Perry’s big splash in the race has crippled Michele Bachmann’s candidacy. Mitt Romney is the one really benefiting from Perry’s entrance in the race. Suddenly Romney appears presidential and safe. As Rick Santorum, Ron Paul and Bachmann beat up on Perry, Romney just watches with glee. The GOP establishment is falling over themselves trying to say it’s over for Perry, but that’s just hyperbole. However, Perry really need to step up his game in these debates.

Perry’s two biggest problems are the vaccination business and immigration. Bachmann has got all she can out of the HPV vaccination. The best part? Bachmann is sinking fast. Perry has a real problem with immigration. Illegal immigration is a complex topic. There’s no concensus on how to solve it; however, Perry might get buried on it because Santorum Bachmann, and Huntsman are unrelenting in their attack on Perry. I’ve written about Perry’s luck in politics in Texas, but he’s gonna need a healthy dose of it to survive these attacks. On the flip side, Perry’s stance on immigration is likely to be a plus in the general election, if he ever makes it that far.

This race is Mitt Romney’s to lose at this point. The establishment is on his side. He’s the best politician in the field. You have to be a great politician to change your positions as often as he has in the past ten years. One last thing that Mitt Romney has going… he’s left-handed. Since President Ford, the United States has elected two right-handed presidents (Carter, Bush 2). President Reagan was ambidextrous, so maybe we should be looking for that trait in a candidate.

Finally, Newt Gingrich has been the best in all three debates in September. Gingrich’s problem is that he’s too unpredictable to support. It’s a shame, because he’d crush Obama in a debate.

The Stars and Stripes is a glaring omission from the doodle. I can almost hear the brainstorming session now: “Let’s do something for the Fourth of July, but let’s not get carried away.” Using the American flag for the doodle would have been too much.

It’s easy to use. The download manager finds all the music on your computer and uploads them automatically. It even syncs with iTunes. The manager imported all the information (ratings, play counts, artwork) out of iTunes. That’s a huge plus considering that I’m OCD about keep my music labeled correctly.

The beta has an upload limit of 20,000 songs. That an enormous amount of space. Google hasn’t announced how much the service will cost when it comes out of beta. For me, Google Music means the end of the iPod. The only real reason I still have an iPod is a way to back-up and carry all my music. Now that everything is backed-up on the cloud and I can access my library from my phone the iPod is obsolete.

Now I can finally free my computer from the space resource hog iTunes. Hopefully, Google Music won’t be too expensive.

For some reason it’s easy to hate corporations. I blame it on too many shallowly-written cartoons. Almost every evil character is some rich corporate overlord trying to exploit the average man. It’s kind of like Scrooge McDuck vs. Flintheart Glomgold. In Disney’s Duck Tales there are two rich Duck rivals with the names Scrooge and Flintheart. That doesn’t sound very charitable, does it? How did Scrooge McDuck make his money? He made it being “smarter than the smarties, and tougher than the toughies.” No, seriously! Is it any wonder why so many people distrust corporations? For whatever reason government bureaucrats don’t make good cartoons. One of my favorite Stuff White People Like entries is #82 Hating Corporations. Yuppies love Target, but they hate Walmart.

When engaging in a conversation about corporate evils it is important to NEVER, EVER mention Apple Computers, Target or Ikea in the same breath as the companies mentioned earlier. White people prefer to hate corporations that don’t make stuff that they like.

You can add Google to that list as well. Google’s smug motto “don’t be evil” would be an excellent piece of satire except that’s actually their motto. So I guess we’re supposed to take it seriously? Apple, on the other hand, is the king of all branding. Where is the outrage about their products being assembled in China? Also, what about Apple’s profits? Mark J. Perry at Carpe Diem compares Apple’s profits to ExxonMobil.

Apple is getting taxed less and making a higher profit margin. How can this be? Where is the outrage? Where are the calls for a windfall profit taxes? President Obama floated the idea of a windfall profit tax on oil companies during the 2008 election. Would companies like Apple be a better target? By any measure these type of farcical taxes are dangerous and counterproductive, but there are those on the left who think it’s a good idea.

Americans should be more concerned with windfall debt. Profits from ExxonMobil and Apple aren’t damaging the nation. Windfall profits are a fake problem.

Google announced today that it’s launching the fourth annual Doodle 4 Google contest with the theme “What I’d like to do someday…” The contest is open to K-12 students in the U.S.

The winning Doodle will be displayed on Google’s homepage; its creator will receive a $15,000 scholarship, and his or her school will receive a $25,000 technology grant.

