Before today I had no opinion about Chomsky.  My conservative friends tend to despise him and my liberal friends suddenly look nervous when his name is mentioned.  Swirling rumors about what he wrote and its relationship to propaganda theory and practice kept landing like drunken MIT co-eds in my mind (and there is nothing quite as amusingly amorous than a liquored-up geek girl).

I’m peddling a book to publishers on the very topic of agitprop.  Having invested a decade in exploding gun control myths I have encountered most every manifestation of misinformation.  Since gun control myths are a subset of propaganda proper, and since Noam wrote on the subject, all these rumors about Chomsky’s insights and how they might be currently leveraged by the left demanded I read into his work.

Can’t say I’m impressed.

I have to give Noam some windage here.  His Manufacturing Consent was penned before every teenager had their own blog and before newspapers began evaporating faster than the last wisp of rum from aforementioned co-ed’s breath (though I will confess that Myers taste better when slurped from her bellybutton).  Thus a fair amount of Noam’s noodling is non sequitur.

Some of it was plain wrong when written.

A primary premise in Manufacturing Consent was that the advertisers led the media by their financial noses.  Noam was metaphorically looking down the wrong end of the barrel (it would be a wonderful event if the barrel analogy were literal).  The media is a matchmaker, with the audience as client.  Any media outlet that creates content disagreeable with the consumer goes out of business.  The primary financial incentive is to give the public what they want, regardless of how bland, sleazy or repugnant it may be.  Without content consumers, the media ceases to exist and no amount of advertising money will enact resurrection.

This is why the main stream media is moribund.  In the 80’s and 90’s a few university journalism schools, paired with statisticians, measured media bias and quantified that the American media was slightly to the left of Fidel.  Given that the polled public perceived itself slightly right of center, there existed a daily disconnect between the media and the public.  What Ma and Pa witnessed day-in-and-out disagreed with what the media marketed.  Fox News has high ratings simply because their content provided something that an otherwise homogeneous media did not.

Chomsky contends that the media was subservient to the advertiser.  Having worked in marketing I know this to be less than half the story.  Advertisers want to reach people, and the editorial leanings of the media are nearly irrelevant.  If a television channel reaches millions of males between 18 and 32, and if the advertiser sells Girl’s Gone Goofy videos, they would not care if the media was a nexus for necrophilia (which may be the next NBS reality show).  Based on ratings and demographics the vendor could predict their sales volume and would buy ad space.  Indeed, the only thing that would stop an advertiser would be if the anti-necra lobby threatened to boycott stations that aired drunken co-ed videos.

Hence, the left-leaning nature of the old media.  In the absence of competing outlets (pre talk radio, internet and Fox) they had insufficient backlash from the consumers. Thus, advertisers were content with the available advertising venues.  Without corrective action from either end of the financial relationship, we see two realities:  First, Noam didn’t know what he was talking about.  Second, the bulk of news was thus controlled by the media and the government, not advertisers.

Forget the military-industrial complex.  The media-politician complex was and is the real threat.

I know enough reporters to confirm that they live for two things:  telling a good story and exercising power.  The former is only of interest to other writers, and we get it.  The later is understandable only in the context that some small and sinister part of the populace always wants to control other people.  Reporters, producers and media moguls are no exception.  Controlling information was a great way to push the public toward some journalists’ political ends.  ‘Was’ is the operative word.  Today everybody is the media – there are millions of board and bathrobed fact checkers armed with an online sea of information that would make an Alexandrian librarian faint.

The media is no longer in control of the conversation, something they have yet to realize.

Noam got the financial aspects of the media backwards.  He also undersold the motivations of the media itself, which have been both malignant and manic.  Too many times we have witnessed major media outlets sell what remained of their souls in order to assassinate a person, company, industry or cause.  NBC faked exploding pick-up trucks.  CNN used machineguns to misinform the public about the power of sporting rifles.  ABC staged impossible self-defense scenarios.  CBS bought or co-produced fake documents during an election.  And MSNBC can’t emit an electron without it being accompanied by misinformation.

Yet Chomsky does not see this as a major source for the manufacture of “consent”.  Willful blindness or purposeful obfuscation?  Don’t know, but either way it says volumes about the quality of his analytical abilities.  He possesses all the functioning cognitive capacity of a drunk co-ed, but with none of the giggling charm.

