Global Warming Kills Florida Surfer UPDATE: Thousands Without Electricity or WiFi; Bloggers Hardest Hit by Storm UPDATE: New York Braces for Irene; Women, Minorites, NFL Fans Hardest Hit

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The past couple of days, I became irritated by non-stop TV hurricane hype, which depicted Irene as a cataclysmic danger to the East Coast. However, just because the cable-news hysteria was absurdly disproportionate to the actual threat didn’t mean Irene was harmless:

Six people, including an 11-year-old boy and a surfer, were dead and the East Coast was a solid wall of red hurricane warnings Saturday as Hurricane Irene began lashing the Virginia coast on its way to what forecasters and authorities warned could be a catastrophic run north.

Wait — what? A surfer?

In Florida, the Volusia County Beach Patrol confirmed that a surfer was killed Saturday when he was knocked off his board at New Smyrna Beach, where surfers flocked to take advantage of 10-foot waves kicked up in the wake of Irene.
“It appears he went over a wave and might have gone head first into the ground,” Tammy Marris, a spokeswoman for the agency, told the Daytona Beach News-Journal.

The dead surfer was a popular high-school math teacher, but the Daytona story concludes:

The National Weather Service and local officials continue to warn that dangerous rip currents are present all along the Atlantic Coast beaches.  “If you are a weak swimmer, you should stay out of the surf,” the weather service stated in an advisory. “Even experienced ocean swimmers should check with lifeguards about where rip currents are occurring before going into the water.”

Ten-foot waves killing innocent surfers? I blame global warming.

UPDATE: Linked by the Lonely Conservative — thanks!

This storm has caused a lot of concern for our environmentalist friends. However, according to the latest reports, no polar bears have been killed by the hurricane. So we can be thankful for that.

UPDATE II: This morning, I was worried because traffic on the blog was kinda slow, even for a Saturday. Then I checked the Wall Street Journal‘s special Irene blog and found out that the storm has knocked out electricity for hundreds of thousands of homes in North Carolina and Virginia. This means that many of our regular readers in those states probably don’t have WiFi and can’t even check the blog today — another tragic consequence of global warming.

UPDATE III: Irene’s tragic toll continues:

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Like the rest of the East Coast, the New York Giants were adjusting their lives around Hurricane Irene on Saturday.
After having their preseason game against the Jets postponed from Saturday to Monday, the Giants held a practice on Saturday morning. Tom Coughlin then sent his team home to be with their families and gave them an off day Sunday, when Irene is expected to hit New Jersey and New York hard.

So if the Giants don’t cover the spread? Right: Global warming.

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‘The Relationship Soured After They Came to Doubt His Reincarnation Credentials’

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That weird sentence was buried in a New York Times story about a Twitter “stalking” case involving an intra-Buddhist dispute:

Born in Canarsie, Brooklyn, Ms. Zeoli is considered to be a reincarnated master in the Tibetan Buddhist religious tradition, and is known to her followers as Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo. She is an avid Twitter user, with 23,000 followers. A representative for Ms. Zeoli said she declined to be interviewed for this article.
According to the F.B.I. and Ms. Zeoli’s lawyer, Mr. Cassidy also claimed to be a reincarnated Buddhist when he joined Ms. Zeoli’s organization, Kunzang Palyul Choling, in 2007. He signed up using a false name and claimed to have had lung cancer, they said. Ms. Zeoli’s organization cared for him and, briefly, even appointed him to its executive team. The relationship soured after they came to doubt his reincarnation credentials and found that his claims of cancer were false. Mr. Cassidy left. Then came the relentless tweets, they said.

The article quotes eminent law-blogger Eugene Volokh on the First Amendment issues involved.

My advice? Don’t ever doubt a Buddhist’s reincarnation credentials!

The Politics of Fear

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“In the hands of a skillful indoctrinator, the average student not only thinks what the indoctrinator wants him to think . . . but is altogether positive that he has arrived at his position by independent intellectual exertion. This man is outraged by the suggestion that he is the flesh-and-blood tribute to the success of his indoctrinators.”
– William F. Buckley Jr., Up From Liberalism (1959)

In February, the National Interest published an article by Ian Kershaw called “The Ghosts of Fascists Past“:

A prominent British government minister, Baroness Warsi, herself a Muslim, claimed just recently that Islamophobia has “passed the dinner-table test” in Britain and is seen by many as normal and uncontroversial. She warned of growing intolerance, prejudice and bigotry toward the Muslim faith and its adherents. . . .
If we add to the mix the anti-immigrant feeling that is widespread in many parts of the Continent, then racism, it has to be admitted, is far from eradicated. How dangerous is it, given these countries’ baleful histories of racism and fascism in the not-too-distant past? Not surprisingly, some have asked whether Europe is moving toward political extremes. Do the signs point that way? Is Europe indeed on the road to new racial intolerance that could give succor to the extremist Right and even offer it new, promising prospects? . . .

