Say “Yes,” Tim!

As a favor to an old Air Force friend, I’d like to ask any of y’all who have Facebook or Twitter accounts or your own blogs to give this a bit of oxygen.

Thank you and God bless!

♦  ♦  ♦  ♦  ♦

Update: Gregory No. 6, James Board and El Campeador join the campaign. If you’ve re-blogged, Facebooked or Twittered it, let me know in comments below and we’ll give you a plug as well.

“Happens all the time.”

Yes.  It can and does.  Frequently.

We blame Global Warming.  Also, Tony Abbott.

Next?

-via @AwkwardMsgs1111

Congrats to ‘Watts Up With That’ – 100,000,000 Page Views and Counting…

W00T to WUWT on their “small milestone”, reached sometime this morning (8am-ish January 7th US Pacific time; the wee hours of the 8th Aussie time).

So wander over, offer your congratulations and thanks to Anthony Watts for his tireless efforts to bring some sanity – and SCIENCE – back to the discussion of nature, weather, technology and global warming climate change, check out Christopher Monckton’s guest post Hurrah for 8 orders of magnitude! and make sure to have a browse through some of the WUWT classics reposted here.

As Tim Blair noted in his recent post PEAK LOVE, “Climate panic is in decline…”  And though the self-inflicted damage of the content of the Climategate emails and many of the stupid hyperbole-ridden ham-handed advertising and “awareness” campaigns by the Warmies themselves (and their Love Media enablers) are partly to credit for the loss of credibility of the Catastrophic Man-Made Global Warming’s Gonna Kill Us All®  movement, much credit must really go to the big guns of the bloggy “Deniosphere” such as Anthony Watts, Andrew Bolt, James Delingpole and our own Blogfather Tim Blair.

“Ha ha Warmist losers. For you the war is over.”

A Decade of Tim Blair — Blogger, Legend

Gavin Atkins at Asian Correspondent marks the milestone:

Blogger/journalist Tim Blair has never been one to take a lot of notice of plaudits, awards or milestones – in fact, he assiduously ignores them – but the recent passing 10-year anniversary of his blog should not go by without comment.

For many Australians of a conservative or libertarian bent, about ten years ago, just reading or watching the news was like being asked to wade through a floating garbage dump of dogma to try and read what was written on the ground. What’s more, most of us were left cursing, as only the most watered down of our thoughts would ever make it through as a letter to the editor.

Tim Blair changed all that with his blog that tackled the idiocies of the left pretty much as they happened. His blog filled a niche that conservatives were crying out for, and his comment sections soon became almost as entertaining as the articles. […]

Along the way, he has invented terms such as Blair’s Law and the Gore Effect as well as alerting the world to the alarming tendency of lefties to tilt their heads in photographs.

And then there’s the Plastic Turkey meme, the new verbs “to beclown” and “to Fisk,” and probably a whole lot more that others can add in comments.

One thing Gavin didn’t mention was how global Tim Blair’s appeal has turned out to be  – in fact, one sledge often thrown at him by some of his resident trolls is that he has “too many” American fans and commenters.  For some reason, his Leftoid Australian detractors believed that was some sort of fatal “gotcha”.

Ah, his trolls!  Not only have Tim’s blogging efforts attracted some of the most clever and witty commenters over the years, they’ve seen him collect some of the most dedicated, demented, obsessive and sometimes just chuckleheadedly-silly assortment of sockpuppets and trolls ever seen in one place.

Go over and read Gavin’s whole piece, and be sure to leave your thoughts & favourite memories/recollections in comments either here or there.

Happy Tenth Blogiversary, Tim!

P.S. Where’s Wronwright with that mead…?

P.P.S. As our blogroll has been rather neglected of late, if you are one of the #BlairNation troupe of bloggers (new motto, #WeAreUs – thanks Julia!) and aren’t listed over on the right-hand side there ——->
just drop your blog link in comments and we’ll get it updated. Cheers.

UPDATE:  More comments now at The Blogfather’s here:  TEN YEARS OF LOVE.  As Puce would have said, CLICK.