Chomsky also felt that reporters, as a subspecies, trusted governmental information sources more than private.  Here Noam was nearly correct.  Like humans in general, reporters believe what they want and many seek information that bolsters their pre-existing biases.  If a corporation, advocacy group or man on the street helps assault whomever a reprobate reporter wishes to journalistically bludgeon, that is who will appear on the evening news.  Since reporters have been measured to be more liberal and Democrat than the public at large, they will more often accept government’s guile than General Motors’ (not that there is a difference between those two entities any more).  Yet when the government or a particular politician is the target of a reporters wrath, then non-government sources of deception work just as well.

Ask Dan Rather, providing his meds are allowing him to talk coherently this week.

Noam’s neglectfulness centers mainly on the assumption that “the media” (a rapidly evolving complex organism) is a mindless machine that is easily manipulated.  He ignores the media’s motivations and members therein who are merely activists with press passes.  Therein was the true source of propaganda – an unchecked media with no competition on the sources and distribution of information.  In the bad old days, your world view came from three very similar network news programs and one or two local newspapers.  Now with 500 television channels, several 24×7 news networks and the entirety of the Internet, the old threat of media manufactured consent is mitigated if not eliminated.

Noam Chomsky may have influenced a few, but his depth of analysis betrays a shallow intellectual pond.  Now that everybody is the media, Noam can be ignored … again.

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http://www.gunfacts.info/gun-facts-media-resources/video/nra-2010/nranews-2010-guy-smith.swf.html

Also, a recent interview on Armed American Radio

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It is a bit surreal to see Bill “The Zipper” Clinton in action as I wrap-up edits on my next book, Catalog of Canards, that exposes how political lies are created and spread.  Though we accept that all politicians lie, few have proven to be as artful as the man from Hot Springs (which is his home town, not a nickname for his mattress).  Clinton possesses a rare combination of skills:  the ability to think strategically and blow smoke up skirts.

That’s when he is not inserting cigars there.

Over the weekend Clinton has made several statements wherein he attempts, rather elegantly, to associate the Tea Party movement with deranged mass murders.  His chain reaction of irrational reasoning is that if a Tea Party participant says something unkind about the government, it will cause the next Timothy McVeigh to head straight for the Ryder rental center.

This is, of course, patently insane and shows that Bill Clinton understands nothing about the minds of madmen (though given the number of ladies he has jilted, he may know a thing or two about mad women).  Every day, in every city of every country, people get into heated discussion and shouting matches that go no further than a spittle exchange.  You, your parents, your siblings, your boss, your neighbors do this often enough.  Yet rarely does anyone take action stronger than completing their tantrum.  Being ticked off at an abstraction such as government is even less dangerous.

Thus, the Timothy McVeigh’s of the world are by definition mad.  A rational patriot would not assassinate 168 people guilty of nothing aside from arriving at work on time, much less 19 kids younger than six.  The logical gulf between a group of concerned citizens attending a rally and a lone mass murder is as wide as Monica’s … well, let’s not go there.  We’ll leave it to say that cigars should not be inserted horizontally.

Stipulating that Clinton is no moron, we have to ask ourselves what is his motivation in making plainly inane comparisons.  Since fear is the primary tool of the politicians’ trade, Clinton sought to make people not familiar with the Tea Party fearful of them.  By shellacking Tea Party people and Tim McVeigh with the same brush, Clinton attempted to generate fear of the Tea Party itself.

Nice try Bubba, but no cigar.

People – not politicians or the media – are now in control of the conversation, as documented by Brian Patrick in Rise of the Anti-Media.  Clinton might cause a few skittish souls to shriek, but the average citizen, who likely knows one or more Tea Party members, is sadly amused at Bill’s buncombe and will say as much to his Facebook friends, on message boards, and via his own media outlets, be they blogs, YouTube videos or podcasts.  Whereas Clinton frets about citizens demonizing “the government or … its elected officials,” he stokes the process by being a visible symbol and advocate of elected officials and the government while demeaning The People.  By inappropriately and cynically associating Tea Party activists with lunatic bombers, he generates the distrust that he claims will motivate madmen.

“I want you to listen to me,” Clinton began.  “I’m going to say this again.  I did not have sexual relations with that woman … these allegations are false!”

Just keep that hysterical and historical moment in mind as Billy opines on the opposition.