“We know this crop of students will be the generation of tomorrow’s leaders and inventors, and we can’t wait to see what they come up with,” Google’s VP of consumer products, Marissa Mayer, wrote in a blog post.

This year’s contest judges will include Whoopi Goldberg, ice skater Evan Lysacek and Jim Davis, the creator of Garfield, and Google employees. The 40 regional finalists will receive a trip to New York City and their art will be displayed at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Whoopi “Rape Rape” Goldberg is going to be a judge in a competition involving children? Is anyone going to call this woman out for her comments? Goldberg argues that the rest of the world sees 13 year old girls differently than the United States. Apparently getting a child drunk and then forcing sex on them is acceptable in Europe? When Goldberg was mocked on Saturday Night Live for her ignorant comments this was her defense:

“Look, Seth Meyers, unlike you we have an early morning show. Basically I just roll out of bed and start talking. Sometimes I don’t even wake up until 45 minutes into the show, unsure of what I said to whom or what or where or even who got me to where I am or how.”

Is this the type of person Google wants to use as a judge for a contest involving children? I hope they make sure Whoopi isn’t carrying any drugs or alcohol when she comes in to judge.

Still not endangered

The number of polar bears has been increasing now for some time, but that hasn’t stopped us from watching polar bears fall from the sky. It’s not really surprising then that same kid who worried about the polar bears two years ago is still worried about them today. What else is there to tell him? I don’t know if it’s an indictment on society or the educational system that we churn out this kind of ignorance.

Despite having a doodle picked by Google it took Mr. Jordan almost two years to find that I had written him an open letter. Here are the highlights of the young activist’s comments:

Well thank you Henshaw, since we’re on the topic of wishes, I wish people like you would stop being assholes and leave this alone, everyones got their own opinion on everything, I can respect that, but disregarding the fact I was misinformed or Not. I was listening to the media, like All of America does, and I was inspired to make a design about the polar bears and global warming, and if you don’t like it, you can go screw yourself

I think I missed the part where he was respecting my opinion. Anyway, it’s not really his fault, it’s the media! Evidently all those paranoid right-wingers have a real reason to be concerned. The media basically forced this kid to be ignorant. Oh, it gets better.

Ok, I’d much rather come back when you learn to play nice with the lil’ kiddies and stop being a dick head:) haha, I am 17 now, so I hope you cut me some slack again for calling a dick head ass wipe that likes to pick on kids:) so hasta luego:)

Again, where exactly is the part where he respected my opinion? I’ve seen the full spectrum today at The Daily Plunge. The Ph.D leftist and the 17 year old boy from Idaho are on opposite ends of the educational universe, but they’re both equally misinformed. Each has their own defense mechanism that allows them, at least in their minds, to get away with spouting nonsense: I’m so smart! Or, I’m so young; quit picking on me! But that’s the American way, I suppose. Who needs facts when we have excuses and feelings?

President Obama became Head Shark Jumper in January 2009. Congratulations!

Let’s face it. This whole “green” thing has officially jumped the shark and turned into an Urban Legend of mythic proportions. For instance, I have a friend who took issue with one of my posts and compared my indifference to Global Warming (or whatever it is depending on the current weather) to someone who wouldn’t do anything if an asteroid was on a collision course with the earth. The argument was a little more nuanced than that, but that was the crux of it.

This idea that climate change is leading to catastrophe and apocalypse is absurd. Why is it that Global Warmongers can never see the silver linings? Is warming catastrophic? Sure, if you live on Venus. But Venus is a greenhouse gone made because it’s so close to the sun, not because Venusians are drinking coffee from Styrofoam cups.

The truth is that a warmer earth is a friendlier earth. According to “scientists,” or at least those engaged in studying the history of climate change:

By 5000 to 3000 BC average global temperatures reached their maximum level during the Holocene and were 1 to 2 degrees Celsius warmer than they are today. Climatologists call this period the Climatic Optimum. During the Climatic Optimum, many of the Earth’s great ancient civilizations began and flourished. In Africa, the Nile River had three times its present volume, indicating a much larger tropical region.

Hmmmm. Let’s see… So an earth 1 to 2 degrees C warmer than it is today is called an “Optimum” by so-called climatologists. But according to Global Warmongers, an earth that warms will rain destruction on mankind and the various species which he (or she) shares with them. Can we at least wait until the earth reaches its Optimum before we regulate ourselves back to the Stone Age?

