Democrats want equality even if it means the sacrifice of liberty. Employers must hire a certain number of people in the name of equality, which means they are not at liberty to hire whom they please. Democrats don't want anyone to just say anything: esp. if it might offend someone and make them feel unequal. Democrats dislike esp. the freedom to have guns. They want to make the "great equalizer" illegal, so that government can be the only institution that guarantees equality. Likewise, Democrats want to force everyone to have insurance, so that everyone can be equal. But this denies the liberty of those who don't want to purchase it.
Republicans used to believe in equality (Lincoln argued for it in the Emancipation Proclamation and in the Gettysburg Address) but now they increasingly argue instead for another Enlightenment Value: Liberty.
Liberty is an important and seemingly unimpeachable value. No one pickets the Statue of Liberty. Republicans are generally in favor of it, but not always. Communist women want the liberty to abort foetuses (which do not get equal treatment under the law because they are not considered human until the moment they leave the birth canal -- Obama wants to even prolong the inequality past that event so that young mothers can still be rid of their unwanted babies until the very last minute and so most women continue to vote Democrat). Republicans want the first two amendments which guarantee freedom of speech and freedom to own guns. Democrats used to want freedom of speech (60s) but now that they've arrived in a position of power (esp. on campuses) speech codes in favor of EQUALITY are all the rage.
Liberty denied.
Equality, like love, is important, but they cannot be permitted to become totalitarian. Liberty is also an important value. We need the liberty to question love and equality (which can become evil totalitarianisms), and to argue that they are ill-defined and in some cases: a denial of liberty.
Polygamy is evil. Why? Because it is a denial of equality.
(Yes, sometimes we resort to the recursive, just for fun, and take the other side.)
Freedom can certainly be evil. If someone were to spray bullets into a lunchtime crowd at the local McDonald's, why, that would be evil! Even if they did it to save the animals, in the name of equality! Liberty musn't encroach upon other rights, such as the right to life. (Life is another word that's hard to define: does a foetus have life? Does an olding individual without brain waves have it? Does a gold fish have life? Do viruses have lives, and thus should they fall under the rubric of animal rights? Should cows never be eaten because they are sacred, as are the cows of India? What other animals deserve the right to be sacred cows?)
Most of the lines that used to help us to understand how to live and behave have been erased. The ten commandments still hold for churchgoers, but for the vast unwashed and totally depraved, theft is a good thing, because it promotes equality. Adultery and murder can go under the sign of liberty (if abortion is murder, then it is under the sign of liberty and equality then women should have the right to choose death for their children). The communists (Marx and Engels) wanted the liberty for all to screw all, in the name of equality.
We have the sense that everyone should be equal under the law. Does this mean that everyone gets to be a millionaire, and that everyone should play in the NBA, and that everyone should be president? If not, why not?
The two terms (liberty and equality) are quite confusing, but they are possibly the two biggest terms that Americans can resort to in an argument. Each of them have universal appeal. Democrats lean toward equality as their greater theme, and increasingly believe that it trumps liberty. Republicans on the other hand lean toward liberty (especially those who support Ron Paul). Freedom of speech is an incredibly important value for me. Therefore, I'm with the Republicans. It is very clear to me that at this juncture, they are the party of free speech. The other party, junkies of political correctness, prefer equality as mandated by every official organ they can bring to bear on the matter, and every unofficial groan and jeer such that no one is safe anywhere from the Red Star they use to torment anyone who offends against this Sacred Principle. The whole world has become their personal star chamber.
I, personally, prefer LIBERTY, because I think it allows for more EQUALITY.
150 comments:
i never noticed before that lady liberty's face is cracked up the side and her nose is fooll of black snot
Republicans want cheap labor. They're anti-abortion and anti-conception because they rely on orphanages for cheap, exploitable labor. They also like to hire Mexicans, because they're cheap, and because they don't have recourse to the legal system (something that wouldn't be true in a civilized nation, i.e., a nation understood that equal access to the law is a human right, not merely a citizenship right). And they like to use the existence of cheap Mexican labor both to force wage concessions from domestic labor, and to displace the justifiable anger that domestic worker have at being so cheated, not against those who profit from the cheating, but against their fellow victims.
Republicans believe themselves to be entitled to prosperity, which they define in relative terms, as measured against the laborers (foreign and domestic) whom they exploit. The poor will always be with us, simply because the rich will always require their service, and they have the power to ensure that there will be enough losers to serve the winners.
Liberty to a Republican is not a community value. It is the value to exploit others, and to twist God's holy call for justice into a justification for the privileges they protect with arrogant jealousy.
If you're a Republican out of fear, you're a tool of Mammon, no less exploited than a Mexican lettuce cutter, and no more free.
touche' stu touche'
fencing jousting juggling
let the festival begin
way to pull out the stops
is this a choice between obama socialists and boehner romeny connell inflated rich fascists
i don't know
liberal democrats for all their wierdmindedness at least they appear human where as most republican appear photoshopped
to clean to be believed
lady liberty leapt lavishly linking lefsa light literarry libels leftward lofted lipsync lies leeward
I don't see anything wrong with employers. We need more of those. At present it's dangerous to hire anyone because the rules pertaining to hiring someone are so unclear. The Democrats want to make it practically a crime to hire anyone without dividing your money with them.
I haven't ever employed anyone except a babysitter here or there, or a temporary thing like a waiter or waitress to bring the food.
Would prefer a buffet, as I could see what I'm getting.
In NJ you can't pump your own gas as it would put the pumpers out of work. So you have to get them to do it. It isn't fast, but the price is aboiut 40 cents less than in NY because the taxes there on gas arent so high.
I am a Republican but I don't want cheap labor. I don't want orphans to pump my gas. I just want to be able to do it myself. I did make the mistake of calling a plumber the other day. I had a stuck toilet. It cost 81 dollars for the guy to use the plunger for four seconds. His technique was ultra-rigorous which was a lesson, but the only problem is that I had to clean up for a half hour.
In true communist systems the state gets in between the needs of men and the price is totalitarianism. The face of Kim Jung-Il seems as human to me as my own. But he owns the police and the military.
I own nothing, because the state owns everything.
Kirby,
I don't see anything wrong with employers.
It depends on the employer. Some employers take the attitude that their laborers are part of an extended family, and the business is a shared interest. Other employers view laborers as interchangeable parts subject to rigorous economization. The former model brings prosperity to all, the later brings ruin to many.
At present it's dangerous to hire anyone because the rules pertaining to hiring someone are so unclear.
False, of course, but since you've never hired anyone, you wouldn't know.
The Democrats want to make it practically a crime to hire anyone without dividing your money with them.
Dividing? No. Playing a fair wage, yes. As for the financing of HCR, I'm not a fan, but this was the compromise that was forced through the political process. A single-payer system (like Canada's) would have been more equitable, as well as simpler for employers to deal with. Indeed, much of what complication exists in the employment relationship follows from the Republican insistance on a'la carte solutions to buffet problems.
The face of Kim Jung-Il seems as human to me as my own.
A sad commentary on your face, in that Jong-Il has been dead for two months.
And clearly, in a civilized nation, there would be no objection to giving a Jong-Il full access to the justice system. What case do you think he would bring? How do you think his claims would be assessed by an independent judiciary?
I own nothing, because the state owns everything.
Bull.
I can't see what's wrong with "economizing" on labor, on parts, on transportation. The idea is to be economical when running a business. You keep thinking that Mammon should disappear and that everything should be about serving God, Stu, but even Christ Himself said that we had to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's!
Matthew 22: 15-22.
...And Jesus said to them, "Whose likeness and inscription is this?" They said, "Caesar's." Then he said to them, "Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." When they heard it, they marveled.
for a Lutheran, you don't seem to allow any room at all for two kingdoms thought.
The idea is for each to support their own family. The family is the basic unit, not the village, as the communists argue (It takes a village, idiot.)
The communist notion confuses everything.
America sponsors rugged individualism. The idea is that each must scratch out their own living through competition. You would have basketball players in the NBA play whether or not they could play, and all make roughly the same amount whether they were contributing points and assists or not. The workers also have to be capitalists and decide whether a given situation is best for them or not. Otherwise they would be like good sons and daughters in your family metaphor and not be able to leave a company and strike out on their own.
Your sense of things is rather like what they Japanese do, I suppose, it just isn't American-style capitalism. How you arrived at this point is obscure to me still.
I suppose your idea is that America is one great big family, and we should all protect one another, with the government as the big nanny that provides for everyone.
But socialism isn't an economic system. It's some kind of moralism gone berserk. Each person has to decide on a simple basis: is this the best I can do for now?
Within a family I agree that there should be other concerns: such as pure love for babies (you can't kill a baby just because it would be economical to do it).
But I wouldn't extend the notion of a family to the nation as a whole.
Otherwise competition itself would suffer (well, I wouldn't want to undercut the competition by advertising my wares at lesser rates made available by a new machine that I've invented, because that would mean the guy in the next town would be unable to feed his family).
That is just terrible thinking since it gets rid of competition, and thus, innovation.
It would be the equivalent in basketball of letting Jeremy Lin score points just to let his legacy grow.
That's just SICK!
Kirby,
I can't see what's wrong with "economizing" on labor, on parts, on transportation.
Exactly. Republicans like yourself understand the cost of everything, and the value of nothing. And you're unaware of the distinction, and so of your own ignorance. I've done hiring negotiations in several contexts. People are not machines—you want the people who are working for you to feel that you have their interests at heart, and this is not something that can be faked. The difference in productivity between someone who is bitterly punching the clock and loathing every moment they spend at work, vs. someone who feels invested in the work they're doing, dominates the differences in compensation involved. Cheapskate management is as incompetent as spendthrift management.
And it is inescapable that different lines of work have different values. But that said, every laborer is owed a living wage, and the opportunity to earn it. If private interests won't provide this baseline of opportunity, then the government must. We got this right in 30's, and wrong (entirely because of Republican intransigence, and an unwillingness to be productively involving in cleaning up the economic mess that they'd made) these past four years.
The idea is for each to support their own family. The family is the basic unit, not the village, as the communists argue (It takes a village, idiot.)
Actually, you're confused here, and are taking a mistaken theological position as a result. Consider:
While he was still speaking to the crowds, his mother and his brothers were standing outside, wanting to speak to him. Someone told him, “Look, your mother and your brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.” But to the one who had told him this, Jesus replied, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” And pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! (Matthew 12:46–49 NRSV)
“I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.” (Luke 12:49–53 NRSV)
Are families more important than community? No. The question is in a way nonsensical, because family constitutes an important special case of community, rather than something distinct from it. Families are, for almost all of us, our first community, and for many remain our most important community. But Jesus is emphatic that the ties of the Christian community bind more deeply than the ties of family, even than the ties of his family.
I believe that we as Christians should try to bring our families intact into the Christian community—after all, if we have no influence within our families, we don't have much hope for authentic influence outside of our families. Healthy families can serve as models for healthy communities, and vice versa.
I think this opens up new paths of conversation, but I am hoping to drop into the background. I sure wish JADL and Dim Lamp would comment here. Maybe even JEP. Families and communities cannot be considered identical in my view. I hope someone can clarify this. This is a very communist idea. It would lead to a completely matriarchal viewpoint, and we'd end up in something like ancient Egypt in which there was no innovation for four thousand years.
Why is competition so scary to the left?
Kirby,
Why is competition so scary to the left?
It's not. This is just one point of many that you're confused about. In fact, it seems to me that there's more fear of competition on the right: after all, it's your side that wants to rig the game so that the established rich always win it, and that everyone else will always lose.
I've not argued, e.g., that everyone is entitled to a living wage, but rather that everyone ought to have the opportunity and the obligation to earn it. You would exempt the rich from obligation to earn a living wage, and believe (mistakenly) that I would exempt the poor. Nonsense.
If you can't work, you shouldn't starve. We as a society have an obligation to the weak amongst us. But if you won't work, then you have no call on a society you've rejected.
You seem to think that I find rich people to be despicable. This is hardly the case. I find the indolent rich to be despicable, and parasites on society, but I'm also very well aware that most rich folks are productively involved in society. And they can be useful models, as their participation in society is the clearest possible illustration of the value of participation. We all need to be involved in building up, as we will all be enriched from it.
But what is competition? It is not warfare. The objective isn't to destroy the losers, it's to differentially reward people based on productivity. Winner take all systems are counterproductive, if the goal (as it should be) is to acheive maximum aggregate productivity.
Equitable opportunity is not the same thing as identical outcomes. I'm arguing for the former, not the later, and I'd appreciate it if you'd at least attempt to recognize the distinction and deal honestly with it.
Let's take a concrete situation that you and I would both understand, and move on from there, Stu. Let's take a classroom and talk about what would get maximum productivity out of students.
If the goal is to make as many people as possible get As for instance, and as few Fs as possible, one answer would be to just give everyone an A.
That would do it.
But, the problem would be that some few would work for the A, and most would not, knowing that they didn't have to do anything to get the A.
But let's say it is an English classroom and the goal is to sufficiently comprehend Shakespeare's five major plays (Lear, MacBeth, R & J, Henry I, Part one and two), so that the students could pass not only a knowledge test, but also write an excellent essay that illuminates some new aspect of the plays so that it contributes to greater knowledge.
Now let's say that two members of the classroom grew up reading Shakespeare (their dad was an English professor) and they have seen the plays live in Central Park done by excellent actors in a variety of different productions. Fifteen students int he class have never seen a Shakespeare play produced nor have they read one beforehand, and also are not aware of the outlines of Elizabethan or English history.
One member of the class has an IQ of 210 and can do whatever any class requires, and will always get an A.
Some members of the class are lazy, and won't work.
Others will work hard but they are from Asia and their first language is not English, and Shakespearean English throws them for a triple loop.
But they take their paper to the Writing Center and spend forty hours on it until it is as good as the papers handed in by the two who grew up reading Shakespeare.
Do we give any credible understanding to the poor background of the people, or the excellent background, in terms of dishing out grades?
Thomas Sowell says NO. We should ONLY deal with outcomes.
You seem to imply that the class who had no background in English studies should get a hand up from those who already had an advantage. So either the teacher should spend a lot of extra time with them while the excellent students in the class daydream, or else whole resources should be set aside to bring them up to speed.
I just don't know what you are arguing under the phrase "equitable opportunity."
I think you should remain within an English class rather than switching to mathematics simply because I think as we've stated before that you are probably better versed in English than I am in math. Plus, that would be true for all of our participants at present with the possible exception of the man who went by the name of George Grady who has not stopped in here for at least two years.
What exactly do you recommend?
And then let's apply what you are saying to the economy at large. You assume there is such a thing as the indolent rich. Coiuld you give me a clear example of such a person? Paris Hilton? she's hardly indolent.
Do such people genuienly exist? In the old days of pre-Stalin they gave us a fictional example called Oblomov. But did he exist? I don't know anyone like that.
It seems to me that everyone is busy trying to make the most of their life, and everyone wants to get a good grade in an English class. Some grew up with no books in their homes and illiterate parents.
Some grew up with walls of excellent books and very engaged parents.
How am I to rectify this in my English class?
Do you suggest that I take into account their backgrounds or not?
Mugabe's answer was to dispossess the whites of all land in Zimbabwe. But he also dispossessed his country of all people who knew how to farm. Result: widespread famine, endless misery, and collapse of the economy.
That's the answer of many in the new regime: just grade according to race, gender, and class. are you for that or not?
Kirby, I agree that however variously understood and invoked omnibus terms like equality and liberty are in political debates, Democrats tend more to invoke equality (the leftier of whom seem to prefer "social justice," which often amounts to operating illiberal government confiscation and redistribution schemes), Republicans liberty.
stu, your assertion that Republicans in general are "anti-abortion and anti-conception [sic?] because they rely on orphanages [!?] for cheap, exploitable labor" seems implausible, even absurd, without something to back it up.
And I've heard many a Republican politician make the same complaint you make against the Rs, about illegal alien workers not only taking jobs from citizens and legal immigrants but also driving down domestic wage levels.
And while you argue for illegal aliens' "equal access to the law," that should also of course include, as citizens are, **being subject to it** as well. So if people are here illegally, they have already abdicated this responsibility.
For the rest, e.g., your assertion that "Republicans believe themselves to be entitled to prosperity . . . as measured against the laborers (foreign and domestic) they exploit," etc., etc. seems hardly more than letting off a little spleen (it's OK and I'm hopeful it's cathartic) of the sort (save the invocation of God's justice; surprised you didn't add "Strike them, Lord! Strike them now!" amid backgound crashes of stage thunder) written by the deranged tools at the communist People's World.
Your mention of the "Mexican lettuce cutter" reminds me of my summer of work long ago at seventeen with the field braceros in California for minimum wage (plus bonus if earned). Didn't feel exploited (nor in the regular housepainting jobs I had from the age of fifteen to college age), only happy to contribute to a poor single-parent family. Guess there wasn't someone around then to tell me how miserable and exploited I actually was.
Just wanted to thank JADL for a few of his comments here (always welcome!). When Stu goes to town he does so with a vengeance and since I'm somewhat allergic to confrontation, I'm glad you took him to task for his bizarre and unbalanced statements regarding orphans, among other unsavory items in the Stu repertoire.
What I think is at stake here is the whole concept of WORK. Some people think they shouldn't have to do it. The middle classes rightly object to those who want handouts from the government or from Obama (the king of food stamps, as he has been called).
Meanwhile, his wife goes on vacation after vacation -- this most recent one is at Aspen for skiing.
The Garden of Eden reminds us that we are in a Postedenic world in which WORK is for everyone.
The left imagines some Oblomovian realm in which people are eating and puking and having orgies as they were in ancient Rome among the Senatorial classes (Caligula and Nero raped men and women with abandon apparently not content with those who would willingly give themselves).
But I'm hoping to hold Stu to a tight set of examples in an English class, and not let him off the hook into pious abstractions. What exactly does he want me to do differently in English so as to help the poorly prepared?
Work is meant I think as a kind of parting gift in Genesis. Those who are deprived of it find less meaning and less satisfaction in life. Every kind of work should be considered good work: whether sweeping a floor or doing equations in the Ivory Tower. To simply hand out grades or hand out food stamps is to deprive people of work.
Even retarded people can do some work generaly: whether it's sorting cans, or twisting macaroni, or what have you. Unless you're an actual vegetable you should be able to work. I liked painting houses, working as a waiter, working in stores, and doing many other kinds of work as a kid.
If the extreme rich choose to work in terms of shopping, or vacationing in the Caribbean, I suppose that even that could be seen as a kind of work.
Perhaps I coiuld even be generous and say what Mrs. Obama is doing in Aspen is work. chomping down lobster in 4-star hotels is work. It's conspicious consumption which helps to move the economy.
