Its back to work.

But to keep you amused here's a great add:

A couple of others I like are:

An amusing take on Levis.

And a somewhat more risqué view on Mastercard.

And in the same vein, a great Obama cartoon.

Cartoon: By Warren.

More great stuff from Daniel Hannan.

I was somewhat disturbed by Hannan’s acceptance of Enoch Powell, but I think his reasons in this clip are justifiable and some of the more extreme statements of Powell may not be well known to him as Powell is a fairly distant memory, and this guy is younger and may not be fully familiar with them.

This clip should be a warning to America of what it may be about to lose, and a reminder to the rest of us that we may be a lot better off if we were, (gasp) “More like America.”

Some people just never learn.

H/T Ben and Bawb’s blog.

During the last US election I supported John McCain after Fred Thompson pulled out as I thought that he was the best of the candidates left at that time, and I recalled the incredible impact he had on the 2000 campaign prior to being destroyed by the dirty tricks element of the Bush effort.

After he secured the nomination I watched with growing disquiet as he tended to display himself as increasingly out of his depth, at which time I seriously considered throwing my effort behind the Libertarian Party campaign which I was lending some support to anyway. At that time he made the only really good decision of the entire campaign, selecting Sarah Palin as VP nominee, which brought me back onside.

I then watched with growing disquiet as the entire Democrat campaign turned their guns on her, figuring that they could afford to dismiss him while she was the real danger. By the end of the campaign we only had one dog left in the fight, but she carried it to the end, despite treachery from the McCain campaign, which he made no attempt to stop. He at no time in the entire effort made any effort to support her even as her children were attacked.

McCain is less competent than the guy with a knife in a gunfight.

Nothing has changed since the election as his latest effort shows. Answering a question at a town hall he made the rather incredible claim that Obama is a man who respects the constitution. Any passing analysis of Obama’s statements clearly indicates that he is a total statist with little understanding of the reason or purpose of the constitution and no respect for its contents. Nobody with any understanding of the concept of liberty would rail against it being a charter of negative liberties, as seen here:

(2001 interview with Chicago Public Radio)

… And to that extent, I think, as radical as people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn't that radical. It didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution, at least as it's been interpreted, and the Warren Court interpreted it in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties, says what the states can't do to you, says what the federal government can't do to you, but it doesn't say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf, and that hasn't shifted, and one of the, I think, the tragedies of the Civil Rights movement was, because the Civil Rights movement became so court focused, I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change. And, ah, in some ways we still suffer from that."

Obama criticized the Supreme Court for only granting black Americans the same rights as white Americans, yet to listen to McCain you would think he was the leader of the Constitution Party, not the Democrats.

Not Evil Just Wrong

Agmates is a site with a number of networking groups associated with it, one being the Climate Sceptics Party forum.

An interesting topic which has come up is the release of the feature length documentary, “Not Evil Just Wrong” which examines the devastating consequences of the global warming hysteria. From a personal standpoint I have some difficulties with the title as I find it difficult to accept that people such as Gore, could keep repeating their views in the face of mounting contrarian evidence if their views were an honest mistake, but I suppose we can be generous and give them the benefit of the doubt.

A new line has been developed for the release, with the theme:

“Have your own CINEMATIC TEA PARTY!”

DISTRIBUTION STRATEGY

The typical Hollywood distribution model wasn’t right for this film.
Hollywood’s long standing disconnect with the lives of every day Americans wouldn’t suit a film about the lives and livelihoods of hard-working folks like those profiled in Vevay, Indiana. This film is for the Southwest Virginia miner, the North Dakota farmer, and the hometown entrepreneur.

We’re shattering the original model and creating a new mold with the distribution of this film because this film truly belongs in the home of every hard working person. Home party packs are now available for pre-order for viewing the night of October 18th and onward, including a poster, red carpet and invitations. We are offering a unique, family-oriented cinematic experience to encourage discussion with your neighbors and friends.

Orders can be done here.



On the theme of honest mistakes versus deliberate misinformation it is hard to go past the following clip in which Gerd Leipold of GreenPeace finds himself with a questioner who is not a subservient acolyte and challenges statements made by the organization resulting in an embarrassing backdown, and an admission that they tend to ‘emotionalize’ or in reality exaggerate their causes to get their way. The interesting part comes in at around the three minute mark. For a shorter version go to this clip.

Banning the Criminals.

Interestingly after my post on bikie legislation my old mate Ron Kitching came up with the same conclusions, although a littlle more succinct:

By Ron Kitching.


The Queensland Premier, Anna Bligh, has announced that new laws will ban Motor Cycle Clubs.

On a percentage basis, the news informed us today that Queensland politicians have a higher rate of criminal conviction than those among Motorcycle Club Members.

If the odd member of a Motor Cycle Club breaks the law, he can be arrested and prosecuted by existing laws.

