Saving Rodbama The Trouble

Hugh warned us about this plot to sneak Kyoto in the regulatory back door; now it's too late:

The Interior Department is listing the polar bear as a threatened species because of declining Arctic sea ice.

That would be the Bush Interior Department.  You know, those gleefully wicked destroyers of Gaia's preciously divine realm.

Just to reiterate the practical effects of this ecological police state - which will have nothing whatsodamnever do to with f'ing polar bears:

[Now that] the polar bear is listed as a "threatened" species, every federal action - the grant of a permit, the award of a grant - that leads even indirectly to the emission of greenhouse gases will come under at least the theoretical review of the United States Fish & Wildlife Service pursuant to Section 7 of the ESA...in fact it is as likely to delay or destroy economic activity in any part of the lower forty-eight as it is in Alaska.

And just to reiterate the "science" of the underlying pretext for this blatant regulatory power-grab:

NASA’s not even sure yet that it’s global warming that’s causing the ice caps to melt; in fact, it’s Canada that’s best positioned to address the needs of the bears since they host two-thirds of the global population. Are the Canadians freaked out about the bears’ endangerment? No: They haven’t even listed the species as threatened, and according to this fact site about polar bears, Canadian hunters actually believe the population’s increasing. Some biologists think that’s untrue, that the bears are simply moving inland as the ice melts. Other biologists disagree, claiming that there are more bears today than there were thirty-five years ago.

It's all bullbleep, folks.  Polar bear extinction, melting ice caps, global warming - all bullbleep.  The....planet....is....cooling, not "warming," and that's being driven by the sun, not "Earth's greatest threat".

Nevertheless, the pagan commie-pinkos get to impose their religion on the rest of us, unlike those phantom "Christianists" of their feverishly bigoted imaginations.  And with the economy already being talked down by the triumphalist Left, with the Bush tax cuts destined to be allowed to expire, with Rodbama banging the drums for jacking capgains tax rates back up and imposing new energy taxes in the midst of an energy price upward spiral, well, what could be a better coup de grace for a Second Great Depression than using f'ing polar bears as justification for greenstremist Gestapo lawsuits that'll litigate us back to the Stone Age?

True to form, Double-H has outlined a plan of counterattack against Operation Polar Bear.  Maybe it'll be undertaken, maybe it won't - but if (God willing) it is, what hope is there that the damage can be remotely contained?

Once again, here's what we're up against:

The [Endanger Species] Act operates simply. Once an animal is listed, it becomes a felony to harm or harass it without the permission of the feds.  Harm or harassment has been defined to include destruction or impairment of the habitat the species actually occupies....

Because the polar bear has been listed as threatened due to alleged deterioration of its ice habitat, and because the alleged loss of the ice habitat has occurred because of global warming caused at least in part by the emission of greenhouse gases, environmental activists will argue that all emissions of greenhouse gases that flow as a consequence of the grant of a federal permit of any sort are now subject to review under the ESA and, crucially, that those permits cannot be issued unless and until the United States Fish & Wildlife Service reviews and approves of the requested permit under Section 7 of the ESA, a process which takes at a minimum months and which can cost millions of dollars even if it is successful. [emphases added]

That's a reach almost to ubiquity.  This is orders of magnitude beyond "You can't build your Burger King because a Delhi Sands flower-loving fly that has never been seen and is above ground only a few days a year might be near-by"; this is more like, "You can't build a house anywhere because you might go outside in your back yard and break wind, releasing methane that will contribute infinitisemally to the melting of the polar ice caps and, thus, the destruction of the polar bear's natural habitat."  The next step, I suppose, will be, "You are being put to death because you might break wind, releasing methane into the atmosphere that will float north, help melt the polar ice caps, and destroy the polar bear's natural habitat."

Or perhaps the step after next.  The greenshirts are already pushing for harm to habitat that could be occupied in the future being criminalized under the ESA.  And they know precisely where to go: the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the most Marxian appellate stop in the country.  Even if businesses, industries, and trade associations were to counter-blitz the courts as Hugh suggests (since no relief can be expected from the Donk Congress), what chance would they have in such a hostile venue?

And how likely is it that they'd even make the attempt?:

Incredibly, not one of the industries likely to be impacted by the listing intervened in the court proceeding that imposed a deadline on Secretary Kempthorne. Not one.

C'mon, ladies and gents.  Much as I want to see Commodore Hewitt's strategy employed, it is sheer fantasy.  The reason why is because we haven't reached rock-bottom yet.  The Right is beaten, reeling, divided, and demoralized.  We don't even have a candidate in the presidential race, and are doomed to decimation at the congressional level this fall.  It's a state of debility far worse than what we faced after the 1992 debacle because we've had so much farther to fall, and because we haven't been the victims of opposition deception.  Democrats didn't retake Congress in 2006 by pretending to be conservatives, "blue dogs" or no "blue dogs"; they did so by being their loud, obnoxious, seditious, neoBolshevik selves; by yelling and screaming and whining and bitching and moaning and agitating until the voters finally gave them their power back, even if just to shut them up.  Neither is Rodbama on course to retake the White House in November on a platform of triangulation and "New Democrat-ism".  Far to the contrary, Hillary and Ba-ROCK are elbowing each other to be the biggest tax-raiser, business-destroyer, healthcare-rationer, war-quitter, and all-around Stalinist on the ballot, and both are leading the so-called "Republican" candidate in hypothetical polling matchups.