My only question is as to who is picking up the tab.
Kirby,
OK, let's take the example of the English class. In many ways, you've provided many of the answers in your setup.
But first, here are some you didn't answer: let's consider the base of a lazy, disruptive student. What do you do if, in addition to this, (a), they're the star quarterback on your college's football team? (b) they're the star striker on your college's soccer team? (c) their father is a major benefactor of your college, and is considering a major donation to your department?
Now, for the rest. You've already conceded the entire argument by providing a college writing center that highly motivated, but ill prepared students can take advantage of, and which is apparently sufficiently well staffed to achieve its mission. In effect, you've set up a hypothetical in which any of the students can succeed, but in which some fail due to lack of application, rather than lack of opportunity. The status quo you posit is already a Democratic ideal, and so arguments that more investment/equalization is necessary are going to look silly. No, as a Republican, your position must be in favor of closing that manifestly socialist writing center, because all it does is to support the unworthy ill-prepared, who should be fully subject to the consequences of their parent's folly. I'm sure you'd love to share such arguments with your administration ;-).
As a practical matter, I'd expect those Asian students to do very well in subsequent Shakespearean studies—hard work is going to take you further in the long run than the advantages of upbringing. And so basing an assessment in part on how far they came (rather than just where they got to) actually improves the predictive utility of the assessment for those future potential employers.
You assume there is such a thing as the indolent rich. Coiuld you give me a clear example of such a person?
I went to high school in Grosse Pointe, and saw enough indolent rich there to last a lifetime. There was a kid in my scout troup who never washed a dish—he's simply throw his kit in the bushes after the last meal, and got new for the next campout. He supplied half the troup with gear, but not out of generosity. There were kids who drove Jags to school, wore docksiders and lacoste shirts in the era before Abercrombie had retail stores, but who couldn't be bothered to write an English paper or break a sweat in gym.
JADL,
stu, your assertion that Republicans in general are "anti-abortion and anti-conception [sic?] because they rely on orphanages [!?] for cheap, exploitable labor" seems implausible, even absurd, without something to back it up.
Two responses. As regards "anti-conception," that should be "anti-contraception," a clear typo (mentalo?). As regards the general tenor of my note, I'm just playing 1/10 of a Kirby from the other side. Yes, it's hyperbolic. It seems to me that we ought to see if Kirby (and you) can take it as well as dish it out. You're mostly doing ok, if a couple of steps slow in irony detection. This is actually worse than it seems, because clearly jh got it, you had his note in front of you as well as mine.
And while you argue for illegal aliens' "equal access to the law," that should also of course include, as citizens are, **being subject to it** as well. So if people are here illegally, they have already abdicated this responsibility.
Of course they should be subject to the law, and this includes consequences associated with their illegal status, once properly ascertained through the legal process. But a fault in one regard does not entail the loss of all legal rights, and especially not on the untried say-so of the Maricopa County Sheriff or his ilk. Even convicted felons in this country have access to the legal system, even in Maricopa County, at least so long as the courts are paying attention.
Do you think it would be reasonable to require that whenever a person enters a criminal complaint, they ought to be subject to a full IRS audit of all tax returns not covered by the statute of limitations? After all, they might be tax scofflaws, and maybe this is a reason to deny them redress. Or that people who are delinquent on repayment of student loans don't deserve the full protection of the law in other contexts?
For the rest, e.g., your assertion that "Republicans believe themselves to be entitled to prosperity . . . as measured against the laborers (foreign and domestic) they exploit," etc., etc. seems hardly more than letting off a little spleen (it's OK and I'm hopeful it's cathartic) of the sort (save the invocation of God's justice; surprised you didn't add "Strike them, Lord! Strike them now!" amid backgound crashes of stage thunder) written by the deranged tools at the communist People's World.
Bullshit. Those clowns are atheists, and would never invoke such an argument. As for the special effects, the Lord will provide, in his own time. No, I'm inspired by the writings of other deranged fools: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, etc.
Your mention of the "Mexican lettuce cutter" reminds me of my summer of work long ago at seventeen with the field braceros in California for minimum wage (plus bonus if earned). Didn't feel exploited (nor in the regular housepainting jobs I had from the age of fifteen to college age), only happy to contribute to a poor single-parent family. Guess there wasn't someone around then to tell me how miserable and exploited I actually was.
There are some interesting differences. You were contributing to a poor single-parent family. I applaud that. The stakes are a bit different, though, for the chief breadwinner for a family of six. For you, these were temporary jobs, and you had the future expectation of college, or at least better economic opportunity. The Mexicans don't. There's no college in their future, unless the college has tomatoes to be picked. And you were paid minimum wage. These days, that's not a given, especially for illegals.
Stu, your rich clearly lived an impoverished life, which I think is a shame on themselves. And their problem. It wuiold be good if the kits went into a trash can, but otherwise they kept the economy working.
\
We have no football team here, and there's no way I'd treat any of them differently if we did.
We do have a soccer team, but it's no good.
I do have basketball players, but they will work or else they will fail.
The writing center is not supposed to write the papers for the kids. And if they're willing to put in 40 hours to produce a beautiful paper, I consider it their work even if there was collaboration with the Writing Center.
Anyone with a work ethic can succeed in this country. bill Clinton was not born rich. He's done fine (although he has no morals, he does have standing within the party of no morals).
Cain was able (to speak of a jerk in my party) to rise from nothing to riches. He too brought with him no morals much. But at least my party abandoned him.
Your party wants Clinton all over again.
My party has also abandoned Gingrich because of he and Calista.
Who cares about people like that?
The ten commandments do matter to us.
For you guys, it's anything goes: power politics without even a whisper of lip service to any kind of standards of morality. Obama won't even address drug use or promiscuity as the principle vector behind AIDS.
It would embarrass his clientele.
He won't even take on the fact of ACORN's improprieties. He just helps them get another name, and then it's business as usual.
I think we do at least agree that a decent life begins and ends with work. You and I do, at least. There are lots of people in your party who think life should be an endless party with food and checks provided by the government.
If there are those in my party who think life should be a party, at least they are footing the bills themselves.
Kirby,
Stu, your rich clearly lived an impoverished life, which I think is a shame on themselves.
Something we agree on. But here's the thing: you're opposed to enabling in all contexts except this one. Why the exception?
Anyone with a work ethic can succeed in this country. bill Clinton was not born rich. He's done fine (although he has no morals, he does have standing within the party of no morals).
I'll take your Clinton, and raise you Gingrich. Do you think this argument is going to play out to your advantage?
Your party wants Clinton all over again.
Some truth. Clinton was fairly effective, if a bit casual in his personal morality. Moral problems seem depressingly common (albeit not ubiquitous) among the political class, and without respect to party.
My party has also abandoned Gingrich because of he and Calista.
Your party flirted with Gingrich as a serious Presidential candidate 12 years after he dumped wife #2 for the Mrs. Gingrich du jour. So I don't think there's much moral credit here—just the salutory effect of Republican SuperPAC money being used to drive up the negatives of Republican candidates. Funny thing that all it takes is truth telling.
For you guys, it's anything goes: power politics without even a whisper of lip service to any kind of standards of morality. Obama won't even address drug use or promiscuity as the principle vector behind AIDS.
A funny argument to make against someone who's argued consistently that public policy ought to be informed by God's call for justice. I'm not sure what your argument against Obama is here, BTW. Is it that abstinence-only sex education programs have been cut? They're generally not effective: Wiki:Abstinence-only sex education, cf., “Effectiveness.” It is better to put public health dollars in places where there's empirical evidence of efficacy.
If there are those in my party who think life should be a party, at least they are footing the bills themselves.
... with dollars provided from no-bid government contracts.
I don't think I am in favor of government enforcing virtue is all.
The rich get rich off government? Romney didn't. It's a lot better if they make real money.
But should government seize the profits even if it'sgovernment money?
Kirby,
I don't think I am in favor of government enforcing virtue is all.
Then what's your beef with Obama? You're dodging more questions than you're answering.
The rich get rich off government? Romney didn't. It's a lot better if they make real money.
Actually, he did, cf., Mitt Romney Took Advantage of Government Subsidies at Bain. And the Romney family came into money via auto industry defense contracts during WW II. This may not be your strongest argument.
But should government seize the profits even if it'sgovernment money?
Seize? No. Tax, equitably? Yes. This isn't hard. There are certain essential services that it is more efficient if government provides them. Let me suggest we begin with defense, police, and fire. These services need to be paid for, and so we're taxed. Even if, e.g., we consider the Iraq invasion to have been immoral. [Which does reveal the bishop's argument that no one has ever been taxed against their conscience before the proposed policy on contraception coverage to be silly.]
So here's a question. What is it about those services that makes it appropriate that we support them collectively? Can you articulate a principled theory of just taxation that includes these items (and perhaps others that we might reasonably agree on, like sewers and water supplies and interstate highways and education), and does not include health care?
OK OK OK already OK everybody just step back and take a breather this is getting way too intense i haven't read the full thread but i've read enough to know that world championship wretsling rules are going to have to come into effect ASAP
what we'll do is square off into corners
stu and i will be the faithful social gospel alliance conquistadores
jadl and kirby will be the impetuous duo
headlocks are a pin
and three stomps on the floor is end of match
any questions
here's the bell
go for it
stu is wearing his angry luther mask and is showing some intimidating moves in the direction of kirby no wait wait wait he's turned on kirby then on jadl while hermano juan appears to be eating a banana and is not concerned in the least but now he sees his team mate getting double teamed and look at that he throws the banana peel on the floor and ouch jadl slips on his ass
hermano the crusher juan is up on the ropes ladies and gentlemen he's going to do a flying buttress right into the cathedral of secular doubt look at him fly
he's yelling something about the protestant work ethic and kahplehwiee he lays into both kirby and jadl with reckless abandon giving his teammate stu the bruizer a chance to catch his breath ladies and gentlemen this is a match to beat all matches this is a blow out knockemdown body grinder if ever there was one wait oh wait here's stu circling circling what's he going to do OH KNOW NOO O NOO the tornado he grabs kirbyeez hand he grabs jadl by the hair he's spinning spinning spinning there they go they both go flying into the ropes and back off and two ladies and gentlemen two arms to the heads of the whizzed out christian right
hermano juan is busying himself with a marguerita and a rather indecent moment with loretta light lips we can't show this on tv folks no no turn the camera this can't be shown
o what's this jadl is on his feet and he is steaming literally yes you guessed it steaming and whamo he launches his whole body into stu's back while the man wasn't even looking looks like a whistle sounds like a hairy infraction the social gospel democrats could win on penalty points after this o and kiby the kirberator is up and jumping like a kangaroo on speed and he is bouncing all over hermano juan and his girlfriend oh my god she has cake in her hair
anyway
keep up the good work
this is fascinating
more fun than the media narratives by far
whammooo
jh
Liberty Vs. Equality: a pro wrestling match.
Social Gospel on the one side. What exactly is on the other side? Two Kingdoms?
Kirby,
Social Gospel on the one side. What exactly is on the other side? Two Kingdoms?
Antisocial gospel, of course. ;-)
"Go, Capital and Labor, hand in hand,
Bleed Fortune and Prosperity across the land."
Konrad Krez
Translating the closing couplet for this poem was relatively easy because hand is the same word in both German and English and the same goes for land, although in German land actually means country or nation rather than real estate. The rest of the poem will be more of a challenge because the rhyme words in German aren't English cognates.
Tomorrow I'm going to a poetry reading. The last time I attended a poetry reading was 28 years ago at Castalia, named after the imaginary institute in Hesse's Magister Ludi, and I was one of the readers. The only person who came to see me read has now been my wife for almost 25 years. I'm also invited to lunch afterward.
The reader/lecturer tomorrow will be Que Mai, a Vietnamese woman who grew up selling cigarettes on the sidewalks of Ho Chi Minh City back when we still called it Saigon. She went to college in Australia and learned enough English to collaborate as a translator with an American poet who used to teach poetry at Penn State. He's got a Vietnamese daughter he adopted after the war and they share a German surname.
Theodore Roethke, who also taught at Penn State before he became famous, also had a German surname. Konrad Krez was a famous German-American poet in the year Roethke was born. He was first published in Germany during the Nazi era by a lifelong friend of Herman Hesse when Roethke was almost thirty years old.
I'll buy one of Que Mai's chapbooks and maybe at lunch she'll be kind enough to personalize her autograph for me. One of the first American publishers of her work in English was apparently a journal called Bombay Gin.
Bravo! to jh for the great last posting that "matches" so well the "ludere" in the "serio ludere" spirit of LS. No "cage match" to come, just a few gentle jabs back at stu:
You're right to say that Kirby's provocative postings are license for you to do the same--it's just that sorting the real stuff from the hype and huff isn't always easy (but I did note the cathartic value the latter provide).
Enforcement of laws against immigration has during this administration especially (with its thoroughly incompetent and corrupt DOJ of AG Holder and his ilk) been worse than lax. The official attitude now is "we'll just wait for you to commit an armed robbery, rape, manslaughter, or murder, otherwise, it's OK . . . whatever." US cities and mayors operating "sanctuary cities" openly flout the law without consequence (e.g., the stooge mayor of New Haven CT who wants to give the vote to illegals: http://standwitharizona.com/blog/2012/02/15/outrage-feds-settle-with-illegals-aliens-in-ct-give-them-350k-and-amnesty/).
And your BS claim is itself BS, for I meant you, not they, who issued the mock calls to divine vengeance. You missed it or I didn't clearl;y enough indicate it.
The illegals in this country aren't of course all Mexican lettuce-cutters and tomato-pickers, for operations like landscape gardening, meat-packing, construction, etc. are well represented. And you should know that many tens of thousands of illegals here are actually ex-college and university students who've overstayed their visas. And then there's the Chinese "anchor-baby" operations, etc.
And OK, you can bid a Gingrich as a past moral reprobate, but if you want to continue the game I'll raise you a Clinton or a JFK (the latest revelations from the once 19-yr old intern are dog-butt ugly).
Later Niebuhr is somewhat Two Kingdoms. Social Gospel thought is rather self-righteous, and doesn't really go much of anywhere in terms of building a strong economy. I think it's good that JH finally has provided a clear definitino of he and Stu's viewpoint: Social Gospel.
I'm basiclaly Two Kingdoms using later Niebuhr.
Not sure where JADL finds his theological underpinnings. Let's all pin down our positions so that the carpet bombing can commence at unheard of new levels.
Forget the WWE!
Let's move on to WWIII!
@ Craig, Bombay Gin is the Naropa Institute (now Naropa University) journal. I was published there in the 1979 issue (my very first poetry publication). I didn't follow the point of your comment. Were you commenting somehow on our thread, or were you just venturing something off on your own?
I was commenting obliquely on the thread. I knew from a number of comments you've made on other posts and threads that you spent some time at Naropa and that this year is volume 38 which means it probably started up in 1974 and was a going concern by the time you got there.
One class in beginning verse writing somehow got me a reading at Castalia, but I figured I needed substantially more than that to take a stab at the MFA. One might suppose that French would be the first choice for the alternative language of a Vietnamese poet rather than German-American English as taught in Australia.
JADL,
Enforcement of laws against immigration has during this administration especially (with its thoroughly incompetent and corrupt DOJ of AG Holder and his ilk) been worse than lax.
When I Google for "US Deportations by Year," what I find are charts and stories that say that US deportations hit an all-time high in 2011. So your assessment of Holder, et. al., is not fact based.
US cities and mayors operating "sanctuary cities" openly flout the law without consequence (e.g., the stooge mayor of New Haven CT who wants to give the vote to illegals:...
It's interesting to follow the link in the story you mentioned to the underlying FOX News (!) story, which makes it clear that the basis for settlement was that the initial searchs were illegal. Specifically, the Immigration judge found as a matter of fact that the ICE agents raided the residences of the individuals who brought suit "without warrents, probable cause, or their consent." And moreover it is a general principle that evidence tainted by an illegal search is not admissible, and if investigatory malfeasance is sufficiently egregious, the taint might extend to future prosecutions for the same offense. And this is what the judge found in this case. What the City of New Haven did is entirely irrelevant to this case.
And moreover, I'll note that the right to vote was not an issue in this article you linked (although there's a linked article in which it was). Again, following the link to the grand-article, it's clear in both it and its sources that the right being sought was the right to vote in local elections, not in state or federal elections. And let me reiterate—the right being sought. The mayor was not acting unilaterally, but was working through the state legislature. It's hard to reconcile this with open flouting of the law, whatever you may make of the wisdom of the policy itself.
As for the JFK intern affair, I agree the accusastions are ugly. The question is whether or not they'll stick. I don't know, maybe they will, although I'm aware of no independent corroborating evidence. Anyway, you start digging, and you'll find that many of the heros of the past also had affairs that were equally questionable, e.g., Eisenhower's purported affair with an inferior officer, both from the point of view of propriety, and of historicity. At least in Summersby's case, there were contemporaneous rumors.
But as I said when Kirby raised the point: I don't see that either party's politicians have a clear advantage over the other when it comes to personal sexual morality, so I don't see much point to pursing this argument in general, except to the extent that you guys impose the obligation of an active defense on me.
Of course, the situation is a bit different when it comes to specifics. If Bill Clinton was a candidate, then would make perfect sense to raise the issue of his affairs, as Romney's SuperPAC did with Gingrich.
Craig, that's good detective work. Naropa would have started in about 1974, and the journal is an annual, so I think you're spot on. I don't completely follow how the australian of Vietnamese descent got into the journal because I thought it was generally reserved for students and staff of Naropa, but that policy may have changed and it may be more open now than it was, or she may have been a student there.
There are people on both sides of the political divide that have affairs or break other commandments. I merely note that in general the Democrats really don't seem to care about this There are of course exceptions within the Democrats (stu being one of those). But I think most Democrats thought it was not germane to whether or not Clinton should be the figurehead of the country. As long as he brought in money and business went smoothly, what he did as a person didn't really matter. To the right, there were some who also didn't care what Cain did, or Gingrich did, but in general, the preponderance of the party looked elsewhere.
Santorum, Paul, and Romney are the three that are left in the race. Gingrich is now finished in my opinion, largely because of the way he treated wife one and two.
I don't think Democrats on the other hand generally care how the Clintons went, so long as they can have their abortions and their food stamps.
stu, I'll have a fuller answer later, but just to stir the pot a bit on the deportation figures, here's a piece that argues that the Obama administration is lying to the public by releasing false figures about criminal deportations:
http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2011/12/obama-admin-skews-deportation-figures/
Kirby,
There are people on both sides of the political divide that have affairs or break other commandments. I merely note that in general the Democrats really don't seem to care about this There are of course exceptions within the Democrats (stu being one of those).
