We might as well give up, folks. Everything, everywhere, is going to go extinct in the next 10 to 50 years. Really. Would you disbelieve National Geographic, CNN, and Scientific American?

The reason, of course, is that the half of all species that were supposed to be extinct by 2000 flatly refused to do so. Norman Myers, Edward O. Wilson, Paul Ehrlich and Thomas Lovejoy have predicted such catastrophe ever since their hippie heydays. The very same people keep getting quoted as reliable sources and keep making the same predictions. The more they turn out to be false, the more crazy they make them.

The most succinct: Earth ‘will expire by 2050′. Heaven knows why people worry about the climate in 2100. Or have babies. I always knew retirement annuities were a scam.

Just scan the list of extinction headlines on this page. Once you’ve finished laughing, ask yourself: does the media have any credibility on environmental questions at all?

Remember the days when public gatherings were illegal, and political opponents of the government got arrested for attending them? Well, they’re back.

With General David Petraeus poised to deliver a report on progress in the war against insurgents in Iraq, this quotation, courtesy of the Lucianne.com News Forum is apt. It dates to 1863, and comes from General Robert E. Lee of Virginia.

It appears we have appointed our worst generals to command forces, and our most gifted and brilliant to edit newspapers. In fact, I discovered by reading newspapers that these editor/geniuses plainly saw all my strategic defects from the start, yet failed to inform me until it was too late. Accordingly, I am readily willing to yield my command to these obviously superior intellects, and I will, in turn, do my best for the Cause by writing editorials — after the fact.

Also appropriately, Lee did not glorify war: “It is well that war is so terrible — we would grow too fond of it.”

(Hat tip: Trevor Wensley.)