Politeness is a sign of dignity, not of subservience.
- Theodore Roosevelt
But everybody can tell if you're an asshole.
Divemedic posted his stance on the vaccine: get it if you think it's right for you, don't get it if you don't think it's right for you. A more sensible position is hard to imagine.
And then The Internet appeared in his comments section, with SumD00d telling him he was wrong (well, I think that's what he said because the comment was fairly incomprehensible; hey, it's The Internet, amirite?).
And while the comment was moderately incoherent, the attitude of the commenter was anything but. Commenter "Hedge" is an asshole. He may (or may not) be a dog with a keyboard but he is unmistakably an asshole with one.
Sigh.
I am very grateful indeed that the commenters here are almost always respectful and intelligent - and the commenters on the Dad Jokes are funny as hell. I almost never need to step in to tell folks to settle down and mind their manners - maybe only 2 or 3 times in the 13 years I've been here.
People think wrong when they think that the Internet gives them anonymity. It doesn't. It gives pseudonymity, which is not at all the same thing. If you post under a pseudonym (like Hedge and I both do), you still develop a reputation. Quite frankly, you can't comment anonymously here, so anything you say in the comments here will add to (or in rare cases detract from) your reputation.
Divemedic certainly doesn't need me to fight his fights, that's not the point of this post. I love comments and the two way (or multiple way) discussions we have here. But I'm not going to tolerate Internet Assholes like Hedge here. Cathedra mea, regula meae - my place, my rules.. If you don't like it, don't stop by. This really isn't very hard.
It is a wise thing to be polite; consequently, it is a stupid thing to be rude. To make enemies by unnecessary and willful incivility, is just as insane a proceeding as to set your house on fire. For politeness is like a counter--an avowedly false coin, with which it is foolish to be stingy.
There is a very interesting post over at Peter's discussing political polarization. A comment left by McChuck jumped out at me:
The "Never Trumpers" are part of the Left, not the Right. They are infiltrators and Wormtongues. They are the approved opposition, the Washington Generals. They have finally being so obvious about their true loyalties that anyone with eyes to see and ears to listen can tell.
"You may think these thoughts, but not those. You may go this far, but no further. Now, the conservative case for eating the flesh of the innocent."
To take a leaf from Polifact, I would rate this "mostly true" - everything after the first sentence is spot on. And the first sentence is also sort of right, but our "left" vs. "right" thinking is two dimensional, and so has hidden the really nefarious games that the GOP has been playing for decades. If we expand our thinking just a little, a lot falls squarely into place.
Picture our classic "left" and "right" as a horizontal line but instead of the old labels let's use "Perfectability of Mankind" and "Traditionalist" as the labels. Much of this captures the social issues that are so divisive in the political conversation today. The GOP can correctly claim that it exists on the Traditionalist side of that spectrum.
But now let's add a vertical axis, representing the desired size of government (smaller or bigger). We get something that looks like this:
Conservatives in the way we're used to think about them are in the lower left - traditionalists who believe in smaller government. Communists (and actually fascists as well) believe in the perfectability of mankind and are quite eager to use a vastly expanded government to bring this about; they inhabit the upper right. The political establishments are (mostly) about not rocking the boat too much but have a galaxy of hangers-on, all feeding at the public trough; they are in the upper left. It's important to emphasize that these types really don't want to upset the apple cart by radical changes. Lastly, there is almost nobody in the lower right: people who want to perfect humankind but don't really want any part of government. About the only example I can think of is the Branch Davidians who got burned to death by the ATF in Waco.
Now let's populate the current political Who's Who into this quadrant:
Yeah, nobody I can think of is in the lower right. The upper right is who you'd expect - Big Chief Sitting Bulls**t, Bernie, and AOC. Obama may or may not be here (more on this later). But the interesting bit - and the bit that gets to McChuck's comment ("The Never Trumpers are part of the left") is in the upper left quadrant. Let me explain.