Let me suggest that you've completely forgotten about John Edwards, whose run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 came unhinged with the publication of evidence that he'd had an affair, and indeed, had fathered a child with his mistress; and also about Gary Hart, whose run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988 came unglued for the same reason.
The situation around Clinton in 1992 and 1996 was different. These elections preceded the publication of the Lewinski affair, and the earlier accusations (Paula Jones, Gennifer Flowers) were vigorously denied, and there was a lack of corroborating evidence. I suspect, as well, that there was an unwillingness on the part of GHW Bush to push the affair angle, as there's reason to believe he might have been vulnerable on the same score.
When Gary Hart dropped out it was a long time ago when the Democratic Party was different and there were still morals. With Edwards, things were quite different. While the initial story ran in the National Inquirer in 2007, it wasn't picked up by the MSM until after Edwards was already toast by about January 30, 2008 (he hadn't yet won any of the states including his home state, South Carolina).
Once it was seen the Edwards would not be a major player, finally the MSM dug into the story and Edwards' life unraveled, and the million dollars he spent on hiding the story came to light, but only after it was seen as to not hurt the party.
Now of course Edwards is no longer a major player of any kind, so nobody cares that he faces a thirty-year sentence if convicted of the various crimes associated with using taxpayer money to hide his affair.
He's undergoing heart surgery soon (they might find that he has no heart!), and then we'll see if there's any conviction. Edwards squeaked a lot about social justice, I might add, but won't, as it seems a low blow.
JADL,
I'll have a fuller answer later, but just to stir the pot a bit on the deportation figures, here's a piece that argues that the Obama administration is lying to the public by releasing false figures about criminal deportations:
I don't see how you think this helps. The total number of deportations is not at issue in the linked article, only the fraction of that total which had a criminal record. And indeed, if the basic premise of the article is true (i.e., that a smaller fraction of the deportees had prior criminal records than claimed), then the inescapable consequence is that a larger fraction of the deportees are being deported solely because of their immigration status, which establishes the very point you were seeking to deny.
And indeed, the linked article represents criticism of Obama from the left, i.e., that he'd promised "backdoor amnesty" for individuals whose only crime was that of illegal entry, but in fact the opposite was happening.
This raises the question of what the heck is actually happening, but whatever it is, it's clear that you've misconstrued it.
Kirby,
When Gary Hart dropped out it was a long time ago when the Democratic Party was different and there were still morals.
This is unsupportable. Gary Hart's candidacy was in '88, and the current political alignments were well established then. And your longstanding argument is that the country went off the tracks in the 60's, which is a solid two decades before, time enough for this moral collapse you believe happened to have occurred.
Edwards squeaked a lot about social justice, I might add, but won't, as it seems a low blow.
It doesn't seem like a low blow to me. We're all sinners (and saints), although few among our present company have fallen as far as Hart, Edwards, Gingrich, et. al. A consequence of this is that if any among us is pushing a saintly agenda (and surely you'd grant that for yourself, if not for me), then that agenda is necessarily pushed by a sinner.
This raises a natural question. If what we care about is a President's policies, why should we care about his/her private morality? And at least through the 60's, the answer was that we shouldn't, and so the national media of the day didn't develop stories about the private sex lives of politicians, not for JFK, not for Eisenhower, not for Roosevelt, and all the way back to Jefferson and Washington (who I understand was "father of his country" literally as much if not more than figuratively).
To a certain extent, it remains true today. I've heard it said that we were much better served by Clinton than Bush, because what Clinton did to a few bimbos, Bush did to the country as a whole. It was true enough in the Republican's flirtation with Gingrich, whose past transgressions were well known, but who briefly became the leading Republican alternative to Romney. Indeed, if the Republican base didn't have Santorum to turn to, they'd probably have found it easier to forgive Gingrich his affairs than Romney his Mormonism and liberality, and Gingrich would remain unrejected. This is hypothetical, of course, but it has the ring of truth. And it explains Romney's strategy in knee-capping Gingrich first, which leaves him with the weaker of the two potential opponents.
Yet there is a strong moralizing component to American politics, and a sense that even if there a candidate's policies are not a perfect reflection of their private values, there is a correlation. So private morality has become something of a tie-breaker, which is to say, we prefer our sinners to the other guy's saints, but our saints to our sinners.
It's definitely not a leftist site. Go to their current projects and you'll see attacks on Obamacare, Elena Kagan, and an address given at the Ronald Reagan CPAC banquet, among other items. It's definitely a conservative site.
We probably won't know for a long time to come what the effect of W.'s interventions in Afghanistan will be. What will be the upshot of 9 million women who can read and write for the first time in their history? One might be simply gynocide if the Taliban return to power as O. seems to wish. That in turn will cast an amazing pall over world Islam from the viewpoint of the UN.
What will be the effect of voting in Iraq?
The Protestant notion that we are all created in the image of God (not just the Pope, but all of us) budged the west toward democracy via Locke.
Locke was fallen as were the Founding Fathers. Their personal failings such as Hancock's foibles with women, or Jefferson's dalliances with slave women might not mean much to us, but I suppose provides fodder for the feminists who want to bring down the patriarchies of the west and substitute the Kali Yuga so that the nations instead have Margaret Thatchers or Mao Tse-Tung's wife in charge (depending on whether it's a democratic or a communist system) or why not Nelson Mandela's lovely wife!
But Madison's notion of checks and balances seems quite important and maybe the good thing about having two parties is that the two constantly call one another out.
I think foregrounding Callista and the Salamander's prenuptial embraces did do him in, as most of us still believe in marriage as something sacred, and as a pact and covenant between people.
If you can't honor that what can you honor?
The Democratic party has slowly crumbled since the 60s. Carter said it was ok to think about adultery but not to do it. Clinton seemed to say on the other hand it was ok to practice adultery so long as you didn't think about it.
Obama is squarely under the thumb of his Amazon (who's on a ski vacation, but she probably checks in on him every quarter hour). We don't really know anything much about those two lovebirds.
Their kids appear to be theirs, and they appear to be happy enough. That's a huge thing. May they continue on in that light for another four decades.
stu, the Obama administration's bogus claims about criminal deportations don't help your counter-claims when coupled with the following report focusing on the administration's general cooking of the books (especially as delivered by Rep Lamar Smith [R, Texas], the House member in charge of immigration oversight):
http://capoliticalnews.com/2011/10/19/bogus-deportation-statistics-released-by-obama-angers-lawmakers/
The pictures on the site are of President Obama's uncle, an illegal alien who's been living in the US for decades (despite a deporation order issued in 1992); likewise his ingrate leeching aunt against whom there've been standing deportation orders for years. Guess DUI (he's at least one earlier conviction for illegal liquor sales or something--but hey, it's Massachusetts, Joe Kennedy country--no prob!) isn't a "serious" crime, just a "funny" one or at least not enough to get him deported. When arrested, he requested he said he wanted to put in a call to the White House.
Your stuff on sexual misconduct is mostly an attempt to muddy the waters, like "what Clinton did to a few bimbos" etc. without mention of his lying under oath in connection with his escapades. Yopu know, the kind of stuff one would expect to be cranked out by conspiratorial low-lifes (possibly with the conivance of White House staff and major media stooges) at Media Matters.
I like Ernie better than Bert.
Kirby,
The Democratic party has slowly crumbled since the 60s. Carter said it was ok to think about adultery but not to do it. Clinton seemed to say on the other hand it was ok to practice adultery so long as you didn't think about it.
1) Carter vs. Clinton on thinking vs. doing is hilarious.
2) It's dangerous to extrapolate from two data points, as you're doing here. In particular, Obama seems much closer to Carter (and GWBush) as regards marital fidelity than any of the three seem to Clinton, etc. Add Obama as a data point, and the regression line is flat.
3) That joke about Clinton vs. Bush and who's screwing whom? The parallel works here, too. W's attitude towards governance seemed to be that it was ok to practice it so long as you didn't think about it. Eight years is a long time not to inhale. "The Decider" he may have been. "The Thinker," not so much. Give me Clinton's wonkishness any day -- the decisions may have come slower, but they were consistently better grounded.
in a truly just society liberty is that condition by which a person or a community can come to self realization and in fact the persons liberty is understood as reflective of the community sense of trust and freedom
if equality is the condition to be desired methinks then one needs something much grander by which to measure god is big we are small therefor we are equal we are equal in death and that is perhaps about it
i think everyone including kirby should have a shot at being president hell if colbert can do it thus can thou kirby hell's a poppin
yodel aye heee hooo
where was i
oh yeah
the human species tends toward infinite variety of character and person why force it into preconceived notions of equality
i know there are better poets
i know there are better read guys and girls
i know there are better rock and roll stars
each of us is a fragment of ornamental glass with sunlight
there will be equality when leisure is the essence of actual living --- all the way around ---- even for the poor
i recently entered into a maddening conversation with someone who is convinced that the catholic church is all wrong about divorce because look at gingrich he's divorced twice and catholic
i could not get the canon law point across concering sacramental marriage...had gingrich married a catholic in catholic ceremnoy with catholic canonical paperwork he could never have remarried in the church..it just don't happen....everyone is equal under that law...still he would have the liberty to marry and enter into union with someone but in effect he could not presume to go to communion unless he acquired a special dispensation...yet to divorce in civil unions is considered noncanonical or nonsacramental if you wish...if you're going to make marriage a sacrament then you've got to live up to it as one...anyway the catholic church accepts newt accepts his marriage accepts him as a growing maturing pilgrim...he's not such a bad guy...pretty smart...given to grandeur thinking...but he's a good bad catholic
yes you can have it both ways
anyway
labor justice
all that's happened is that we've made slavery remunerable...we pay people and sometimes pay them very well...to be slaves
i wonder what would happen if we took american politics out of the news almost completely save for a press conference here and there
just a group of peopel who work to make a better place and don't play media impression games...every other year they have to work real jobs all those politicos...i think it's crazy that we've made a whole class of professional politophiles...or that we've chosen to do so
i think it's great that the rich are getting a jolt tax something to bring affluence around to reality...it's worth their while to pay a little more for all their security and luxury
i think all policemen and girls
(for there truly are no policewomen....just girls)
should wear kilts
stop the electric surge
jh
land owndership should be determined by landscape and available water...that's it
soon the women will run mexico
mark my word
I don't completely follow how the australian of Vietnamese descent got into the journal because I thought it was generally reserved for students and staff of Naropa, but that policy may have changed and it may be more open now than it was, or she may have been a student there.
I didn't ask Que Mai what connection she had with Naropa, but did pose a question to her in the Q&A about her choice of English over French. It should be remembered that the peace treaty in 1975 was brokered and signed in Paris. Her English is quite good, well articulated and easy to understand, but all of her poems in English were actually read aloud by Filipina creative writing students, most of whom recited the poems they read from memory.
Que Mai was born near Hanoi in 1973 and lived in the Mekong delta south and west of Ho Chi Minh City from age 6 onward. Her grandparents died in the war and both of her parents survived it. She attended public school in post war Viet Nam and pointed out that poetry is highly revered there and is in many respects the central pillar of public education.
If I recall correctly her husband is a Dane who works for the European Commission and is posted in Hanoi. She works for an NGO she founded there providing health care for more than 3,000 children with cancer and other afflictions, often birth defects, associated with the effects of Agent Orange. She attended college in Australia on scholarship and earned top marks in obtaining a degree in business administration. She claims she never had any formal training in poetry or literature beyond what was routinely provided in the public school curriculum.
Her most recent books of poetry, those made available at the reading, were produced in collaboration with the American poet, Bruce Weigl, a Viet Nam veteran who is now poet in residence at a community college near Oberlin in Ohio. He taught for many years at Penn State and is generally known for a poem he wrote many years ago about the effects of napalm on human bodies.
JADL,
I followed the capoliticalnews link, and I'm appalled that you appealed to it. Any so-called news article that begins with "Obama can't help it—he's a blooming liar" has nailed itself to the mast of hyperpartisanship from the start, dispensed with any claim to objectivity, and so is inadmissible in the context of a fact-based discussion. If this is the best you have, then you have nothing.
Nonsense, stu, you might have looked a little further down the page, though for my part I should have specified that what I counted as valid evidence and argument were not Stephen Frank's polemical remarks at the top of the site (though they hardly differ from the tone of much of, say, the Daily Kos's stuff), but the report of Jim Kouri of The Law Examiner below that concentrates on the remarks of Rep Smith et al challenging the deceptive claims of the Obama administration's misleading stats on deportations of illegals.
Republicans don't believe in equality of opportunity. They sometimes say they do, then they decry positions that support equality of opportunity.
If you bring up the idea of trying to have good schools for all kids, regardless of their socioeconomic background, Republicans throw a conniption fit!
It would make sense if Republicans were Against the idea of equality of opportunity - if they were principled, they'd simply say some folks are born unlucky, in horrible situations, and that their opportunity is notably less than others, and that's just the way it iiiiis...
JADL,
I read the whole wingnut echo-chamber piece.
If there was a objective point to be made here, you should have no problem finding a objective source for it. But instead, you've doubled down on a source that is manifestly not objective.
You ask, why should it matter? Why indeed? Let's take the point that you raise about the Obama administration "cooking the books" vz. deportation statistics. A legitimate question that an objective reporter should ask at this point is whether or not previous administrations "cooked the books" in the same way. The point is that a "yes" answer would mean that the comparison of statistics is still legitimate, and so that overall deportation activity (as measured by a statistic that has the de facto sanction of both Democratic and Republican administrations) has indeed increased. But this question is not addressed in the article you cited. I have every reason to believe that the source you quoted would have suppressed such exculpatory information, even had it been a part of its primary source. And that's why.
One of the distinguishing features of hyperpartisanship is it's willingness to omit relevant fact through active omission. You yourself have done this, and been caught at it. I consider such to be lying, which is unacceptable in debate, and have said so. You've argued that it just part of your vigorous debating style.
I repeat: you do not have an objective source, and without an objective source, you have nothing.
JADL,
No sooner did I hit the send button on my last comment that it occurred to me that it might be entertaining to push on the capoliticalnews article -- feed the quotes to the googlebeast, and see what it caughts up.
I followed the first link that did not appear to point to an "advocacy" (i.e., non-objective) site. And I found this:
Texas Tribune: ICE Removes Record Number of Immigrants in FY 2011
Money quote:
A DHS spokesman confirmed to the Tribune that voluntary removals are included in this year’s count. But the official said that has been the process since the Bush administration — and that a voluntary removal is essentially a plea an immigrant enters that admits guilt. The immigrant forgoes a formal immigration court process and is then is deported, which the government says saves the courts time and money.
Your source is busted: it had exculpatory evidence in its source, and it willfully omitted it. Liars.
Stu, what would you consider to be an objective source? Where politics are concerned, can anyone really be completely objective? I don't think there is a single source anywhere that I would trust to be neutral on almost any topic. Certainly there is no TV station that doesn't have a slant. Since all people are political, which means that they take a side, and all sources are created by people, I don't think we can have such a thing as a politically neutral source.
there are some people who are more likely to attempt to tell the truth.
I think JADL is at least as likely as anyone here to try to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help him, God, as they say.
But of course we all want to paint the other side as being somewhat more dimly lit than our own.
Brett has said in the past that Obama is for illegal immigration whenever he speaks, but on the sly, he has record numbers of deportations.
This makes sense to me in a way because Obama is always two-faced. What he says almost never matches what he does.
Crowleygate for instance showed how biased he is in racial terms.
And yet, he is also a work in progress. I think he actually does try to learn.
At college he sought out Marxist professors.
I think he's now trying to understand things from the business perspective, and is actually attempting to listen to successful people like Warren Buffet because, like Oedipus, I think he dimly senses that whatever is wrong with this country is somehow due to something he's done wrong.
I think he's aware he's scared the daylights out of the business community and even feels he may be able to rectify that in some way. Another part of him simply wants to destroy the business community and take it over, making the government the only game in town, as it was in Marxist systems.
I'd rather put in someone who understands business from the get-go, since I don't think the business of government is business, or should be business.
Only individuals can create.
Just as I think government should stay out of poetry, they should also stay out of business.
At any rate, I don't think JADL's sources are any weirder than yours. I wouldn't trust anyone's numbers.
It's like trying to get an accurate assessment of casualties in the Finnish Winter War. The Soviets played down the numbers. The Finns played them up.
Estimates range between 250,000 and four million casualties for the Russians. You'd think the Finns would have a more accurate assessment of their own casualties, but the numbers there vary considerably too.
One of the neat things about basketball is that the score is at least certain. There are not two scores kept.
I'm looking forward to the Heat-Knicks game this evening. Lin has won 9 of 11 of his games for the Knicks. Tonight will be a big test.
People can spin why one team won and another lost, but they can't spin the actual score.
With deportation figures, on the other hand, the numbers vary wildly.
Since Obama has spun almost every other number from employment figures to how much Obamacare will cost, I doubt if his side has any care to keep an accurate assessment of anything at all. Since he was a major player for ACORN and in Illinois politics, why would he somehow be different when it came to deportation numbers.
Obama is basically a spinmeister extraordinaire.
Are all politicians the same?
Probably, but it's a question of degree. I think Obama is with Pilate, when Pilate asked, "What is truth?"
Kirby, stu's claim that there's "nothing" in the report I cited is itself quite as bogus as the Obama administration's illegal alien deportation figures, as indicated by "the lawmaker in-charge of immigration oversight" (Rep Lamar Alexander, R-TX).
First remember that stu conditionally accepted the claims about the ICE's inflated "criminal" deportations for "serious" crimes (I guessed as opposed to "funny" ones like those of Obama's uncle--ordered deported two decades ago--and his DUI/near-ramming of a police vehicle) about criminal deportations when he fancied it could back his argument, but I introduced further claims against the ICE's *total* figures as well. But on to "nothing":
While the ICE claims a higher number of illegals deported than ever, Rep Smith responds:
"The Obama administration continues to inflate its deportation numbers. The administration includes voluntary removals in its deportation statistics even though they impose no penalties on the offenders and make it easier for illegal immigrants to return to the U.S.
In other words, the Obama administration is cooking the books to make it look like they are enforcing immigration laws, when in reality they are enacting amnesty through inaction."
The Kouri report (Kouri is Vice-Pres of the National Assn of Chiefs of Police) also contends that workplace enforcement has dropped by 70%, even though Rep Smith adds that "[m]eanwhile, seven million illegal immigrants have jobs in the U.S. We could free up millions of jobs for citizens and legal immigrants if we simply enforced our immigration laws. The President’s policies just don’t add up."
