Global Warming & Population Explosion

A match made in Hell. Surely there's a link between Global Warming and Alar-poisoned apples or DDT. Hmmmm? Well, I am sure the devotees of the mass murderess Rachel Carson are feverishly trying to establish this connection.

Until then, Paul Ehrlich, call your agent. I smell a lucrative lecture circuit in your future. The Stanford University biologist, you see, published his theories that by the end of the 1970's we would all be starving or fighting for food (not oil) or suffering a depletion in the world's supply of....oxygen (not oil). In the Population Bomb, Prof. Ehrlich argued that the world's population of people would outstrip the world's supply of food to eat, places to live, air to breath, etc.

Unfortunately, it turns out that the world's population is suffering from obesity, diabetes and, yes, longevity all resulting from the supply of too much food in those parts of the world where people are generally free to pursue happiness. Well a Canadian paper has picked up the 40-year-old trail, conveniently leaving out the 40-year-old history of over-population predictions and has ginned-up a new theory on which to base the now-dubious "science" of man-made global warming. There are too many people, you see. And do you know what people do? Breath! They breath in oxygen and exhale.....pollution!

But wait, there's more! All is not lost because the Chinese have hit upon a solution. The one-child policy. That's right. Chi-Com families are punished in ways that would make Kim jong-Il blush for being over-reproductive, and our Canadian brethren are just amazed that the civilized world has been slow to adopt this policy. To make matters worse, this issue has "crossed the radar screen" of CNN's Jack Cafferty who brought it to the Situation Room late last week.

Do we look like fools or what? Here we sit with egg-foo-yung on our faces while the Chinese population in 40 years drops by two-thirds! They will voluntarily kill off two-thirds of their population just save the polar bears! Here all this time we thought they were monsters just for running their own people down with tanks and infantry. And all we do is complain that they are not stopping the use of oil and coal and not spending billions to grow ethanol, erect wind-turbines. Oh, wait, only the conservative Republicans are complaining. For the rest of the world, it is enough that the Chi-Coms are conducting forced-sterilization and infanticide to enforce the one-child policy and ...save the polar bears!

But I think the one-child policy will have drastic consequences for the U.S. of A. If the Chinese population drops by two-thirds, who will buy our Treasuries? Where will we get all of our cheap electronics and Happy Meal toys?

Sarah Palin; Why Not?

I've been wanting to write about Sarah Palin for a long time. Why? Well because there are many in the conservative yak-o-sphere who seem to be clinging to one issue as a rock-solid reason for opposing her further adventures in politics: stepping down as Governor of Alaska.

Now there is a template being employed here if one listens or reads carefully and it defines why this is a rock-solid reason for her disqualification. Since I have not been convinced by this template I am compelled to debunk it.

1. The reason for her stepping down is "still unexplained." This is the premise that should embarrass anyone employing this template. The only thing "still unexplained" about this issue is who developed the template. Less puzzling though still entertaining is why otherwise intelligent conservatives continue to employ it.

Unless I saw a different press conference where she announced her decision and, get this, explained why she was stepping down, it seems to me that she explained her compelling reasons for her decision:

a) It was costing the taxpayers of Alaska way too much money to answer the endless parade of nuisance queries, requests for information, legal motions, etc., that she as duly elected Governor was required to answer;
b) These nuisances were distracting her and her administration from performing the job that Alaskans elected her to do and that she was compelled to do under the state's constitution.
c) Finally these distractions were not serving the interests of Alaska or its citizens but were a hold-over from a twisted Republican presidential campaign that continues to define the liberal-conservative animus.

2. She is a quitter. If the reasons (written in plain English above) make Sarah Palin a "quitter" then I suppose that George Washington was also a quitter for resigning his commission after the Revolution when, at a point in America's infancy, an iconic personality and leader of the only legitimate armed forces, Washington could very well have assumed power and ruled as a dictator. Instead, Washington acted in what he rightly saw as America's best interests, placing the future of the new Republic above that of his own career.

3. She quit just so she could make a gazillion bucks on the lecture circuit. This from "conservatives"! Why any so-called conservative would begrudge someone, even a liberal, the chance to make a better life for themselves and their family, without hurting anyone or breaking any laws, is beyond me. Perhaps one of you "conservatives" out there can 'splain it to me, real slow and using small words.

And this is the template used by the still-hinged, the reasonable thinkers and writers. This week the National Journal published its latest "Insider" polls in which the staff ask a gaggle of supposed insiders of each party a handful of "If-you-could-be-any-animal..." type questions and come up with...something to publish. One of the questions was who in your party would you most like to see muted.

Two of the four top vote-getters were Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh. Others these insiders would mute include Rep. Michelle Bachmann and Glenn Beck! Of the 85 people named as the Republican "political insiders" I have heard of maybe five. By comparison, I have heard of more of the Democratic political insiders. And I think I have found the source of the still-unexplained- reason-for-Sarah-Palin's-resignation-as-Governor talking points.