Absolutely Twisted – Part Two

Yech.

Woody Allen, David Lynch and Martin Scorsese today added their names to a petition demanding the immediate release of Roman Polanski from detention in Zurich. The director was arrested on Saturday over a three-decade-old underage sex case when he arrived to receive a lifetime achievement award at the city’s film festival.

“Film-makers in France, in Europe, in the United States and around the world are dismayed by this decision,” says the petition, which is co-ordinated by the Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques (SACD), a film industry organisation which also represents performance and visual artists.

“It seems inadmissible to them that an international cultural event, paying homage to one of the greatest contemporary film-makers, is used by police to apprehend him,” it adds.

Mark those names of people in the film industry who think that being one of the “greatest contemporary film-makers” gives one a pass on drugging and raping a 13-year old girl.

Yech.

Cannibal Mikey

Mikey threatens to eat Democrats:

Controversial liberal filmmaker Michael Moore on Tuesday issued a warning to Democrats who have been cool to President Barack Obama’s call for meaningful health care reform: Get on board or prepare to lose your seat.

“To the Democrats in Congress who don’t quite get it: I want to offer a personal pledge. I – and a lot of other people – have every intention of removing you from Congress in the next election if you stand in the way of health care legislation that the people want,” Moore told supporters of women’s groups and unions gathered at the headquarters of the government watchdog group Public Citizen. “That is not a hollow or idle threat. We will come to your district and we will work against you, first in the primary and, if we have to, in the general election.”

This is what passes for deep thinking on the authoritarian (decidedly NOT liberal) left. Toe the line of our agenda or we will destroy you. No thought at all to the political reality that a vote for the left’s agenda might already be a vote for political suicide.

Let’s face it, Mikey, who has lived very large off the capitalism he now abhors, is a poseur. He fancies himself a man of the people while living in very nice digs paid for by those same people. In other words, he’s a happy, rather rich capitalist playing at being a populist agitator. 

Mikey’s threats against Max Baucus are – completely – meaningless, incidentally. Baucus was reelected in 2008 and is not up for reelection within the memory-span of Mikey.

Bring it, Mikey. We can use all the help to unseat Democrats in 2010. Thanks for offering!

Got Snuggies?

If you happen to live in the Northeastern United States, you might want to order several sets of long underwear. It’s looking to be cold up in those parts:

“Weak El Ninos are notorious for cold and snowy weather on the Eastern seaboard,” Rogers said in a Bloomberg Television interview from Washington. “About 70 percent to 75 percent of the time a weak El Nino will deliver the goods in terms of above-normal heating demand and cold weather. It’s pretty good odds.”

Warming in the Pacific often means fewer Atlantic hurricanes and higher temperatures in the U.S. Northeast during January, February and March, according to the National Weather Service. El Nino occurs every two to five years, on average, and lasts about 12 months, according to the service.

How good are the odds? Well, hedge fund managers and traders are betting that heating oil prices are going up. That should tell you something (the Northeast uses an inordinate amount of heating oil).

In the Midwest, it has been a very cold summer – according to folks who have lived in this area all their lives. Coupled with Rich Horton’s post about the so-called science a lot of AGW hysteria is based on, you should have some food for thought. (If you have not read Rich’s post, now is a good time to do so.)

Shaken, Not Stirred

Not a Bond martini, consumer confidence. Contrary to the cheery pronouncements of Federal officials, the Obama administration and the ever more ridiculously sycophantic major media, consumers are feeling less secure in the notion that the economy is recovering.

The New York-based Conference Board, a private research group, said that its Consumer Confidence Index dipped to 53.1 in September, down from the revised 54.5 reading in August. Economists surveyed by Thomson Reuters had expected a reading of 57.

The index — fueled by signs that the economy might be stabilizing — had enjoyed a three-month climb since hitting a historic low in February of 25.3 but has been bumpy since June as rising unemployment has caught up with shoppers.

A reading above 90 means the economy is on solid footing. Above 100 signals strong growth.

Economists watch consumer sentiment because spending on goods and services for consumers, including housing and health care, accounts for about 70 percent of U.S. economic activity by federal measures.

The Conference Board’s Present Situation Index, which measures consumers’ current assessment of the economy, declined to 22.7 from 25.4. The Expectations Index, which measures consumers’ outlook over the next six months, dipped to 73.3 from 73.8 last month.

“While not as pessimistic as earlier this year, consumers remain quite apprehensive about the short-term outlook and their incomes,” said Lynn Franco, director of The Conference Board Consumer Research Center. “With the holiday season quickly approaching, this is not very encouraging news.”