And while stu raises a legitimate question about a comparative statistical figures from other administrations and under what circumstances deportations are counted (and this is aside from other questions such as how assiduous comparative border *policing* was then and is now--e.g., numbers of enforcement personnel as well as *enforcement,* i.e., comparative figures on border *apprehensions*),there is the reported testimony of an anonymous Border Patrol source who compares enforcement in the last two administrations:
"All one needs to do is compare the press releases issued by ICE during the Obama years and the Bush years to see they are not focusing on enforcing the nation’s immigration laws these days.
During the Bush administration, the majority of press releases highlighted the capture of illegal aliens working at companies across the nation. They even nabbed illegal aliens working at high-security facilities run by the U.S. government. Today, the majority of the press releases are issued with regard to child pornography, counterfeit designer clothing and accessories, and even drug arrests."
As I said, for a number of reasons, Eric Holder's DOJ has proven itself thoroughly politicized, corrupt, and prevaricating (as argued recently by several career DOJ officials), and the AG himself and several of his political cronies in the DOJ have disgraced their offices and should at least resign, if not be investigated further for dereliction and even perjury.
cookie monster
he's my ghuy
I think the Obama administration believes it has license to spin, prevaricate, switch positions, blame others, and lie because they can count on major media personnel rarely asking tough or follow-up questions of their corrupt Chicago-style operation. The MSM exception of course, is FoxNews, so of course the President and his political cronies have given extraordinary attention to attacking FN with all they can muster. Naturally FN seems the only MSM willing to investigate further recent preliminary evidence for collusion between White House officials and the left-wing media source Media Matters, which in turn was to be the conduit for feed damaging personal info on FN personnel to other MSM outlets.
Such media outlets were recently eager purveyors of info from the anti-Catastrophic Global Warming think-tank the Heartland Institute when documents were revealed by a prominent and indeed vociferous CAGW supporter, Dr Peter Gleick (member of the American Academy of Sciences, The Pacific Institute, head of the *scientific ethics* [!] division of the American Geophysical Union, etc.) Essentially what Gleick seems to have done was that he:
“impersonated a board member of the Heartland Institute, stole his identity by creating a fake email address, and proceeded to use that fake email address to steal documents that were prepared for a board meeting. He read those documents, concluded that there was no smoking gun in them, and then forged a two-page memo” (J. Bast, HI). Gleick's fairly crude forgery is parsed here:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/02/global-warming-alarmists-resort-to-hoax.php
Gleick has since confessed, resigned several of his positions, and may face criminal prosecution as well as a surely-promised civil suit from The Heartland Institute. But after this scandal (now called "FakeGate," after the earlier "ClimateGate" disaster for the scientific AGW "consensus" mafia) a number of MSM reporters and media outlets are either ignoring or pathetically spinning the story to try to minimize damage to their cause.
The most-viewed climate site in the country, Watts up with That?, run by meteorologist Anthony Watts) has the details:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/20/breaking-gleick-confesses/#more-57113
JADL just blathered a lot - the point is that deportations of illegals, and especially illegals who are criminals in other ways too, has increased under Obama.
That's true. Stu showed that the 'book-cooking' is actually just 'standard procedure' that happened across all administrations.
It's like comparing one president's U3 unemployment to another's U6 unemployment. Uhhhh, be consistent with your measuring sticks, people...
I's just sorry, JADL, that you don't like the truth!
:-)
And I never said that Obama was FOR illegal immigration, yet slyly increasing deportations - Heightened border security, and the deportation of criminal criminal illegals, has always been (AFAIK) part of his platform.
JADL,
I'll make the reasonable and charitable assumption that you didn't see my 11:19 note before writing your 1:12 note, as the former was substantially delayed in its appearance.
Reviewing the bidding: You have a source in Lamar Alexander (which is available through objective sources, as well as via the wingnut echochamber) complaining (although not in so many words) that the Obama administration is counting deportations exactly same way the Bush administration did, and dadgummit, that's not fair. I've delivered sources that show that the total number of deportations has increased under Obama, and this is unrefuted.
You have sources that argue that the Obama administration is not using the same approach that the Bush administration did in enforcing immgration law. But given that Obama's efforts have been more effective as measured by total deportations, this is not a basis for criticism. Why should we go back to doing it a way that didn't work as well?
There is a recurring theme here: Republican sources (often members of Congress or former Bush Administration officials) complain that the Obama administration is doing something that they construe as dishonest, only to have it prove out that policy in question dates from the Bush Administration. It is possible (albeit a bit embarrassing) in such a context to argue that the policy is misguided, but hypocritical to cast it as evidence of one's opponent's perfidy.
As regards the criminal fraction of the deported population, this is something that I'd like to understand better. Having a mathematical mind, as well as the experience of the kind of political gamesmanship that is being played with these statistics, it seems likely that there is a difference between the voluntary and involuntary deportation pool w.r.t. past criminal record, with the voluntary pool likely having a substantially higher rate. Not much point taking your case to the immigration judge if you have a rape conviction, after all. It is plausible to me that Obama is reporting the rate of criminal records across the entire pool (both voluntary and involuntary), whereas the sources you're quoting are restricting it to the involuntary pool (since in their mind, the voluntary pool doesn't count).
But let me return to capoliticalnews. The reason you don't use an advocacy site as a source in a fact-based debate is that when they get caught misrepresenting the truth, as they're wont to do, you end up owning it. I doubt you have the grace to admit that you were wrong regarding Obama-era DOJ immigration enforcement, or that you're embarrassed by a source you relied on, but you are in the first case, and should be in the second.
stu, since you're relying on the report of the lib-left Texas Tribune (by a number of conservative accounts--though they could be correct in this case) and the Obama administration's DHS spokesman's claims, there's a report by the right-leaning Judicial Watch on the general unreliability of DHS info. They quote what they say is "a nonpartisan New York-based data research center, Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), [that] provides detailed information about the operation of hundreds of government agencies. Immigration is one of many areas it researches." Among the results of TRAC's case-by-case analysis of ICE's deportation claims we have Judicial Watch's summary:
"For the better part of the last two years TRAC has been engaged in a fierce legal battle with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) over records involving the agency’s enforcement activities. After repeatedly getting stonewalled, TRAC was recently provided with some of the documents involving statistics of individuals who had been arrested, detained, charged, returned or removed from the country during a specific period.
Although ICE is still withholding much of the information, the files that have been furnished so far reveal 'vast discrepancies' in many areas, according to a case-by-case analysis conducted by TRAC. The initial probe reveals that official ICE statements claimed 34 times more detentions, 24 times more deportations and almost five times more apprehensions than its own data. This certainly indicates that ICE knowingly lied to lawmakers and the press to embellish its enforcement activities.
For instance, during a one-year period that ICE claimed it detained 233,417 individuals it really only detained 6,778, according to agency’s own records. That same year, ICE said it deported 166,075 people when it really only deported 6,906 and it only apprehended 21,339 compared to claims that it had apprehended 102,034."
http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2012/01/ices-own-data-fails-to-back-enforcement-claims/
I haven't checked out the veracity of the DHS spokesman's claim that the Obama administration's criteria for counting deportation figures (including voluntary ones) is no different than that of the Bush administration (which I acknowledged would be a pertinent point, though beside the point in another sense).
Obama's and Holder's corrupt DOJ already has an "impressive" record of refusing to provide petitioned data and subpoenaed witnesses' testimonies to Congressional oversight committees, of making blatantly false statements (as in the Fast and Furious scandal, in which they lied to Congress that there was no such programme all the while DOJ officials were discussing how to spin down the F &F damage they did that have taken the lives of hundreds of Mexicans and two US Customs agents--and the damage continues), and attempting to punish whistle-blowers--e.g., ATF agents, so I think there's at least room for scepticism about reports from Obama administration agencies.
Yes, stu, I had already conceded that my initial source was a site that took a polemical line, but that Rep Alexander's testimony (if quoted accurately) was not of the same level of implausibility.
Whether the Bush administration's counting procedures are no different from the Obama administration's I'd not quite accept yet (though earlier I thought it a pertinent point); it's plausible I suppose if one accepts without question one DHS spokesman's claims. However, the AG and the supportive Ds have spun Fast and Furious as no different than a much more cautious Bush administration programme ("Wide Receiver"), though this claim turned out to be false, as admitted even by the AG after some pretty sharp House questioning. So no, there's some evidence that we can't always take Obama's officials' words at face value. And I don't claim the Judicial Watch's claims as a refutation to the ICE stats, only a challenge. You may accept them as "unrefuted" if you wish.
what a wierdly warped weave of words and phrases and figures and facts i'm aboot had it as the canadian would say
que mai writes poetry
this much i know
i will seek out and steal one of her poems
heh heh heh
jh
I apologize for taking so long to tget your admirable commentary up here JADL, I was busy reading a biography of Philippe Soupault -- my favorite of the surrealists. H ewas in an elevator with Hitler in 1933 and wished he had had a revolver as he already knew what would happen, or so he claimed. But would we? Perhaps we'd see him as a heel had he done so at that point.
Things power along.
The debate last night unsettled Santorum's surge many say as ron Paul stuck it to him for being a fake.
Alabama's unemployment way down thanks to the mass exodus of illegals.
That's good.
Families of illegals quite broken up. That's bad.
A Christian pastor in Iran will die for apostacy. His parents were Muslims, whichmeans he's not allowed to change. Lutherans and Catholcis were like that for a while. 500 years ago.
Equality and liberty have some catching up to do within Islam.
But it's not polite to say anything. Meanwhile, Nubian Christians are being slaughtered. But it's not polite to bring this up.
Let's instead focus on Santorum's evil pronouncements. He's for the equality of the unborn.
I apologize for taking so long to tget your admirable commentary up here JADL, I was busy reading a biography of Philippe Soupault -- my favorite of the surrealists. H ewas in an elevator with Hitler in 1933 and wished he had had a revolver as he already knew what would happen, or so he claimed. But would we? Perhaps we'd see him as a heel had he done so at that point.
Things power along.
The debate last night unsettled Santorum's surge many say as ron Paul stuck it to him for being a fake.
Alabama's unemployment way down thanks to the mass exodus of illegals.
That's good.
Families of illegals quite broken up. That's bad.
A Christian pastor in Iran will die for apostacy. His parents were Muslims, whichmeans he's not allowed to change. Lutherans and Catholcis were like that for a while. 500 years ago.
Equality and liberty have some catching up to do within Islam.
But it's not polite to say anything. Meanwhile, Nubian Christians are being slaughtered. But it's not polite to bring this up.
Let's instead focus on Santorum's evil pronouncements. He's for the equality of the unborn.
i think he's for the liberty of the unborn
why should'nt any human being enjoy one of our god given rights
what a strange place for a politician to be right in the middle of things that nobody seems to talk much about anymore
i mean you barely hear the word abortion anymore and it used to be the red light topic flashing red light
doesn't obama possess the best of both liberty and equality
i mean he's not even american and he gets to call the shots
plus he's a bad lawyer
wanted to help kids in terrible neighborhoods do better
what a jerk
i mean those kids can get along ok by themselves why wasn't he writing huge legal briefs
i think he's sueing the US govt that's right he's so clever and so upset he's literally sueing the hell out of america...by thinking americans should have a hand in helping the porest in our midst
the glitz rich is pretty ugly in america i don't care what anyone says it's garish...those folks should tone it down a few notches
ahem
where was i
oh yeah
time for bed
adios
jh
que mai writes poetry
this much i know
i will seek out and steal one of her poems
Her poems are all written in Vietnamese. Bruce Weigl is an excellent poet, deeply influenced by Richard Hugo, but his translations of Que Mai are his best work. Terrific compression. She translates his poems into Vietnamese.
Kirby, the Soupault anecdote about his proximity on an elevator in 1933 to Hitler you related is a fascinating toy of thought--if only . . . !
I'll agree with stu that advocacy sites in general are dicey with regard to interpreting data, though some (I'd argue, like Judicial Watch in this case) are better than others. And perhaps in some cases advocacy sites can be more forthright and honest in expressing their views than conventional news media opinion sources in which data, testimonies, and reporters' commentaries are cunningly and tendentiously blended to produce a preconceived result.
In the case of the Judicial Watch report I cited on illegal immigration statistics, JW's link to the TRAC analysts seems to attest to its bona fides in JW's summary statements. And it does seem that TRAC is a legitimate research operation that is represented in a linked FOIA request letter to the ICE-DHS by two Syracuse U academics that details their frustration with those agencies' stonewalling and lack of co-operation in providing the info they've repeatedly (since 2010) requested. The partial data that has been provided and analysed so far mostly seem to deal with files dating back to 2004-05 from the Bush administration, so this presents a new potential problem for stu if he wishes to persist in claiming (on the basis of sole DHS spokesman that Obama administration apprehension, deportation, etc. counting procedures are no different from those of the Bush administration. TRAC's letter (that stu especially might find of technical interest) may be read here:
http://trac.syr.edu/foia/ice/20120104/2012-01-04_TRAC_appeal.pdf
In light of the latest manufactured Muslim outrage about Quran-burning in Afghanistan, we also read what rough justice hands out to those who insult Islam . . . in Pennsylvania!
http://www.opposingviews.com/i/society/crime/muslim-admits-attacking-atheist-muslim-judge-dismisses-case
The story concludes:
"That a Muslim immigrant can assault a United States citizen in defense of his religious beliefs and walk away a free man, while the victim is chastised and insulted by a Muslim judge who then blamed the victim for the crime committed against him is a horrible abrogation."
Kirby, I know live close to the Pennsylvania border, so if you're in the habit of traveling there, take care not to stray into the jurisdiction of that bloody idiot of a judge who tried this case!
JADL's deep looks into deportation figures strike me as worthy of further investigation. 34 times exaggerations are about what I'd think was right for Democratic figures, including votes within heavily Democratic areas where fraud is the norm. The Climate gate lies are another strong indicator of attempt to defraud the country into false beliefs. How to fight these things with the First and Second Amendments themselves hanging in the balance. The peace negotations with the Taliban are getting surprisingly little publicity meanwhile. Will they have the right to commit gynocide against the 9 million newly literate women in their country? Will it be considered an internal matter by the Obama administration (it could be said that he himself is an apostate at best). Lots going on.
Soupault asked for an interview with Hitler and was denied. Hitler didn't do interviews with French journalists.
Hitler is the beginning of a return toward tribalism in contemporary politics. Race, gender, class affiliations, which attempt to demolish anyone and everyone else.
Kirby and all: sorry for the typos agreement errors, and omissions in my last few posts.
so jh, yeah, obama's not only pushed abortion, but occasional infanticide, though i admit, yes, he did want to help kids in terrible neighborhoods, like when his admin cut the rug out from under a DC school voucher programme for deprived kids, so yeah again, he's making us all feel better by spreading the misery around. . . .
Just one example of what the Syracuse U researchers' FOIA letter I linked to in their analyses of what info was released by to them by ICE:
"Unfortunately, it is also unclear whether ICE was successful in assigning unique sequence numbers to each individual. We found in the spreadsheets we received an
inexplicable number of duplicate records – records supposedly about the same individual but where all information in separate records was identical. For example, one of the files provided information about the mother, father, spouse, and other relatives for each individual. However, using the ICE-assigned sequence numbers to identify records about the same individual, the file showed that typically individuals had multiple mothers, multiple fathers, and multiple spouses. This seems highly improbable [!]. Indeed, the information in one entry showed that the individual in question had 27 fathers [!]. Another entry showed an individual with 40 mothers [!]. The individual in a third entry had 26 spouses, all of whom that person appeared to have been currently married to [!]."
Time to call stu's DHS spokesman, I reckon.
I'm having trouble with typos too. Typing on an old machine that doesn't allow me to correct without lots of hooey. I just sned the comments through. I think we can deal with it. I had no idea about the extent of the lies and exaggerations in Obama's ICE, but am not surprised. Whenever you're dealing with communists you're also dealing with lies because they don't care about the truth, and don't believe in it. Useful fictions is their operating norm, and so you just realize that whatever they say is some variety of advertising for their cause and has no relationship to any factual world of empirical reality and good only for their dupes.
Problems such as a ballooning deficit are not likely even to be believed by them as they think of it as some kind of counter-factual advertisement for the other side. Money itself is a fiction. Everything becomes a fiction, and there are no facts, and those that do exist exist only to be manipulated.
If warm weather is to a good thing, there is warm weather, even if it is 40 below in Finland this year. Such truths are conveniently shuttled to one side, and more convenient truths forced to the service.
Perhaps the most egregious truth is that of the new tribalism: race, gender, class, in which anything that fits the vengeance model that they prefer is rushed into print. Anything that tends toward pushing a merit-based evaluation is pushed into the background.
It was identical in the days of the Hitlerites in which the Nazi race was judged supreme even as they had to witness Jesse Owens at their own Olympics.
Today it is the supremacy of women, their legendary kindness, etc. that is pushed, while Countess Bathory is never mentioned, or if she is, it is only when some greater criminal tends to mitigate her crimes against humanity.
This kind of tribalism is the new truth.
Against this, the Republicans, or so it seems to me, are trying to find a new format in the old one of seeing a soul in each person, and that every person is made in the image of God -- the old Protestant mythos that led to democracy.
And that led to both liberty and equality.
Those who push vengeance try to unite their ground around some hurt. And then create an us vs. them mentality. It's happened not only in Al Qaeda and in the Nazi regime but in race circles in the US (not only for the blacks but also for the whites under the form of counter-discrimination). Naturally,e very side can point to something that has been done to them. But to insist that this is the true uniter under the format of equality is somehow wrong, and I think we have to continue to insist on TRUTH, and on JUSTICE FOR ALL, as other aspects of American legitimacy that must not be swept under a rug by our new demagogues such as BO and his creepy new justices Kagan and Sotomayor.
Some kind of impartiality must be brought back under a new moniker: perhaps not Protestantism, but we need a new term or set of terms to which all can point as legitimations of their thought, so that we can begin to speak again as a nation, rather than as factions of winner take all fascisms.
craig thanks for the weigl flag
something to pursue
mnemnotically
jh
How again did the vietnamese poet surface in this conversation? does she have something to contribute to our understanding of liberty and equality? Is she down with the communist regime there in Ho Chi Minh City? Lots of poets are under arrest in Vietnam, esp. if they are Christians.
JADL, Kirby,
The Judicial Watch article that JADL referred to does not only refer to the TRAC study, it links to it.
TRAC: ICE Targets Fewer Criminals in Deportation Proceedings.
It is clear from the title of the article (as well as its content) that the TRAC data considers only actual deportation hearings, i.e., only “involuntary” deportations. It seems reasonable to suppose that both Obama and the ICE's statistics refer to the (evidently much larger) pool that includes “voluntary” deportations as well. Here, I am using scare quotes because both cases are in fact involuntary, the actual distinction is whether the person being deported chose to fully exercise their legal rights by having a deportation hearing.
