Piers Akerman, Climate Change, Vaclav Klaus, Tom McClintock, Soul Coughing and Conspiracy Theories

It's a little known fact that the Twin Towers disaster was predicted as long ago as 1994 by an indie alt band Soul Coughing, in the lyrics for their song Is Chicago, Is Not Chicago:

A man 

drives a plane

into the

Chrysler building

Now we could argue semantics - how exactly do you drive a plane into a building? Did the lyrics originally say fly? Did the CIA order a re-adjustment, as well as shift the target to the Chrysler building? What inside information did Soul Coughing have? Writer Mike Doughty refuses to answer questions on this issue. Claims the heat and the drinking mad him go mad in Tucson. Was he referencing the 1945 plane crash into the Empire State Building, which killed 14, or is it something more sinister? Was he foreshadowing the way an Abu Dhabi fund picked up Prudential Financial's stake of the Chrysler building in 2008? Is Doughty Nostradamus? Or something else? Something sinister? Such as, were the lyrics taken as a direct command by jihadists?

Eerie. But it shows just what a good conspiracy theorist I am, having learned at the feet of many master loons, none more prescient or insightful than Piers Akerman, aka the fat owl of the remove.

But what does the successful prediction of the Twin Towers attack in a song lyric years before it happened have to do with the fat owl's column No room for idiocy in a harsh economic climate, which is ostensibly about economics and climate change policy?

Well everything and nothing as the fat owl - given the broad policy fraud currently being perpetrated by Penny Wong - manages to wander down the most exotic, labyrinthine by ways. 

While most of the world - including the Murdoch press - has been looking at the reports of the Copenhagen conference, an assembly of actual scientists, and their assessment of the latest state of climate change - gloomy - the fat owl reports on the gathering on Monday and Tuesday of 600 scientists "and others" gathered in New York to hear experts speak against the theory of man-made climate change.

Amongst them was European Union President Vaclav Klaus, who said climate change did not support the theory of human causation adding we needed to save the planet from the environmentalists. The fat owl neglects to mention that Klaus, trained as an economist, knows bugger all about the science, is a serial philanderer and classic climate bashing loon with more bees in his bonnet than the hive episode in The X Files.

The only other personage the fat owl manages to quote is Californian Senator Tom McClintock who had the audience rolling in the aisles as he pointed out the inanities of the doomsayers.

Actually McClintock is now a former state senator, and now a member of the US House of Representatives. He's a ratbag Republican of the weird king - bear in mind that in 2000 he was responsible for a two thirds reduction in the vehicle license fee (car tax) in California and also opposed any borrowings in California, putting him at odds with the state treasurer. A serial exploiter of per diem living expenses when a senator, he is a classic representative of old style Shrub economics and politics, and we know where that landed the world.

Now here's the rub - according to McClintock, and gleefully endorsed by the fat owl, it's California's climate change policies which have produced massive unemployment in California. Yep, it's all the fault of "the most radically restrictive legislation anywhere on the planet."

Well I guess that makes a change from blaming the homosexuals in the north, the hispanics in the south, or the long standing disgrace of recalled Gray Davis. Hapless Gray was of course replaced by Republican Guvernator Arnie, and its under his watch, and with the aid of recalcitrant Republicans, that California has gone down like a T800 up against a T1001. And if you take a look at the decline and fall of California, climate change is the least of the serial disasters enacted in the state. To say otherwise is a blatant, willful distortion of the situation (of course in other audiences you're just as likely to hear McClintock blame Californian unemployment on the Mexican wave coming across the border, and the US's policies on immigration).

So there you are, the actual causes of California's problems and the two 'experts' the fat owl cites have as much connection to scientific reality, as the Twin Towers disaster has to a song lyric.

There's no room for idiocy in these perilous times, so how does an idiot like the fat owl get paid to write a regular column. And does anyone writing about idiocy in turn become an idiot? Is this site, is this world, groaning and collapsing under the mind numbing, history distorting, science ignoring idiocy of the likes of the fat owl? And who will therefore call Penny Wong to account with any credibility, and help her craft a better set of policies than the ones she currently touts?

For the answer to that, we have to return to Soul Coughing's scientific analysis of the state of California's soul. Read into the lyrics what you will, but they strike me as sinister:

It is 5 am
and you are listening
to Los Angeles.

And the radioman says
it is a beautiful night out there!
And the radioman says
Rock and Roll lives!
And the radioman says
it is a beautiful night out there
in Los Angeles.
You live
in Los Angeles
and you are going to
Reseda; we are all
in some way or
another going to
Reseda someday
to die.
And the radioman
laughs because
the radioman fucks
a model too.

Gone savage
for teenagers with
automatic weapons and
boundless love.
Gone savage for
teenagers who are
aesthetically pleasing,
in other words,
fly.
Los Angeles beckons
the teenagers
to come to her
on buses;
Los Angeles loves
love.

It is 5 am
and you are listening
to Los Angeles.

I am going to
Los Angeles
to build a screenplay about
lovers who murder each other.
I am going to
Los Angeles
to see my own name on a
screen, five feet
long and luminous.
As the radioman says
it is 5AM
and the sun has charred
the other side of
the world and come
back to us
and painted the smoke
over our heads
an imperial violet.

It is 5 am
and you are listening
to Los Angeles.

Yet somehow there seems to be more poetic truth in a few modest lyrics of an obscure band than a year's ranting by the fat owl. What was that bit about the sun charring the other side of the world ...?