'Many human beings, apparently, never quite get over an innate totalitarian impulse...'

From Heather Wilhelm, at RCP, "Attack of the Leftist Snowflakes."

Via Instapundit. (Be sure to click through for more on the leftist snowflakes."

I'm Reminded of Mark Steyn with All the Climate Change Hysteria and Hypocrisy this Week

I haven't heard much recently on the Mann vs. Steyn lawsuit, so I checked over at the dude's blog, and behold: "The Science is Settled!"

And check out his books, Climate Change: The Facts, and The Undocumented Mark Steyn.

Obama's Earth Day Hypocrisy

At Free Beacon, "Obama Earth Day Trip to Emit 5 Times as Much CO2 as the Average American Does Annually."

Plus, at CBS DC, "More Than 9,000 Gallons of Fuel to Be Used on Air Force One for Obama's Trip to Everglades on Earth Day."

And at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "Obama under fire for Air Force One's big carbon footprint on Earth Day."

And watch, from Bret Baier's Special Report yesterday, "Earth Day Message - Obama's Mixed Messages on Climate Change."

@hale_razor Hey, 100 TONS of CO2 seems a small sacrifice for a photo op & an #EarthDay speech nobody will remember. pic.twitter.com/1mSzZpC07H

— Soquel by the Creek (@SoquelCreek) April 22, 2015

'What Are We Doing?' Robert Downey Jr. Asks After an Interview Gets Personal — And Before He Walks Out

He's conservative.

At LAT, "Robert Downey Jr. interview gets too 'Diane Sawyer-esque,' so he walks out."

And at Pat Dollard's, "Robert Downey Jr. Leaves Mid-Interview After Being Badgered About Not Being a Liberal."

Earth Day Overload

Here's a pretty good piece from Nick Gillespie, which is saying something, since I think he's kinda blustery in any case, heh.

At Reason, "Jerry's Brown Apocalyptic 'Warning to Humanity'."

Watch the video at the link as well: "The Top Five Environmental Disasters that Didn't Happen."

More at the Atlantic, "California's Poorest Could Start Paying More for Water," and the L.A. Times, "What's next on California's water rates?"

There's No Such Thing as Consensus Science

From Professor Mark Perry, at the American Enterprise Institute, "For Earth Day: Michael Crichton explains why there is “no such thing as consensus science”":

Michael Crichton, @Caltech lecture, 2003: [H/T: @Mark_J_Perry] pic.twitter.com/4QO8y7naNn

— Jeff Jacoby (@Jeff_Jacoby) April 21, 2015

Do a Google search for the term “global warming consensus” and you’ll find more than 23,000 links (and 18,000,000 results without the quotations marks). The first link is to this NASA webpage about “scientific consensus” with the following bold statement:

Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree that climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activities, and most of the leading scientific organizations worldwide have issued public statements endorsing this position.

As part of my series of posts this week to recognize the green holy day called Earth Day, here’s what Michael Crichton had to say about “scientific consensus” back in 2003 when he gave a lecture at the California Institute of Technology titled “Aliens Cause Global Warming” (emphasis mine):

Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world.

In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.

In addition, let me remind you that the track record of the consensus is nothing to be proud of. Let’s review a few cases...

Keep reading.

Celebrate Earth Day with Robert Zubrin's Merchants of Despair

Once again, check out Robert Zubrin's book, Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism.

Climate Hypocrite Leonardo DiCaprio Flew Private Jet from Los Angeles to New York Six Times in Six Weeks

Michelle Fields is screencapped at the piece.

At London's Daily Mail, "Leonardo DiCaprio the 'eco warrior' flew on a private jet from NY to LA SIX times in SIX weeks, Sony hack documents reveal."

Obama Commemorating Earth Day with Massive Carbon Footprint in Florida

At the Tampa Bay Times, "Obama's big carbon footprint celebrating Earth Day in Fla":

@VictoriaTaft #EarthDay2015 tweet of the day!! @TwitchyTeam pic.twitter.com/queB62S1Gq

— Tom Thurman (@Tommm1954) April 22, 2015

President Obama will visit the Everglades Wednesday, Earth Day, to call attention to global warming and the administration's efforts to cut carbon pollution across the globe. CBS News reporter Mark Knoller raised an intervesting question with honorary Floridian and former Jim Davis adviser Josh Earnest at the press secretary's daily briefing today. Here's a transcript of the exchange:

