Happy New Year! For
those who enjoy irony, 2014 begins cheerfully with a global warming
event.
A Russian ship,
carrying a New Zealand “scientific expedition” and what seem to be
eco-tourists led by Australian “climate scientist” Chris Turney, is
stuck in thousands of square kilometers of “unexpected” summertime
ice in Antarctica.
Much of the mainstream
media doesn’t seem to know what the ship is doing there, but
according to Internet sources, the purpose of the expedition is “to
discover and communicate the environmental changes taking place in
the south.”
Chris Turney’s carbon
refining company is involved in developing technology to make green
products to help reduce greenhouse gases.
So, the ship filled
with scientists looking for evidence of global warming, which left
New Zealand Nov. 28, has been stuck since Christmas Eve, when a
blizzard “pushed the sea ice around the ship, freezing it in place,”
according to AP, which also says it “isn’t in danger of sinking”.
While it probably won’t
sink when encased in ice, the hull is likely to be crushed if the
ice thickens. Fossil-fuel ice-breakers have been trying to reach the
ship, hoping to free it, then turn it around so it can sail to open
water. However, the latest plan involves fossil-fuel helicopters
evacuating the passengers.
They are said to be in
good spirits, with enough supplies to last awhile, so we shouldn’t
feel bad if we are laughing. If only Al Gore were a passenger, the
irony would be rated 100 percent.
More irony as the year
turns: the Obama supporters who spent their Christmas season trying
to get health insurance before the constantly moving deadlines,
after they lost the plans they liked that Obama promised they could
keep. I uncharitably hope that those remaining apologists who insist
we shouldn’t criticize ObamaCare until it’s had a chance to work
also spent New Year’s Eve sitting in front of their computers trying
to sign up before 2014 began. Should the auld policy be canceled,
just lift a cup of kindness and toast auld lying politicians.
Of course, there’s
nothing funny about their insurance dependents losing coverage, or
the Romney voters who are also going through this ObamaCare
exercise. Might as well take comfort, though, in whatever justice
has been visited upon the perpetrators of health insurance hell.
Here’s an irony I would
like to see: halfway homes for released juvenile killers located
next door to the homes of the Supreme Judicial Court judges who
think that life without parole is too harsh a punishment for people
whose young brains weren’t fully formed when they killed.
But, if inadequately
formed juvenile brains is the problem, why don’t more juveniles
savagely murder innocent people? One wonders when the brains of the
judges stopped maturing into entities capable of common sense. Once
one murders, one defines oneself as outside the human race, hence
the banishment of Cain, and onward to the mandatory life sentences
today.
I wonder, too, about
the brains of other judges who keep releasing repeat drunken
drivers, giving them a chance to become killers, too.
Well, now that I’ve got
all that mean-spiritedness out of my system, let’s look forward to
the New Year. Last year around this time, we were talking about a
Mayan prophecy about the end of the world. I told you that my
Llewellyn’s 2013 planetary guide, from the Pyramid bookstore in
Salem, said that we may instead be facing a “very dark moment in
history.” Llewellyn’s 2014 planetary guide reiterates a “conflict
between the new order and the old guard, (with) uneasy earth shifts,
global conflicts, economic hardships, and social modifications.”
If you’re not into
astrology, you can read about those concerns in this week’s
newspapers to find out what’s going on in our corner of the
universe. Earthquakes all around the Earth. Saudis give Lebanon $3
billion to buy weapons. Israel hit by rockets fired from Lebanon.
Ethnic crisis in South Sudan; radical Islamists disrupting Russia,
Syria, Nigeria, Egypt, Kenya and Afghanistan. Nuclear weapons in the
hands of dictators still a threat to humanity. U.S. unemployment
still high, leading to arguments that it’s necessary to keep
able-bodied people on unemployment for years because the economy
can’t create jobs for them. Children killed by parents, abused in
foster homes, homeless at age 18. The uncontrolled national debt
preventing meaningful action into the future.
If you are looking for
a light in the darkness, you can look forward to President Obama’s
State of the Union address later this month. He’s expected to
promise ... oh, never mind. You might instead want to read the
opening chapter of my favorite new book, Charles Krauthammer’s “Things
that Matter.”
Dr. Krauthammer
explains: “Politics is the moat, the walls, beyond which lie the
barbarians. Fail to keep them at bay, and everything burns. The
entire 20th century with its mass political enthusiasms is a lesson
in the supreme power of politics to produce ever-expanding circles
of ruin”.
As the 21st century
began, on 9/11/01, we saw a “very dark moment in history,” the
beginning of a larger hour. Only a strong America, holding to the
principles of our Bill of Rights and our Constitution, can defend
the light. This must be our citizen resolution, this New Year and
every New Year of our lives.
