The left’s new favorite buzz word is sustainable.  In theory, it has an obvious meaning, basically building things that can last and are easy to maintain and even self-repairing.  Like clean air, it’s a concept no one can object to.  Or is it? 

The problem is that the left uses words to guide thoughts, while the right uses thoughts to guide words.

Take the phrase “Sustainable Economy”.  If you Google it, you get a bunch of liberal web sites promoting environmental causes and income redistribution.  To preserve things as they are forever, never change, never grow.  So it does not mean building to last to them, it means building towards communism.  To quote Mark Levin, “Yes, I said it!”  Communism.  What else can you call it when the goal is getting away from free market capitalism?

Or, to look at it the other way.  What economic system is actually sustainable – built to last, easy to maintain, and self-repairing?  The only one is free market capitalism.  Every other economic system has failed miserably every place it was tried.  The problem with our economy is not that we have too much capitalism, it’s that we have too little.  

As a result, we now have idiots like Timothy Geithner pushing the idea that the rich should have to pay more for the privilege of being an American, in order to achieve fiscal sustainability. 

I, for one, am tired of liberals telling me I need to pay for my privileges, when all they are really asking me to do is pay for THEIR privileges.  Not only that, I have a right to be an American, it is not simply a privilege, and under our constitution, I am not required to pay anything for those rights.  What I am supposed to pay for is the general good, which should include serving my needs too.  Instead, my taxes are being used to promote the needs of people who have opted to drop out of participating in our society, as well as to benefit an elected class intent on accumulating power and personal wealth.

Capitalism is inherently self-repairing.  It only fails when people who do not believe in the fundamental advantages of capitalism have enough power to prevent the system from the corrections it would otherwise make.  

Remember that the next time someone shoves the word sustainable into a sentence.  They are not trying to create something that lasts, they are trying to tear down something they hate, and get you to agree to it one word at a time.

Very funny.  Well, very funny if you are a total blog geek.  H/T Steve Milloy.  If you don’t know who Charles Johnson or LGF is, then you need to do some more research.

AJ Strata just posted an impressive analysis on the relationship between undersea volcanoes and the relationship to El Niño/La Niña currents.  His blog was cross-posted at WUWT.

I started poking at this topic after seeing several discussions regarding the effects of  undersea volcanoes on seasonal events such as the arctic ice extent.  It made sense to me that seasonal events can be affected by massive events like undersea eruptions.  To Global Warming Alarmists, a declining ice pack is an unprecedented cataclysmal event.  To a rational, free-thinking individual, the presence of thousands of acres of molten lava underneath the ice ought to have some measurable effect, and is certainly not proof of Global Warming.

I have been background researching a related topic, namely the claim that Antarctica was exhibiting a lot of warming. However, when you dig into it, the location of all the significant loss is the Antarctic Peninsula -- which is apparently directly in a current eddy from recently discovered underwater volcanoes.

Check out this image describing the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, and note the loop in the Weddell sea (Wikipedia has a similar current map ) :

My observation is that deep warm water from the recently discovered volcanoes actually flows in a loop right past the area in Antarctica that is experiencing the most noticeable warming.

Map Info

There are major problems with all the computer models used by the so-called scientists trying to foster the global warming myth upon us all.  For one thing, at elevations above sea-level, where the sun shires, those models ignore the effect of sunlight and variations in solar output.  Worse, beneath the sea, where the sun don’t shine, their best explanations are based on the cyclical nature of solar output.

The term for this is GIGO.

Oh, for what could have been.

Andrew Malcolm gets it right.

It’s going to take me a while to get to my point, so bear with me.  It’s worth the ride.

This year, Romney has been labeled as the chosen one by the “Republican Establishment,” but there seems to be much confusion and derision over just who is the Republican Establishment, or even if they exist. 

First, let’s start with the obvious, who they are not. I’m available to discuss the whys, but IMHO, if you are one of the following you are not part of the Republican Establishment:

Democrats, Green Party, Libertarians, or Ron Paul Supporters.

The Tea Party.

Limbaugh. Hannity, Levin, or other conservative talk show hosts.

Evangelicals, Second Amendment advocates, and other single-issue voters.

Who’s left?  Rush Limbaugh has discussed the the country club Republicans as the “go along to get along” crowd, and we’re getting closer now.  But before I explore this further, I’m going to digress again (sorry). 

Thought exercise: What’s the Left’s equivalent of the Republican Establishment?  It’s not Greenpeace, NOW, ACLU, or the unions, so what is it?  It is simply elected officials and their ilk.  The people that pander to all those left wing special interests.  Or, to quote Sarah Palin, the “crony capitalists.”  The people that make their living off of plying favors and delivering the bacon through their influence as an elected official, or through their influence with elected officials.  Play by our rules and support our causes, and we’ll get you elected.  Democrat elected officials, union leaders, Main Stream Media, that is the left’s Establishment.  The ones that have the most control on who get’s elected next as a Democrat.  The people who do not really believe in the cause but are not afraid to use it.

In other words, there is a Democrat Establishment.  And it is just as real, and dangerous, as the Republican Establishment, its just never been named as such.

Back to the Country Club Republicans.  The people who associate with, do business with, lobby, support, and often select who the next elected Republican will be.  This is not a bad crowd, they are really nice people, but they do not like fights.  Go along to get along.  Do not rock the boat.  They do not like the Tea Party, for instance.  But as you can see from the results of their actions, regardless of whether whether they realize it or not, they are engaged in the same crony capitalism as their mirror-pair equivalents on the left wing Establishment.  Vote for those that play by our crony capitalism rules.

