Category Archives: Political Commentary

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Betraying Science

73 Comments

Here’s a nice summary of the significant contents of the email dump. Regardless of the validity of the science, these people have thoroughly discredited themselves, and given AGW skeptics a vast arsenal. Thankfully, this is going to make it much more difficult for the warm-mongers to implement their anti-free-market agenda. I suspect that if cap’n’tax wasn’t already dead in the Senate, it will be now.

[Update mid afternoon]

Powerline has been going through the emails. The picture that emerges is not that of scientists seeking truth, but of partisans, protecting (at the least) their own pet theory, and possibly a broader agenda as well, at the expense of truth and the reputations of anyone who dares to question them..

[Sunday morning update]

When in doubt, delete:

These emails appear to show that, when faced with a legitimate request under Britain’s Freedom of Information Act, these global warming alarmists preferred to delete their emails with one another about the crucially important IPCC report–the main basis for the purported “consensus” in favor of anthropogenic global warming–rather than allow them to come to light. This is one of many instances in the East Anglia documents where the global warming alarmists act like a gang of co-conspirators rather than respectable scientists.

I don’t think it’s an act.

Political Commentary, War Commentary

“Failure Is Not An Option”

1 Comment

In other words, it’s a show trial:

Obama’s and Holder’s assurances that KSM will be convicted (and, according to the president, “put to death”) make a mockery of due process. Nothing is more fundamental to America’s criminal justice system than the presumption of innocence, and if terrorist detainees are to be treated as criminal defendants, they are entitled to that presumption.

For the sake of political expediency, Obama and Holder are refusing even to make a pretense of respect for due process. If KSM & Co. are convicted and put to death, America’s critics and enemies will point to Obama and Holder’s assurances in arguing that the defendants were subjected to sham justice. Nice work restoring America’s moral standing, Mr. President.

This remains indefensible, though I’m sure the Obama kool-aid drinkers will continue to defend it. Certainly Holder wasn’t able to do so last week.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

Entrepreneurs Go On Strike

7 Comments

Thoughts at The American Thinker:

For many decades, the American dream has been undergirded by the faith that regardless of its current state, the economy would come back around thanks to the greatness of ordinary people being free to do extraordinary things. Thus the bold gunslinger mentality many business owners have had in previous recessions, refusing to participate, and even expanding cheaply to grab market share in the next recovery.

But it’s different now, and there is no denying it. The dream itself is being killed by legal and regulatory micromanagement. Washington is determined to employ policies to cure something that can be cured only by government getting the hell out of the way.

A small business summit in the White House will accomplish nothing unless the invitees include unions and lawyers and bureaucrats, in which case it will be devastating. When did a union or a lawyer or a bureaucrat ever start a business? How many times a day do they kill one?

And that’s the climate entrepreneurs see. Unions, lawyers, and bureaucrats gain more power and leverage every day. The big opportunity now is to spend government money: an eighteen-million-dollar government contract to create an awful Recovery.org website, SEIU union jobs in ObamaCare, bankruptcy lawyers, and perhaps carbon credit trades coming. There are ACORN-style crony contracts to be had, not to mention all the jobs created by the David Axelrod astroturfing media escapades. If you are connected or if your dream is to enrich yourself by killing the dreams of others, then the field is ripe for you.

Ayn Rand saw this coming.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Quoteworthy

26 Comments

On mandates:

In the primaries, Obama distinguished himself from Clinton on health care by opposing an individual mandate. In the general election, he distinguished himself from McCain by opposing taxes on health benefits. So now he is trying to pass bills with both an individual mandate and taxes on health benefits—and his supporters are saying that Congress should go along because he won the election.

“I won” is not a substitute for substantive policy discussion.

Political Commentary, War Commentary

Smart Diplomacy?

5 Comments

No, chump diplomacy:

Oh, how the international community loves Barack Obama — loves to stiff him, play him along, and manipulate him. He’s the world’s celebrity ingenue, the slender naïf perpetually undone by the recalcitrance of foreign leaders.

…Democrats spent years banging on Bush for alienating our allies. What they really meant was that he hadn’t been nice enough to our enemies. Reversing field entirely, Obama has been hell on allies like Hamid Karzai and the Israelis. He’s undercut the Poles and Czechs. He’s given a cold shoulder to friends who have the temerity to want to trade with us, like the Colombians and South Koreans. He’s cooled the special relationship with Britain. And he hammered the government of Honduras when it stopped a creeping Chávezist coup by its sitting president.

It’s hard to figure out just what country he’s president of.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Gaia Refuses To Get With The Program

63 Comments

And the warm-mongers aren’t happy about it.