Bizzle likes him some Dunkers

An owl. In a towel. Awwww…

We evil RWDBs do love us some cute l’il owls.  Here’s recently-rescued short-eared owl “Chopper” in a towel.  Because really.  An owl in a towel.  How adorable is that?

All together now: "Awwwwww!"

Where’s Big Counterjihad When You Need It?

Over at Gov and Vlad Tepes a call has gone out for assistance. The remarkable Fjordman is in somewhat straightened circumstances, so a few of us are helping put the word out for him. He hasn’t had a blog of his own for years, although that has not stopped his productivity. What did slow him down, however, was the Norwegian gunman Breivik naming him (among others) as being a bit of an inspiration*. I personally think that Breivik’s ‘manifesto’ is a load of tripe. Breivik talks of christianity, say’s he’s not one, and yet gets wheeled out as being a fundamentalist christian. As someone who is into Extreme Popery, I call bullshite. In the meantime, and along with everything else, Fjordman has now pretty much lost everything – job, home, country. I’ve got a cat he could have, but that’s no use when there’s nowhere to keep it. He does have a few (for him) words over at Vlad’swhich I’ll paste here:

Hello from Peder Jensen alias Fjordman. I will continue writing under one name or the other and hope to publish several books in the next year and a half, but after the Breivik case in Norway, which I got mixed up in against my will, I no longer have a job and I am also moving out of my old flat in Oslo, which I already left weeks ago. There are always some costs involved in moving to a different location and creating a new life somewhere else. If you have enjoyed some of my essays in the past I would be grateful if you donated a few bucks this time. Think of it as a Fjordman Relocation Fund. Just mark the donations as being for me and I will get it via Vlad’s fine website. Thank you, and thank you for all the support and kind words I get from long-time readers. Peder

This is not quite a twilight bark – more a twilight blog. *very interesting review of Breivik’s ‘manifesto’ by someone of the left-persuasion. I’m not sure she’s read the Reliance, or the hadiths or the Hedaya, but that’s only to be expected. A few weeks with HuT might help her with a few things. Like the fact that muslims believe that sharia law is Allah’s Law for all men for all time, so whether she agrees with it or not is irrelevant. That’s not conspiracy theory, neither is it conspiracy that a man has been hounded out of his home for writing some hard-hitting essays that focus on the Decline and Fall of Western Civilisation. We’re just not supposed to mention the islamists because we’re not allowed to hurt feelings. Please check out the post over at VladTepes, and if you can donate money to assist Fjordman, please do. If you can’t, then linklove and prayers are most welcome also.

crossposted at rightwingdeathbogan.

Music Video of the Day: Raise the Debt Ceiling rap

Via Reason.TV, by Remy (who also gave us The TSA Pokey Pokey and Why They Fought)

Lyrics:

Your Favourite Blogs – Now With More Carbon!

How often have you been reading a blog and thought to yourself, “Self, what that blog needs is MORE CARBON!”?

Tax this, Julia…

(click to embiggen)

Moar?   

Best Australian Ad of the Year So Far: TradeTools Doesn’t {Heart} Julia

I love this ad.  I would marry this ad.  Hell, I would gay marry this ad.

PDF of actual ad from yesterday’s Sunday Mail at link; text of the prize rant below for clarity:

New video from the makers of “We Con the World” – Guns, Guns Guns! #flotilla

If you liked the Flotilla Choir in We Con the World last year, you’ll want to see Latma’s latest offering, the Audacity of Dopes band with Guns, Guns, Guns! 

An encore of last year’s Flotilla Choir masterpiece:

(via Big Peace)

Fight the GetUp! campaign against Australian businesses [Update]

I received this email from CANdo – the Conservative Action Network – today and thought it was worth passing on.  It’s time for us to have a go at fighting back against the bully-boy tactics of the Greens/union-funded astroturfers from GetUp!.  They may have had a win in getting clubs like the Broncos to cancel Chris Monckton’s speech at the last second, but the lifting of the ban on our live cattle export industry shows that if enough ordinary people get motivated to make their concerns known, true grass-roots movements can be just as effective.