It is reasonable to assume that the the “voluntary” and “involuntary” pools are very different from one another: the “involuntary” subpool after all is self-selected for those people who believe they might actually win the deportation hearing.
I do think that the TRAC authors could have done a better job of clarifying this distinction, but I do have some sympathy for them, given the difficulty of getting information out of any police agency, FOIA or not. And just to be clear here, this is not an Obama-era aberation, but an essentially universal aspect of all police forces in all countries at all times.
But again, it well established at this point that the “case” that the DOJ/ICE are misrepresenting deportation statistics relies on confusing the “involuntary” pool and its statistical characteristics with the total pool. Greater transparency on the part of ICE could help here, but I doubt we'll see it, police forces being what they are.
But there is a further point here that seems well worth making. If you guys discover some “fact” that looks bad for Obama, you can't help but echo it back and forth and high-five one another. You don't dig deeper, you don't try to understand, you don't the “fact” in context. It is so much easier to stop and say, “Obama is lying,” than it is to deal with the possibility that he's telling the truth, and it's the “fact” that is lying.
While I'm at it, I'd like to point out another google “hit” based on the Lamar Alexander quote:
Media matters: NRO's Krikorian Tries To Move The Goal Posts In Immigration Debate
The punchline to the article makes the point very effectively. It doesn't matter what Obama has done (and in the context of immigration enforcement, he's done quite a lot), nor how far this goes beyond the efforts of previous administrations in effort and efficacy. You guys will never be satisfied so long as Obama's administration is doing it.
The underlying facts don't matter to you. What matters is that Obama is President, which means that you lost the only debate that mattered in 2008. Well, it's 2012 now, and we're not arguing to convince one another, but rather the independents. It will be interesting to see how they score the debate in November.
Kirby, I know you don't have time to read all the articles we link to, so that's why I sometimes include excerpts from my sources.
Obama's complaints about "divisive politics" might rather reveal his thirst for the "unitary" variety. He's (purposely?) neglected to appoint Inspector Generals (12 positions are currently vacant) that could provide more scrutiny and real transparency (unlike his empty and false electioneering promises touting himself as transparency's guarantor) to the workings of his Chicago mafia-style approach to presiding. Our Capo-in-Chief, Don Signor Obama has even attempted to draw the current IGs closer underneath his executive wing, though he seems to prefer rule through unconfirmed "czars" (and to Whom alone did the Russian variety owe their ascendancy and responsibility?), who are completely his own creatures. He fired one IG in 2009 who was investigating a corruption case against one of his political bagmen, forced the retirement of another IG, and interfered with the investigations of a third.
Likewise, his thoroughly corrupt DOJ headed by our chief national legal disgrace, AG Eric "my- people-americans-are-cowards-about-race" Holder.
Another Obama admin example of what "transparency" is worth to it is the shameful case of Dr Peter Gleick (now subject to an FBI investigation it seems), whom I alluded to earlier (link provided above). Perhaps Gleick "no-like" the number of high-profile scientists and others who've been peeling off the CAGW cause (including recently a Nobel physics laureate). The EPA that gushed praise over a grant of 468K a couple of days ago to Gleick's little second-storey-above-the-dressmaker's-shop climate grant shakedown operation (whew!) with the magnificently modest name "The Pacific Institute" (rumbling sounds in background) apparently just scrubbed the announcement from the EPA's official website rather than explain. In this case, as in many more, Obama admin prefers silent evanescence over transparency. It's easier.
JADL, thanks for actual quotes. I am indeed far behind the 8-ball in this discussion. I'm also reading about a hundred student papers, the Soupault biography, and trying to make some headway in the Santorum tome. So far, I've read the first paragraph of that book (it was published in 2005 and it seems that Obama or someone in his camp read it and used it as part of the clinging to guns and religion phrase?):
"A large part of the district I represented as a freshman congressman in 1993-1994 was the old steel valley southeast of Pittsburgh. Unlike, say, Silicon Valley, this was not an area bursing with new jobs and economic opportunity. The little mill towns along the Monongahela River looked more like ghost towns. Unlike most congressional Republicans, I represented a lot of people who were poor, but with rich traditions; bitter, but still proud. They also, increasingly, didn't have much hope. My main district office was in the heart of one of those mill towns, McKeesport. Almost every day my staff and I dealt with chronic problems of poverty and despair that were the result of economic dislocation that was only made worse by a liberal vision of how to return those areas to their former glory. The liberal vision wasn't working. So what was the conservative vision? What was my vision?"
Us versus them isn't necessarily always the optimal means for resolving long standing disputes and removing obstacles to achieving the promise of something better than reliving past tragedies as farce. I'm simply pointing out that I had a chance to attend a poetry reading at a university campus two days ago and I took that chance. It's the first time I've actually visited a college campus in the twelve years I've been here and it was by invitation from a British painter/poet who read poems last year at a festival in Hanoi at the Temple of Literature. The Vietnamese poet who read two days ago here in Manila was instrumental in creating that opportunity.
It probably has more to do with Surrealism than some kind of ridiculous tug of war between Liberty and Equality. Viet Nam was a French colony for roughly a century and the French were initially welcomed as something potentially preferable to colonial domination by China. The masses had fairly limited exposure to French thought and culture as much of the population was more concerned with growing rice and making pottery than worrying the niceties of European political theories. That exposure was filtered through an educated elite that underwent a change around 1932 when the educated elite in Viet Nam began acquiring a taste for modern rather than classical French poetry.
If the United States had "won" the war in Viet Nam it would likely have resulted eventually in education for the masses in English, just as it did in the Philippines when the end of Spanish rule created the possibility and now the reality of mass education conducted in English. Many of the schools in the Philippines receive students from neighboring countries where English is not the primary language of instruction, and the students come in droves because a university education in English still has cachet throughout most of Asia. Mastery of English remains the surest route, if not to social equality, at least to social mobiity. The realization that race, gender and class are components of that notion of mobility is a relatively small price to pay for the liberty that mobility entails.
stu, you're at least right to say that "we're not arguing to convince one another, but rather the independents"; nevertheless, it's helpful to test our arguments against our opposition, and I think you and Brett usually seem in pretty good nick as opponents.
Hyperbole and humour are often served up to promote our topical casus belli of the day (e.g., your initial post on this thread), and as you also point out, Kirby shouldn't reserve to himself all the fun (the inimitable jh often sees to that).
But given that this a crucial election year, it's also helpful (as in the last midterm elections) for our side to wage our campaign in the old "Roman" way, as in the Third Carthaginian War (as was said about the late great literary critic F R Leavis, who sallied forth against what he called "technologico-Benthamite civilisation"), that is, not only to assault the city, but also to storm the citadel, sow salt on the fields, and sell the entire population into slavery. For a start.
On the Gleick scandal, he's shot his bolt backwards into his own face, perhaps fatally, and though the scientific and political left are retreating and dragging their wounded into their small citadel in this affair (hoping perhaps for some relief from the corrupt major media and from liberal cap-'n'-trade politicians), the old Roman Sceptics at present have them surrounded. Rep Ed Markey (D-MA, from the House Natural Resources Committee) is making some bellicose gestures at the Heartland Institute and is trying to stick his nose into what is now a law enforcement and judicial matter, but the "consensus" argument on the sceptical sites (as on the most viewed climate blog site in the country, "What's Up With That?" is politely requesting Mr Markey kindly to . . . . "Bugger off!"
JADL,
I see the Heartland controversy as a mirror image of the East Anglia imbroglio, which is to say, true believers don't believe that the rules apply to them, and this is now established to be true of both sides. In both cases, advocates used unethical techniques to obtain internal documents from the opposition for the purpose of embarrassing it. What goes around comes around, and I'm inclined to view this interchange as a draw, albeit one that was personally and professionally damaging (and entirely unnecessarily so) for Glieck. I know that you're inclined to view both as being fundamentally embarrassing to the scientific consensus, but in light of the underlying symmetries, this simply cannot be.
In particular, for you to portray the Heartland memos as being forgeries is blowing smoke. That one of the documents is a probable forgery is accepted by both sides, and this is extremely damaging to Glieck; but that there are numerous other documents from Heartland whose veracity is unchallenged, and which are more embarrassing to it, is is also granted by both sides. Heartland is not driven by a search for the truth, it only cares about serving its anonymous donor, and this is now established beyond all doubt.
In the meantime, whether global warming/climate change is real is not a question of political opinion, but rather scientific fact. Unfortunately for all of us, the real world will arbitrate this question, not popular opinion. And there is a clear scientific consensus (the lack of perfect unanimity notwithstanding) that global climate change is real, and that anthropogenic activities are the principal forcing agent. Again, it is blowing smoke to claim otherwise, a few scientific skeptics (and a much smaller set of scientific deniers) notwithstanding.
In the meantime, there's a nice article up on RealClimate debunking the recent Wall Street Journal editorial: Bickmore on the WSJ response. The discussion of error analysis, and the omission of its consideration by the WSJ editorial, is especially important, clearly conveyed, and utterly damning.
Now, I know that you'll immediately weigh in that RealClimate is an advocacy site, and I'd agree. But I also think we've established in the foregoing debate that there are advocacy sites, and there are advocacy sites, e.g., while both capoliticalnews.com and judicialwatch.org are conservative advocacy sites, the later is worthy of respect and consideration, the former is worthy of neither. In this, I'd put RealClimate as being on a par with judicialwatch.org, albeit liberal in precisely the sense that the real world has a liberal bias.
stu, thanks for the linked source. While I think the WSJ should have published the Bickmore rejoinder (the sceptical meteorologist Anthony Watts on the WUWT climate blog site regularly invites and publishes contrary "guest warmist" opinions, and "Climate Debate Daily," run by two New Zealand academics, juxtaposes the two views in parallel columns, despite complaints from warmists that sceptics should not be allowed such privileges to publish), I also think the letter seems to rely mostly for its supposed "punch" the well-worn and in some ways anti-scientific "consensus" argument and the statements of editorial boards of scientific societies like the APS. The recent withdrawal from the APS by Nobel Prize laureate Ivar Giaever and the note on the hundreds of dissenting scientists objecting to the blatantly science-is-settled "consensus" claims like those of the APS may be found here:
http://www.climatedepot.com/a/12797/Exclusive-Nobel-PrizeWinning-Physicist-Who-Endorsed-Obama-Dissents-Resigns-from-American-Physical-Society-Over-Groups-Promotion-of-ManMade-Global-Warming
At any rate, the small Bickmore piece is in no way "utterly damning." One of the sceptical sites treating statistical matters relevant to the AGW issue is Steven McIntyre's "Climate Audit," though recent entries are taken up with the Gleick scandal.
I'll agree at least that the ClimateGate affair at the Climate Research Unit of the U of East Anglia and the Gleick scandal are both damaging to AGW "consensus" supporters, but there are significant differences. The source for the caches of emails published in the ClimateGate affair is yet unknown and may well have been an inside "whistleblower," unlike Dr Gleick, who was a enemy of Heartland (though they graciously offered him the opportunity to air his views at HI--and a fee for doing it) and quite arguably has committed several crimes in his clumsy scheme that backfired. Further, the Heartland Institute is a private organisation and therefore is not subject to FOIA requests, while the CRU is publicly-funded and therefore subject to FOIA requests, though they had been stonewalling legitimate FOIA requests for years (documented repeatedly and meticulously by McIntyre). The thousands of published emails reveal a conspiratorial bent among AGW scientists to deny sceptics access to peer-reviewed journals, to punish editors of such journals if they dared publish papers of sceptical scientists (several editors were so punished when they did), to delete damaging correspondence that might impugn their AGW case, to use "tricks" to hide apparently contrary evidence, etc.
That said, I'll agree also that advocacy sites differ in plausibility and polemical fervor. I happened to choose a polemical one like capoliticalnews.com (first time I'd seen it) more or less at random for the remarks of Rep Alexander.
Accusations of forgery on the part of Dr Gleick (a hydrologist) are not at all "blowing smoke," as the following piece indicates:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/02/23/fakegate_global_warmists_try_to_hide_their_decline_113225.html
As the above source indicates, the damaging two-page memo is quite obviously a clumsy forgery, whether or not Gleick can beat the rap for concocting it. I'll agree that the other documents can be damaging to Heartland, but only because of the personal info stolen by Gleick, not by any revelation of Heartland's treachery; but if you've evidence of this please link to it or present a plausible argument for it.
What is listed as a "neutral" site, Dr Judith Curry's "Climate, Etc."
stu, thanks for the linked source. While I think the WSJ should have published the Bickmore rejoinder (the sceptical meteorologist Anthony Watts on the WUWT climate blog site regularly invites and publishes contrary "guest warmist" opinions, and "Climate Debate Daily," run by two New Zealand academics, juxtaposes the two views in parallel columns, despite complaints from warmists that sceptics should not be allowed such privileges to publish), I also think the letter seems to rely mostly for its supposed "punch" the well-worn and in some ways anti-scientific "consensus" argument and the statements of editorial boards of scientific societies like the APS. The recent withdrawal from the APS by Nobel Prize laureate Ivar Giaever and the note on the hundreds of dissenting scientists objecting to the blatantly science-is-settled "consensus" claims like those of the APS may be found here:
http://www.climatedepot.com/a/12797/Exclusive-Nobel-PrizeWinning-Physicist-Who-Endorsed-Obama-Dissents-Resigns-from-American-Physical-Society-Over-Groups-Promotion-of-ManMade-Global-Warming
At any rate, the small Bickmore piece is in no way "utterly damning." One of the sceptical sites treating statistical matters relevant to the AGW issue is Steven McIntyre's "Climate Audit," though recent entries are taken up with the Gleick scandal.
I'll agree at least that the ClimateGate affair at the Climate Research Unit of the U of East Anglia and the Gleick scandal are both damaging to AGW "consensus" supporters, but there are significant differences. The source for the caches of emails published in the ClimateGate affair is yet unknown and may well have been an inside "whistleblower," unlike Dr Gleick, who was a enemy of Heartland (though they graciously offered him the opportunity to air his views at HI--and a fee for doing it) and quite arguably has committed several crimes in his clumsy scheme that backfired. Further, the Heartland Institute is a private organisation and therefore is not subject to FOIA requests, while the CRU is publicly-funded and therefore subject to FOIA requests, though they had been stonewalling legitimate FOIA requests for years (documented repeatedly and meticulously by McIntyre). The thousands of published emails reveal a conspiratorial bent among AGW scientists to deny sceptics access to peer-reviewed journals, to punish editors of such journals if they dared publish papers of sceptical scientists (several editors were so punished when they did), to delete damaging correspondence that might impugn their AGW case, to use "tricks" to hide apparently contrary evidence, etc.
That said, I'll agree also that advocacy sites differ in plausibility and polemical fervor. I happened to choose a polemical one like capoliticalnews.com (first time I'd seen it) more or less at random for the remarks of Rep Alexander.
Accusations of forgery on the part of Dr Gleick (a hydrologist) are not at all "blowing smoke," as the following piece indicates:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/02/23/fakegate_global_warmists_try_to_hide_their_decline_113225.html
As the above source indicates, the damaging two-page memo is quite obviously a clumsy forgery, whether or not Gleick can beat the rap for concocting it. I'll agree that the other documents can be damaging to Heartland, but only because of the personal info stolen by Gleick, not by any revelation of Heartland's treachery; but if you've evidence of this please link to it or present a plausible argument for it.
What is listed as a "neutral" site, Dr Judith Curry's "Climate, Etc."
Liberty doesn't necessarily mean libertine excess, and equality shouldn't necessarily mean everyone gets the same salary whether they work or not. I've now read the first four chapters of Santorum's book It Takes A Family. It's a very easy and good read. It is firming up some of my ideas that have been floating around without quite gelling. His basic argument is that we have these gnostic village elders who are giving us toxic information about how to live. Most of them haven't got their own kids, or have them raised by maids. He thinks for most of us, family is the only thing we've got, and all the major institutions are trying to disestablish that rugged institution in order to consolidate their power over us. "Can you imagine Hollywood, the media, and university faculty communicating the value of selflessness, commitment, faith, virtue, and a keen sense of right and wrong?" (page 20). Imagine Madonna or Lady Gag-Gag or the Rolling Stones communicating those values, much less the Zizeks and such of academia communicating those values!
Liberty doesn't necessarily mean libertine excess, and equality shouldn't necessarily mean everyone gets the same salary whether they work or not. I've now read the first four chapters of Santorum's book It Takes A Family. It's a very easy and good read. It is firming up some of my ideas that have been floating around without quite gelling. His basic argument is that we have these gnostic village elders who are giving us toxic information about how to live. Most of them haven't got their own kids, or have them raised by maids. He thinks for most of us, family is the only thing we've got, and all the major institutions are trying to disestablish that rugged institution in order to consolidate their power over us. "Can you imagine Hollywood, the media, and university faculty communicating the value of selflessness, commitment, faith, virtue, and a keen sense of right and wrong?" (page 20). Imagine Madonna or Lady Gag-Gag or the Rolling Stones communicating those values, much less the Zizeks and such of academia communicating those values!
Social Justice has its own Wiki page I just learned at the Althouse blog. I read it, and was grossed out. I think the top problem is that it ERASES liberty in order to create equality, making the government into the nanny who makes certain that everyone shares. The criticism of Social Justice was not very good in the WIKI article, but they did give this sentence:
"On the other hand, some scholars reject the very idea of social justice as meaningless, religious, self-contradictory, and ideological, believing that to realize any degree of social justice is unfeasible, and that the attempt to do so must destroy all liberty. The most complete rejection of the concept of social justice comes from Friedrich Hayek of the Austrian School of economics:
There can be no test by which we can discover what is 'socially unjust' because there is no subject by which such an injustice can be committed, and there are no rules of individual conduct the observance of which in the market order would secure to the individuals and groups the position which as such (as distinguished from the procedure by which it is determined) would appear just to us. [Social justice] does not belong to the category of error but to that of nonsense, like the term `a moral stone'.[24]"
The main problem of course is that it allows an idiot like Kim Jong-Il to be the One to reapportion. Since all people are fallen, it allows government to be the top dog, and the top dog is still always a dog. This is the main problem with Catholic theology stemming from St. Augustine. Not enough emphasis on the fallenness of humanity, and so not enough of a sense of checks and balances.
We need checks, but in order for them to be valid, we need balances.
This whole Social gospel thing is an invitation to tyranny.
Perhaps there is an antidote within Catholicism. Or some kind of countermovement. I wish I knew.