That quadrant is perhaps best labeled as "Grifters". All of those mentioned are in it for the filthy lucre. Not one of the republicans listed (all of whom I should point out have impeccable Establishment credentials) lifted a finger to reduce the size of government, and indeed were enthusiastic in their use of big government to oppress their opponents - all of whom were in the lower left quadrant. Where were all the GOP complaints about the IRS targeting the Tea Party? Who in the GOP Establishment stood up against the smearing of Sarah Palin? Who was complaining about ballooning Federal Regulations*? Where were National Review and The Weekly Standard in all this? [crickets]
The Establishment is about using ever increasing government to feed their swelling army of clients. The difference between the Republicans and Democrats is actually pretty small - look at the massive expansion of spending under George W. Bush. The Deep State lives right there, in the upper left, and all the people listed are 100% Deep Staters.
Now what else is interesting is that the core bases of each party are much more motivated by social issues which the parties play up to distract everyone from, well, the graft. As long as the rubes keep chasing the laser dot then the Powers That Be can relax and go back to the money machine. Both parties play this game, with Obama perhaps the most successful Democrat to do so (which is why even though I show him in the upper right he is probably in the upper left/Establishment quadrant). With him it was a lot of pretty murmurings of transformation to the base while in many ways governing as the 3rd and 4th George W Bush administrations.
In short, the Democratic Party lies to their base and the GOP lies to their base. They have been for decades.
But Donald Trump breaks this cozy arrangement. I would tentatively put him in the lower left quadrant. Yes, the Federal Budget is still out of control, but Congress is firmly in the "Establishment/Grifter" camp and Congress passes the budget. This isn't something that he can do much about (yet - we'll see if it gets on his radar or not). But he has been enormously successful in slashing regulations in a very short time, and people vastly underestimate just how important this is. If he doesn't do anything other than this for the rest of his two terms, this will be a major sea change for America.
And so to McChuck's comment - the Never Trumpers are violently opposed to Trump, but they're all in the upper left. That's more evidence that Trump is seen as being in the lower left, or he wouldn't get that sort of visceral reaction from them. Livelihoods are at stake, if Trump can dry up the gravy train - and the best way to understand government regulation is as a gravy train for the connected class. All of the complaining about Trump's tweets and how he is mean is transparent drivel. When they say it's all about the principle, it's really all about the money.
* I would like to point out that it was Richard Nixon who created the Environmental Protection Agency, and George H. W. Bush who established the wetlands protection regulations.
Really? It's nonsense, and really quite shockingly low caliber nonsense. When you hear someone say these words and (quite reasonably) ask what the proposed restriction is and what it will accomplish, all you hear is nonsense.
There's quite a simple reason for this, and I wrote about it 9 years ago. I'd only been blogging a week or two, but I'm digging it out because the topic is evergreen.
Common Sense Gun Controls are Heffalumps
This started out as Quote of the Day, from Bruce (with my original comment):
From the Progressive Dictionary:
Common-sense (adj.): a term used to describe laws that allow rich, white people to enjoy the exercise of their Constitutional rights, while systematically denying the same to low-income people of color.
That was the original post. I thought it would be quick and fun, just toss a few corroborating links and get your snark on. After going way overboard on links, I found the fun evaporated. As I read the links, I could feel my mellow (did I mention that I'm on vacation? thanks for asking!) being harshed. It became a link rant.
Of course the "progressives" are going to keep trying the same thing a different way. We have a clash of world views here. Heller is part of it, but so is Iraq, the relationship of the citizen to the government, the whole thing. When you disagree on basic premises, it's really hard to find common ground. You're messing with their faith.
So Heller's only a start. Heller isn't the beginning of the end for gun control, at best it's the end of the beginning.
Bah. My mellow was so harshed, that I had to turn to the Relevant Literature for help in dealing with liberal "Common Sense" arguments. Ta da! Instantly, all became clear, my mood lightened, a spring returned to my step, and a gleam to my eye. The problem is that we try to argue with facts (I'm looking AT YOU, Kevin). They argue with Heffalumps.
One day, when Christopher Robin and Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet were all talking together, Christopher Robin finished the mouthful he was eating and said carelessly:
"I saw a Heffalump today, Piglet."
