December 1998 Vol. 219 No. 12  Comment

R. W. Scott

Yuletide cheer

One Bob Livingston from Louisiana, who has been described as a "classic Republican" and an "advocate for oil and gas," will be the next Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, replacing Newt Gingrich. The Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Livingston has implied he will play cozy with his many democratic pals, has not in recent years been very tight-fisted with our tax dollars and has not gotten along too well with Republican social conservatives. On top of all that, he co-sponsored a bill last year (which became law) to sell crude oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (at a $175 million loss at the time) to increase national park maintenance and rehabilitation. That, of course, was not exactly fiscally responsible and would have played hob with crude prices even sooner than they submerged. Those are weird moves for a pol from South Louisiana who has one heck of a bunch of conservative oil people for constituents. Maybe they know something about him we don’t. Anyway, we were fortunate that this year Sen. Frank Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Rep. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) got counter-legislation passed that blocked Livingston’s oil sale.

Newt had his faults, but the Clinton crowd ran all over both him and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott. If the new guy thinks he can improve that situation by playing kissy with the White House, somebody had better re-define "classic Republican."

• Billy Jeff Clinton gets away with criminal acts as if they’re of no more consequence than a parking ticket.
• Trent Lott and Newt Gingrich mess around all year, fail to do their legislative jobs, and end up personally bowing and scraping to the White House, and the perjurer therein, to produce the most monstrous, pork-stuffed budget bill in history, the contents of which were not (and probably still aren’t) known to one breathing soul in Congress when it was passed.
• Trent Lott personally killed the $80 billion tax cut bill crafted and passed by the House this year by refusing to even allow debate on it in the Senate.

Question: How come Newt’s the only one with enough gumption to get the hell out of Dodge when he screws up?

Guess what? The Global Warmers are all atwitter and worked up over a new report from a team of American researchers known as the Carbon Modeling Consortium. As reported in New Scientist magazine, the group modeled carbon dioxide distribution worldwide. Seems like trees in the U.S. suck up virtually all of the 1.6 billion tons of CO₂ that the U.S. discharges into the atmosphere each year. That, of course, means that the U.S. has absolutely no reason to sign the lunacy called the Kyoto treaty, since our outgo and suck up of CO₂ balances out.

Reckon those could be Christmas trees?

It was only a matter of time until some global warmer got the idea that this idiotic fantasy needed to be expanded to cover all bases.

In a recent article in The Atlantic Monthly entitled "The great climate flipflop," GW author William H. Colvin postulates thusly: "Climate change is popularly understood to mean greenhouse warming, which, it is predicted, will cause flooding, severe wind storms and killer heat waves. But warming could lead, paradoxically, to drastic cooling — a catastrophe that could threaten the survival of civilization."

Now you have it from the horse’s (take your choice of which end) that GW could also lead to another ice age, indicating that these people are crazier than we imagined.

If this is not the epitome of a transparent CYA effort we’ve never seen one.

Many of you out there have been to, or lived in, the UK over the years. As you well recall it is customary (maybe even mandatory) that there is always a toast to the Queen when attending moderate to large gatherings at luncheons, dinners, etc.

Some weeks ago, Pat Buchanan reported in his syndicated column that Charles Colson of Richard Nixon vintage attended a dinner in England attended by Americans and Brits when someone stood, raised their glass and announced "To the Queen." Everyone promptly stood and toasted. A bit later, someone (apparently a democrat) stood and announced "To the President of the United States." The entire bunch fell out laughing, which normally would be an affront to any U.S. citizen, although in this case it is understandable, though embarrassing.

Indeed, we in the colonies may have even more of a problem than we thought in this regard, although we suspect the Americans at the dinner (republicans, of course) started the laughing. Given the years of similar Clintonesque scandals in the British government and the monarchy back to Henry VIII or maybe even Charles I, it is hard to believe our Brit friends would throw rocks in a glass house. But maybe they were relieved to have company and apparently joined in the fun.

The Washington Times reports that a male Arizona State University Professor of Theater has been fired by what must be a femifascist-dominated Theater Department. Seems he taught Shakespeare, Checkov, etc. in the traditional manner.

The department head said the plays the professor taught were "offensive, sexist and Eurocentric" and asked him to "reinterpret" the texts. He wouldn’t.

Following his grossly unjust firing, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute reported that the ASU femifascists produced a play titled Betty the Yeti: An Eco Fable. It was a story about a logger who ... well, politely put ... has an "affair" with a Sasquatch or Yeti, depending on whether you are in the U.S. or Tibet (hopefully it was an abominable snow woman in this case), and is transformed into an environmentalist (unquestionably the wacky type).

We always wondered where they came from.

Merry Christmas

and

Best Wishes!

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