Month: July 2010

Classic movie beard-shaving scenes. I look away.

The cultures of Cheney and Palin are converging over opposition to the building of a mosque in Temecula, California:

An e-mail alert sent to area newspapers last week announced that a one-hour "singing – praying – patriotic rally" will begin at 12:30 p.m. July 30 at the Islamic Center’s existing facility. The advisory – sent by a leader of a conservative coalition that has been active with Republican and Tea Party functions – recommended participants "bring your Bibles, flags, signs, dogs and singing voices."

"We will not be submissive," the notice proclaimed. "Our voices are going to be heard!" The alert went on to question what its authors described as Islamic beliefs. It suggested that participants sing during the rally because Muslim "women are forbidden to sing." It suggested that rally participants bring dogs because Muslims "hate dogs."

This is great news for al Qaeda, and for all those Jihadists who want a civilizational war over religion. Are there any countervailing voices in the GOP? Anyone willing to stand up to this? When Gingrich has signed on, you realize that there are no moderating elites any more. Just opportunists willing to ride the tiger of polarization.

(Hat tip: RWW)

Douthat follows up:

Imagine that a more perfect version of cap-and-trade could have been smoothed into law by G.O.P. support. And let’s further bracket Manzi’s favorite debating terrain, the (extremely important) question of whether the costs of a carbon cap are worth the expected economic benefit, given the likely damage wrought by climate change. Even then, I still don’t understand how progressives can believe — especially in the wake of the Copenhagan summit — that this bill actually opens the way to an actual global insurance policy against catastrophic climate change. Spending 1 percent of our G.D.P. as a hedge against catastrophe might make sense; spending the same amount without any prospect of actually getting that insurance policy seems like idealistic folly. And so far, when it comes to actual mechanisms whereby Waxman-Markey becomes a model for the developing world, all I’ve heard from the left are neoconservative-style arguments about how “if the world’s leading power leads, everyone else will follow,” and visions of a carbon trade war between the West and China. Neither seems persuasive.

Actually, of course, the world's leading power (in terms of economic potential) is leading. China, that is.

And to say that we shouldn't start disincentives for carbon-use because we cannot guarantee a solution to climate change seems overly pessimistic and non-dynamist to me. My view is that, in the very end, humankind willl find some way to harness non-carbon energy to sustain our way of life – or we will return to a more rudimentary life style (if it isn't imposed on us by a WMD catastrophe). And the geo-strategic advantages of ending our addiction to mainly foreign oil are also surely to be taken into account. Anything that can get us out of the endless wars of the Middle East is well worth 1 percent of GDP, no?

A reader asks if I was channeling Professor Farnsworth. Indeed I was. The new Futurama season? Trying a teensy bit too hard, in my view. But still brilliant in flashes, and they'll get their groove back soon enough.

A reader writes:

When I saw the latest FOTD, I could only imagine the sheep’s thoughts: “Whoa… Double windmill!  What does it mean….?”

Sorry.

Apology accepted.

Some Obama supporters are hoping for a Palin nomination because her high negatives will give Obama a better shot at reelection. Ned Resnikoff lists other consequences:

Palin has already demonstrated a disturbing willingness to frame even minor political squabbles in terms of "tyranny" versus "liberty," and to make her a major party’s presidential candidate would only do more to throw the spotlight on that sort of incitement. Perhaps, as Kevin Drum prays, the GOP would then, "go down to such an epic defeat that they finally get some sense knocked into them." But in the meantime, we would be facing a long, protracted campaign in which both a major political party and the mainstream press would treat violently anti-democratic positions as existing within the confines of reasonable political discourse. We’ve already had quite a bit of that over the past few years; accommodating and encouraging it could potentially make things much, much worse.

Truly: she's far too dangerous to be considered opportunistically.

A gaffe prematurely reveals some fascinating new astronomical findings via the Kepler Space Telescope:

In a recent presentation, Kepler co-investigator Dimitar Sasselov preempted the official announcement that the exoplanet-hunting Kepler Space Telescope has discovered about 140 candidate worlds orbiting other stars that are "like Earth."

Usually, announcements like these happen after an official press release, but during the TEDGLobal conference in Oxford, U.K., Sasselov unexpectedly dropped the groundbreaking news in one of his presentation slides.

John Hudson kicks the Volt's wheels.

A fascinating look at the future of ordering food.