At Home On Piety Hill

Well, I’ve taken about all I can this election year. So, I’ll close out political week with a flurry of posts on a variety of issues for those with inquiring minds and plenty of time to peruse. I’ve done the footwork, so now all you need to do is click and enjoy. Let’s begin with this one…

Forget all that babble from Democrats and the automatons on the paleo-press about violence and hate at the McCain-Palin rallies. The real scary stuff is happening in neighborhoods across the land. Here we find progressives in New York expressing their tolerance during a recent march:

Meanwhile, in Portland there are some neo-hippies spreading their brand of peace, love and understanding through a creative use of fossil fuels:

Leslie Brockette Leudtke, 23, and Kevin Carl Robinson, 23, were held on at least eight felony charges of making a destructive device and possession of a destructive device. Leudtke also was charged with reckless burning.

Michael Barone sounds a warning about the potential for mischief if these jackboot thugs become emboldened when Obama sweeps to power in January ‘09. There’s a chill wind blowing across the land of the free:

That’s what Obama supporters, alerted by campaign e-mails, did when conservative Stanley Kurtz appeared on Milt Rosenberg’s WGN radio program in Chicago. Mr. Kurtz had been researching Mr. Obama’s relationship with unrepentant Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers in Chicago Annenberg Challenge papers in the Richard J. Daley Library in Chicago - papers that were closed off to him for some days, apparently at the behest of Obama supporters.

Obama fans jammed WGN’s phone lines and sent in hundreds of protest e-mails. The message was clear to anyone who would follow Mr. Rosenberg’s example. We will make trouble for you if you let anyone make the case against The One…

These attempts to shut down political speech have become routine for liberals. Congressional Democrats sought to reimpose the “fairness doctrine” on broadcasters, which until it was repealed in the 1980s required equal time for different points of view. The motive was plain: to shut down the one conservative-leaning communications medium, talk radio…

Then there’s the Democrats’ “card check” legislation that would abolish secret ballot elections in determining whether employees are represented by unions. The unions’ strategy is obvious: Send a few thugs over to employees’ homes - we know where you live - and get them to sign cards that will trigger a union victory without giving employers a chance to be heard…

Today’s liberals seem to be taking their marching orders from other quarters. Specifically, from the college and university campuses where administrators, armed with speech codes, have for years been disciplining and subjecting to sensitivity training any students who dare to utter thoughts that liberals find offensive. The campuses that once prided themselves as zones of free expression are now the least free part of our society.

Obama supporters who found the campuses congenial and Mr. Obama himself, who has chosen to live all his adult life in university communities, seem to find it entirely natural to suppress speech they don’t like and seem utterly oblivious to claims this violates the letter and spirit of the First Amendment. In this campaign, we have seen the coming of the Obama thugocracy, suppressing free speech, and we may see its flourishing in the four or eight years ahead.

I’ve tried to explain this to people… From The Guardian:

People who believe they have the greenest lifestyles can be seen as some of the main culprits behind global warming, says a team of researchers, who claim that many ideas about sustainable living are a myth.

According to the researchers, people who regularly recycle rubbish and save energy at home are also the most likely to take frequent long-haul flights abroad. The carbon emissions from such flights can swamp the green savings made at home, the researchers claim.

The issue is not hypocrisy — everyone is a hypocrite, so that’s not news. The problem is that there are people around who set themselves up as the arbiters of who is responsible enough to enjoy the goodies and who’s not. Al Gore is just one such preachy, finger-wagging moralist, who is sucking the planet dry. Why anyone would pay any attention to that blow-hard is mind boggling to me.

Suddenly being green is not cool any more: As the credit crunch bites, environmental policies are being ditched. But oddly we are doing better at saving the planet

Julie Burchill can’t stand them. According to her new book, Not in my Name: A Compendium of Modern Hypocrisy, she thinks all environmentalists are po-faced, unsexy, public school alumni who drivel on about the end of the world because they don’t want the working classes to have any fun, go on foreign holidays or buy cheap clothes.

Michael O’Leary, the chief executive of Ryanair, agrees. In an interview with Rachel Sylvester and me, he told us that the “nutbag ecologists” are the overindulged rich who have nothing better to do with their lives than talk about hot air and beans.

So the salad days are over; it’s the end of the greens. Where only a year ago the smart new eco-warriors were revered, wormeries and unbleached cashmere jeans are now seen as a middle-class indulgence.

But the problem for the green lobby isn’t that it has been overrun by “toffs”: it’s the chilly economic climate that has frozen the shoots of environmentalism. Espousing the green life, with its misshapen vegetables and non-disposable nappies, is increasingly being seen as a luxury by everyone.

Meanwhile, this article in the National Journal suggests that Americans are becoming smarter:

According to a survey [PDF] from ABC News, Planet Green and Stanford University, fewer than half — 47 percent — of Americans consider global warming an important issue to them personally, down from 52 percent in April 2007. Although a vast majority still think the planet is warming — 8 in 10 respondents — that figure is also down from last year, having dropped 4 percentage points. Furthermore, in an open-ended question, the number of respondents who called global warming the biggest environmental challenge facing the world fell 8 points from 2007 and currently hovers at 25 percent.

When the people lead, the leaders (and scientists) will follow:

The American Physical Society, an organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its stance on climate change and is now proclaiming that many of its members disbelieve in human-induced global warming.  The APS is also sponsoring public debate on the validity of global warming science…. editor Jeffrey Marque explains,”There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution.”

The APS is opening its debate with the publication of a paper by Lord Monckton of Brenchley, which concludes that climate sensitivity — the rate of temperature change a given amount of greenhouse gas will cause — has been grossly overstated by IPCC modeling… Larry Gould, Professor of Physics at the University of Hartford and Chairman of the New England Section of the APS, called Monckton’s paper an “expose of the IPCC that details numerous exaggerations and “extensive errors”

Finally, we may have the answer to what’s been driving the environmental hysteria all these years:

MELBOURNE: Scientists have discovered that going veggie could be bad for your brain-with those on a meat-free diet six times more likely to suffer brain shrinkage. 

Vegans and vegetarians are the most likely to be deficient because the best sources of the vitamin are meat, particularly liver, milk and fish. VitaminB12 deficiency can also cause anaemia and inflammation of the nervous system. Yeast extracts are one of the few vegetarian foods which provide good levels of the vitamin. 

I think this Washington Post story puts its finger on the problem of declining network viewership, plummeting newspaper circulation and ad revenue.

Lured by an offer of interviews with the Democratic presidential candidate, Brian Williams, Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric will make the overseas trek, meaning that the NBC, ABC and CBS evening newscasts will originate from stops along the route and undoubtedly give it big play.

John McCain has taken three foreign trips in the past four months, all unaccompanied by a single network anchor.

The US has devolved from a representative democratic republic to a two party system with a press that has a cult-like fascination with only one party and philosophy. From the many to the one. Yes, we get one perspective. That’s all. That’s it. One right way to think. One portrayal of how normal people ought to view current events, culture and public policy. 

It’s not as if I don’t understand their strategy. It’s all about being relevant and close to the power people. It’s not about profit and objectivity is definitely out of fashion. When you’re aiming your product to the lowest common denominator and the other guy is indistinguishable from the hip candidate, except for age and ethnicity, follow the buzz and go with the winner! 

One word from a serious news consumer — boring!