Archive for November, 2009

As regular readers of NobleThinking know, I’m a huge fan of the TV show Lost on ABC. It is the first show in years that had me captivated and waiting on the edge of my seat for the next episode.

Then came along Mad Men on AMC. I love that show, but it’s in the off-season, leaving me with nowhere to go since Lost doesn’t start again until February 2010.

Which brings me to my latest fascination: Glee. The appeal to this show for me is that I was in show choir and drama in high school, and I can completely relate to a lot of the tension between the “popular” kids and the kids in glee.

When I revel in the glory days of high school, the big memories are starring as Curly in the school production of Oklahoma, playing Lord Fancourth Babberly in Charlie’s Aunt, our baseball team winning the state championship (I was the starting center fielder) and performing in the All-State show choir – all in that order.

So it turns out I’m more drama/choir geek than baseball jock. That’s probably obvious to everyone who went to high school with me, but it’s only upon reflection that I realized it myself.

So early next year, I’m going to be conflicted. Glee will go up against Lost on Wednesday nights.

Thank goodness for Tivo.

“Climategate” is the latest scandal to rock the political scene. As the scope of the fraud perpetrated by “scientists” expands, it is going to have a big impact on the efforts to pass cap-and-trade legislation in the Senate and create even more problems for Obama.

So what should Obama do? A smart move would be to scrap his plans to attend the climate summit in Copenhagen. We remember what happened last time he went to Copenhagen. The cap-and-trade bill is already on life support in the Senate, and Obama will face criticism that the U.S. is not doing enough. Why subject himself, and the U.S., to criticism for not being “green enough” when we now have proof that there is true scientific bias and fabrication of information?

There are many people in the scientific world who are trying to minimize this bias and fraud as no big deal. George Monbiot, a big-time climate change advocate, warns that the email scandal is a big deal, and that the climate change crowd minimizes it at its own peril. His blog post tries to juxtapose this scandal with the “lying” of the “fossil fuel industry,” but that’s to be expected.

The Wall Street Journal Europe editorialized on this issue, writing:

The real issue is what the messages say about the way the much-ballyhooed scientific consensus on global warming was arrived at in the first place, and how even now a single view is being enforced. In short, the impression left by the correspondence among Messrs. Mann and Jones and others is that the climate-tracking game has been rigged from the start.

According to this privileged group, only those whose work has been published in select scientific journals, after having gone through the “peer-review” process, can be relied on to critique the science. And sure enough, any challenges that critics have lobbed at climatologists from outside this clique are routinely dismissed and disparaged.

There is plenty more to come on this issue, and if you aren’t up to speed on the Climategate emails, one of the best recaps (and with a very Arizona-specific twist) is Greg Patterson’s treatment of this at espressopundit.com.

Is anyone else as bothered as I am about the media labeling the kick-off of the Christmas Season as “Black Friday?”

Very disturbing.

Thanksgiving is a wonderful holiday in the sense that it is built around the whole idea of gratitude.

If there is one thing missing most in society today, it is gratitude, true gratitude. Not the kind like, “I’m so thankful that Wal-Mart has this awesome sale.” (That was the gratitude on display late Thanksgiving night when I ran to the nearby 24-hour Super Wal-Mart and there were lines of people waiting for the clock to strike midnight to officially kick off the post-Thanksgiving sales.)

Gratitude, in its purest sense, is recognizing that all that we have is a gift from God.

Ok, I didn’t say anything when Obama bowed to the Saudi King. I didn’t say anything when he bowed to the Japanese Emperor, but good grief, the Chinese Premier?

Please. Just. Stop.

You know that the glow of Obama is fading when historical allies begin to take shots at him. A lefty t-shirt maker in L.A. is going to make a killing on his “Hope… is fading fast” t-shirt.

Saturday Night Live, never a bastion of conservatism, has been whacking Obama hard for on his “accomplishments” (read: zero – according to them) and his policies both foreign and domestic.

Even Jay Leno is in the fray:

“The White House and the Senate Democrats are working on a new jobs bill. The White House said this new jobs bill could create twice as many nonexistent fake jobs as the last one.  Now, three weeks ago … the $787 billion stimulus-thing created one million new jobs. Then, last week, they said it was really only 640,000 jobs. Now, they’re saying they really don’t know. You know how to create a new job? Fire the guy in charge of counting.”

When you are a Democrat and have become the butt of late night comics, you’ve lost your groove.

This video is a true classic.

It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first. – Ronald Reagan

Count on the United Nations to come up with one of the most outlandish reasons to push the alarmist view of the “dangers” of global warming: ‘Climate change pushes poor women to prostitution.’

Seriously? I mean, come on, these kinds of claims make the global warming and overpopulation crowd look downright silly. This is the “oldest profession” we are talking about, and we are supposed to believe that global warming causes an increase in prostitution?

Just when I thought I’d heard it all.

The debate over global warming, and whether or not it is human-caused, just got more interesting. While some have argued that “the science is settled” on this issue, Erick Erickson posts a very important report at RedState.com that demonstrates the lengths that global warming alarmist will go to try to squash the very scientific debate that they claim is critical to finding the truth. It’s well worth the read.