Anyway, have a read and pass it on.  Also, think about joining Australia’s Conservative Action Network. They won’t swamp you with emails, only contacting you when there’s real action needing to be taken, and once you’re a member how much or how little you do is completely up to you.  Hey, as our Mole has found out, taking action can be fun!

Plus! Haven’t you really always wanted to be able to add “Community Organiser: VRWC Division” to your CV?  😉

♦

A message to all members of CANdo

Dear CANdo members

There has been a disturbing development in the carbon tax debate, led by left-wing activist group GetUp!

GetUp! is engaging in a campaign to blackmail businesses into dropping their public opposition to the proposed carbon tax. To blackmail legitimate businesses that are doing nothing more than exercising their freedom of speech is simply unacceptable.

The letter sent by GetUp! is available here for you to read.

What CANyoudo:

1. Contact your local talkback radio stations and let them know how disgusted you are by this latest scare campaign
2. Write a letter to your local paper to make people in your area aware of this atrocity
3. If GetUp! does indeed publish a list of businesses that it is boycotting (we’ll let you know if they do) go along to those businesses in your area and support them.

Australian businesses do not deserve to be intimidated by Labor-Greens front groups like GetUp!

Visit CANdo at: http://network.conservative.org.au/?xg_source=msg_mes_network

♦

As soon as we get word of the businesses GetUp! plans to target, I’ll post them here and we can go to work letting these businesses know (as several of us did with Max Brenner) that they have our support.

And seriously – read the GetUp! letter, especially the questions they’re demanding that businesses answer.  McCarthy had nothin’ on these people.

UPDATE:  More on this GetUp! boycott at the Australian – CLICK.  (via James)

UPDATE II: Bolt goes with the McCarty analogy as well – “The New Warming McCarthyists” – and makes a good point about their claim to as many as 570,000 “members”:

It’s time more people realised the GetUp’s power is wildly overstated. Those more than 400,000 members it boasts [EDIT: The boycott letter actually claims 570,000 members] are just names on petitions. Fewer than 18,000 people have actually sent it money – less than $100 each on average.

Update III:  Quadrant, March 2011 – Inside GetUp and the New Youth Politics 

 In its most recently published annual report for 2008-09, the total number of individual donors was just 17,295 with an average donation of $96.78.

Since most of the donated money came from big unions, the actual amount given by individual members must have been very small.

UPDATE IV:  Via CANdo, The Galileo Movement and Menzies House comes this plea – URGENT: Help Us Stop GetUp!’s Blackmail.  It appears that the AFGC are really feeling the heat – the CEO reports that their members are feeling “intimidated” – and they need to hear that they do have support out here.  Click over to MenziesHouse for details.

 

 

Environmental activists “too polite and well behaved”; urged to “get tough”

You know what the Warmy activists’ problem is? They’ve just been too gosh darned polite & well-behaved so far. Really.

“Have we failed to slow global warming pollution in part because climate and environmental activists have been too polite and well behaved?”

Via climatenonconformist, Steve Goddard take a look at a Rolling Stone article which announces that “It’s time for climate activists to get tough.”   Because you can’t slow global warming pollution [global warming pollution??] without breaking a few eggs!

“Is it time to take to the streets, express some outrage, maybe engage in a little guerilla [sic] warfare against Big Oil and Big Coal?”

It’s not violent extremism if you’re on a mission from God Gaia.

Plus, bonus Crazy Eyes!

“In the letter by Bill McKibben, he is asking protestors “to do something hard,” which is to come to Washington ”in the hottest and stickiest weeks of the summer and engaging in civil disobedience that will quite possibly get you arrested.” ”

Yeees, Biiill.

Now here’s a thought:  What would the reaction be if those of us who don’t believe that there’s enough scientific evidence to claim that man’s CO2 emissions are heating the world to hell, and don’t believe that the government can control the world’s climate through “carbon tax” or “cap and trade” schemes, were to propose engaging in “a little guerrilla warfare” against the government and academic institutions which are threatening our economy, our jobs, our quality of life, and our childrens’ futures with their various expensive but futile plans to “stop catastrophic man-made global warming”?