Perhaps some would point toward last month’s Oslo massacre as evidence of such a trend, but I think that’s misleading. Anders Breivik was a lone wolf, a one-off like Timothy McVeigh. Recall that the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing was at the time heralded as a symbol of an alleged menace — right-wing militias — that never really developed into anything. And likewise we have no evidence that Breivik’s murder spree was the leading edge of a mass movement.

This is not to minimize the extent or significance of Breivik’s (or McVeigh’s) association with the Right, but rather to illustrate that even the most extreme elements of the Right seldom resort to terrorist violence, and such violence never serves to advance the cause on behalf of which its perpetrators purport to act. In democratic societies, political violence tends to be self-defeating, discrediting those who employ it. Yet there is an industry devoted to conjuring fear of right-wing extremism. The Southern Poverty Law Center (with a tax-free bank account of $175 million) routinely floods the mailboxes of elderly rich liberals with scary solicitations conveying the impression that, unless they send a generous check to fund the SPLC’s efforts, the brownshirts will be goose-stepping down Main Street next week.

My point is that this fear is misplaced and irrational, and yet the Department of Homeland Security’s infamous “right-wing extremism” report of 2009 shows how such foolishness is taken seriously in high places. If the DHS report was directed at the Tea Party movement (as most believe), what are they afraid of? People holding rallies to protest against deficit spending? Mass opposition to a government takeover of the health-care system? A Republican electoral landslide?

Unjustified fear of “right-wing extremism” is fomented simply as a way of demonizing Republicans who, the liberals would have us believe, are on the one hand beholden to dangerous crackpots while, on the other hand, are also tacitly encouraging violent extremists. So if some nut commits a heinous crime and is then alleged to have been a Rush Limbaugh listener — vote Democrat!

Because if you don’t vote Democrat, the Republicans will take charge and then the brownshirts will be goose-stepping down Main Street next week.

It sounds silly when put in such simple terms, of course, but what exactly do the fearmongers want their audiences to fear?

If the danger is psychos with explosives, OK — let the FBI investigate and arrest them. But the fearmongers would have us believe that there is a Continuum of Hate, an uninterrupted chain of causality by which the Hutaree Militia is ultimately connected to the Republican National Committee. And it just ain’t so. Continue reading The Politics of Fear →

Is The GOP Hopelessly Nixonian?

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by Smitty

Insty links to Bret Jacobson in Forbes. Jacobson starts with the obvious JFK/Nixon debate point, enumerates the various major new media channels, and concludes:

So successful campaigns using digital tools well should always be congratulated, sometimes emulated (never duplicated), and always topped. Showing up is a great first step. Then it’s time to understand how to win in an emerging medium.

I don’t think that the GOP’s Nixonian problem has to do with a Luddite view of technology. The wrecking of George Allen in 2006 and the ludicrous $ haul of BHO in 2008 are two searing examples among thousands of why technology mastery goes without saying.

The view of Nixon’s character, as seen in Frost/Nixon suggests another parallel between the GOP gestalt and Nixon; that of the Ruling Class Overlord confronted with the hoi polloi. The elder statesman is too burdened with his weighty matters of state to condescend to explain himself to a commoner. But, as with the JFK/Nixon debate issue, this is superficial.

The problem is not the GOP inside the beltway looking out to the lumpen proletariat. Rather, the American citizens looking into the beltway having trouble telling apart the GOP and Democrat ends of the Ruling Class. In a twisted way, the Democrats are more forthright: they explicitly believe that there are no problems, only government solutions. No bones about it. No faux capitalist bleating, and then another bureaucracy (TSA) or ream of legislation up the stern tube.

Now, I understand that all the GOP candidates, in contrast to the Democrat one, have got to be moderate for a few reasons:

  • The Independent third of the electorate decides who gets control.
  • People will cheerfully ride the economic bus they know off a cliff rather than consider things like eliminating the Federal Reserve, with the attendant uncertainty about who will pick our pockets and shower them with economic ruin, if not Bernanke.
  • Nobody wants to upset the rice bowls. The amazingly torpid homo bureaucratus who works within the beltway can become agitated, and release a storm of PowerPoint slides, if his meeting room habitat is disturbed. Candidates are wise to take a mellow tack, and promise spending cuts, but no staffing cuts.

That’s all campaigning, which is a different beast than holding office, unless your name sounds similar to origami.

Which is the crux of the matter for the GOP. Doing the right, proper, conservative, common-sense thing involves a refudiation of their entire Ruling Class approach for the last century. It’s one thing for a lone drunk to go cold turkey, but sobering an entire political party is like trying to get Jimmy Carter not to be a milquetoast: easier said than dried.

Answering the question posed in the title, the GOP is hopelessly Nixonian by nature. It is also going to have as much change beaten into it as necessary by the Tea Party to overcome the hopeless part. The Radtke/Allen kerfuffle is a case in point; look for further entertainment as the primary season unfolds, Virginians.