I'm in favor of democracy, and thus liberty and freedom for all. Which means I don't want government to control everything as Obama and his supporters seem to mindlessly want: even to the extent of wanting to destroy all opposition. I want justice for individuals, and don't want it determined by a corrupt Chicago politician and his partisan AG.
Oops, I meant to say St. Aquinas. Augustine has a better view of fallenness. People are 98% selfish. So to allow one person to be the control of all inaugurates 1984. Every time.
Kirby, thanks for your report on the "gnostic villages elders" who in telling others how to live seem so keen of sight out-of-doors and so blind at home.
On those who fancy they're saving families from themselves, here's a report from Ontario on how nanny-state operatives (a teacher, a school principal, a social services representative, and five police) "cooperated" to arrest a young father of two children who had come to school to pick up his four year-old daughter from school, subject him to a strip-search, try to force him to authorise a warrantless search of his house they had already made, take his wife to the police station for questioning, take away his children to social services for questioning, etc., on a sole piece of "evidence": his four-year daughter had drawn in crayon a picture of a gun with which, when interrogated by the pre-kindergarten teacher, the little girl said showed how her father protected her from "bad people" and "monsters."
Of course there was no gun, and even if the young man had owned one legally, there would be absolutely no justification for the actions of any of these infernal meddlers.
"Ontario Dad arrested after daughter draws picture of a gun"
http://blazingcatfur.blogspot.com/
stu, a link I didn't have space to provide earlier is a pdf file of a Richard Lindzen (I think his full title worth one mention, though this is not meant to serve as an argumentum ad auctoritatem: Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology, Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology) presentation he only just made to the British Parliament on climate change:
"Stated briefly, I will simply try to clarify what the debate over climate change is really about. It most certainly is not about whether climate is changing: it always is. It is not about whether CO2 is increasing: it clearly is. It is not about whether the increase in CO2, by itself, will lead to some warming: it should. The debate is simply over the matter of how much warming the increase in CO2 can lead to, and the connection of such warming to the innumerable claimed catastrophes. The evidence is that the increase in CO2 will lead to very little warming, and that the connection of this minimal warming (or even significant warming) to the purported catastrophes is also minimal. The arguments on which the catastrophic claims are made are extremely weak – and commonly acknowledged as such. They are sometimes overtly dishonest."
Much of the controversy he takes up seems to concern the differential claims about feedback effects on warming and how reliable climate modelling efforts are as well as how do do good and bad things with graphs (to employ the philosopher J A Austin's language).
Lindzen concludes with a bit of scepticism about the term "skeptic" itself:
"Perhaps we should stop accepting the term, ‘skeptic.’ Skepticism implies doubts about a plausible proposition. Current global warming alarm hardly represents a plausible proposition. Twenty years of repetition and escalation of claims does not make it more plausible. Quite the contrary, the failure to improve the case over 20 years makes the case even less plausible as does the evidence from climategate and other instances of overt cheating."
Kirby, you preempted my protest about St Augustine (as opposed to St Thomas Aquinas). St Thomas is a great philosopher and I think I'd agree that his work in general (in combining revelation and reason) treats man as not so much a fallen creature, but following Aristotle especially (though there are strong Platonic strains in his work), a creature of reason.
And in general again, I'm on board with the "two kingdoms" idea and pretty suspicious of the "social Gospel" one.
JADL,
The source for the caches of emails published in the ClimateGate affair is yet unknown
Dissembling. Climate skeptic Roger Tattersall is under investigation for having hacked into the East Anglia servers, as are several of his confederates. It is true that he has not been charged or convicted, but it is also true that there was sufficient evidence to seize his computers.
It is also well established at this point that the East Anglia server was hacked into.
Further, the Heartland Institute is a private organisation and therefore is not subject to FOIA requests, while the CRU is publicly-funded and therefore subject to FOIA requests, though they had been stonewalling legitimate FOIA requests for years (documented repeatedly and meticulously by McIntyre).
You do understand that East Anglia is in the UK?
Accusations of forgery on the part of Dr Gleick (a hydrologist) are not at all "blowing smoke," as the following piece indicates
Martin Luther says that we should always put the best possible construction on our brother's speech, so I'll assume that you responded to "blowing smoke" without actually bothering to read what I wrote. Let me suggest that you go back and read what I wrote with care, and you'll understand just how inappropriate your "rebuttal" is.
My main beef with global warming is that it is another thinly disguised attempt to get government control to grow into new areas so as to seize assets and make government stronger and individuals weaker. The agenda might as well say SKYLAB on it.
Kirby,
My main beef with global warming is that it is another thinly disguised attempt to get government control to grow into new areas so as to seize assets and make government stronger and individuals weaker.
Which is to day that, because the response required of us as stewards of God's good creation in response to global warming is to consume less energy in the short run, and to find energy sources that do not inject carbon into the atomosphere in the long run, is inconvenient to you, you find it preferrable to invoke government overreach as an excuse to exempt you from your obligations, without actually considering the question on its merits.
The problem, Stu, is that I'm simply unable to determine anything about the validity of the data. The validity of the data is being pushed from behind by a need for data that supports global warming. Anyone who would go against this would lose funding. Something similar happens when someone researches differences in IQ among races. Their funding disappears unless they tow the party line. This has happened everywhere in academia. You either play ball with the left, or you are left out. There are a few older profs who buck the trends, as their funding is assured. Everyone else is terrified and plays ball.
I was talking with my mom on the phone today (she's 80 and is a retired first grade teacher who served 25 years in the Penns. system and is a staunch Democrat) and she said Pennsylvania has had a 860 million dollar cut to public education. In addition, there was a further cut of 240 million to the higher education system. Temple, Penn State, and other places in PA were hit quite hard -- some to about 20% of the total budget. PA spends about 25 billion on public education, but tax receipts are way down, and unemployment high. Republican Governor Tom Corbett has axed about 4% from public education, but has been willing to fund charter schools. There are lots of those in the Philadelphia region (about a hundred of them). It's hard to know what all this means since I haven't got a sense of the larger picture (I don't live in PA). On the one hand, the fervor of the sixties revolutionaries incited them to take over public education. It has helped their causes, but it hasn't helped education. At colleges, most students who go in as believers come out as atheists. I suppose the left would say that's good progress. Some colleges' humanities departments don't have a single Republican. I suppose the left would say that's good. (At Duke it was 500 leftists to 3 Republicans.) Party affiliation is a matter of public record so it's easy to check. Even in playschool my children were asked to sing songs against George Bush. I found it hilarious, but obviously, wrong. the kindergarten teacher even took it upon herself to tell our 5-year-old that Santa Claus was a capitalist plot to push toys and was an advertising phenomenon and that under a truly just system children would gt new toys every day from the government. She had to repeat this back to the teacher to be sure she got it right. She did, but didn't understand what half the words meant and I wasn't telling her. I just said the teacher was a liar and left it at that.
Why would Republican administrators want to fund such ideologically monolithic places especially if students aren't being taught to think for themselves, but only to parrot the party line? Most of the work in the humanities now has taken up "social justice" as its cri-de-coeur for "relevance." But the problem with "social justice" is that it requires a totalitarian state to administer it. That is, total equality means the total denial of liberty. and if you must parrot the party line to get a decent grade, how are you learning anything? Or so that's the argument of the right ever since Hayek and his Road to Serfdom (1943). The proper goal of an education should be less ideological and more involved with teaching the basic skills. Out of some 125 students that I teach in college each semester, I would say that only one in ten can write a decent sentence. Only one in about fifty knows the difference between their, there, and they're. Its and it's are mixed willy nilly by at least 99%. 99% of the students would not be able to put together a powerful and convincing argument on a difficult topic. When I do occasionally get an original and moving essay or story I always go to turnitin.com and look for the proof of plagiarism. So much for the 99% of the 1%. Still, there are students who get through the system and have their own minds and write well. Our literacy rate is probably at least as high as that in Cambodia during the reign of the Khmer Rouge. Who says we lag behind the rest of the world?
JADL WROTE THIS BUT I DIDN"T SEE IT IN THE QUEUE so I am sending it through at the tail end of the thread now again. I'm glad to see JADL signs on with two kingdoms! Also that he defends Aquinas! Who is very great, but I think asks too much of reason, and man!
Kirby, you preempted my protest about St Augustine (as opposed to St Thomas Aquinas). St Thomas is a great philosopher and I think I'd agree that his work in general (in combining revelation and reason) treats man as not so much a fallen creature, but following Aristotle especially (though there are strong Platonic strains in his work), a creature of reason.
And in general again, I'm on board with the "two kingdoms" idea and pretty suspicious of the "social Gospel" one.
stu, where can your "well established" evidence be found that the source of the ClimateGate emails is a hacker?
And as for Roger Tattersall (of the U of Leeds, blog name "Tallbloke"), he says the police assured him he was not a suspect--and I'd tread lightly about referring to his "confederates" if you mean those implicated in the alleged crime, for he's already secured a pro-bono lawyer to represent him in a suit against someone who's alleged that he is (but as far as I'm concerned what is exchanged here stays here).
Yes, of course you know I know where "East Anglia" is (been there, done that); so just drop the "A," for your information (FOI).
Further, I read what you wrote, but you seem to have missed the distinction I made between the two-page memo being a forgery (which you acknowledge and the compelling evidence that Gleick himself forged it. If you agree such evidence exists, then I withdraw my objection, though that would put you at odds with many of his dishonest mouthpieces who accept his highly dubious claims that he didn't write the forgery himself.
As for the supposedly other damaging documents from Heartland ("numerous other documents from Heartland whose veracity is unchallenged, and which are more embarrassing to it, is is [sic] also granted by both sides") I'll repeat (as above you didn't respond)--what evidence or argument is there for this claim?
And while the courageous Heartland Institute's funding pales in comparison to the lavish subsidies (including heavy public funding) for enviromental lobbies and causes, disingeuous critics are forever bleating about HI's big corporate donors ("Big Oil," etc., that actually give far more to the enviro-AGW organisations) that don't exist. What the admirable Koch brothers gave to HI was earmarked for heath issues, but the critics go right on prattling about the Koch's funding of AGW sceptics. It's some of the AGW crowd that cares little for the truth (like several who say that lying is OK to "scare" people into adopting drastic measures to fight CAGW--I'll produce sources if you wish), and they've lost those who've ditched the phony "consensus" arguments (e.g., Judith Curry, Chair of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech; her "Climate, Etc." blog and info site is one of the most trafficked in the country) and for which they are roundly denounced as traitors to the cause.
Funny that Pres Obama's latest energy sky-hook should be . . . algae! But I'll leave that for another time.
i don't think this can go 100 canit
new topic let's go
this has gone on too long
what's next
lobsters doing ballet
jh
Cinderella's stepsisters doing lobster impressions.
If Gabby Giffords had been Republican there would have been comedians doing impressions of her being shot, and how she talked when she came back. But I think we should stop here with Cinderella's stepsisters doing lobster impressions.
If Gabby Giffords had been Republican there would have been comedians doing impressions of her being shot, and how she talked when she came back. But I think we should stop here with Cinderella's stepsisters doing lobster impressions.
If Gabby Giffords had been Republican there would have been comedians doing impressions of her being shot, and how she talked when she came back. But I think we should stop here with Cinderella's stepsisters doing lobster impressions.
If Gabby Giffords had been Republican there would have been comedians doing impressions of her being shot, and how she talked when she came back. But I think we should stop here with Cinderella's stepsisters doing lobster impressions.
If Gabby Giffords had been Republican there would have been comedians doing impressions of her being shot, and how she talked when she came back. But I think we should stop here with Cinderella's stepsisters doing lobster impressions.
If Gabby Giffords had been Republican there would have been comedians doing impressions of her being shot, and how she talked when she came back. But I think we should stop here with Cinderella's stepsisters doing lobster impressions.
If Gabby Giffords had been Republican there would have been comedians doing impressions of her being shot, and how she talked when she came back. But I think we should stop here with Cinderella's stepsisters doing lobster impressions.
If Gabby Giffords had been Republican there would have been comedians doing impressions of her being shot, and how she talked when she came back. But I think we should stop here with Cinderella's stepsisters doing lobster impressions.
If Gabby Giffords had been Republican there would have been comedians doing impressions of her being shot, and how she talked when she came back. But I think we should stop here with Cinderella's stepsisters doing lobster impressions.
If Gabby Giffords had been Republican there would have been comedians doing impressions of her being shot, and how she talked when she came back. But I think we should stop here with Cinderella's stepsisters doing lobster impressions.
If Gabby Giffords had been Republican there would have been comedians doing impressions of her being shot, and how she talked when she came back. But I think we should stop here with Cinderella's stepsisters doing lobster impressions.
If Gabby Giffords had been Republican there would have been comedians doing impressions of her being shot, and how she talked when she came back. But I think we should stop here with Cinderella's stepsisters doing lobster impressions.
If Gabby Giffords had been Republican there would have been comedians doing impressions of her being shot, and how she talked when she came back. But I think we should stop here with Cinderella's stepsisters doing lobster impressions.
If Gabby Giffords had been Republican there would have been comedians doing impressions of her being shot, and how she talked when she came back. But I think we should stop here with Cinderella's stepsisters doing lobster impressions.
If Gabby Giffords had been Republican there would have been comedians doing impressions of her being shot, and how she talked when she came back. But I think we should stop here with Cinderella's stepsisters doing lobster impressions.
If Gabby Giffords had been Republican there would have been comedians doing impressions of her being shot, and how she talked when she came back. But I think we should stop here with Cinderella's stepsisters doing lobster impressions.
If Gabby Giffords had been Republican there would have been comedians doing impressions of her being shot, and how she talked when she came back. But I think we should stop here with Cinderella's stepsisters doing lobster impressions.
If Gabby Giffords had been Republican there would have been comedians doing impressions of her being shot, and how she talked when she came back. But I think we should stop here with Cinderella's stepsisters doing lobster impressions.
If Gabby Giffords had been Republican there would have been comedians doing impressions of her being shot, and how she talked when she came back. But I think we should stop here with Cinderella's stepsisters doing lobster impressions.
If Gabby Giffords had been Republican there would have been comedians doing impressions of her being shot, and how she talked when she came back. But I think we should stop here with Cinderella's stepsisters doing lobster impressions.
If Gabby Giffords had been Republican there would have been comedians doing impressions of her being shot, and how she talked when she came back. But I think we should stop here with Cinderella's stepsisters doing lobster impressions.
If Gabby Giffords had been Republican there would have been comedians doing impressions of her being shot, and how she talked when she came back. But I think we should stop here with Cinderella's stepsisters doing lobster impressions.
If Gabby Giffords had been Republican there would have been comedians doing impressions of her being shot, and how she talked when she came back. But I think we should stop here with Cinderella's stepsisters doing lobster impressions.
If Gabby Giffords had been Republican there would have been comedians doing impressions of her being shot, and how she talked when she came back. But I think we should stop here with Cinderella's stepsisters doing lobster impressions.
If Gabby Giffords had been Republican there would have been comedians doing impressions of her being shot, and how she talked when she came back. But I think we should stop here with Cinderella's stepsisters doing lobster impressions.
If Gabby Giffords had been Republican there would have been comedians doing impressions of her being shot, and how she talked when she came back. But I think we should stop here with Cinderella's stepsisters doing lobster impressions.
If Gabby Giffords had been Republican there would have been comedians doing impressions of her being shot, and how she talked when she came back. But I think we should stop here with Cinderella's stepsisters doing lobster impressions.
If Gabby Giffords had been Republican there would have been comedians doing impressions of her being shot, and how she talked when she came back. But I think we should stop here with Cinderella's stepsisters doing lobster impressions.
Kirby, seems you've had something a moment from the movie "The Shining" last night. Perhaps we should play along with the game and very carefully parse each one of your last twenty postings.
Seems also Dr Peter Gleick was the "whistle-blower" Cinderella of the MSM last week, but now has become the proverbial ugly sister. I do hope this MacArthur-prize winning "genius" will recover personally from his disgrace but will no longer be an influence on public policy, for the stakes are high.
Now here's an excerpt from Dr Gleick lecturing the US Senate in a 2007 presentation:
"There are many tactics used to argue for or against scientific conclusions that are inappropriate, involve deceit, or directly abuse the scientific process."
And here's Dr Judith Curry's short comparison of Climategate and the Gleick affair ("Fakegate" or "Heartlandgate"):
"When ‘Heartlandgate’ first broke, I saw no parallels with Climategate. Now, with the involvement of Gleick, there most certainly are parallels. There is the common theme of climate scientists compromising personal and professional ethics, integrity, and responsibility, all in the interests of a ’cause.'"
(pt 1)
And here's Christopher Booker weighing in on the folly and crippling cost of mollifying the climate change alarmists that resulted in passage of the Climate Change Act (committing the UK to an outlay of L700 billion by 2050):
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/greenpolitics/9105330/The-Gleick-affair-is-further-proof-of-the-warmists-endless-credulity.html
"What a very odd situation we find ourselves in, due to the extraordinary transformation in recent years of the so-called debate over global warming. Last week, The Sunday Telegraph reported that, as part of Britain’s overseas aid budget, the Department for International Development is well on the way to spending £1.5 billion on a mass of climate-related projects across the world. These range from helping Indian farmers to irrigate their fields with foot-powered pumps rather than diesel-fuelled ones, to preventing the authority of Kenyan 'rainmakers' from being undermined by the onset of 'extreme weather events'.
This is bizarre enough – and it might be added that, according to the World Resources Institute, Britain is now spending far more on this kind of nonsense, under the UN’s $28 billion Fast Start Climate Change programme, than any country in the world apart from Japan. But even this is only a tiny fraction of the hundreds of billions Britain is hoping to spend, as a consequence of our Government’s unique obsession with global warming, on everything from climate-related research in our universities to building the 32,000 useless windmills that Chris Huhne was babbling about, before he ignominiously left office. We cannot recall often enough that our Climate Change Act commits us to spending more than £700 billion between now and 2050 – far more than any other country in the world.
Yet while successive British governments have plunged headlong into this madness, the 'science' supposedly used to justify it has been falling apart in all directions. Global temperatures have signally failed to rise as the computer models, upon which the whole scare was based, said they should. And an endless succession of scandals has engulfed the senior scientists who did more than anyone else to promote the scare. These began with the exposure of the notorious 'hockey stick' graph and then the Climategate emails which showed how they fiddled their data and stopped at nothing to discredit anyone who challenged what they called 'the Cause'. The scandals continued with the revelations that much of the work of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – the supreme champion of the Cause – had not been based on science at all but on scare stories dreamed up by environmental activists."