We were already tagged as “extremists” (and worse) simply for holding a peaceful rally in opposition to the carbon tax.  What if we were to promise to stop being so polite and well behaved and engage instead in a little guerrilla warfare*?

Happily, that’s not our way.  But it’s evident that as their CAGW scam continues to fall apart before their very eyes, the Warmies are getting more and more frantic and more and more militant.  I just hope this doesn’t get real ugly before it’s all over.

*That was not a “death threat,” Warmies.  No need to evacuate to your secure bunkers.

Warmenists dine out on plastic turkey

…an incident in Australia earlier this month when university researchers were rushed to a secure location after receiving death threats.

D’ya want a turkey roll with that, Mistah Meeja?

One for the Sheeple

As at July 1st 2011, the Australian Greens took the balance of power in the Senate.  Thank you, whoever voted for them – we owe you one!

AGW Skeptic Rap Video Going Viral in Germany

Is the old refrain “Question Authority!” coming back into vogue?  Are the Yoof starting to rebel against the orthodoxy of the great “Catastrophic Man-Made Global Warming” swindle the Teacher-Preacher class is trying to sell them?

Loosely translated into English by NoTricksZone (do click over and see their whole post):

 Kilez More – Climate Change (Climate Lies, Climate Swindle…)

You thinking of climate change and you’re screaming for laws
You’re thinking about CO2 and saying “let’s stop it”
Global catastrophes happening all because of man
We did too much driving, now the planet is too warm
If we don’t do something soon then the ice will melt
A flood is gonna kill us and the future’s gonna fall
No it aint…I’m telling you you’re off the wall
Man aint causing climate change, yeah you
think I’m crazy and making no sense
But just look at the climate institutes and you’ll see
what they do, they’re fudging the data making it hot
We just found out…their studies are made up
A hacker got in the computer and the database
Now read the mails from the CRU – they’ll make you laugh
They’re cooking the numbers, the temperature is up
Listen to me! It’s all a fraud and enough is enough

Refrain:
Climate change was not made by man
No… It’s only to keep the world in fear
All those who are pimpin it are being called experts
And the brothers who diss it are getting labelled sick
Climate change was not caused by man
No…it’s only to keep the world in fear
But I don’t believe it, and so I’m getting labelled sick
But it’s the price you pay when you think for yourself

II
Climate change is normal, it’s always been around
We aint done a thing, history shows us so
History books show in 1100 the planet was warm
In North England people were pickin grapes and making wine
And that wasn’t because of factories run by knights and
The shield industry driving the climate up
Then in sixteen hundred the Baltic froze over and it
Wasn’t because they stopped CO2 with ‘reform’
That’s pure arrogance when man thinks he’s got the power
To control the whole climate on the entire globe
Truth is only 1 to 3 percent comes from man
Comes from processes that are natural – so they’re lying
Inside the brainless walls of these fear-mongering crackpots
They want more power, more money, more control, more global tax
And every skeptic is getting branded by them
Being defamed and compared to Holocaust deniers

Refrain:
Climate change was not made by man
No… It’s only to keep the world in fear
All those who are pimpin it are being called experts
And the brothers who diss it are labelled sick
Climate change was not caused by man
No…it’s only to keep the world in fear
But I don’t believe it, and so I’m getting labelled sick
But it’s the price you pay when you think for yourself

UPDATE:  P. Gosselin is as optimistic as I am – ‘Question Authority’ Back In Vogue – and asks that skeptics try to pass the link to the video around. I’ve posted it on Twitter; maybe others who use various social networking sites or have their own blogs can give it some oxygen as well?

See alsoAndrew Bolt – Skepticism Becomes the New Fashion

The Ultimate Absolute Complete and Utterly Final Global Warming Poem

KITTENS CRYING, people.

KITTENS CRYING!

»» A must-see by TimT – he who will type for food.  H/T Blair.

UPDATE:  TimT needs to talk Debbie from eHarmony into doing a dramatic reading of his fine pome.  I would pay money to see that.