When environmentalists predict disaster, gird your loins and hold onto your wallet, because “environmentalism” is a penny-ante version of Liberation Theology (a.ka., Marxism). It is less science and more like religion. It has its holy days (Earth Day), its priesthood (scientists in search of grants) and its Apocalypse (climate change).

Like any religious cult, when they predict doomsday and it doesn’t happen they find an excuse and move on to the next doomsday prediction. In the past few decades we’ve had the Population Bomb (didn’t happen), the DDT scare (wasn’t true) and now Global Warming. But, of course, Global Warming is morphing into Climate Change, because how the hell can you argue against that? The climate changes all the time and always has! So there!

After all these years the environmental cult has found its magic bullet, a bullet so magic and so silver that it will take a million years to absolutely refute. By then, of course, we’ll live in a Utopian society in which most people live in grass huts and use unicycles for transportation.

Most environmental mythology takes just a few years to refute when the data comes in, but climate change is a moving data point that doesn’t end until the sun becomes a red giant and engulfs the earth in a super-heated hydrogen reactor.

In the meantime, American corporations have bought into this nonsense hook, line, bobber, sinker and bait. I have a friend in the sign industry who sent me photos of a large lighted sign, about 10 feet high by 20 feet long, he was servicing for a large corporation. The whole thing was lit with LEDs, many of which had failed. The corporation had specified LEDs because they’re touted as the “environmentally-friendly” solution since they use less power than neon or fluorescent and don’t require mercury.

Instead of actually looking into the technology and finding out what it works best for, some Corporate Schmo pulled the trigger on something about which he (or she) was totally uneducated. Because of the sheer size of the sign, neon would have lit it for about 15 times less in cost and any number of times more in energy efficiency. This Corporate Schmo was so blinded by being “green” that he (or she) did the exact opposite of what would have been best for the environment. Unfortunately, this is not the exception.

I know there's a Starbucks somewhere in Denver, but I don't think they noticed that if it wasn't for the city there wouldn't be any trees. The picture below shows what the Front Range looks like without a city. The Front Range, in case you're wondering, is the area where the Great Plains meet the Rocky Mountains.

Starbucks is my favorite example of corporate malfeasance when it comes to “green” BS. Starbucks not only perpetuates environmental mythology, but head fakes us in the wrong direction. Take, for instance, its recent promotion to save trees by giving a free cup of coffee to anyone who brought in a reusable mug on April 15. “One person can save trees,” says the Starbucks’ promotion, “together we can save forests.”

That’s all well and good, I suppose, but aren’t there more pressing needs than planting trees? As far as I know any problems we have with deforestation have nothing to do with the paper cups we’re using at Starbucks, or any other paper product. Once again, corporate America comes up with easy solutions, puts them in a pretty package, places the “environmental” feather in their cap and shouts it from the rooftops. Effective marketing, yes, but really making a difference for the environment? I don’t think so.

But it really doesn’t matter as long as Corporate Schmo thinks, a) it’s a great PR move, and b) maybe I’m doing my little part, but either way, it’s a great PR move. Let’s face it, Corporate Schmo doesn’t think much beyond A and B, much less all the way to Z. Too much brain damage and not pithy enough to reach Consumer Schmo effectively.

That’s why Corporate Schmo buys into the latest Urban (Forest?) Legends and jumps the shark with the environmentalist. It’s easy and he (or she) really doesn’t have to do much of anything except come up with a clever promotion and tagline.

That’s all positive reinforcement, but C. Schmo is also very aware of the negative reinforcement. If Schmo doesn’t play along, he’s likely to be painted as some kind of nouveau Nazi earth-killing Holocaust denier. The agents of “change” and “environmental awareness” are not content with spirited debate on the science or rationality of their topic.

They play to win and are ready to tar, feather, brand, hog tie, railroad, demonize, emblazon and stamp anyone who disagrees as, at best, an ignorant, heretical buffoon. It’s very much like the Catholic Church, circa 1500, except without the burning at the stake thing. But I’m sure if they could, they would, which is another good reason to make sure we don’t exchange our republic for a 21st Century equivalent of an Inquisition led by a scientist/environmentalist priesthood.

Update: C. Schmo strikes again, this time at Google. Read all about goats, grass and faux greenery at TechCrunch!

Update II: Climate Change! Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound! Able to cause each and every natural disaster, even if the disaster is related to plate tectonics, like the volcano erupting in Iceland! It’s amazing! Get the full scoop on the latest shark jumping news at Watts Up With That?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4v1dO5YdYJo

THE BEAST FILE: GOOGLE (‘HUNGRY BEAST’, ABC TV) from Hungry Beast on Vimeo.