Uncommon Commentary #421: Alarmists Might Say "Keep Your Pause to Yourself!"

In the late 1980’s and the 1990’s, when global-warming hysteria was young, my position on the subject was that it was entirely appropriate to carry out research on whether catastrophic, anthropogenic “climate change” (to use the term that adherents of the global-warmist religion now prefer) is taking place, but that there was no cause for panic.  By now, however, those who want to find real evidence of such an apocalypse have had over a quarter of a century in which to do so—And the burden of proof is on them, not on the skeptics, because it’s the former who demand that we cope with this putative threat through radical action, which would both eliminate millions of jobs in the fossil-fuel industries and raise energy costs for consumers (and because long-term variation in world temperatures is natural, as anyone who has ever heard of the Ice Ages of the Pleistocene Epoch ought to know)—and they haven’t found it, although they talk as if they had.  It’s ironic that Al Gory, President Obombast, &c. habitually apply the word "deniers" to anyone who does not follow them obsequiously in this regard, since it's actually they who have taken on the rôle of obscurantist as they wilfully ignore the "pause" in warming (1998-present, which means that its inception actually predates Gory’s launching of his anti-“global-warming” crusade) and other evidence that discredits the alarmist position.  As you like to say, Al, “the debate is over”, and you’ve lost!

Uncommon Commentary #420: Why Won’t Obama Help His Own Worshipers?

(Followers of the Yazidi religion, you see, idolize Satan.)
President Obombast reached a new level of dishonesty with his announcement one week ago regarding the siege of Mt. Sanjar, where thousands of Yazidis were trapped without food or water.  He declared that the siege had been broken (by his “airstrikes”, of course) and that, therefore, the rescue mission that his critics had goaded his administration into planning was now unnecessary.  The reality was that Yazidis had been escaping from the mountain with the assistance of Kurdish forces, so that an estimated 5,000 remained thereon out of the 30,000-to-40,000 that our intelligence expected to find still there; our bloviator-in-chief evidently didn’t consider this lowered number sufficient to justify the prevention of mass murder.  Obama has always been a liar, but proclaiming that we have resolved an ongoing humanitarian crisis is on a par with what Beijing told us about the Tiananmen Square massacre 25 years ago!

Uncommon Commentary #419: Thanks for the Tanks, Yanks!

Rather than exacerbate a domestic problem (the over-militarization of local law-enforcement) by giving away surplus ordnance (including even tanks) to police departments that have no need of such heavy armament, why don’t we help to solve a foreign problem by having the Pentagon donate this weaponry to the Kurds of Iraq, who do need it to fight our common adversary the Islamists?

Uncommon Commentary #418

Emperor Nerobama demands that the US Congress give him 3.7 billion dollars to cope with the crisis on our southern border, and threatens to act without congressional approval.  Here’s something that would be less expensive, and likely more effective: a public-relations campaign in the Central American states whence all these children are coming, asking them why they want to live in a country so badly governed as ours.

Uncommon Commentary #417: Nowadays, it’s Hip to Be a Hypocrite

I wonder whether the Obombast administration, which denounces Israel over civilian casualties in the Gaza Strip, is aware that our own armed forces killed millions of innocents during World War II.  (It’s a coincidence that I’m making this posting on the anniversary of the atomic-bombing of Hiroshima, which obliterated an entire city full of noncombatants.)  My purpose here is not to condemn WWII air-raids or the men who carried them out, but to condemn self-righteous hypocrisy.

Uncommon Commentary #416: You and the UN and the Ukraine

Here’s my proposed resolution of the crisis in the Ukraine: Solicit the assent of the warring parties, as well as of Russia, to the holding of an UN-sponsored referendum on independence for the areas in question.  The terms of this plebiscite would be as follows: Monitors from neutral countries would oversee the voting; Should the denizens of the disputed regions vote to secede (and then join Russia, if they so choose), they’ll be allowed to do so in peace; If they vote against secession, UN troops will be sent to the area to prevent any further insurgence.  Wouldn’t either outcome be preferable to a continuance of the bloodshed?

Uncommon Commentary #415: Being Ignorant of History Is Worse than Letting the Bannock Burn

(“Bannock” has been used, in New England, to apply to a “thin cake baked on a griddle”.)

That this year marks the seven-hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn presumably is the reason why Scottish nationalists have chosen 2014 for the holding of their hubristic and pointless referendum on independence.  Here are a couple of facts that you probably didn’t know about the circumstances of that engagement:

1. During those feudal times, loyalty was to one's overlord rather than to one's country; whether that overlord, for instance, the King of England (to whom the Bruce and all the other candidates for the crown of Scotland had sworn fealty in 1291), was of a different nationality from one's own was irrelevant.  Robert the Bruce and his adherents were motivated not by patriotism but merely by his dynastic ambition.
2. During Bannockburn, it appears, not only the Bruce (who had committed either murder or attempted murder inside a church) but the whole of Scotland was under excommunication by the Pope.

The above might prove enlightening to those Scottish patriots who like to believe that Robert the Bruce's side had the moral high ground!

Uncommon Commentary #414: Whoever Coined the Name Ought to Be Exiled to Cyberia

Tomorrow reputedly is “Cyber [sic] Monday”.  Since I try to avoid popular culture, I don’t know what that appellation means; since 4 August is also Emperor Nerobama’s birthday, however, and the pseudo-word “cyber” derives from “cipher”, which literally means “zero”, I’d say that the designation is accidentally appropriate this year!