Brown Town [Video]

BROWN TOWN:  Ray Hadley reworks a Petula Clark classic in honour of Greens leader Bob Brown; @s_dog takes the liberty of putting some pictures to the song and uploading it to YouTube:

(Please feel free to pass it on – the URL for the video is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IM73CRgUPiY )

UPDATE:  Thanks, Bolta!  Link: A Lesson for Brown 

UPDATE II:  Critics.  Sigh.  “Brown Town” song parody proves right-wingers have no sense of humour

UPDATE III: Thanks to Menzies House for reposting; also GregoryNo6, Iain Hall, James Board, Mags 

UPDATE IV:  More linkers – thanks!  Quadrant Online, Blazing Cat Fur, Stop Gillard’s Carbon Tax, ASX Guru, DontCopIt, and thanks to Mark Sharma and the other ‘Aussies on the Right’ on Twitter for passing it around… (if I’ve missed any, let me know)  Also, @Western_Patriot just let me know that Ray Hadley mentioned my clip on @2GB873 this morning and it got positive feedback – I’ll post a podcast link when it’s up.

The inimitable Lyle, on the confessions of a desperate house cat

Via Tim Blair (who warns, DON’T TRUST THEM), a cat gets caught barking by a human and resumes meowing:

Via blog poet laureate lyle in comments:

Secrets of a Desperate House Cat

The houses and the streets grow dark 
And I sneak out to stroll the park 
Where all the rough dogs like to play 
And me, too; I was born that way.

My daytime friends are unaware 
And would be shocked but I don’t care, 
For only in the darkened park 
Can I be who I am, and bark.

You might think that it’s sex – it’s not – 
That draws me to Spike, Rex and Spot, 
But with my dogs I know I’m free 
To be a slob, and drool and pee.

And with them I don’t have to act 
With catlike cool, reserve and tact; 
When I’m around my dogs I’ve found 
I can express my inner hound.

lyle
Tue 28 Jun 11 (01:43am)

Just so.

Julia Gillard’s “Eat Your Peas” Government [Update: Et tu, Obama..?]

“Eat Your Peas” Government is a euphemism for the Nanny State, for the government which assumes that the great bulk of citizens are simply too childlike or stupid to be able to be trusted to make their own decisions about… well… anything.  William Safire famously referred to 1988 Democrat presidential candidate Michael Dukakis as an Eat Your Peas politician for being such a scold, and the term stuck.

An Eat Your Peas government feels that  instead of sticking to looking after the basics (establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense… everybody sing now!) and letting us work out much of the rest as we – reasonable consenting adults that most of us are – see fit, they need to micromanage our lives down to the amount of salt our ketchup is allowed to have and the kinds of windows we can put in our houses… and [insert your favourite nanny-state law here]. You get the drift.

From the start I’ve considered both Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard to be Eat Your Peas politicians – hectoring, nannying, scolding neo-wowsers determined to make us all healthy wealthy and wise in spite of our own dumb selves… but today, Julia went there.

She really, really went there.

In explaining why she still feels righteously compelled to foist her wildly unpopular carbon tax on an increasingly unhappy citizenry, and what she thinks is behind the majority’s lack of support for it, she explained:

“It’s the equivalent of saying ‘eat your vegetables’, I suppose.”

Oh, dear.  “Eat your vegetables.”  Just sit down, shut up, and eat your goddamn vegetables.  Got it?

If our media weren’t so in the bag for Labor, the term “Eat Your Veggies” would stick to Gillard for posterity the way “Eat Your Peas” stuck to Dukakis.

What are the chances?

UPDATE [12 July 2011]:  Obama apparently just went there too…

“It’s not going to get easier, it’s going to get harder. So we might as well do it now; pull off the Band-Aid, eat our peas.”

Since Comrade Julia’s use of that line, her approval rating has dropped to just 28% and Labor’s primary vote has fallen to just 27%.  I wonder if American voters will take to Obama’s use of the line any more kindly than Aussie voters took to Julia’s?

I’m half-convinced that whoever is feeding our pollies these stupid lines must be an undercover VRWC operative.

Heh.