Hard Times Spreading Just Like the Flu …

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. . . Watch out, homeboy, don’t let it catch you:

In the occasionally prickly world of media reporting, it’s hard to find anyone who does not love, respect and, yes, slightly fear Jack Shafer.
So widespread is the love that American Journalism Review published a valentine to him earlier today, devoting 2,500 words to figuring out just what makes him so much better at writing about the media than everybody else.
Then, just minutes later, Adweek broke the news that Slate had laid him off, along with several others.
“These are tough times for publications,” Shafer told POLITICO. “They had to let some people go, and I was one of them.”He said he would continue as a contributor.
Slate held a meeting on Wednesday afternoon to inform staff about the layoffs, which affected four people. Staffers said there was no mention of any reason for the cutbacks beyond the tough economic times.
“We did a small reduction in our full-time staff and in our contractors, and we are, like everybody in the business, constantly looking at the competitive landscape and trying to be as responsive and agile as we can,” David Plotz, Slate’s editor, told POLITICO. “The goal of Slate is to produce intelligent and witty and innovative-in-the-medium kind of journalism, and it’s our belief that the changes that we’ve made today, plus some investments that we are making in other editorial matters and technology, are going to help us be competitive.”
Timothy Noah, author of Slate’s “Chatterbox” column, confirmed that he was one of the four editorial staffers laid off, and will now become a nonstaff “contributing writer.” He’s been on book leave since April writing a book about income inequality, based on a series he wrote last year for Slate.

Kind of ironic to be working on a book about “income inequality” when you get laid off from your day job. But the fact that they are making such cutbacks at Slate, one of the original online publications, and cutting front-page names like Shafer and Noah, should tell you something about the state of the industry.

Instapundit quoted something wise yesterday: “The way you get a job as an online journalist is that you show you can write and get traffic. . . . You should also start your own blog. That is your real resume. If you want a job writing online, any employer will say ‘Why aren’t you doing it now if that’s what you want to do?’ And it’s a decent question. No one is stopping you from writing right now. You don’t need to be paid to write something good. Just write it and put it on your blog.”

What’s weird to me is that so few downsized journalists even try their hands as independent bloggers. Most bloggers dont’t come from a journalism background. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of newspaper staffers have been laid off in the past decade. How many of them are are now blogging? Not many, so far as I know. And that’s weird.

And hey, how’d you like that Old School hiphop reference in the title?

This Item Is Not (Yet) Available at Amazon

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But it’s probably only a matter of time:

The Duet is a new, sleek, multispeed, waterproof vibrator – and it doubles as a USB drive with up to 16GB of storage.
Its designers, Ti Chang and Michael Topolovac, realized that the biggest complaint from women about vibrators had to do with the hassle of cords, batteries or obscure charging devices.
They discovered a USB connector was the solution.
“You look at it plugged into a laptop, charging, and it doesn’t look anything like a vibrator,” Chang said.

Could technology render men redundant to the . . . uh, pleasure process? Feminists perhaps hope so, and therefore this USB love-machine/thumb-drive represents “progress” in the wrong direction. Nevertheless, they sell everything at Amazon, and I’m sure they’ll be selling this soon.

Just yesterday, we sold a Kitchen Aid food processor for $179, which earned me a $7.16 commission through Amazon Associates, and another reader recently bought a $379 Nikon digital camera, thus kicking a $15.16 commission my way.

Whether it’s food processors or cameras or . . . uh, personal pleasure you’re looking for, Amazon sells it, and every time you shop through our Amazon links here, I get a 4% commission on the purchase price.





Of course, the easiest and quickest way to help pay the bills here is to hit the tip jar, but we do appreciate readers who shop Amazon for great bargains. And good lovin’ . . . NTTAWWT.

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More Predictable Than the Weather

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Hurricane hysteria gives way to global-warming hype:

Was Hurricane Irene caused by global warming?
— Politico

How Global Warming Is Making Hurricane Irene Worse
— Thnk Progress

Global Warming’s Heavy Cost
— The Daily Beast

And if you don’t buy into the hype, you’re anti-science.

Just wondering: Would I be the first to say that it’s hard to hate a hurricane that seems to be taking direct aim at James Wolcott?

Not that I am actually saying that, but if I did say it, would I be the first?

Tiny Indiana College Likely to Get a Whole Lot Tinier in the Near Future

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The kind of stuff you can’t make up:

Tiny Goshen College in Indiana has banned the “The Star Spangled Banner: at all sporting events because the Mennonite school’s president considers the National Anthem’s words to be too violent.
The 1,000-student school had already banned the words last year, but the band could still play the music for patriots in attendance. Now, the school has banned the song entirely, according to NBC Sports.

(Via Memeorandum.) If Goshen College wishes to be even less significant than they already are, they’ve chosen a perfect path to obscurity.

Next year is the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812, during which the British bombardment of Fort McHenry inspired the famous words of our national anthem, written by Maryland native Francis Scott Key. It is pathetic that brave men died so that twerps like Goshen College’s president could have the freedom to repudiate their courageous sacrifice.