Updated: Foul Tom Friedman

Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Journalism, Media, Neoconservatism, Pseudoscience

Thomas Friedman, the mustachioed crunchy-neocon, can’t go wrong. He was wrong about Iraq, but that didn’t come back to bite him. What’s a little war between friends? He purports to understand free market economics, yet, on the Late Night Show, he complained that not enough capitalists were developing green technologies—the most lucrative potential market there is, says Friedman.
Let’s see: Is this because capitalists are not as smart as Tom Friedman, a statist ponce who pimps for the powers that be? Naturally, Friedman is being holier than thou. Scientists are fiddling with green technologies all the time; industrialists, not so much, since the scientists have yet to find a way to make these technologies commercially viable.
The profit motive, Mr. Friedman, ensures resources are directed to their most efficient use. Technologies that aren’t commercially viable are too expensive; aren’t profitable and are, therefore, invariably wasteful—of the very resources they aim to preserve.
Friedman, who got behind the neoconservative Manifest Destiny, is hungry for a new National Greatness Agenda. I guess exporting democracy didn’t go that well. In the Green Agenda he sees “a new unifying political movement for the 21st century.” Hence his motto: “Green is the new red, white and blue.”
“Reincarnation of the Reds” is more like it.
Americans have been fooled by the likes of Friedman, but the British Times Literary Supplement panned his last book—the reviewer had little good to say about Friedman’s reasoning.
As I’ve said, my only consolation is that the gangreens “are worried sick about the planet—genuinely…The Worry Factor may just increase the rate at which this particular invasive species falls off the earth.”
Come to think about it, the ethically challenged Friedman didn’t care much about the casualties of an unjust war; I’m sure he doesn’t lose sleep over alleged global warming.
Friedman’s grammar: he said “more fit,” and “more strong,” when he should have said “fitter and stronger.” And he polluted with a mouthful of cute coinages, such as “global weirding,” and by saying we should have an “earth race” (as opposed to an arms race, supposedly) with China. Puke.

Update (Feb 27): Cooling Trend. From “Daily Tech,” via WorldNetDaily:
“Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile — the list goes on and on.
No more than anecdotal evidence, to be sure. But now, that evidence has been supplanted by hard scientific fact. All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA’s GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.”

Update II: George Reisman, Ph.D, sends along this apropos comment:

“As the ice thickens in the Arctic and in Antarctica and record cold temperatures are recorded practically across the world [SEE BELOW], so too does the ice thin—under the feet of the environmentalists and their global warming crusade. It may almost be time to begin speculating on what will follow global warming as the next great scare.”

George is referring to the appropriately humorous title of Sen. Inhofe’s circular: “Earth’s ‘Fever’ Breaks: Global COOLING Currently Under Way.” You can find a good collection of up-to-date articles here on the Inhofe EPW Press Blog.

America's Best Export

Foreign Policy, Free Markets, Media

“[B]ows and basses rather than arms and armor…”

“North Korea presented a lavish welcome on Monday to its latest visiting delegation, the New York Philharmonic…The North Koreans opened the door to some 400 people, the largest contingent of Americans to visit this isolated, totalitarian state since the Korean War ended in 1953. The group includes musicians, orchestra staff, television production crews and 80 journalists, as well as patrons who paid $100,000 a couple.

The Philharmonic will play in the East Pyongyang Grand Theater, where music of Gershwin, Dvorak and Wagner, not to mention the American and North Korean national anthems, is to be broadcast live on state radio and television. That will be a novelty for a populace shut off from the world by government censorship.”

And it would have been a novelty in the US had stations other than CNN broadcast this positive event. Perhaps America would once again adopt the “novel” idea that genuine change is best achieved through peaceful trade and voluntary exchange of cultural products.

