It’s not just that Obama lied, it’s the obviousness of the mendacity. There’s no wriggle room on this one; anyone who’s been paying any attention for the last two years knows it’s a bald-faced lie. And in addition, there’s been no explanation for it, and no excuses. The administration is simply ignoring the lie as though it doesn’t matter, and insulting the press in the bargain. This makes pundits who liked and supported Obama look foolish, and they don’t like to look that way. Thus, the anger—it’s personal now.
Maybe they’ll attack him in his sleep with a golf club. Good thing he has Secret Service.
Did Climaquiddick set one off? If so, it’s not just a new, but a real (as opposed to politically ideologically driven) science, returning it to free inquiry.:
Remember these names: Steven Mosher, Steve McIntyre, Ross McKitrick, Jeff “Id” Condon, Lucia Liljegren, and Anthony Watts. These, and their community of blog commenters, are the global warming contrarians that formed the peer-to-peer review network and helped bring chaos to Copenhagen – critically wounding the prospects of cap-and-trade legislation in the process. One may have even played the instrumental role of first placing the leaked files on the Internet.
This group can be thought of as the first cousins to Andrew Breitbart’s collective of BIG websites – obsessively curious, grassroots investigators that provide vision to the establishment’s blind eye. Peer-to-peer review is the scientific version of the undernews.
Call it Big Science.
[Update a few minutes later]
I liked this comment, which puts it all in perspective for those who remain willfully blind to the implications of the data dump:
Imagine for a moment that a high school student submitted a project for competition in which he offered up the hypothesis that tree rings gave a historical blueprint of climate change.
Competition Judge: “Ok, Johnny, this is a very interesting theory. May I see your data?”
Johnny McFibber: “I lost it.”
Competition Judge: “Hmmm. That will make it nearly impossible to win, Johnny. Can you duplicate it or give us a detailed description of what it showed”
Johnny M “Actually, I hid the parts that didn’t comport with my theory., in fact, showed the exact opposite of my theory,..and I emailed all my friends to do the same”
Competition Judge” “Johnny, that’s not the way we conduct ourselves in the sciences, you must be confused with your humanities classes. Over here, we strictly scrutinize the facts.
Johnny M: There’s a reporter here I would like to introduce you to…he wants to ask some questions about your first marriage.
Competition Judge: Great work on this project, Johnny. The science is settled. You win.
Moral? Research softly and carry a big hockey stick.
Fortunately, the hockey stick is broken, probably for good.
The engineers, the people who actually make this stuff work (not to denigrate the financiers, marketers, etc. whose efforts are also necessary to fund the engineers) are underappreciated in society. As is technology in general. As he points out, people are complaining about having twenty-minute delays on a trip that would have taken their ancestors (and not distant ancestors — great-great-grandparents) months.
From town halls last summer at which tough questions got lawmakers’ backs up right through the middle-of-the-night votes on thousand-page excrescences largely unread and scarcely comprehended, the directive from congressional leaders has been to ignore voters, ignore polls, ignore qualms and questions: Just pass something.
The House passed one version of Obamacare and the Senate a markedly different one. That usually means a conference committee. This time, the Democratic leaders who own Congress are skipping the usual open process and embracing a so-called “ping pong” of closed-door bargaining designed to cut out not merely Republicans but even Democrats who worry too much about what’s in the sausage.
This has the political left simmering: Liberals fear that their dearest wish, a government-run option, won’t survive. But the doors are closed precisely to enable unsavory compromises that preserve the scant margins by which the bill can pass. They’re closed to keep the priorities of passionate voters from coming into play. We out here are distractions.
This is happening on legislation that will profoundly, permanently change our relationship to government. It’s reasonable to ask that a vast expansion of Washington’s power be based on more than one-vote margins and secret deals, just as it would be reasonable for a senator to, sometime in three months, talk to a concerned citizen as promised.
This is not the season for reason, however. These are the days of political will. Democracy, constituents – all that just gets in the way.
…that a Napolitano replacement would be an improvement? Not much, at least from this administration. Of course, I don’t think that the department should have been created in the first place. Whoever runs it has a pretty impossible job.