America got snookered sixteen years ago.  Now it is turning - HARD - to the Left.  The catastrophic consequences of that lamentable mistake will have to land with both feet before any "counterattack" can even be mounted, much less have any chance of succeeding.  Assuming such, or even any political opposition to the New Order, will even be tolerated.

But we - or at least, I - have seen this fate coming for years.  What most appalls me is that such a ruling could be allowed to come out of a Republican - and at intermittant times, even a conservative - Administration.

And spare me the "They were under a court order" fiddle-faddle.  As President Lincoln said of the infamous Dred Scott decision, "Justice Taney has issued his ruling; now let him enforce it."  Quite simply, the Bush Interior Department should have flatly refused to list the polar bear as a "threatened species".  Period.  What did they have to lose, seeing as how any of its three Democrat successors would do it next year anyway?  Indeed, what did they have to gain by putting Dubya's fingerprints on such an economically ruinous policy betrayal?

Particularly when, as you ought to have expected, it's still not good enough for the other side:

''They're trying to make this a threatened listing in name only with no change in today's impacts and that's not going to fly,'' said Jamie Rappaport Clark of Defenders of Wildlife and a former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service director.

Members of Congress also were skeptical.

The Bush Administration ''is forcing the polar bear to sink or swim,'' said Representative Edward Markey, D-MA, chairman of a House committee on global warming.

Senator John Kerry, D-MA, called it ''a lifeline for our last remaining polar bears'' but said the bear's survival won't be assured without limits on oil development in the same Arctic waters where the bears are found.

Despite the new listing, the announcement underscores the need to approve climate legislation that would limit the release of greenhouse gases and avert the future effects on climate change, said Senator Barbara Boxer, D-CA, chairwoman of the Environment Committee.

We're already approaching the $4 per gallon mark at the pump even without this polar bear nonsense, and the Dems want even more limits on energy exploration.  Kind of like how healthcare costs continue to spiral upward and their solution is to complete the government takeover of the medical sector, and federal spending continues to skyrocket and their solution is ever higher taxes.  But don't call them socialists!

Do call them winners, though.  Because in their twelve years in the political wilderness they never buckled, never compromised, and never quit.  It is we, conservatives, the Right, that couldn't handle prosperity, that didn't tear down the entire liberal welfare regulatory behemoth and restore the federal government to its proper, constitutionally mandated size, structure, and function - or at least make a good faith attempt.  It is we who have forgotten why we engaged and defeated the Left in 1994 and 2000 and 2002 and 2004, forgotten the lessons of the Clinton era, and now blunder around blindly in utter disarray, which is the only contextual explanation for why the Bush Administration is making such a massive regulatory downpayment on the DisLoyalists' behalf.

Oh, yes, and by the way, the Calfornia Supremes imposed sodomarriage on their state today.  And most of them were appointed by...."Republican" Governor Arnold Schwartzeneggar, who bears more than a passing political resemblance to....John Sith McCain.

Consider that another complimentary "bipartisan" downpayment.  The next step will be the banning of heterosexual marriage.  Because, as we all ought to know by now, there's no such thing as RINOs out-liberaling liberals.

I may as well segue full-bore into this topic since I'm halfway there already.  This polar bear surrender is but the baton that was handed off to Darth Queeg, who, as I alluded the other day, isn't exactly the second coming of Ronald Reagan, and is going out of his way to use global warming superstitution to prove it:

If Republicans are going to be stampeded by phony environmental alarms and propose terrible public policies in the name of these scams, what the hell do we need Democrats for?

America is so far gone in the global warming superstition that the Republican candidate for president (the REPUBLICAN!) is proposing a Soviet scheme to take decisions about energy use out of the private sector where they belong and turn them over to politicians and bureaucrats. If there's a quicker way to make America into a Third World nation, pray tell me what it is....

So how account for the execrable cap and trade policy McCain sprung on us from Portland, Oregon, Monday and which he says will save us from the dreaded carbon dioxide? (If you're asking: "Carbon dioxide -- isn't that what makes the flowers grow and what baby's breath is made of?" Answer: yes.) All a cap and trade system (government energy rationing) would bring about is a sharp decline in our standard of living in return for, well, nothing. Sources of energy to replace the carbon-based ones we rely on now just aren't here yet, and we don't know when they will be. 

Later, Larry Thornberry answers his own question:

For the Left's political agenda of taxes and regulation without end, you couldn't design a better scam than global warming. And a scam is all it is. As someone smart and famous once said, "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and dazzle the rest of them with statistics and charts." These folks just want as much control over the economy as they now exercise, to our sorrow, over the culture. And global warming is their ticket to ride.

Computer programming 101, gentles: IF x, THEN y.  IF the "climate change" hoax is the Left's ticket to a revival of the old Soviet Union right here in the formerly good ol' US of A, and IF John Sith McCain is the newly self-minted champion of crusading against "climate change," THEN he is a man of the Left, is leading a hostile takeover of the Republican Party BY the Left, and is removing any viable opposition to said one-party Marxist-Leninist state.

It is isn't just conservatives and the GOP that is truly endangered, my friends, but America as we have known it for the past 232 years.  Even if the polar bear WAS "threatened" - on which, to be bending-over-backwards charatible, the jury is still way out - better that critter die out than American prosperity and liberty.

A lamentation that is falling on stubbornly deaf ears.