America’s Best Export

Foreign Policy, Free Markets, Media

“[B]ows and basses rather than arms and armor…”

“North Korea presented a lavish welcome on Monday to its latest visiting delegation, the New York Philharmonic…The North Koreans opened the door to some 400 people, the largest contingent of Americans to visit this isolated, totalitarian state since the Korean War ended in 1953. The group includes musicians, orchestra staff, television production crews and 80 journalists, as well as patrons who paid $100,000 a couple.

The Philharmonic will play in the East Pyongyang Grand Theater, where music of Gershwin, Dvorak and Wagner, not to mention the American and North Korean national anthems, is to be broadcast live on state radio and television. That will be a novelty for a populace shut off from the world by government censorship.”

And it would have been a novelty in the US had stations other than CNN broadcast this positive event. Perhaps America would once again adopt the “novel” idea that genuine change is best achieved through peaceful trade and voluntary exchange of cultural products.

Oscar Offal

Aesthetics, Film, Hollywood, Pop-Culture, The Zeitgeist

I haven’t seen any one of the films nominated, so I’ll withhold judgment. I’m curious about what appears outwardly to be a thriller, “No Country for Old Men.” Although it’s not impossible, knowing Hollywood’s devotion to the Goddess Gaia, that it’s a disguised message about global warming.

I’m certainly not likely to put myself through a “sensitive” flick that deals with teen turmoil. “Juno” was written by Hollywood’s latest IT girl. You know Diablo Cody is an authentic individualist, at least as defined by Hollywood hollow heads and public school pedagogues. Her “originality” is evident from her outré sense of dress, tattoos, and the knack for spluttering mind-numbing clichés. She also speaks in that Anna-Marie-Cox (Wonkette) inflection used in commercials directed at the cool crowd that reads the New York Times.

Marion Cotillard: a delightful French singer/actress who portrayed Edith Piaf in “La Vie En Rose.” Not my idea of a fun film, but the lady was delightful and was dressed ever-so elegantly. How long before she gets skankified? Make haste, Marion, go back to France.

All the hype about red gowns, notwithstanding, no one but Heidi Klum can carry off bright red. Klum is indeed a ravishing beauty, but she’s looking like a “Muselmann”—her total weight must equal the weight of her bones.

Cameron Diaz: The John Galliano frock did not finesse those flat, coarse features and thick leathery skin. All in all, the off-the-shoulder look requires perfect neck-jaw-bosom line. Although I don’t much care for Cruz, Penélope’s off-the-shoulder black number did it for me; she looked lovely. The dress didn’t plunge, but had been softened with a few fluffy plumes. Bedsides which she has the slight build to pull it off.

I am none the wiser about the silly, slushy movie “Enchanted” and its stars, but I’ll say this much about Amy Adams, who ever she is: The reddish locks, white flawless skin, and greed gown made for a beguiling blend.

Not well turned-out was Daniel Day-Lewis in gold pirate earring and a carefully disheveled coiffe. He is compared to Robert De Niro, but the latter is as manly as you get. A good actor too.

This here is a photo of a very great beauty. Here Julie Christie is again. This here is a photo of someone who is not a great beauty: The large, manly, expanses of forehead, the stupid smile, and the less-than-chiseled jaw. The eyes are more cow-like than captivating. It’s fine to find this common Hispanic look attractive, but it isn’t beautiful.

America’s idea of beauty now resembles its idea of good food; cheap and nasty.

The less said about Nicole Kidman the better. I liked her when her hair flowed in red ringlets, her blue eyes pierced, and her lips were thin. I tried to locate photos of Kidman before her make-over, but my PC was mysteriously assailed, and, subsequently crashed. Seriously, it’s impossible to find old images of the woman on the Internet. Oh, here are some from Malice.

Her acting too has become awfully affectatious. I watched Kidman in “Birth” (on TV; I’d never pay to see that bit of torture) with the fascination with which you’d watch maggots crawl in and out a CSI corpse. She was repulsive: she must have just had her mouth inflated, because she wouldn’t stop working it—the drooling thing assumed a life of its own. The object of her spittle was a ten year old boy—yeah, I know.

Lastly, Jon Stewart was rather weak.