(pt 2)
Last half of Booker piece:
"All this has left the debate over climate change in a depressingly fetid state, as supporters of the orthodoxy lash out with increasing desperation, forlornly trying to defend their crumbling faith. A further example of this was the strange little scandal that erupted last week, with the release on the internet of various documents from the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based think-tank long vilified by the warmists for organising conferences attended by hundreds of distinguished scientists from across the world who dare to be sceptical of the orthodoxy.
The documents were entirely innocuous except for one, which stood out from the rest because it purported to be a secret 'strategy paper' that outlined Heartland’s plans to get the teaching of the science of climate change outlawed in America’s schools. This seemingly damning revelation aroused much excitement among warmists on both sides of the Atlantic. The Guardian published no less than nine separate items about it."
But the document’s peculiar phrasing, punctuation and other details soon led some observers to suggest that it looked suspiciously like the work of one Dr Peter Gleick, a prominent warmist and the head of a California-based institute which campaigns on climate change and on the need for 'integrity in science'.
Within hours, the story was unravelling. Gleick confessed that he had obtained genuine Heartland documents under false pretences, in an attempt, he said, to verify that the 'anonymous' strategy paper had come from the institute – the document that he himself was already suspected of faking. Though his statement made no admission in that regard, it unleashed mayhem. Gleick was reprimanded by his own Pacific Institute, and then requested a leave of absence. Heartland is threatening legal action in all directions – not least against all those journalists who were so eager to believe his hoax that they hadn’t bothered to check their facts.
When the history of the decline and fall of the world’s most damaging scare comes to be written, l’affaire Gleick will only be a brief footnote. But it does suggest how desperate those who wish to keep the scare alive have become.
More importantly, however, it should focus our attention once again on the fact that we are still being presented with by far the biggest bill in history, to counter a threat that never actually existed."
(pt 3)
And finally, on the "Two Kingdoms and the "Social Gospel" idea there is this ("President Obama's Theology: Is It Phony"):
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/02/president_obamas_theology_is_it_phony.html
c'est absurd
c'est ludicreuse
c'est pomme d'terre
I was working on a tiny mechanism last night and the thing wouldn't send my post through but it looks like it did come through and pushed the number of comments from 85 to 123 this morning. Sorry about this.
JADL -- I'm so glad to hear of the global warming shenanigans from the British viewpoint. It is obviously a huge canard played by the left to increase government control of the economy. And the idea of Obama's that Caesar should play God is completely maddening but he is such a complete fool that he probably believes it. The man has an IQ of fifty, if that. It's amazing he can feed himself.
I feel a new post coming on.
In an earlier post I said this to stu:
"It's some of the AGW crowd that cares little for the truth (like several who say that lying is OK to 'scare' people into adopting drastic measures to fight CAGW--I'll produce sources if you wish)."
A recent example is the admirable, heart-warming, and thoroughly convincing defence of Dr Gleick's actions by a philosopher and author of "The Ethics of Climate Change," James Garvey, in a Guardian piece:
"What Heartland is doing is harmful, because it gets in the way of public consensus and action. Was Gleick right to lie to expose Heartland and maybe stop it from causing further delay to action on climate change? If his lie has good effects overall – if those who take Heartland's money to push scepticism are dismissed as shills, if donors pull funding after being exposed in the press – then perhaps on balance he did the right thing. It could go the other way too – maybe he's undermined confidence in climate scientists. It depends on how this plays out."
In other words, it's unconditionally good to lie for the "cause" of global warming alarmism, but only on the condition you don't get caught out, as Gleick did.
And here's a classic statement from one of the Black Princes of enviro-AGW extremism, the late Stanford climate science prof Stephen Schneider:
" . . . we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This 'double ethical bind' we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both."
A recent outstanding contribution to CAGW 'scare' literature and to evidence of some CAGW devotees' retreat into what has been called meretricious shamanism is British vulcanologist Bill McGuire's book (advertised in the enviro-CAGW-friendly Guardian) "Waking the Giant: How a changing climate triggers earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes," which concludes that
"earthquakes can be induced by infinitesimally small variations…the pressure of a handshake could be sufficient to trigger its rupture and set the ground shaking…many potentially hazardous geological systems may be teetering on the edge of stability…a tiny nudge…may initiate a reaction out of all proportion to the size of the trigger – the pressure of the handshake analogy comes once again to mind. Substitute anthropogenic climate change…Through our climate-changing activities we are loading the dice in favour of increased geological mayhem…”
Not a few commentators on What's Up With That?" (voted the best science blog site for a second year in a row) think Dr McGuire's been hitching rides on the Chariots of the Gods too long--but whatever, all for the "Cause" I guess.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/27/why-yes-linking-climate-change-to-earthquakes-does-seem-to-be-bordering-on-the-insane/#more-57702
JADL,
Unfortunately, an earlier comment went missing, and this is my attempt to reconstruct it.
I can well understand why you're trying to pursue the argument about climate change by focussing on people, and the sins of enthusiasts. I can well understand why you chose to argue this way. You have neither the inclination nor the ability to talk sensibly about the underlying scientific or observational evidence. Physical issues like radiative transfer, the absorption spectrum of CO2 vs. the emission spectrum from Earth, albedo, the uptake rate of carbon sinks mean nothing to you. Nor do observations such as the melting of glaciers throughout the arctic, or the breaking up of ice shelves in Ellesmere and the Antarctic peninsula, or pooled water on the top of glaciers in Greenland, or beetle killed trees in mountains above Sitka and Estes Park. These are the issues that are relevant to the debate. Not who hacked who, or who's paying for who's opinion.
But this is a debate that it is impossible to have with you in any meaningful sense. You can't understand the arguments of experts, mine or yours. So you regurgitate the opinions of others, culled from the echo chamber of climate deliars, but without either accountability for the opinions you bring forward, or the ability fairly consider refuting arguments with your own mind. If that changes, I'm happy to continue the discussion, otherwise no.
And last but not least for now is the devastating attack on Obama's politically-charged anti-CO2 EPA from Dr Fred Singer:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/02/obama_skins_the_cat.html
(Singer's creds: S. Fred Singer is professor emeritus at the University of Virginia and director of the Science & Environmental Policy Project, specializing in climate science and energy policy. An expert in remote sensing and satellites, he served as the founding director of the US Weather Satellite Service and, more recently, as vice chair of the US National Advisory Committee on Oceans & Atmosphere. He is a senior fellow of the Heartland Institute and of the Independent Institute. In 2007, he founded and chaired NIPCC (Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change).
stu, I do pursue the public policy and rhetorical aspects of the climate change debates more, for it's important for citizens in a democratic republic to inform themselves about key scientific issues that drastically affect public policies.
True, my courses in physical geography and meteorology are long behind me, but I don't think I'm completely uninterested and incapable of following some of the more accessible scientific literature on climate science or the some of the key spots of disagreement in the debates (e.g., Roy Spencer's views on cloud feedback data). On the site Climate Debate Daily, I generally favour sceptical pieces over CAGW ones by, I'd say roughly, a margin of three-to-one, but I do my best to parse the scientific arguments and data on the latter.
Unfortunately the controversy leads not only to substantive disagreements among climate scientists but also to mutual ad hominem attacks (and especially where reputations and funding issues are involved), e.g., as attested by a U of Colorado climate scientist, Roger Pielke Sr ("Hatchet Job On John Christy and Roy Spencer By [CAGW supporters] Kevin Trenberth, John Abraham and Peter Gleick").
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2011/09/04/hatchet-job-on-john-christy-and-roy-spencer-by-kevin-trenberth-john-abraham-and-peter-gleick/
Personalities do seem to matter in this controversy: now considered a sceptical climate scientist, John Christy "is a distinguished professor of atmospheric science, and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville," etc. (he also holds a master's in divinity; source: Wiki). Roy Spencer, another sceptical climate scientist who sees most observable global warming as a result of "natural or chaotic variations in factors," not man-made causes, "is a climatologist and a Principal Research Scientist for the University of Alabama in Huntsville, as well as the U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR-E) on NASA’s Aqua satellite. He has served as senior scientist for climate studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama," etc. (source: Wiki).
Dr Pielke Sr's conclusion is that "[w]hat is disturbing, however, in the Trenberth et al article is its tone and disparagement of two outstanding scientists. Instead of addressing the science issues, they resort to statements such as Spencer and Christy making 'serial mistakes'. This is truly a hatchet job and will only further polarize the climate science debate." Are Drs Lindzen, Curry, Singer, Christy, Spencer, et al what you call "climate 'deliars'" (first time I've heard this one--your invention?)?
As I told Kirby, I often include excerpts from articles or pieces I've read to present arguments en bref for time-starved readers, so you may ignore these excerpts if you prefer.
i'm willing to acknowledge that the whole atmospheric catastrophe theory is a sham a big mistake a big silly wah doo dah
but it seems to have brought people together from around the world on some sort of agreement that it is important no matter what to care for the planet
if we haven't phuqt it up yet yet we might well could
i'll bite a little on the social gospel two kingdoms nonesense that keeps coming up on this blog
sheesh
todays gospel for instance for those like us crazy catholics who have mass everyday and hear readings consistently every day big deal i know but at least we're getting the consistent dose of it all lord knows we need it
i read the article you slotted in there jadl
i found the soldier's theology wanting something some depth soem breadth something
todays gospel if i can stay on track here long enough to weave some words into thought
was jesus using the image of separating the sheep and the goats
the good sheep heard the word and followed suit those who put into some sort of action the feeding the healing the visiting the destitute which is really all jesus came for anyway isn't it it's all about caring for the poor you can make it a lot of other things but dorothy day and mother theresa had it right as did the franciscans as did the jesuits this idea of caring it used to be that benedictine monasteries were beholden to accept the care of 12 downtrodden souls at a time sort of their share of the social gospel you might say
santorum is sticking his neck out
i sort of feel sorry for the guy i think theirs still enough catholic hatred in the voting blocs to squash a guy like that it's like he's using his faith as a cudgel
but he's flailing a bit without a shield he should buy a good shield
i noticed that a soon as he got some secret service protection his rhetoric got a little more shall we say ballsy (if that's a word)
you know
testicular
his is a highly idealised politicised catholic message but i do recognize it as catholic the notion of family is the correct primary social basis
but he's putting himself right in the warzone of unspoken battles
no matter what kennedy john and kennedy robert stood for in regards to the relationship between faith and public life they both acted in a very catholic manner...taking the presuppositons of faith and making them present in the social forum...and they both paid a price too...the cost of discipleship is a social arrangement that may entail martyrdom
everything in the bible is addressed to communities primarily and individuals within communities who are willing to have their lives formed into the agreement of good social living
.
obama seems to know something about the adage...the measure of good govt is seen in the way in which it responds to the needs of the most needy
santorum is too idealistic
why doesn't he say
there ain't no dang employment problem there's just too many dang women out there wanting to work they should go home and be the caretakers of the home get off the pill stop killing their fetuses because they're not theirs in the first place...to hell with this everyone has to have a job bullshit...not everyone has to work money is not what it is about no money is a highly overrated and distorted phenomenon by which we are being intensely manipulated
that's all i'm saying about that
but i believe it
santorum in a room with a bunch of hyped up reproductive rights ladies
imagine that
they'd tear the guy to shreds
those girls all sound like they're on LSD
let's call the next election off let's just all agree that obama is doing a pretty good job and he should be high chief tribal king of the glistening white horse prayers before the thunderous throne of god the bountiful generous king of good social government the long awaited nearly messianic prince of justice fairness and kicking the stinking rich people in the ass purveyor of inimitable justice indeed
bring on the social gospel
obama had it right
work with the street kids
give them a chance to get something right
more small production local farms more crafts more hand made stuff
maybe the repub tikett will be santorum gingerich a catholic double wammy
i'd vote for them if' they'd promise to put this protestant work ethic madness to rest and promote a little more well deserved cultural leisure
everyone slow down share a little more and spread it around
joe the plumber is still sort of hungry
you guys are a trip and a half
jh
hey what's with the new comment format
JADL,
OK, let's consider Singer's article in “The American Thinker.”
Singer starts by characterizing current White House policy as “driven by pathological fear of global warming and the unreasonable compulsion to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide.” But Singer does not have a privileged insight into the psychology of the administration, and so his claims of “pathological fear” and “unreasonable compulsion” are at best speculative, but are more plausibly polemics intended to diminish his opponents by calling into question their motivations at the beginning of the debate.
He then goes on to characterize CO2 as “a non-toxic natural constituent of the atmosphere and an absolute necessity for the survival of plants, animals, and humans.” This is intended to bolster the claim that the administration's desire to cap CO2 emissions is unreasonable: he's trying to position Obama as being opposed to one of life's essentials. But this is a willful mischaracterization. Water too is essential for life, but too much of it can be lethal because other mechanisms come into play (cf., the recent tsunamis). A good starting place here is Wiki: Carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere, which includes a number of highly insightful graphs. Current research indicates that the CO2 levels during the 10,000 years prior to the industrial age were 260-280 ppm. CO2 levels today are at about 396 ppm, and are increasing by about 2 ppm/year, so the increase is about 40%. The cause is human activity: the burning of fossil fuels.
This is a big change, and it brings other mechanisms to the fore. CO2 at historical concentrations is essential—it is the most important carbon source for plants. At higher concentrations, it results in global warming.
He then states that “no significant evidence that any recent warming has been caused by CO2 increases.” Note the weaselly use of “any recent warming” which dances around the question of observed warming by not committing to a position (so he can't be pinned down by actual data), while questioning it nevertheless. But at a deeper level, he is simply lying. Modern climate models tie observed warming to CO2 concentrations, in close correspondence with historical data. Again, his use of the weasel word “significant” is intended to give him plausible deniability here, by not committing himself to denying any specific observation, but implicitly denying all of them (and especially the modeling data).
His next point is that a unilateral decision to limit CO2 emissions is ineffective. This is certainly true, but it is also disingenuous. There is an international treaty framework in place for reducing CO2 emissions: the Kyoto protocol. The US has signed, but not ratified, the protocol, the later because the Republicans have opposed ratification. Obama is pushing for compliance with Kyoto, sans ratification, and a re-engagement with the international community on the subject of climate change. It's what we've been doing that's unilateral, not what Obama proposes to do.
There's nothing else of substance here. Singer spends a lot of words trying to portray the Obama administration as being perverse for allowing sound science to inform policy. He talks a great deal about the costs of implementing these policies, which are considerable, but he doesn't talk about the costs of not addressing climate change. As is always the case, our decision has to be between competing proposals, of which maintaining the status quo is one. To make an informed decision, the costs and benefits of each proposal have to be honestly assessed.
I see a tremendous amount of dancing around the truth here. Singer is doing enough to justify his Heartland stipend, but he's avoiding pinning his scientific reputation too tightly to anything specific denial.
stu, my comments on your critique of the Singer essay, which is of course intended as an omnibus opinion piece rather than as a contribution to an exclusively scientific audience:
Your first criticism that Singer is speculating on the "psychology of the administration," calling it a "pathological fear," is pretty weak, for it seems to me he's only using a metaphor; he might just as well have called the current administration's view "extreme" or "blinkered."
On your criticism of his second claim, I think Singer's accurate description of CO2 is meant to counter the EPA's widely-publicized claim (relying heavily on severely-flawed IPCC reports--Dr Curry favours scrapping the IPCC altogether and views the "consensus" argument as completely bogus) two years ago that C02 was a "dangerous pollutant." Assuming for the moment that "nearly all the industrial-age warming is due to our CO2" (excluding a number of other possible factors such as variations in solar activity promoted by Svensmark et al, etc.) the crux of the CO2 increase debate seems to be, not over whether there's been no increase in global CO2 levels, but over feedback amplification effects causing rising global temperatures as predicted in computer modelling efforts.
A sceptical critique of such flawed modelling predictions by Dr David Evans:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/26/the-skeptics-case/
Evans's critique seems to bolster both Singer's point about the lack of "significant evidence that any recent warming has been caused by CO2 increases" as well as Evans's argument about the failure of "actual data" to accord with computer modelling projections promoting the CAGW case.
Singer's sensible comments about the Kyoto protocol are quite rightly based on the insignificance of the reduction in warming that would occur were the US to adopt the economically disastrous folly of the protocol's strictures. (Do you actually fancy that such economically suffocating strictures have any chance of passage today, even with a Democrat-majority Senate?) Of course big CO2 emitters like India and China are exempt, and previous signatories like Canada, Russia, and Japan as well have recently opted out of an agreement to new cuts in this shabby UN-backed world wealth redistribution scheme.
And thanks to Singer for pointing out the collaborative work between Dr John Holdren, President Obama's science adviser, and Dr Paul Ehrlich, whose ghoulish and hallucinatory visions about immanent world catastrophes have been the butt of Olympian laughter for decades since his first block-buster nightmare in book form in 1968.
Knew you'd be hard-pressed not to mention Singer's association with the Heartland Institute (a constant CAGW wail about money driving ideology in the HI's sparse budget outlays, while ignoring the huge grants and budgets warmists feast upon), but how does this accord with your earlier claim on this very thread that relevant issues are not *"who's paying for who's [sic] opinion"*?
stu, my comments on your critique of the Singer essay, which is of course intended as an omnibus opinion piece rather than as a contribution to an exclusively scientific audience:
Your first criticism that Singer is speculating on the "psychology of the administration," calling it a "pathological fear," is pretty weak, for it seems to me he's only using a metaphor; he might just as well have called the current administration's view "extreme" or "blinkered."
On your criticism of his second claim, I think Singer's accurate description of CO2 is meant to counter the EPA's widely-publicized claim (relying heavily on severely-flawed IPCC reports--Dr Curry favours scrapping the IPCC altogether and views the "consensus" argument as completely bogus) two years ago that C02 was a "dangerous pollutant." Assuming for the moment that "nearly all the industrial-age warming is due to our CO2" (excluding a number of other possible factors such as variations in solar activity promoted by Svensmark et al, etc.) the crux of the CO2 increase debate seems to be, not over whether there's been no increase in global CO2 levels, but over feedback amplification effects causing rising global temperatures as predicted in computer modelling efforts.
A sceptical critique of such flawed modelling predictions by Dr David Evans:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/26/the-skeptics-case/
Evans's critique seems to bolster both Singer's point about the lack of "significant evidence that any recent warming has been caused by CO2 increases" as well as Evans's argument about the failure of "actual data" to accord with computer modelling projections promoting the CAGW case.
Singer's sensible comments about the Kyoto protocol are quite rightly based on the insignificance of the reduction in warming that would occur were the US to adopt the economically disastrous folly of the protocol's strictures. (Do you actually fancy that such economically suffocating strictures have any chance of passage today, even with a Democrat-majority Senate?) Of course big CO2 emitters like India and China are exempt, and previous signatories like Canada, Russia, and Japan as well have recently opted out of an agreement to new cuts in this shabby UN-backed world wealth redistribution scheme.
