The Usual Load of Bollocks

On the lighter side of “Climate Change…”

Global Warming Shovel Hot Item in New York Stores
by Scott Ott

(2007-02-11) — Wal-Mart and Home Depot stores in upstate New York report brisk sales of the new Global Warming Shovel which hit store shelves just in time for this week’s 9.5-foot snowfall.

The shovels, made of a rigid form of lightweight GORE-TEX®, are specifically designed to remove the kind of snow spawned by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, “no matter how deep it gets,” according to the manufacturer.

Later this week, the company will also roll out its new Kyoto Mittens, “guaranteed to protect the wearer from the inconvenient truth of global warming-induced frostbite.”

But there’s seriousness at the links.

So…in serious news, there’s lotsa buzz about the tentative agreement with the Norks about their nuclear program. About half-way down the page in that AP release is this lil gem:

But the deal drew strong criticism from John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the U.N., who urged President Bush to reject it.

"I am very disturbed by this deal," Bolton told CNN. "It sends exactly the wrong signal to would-be proliferators around the world: 'If we hold out long enough, wear down the State Department negotiators, eventually you get rewarded,' in this case with massive shipments of heavy fuel oil for doing only partially what needs to be done."

I’m of the feeling we should all be “very disturbed.” Kim Jong-Il’s track record when it comes to honoring agreements and treaties is all but non-existent. What makes our negotiators think he’ll hold to this one? I’m all for diplomacy…when it works. Unfortunately, it never seems to work at all when it comes to the world’s bad actors. Or am I reading the wrong sort of history books?

More on the agreement here. Richardson at DPRK Studies isn’t impressed, either. And I get the feeling he knows a whole helluva lot more about this than I do. (h/t: ROK Drop, via Mudville)

Jack Cafferty: “I’m confused, Wolf.”

Truer words were never spoken. The “I’m confused” bit, not the other krep. When someone has to ask about the difference between shooting down Russian Hinds and shooting down US helicopters that individual is indeed confused... to put it mildly. Cafferty is around Number Three (with a bullet) on my personal list of people I love to hate actively dislike. You didn’t ask, but I’ll tell you…Number One is Keith Olbermann; Number Two is SWWNBN. Now you know.

Bernard Lewis, on Iran:

Does the Iranian regime believe that a military attack on its nuclear sites would strengthen it? Do they think that it can be avoided - that they can manage to keep the West from attacking them?

My guess is that they do not expect to be attacked. Remember, they have no experience of the functioning of a free society. The sort of self-criticism and mutual criticism that we see as normal is beyond their understanding and totally outside their experience. What we see as free debate, they see as weakness and division and fear.

Therefore I think they have a very low estimate of the forces that oppose them, whether in the US or Israel or elsewhere. They expect to have it their way, whatever way they choose.

Part of a Q&A session hosted by The Jerusalem Post.

Seating himself in the center of The Jerusalem Post's conference room, Prof. Bernard Lewis preferred to eschew any kind of opening remarks, and instead simply invited our questions. Arguably the preeminent Islamic historian and scholar of his age, Lewis, who turned 90 last May, handled the resulting avalanche with absolute equanimity.

Do I have to say it? Read the whole thing… (h/t: Chap)