Better dead than Red!

Charles Krauthammer's column on environmentalism and climate change in the Post today is a good chuckle. I'm going to give it more space and attention than it really deserves, because it is so ludicrous, yet infuriating.

First of all, either Krauthammer doesn't really understand how "science" works, or he's pretending not to. I'll choose the latter since he's not a dumb guy. He writes,

Predictions of catastrophe depend on models. Models depend on assumptions about complex planetary systems -- from ocean currents to cloud formation -- that no one fully understands. Which is why the models are inherently flawed and forever changing.

Ummmm...that's how "models" work. The space shuttle flies based on models of the physical universe. We go to war based on models of the geopolitical universe. The Fed's decision to reduce interest rates again? Yup, that was based on a model too! Until someone can literally see the future, we're going to be basing policy on models. Ideally, models with strong scientific consensus behind them, like those predicting continued global warming from carbon dioxide emissions.

Secondly--communism? I guess that's why China has such strong environmental protections. Listen, equating "liberal" social change efforts with communism isn't going to work for much longer, guys. There are people in college right now who weren't even born by the time the Berlin Wall came down. You won. You defeated communism. Congratulations. Let it go.

Finally, it sure takes a power-hungry person to assume that the purpose of any group advocating some sort of social or economic paradigm shift is doing so in order to gain or consolidate political power for themselves. To put it bluntly, just because you're a selfish, greedy jerk doesn't mean everyone else is too, and assuming such only points to your own motivations.

As Krauthammer writes,

There's no greater social power than the power to ration...The Church of the Environment promulgates secondary dogmas as well. One of these is a strict nuclear taboo. Rather convenient, is it not? Take this major coal-substituting fix off the table, and we will be rationing all the more. Guess who does the rationing.

Ooooo, I know I know! Chairman Al Gore! I know that if it weren't for my desperate thirst to control the world by rationing energy, I would be 100% behind building nuclear plants everywhere they will fit.

Barack Obama is coming for our precious bodily fluids

Did you know that the next president of the United States might be a...Communist?

According to Lisa Schiffren on the National Review's "The Corner" blog*, it is highly likely that Barack Obama is a certified "red diaper baby." How can she be sure? Because he was born to a black father and white, reputedly Jewish** mother in the early 1960s, thats why. And we all know how those people are!

Are you serious? This is hilarious. I can't believe it actually made it onto the (web)pages of the National Review. It sounds like a rant from somebody's crotchety, bigoted, 85-year-old aunt. Calm down, Mildred, and have a sherry.

Watch out--if Mr. Obama succeeds and the Communists take over, they might attack our civil liberties, imprison people without cause, and trash our economy.

Just remember, as Schiffren writes,

Political correctness was invented precisely to prevent the mainstream liberal media from persuing the questions which might arise about how Senator Obama's mother, from Kansas, came to marry an African graduate student. Love? Sure, why not? But what else was going on around them that made it feasible?

*Via Wonkette, of course.
**When she wasn't being Muslim