He’s blaming Obama for high gas prices. I love this line:
Obama has focused on alternative energy and other long-term strategies to bring down gas prices by decreasing demand.
Many republicans say prices will drop if we increase the supply.
So Democrats don’t believe that? Only Republicans are familiar with the law of supply and demand?
James O’Keefe pwns Eric Holder.
“Screw PETA.”
Over at Althouse’s place:
Strangely enough, “progressivism” was broadly associated with eugenics and racism and yet the only people who remember that are the people accused of being social darwinists.
There’s a lot more to unpack here than I have time for, but a key point made by another commenter is that no one calls themselves a Social Darwinist — it is an illegitimate epithet reserved for the perceived enemies of same, whereas many have been, and continue to be proud to call themselves Marxists and socialists. And they should be ashamed to do so, given the history of the twentieth century.
An open letter and history lesson:
All this is well known. I should like you to think about something that is less well known, Herr Grass, and that is the fact that the First and Second World Wars were entirely unnecessary. That’s right: the fact that they were fought in the first place is entirely the fault of people like you, and specifically of Kaiser Wilhelm II, who could have pre-empted them in 1905. Kaiser Wilhelm II and Günter Grass: a couple of soul-mates.
Like some of the commenters there, I always found The Tin Drum unreadable, in German or English.
Was it good politics?
the president’s demagoguery did agitate the constituencies that matter most: the pro-Obama media, the even more pro-Obama media, and Europeans (who, let’s face it, are just more soignée than we are). Judging by my Facebook feed, he’s doing a pretty good job of getting his rank and file followers to mouth the appropriate slogans as well.
But I think Pruden is missing a piece of good news in all this. Obama has also demonstrated the limits of propaganda that was perfected in the era of totalitarianism. It was easy for FDR to make a crude campaign against the court stick because (sorry, Greatest Generation) Americans back then were across the board less educated and less skeptical, and they had access to a universe of information so small that, by the standards of 2012, it can barely be said to have existed.
Last month, an ABC News/Washington Post poll indicated nearly 70 percent of Americans believed the Court should strike down the individual mandate or the entire PPACA. A Kaiser Family Foundation poll also showed majority belief that the mandate was unconstitutional. I don’t read too much into that. (Among the many ways we’re smarter than our ancestors is that we’re more skeptical of opinion polling.) But if you had taken a similar poll taken in 1935, the majority of responses to a question about judicial review and constitutionality under either the commerce clause or the necessary and proper doctrine would have been “Huh?” That Obama is out of his depth just shows again that he’s everything Bill Clinton wasn’t: inflexible, intellectually lazy, and tied to a vision of America the rest of the country stopped caring about decades ago.
We’re just not as stupid and ignorant as they wish we were. Or they are.
Universe Today is taking note of a 1981 paper by corrupt climate fraud Jim Hansen (and others) that it claims demonstrates his prescience on the issue:
Hansen wrote in the original paper:
“The global temperature rose by 0.2ºC between the middle 1960′s and 1980, yielding a warming of 0.4ºC in the past century. This temperature increase is consistent with the calculated greenhouse effect due to measured increases of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Variations of volcanic aerosols and possibly solar luminosity appear to be primary causes of observed fluctuations about the mean rend of increasing temperature. It is shown that the anthropogenic carbon dioxide warming should emerge from the noise level of natural climate variability by the end of the century, and there is a high probability of warming in the 1980′s. Potential effects on climate in the 21st century include the creation of drought-prone regions in North America and central Asia as part of a shifting of climate zones, erosion of the West Antarctic ice sheet with a consequent worldwide rise in sea level, and opening of the fabled Northwest Passage.”
Now here we are in 2012, looking down the barrel of the global warming gun Hansen and team had reported was there 31 years earlier. In fact, we’ve already seen most of the predicted effects take place.
“Drought-prone regions” are receiving less rainfall, the Antarctic ice has begun to crack and crumble and bowhead whales are using the Northwest Passage as a polar short-cut.
This was from back in an era in which it’s possible that Hansen was still doing real science, as opposed to political advocacy, demagoguery and calls for the silencing or reeducation of his critics.
Here’s my question. I haven’t had time to read through the entire thing to see if a) the predictions quoted above are the only ones and b) if there are others, how did they hold up? In other words, did the people who dug up the paper and are now using it to herald their hero’s brilliance and far sightedness cherry pick? Let’s do a little crowd sourcing here.
[Update a few minutes later]
A lot more discussion over at Real Climate.
I have some thoughts on NBC’s bias, and media bias in general, over at PJMedia.
[Update a while later]
Similar thoughts over at Breitbart.com.
[Update early afternoon]
Matt Welch: When losers write history.
[Update later in the afternoon]
A commenter at my PJMedia piece has recreated the editing process:
Original quote as heard on the 911 tapes:
ZIMMERMAN: This guy looks like he’s up to no good, or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining, and he’s just walking around, looking about.
911 DISPATCHER: Okay, is this guy, is he white, black, or Hispanic?
ZIMMERMAN: He looks black.I guess some unknown NBC ‘senior producer’ was told the quote was too long to include in the broadcast segment and it needed to be cut to no longer than 5 seconds in order to fit time constraints.
First Round: Obviously the first thing to do when trimming a Zimmerman quote to fit the time allotted is to cut out anything that wasn’t said by Zimmerman;
ZIMMERMAN: This guy looks like he’s up to no good, or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining, and he’s just walking around, looking about.
ZIMMERMAN: He looks black.Nope, it’s still too long, we need to cut more.
Second Round, of course, reprising the weather report for that night is Sanford Florida is unnecessary and might be confusing to viewers who don’t live in Central Florida.
ZIMMERMAN: This guy looks like he’s up to no good, or he’s on drugs or something. He’s just walking around, looking about.
ZIMMERMAN: He looks black.Still too long, we obviously need to cut more.
Third round: We take out the passive ‘stage direction’ parts of Zimmerman’s dialog that really don’t contribute to the action that we need to hold viewer’s attention.
ZIMMERMAN: This guy looks like he’s up to no good, or he’s on drugs or something.
ZIMMERMAN: He looks black.Fourth round: It’s closer but the quote is still a little too long to fit into the time slot.
Now Legal gets into the act and tells the editor that an on the air accusation that someone might be on drugs, even in a quote from a third party, might expose the station to a defamation lawsuit and they want the offending words removed .
ZIMMERMAN: This guy looks like he’s up to no good, or something.
ZIMMERMAN: He looks black.Fifth round: Now we’re almost there; just a couple of more words to trim and the quote will fit into the 5 second window allotted.
Running the remaining text through the NBC Writers Style Guide shows that without the ‘on drugs’ direct action object that Legal had removed, the words ‘or something’ are duplicative and softens the narrative line established by ‘up to no good’ action group and weakens the emotional impact of the entire quote.
ZIMMERMAN: This guy looks like he’s up to no good.
ZIMMERMAN: He looks black.Sixth Round: Now we’ve almost got it. All we need to do now is take out the dead air blank caused by removing the Dispatchers unnecessary comments from the quote and we’ve got our 5 second quote.
ZIMMERMAN: This guy looks like he’s up to no good, he looks black.
Yeah!! We did it and we only had to go to Legal Once@!!/sarc off
The frightening thing is, it’s entirely plausible.
Frank J. explains why.