Time for Thorns

The Virginia Historical Society put together an exhibit of  “bizarre bits”  from its collection,  which included  a smallpox scab.   That sent the Centers for Disease Control off in a dash to retrieve it.   It was a false alarm,  as are nearly all such discoveries,  because smallpox doesn’t remain viable without the right conditions.

What is incredible is that people are clamoring for Russia and the USA to destroy their stocks of smallpox,  when terrorists are always searching for bio-weapons.   And anyone who believes the Russians would actually destroy their stock if the UN and the World Health Organization suddenly decided it should,  raise your hand and go to the back of the line.

This reminds us  why it is worse than useless to utilize the United Nations for anything of consequence.   The irony,  of course,  is that tyrants and progressives love putting the UN into play for their own purposes,  which are never to solve the ostensible problem.

It suits most of the member nations to never have terrorism defined,  so that their own regimes,  legitimate and otherwise,  don’t run afoul of the magic words.   And after all,  if you ever get around to defining terrorism,  somebody just might expect you to get up off your collective corrupt,  incompetent asses and do something about it.

UPDATE:   Richard Miniter points out what I was thinking with his view  of UN war  involvement.

Are you surprised that so little of the unrest  in the Middle East is aimed at Israel by the people in the streets?   I’m not,  as Israel has never been the actual problem.

Anne Bayefsky and Benjamin Weinthal have an excellent piece on Israel being the  sole topic of the resumptions of the 10th emergency session of the UN since 1997.   It matters because His Oneness made the UN the cornerstone of his foreign policy,  and I’m surprised only that the predictable outcomes of such folly have taken this long to appear.

We now have a UN IPCC  official admitting they mean to redistribute the wealth of the world via climate policy.    What Edenhofer didn’t admit was that the UN is expecting to steal a chunk of the wealth as it passes by its open maw,  or that he and the other alarmists are positioned to vastly improve their personal fortunes as well.

This isn’t a conspiracy theory,  it’s an actual conspiracy,  and it’s unfolding right in front of your nose.

In more promising news,  the Chicago Climate Exchange has collapsed.   It would have been worth its $7 high had Al Gore become president,  but now it’s not worth its current 5 cents a share.   Kim Strassel  is right that the GOP is missing an opportunity to save money by stopping the job-killing green subsidies,  such  as in North Carolina.

The  fraudsters are fighting back, and promising action against the U.S.  if we don’t stay on the climate train,  assisted by His Oneness, who   is awarding a Presidential Medal of Freedom to John Adams, founder of the virulently anti-business  and anti-energy Natural Resources Defense Council.

Much better to listen to Bjorn Lomborg,  who has a spot-on new film out  showing much more useful ways to help mankind at a fraction of the cost,  though it’s more fun to read James Delingpole’s  withering piece on the watermelons.

I confess I thoroughly enjoyed reading Matt Patterson’s piece about Al Gore and the  incredible shrinking global warming crisis.

Even the WaPo is beginning  to report on the loss of steam for the eco-tyrants,  and amazingly,  the  UN and the EU are showing signs of weakening,  if not abandoning entirely,  their green enthusiasm.  I find it especially delicious,  after all the whitewashing inquiries of ClimateGate,  that the InterAcademy Council review of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found there was  “little evidence” for its claims about global warming.

Of course,  none of these odors of reality are stopping His Oneness from trying to achieve the goals of cap-and-trade without legislation.   Texas is  fighting back against this illegal action.

The Climate Action Partnership is collapsing,  with Deere & Co the latest to drop out.   My favorite line from  this article is:   “Corporate America can be accused of being greedy,  but not stupid.”

Of course,  you can still  blame carbon for poison ivy.   (h/t John Miller at The Corner)

Having undergone serious whitewashes to be absolved of committing junk science,  climate scientists are now  being warned not to talk to the press.   It’s t0o dangerous for these over-educated crooks to actually face questions from nosy reporters lacking the scientific knowledge to understand their answers.

Considering what we  now know about the IPCC in particular and the UN in general,  this is probably a wise move.    Dr. Ball reveals in simple terms some of the worst scientific frauds this bunch has committed,  so if you read it,  you’ll know far more than your Congress critter does.

Another   “aid” ship headed to Gaza has been intercepted and boarded,  apparently without incident.

Meanwhile,  an anonymous news anchor accuses a network of anti-Israeli bias,  we discover that His Oneness showed his true colors by telling Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to  return home before defending his country’s actions against the original flotilla,  which turns out to have  been organized by his old pal Bill Ayers.

Nelson Mandela  has condemned Israel’s actions,   joined by Jimmy  Carter and the other usual useful idiots.   Jonah Goldberg takes a clear look at the universe’s most  convenient enemy,  while Charles Krauthammer  recounts the various defensive actions for which Israel has been hammered over the years  (h/t Philip Klein at The American Spectator).

Perhaps His Oneness will have convinced Israel of his weakness by joining the  UN’s condemnation of  it’s favorite punching bag.

If you watch no other video this week,  watch  this one of Rep. Thaddeus McCotter that Veronique de Rugy at The Corner noted for us all.   He has his facts together  (I checked some of them too) ,  and there is no denying that,  while Obama may have caused progressives to regard anew government as a useful weapon for controlling the masses,   he has made the general public’s mistrust and dislike of government very much worse.   Big Government has a transcript  here but you really ought to watch.

His Oneness has embarked on his post-legislation selling tour against a backdrop of:   more sleaze oozing out;  more uncounted consumer health costs;  Fidel Castro  applauding his takeover of health care;   gasoline rising a dollar a gallon under his watch;   and the Gray Lady reporting that Social Security will be  paying out more than it’s taking in this year.   Oh, and the UN approves of ObamaCare!

I’m afraid the mullahs’ big announcement that it had made its first batch of  highly-enriched uranium delightfully underwhelms me,  as I had considered they might do something spectacularly stupid for the big anniversary.    The Guardian is running a  live blog on the citizens’ protests,  and it appears the government has been thorough in its  crackdown efforts on democracy.

There is much discussion of if and when Iran gets a nuclear bomb,  but I’m more inclined to think we should be worried about them putting nuclear material on a freighter,  with plenty of zinc and calcium and other goodies to make it truly “dirty”,   and setting it off in New York harbor.

I doubt His Oneness or any other Western leader will make a forceful demand that the protesters be unmolested,  because I’m not at all certain our president has anything I’d recognize as a real policy on Iran,  but at a minimum he should keep Iran off the UN’s Human Rights Council.   What is blindingly apparent is that the Iranian regime has not the slightest fear of His Oneness and is determined to acquire deliverable nuclear weapons,  in whatever form.

Newt Gingrich offers  some advice His Oneness will surely ignore.  But I hope the protesters persist,  even though it may be quite a while before we see the outcome of this  new revolution.   In the meantime,  don’t count the  Iranian people out  — they were in the streets today shouting that they wanted an Iranian republic,  not an Islamic republic.

We can thank Amb. Louis Susman for  confirming to us all that the Obama Administration neither knows nor cares about actual science, only about using it as a weapon with which to silence critics and acquire power.

What other excuse could  His Oneness have for ignoring the fact that the emails suggest that the  raw data was  error-filled and manipulated,  and therefor is unreliable for scientific purposes,  not to mention that the computer  source code used is third-rate.

And give a cheer for the two brave  Canadians who discovered faulty calculations in some of the key scientific studies underlying the UN’s Climate reports.

And this wouldn’t be the first time  scientists eager for grant money reached the conclusion wanted by the money bags instead of actually following the evidence.

Stay tuned,  folks — this is going to get a lot more interesting!