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As a writer and political junkie, I stand amused, bemused, offended and (very) occasionally amazed at the way my language is manipulated, manhandled and forcefully deflowered. Politicians – the world’s original liars – have desensitized me to all the common linguistic spin cycles, and it is a cold, cold day when I encounter semantic sophism that makes me sputter.

It took scientists talking like congress critters to redecorate my computer monitor this morning.

I have not written about Climategate because it was too predictable. Anyone with on-duty dendra has been skeptical about anthropogenic global warming (AGW). I even cut a cute little video about the buncombe. Through the back and forth of the warring factions, scientific ethics had been questioned. Select scientists resigned the IPCC – the United Nations scientific cesspool – in protest for their minority report being downplayed. Certain data and modeling criteria was not shared, an almost unheard of refusal among real scientists. Repeated problems in process, proportionality and programming were uncovered. Yet promoters of AGW leaned heavily upon suspect scientists and maintained momentum due to their alleged inalienable integrity.

So leaked emails showing they are as craven as their criminal cohorts in Congress were only minor surprises. After all, when you are riding a publicity wave and making more money than every other scientist you know, it is human nature to keep the canard going.

What floored me this morning was the nearly Senatorial scheisse scientists spoke. George Orwell looked up from his fifth ring-side seat in Hell and said “Good play old man.”

The initial utterance appeared when requests for core data were denied. It seems that temperature data presented to the public had been adjusted. This is not necessisarily criminal – occasionally data from multiple points needs to be correlated. What was curious is that the original raw data had been disposed of, leaving only the doctored dope. While attempting to explain missing raw data, a spokesdroid said:

“We do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (quality controlled and homogenised) data.”

Can you spot the two twists in this tragic testimony? First is the assertion that under-detailed mathematical changes to the raw data added value. “Value” is highly subjective. DuPont chemical plants produce value for the corporation and the people who use the products it produces, but the value-add to deformed peasant children living downstream may not be well understood … to them.

More inane and insane is the self-contradictory statements about dumping data (which in computerized form takes no real room) and “quality control”. ‘Quality’ and ‘control’ insinuate that one controls quality, and in scientific research this means being able to reproduce experiments and calculation on demand (and, ahem, allowing other people to review and attempt to duplicate the same). Thus the scoundrel speaking this sputum asserted that the quality of manipulated data was controlled, but there was no control over the quality of their data storage in general.

Somebody, please call the Gobbles Political Communications Institute – I found their new fellowship candidate.

This does raise one question: Can the original data be reconstructed? The villains in this story have not claimed that the adjustment process is unknown. Could the current “value-added” data have the adjustments removed/reversed and thus the original data be reconstituted? Who is willing to beg the question publicly?

In a somewhat related story, another marcom cretin claimed that their organization refused to share information as required by law, saying:

When he submitted a request for the figures under freedom of information laws he was refused because it was “not in the public interest”.

Odd. I have been under a life long assumption that scientific data, knowledge and validation were the public’s interest? I can only speculate that the policy makers herein are afraid that public access would add value. Interestingly, freedom of information legislation was invented to force disclosure because transparency is in the public interest, and it was the public who enacted the law. Any employee of the people who does not perceive this principle needs to pack-up their personal belongings and exit the building immediately, because they are too dense to hold any job aside from elected office.

Expect more of the same in the days to come. With the Copenhagen summit approaching, and with AGW agitators getting defensive, industrial level adulteration of language is assured. It will be as grotesque as Copenhagen Chew residue.

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If you had not noticed, this joint called Earth is a soggy place. Water covers about 71% of the surface and plunges nearly seven miles down, a depth slightly deeper and colder than Al Gore’s soul. If you stood every existing human side by side they would not cover a fraction of Lake Maracaibo, which is still a quarter of Al Gores growing girth.

Which may well explain why the planet is cooling and my green friends are in dithers.

Not that local San Francisco greenies need much motivation to fret, which is seemingly their very purpose in life. Aside from smoking vast quantities of medical marijuana, what has them most perplexed is that during the current decade our planet has cooled off a might. This contradicts United Nations climatologists and other enfeebled persons, and thus conflicts my green leaning associates.

Have a tofu burger. You’ll feel better.

Their confusion is understandable. After all, with China now the top producer of raw atmospheric pollution, with America not reducing its carbon footprint, and with India playing industrial catch-up, Al Gore’s canard clearly states that we should be roasting in our own juices. For the planet to cool while mankind is releasing more carbon than ever in our industrial history defies the theory.

