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P. J. O’Rourke offered a perfectly delightful address at the Independence Institute’s 25th Anniversary Banquet, held in Denver on November 19. He mostly blasted leftist policies but saved some of his best lines for Republicans. For example, he said that building a wall between us and Mexico would be a boon to the Mexican ladder industry. I captured a number of interviews on camera:
It is hard work defending a cult. Especially when the truth might harm its foundations. Cult leaders will suppress the truth to protect the religious movement. Scientists seek truth.
That, my friends, is the difference between members of the Al Gore Cult of Global Warming and actual scientists.
The New York Times reports that the Cult’s internal memos demonstrate a deliberate intent to suppress the truth to preserve the religion.
Some examples:
An actual scientist faced with data contrary to his hypothesis would ask if his hypothesis was wrong. A religious zealot curses the data and calls it a travesty.
In a 1999 e-mail exchange about charts showing climate patterns over the last two millennia, Phil Jones, a longtime climate researcher at the East Anglia Climate Research Unit, said he had used a “trick” employed by another scientist, Michael Mann, to “hide a decline” in temperatures. Actual scientists do not use “tricks” to fool people. Cult leaders and snake-oil salesmen use tricks, to, well, trick people into believing a lie.
“Drinking the Kool-Aid” has become a cliche, but Jim Jones would have made an excellent climate change advocate from his campground in Guyana. Jones led a very successful cult.
Just like Al Gore.
Please make a call today to the senators below — or those that you have any connection with at least. Tell them this – As environmentalists dressed as clowns protested coal-fired electric plants in Denver — see the reports from the Denver Daily News and Denver Post — Keith Lockitch prepared to give a talk at the Auraria campus that evening explaining the profound human need for industrial energy. (More on this soon.) In the Q&A, Lockitch pointed to two quotes from environmentalists indicating that they don’t want cheap, abundant energy, even if it is “clean” and “renewable.” Paul Ehrlich said, “Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.” Amory Lovins said, “If you ask me, it’d be little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy because of what we would do with it.” 
From today’s Denver Post:
Yet the members of the Cult of the State continue to worship their Government God as the answer to all of society’s ills, real and perceived.
Perhaps these cult members should reevaluate their fealty to such a feeble deity. Perhaps they should look elsewhere for solutions.
Maybe the cult’s members are right and government’s impending takeover of health care will not suffer from similar incompetence.
However, it takes an unwarranted and unearned faith to believe so.
Earlier this year, I criticized a new law that allows police to take DNA samples from people they arrest for a felony, absent any criminal conviction. As the Denver Post summarized, “The bill was amended to allow police to take DNA tests upon arrest but for the sample not to be processed unless a person is charged. The sample will be destroyed if no charges are filed.” As I noted, the law will “encourage police and prosecutors to arrest and charge people just to get a look at their DNA.” Now that Denver police have advanced a program to match crime-scene DNA to samples on record, it is no longer a question of whether the law will be abused, but when. Michael Roberts writes for Westword, “Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey… [has] been working with colleagues in the Denver Police Department’s crime lab, among others, to prove the efficacy of a method able to connect DNA not in law-enforcement databases to samples from family members…” Morrissey told Roberts, “We’re running [a sample] against the DNA of somebody else whose sample we obtained legally.” Except that obtaining somebody else’s DNA legally is now trivially easy. You just come up with some plausible complaint against a person and arrest him. Voila — a legal DNA sample. So let’s say the police suspect Joe Blow of committing some crime, but they can’t easily find Joe Blow. But they know where to find Sam Blow, Joe’s brother. If only we could figure out if the DNA we found belongs to Joe! All we need to do is get a look at Sam’s DNA. And if Sam isn’t feeling so cooperative… I do not doubt that taking DNA samples from everybody in the population would help solve more crimes. Hell, we could get a database going with every single person’s fingerprint, DNA, eye scan, special markings, and so on. We could also install every newborn with a barcode and GPS tracker. Update: CNN also carried the story on the DNA tests. Defense attorney Stephen Mercer told CNN, “If they want to drive down the street and do no-knock searches of homes, they would catch bad guys. But at what cost to our society?” Or, we could retain our liberties. “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated…” November 25 update: “Panel: British police arrest people just for DNA samples.” Coming soon to a Colorado city near you? 
Join your fellow liberty-lovers for a social gathering in the pool room at the Uptown Tavern! This is the place to network, socialize and find out what is going on in the Denver area to promote liberty and free markets! i.e. Going for it on 4th and 2 on you own 28 yard line with a 6 point lead with two minutes remaining.
With the looming government run health care bill that may be taking over the health care industry in the United States, we might as well just say screw the children….and the elderly, and the middle aged. I just saw an advertisement on Facebook for a group that supports Mitt Romney. It says
Conservative principles are absolutely essential to keeping America strong, prosperous and free. Join Our Team. What a hoot! The guy who brought socialized medicine to Massachusetts was claiming to be a champion of “conservative principles.”
I clicked on the link, assuming it was a some kind of spoof. It took me several moments to realize that no, it was all too real.
That Romney is considered a serious, “conservative” representative of the Republican Party tells you all you need to know about the Republican Party.
It may not be a spoof, but it sure as heck is a farce.
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