Actually, I’m guessing that it is disastrous news just as we are beginning to enter the Christmas shopping season. The “everything’s coming up roses” routine is not stirring consumer confidence. Nor are the increasingly strained attempts to spin horrific job losses and unemployment numbers week after week by the media.

As a matter of fact, I suspect that the increasingly silly attempts at claiming things are looking up in the face of the evidence people can see right in front of their own eyes is making people more nervous. Because if the media is spinning this hard over indefensible numbers, what are they hiding? Or who are they kidding?

There are things coming that are going to make things worse. A commercial credit crisis and huge numbers of ARMs due to reset just to name two.

Brace for impact, folks.

Yet More AGW Fraud

Big news: Cherry Picking of Historic Proportions

The sheer effrontery and gall appears to be breathtaking.

The Briffa temperature graphs have been widely cited as evidence by the IPCC, yet it appears they were based on a very carefully selected set of data, so select, that the shape of the graph would have been totally transformed if the rest of the data had been included.

Kieth Briffa used 12 samples to arrive at his version of the hockey stick and refused to provide his data for years. When McIntyre finally got hold of it, and looked at the 34 samples that Briffa left out of his graphs, a stark message was displayed. McIntyre describes it today as one of the most disquieting images he’s ever presented.

Go read the whole thing. It’s important.

Absolutely Twisted

Kate Harding, writing at Salon:

Roman Polanski raped a child. Let’s just start right there, because that’s the detail that tends to get neglected when we start discussing whether it was fair for the bail-jumping director to be arrested at age 76, after 32 years in “exile” (which in this case means owning multiple homes in Europe, continuing to work as a director, marrying and fathering two children, even winning an Oscar, but never — poor baby — being able to return to the U.S.). Let’s keep in mind that Roman Polanski gave a 13-year-old girl a Quaalude and champagne, then raped her, before we start discussing whether the victim looked older than her 13 years, or that she now says she’d rather not see him prosecuted because she can’t stand the media attention. Before we discuss how awesome his movies are or what the now-deceased judge did wrong at his trial, let’s take a moment to recall that according to the victim’s grand jury testimony, Roman Polanski instructed her to get into a jacuzzi naked, refused to take her home when she begged to go, began kissing her even though she said no and asked him to stop; performed cunnilingus on her as she said no and asked him to stop; put his penis in her vagina as she said no and asked him to stop; asked if he could penetrate her anally, to which she replied, “No,” then went ahead and did it anyway, until he had an orgasm…

…But none of that changes the basic, undisputed fact: Roman Polanski raped a child. And rushing past that point to focus on the reasons why we should forgive him, pity him, respect him, admire him, support him, whatever, is absolutely twisted.

It’s sickening to see the people defending Polanski at this point. The man – whether or not he is a great artist – raped a child. Regardless of the personal tragedies in his life, he drugged and raped a 13-year old girl.

This should not even be a topic of discussion, much less one of defending him. Too many in Hollywood, Europe and on the American left are doing the latter. It shows the disconnect between those elements and the majority of America.

Do go read the whole article. Harding is spot on as to why the defense of this is so grotesque.

Quid Pro Quo?

I suspect AllahPundit has this precisely right. After assuring America that health care “reform” was his number one priority, much, much more important than appealing in person to the International Olympic Committee, Barack Obama is flitting off to Denmark to appeal in person to the IOC for Chicago to get the Olympics. Why?

AP (and NRO’s Jim Geraghty) thinks the IOC secretly offered the games to Chicago only if Obama showed up.

Geraghty’s spot on. There’s no way The One would risk his political capital on a personal appeal in Denmark unless he’d been assured that Chicago will get the games if he makes a cameo. It’s a done deal; the only question is who approached whom. I think the IOC probably forced his hand: Given the terrible optics of the trip plus the fact that, as Geraghty reminds us, Obama said as recently as two weeks ago that he wouldn’t go himself, he had every incentive to avoid this — unless the IOC sweetened the pot by promising him the games if he showed up. Once they did that, he had no choice.

My son, only 14, heard the report with me in the car driving home yesterday. He commented, “The president should stop with the PR stuff and do his job”. Smart kid.

So, if the fix is in, as it almost certainly is, how screwed are the other cities feeling right now? Eventually, the facts about this will leak out. There are plenty of people who will want to make sure of that.

I’d like to join AP in thanking the IOC and Obama for handing the right a club with which to beat both. You know that corruption will be rampant given the venue (and the apparent means by which the venue was chosen), so the opportunities to administer beatings will be boundless!

Thanks!