Which means the theory might just be hokum.

But recent global cooling begs a couple of questions, namely why in Hell is it getting colder and who is going to pay my heating bill? Some scientists think the answer to the first question is that oceans are to blame. Maybe I can hit Gore up for the latter. After all he could produce enough hot air to thaw Rahm Emanuel’s heart.

Much of the problem with global warming theory is the inappropriate grafting of recent thermometer readings onto long term, proxy derived temperature estimates, and projecting just the new data into the future. Such bad methodology should be embarrassing to alleged scientists, but in pursuit of government grants even scientists can be dastardly. Most government generated schemes for dealing with the now inverted “global climate crisis” involve taxing somebody and giving the money to somebody else (i.e., theft). With trillions of dollars riding on such legislation, tossing a few quid to unethical or incapable academics is a good way to create public demand for the plan.

Which would work if it wasn’t for those damn oceans.

Some bright folk at Kiel University decided to see if all that water had any recurring effects (click the chart for a bigger one). After all, Mother Nature is a cyclic bitch. Most everything in nature moves in circles, cycles and recycling programs. Nothing nature does is linear with the possible exception of entropy, and I have my doubts about that. Mojib Latif decided to overlay oceanographic temperature data with United Nations scientific effluvium and see how agreeable the two were, discovering that they weren’t. Using a little sign wave logic, they show that the planet appears to be in the early phase of a nominal cooling cycle. Yes, my friend in Alaska – it will get much colder up there in the next 30 years.

Buy an extra parka.

This all makes intuitive sense, which is why United Nations scientists don’t get it. The industrial revolution began at about the same time the Little Ice Age ended. Depending on who answers the question, the Little Ice Age lasted between 200 and 600 years, bringing global temperatures well below average. The long term rise in temperatures from the mid 1800’s appears to be a recovery from excessive global cooling, slowed by those ornery oceans having to go through their cyclic variations.

There are a couple of grand takeaways from this analysis. First and foremost is the understanding that humans are a puny lot and our total effect on the climate doesn’t add up to that of a large lake. Equally important to understand is that if the trend cited by the oceanographers is correct, the worst we will endure this century is a 1/2oC rise in temperature, which might produce enough sweat to moisten Hillary’s dusty labia.

Foremost is shows that United Nations computer projections are buncombe and yet another reason for civilized countries to defund that intellectual brothel.

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Sadly, I am currently sporting a plain plaster variety, having cracked a fibular while in combat with a larger opponent. For all my martial arts training, it is irony personified that that I was broken during a light sparing session. A lesson to other roughnecks: never allow a larger opponent to stay in a head-to-head position where they can charge forward like a blind bull.

Like 85% of Americans, I have private health insurance. For whatever maladies Americans face, our capitalist system has assured that the vast majority of Homo sapiens roaming the American tundra and in the concrete canyons of our big cities have coverage. Contrast this with any third world country or Compton, where people are allowed to die in the streets, this accomplishment of capitalism is compelling.

This perspective is not discussed by Obama. Politicians avoid perspective because it has the nasty habit of preventing legislative larceny. Thus they rely on large, scary sounding numbers routinely amplified with words like ‘crisis’. Barack and other capital courtesans have of late been repeating the sound bite that ‘there are 45 million uninsured Americans.’

Obama’s cure costs a mere $1.6 trillion dollars.

(A brief aside. Long ago a sitting senator joked “A billion here, a billion there, and soon we’re talking real money.” In the last year we have routinely talked about trillions, thanks to a series of government interventions into non-catastrophes. Obama is capitalizing on our collective fiscal desensitization. After all, what’s a trillion dollars between friends and future serfs?)

A trillion and a half bucks is a big investment even by beltway budget standards. Since this is coming out of your pocket, it might be worth examining who these 45 million uninsured people are. You deserve to know – you are their financier (click the chart to get a bigger picture of the fraud de jour).

According to the Census Bureau, there is a little north of 300 million head of humans in The States. Subtract Obama’s alleged 45 million uninsured individuals and you can calculate that 85% have coverage. Various governments insure or repair roughly another 5% through existing programs like Medicare or through prison infirmaries (these estimates are based on government statistics concerning safety net healthcare programs and national incarceration rates).