So, the Republican Establishment is really not much better, by results, than their equivalent on the left.  Hence, the disdain of the Republican Establishment by true conservatives, namely the Tea Party.  By extension, people on the right that deride the Tea Party have flagged themselves as part of the Republican Establishment.  Likewise, Republicans that demean conservative talk radio, they might as well hold up a sign reading “Republican Establishment”. 

And therein lies the battle.  In reality, it is a fight for control of the Republican Party primary process, at all levels.  Who picks the candidates that get “official” support in a primary?  The Republican Establishment, or the Tea Party? 

Hold that thought.

Now, to defend Newt. 

However, in order to do that, let me first defend conservatives.  Heck, to make a point, I’m going to defend the Republican Establishment, in the person of George W. Bush. 

The problem with the Republican Establishment is that their core is the country club “go along to get along” members.  They do not want a fight, they do not want to offend, they do not want the left-wing members of their country clubs and social circles to know they are even Republican.  In those circles, their “friends”, heck, any person, felt comfortable calling George W. Bush a moron.  Or Sarah Palin, Dan Quayle, Rush Limbaugh, or any other Republican that had influence. 

In those circles, the country club Republicans allowed their friends on the left to label, demean, insult, deride, and emasculate anyone and everyone on the right that had influence. 

In order for ‘evil’ to prevail, all that needs to happen is for ‘good’ people to do nothing.

The Republican Establishment allows evil to prevail with nothing but silence.  Actually, I’ll broaden that a bit:  Republicans, in general, are all guilty of this.  We all have been in that living room, listening to a friend call one of our own an idiot, and stood by in silence.  Embarrassed silence.  But silence, nonetheless.

The Republican Establishment embraces this, and picks candidates based solely on who will cause the least amount of conflict in those social situations.  This is called the “big tent” approach to “electability”.  Frankly, it is nothing less than cowardice.

We all should have been defending Bush, and instead we allowed our polite avoidance of conflict to create a public acceptance of a lot of “facts” that simply were not true.  Obama was only elected because we refused to defend our own, which left fiction in the public conscious, such as “Bush Lied, People Died”, and “the worst economy ever”. 

From all of this, the Tea Party arose.  People unafraid to defend our own.  Unafraid of conflict.  People in fact, looking for a good fight.  The original Boston Tea Party was, in fact, just such a group of people seeking conflict in order to have their views prevail.

Which brings me back to defending Newt. 

Romney=Republican Establishment.  You know how I know?   Because it is not possible to distinguish his attacks on Newt from the left’s attacks.  Because instead of building up something to support, Romney is willing to tear down others in his drive for power.  Because he remains silent when he should speak in defense.

Newt is not perfect.  No one is.  But consider the left’s defense of Clinton, and realize the big difference between the Republican Establishment and the Democrat Establishment: The left does not care about the truth, they just want to win.  The right does not care about winning, they just want people to like them.

The single best interview I have ever seen with any candidate was Greta Van Susteren interviewing Newt on January 27, 2012.  

Watching that interview, and the continued observation of the lack of defense of Republicans by other Republicans, and I came to the realization that I support Newt Gingrich for President. 

I am ok with Santorum.  I am absolutely on board with Kermit the Frog, or anyone, as a better President than Obama has been.  I’ll support whoever is the Republican nominee.  However, it is time to defend our own.  To defend our turn.  To attack those that attack us.

It is time for a fighter: Newt Gingrich.

It is time we start defending our own, and stop being shamed into silence.

It is time to stop the back room, crony capitalism, crowd from protecting their own financial interests above the interests of the nation as a whole.  When you can’t tell the difference between an attack from a Republican and an attack from the left, there is a problem. 

Romney’s attacks on the whoever was this month’s leading conservative might as well have been written by the Democrats.  That is just plain stupid, and should not be tolerated.  The last interview I listened to with Romney featured him reminding everyone that Newt had to resign in shame because of ethics charges.  In reality, Newt was exonerated.  But, instead of defending him, Republicans turned on him.

Are you unhappy with the current crop of candidates?  Then ask yourself why Sarah Palin did not run.  Perhaps because her negative ratings had been driven up by the left in absence of defenders.  She was considered “not electable” because of this.  Perhaps if more people had defended her, her negatives would not have been so easily driven up.

The same can be said for virtually every conservative in the public eye, whether those in the media, or as elected officials.  The left will vilify them, marginalize them, and engage in ad hominem attacks.  And far, far too often, conservatives sit politely in the room allowing it to happen.  It is the national shame of this behavior which is driving the Tea Party.  That is why the Tea Party folks have rallied around candidate after candidate as they were picked off by the left and the Republican establishment.  That is why they do not want Mitt Romney.  That is why we do not believe in the concept of “electability” when it is used to encompass attacks that should have already been defended against.

George W Bush left office with a horrible reputation because conservatives failed to defend him.  Yes, we were upset and disappointed in him and some of his policies.  But it was a different list of concerns than the left had.  So when people shouted “Bush lied, people died,” we said nothing and allowed that meme to enter the national conscious.  All too often, the conventional wisdom is created from liberal fictions that should not have gone so unchallenged.

Even as Santorum surges in the face of sniping at Newt, I urge conservatives to break this cycle of allowing conservatives from being torn apart without a defense.  The next time someone says in front of you that Sara Palin is an idiot, or George Bush was a criminal, or Newt Gingrich was corrupt, or Rush Limbaugh is a bigot, or even that Mitt Romney was a vulture capitalist, don’t ignore them, you have to speak up.  Defend our side.  Defend our principles.  Defend our ideas.  Defend our spokesmen, our leaders, our elected officials.  Defend conservatism.

Freedom of speech is meaningless if you refuse to speak up.  And in silence, idiocy reigns.