Labor and Green comment-bombing on the rise? You’re not imagining it. And yet…

The Greens had “Shock & Awe”…

The Greens have launched another strike against the media, calling for volunteers for a rapid-response team to target “shock jock” and “hate campaigns” through talkback and letters to editors.

The call to action echoes Bob Brown’s attack on the “hate press” last week and Twitter jibes at individual journalists from his director of media, Marion Rae.

“The Australian Greens are looking to build a national network of individuals who want to take up the challenge of responding to the misinformation and hate campaigns being waged by radio shock jocks and other sections of the community and media,” says the party in an email.

The party calls the task “critical work”.

Labor has the “Wall of Noise” …

LABOR faithful are being urged to flood airwaves, news websites and letters to the editor sections with a “wall of noise” as part of a propaganda campaign against the Liberal-National Government.

The Sunday Times has obtained emails from Labor state secretary Simon Mead urging party members and supporters to become a “noisemaker” and join the “wall of noise team”.

“We need to be making phone calls to radio stations, posting items on news websites and writing letters to all our newspapers,” Mr Mead told Labor supporters and members in the email sent last month.

He said in another email: “By getting your voice heard you help change the media story from one supporting the government to one that says they are out of touch with the public.”

And yet despite all their smears, their sneers, their jamming and spamming, their outright deceit… their poll numbers say what?

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition

Unexpectedly, the mainstream media did not expect Obama to end up making such a hash of the American economy…

Aurelius at Pundit Press fingers the MSM for apparently being in a constant state of shock that the completely expected is happening, and that Obama-nomics simply isn’t delivering.

“Whenever poor business, house, or job news comes out, they are quick to throw on the word ‘unexpectedly,’ pretending that the economy is actually doing great, but this one time it hiccuped.”

Unexpectedly.

via iowntheworld.com

Good Advice.

Jim Treacher with a word of advice to young Canadian Sparky McFireballs:

Below the fold as possibly-NSFW

Eclipse & Red Moon in Perth; and bonus ‘Dealing With Moon-Truthers’ montage

DESPITE heavy cloud cover WA stargazers had the best view of a total lunar eclipse early this morning.

The eclipse began at 1.25am, but the event became obvious to viewers after 2.23am, as the Earth’s shadow slowly ate away at the moon.

Not only did the eclipse see the moon entirely in shadow by 3.22am, but it also appeared blood-red – a spectacle enhanced by the volcanic ash cloud sweeping over WA.

The total eclipse ended at 5.03am, with the moon fully visible again by 6.02am.

Local photographer Paul Pichugan (Nine News’ favourite uncredited source) braved the cold and went up to Wedge Island in search of the best vantage point and came back with some neat photos:

On the Internet, Nobody Knows You’re a Dog (or a Make-Believe Lesbian)

Another one?  Are there NO real lesbians on the internet?

Click, click, clickity click.

(And be sure to read to the end of clickity… there’s a bonus twist at the end)

UPDATE: Andrea Harris aka @twistyspinster has a handy-dandy tool for finding your lesbian name, so you too can pretend to be a lesbian on the Internet!

UPDATE II: More lesbians!  Mark Steyn, Jonah Goldberg, Mark Krikorian, John Derbyshire and a host of Tim Blair readers out themselves, along with our own  Bingbing Amethyst Thunder.

UPDATE III:  At Reason.com, “Love in the Time of Sockpuppets”

It’s not news that the Internet is rife with role-playing. Take all the masquerades of real life, add anonymity, throw in some viral marketers and alternate reality games and lonelygirl15s for flavor, and you get a network that can’t go a month without grabbing your shirt, slapping your face, and screaming DOUBT IS YOUR FRIEND. I like to think the long-term social effect will be a general increase in skepticism. In the short term, I feel like I tuned in to ‘The L Word’ and got ‘Mission:Impossible’ instead.

In that vein, I’d like to take the opportunity to confess that my name is not spot, and I am not a dog.  It’s just that doris_the_quokka doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.

Anyone else have confessions?  Add them in comments.

h/t Stacy McCain, Bryan Preston & Tim Blair