There are also a significant number – about half – of young adults who can afford to buy insurance but opt not to. Young men and women have other priorities, namely stylish clothing and copious alcohol consumption. The alcohol is a primary tool to get other young adults to remove their stylish clothing.

As interesting as the mating habits of the young and inebriated may be, their uninsured status is completely voluntary. In California, one of the more expensive states in which to be insured, a twenty-something specimen in their vertical and clothed condition can walk into any insurance office and buy a major medical policy for $100 a month. Unclothed applicants might receive a discount. That young adult’s priorities are slightly misplaced is predictable, amusing but not a public policy issue.

This leaves about 5% American residents – as opposed to Americans – uninsured and not covered by existing government programs. This five percent is approximately 16 million mortals, which oddly enough is roughly the number of assumed illegal aliens in residence.

Divide a few of these numbers and you discover that over the ten year budget horizon, Obama plans to purchase insurance for structurally uninsured individuals at a rate of $833 per person per month, or about eight times the going commercial rate. Oddly this speaks well of Obama’s plan given most government run programs are not nearly this financially efficient.

Nobody is accusing Obama of trying to pick the national pocket to support and encourage illegal immigrants and immigration. We have to take Obama on his word the he intends to have the government underwrite 45 million folk. To do so would require insuring those who can afford it, effectively transforming independent and self-sufficient young citizens into a dependant class. Minting disciples among the young is an effective means to manufacture loyalty.

Just ask Nicolae Ceauşescu, though his final outcome was not entirely to his liking.

Let’s assume for a moment that the structurally uninsured could skim by on major medical coverage and that their rates are not much different than most middle aged men. Sixteen million mammals could be covered for the relatively low sum of $19 billion over a ten year stretch, or about 1% of what Obama wants to squander.

A trillion here, and a trillion there. Pretty soon we’re talking about Obama’s budget.

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This tiny tale relates the troubled souls of the Oakland Tribune, two of their writers and its Gollum editor Martin Reynolds. Martin’s misdeeds are a case study in why old media in general and newspapers in particular are a dying breed.

In May the Trib ran an article penned in tag team by two of their journalist. I misuse the term journalist herein because what they wrote in no way resembles reporting. The topic of their corrupt correspondence was gun control, and the piece was proffered in advance of a mayoral campaign by a well known advocate of gun control. I will not accuse these literary desperadoes of prostituting themselves for a politician, especially one known as the “Bay Area Bagman” and under investigation by the FBI. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if these hacks turned a trick, bending over for an elected thief.

Their reporting was contemptible correspondence. This peculiar piece did not meet minimal journalistic standards and was beyond slanted. Any reporter with integrity would have sought balanced sources, multiple perspectives and dug under the issue’s skin. These folks didn’t bother to look beneath their own distorted and seemingly psychotic version of reality. They spoke only to representatives of the gun control industry, misstated facts, cited unreliable sources and quoted discredited researchers.

They may well have smoked their breakfast. After all, they work in Oaksterdam.

I popped off a tirade to the Trib, demanding they print a retraction. I knew exactly what I was asking and did not take my demand lightly. A retraction is an admission of guilt by a newspaper for printing something they shouldn’t have. In the case of this pile of journalistic dung, a retraction was in order. A retraction, an apology, several thousand Hail Marys and possibly even a human sacrifice — the Trib had two reporters who were worthy candidates for the latter.

Martin Reynolds, the editor of the Oakland Tribune, emailed me shortly thereafter, saying in part:

However, the points you have made from what I can tell don’t come close to constituting the need for a retraction. You may not agree with the tenor of the story, or agree with the way it was sourced and what information was not reported, but writing a story in this manner does not warrant a retraction. Not even close.

Martin conveniently missed the point. I never complained about the “tenor” of the piece. I complained that their reporters abdicated their responsibilities as journalist. Anyone even faintly acquainted the political football of gun control would agree that the Oakland Tribune’s reporting lay somewhere between negligent and fraudulent. Martin might not appreciate blunt assessments of his staff’s shortcomings as journalists and human beings, but he misrepresented the nature of the problem and complaint as slickly as his two reporters misrepresented everything.

He also did not bother to question his questioner. Had he performed two seconds of investigative journalism himself, he would have ascertained my position as one of the Bay Area’s top gun control policy experts (I even used my GunFacts.info email address, which should have been his first lead) and one who had published op/eds in his paper previously. This miscue became comically evident when he finished his email with:

And I don’t think you read the story very closely if you think the reporter equated guns shows (sic) with guns on the streets.