[Update a few minutes later]

Environmentalists exposed as liars. I’m shocked, shocked I say.

[Update a few minutes later]

Here’s more on the apparent fraud at the Climate Research Unit.

The problem is that the files and emails seem just too good to be true. A number of files seem to be smoking guns — revealing how to resist Freedom of Information Act requests for their data (which would both be scientific misconduct and actually illegal); long-term marketing plans on how to push the climate-change agenda; and discussions of how to pressure peer-reviewed journals to stop accepting papers that disagree with the “accepted” view of global warming.

In other words, just what the skeptics have been suggesting for years. It seems just too neat, and we don’t have independent verification of where the files came from. Someone who is willing to hack might also be willing to create fakes.

But then, the whole package is very large — 63 megabytes — and seems to be very internally consistent. Several people have already corroborated a number of the emails as being ones they wrote or received. The package also includes substantial data and computer programs, which are being explored as this is being written.

The best we can say right now is that we should keep our eyes on this. If these files are eventually corroborated and verified, it is a bombshell indeed — evidence that there has been a literal conspiracy to push the anthropogenic climate change agenda far beyond the science.

I wish I could say that I was surprised. Actually, I am, a little. I wouldn’t have thought they’d be this blatant about it, but it’s been clear for years that this was being driven by a non-science agenda.

As noted in comments, Jerry Pournelle has some thoughts today:

sounds to me as if climatologists are now admitting they have not the faintest idea of what is going on. I have a remedy for them. Study the data and refine the models. Stop assuming you already know the answers and start looking for better models….

But that’s no fun. It doesn’t give them an excuse to implement socialism via the green door.

[Afternoon update]

Here is more from James Delingpole:

The world is currently cooling; electorates are increasingly reluctant to support eco-policies leading to more oppressive regulation, higher taxes and higher utility bills; the tide is turning against Al Gore’s Anthropogenic Global Warming theory. The so-called “sceptical” view is now also the majority view.

Unfortunately, we’ve a long, long way to go before the public mood (and scientific truth) is reflected by our policy makers. There are too many vested interests in AGW, with far too much to lose either in terms of reputation or money, for this to end without a bitter fight.

But if the Hadley CRU scandal is true, it’s a blow to the AGW lobby’s credibility which is never likely to recover.

What I find delicious about this is (as always) the toxic brew of self-righteousness and hypocrisy. I don’t want to hear anyone, ever again, tell me that it’s “just about the science.”

[Mid-afternoon update]

A lot of discussion over at Slashdot.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Psychiatrist Charles Krauthammer

7 Comments

…on the lunacy of Eric Holder:

…why is Attorney General Eric Holder doing this? Ostensibly, to demonstrate to the world the superiority of our system, where the rule of law and the fair trial reign.

Really? What happens if KSM (and his co-defendants) “do not get convicted,” asked Senate Judiciary Committee member Herb Kohl. “Failure is not an option,” replied Holder. Not an option? Doesn’t the presumption of innocence, er, presume that prosecutorial failure — acquittal, hung jury — is an option? By undermining that presumption, Holder is undermining the fairness of the trial, the demonstration of which is the alleged rationale for putting on this show in the first place.

…Finally, there’s the moral logic. It’s not as if Holder opposes military commissions on principle. On the same day he sent KSM to a civilian trial in New York, Holder announced he was sending Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, (accused) mastermind of the attack on the USS Cole, to a military tribunal.

By what logic? In his congressional testimony Wednesday, Holder was utterly incoherent in trying to explain. In his Nov. 13 news conference, he seemed to be saying that if you attack a civilian target, as in 9/11, you get a civilian trial; a military target like the Cole, and you get a military tribunal.

What a perverse moral calculus. Which is the war crime — an attack on defenseless civilians or an attack on a military target such as a warship, an accepted act of war that the United States itself has engaged in countless times?

By what possible moral reasoning, then, does KSM, who perpetrates the obvious and egregious war crime, receive the special protections and constitutional niceties of a civilian courtroom, while he who attacked a warship is relegated to a military tribunal?

This will not end well.

[Update a couple minutes later]

And speaking of the corrupt political hack running the Department of Injustice, Andrew Breitbart has a warning: investigate ACORN properly, or I’ll release a lot more tapes just before the election next year. You know, I think he has them by the short hairs. I wonder if they’re too stupid to realize it, though.

And in a sane world, Breitbart, Giles and O’Keefe would be getting a Pulitzer.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Oh, this is precious, too. Breitbart totally pwned a hack columnist at the LA Times as well.