     Q    Thanks.  On the Everglades trip, does the President risk undermining his message when he flies to the Everglades on a 747 hundreds of miles to make a statement about climate change?  (Laughter.)
     Q    He could drive.  (Laughter.)
     MR. EARNEST:  It’s a provocative question.
     Q    Take a van.
     MR. EARNEST:  But, no, he doesn't.  The President believes that there are important changes that we can make to reduce carbon pollution in this country, and we can do it in a way that will be good for our economy.  That is precisely the case that the President will be making at the Everglades.  And he’s looking forward to the trip.
     Q    Does he try to minimize the carbon footprint that he leaves whenever he goes anywhere?
     MR. EARNEST:  Well, obviously, the Department of Defense and the Presidential Airlift Group at the United States Air Force is responsible for the President’s transportation.  So you can talk to them about any steps that they may have taken.
     I can say as a general matter that the Department of Defense has acknowledged that climate change does pose a national security threat to the United States.  And there are a lot of practices that the Department of Defense has taken to try to reduce their carbon footprint.  I don't know how that intersects with the use of Air Force One, but you could check with the Air Force on that.
All right?  Thanks, everybody.  Have a good Monday.

Obama Earth Day on Air Force One

At the Washington Times, "Inevitable: An Earth Day trip on Air Force One":

Earth Day could be interesting in Florida: President Obama will journey aboard Air Force to visit the Everglades on Wednesday, burning jet fuel and taxpayer funds as he goes. Well, at least it’s not as far as Tokyo, which was his Earth Day destination last year. That venture prompted the London Daily Mail to do the math and reveal that magnificent but pricey aircraft consumes 5 gallons of jet fuel for every mile it flies — emitting over 21 pounds of dreaded CO2 per gallon. The fuel alone costs taxpayers about $180,000 per hour of flight time. Oh, the carbon footprint — and the irony.

“We’ve committed to doubling the pace at which we cut carbon pollution,” Mr. Obama said during a weekend address that outlined the details of his trip. Climate change is on the president’s mind, though, and he will emphasize the potential economic and environmental impact of global warming and rising seas on the fragile Everglades during an event in Homestead, conveniently the home to an Air Force Reserve base.

Happy Earth Day! Drivers Ditching Hybrids and Electric Vehicles for SUVs

And it's not just about cheaper gas prices these days. Hybrids and EVs just aren't "equal" after all.

At USA Today, "Earth Day, bah! Hybrid, EV owners shift to SUVs":

Owners of gas-electric hybrids and battery electric vehicles are less and less likely to trade for another one, according to data from auto buying and research site Edmunds.com. Even more surprising: they are increasingly likely to shift to SUVs.

The disenchantment with clean-air fuel savers appears to be the result mainly of relatively low fuel prices, though there also seems to be a decline in their being seen as "special."

"For better or worse, it looks like many hybrid and EV owners are driven more by financial motives rather than a responsibility to the environment," says Edmunds.com Director of Industry Analysis Jessica Caldwell. "Three years ago, when gas was at near-record highs, it was a lot easier to rationalize the price premiums on alternative fuel vehicles. But with today's gas prices as low as they are, the math just doesn't make a very compelling case."

It's a blow to the sentiment of Earth Day today, the 45th annual fete for the planet.

And it's bad news for automakers, who need to sell more and more alternative-power vehicles to meet tightening federal fuel-economy rules.

To avoid a backlog, General Motors recently cut the prices of its Spark EV and Cadillac ELR extended-range electric and temporarily halted production of its Chevrolet Volt plug-in car.

Sales of the Nissan Leaf, the best -selling EV in the U.S., are down 27.2% the first quarter this year in a new-vehicle market up 5.6%, says Autodata.

Toyota's Prius gas-electric hybrid is down 7.7%; the plug-in version, fell 61.4%, Autodata says.

Overall, only 45% of this year's hybrid and EV trade-ins have involved the purchase of another alternative-power vehicle, Edmunds data show. That's down from slightly more than 60% in 2012 and is the first time the rate has fallen below 50%...

Hollywood Leftist Ben Affleck Had Inconvenient Truth About Slave-Owning Ancestor Scrubbed from PBS 'Finding Your Roots' Segment

Pretty typical, actually.

At LAT, "PBS sets internal review over Ben Affleck's 'Finding Your Roots' segment."

Angry Baltimore Protester Grabs Microphone from CNN Reporter Miguel Marquez: 'F*** You! F*** That! F*** CNN!'

At Twitchy, with video, "Angry Baltimore protester takes over CNN’s microphone during Freddie Gray march."

