Here is the Decemeber 19th edition of the Cuccinelli Compass. Here Virginia’s Attorney General elect provides some useful commentary on global warming and our economic woes.
Isn’t Snow In the Middle of Global Warming Inconvenient?
December 19, 2009
Dear Fellow Virginians,
Well, I spent a good part of today in the snow, and my natural inclination to humor led me to talk about the global warming debacle.
As regular readers may recall, my opponent in the AG race attacked me for not BELIEVING in man-caused global warming. Note the use of the word “believe.” While it obviously didn’t effect the race, below we will look at some of the developments on this subject since the race ended.
As long as we’re talking about substantive policy, I want to introduce the most serious policy wonks among you to John Allison, former CEO of BB&T Bank. Below, I will point you to his seminar which walks through the reasons for the financial crash and connects all the dots. I heard the lecture live last year and it was like getting a graduate level finance class explained to me in understandable terms in about an hour.
I assure you, listening will be time well spent. And thanks to the magic of the internet, you too can attend the same lecture. For those of you that care about more than mere politics, i.e., you care about the policy too, this is a must-see explanation of the biggest domestic political issue of the last 18 months – one which the leadership of BOTH parties has managed to mess up in their own ways.
Climategate and Copenhagen
From the WSJ: In Copenhagen, “Majken Friss Jorgensen, managing director of Copenhagen’s biggest limousine company told the London Telegraph on Dec. 5th that he reckoned that between her and her rivals the total number of limos in Copenhagen for the global warming conference has already broken the 1,200 barrier. The French alone rang up last Thursday and ordered another 42. ‘We haven’t got enough limos in the country to fulfill the demand,’ she says. ‘We’re having to drive them in hundreds of miles from Germany and Sweden.’
And the total number of electric cars or hybrids among all those limos? ‘Five,’ said Ms. Jorgensen.”
And from the Washington Times:”Venezuelan socialist strongman Hugo Chavez decried the “silent and terrible ghost” of capitalism – to declare that “capitalism is the road to hell.”
The enraptured global warming radicals at the Copenhagen conference rewarded Chavez with a standing ovation for his anti-freedom diatribe, telling us everything we need to know about the modern radical environmental movement headed by Al Gore.”
Just like my opponent in the AG’s race, all of the anti-capitalism environmentalists will DECLARE the need to limit capitalism and free markets in the name of their radical agenda, but they will not honestly DEBATE the subject. Why? Because the facts don’t support their DECLARATION that the globe is inevitably warming as a result of man’s activities.
Then why on earth would they try to enact so many economically destructive policies all over the world? For some it is political correctness (PC) run amok, but for others – like Chavez – it is an excuse (i.e., cover) to gut capitalism and the freedom that comes with it.
In the case of my AG opponent, I presume he was merely from the PC run amok camp. And true to form, he would not debate the subject. I wonder if he would debate it today? Given the release of hacked emails over the last month of global warming scientists who were blocking objective scientists’ work, grants, publications and worse – e.g., publicly attacking them on an unfounded basis, I doubt it. But if he’s game, so am I.
For those of you that are not caught up on this subject, from the WSJ: What is called “climategate concerns some of the world’s leading climate scientists working in tandem to block freedom of information requests, blackball dissenting scientists, manipulate the peer-review process, and obscure, destroy or massage inconvenient temperature data-facts that were laid bare by the disclosure of thousands of emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, or CRU.”
In the U.S., we are facing the notion that the CO2 that we exhale is now deemed so dangerous that the EPA is going to regulate it in its many applications. I would also note that CO2 is used by plants in photosynthesis… and of course, we don’t want too much of THAT going on!
The environmental arena may end up being an area of significant conflict with the Federal government during my term as AG, but only time will tell!
John Allison & the Financial Crash
I have been saving this item for some time, and it amounts to a significant commitment of time (about an hour+), but you can do it at your computer.
I went to a dinner put on earlier this year in which John Allison, former CEO of BB&T, walked through his analysis of why the financial crisis hit. He did it step by step and backed his conclusions very effectively with a data trail.
It probably would not surprise many readers of The Compass that he found that government itself was the biggest single culprit. So, naturally, those in Congress most responsible for the mistakes are leading the charge to do much more of the same!
If you go to the Ayn Rand website, they have his presentation on their website. Also, look below the video and you will see John’s powerpoint slides too.
I suggest clicking on the video, then pulling up the slides and follow his discussion on the powerpoint slides. It’s fascinating, pathetic, but not surprising in many respects.
John did a great job making a complex subject manageable, so I recommend this for anyone. We’d love to hear what you think at KC4AG@Cuccinelli.com (some things don’t change).
Inaugural
I hope we’ll see all of you at one of the inaugural celebrations! For more info, as we mentioned recently, you can click here and get tickets for our events on either (or both) January 14th in NoVa or Friday, January 15th in Richmond.
Please note, that the word “reception” is used loosely on the website and the $65 tickets get you into galas, not what you normally think of as a ‘reception.’
See you soon!
Until then, please have a wonderful rest of the weekend! Enjoy the snow!
Sincerely,
Ken
Note that the video at the Ayn Rand website is excellent, well worth your time.
Wow. LOL. Did Virginia really elect this guy? Virginia has got to be right there next to West Virginia in terms of intelligence. Global warming causes weather in both extremes, hot and cold. That’s why it is more appropriately referred to as a climate crisis. Getting two feet of snow at the end of autumn is highly unusual for Virginia. We get snow because there is moisture in the air which collides with cold air masses. Without the moisture we would just be having a cold spell. So how does the moisture get into the air? Well warm water from the Gulf of Mexico causes the Gulf stream to be warmer which causes higher humidity meaning there is more moisture which leads to two feet of snow.
Global warming does what? If global warming makes it both hotter and colder (no snow without cold), that must explain why we now must call this religiously believed weather god Climatechange.