Silly me for not closely reading the article before demanding a retraction, and in the process detailing why the article was beneath the lowest of journalistic bars as well as contempt.

I fired off a reply to Martin offering that he or his minions contradict my observation. I suggested the Oakland Tribune serialize the article, having the original reporters interview criminologists with opposing views on the sources for crime guns, or at very least explain why they were excluded in the original story. I strongly suggested that his reporters at very least ask gun-owners rights groups for data that might counterpoint the sound bites they had blindly parroted for the Brady Campaign, the Violence Policy Center and the Joyce Foundation-funded university medical researcher they quoted.

Martin was unimpressed with my suggestion that his reporters commit work or journalism. He did take up my gauntlet, and replied:

As editor of this newspaper I endeavor to give voice to as many perspectives as possible. May I also suggest you write a letter to the editor, or a short 500 word opinion piece we call a “My Word” stating your views and concerns with the story. I would be happy to make sure it gets on our opinion page.

I emphasize the last sentence as prelude and the cornerstone of evidence that Martin Reynolds has no respect for his own integrity or that of his profession.

Most people would be intimidated by his offer. Being a writer, a gun policy expert and more than ready to lead public opinion back from the intellectual wastelands into which the Oakland Tribune led them, I sent off a piece within a couple of days. I did not attack the Trib, its writers or even Martin. I simply positioned the facts behind Oakland’s crime wave and how gun control was not the answer. As always, I tailed the submission with a small stack of citations from quality research and government sources. I sent the piece in reply email to Martin, copying his promise to publish. Then I waited.

And waited, and waited, and …

I gave Martin nearly a month to reply and/or publish, pinging him upon occasion, checking the Tribune web site and even resubmitting the op/ed through their online interface. Nada. I searched the Oakland Trib web site daily using both my name and various keywords to find my response to their journalistic lapse.

I finally gave up, rewrote the piece, submitted it to the San Francisco Chronicle. They printed it shortly thereafter.

Allow a tally:

• The Oakland Tribune published a piece of journalistic effluvium
• An expert on the topic complained
• The editor of the Trib promised to publish an opposing perspective
• The editor reneged on his promise

The price one places on their self-respect varies from person to person. The average man won’t sell his at any price. A politician or an Oakland Tribune reporter sells theirs at a discount. A street walker sells hers for spare change. But the editor of the Oakland Tribune gains not a penny for his – he cannot sell what he does not posses.

If you feel compelled to remind Marin that journalistic integrity is essential, feel free to pop him a note at mreynolds@bayareanewsgroup.com.

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Bush the Elder imposed a 10% luxury tax during his only term as President. This tax on consumption by well-heeled folk had the peculiar effect of eliminating most of the Florida yacht building industry. Wealthy people (Republican-defined wealthy, not Democrat-defined) ran the numbers, determined they could buy yachts in neighboring countries for less and take a nice little vacation to pick up their boat with the spare change. And they did.

Fiberglass layers, engine mechanics, and sail makers … you know, the blue collar vote … all lost their jobs while Sunshine State yacht building companies tanked.

If anyone is wondering why gasoline prices are so high these days, a good first place to look is government and how they have mucked in the markets.

China admitted as much today as they raised gasoline prices by 18%, which is not a price hike at all.

China and India both are in hyper growth modes. Since most of their population is poor, and since continued industrialization requires energy and transportation, these countries subsidize gasoline prices. So does Iran, Venezuela, and other nations run by advanced-stage syphilis patients.

Gasoline in those countries is less expensive than the market would otherwise demand, and as a result, gas and oil consumption is higher than it would otherwise be. This artificially high demand creates artificial shortages, which causes prices to artificially rise.

Oil has risen, climbing 100% in the last year alone.

An unintended consequence of market meddling is that the difference in the artificially low price of gasoline and the artificially high price of oil is paid for by these insane regimes. This is the real reason why China is reducing subsidies in order to raise prices: they can’t afford to keep paying the ransom they created.

Monkey with any self-balancing system (like an open market economy) and the system falls out of balance. Typically it falls on the people who tossed the monkey wrench into the machinery.

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A: Nothing.