Also at NYT, "Freddie Gray in Baltimore: Another City, Another Death in the Public Eye."

Pamela Geller Counters Attacks on AFDI Islamic Jew Hatred Bus Ads

At NBC News Philadelphia, via Blazing Cat Fur:

Buy 'Clinton Cash' Book Bombshell Pre-Release

Hey, buy your copy pre-release at Amazon, Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich.

And from yesterday, ICYMI, "'Clinton Cash' Book Bombshell Set to Explode Hillary Clinton Democrat Party Pay-to-Play Scandal."

Benjamin Netanyahu at Annual Holocaust Memorial Day Ceremony — Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem

He's a great guy.

Rich Smuggling Trade Fuels Deadly Migration Across Mediterranean

At WSJ, "Brazen, multi-million-dollar people-smuggling enterprise run by Libyan militias and tribesmen proves hard to combat":

The deaths of more than 1,000 Italy-bound migrants in the Mediterranean Sea in the last week are the product of a multi-million-dollar people-smuggling enterprise run by Libyan militias, tribesmen and bandits, law-enforcement officials and migrant-aid groups say.

Authorities in the European Union on Monday pledged to step up efforts to crack down on a well-oiled and increasingly brazen business of putting desperate people on rickety boats and setting them afloat on the deadliest migrant route in the world. Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni called for international support “to fight against these traffickers of human beings, this new slavery of the 21st century.”

Yeah, it's bad.

More at London's Daily Mail, "Captain arrested over Mediterranean migrant disaster: Two charged with 'multiple manslaughter' when they step on to Italian soil with survivors - as EU vows to 'capture and destroy' human traffickers' boats."

Also at the Guardian UK, "EU ministers meet for crisis talks after hundreds of migrants drown in Mediterranean."

National Review on Wisconsin Democrat Party's 'John Doe' Investigations

I remember reading about the Democrat Party's Nazi-style "John Doe" raids a couple of years ago, at the Wall Street Journal, "Wisconsin Political Speech Raid."

As terrifying as initial reports were, you get a genuine appreciation of Democrat Gestapo tactics with National Review's report, "Wisconsin's Shame: ‘I Thought It Was a Home Invasion’." (Via Memeorandum.)

Patterico writes:

The investigations were conducted at the behest of a prosecutor whose offices “were festooned with the ‘blue fist’ poster of the labor-union movement.” According to one prosecutor who spoke to journalist Stuart Taylor, the wife of the lead prosecutor, John Chisholm, was “a teachers’-union shop steward who was distraught over Act 10’s union reforms” — and Chisholm “felt it was his personal duty” to stop the reforms. Pursuant to the politically motivated subpoenas lacking in probable cause, prosecutors subpoenaed electronic data such as emails and conducted these abusive raids.

It’s the type of activity you would expect to see from the Stasi in East Germany. Conservative activists in Wisconsin literally do not feel safe. They think that police could burst into their homes at any moment to punish them for their First Amendment activity.

In a country that actually valued freedom, this story would spark front-page headlines all over the country. It would be all anyone would be talking about for weeks, and nobody would rest until we knew it could never, ever happen again.

We are no longer such a country.

Gestapo. Stasi. Well, you get the point.

More at Instapundit.

'Clinton Cash' Book Bombshell Set to Explode Hillary Clinton Democrat Party Pay-to-Play Scandal

From Amy Chozick, at the New York Times, "New Book, ‘Clinton Cash,’ Questions Foreign Donations to Foundation" (at Memeorandum):

The book does not hit shelves until May 5, but already the Republican Rand Paul has called its findings “big news” that will “shock people” and make voters “question” the candidacy of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

“Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich,” by Peter Schweizer — a 186-page investigation of donations made to the Clinton Foundation by foreign entities — is proving the most anticipated and feared book of a presidential cycle still in its infancy.

The book, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, asserts that foreign entities who made payments to the Clinton Foundation and to Mr. Clinton through high speaking fees received favors from Mrs. Clinton’s State Department in return.

“We will see a pattern of financial transactions involving the Clintons that occurred contemporaneous with favorable U.S. policy decisions benefiting those providing the funds,” Mr. Schweizer writes.

His examples include a free-trade agreement in Colombia that benefited a major foundation donor’s natural resource investments in the South American nation, development projects in the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake in 2010, and more than $1 million in payments to Mr. Clinton by a Canadian bank and major shareholder in the Keystone XL oil pipeline around the time the project was being debated in the State Department.