Considering the serious and destructive interventions of the Queensland Premier, (who closed the Proserpine Shale Oil project), and her counterparts in Canberra, (who are proposing an Emissions Trading Tax, which will wreck Australia’s economy), steps ought to be taken to ban political parties. If ever there were criminal gangs damaging Australian citizens, most political parties are the leaders of the push.

When Rome relied on the law, the Republic prospered. When the law became politicised, and inflation set in, Rome and the Republic collapsed.

If present political trends persist, Australia will suffer the same inevitable fate.

Renewable energy mandates passed.

The National Party deserve credit for their strong stance on the ration and tax (RAT) scheme on emissions, however the surrender on the issue of alternative energy is a disappointment.

Alternative energy will find its place in the market for power if and when it becomes viable in its own right, but until that time only deserves to be a product for the niche market aimed at those whose concerns are such that they feel the need to use it and feel good about paying the full cost of doing so. At such a time as there is sufficient popular demand for it entrepreneurs will be happy to supply all of the alternative energy the market wants as long as it is economically viable.

Regrettably the coalition has seen fit to join the government in ramming a social engineering exercise down our necks by mandating the use of alternative energy, viable or not. In doing so they are risking massive distortions in the economy, both now and in the future by forcing us to use systems based on what we have now in an evolving technology disregarding the potential for currently theoretical technology to be more efficient.

The whole idea becomes ridiculous, when the use of such clean and valuable sources as hydro and nuclear are unable to come into the equation for the simple reason that the environmental lobby that this is supposed to please, consider them to be uncool. Enel in Italy is currently building a hydrogen fueled power plant, yet this is not a considered option.

The following is an extract from a letter that was forwarded to me and puts the whole thing into perspective:

It is now widely agreed—even among the proponents of AGW—that the observed global warming for the last half of the 20th century amounted to about 0.7°C. 
(There has been a slight reduction in observed global temperature since 1998). 


If the global atmosphere's present component gasses (Nitrogen, Oxygen, water vapor, Argon, a few rare gases and, finally, Carbon Dioxide) were stretched proportionately along 1 kilometer, CO2 accounts for a 38 cm contribution to that kilometer. 


The human-generated CO2 would account for 12 mm. 
Australia's human contribution: 0.18 mm—less than the thickness of a human hair. 


We will leave it to you to work out how much our 0.18 mm would have contributed to the 0.7° temperature rise, even if the AGW hypotheses had been proven. 


It is high time our representatives stopped listening to the rabid zealots of the environmental movement, who seem to regard every aspect of human activity as subject to their self righteous judgmentalism, and would seek to have all of our lives controlled to the point that we fit their image of what they would have us be.

My message to all of you, and especially those guilt ridden souls who have fallen under the influence of the drab grey messengers of doom from the greens, the left, the right, and all those followers of bizarre lines of thought that lead down the road to authoritarianism, is:

It’s OK to feel good about yourself.

Bikie laws: Another Bligh knee jerk.

Cartoon: Day by Day.

Political knee jerk reactions are the reflex action of a government who believe their own hype to such a degree that they consider that only new action by big brother will fix any problem, which gets highlighted in the press. The fact that there are sufficient existing laws to deal with the situation, usually with several powers of overkill fails to impress or dissuade them from such a course of action. Consider the following:

QUEENSLAND will match South Australia with some of the toughest anti-bikie laws in the world, cracking down on their fortresses and group gatherings.
Premier Anna Bligh will today announce State Government measures to dismantle the dangerous outlaw motorcycle gangs.

She said authorities would be given stronger powers to stop the bikies' organized criminal activities, including manufacturing drugs, extortion and money laundering.

The moves come after two outlaw motorcycle gangs set up new headquarters near city centers in Queensland. …

The problem I have with this is that all of the activities that she seems concerned with are already illegal and have more than adequate laws in place to deal with them already. Drug dealing, violence, killing each other, and so on are all covered by existing laws, and it does not require new laws which are bikie specific for those existing laws to be enforced. Much of the proposed laws are on the face of it discriminatory, for example:

“ … gang members will be restricted from owning weapons, working in the security industry or holding a liquor license.”

There seems to be little justification in denying to members of disapproved bikie gang rights, which are not denied to other citizens under normal circumstances. The ‘owning weapons’ aspect is ludicrous anyway as most law abiding people are denied the right to own weapons. It is rather pathetically naïve of Bligh to assume that on the assumption of these people being law-breakers, such a law will be obeyed in any case. This woman is just plain dumb.

The main new victim in this exercise is the rights to freedom of speech and association. Interestingly, in 1951 the Menzies government passed a law banning the Communist Party. It was challenged in the High Court, which ruled that it was invalid. Following this, the government sponsored the communist referendum in an attempt to validate its position. This was opposed by the Communist Party, Australian Labor Party, and by the Young Liberals, on the grounds that it restricted freedom of speech and association.

Political parties consist of groups of people freely associating just the same as bikie gangs are, and with the current controversy in the Bligh government in relation to dirty deals, nepotism, ‘pay for play,’ and downright corruption, it is difficult to imagine a reason why political entities should be awarded any protection from the law not afforded to non-political entities.