And thanks to Singer for pointing out the collaborative work between Dr John Holdren, President Obama's science adviser, and Dr Paul Ehrlich, whose ghoulish and hallucinatory visions about immanent world catastrophes have been the butt of Olympian laughter for decades since his first block-buster nightmare in book form in 1968.
Knew you'd be hard-pressed not to mention Singer's association with the Heartland Institute (a constant CAGW wail about money driving ideology in the HI's sparse budget outlays, while ignoring the huge grants and budgets warmists feast upon), but how does this accord with your earlier claim on this very thread that relevant issues are not *"who's paying for who's [sic] opinion"*?
Perhaps the climate change exchange at this time (as jh suggested) is a little pah-say, but I'll add a pertinent excerpt from a scathing letter to the Times of London in response to CAGW alarmists' slinging around charges against so-called climate change "deniers" (stu's "deliars?"):
"Andrew Motion (report, Feb 23) is correct to castigate climate change deniers, as the climate has always been changing, but he is profoundly mistaken in linking all those who oppose the current climate science orthodoxy into one group. The interpretation of the observational science has been consistently over-egged to produce alarm. All real-world data over the past 20 years has shown the climate models to be exaggerating the likely impacts — if the models cannot account for the near term, why should I trust them in the long term?
I am most worried by the billions of pounds being misinvested and lost as a consequence. Look out to sea at the end of 2015 and see how many windmills are not turning and you will get my point: there are already 14,000 abandoned windmills onshore in the US. Premature technology deployment is thoroughly bad engineering, and my taxes are subsidising it against my will and professional judgment."
Professor Michael Kelly
Prince Philip Professor of Technology, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge
JADL,
I'm at a loss as to what “pathological fear” might be a metaphor for. I can only make sense of it as a blackguard attempt at psychological characterization. Perhaps you can elaborate where the metaphor lies.
As for CO2 being "a dangerous pollutant," this is accurate as so far as global warming is concerned. The issue, as I tried to make clear, is that there are different mechanisms involved. As for the IPCC report being severely flawed, you also have to deal with the Berkeley climate study, funded by the Koch brothers, and pursued by climate change skeptics, which generally confirmed the IPCC findings. [Indeed, where it differed, it generally found that the IPCC had underestimated warming.]
The issue of feedbacks raised in "The Skeptics Case" is real, but I'd caution that that article cherry-picks both feedbacks and effects. For example, he argues that increased CO2 increases temperature, which increases water vapor, which increases cloud cover, which decreases the energy in-flow to the earth. Hence, less warming than predicted. But clouds are more complicated than that. They're basically blankets, and just as much as they reduce energy in-flow, they also reduce energy out-flow. And it's also the case that water vapor in clear air is a powerful greenhouse gas in its own right (which is to say, it has greater absorptivity at infrared than at visible wavelengths). Thus, it is far from clear that the net effect of more water vapor in the atmospheric column (all else being equal) will be for net cooling.
The point here is that models are necessarily simplifications (otherwise, they're subject to overfitting), and so there are choices in which effects to consider, and which to exclude. The proof is in predictions.
And this brings me to data cherry picking in the same article. The particular choice of data set (air temperature vs. sea temperature or surface temperature) seems to maximize the impact of Pinatubo, as does the particular framing. In particular, I suspect that the 0.5 damping factor was based a simple slope calculation--change in temperature over change in CO2--over a period that includes Pinatubo, and the water vapor explanation is ex post facto. I'm skeptical that the feedback effect is less than one in intervals that don't contain volcanos. And while it's reasonable to predict that we'll have volcanos in the future, the point isn't that volcanic eruptions change the equilibrium point so much as that they push the system away from equilibrium, and it takes time to reassert.
Regarding the Kyoto protocol structure. You may not like it (in that it allows developing nations increased emissions which requiring cuts from developed nations), but this is the treaty that both the developed and the developing nations arrived at. No treaty is likely to be perfect, but there's a huge difference between not liking an international agreement, and claiming that one doesn't exist.
Finally, regarding Singer's association with Heartland. You opened the door by listing this as one of his bona fides in your 2/27/2012 3:36pm post. This gave me the license to respond. The name "Heartland Institute" suggests a place of scientific inquiry, rather that what it actually is, a lobbying and legitimacy purchasing operation. And you really lead with your chin in mentioning the huge grants that climate change scientists receive, because that too opens the door for an analytical rebuttal. Singer is receiving $5K/month in order to be a scientific poster-child for climate change denial. This is $60K/year. Those "huge grants" limit salary payments to researchers to 2/9th of their 3Q salary. This means that a climatologist would have to be making $270K/3Q in order to get a $60K salary benefit. A quick search showed the salary range for an atmospheric scientists/climatologist to $38,990-$127,100 in 2008. So the academics are getting half of what Singer is. Do you really want to argue that this is a corrupting amount of money?
stu, Singer's metaphor is an oft-used reference common enough in English, e.g., various "phobias" ("homophobia," Islamophobia," etc.) for a supposedly irrational fear that really refers not to supposedly deranged mental states, but to dubious scare-mongering tactics.
Yes, the Berkeley project (BEST) gives some surface (not satellite or ocean) temp data pertinent to the debate, though I notice you didn't mention Judith Curry, co-author of the study with Richard Muller, the former of whom had some significant caveats about the study, e.g., this JC comment, reported in the UK Daily Mail:
"As for the graph disseminated to the media, she said: ‘This is “hide the decline” stuff. Our data show the pause, just as the other sets of data do. Muller is hiding the decline.
‘To say this is the end of scepticism is misleading, as is the statement that warming hasn’t paused. It is also misleading to say, as he has, that the issue of heat islands has been settled.’"
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/29/uh-oh-it-was-the-best-of-times-it-was-the-worst-of-times/
Notwithstanding her criticism of certain claims of the Heartland Institute, she has this on the funding differentials of groups like HI compared to that of the enviro-CAGW groups:
" . . . those fossil fuel companies and the Koch brothers sure are stingy with all their $$billions in terms of spending it to refute climate change. With only a few scientists or other analysts on staff. Compared to 97% of climate scientists, that must number in the thousands. Compared to $$billions spent by governments on climate research, not to mention $$billions spent by enviro advocacy groups (many of whom have annual budgets exceeding $100M). Is Pat Michaels, Joe Bast, and whoever at GMI, with maybe a measley [sic] few $$million per year, really a match for the global climate establishment? Can somebody please explain this to me?" [Bast is head of HI; the sceptic Michaels is former U of Virginia climatologist and former Virginia state climatologist, whom a member of the Michael Mann faction expressed a burning desire to "punch out."]
http://judithcurry.com/2011/02/14/blame-on-heartland-cato-marshall-etc/
On the Kyoto protocols, it's my understanding that they're not signed "in perpetuo" and need to be re-confirmed from time to time, and the significant exceptions I mentioned have chosen not to renew them. This is aside from countries like Germany, the UK, Spain, et al which have wasted billions of Euros on "green technology" programmes and are making severe cutbacks (re: Michael Kelly's remarks).
And by the way, your assertion that there's "nothing" of substance of Singer's remarks other than what you commented upon is incorrect (e.g., on mercury emissions).
I'll remark on the Evans piece in a later post.
There is a more scientifically-detailed follow-up essay by Singer in today's American Thinker (2/29) that treats some of the points stu makes on cherry-picking data and ignoring contrary evidence in the latest IPCC reports, for which Singer is an Expert Reviewer. In the AT article he takes on both the "warmistas" (his term) and the "deniers."
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/02/climate_deniers_are_giving_us_skeptics_a_bad_name.html#ixzz1nn0SciyO
On the warmista side there is a shamelessly uncritical tout of Michael Mann's recent book and a journalistic attack on Singer et al as "denialists" (something to keep in mind after reading the latest Singer piece in AT--guess that's better than stu's "blackguard" charge though):
http://opinion.latimes.com/opinionla/2012/02/mann-climate.html
In this LA Times piece there is the claim that Gleick "admitted earlier this week to borrowing a page directly from the denialists' playbook" and "[p]osing as someone else, he obtained internal
documents from the Heartland Institute and distributed them to journalists, a tactic little different from the hack attack at the University of East Anglia that has been decried by Evironmentalists." Except, I guess, for the trivial matters of alleged wire fraud, identity theft, malicious libel by means of forgery, etc. Also I'm not sure of the evidence that the CRU files caper was the result of a hacker rather than a whistle-blower (a question I raised earlier).
in a society based upon equality should not denialists earth firsters temperature adjustment schemes high intensity agriculture wonks and shipping magnates all have equal say if the planet is not at risk then it's just a bunch of idealistic peopel having a good time feeling good about saving the planet if the planet is at risk then i think the fact that there are some whistle blowers and observors who are wondering hey some thing stinks in denmark i for one am glad that the days of burning rivers are over liberty to screw up the world is linked to a world view that is decidedly secularist they managed to divorce the concept of god from the beauty of the world and thus it became more of a laboratory for domination and greed as it is in many places
would it not be cognitively reprobate to suggest that the push of scientific effort has not influenced the atmosphere
cities are hot spots
the electricity grid itself is a real weather warper
i would call this a draw but somehow i have to side with stu he's got the more coherent argument if not all the fancy sources
since the referee has taken over hermano juan's girlfriend and the bell ringer is asleep i think you guys should call this match stu wins by penalty points incurred while jadl connived to throw a doozy of a global market squeeze punch while stu was talkin jesus...we can't allow that in this dignified world of world wealth wide whispy westerly wrestling
you two honyokers go to your corners
sometimes liberty means the good sense to curtail an argument
anyone for some nutcake
jh
stu, I'll avoid mention of the Koch brothers (admired on the right, vilified by the left) as a side issue (but I think the BEST study was also funded in part by the Gates' Foundation as well).
Thanks for your run-through on the feedback issue, which does seem to be the crux of the disagreement between those supporting the IPCC models and AGW supporters-turned-sceptics like Evans. And clouds and cloud formation are, as you say, complicated matters, and I'd add, e.g., where they form and at what levels (stratus, cumulus, cirrus, etc.), and these factors in turn affect types of feedback and thus overall temps. A paper by Lindzen and Choi (5/2011)--linked to in the Evans piece--on the tropics (where, they argue, the concentration of feedback is greatest) reports negative feedback and that the eleven models they compared their data to significantly exaggerated climate sensitivity.
I'd like to know a little more about how significantly Evans's figures might be "cherry-picked," though your point is taken about how simplification is necessary in climate modeling as well. As far as sources Evans uses satellite, Argo (for ocean temps), and weather balloon data, which he favours over other data--is this also part of your caveat about "cherry-picking?" Nevertheless, if volcanic activity is skewing the figures, as you suggest, eventually there will be a delay in return to greater equilibrium and this will be reflected in future data readings. However, the AGW alarmists don't seem to want to wait for more work on feedback mechanisms and climate cloud studies in pushing drastic, and in the opinion of many sceptics, disastrous economic strictures on us.
Evans et al believe many climate models have promoted this alarmism where it is unwarranted:
"There is in fact no empirical evidence that global warming is mainly man-made. [. . .] Climate scientists readily concede that there is no direct evidence that global warming is caused by our carbon dioxide. Instead, they say that our knowledge of how the climate works is embodied in their climate models, and the climate models say that global warming is man-made.
Models are logically equivalent to someone punching in numbers and doing sums on a calculator – models are calculations, not evidence. The problem is that the models contain many guesses and assumptions about how things work, and some of them are wrong."
http://joannenova.com.au/2011/09/dr-david-evans-four-fatal-pieces-of-evidence/
By the way, on Singer in my earlier post you referred to, I just copied the info about him given in the American Thinker piece that included his affiliation with Heartland. Your point about the distribution of government grant monies is taken, though as you know many academics take consulting fees from institutions and companies far in excess of Heartland's fees to Singer.
Funny that Republicans now say they require some seemingly unattainable ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY wrt evidence before they commit billions of dollar to promoting certain policies...
Politically, I think we should just be going full-bore toward energy independence, with alternative sources as the long-term goal.
And we should invest in things that just might fail. When did Republicans become the party of 'if at first you don't succeed, give up and cry about lost money.'
We would've never gotten to the moon if every time we failed we went 'ohhhh noz! gvmt waste money!!!'
We should be investing shite-tons of money in alternative energy. Some of those investments will fail - so be it. Finding out what DOESN'T work is just as important as finding out what DOES.
Republicans want private companies to do that, right?
JADL,
I think that jh's point that it's time for us to chill is well taken. I'll limit myself to non-polemical replies.
I do believe that there's a much broader collection of views than the contemporary caricatures of the debate from either side admit. Let me suggest a taxonomy, and see if you have anything to add:
deniers -- it ain't happening
skeptics -- we're not sure it's happening, or, yeah, sure, *something* is happening, but we don't understand why
agnostics -- we don't care whether or not it's happening. Party on!
believers -- it's happening. We may not fully understand it, but the evidence points strongly to human activity, and to serious economic and ecological consequences.
alarmists -- we're all gonna die!!
It is perhaps natural that most (90%) scientists are believers, and the remainder (10%) are skeptics. It is regrettable that the skeptic class (at least as identified above) is not monomorphic. Post Berkeley, the "not sure it's happening" option isn't really viable for scientists, and as evidence, I'll site the weaseling in Singer's article -- he's trying to split the difference between appeasing his bosses, and being laughed out of the scientific community. There are few true alarmists or deniers in the scientific community, and indeed, few agnostics (mathematics departments excepted). It is a rhetorical device used by both sides to portray their opponents as being more extreme than they actually are, i.e., to portray skeptics as deniers, or believers as alarmists. This is tactically useful, but strategically pyrrhic, as it undermines the sense of mutual esteem necessary to have a productive debate.
FWIW, I perceive myself as a believer (i.e., not an alarmist), and you as a skeptic (i.e., not a denier).
Let me suggest that Evans position on scientific models is unscientific. Models are simply the mechanism that lie between complex hypotheses and predictions, and without predictions, the scientific method is inapplicable. There are echoes here of a longstanding conflict between “big” and “little” science over funding, mindshare, and talent. I'm a little science guy myself, by which I mean that my research has been overwhelming individual or small-group, which you'd think would make me sympathetic to Evans, but I think he's got it wrong. Big, integrative science has a place, and computation/models are an inescapable part of big science.
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You raise the issue of consulting fees for academics, outside of the grant process. Yes, of course they exist, and Singer's situation is already a case-in-point. Here I can speak with authority only to the situation at the University of Chicago, and note that there are (at least) two different issues here.
The first regards effort. At Chicago, faculty on academic appointments can do outside work (and this includes consulting) for up to 11 days per quarter. Our administrators tell us that this is unusually liberal, but I don't have a sufficient diversity of experience to evaluate this claim critically.
The second issue revolves around the potential that outside payments might introduce bias into academic work. Chicago has a long standing policy on managing conflicts of interest, which involves an annual conflict of interest survey administered under the authority of the Provost's office, followed up when necessary with a more detailed form and possibly a management plan. The later would require the approval of the Departmental Chair and the cognizant Dean. My sense of the questions on the survey/form is that they're almost exclusively driven by experiences involving clinical trials in the biological sciences, although there are questions that suggest that a few of my colleagues treat graduate students as chattel. Today's debate, though, is in business and economics departments, sequelae of the 2008 financial collapse via the movie "Inside Job." I'm not a party to those debates, but to hear tell of them, there are Sicarii walking the hallways.
Anyway, if there are bazillionaire climate change alarmists as economic counterweights to the Koch brothers, I've not heard of them, and the potentially biasing impact of consulting arrangements in the physical sciences is not something that I've heard much angst over. My guess is that a public disclosure policy would be broadly supported in the physical (but not biological) sciences, although there'd be a few surprises.
Thanks to jh for his moderating "peer-review" contribution on the climate change exchanges, though as he knows from my comments on this thread, I'm not too much daunted by "consensus" appeals.
As to Brett's comments, I think he's not considering all the unintended consequences of diverting huge sums of taxpayer money into "green technology" schemes that skew the operation of the free market, promote cronyism and political corruption, and cause general economic hardship (e.g., higher energy prices, unemployment, etc.) for ordinary citizens. Much better for government R & D than government artificially propping up wasteful and untried energy and technology schemes that often turn into costly boondoggles. As I said, the UK, Germany, and Spain are only now realising the damage their fatuous green-tech kick has done to their economies.
I've learned a number of things in the exchanges with stu, and I hope it hasn't been all one-sided. I read somewhere that aside from the influences of reputation, personality, funding, etc., a sceptic has said that sceptics' and believers' views are often not as far apart as they seem when left to the mercies of the alarmists and deniers. I hope that's true.
On the matter of consulting fees, etc., while there may be limits on academics' time allowed by their universities for consulting, there are numerous cases of academics being paid large fees (hundreds of thousands) for lending their names to trade-written papers (especially for the psychiatric-pharmaceutical nexus), academics sitting on boards (requiring little or no actual work), etc. A George Washington U academic, Margaret Soltan ("Academic Diaries"), has made publicizing such cases one of her specialties (in addition to her expositions of big-time athletics and academic plagiarists).
Yes, Evans seems a bit hard on climate models, but Lindzen and Choi's paper et al are part of the mounting evidence that there are significant problems in according actual climate data with models, though presumably, many are working to improve the modeling techniques.
Kirby - Republicans want outside companies to do all the investing in terms of green energy? I suppose - (this is an illogical and silly way to go about greenifying our country) but they also love the oil companies so much they always push for corporate welfare in that regard.
In any case, governmental investment in private enterprise and new technology is necessary for us to lead the world. Republicans are cool with the government doing this when it comes to war, and certain types of infrastructure, but not, apparently, our energy infrastructure.
Obviously, the 'going to the moon' analogy is pertinent, since that was government-funded.
Gvmt. built the railroads. Gvmt. research led to the internet (and the microwave). Gvmt. built the highways. Of course, there is a part for the private sector in all of this - gvmt. grants for research are what fuels many of our scientific advances, oft through the university system or offering $$ to private companies. Private companies benefited enormously from the highways and railroads and scientific research that was government funded and/or government-built.
i lost some exquisite prose
just now
zapped into cybernowhereland
isn't he a bit like you and me
he's surreal no hair man
albino and a mohair man
isn't he a smitten
chew and mea culpa
where's J these days
aloha
let's go hawwaiiaann
jh
There's an interview with Bruce Weigl here:
http://www.blastfurnacepress.com/2012/02/interview-with-bruce-weigl.html
can't believe this went 150
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