That poor tart of antiquity (Cassandra, not Al, though he may well be old enough to qualify) knew with certainty what the future held, and nobody believed her. Gore on the other hand has prophesied on his and excited a throbbing mixed mass of the guilt-ridden yuppies, aging hippies, and anyone easily frightened by news anchors with serious facial expressions.

Brian Williams’ scowl has been known to scare small children into wetting themselves. Some adults too.

The cycle has become more predictable than any of the prophesies from the alarmist industry. We can go back to Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring where she predicted mass species annihilation due to some pesticides, and as an indirect effect condemned millions of children to die from malaria that could have effectively been controlled with judicial use of the pesticides she caused to be banned. Rachel could be rightly accused of inciting an anti-intellectual riot resulting in manslaughter.

Her process — one of taking some small scientific theory or reality and extrapolating worst-case scenarios — has oft been repeated. A mere six years later Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb claimed that in the 1970s “hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.” Yet the only wide-spread starvation that occurred where caused by governments creating artificial food shortages as weapons … or in Hollywood where actresses upchucked their excesses.

This parade of false prophets has continued unabated. Some predicted the end of natural resources in the 1970’s and even the end of the human species by the year 2000. Oddly, the only thing that died at the millennial turn were a small piece of my liver, that collided with a dose of Jack Daniels … all night long.

One would think … well maybe not. Perhaps one should think about these serial sages and their apocalyptic predictions, and then think about Al Gore.

Try not to think of him too much as the side effects are unpleasant.

Gore is the modern Malthus, taking premature trends and projecting pandemics and pestilence. Al’s predictions are about as accurate. Often echoing other eco-prophets, Al’s earlier Earth in the Balance book and various speeches claimed we would have no arable soil, no forests, oceans devoid of fish, and no oil.

Funny. I had fish for dinner last night, with a nice salad (grown in soil I assume), and went for a walk afterwards in a redwood grove before filling my tank of my pickup.

I won’t pick on Al anymore (today). But the history of doomsayers is long, going back to ancient Greece and perhaps further. Of their dire predictions, very few have come true. Take what political apocalyptics say with two grains of salt.

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Just watch any session of Congress.

Today’s lunacy lesson revolves around a tiny film called Fitna. The video involves the Quran (or Koran for American journalists) and was produced by a non-Muslim. That combination alone is enough to ignite lethal agitation among zealots sans intelligence (if I may be redundant).

In this presentation, producer Geert Wilders simply shows verses from the Quran, then plays video of Islamists who obviously wound their turbans too tightly. For each of these select passages Wilders shows the verses being used as justification for abusing women, slavery and homicide. Wilders’ point appears to be that like many religions before, some people are using Islam to justify theological fascism.

You know, like the Roman church did by posting a copy of Deuteronomy in every inquisition waiting room.

Granted, Wilders put a prickly point on his presentation, using some of the more graphic (though edited) videos produced by Islamist for Fascism, Inc. (if you don’t like seeing a masked jihadist holding aloft a freshly severed caucasian head, then don’t watch Finta). Wilders’ selected footage is the best of their worst, or as I like to say “the cream of the crap.”

But at no place in the video does Wilders call Islam a bad name, defame Mohamed, or call for reverse jihad. He simply exposes people misusing religion as a means for their maniacal mission.

Tell that to the Islamist. Well try to tell them if you can get them to quit scream and burning effigies long enough to engage in thoughtful discussion (yes, I know — I’m pissin’ into the wind with that notion).

All too predictably, after the film hit the Internet violence erupted among Islamic hot heads (how can your head not be hot when you live in the desert and is wrap your head in turban — maybe they have simply baked their brains to the point of imbecility). “They call this freedom of expression, but it’s freedom of aggression,” said one over agitated ass. Failing to have watched the film or to dispassionately consider Wilders’ core message, he continued with the obligatory “God is great.”

Well, at least he got something right. I hope he joins one group that marched in protest of the film. They were wearing headbands that read “We are ready to sacrifice our lives for the sanctity of the prophet”.

That can be arranged.

What would be amusing were it not for the sadness of stupidity is that Radical Islamist have detached themselves from reality. Sane people who watch Wilders’ film will not think less of Islam. They would instead see an analysis of how dimwits with dictatorial dementia abuse the Prophet’s words to justify their temporal tantrums. Loons — like the leadership of Jamate-e-Islami — are Wilders target.

Likewise with my literary cross-hairs and Leupold scope.

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