In the long lead up to Mrs. Clinton’s campaign announcement, aides proved adept in swatting down critical books as conservative propaganda, including Edward Klein’s “Blood Feud,” about tensions between the Clintons and the Obamas, and Daniel Halper’s “Clinton Inc.: The Audacious Rebuilding of a Political Machine.”

But “Clinton Cash” is potentially more unsettling, both because of its focused reporting and because major news organizations including The Times, The Washington Post and Fox News have exclusive agreements with the author  to pursue the story lines found in the book.

Members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which includes Mr. Paul and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, have been briefed on the book’s findings, and its contents have already made their way into several of the Republican presidential candidates’ campaigns.

Conservative “super PACs” plan to seize on “Clinton Cash,” and a pro-Democrat super PAC has already assembled a dossier on Mr. Schweizer, a speechwriting consultant to former President George W. Bush and a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution who has contributed to the conservative website Breitbart.com, to make the case that he has a bias against Mrs. Clinton.

And the newly assembled Clinton campaign team is planning a full-court press to diminish the book as yet another conservative hit job.

A campaign spokesman, Brian Fallon, called the book part of the Republicans’ coordinated attack strategy on Mrs. Clinton “twisting previously known facts into absurd conspiracy theories,” and he said “it will not be the first work of partisan-fueled fiction about the Clintons’ record, and we know it will not be the last.”

Mr. Schweizer and a spokeswoman for HarperCollins, which is owned by News Corporation and is publishing the book, declined to comment.

The timing is problematic for Mrs. Clinton as she begins a campaign to position herself as a “champion for everyday Americans.”

From 2001 to 2012, the Clintons’ income was at least $136.5 million, Mr. Schweizer writes, using a figure previously reported in The Post. “During Hillary’s years of public service, the Clintons have conducted or facilitated hundreds of large transactions” with foreign governments and individuals, he writes. “Some of these transactions have put millions in their own pockets.”

The Clinton Foundation has come under scrutiny for accepting foreign donations while Mrs. Clinton served as secretary of state. Last week, the foundation revised its policy to allow donations from countries like Germany, Canada, the Netherlands and Britain but prohibit giving by other nations in the Middle East.

Mr. Schweizer’s book will be released the same day former President Bill Clinton and the Clintons’ daughter, Chelsea, will host the Clinton Global Initiative gathering with donors in Morocco, the culmination of a foundation trip to several African nations. (A chapter in the book is titled “Warlord Economics: The Clintons Do Africa.”)

There is a robust market for books critical of the Clintons. The thinly sourced “Blood Feud,” by Mr. Klein, at one point overtook Mrs. Clinton’s memoir “Hard Choices” on the best-seller list.

But whether Mr. Schweizer’s book can deliver the same sales is not clear.

More.

And man does this sound juicy!

See also Politico, "New York Times, Fox News strike deals for anti-Clinton research." Look, if the Old Gray Lady's striking a deal with Schweizer, you know he's got the goods. The editors have access to preliminary copies, so you know they're Jonesin' to rake some tabloid cash on the story. No one's above raw naked interests these days. No one.

And note:

The New York Times, The Washington Post and Fox News have made exclusive agreements with a conservative author for early access to his opposition research on Hillary Clinton, a move that has confounded members of the Clinton campaign and some reporters, the On Media blog has confirmed.

Yes, "some reporters" are confounded --- those paragons of dispassionate media integrity. Confounded I say! Why, how dare other dispassionate paragons throw tribal caution to the wind for the beef of a good tabloid romp?!! Heh!

And with Breitbart fingerprints too!

Still more from ABC News, "White House Won't Comment on Reports of Preferential Treatment for Clinton Foundation Donors." Well who can blame them? Hillary's running for Barack's third term --- or, Bill's, depending on your generational perspective!



Image Credit: Zero Hedge, "Secretary of State for Hire: Hillary Clinton Made Millions from Foreign Donors in Exchange for 'Favors'."

Women at Coachella

At Egotastic!, "Celebrity Cleavage from Coachella Week 2." (Don't miss that Kelly Brook coverage at the link.)

I never did post on Week 1, so here you go: "Kendall Jenner, Alessandra Ambrosio, and Bella Thorne Lead Pack of Show Off Desert Hotties at Coachella Weekend One."

Also, "Peyton List Shakes Her Booty In Jean Shorts at Coachella," and "Hilary Duff Sextastic See-Through Cowgirl at Coachella."