"What was it doing?" asked Piglet.
"Just lumping along," said Christopher Robin.
"I don't think it saw me."
"I saw one once," said Piglet. "At least, I think I did," he said. "Only perhaps it wasn't."
"So did I," said Pooh, wondering what a Heffalump was like.
"You don't often see them," said Christopher Robin carelessly.
"Not now," said Piglet.
"Not at this time of year," said Pooh.
Then they all talked about something else, until it was time for Pooh and Piglet to go home together.
Think I'm joking? The Heller dissents can only be classified as Heffalumps. Do Heffalumps self-refute? --------- End of original post ------- So remember, "Common Sense Gun Control" is drivel. People who talk about it are talking about Heffalumps. I'd like a higher caliber drivel, please.
Then there is the persistent incredibly STUPID story that “The Russians Did It!!”. First off, you can’t know if they did the hack, or not. (As pointed out several times already, I’m a computer security guy who had to deal with this stuff professionally for a couple of decades… it’s ‘my business’ and I’m good at it.) My first encounter with The Russians was in about 1986, so call it 30 years ago. To think that only this year they woke up and started hacking is just dumb. They are about 1/4 as active as the Chinese, so anything they have, or did, the Chinese had more of and sooner. Now look at what ‘the hack’ was (and was not): It was NOT a changing of the vote. Recounts and paper ballot States show that. (In fact, they show a little fudging by the Democrats in places like Chicago…but not enough to change the outcome since they are concentrated in places like California where the Dims already run the table). It WAS a publishing of the criminal and completely immoral actual acts and crimes of the DNC, Clinton, Media like CNN and MSNBC and ‘papers of record’ in burning Bernie and going ‘all in’ on biasing the debates (and worse). So at most, it was exposing the truth. Golly, being truthful, such a crime… /sarc
Remember, the Democrats think that you're stupid, and will fall for this drivel.
This may be the most famous science cartoon ever. The humor comes from the explicit inclusion of Bravo Sierra in the proof scrawled on the chalkboard. Even someone who never got no highfalutin edumacation can see the BS for what it is.
Consequently, young Americans are often unsupportive of government
measures to prevent climate change that might harm the economy. Less
than a third of those surveyed agreed with the statement, “Government
should do more to curb climate change, even at the expense of economic
growth,” and only 12 percent strongly agreed with it. Again, the
youngest survey respondents were more conservative than any other age
group, with only 28 percent of 18 to 20-year-olds in agreement and eight
percent in strong agreement with that statement. In contrast, other age
groups varied between 30 percent and 34 percent in agreement and 11
percent to 14 percent in strong agreement. Not only are the newest
voters less convinced of climate change as a reality; they are also less
likely to support government funding of climate change solutions.
Governments are running out of time to address climate change and to avoid the worst effects of rising temperatures, an influential UN panel warned yesterday.
Greater energy efficiency, renewable electricity sources and new technology to dump carbon dioxide underground can all help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the experts said. But there could be as little as eight years left to avoid a dangerous global average rise of 2C or more. [Emphasis mine- Borepatch]
The date that last one was published? Eight years ago.
The title is perhaps a bit inflammatory, but does pretty well capture the gist. Highlights:
Schindler has a particular problem, in that he’s taken a strong stand on the Snowden/Greenwald treasonfiasco, a cause near and dear to the hearts of the young. This is a problem because young people are the most ruthlessly opposed to any notion of expertise, largely because they are the segment of the population least likely tohaveany. These young free-thinkers have made clear to Dr. Schindler that his references to his advanced education and to his many years of experience actually working inside the NSA are just arrogant diversions, because he just doesn’tget it.
Some of John’s debate partners, of course, are intelligent and well-intentioned people. But some of them are just insecure — and sometimes paranoid — scolds who feel the need to lecture Schindler on how the NSA and the intelligence communityreallyworks — that world “really” pops up a lot — and to point him to things he needs to read.
...
Sometimes, all we are left with is to ask people to take our word on it, a request we’ve earned through experience, research, publication, service, etc. When people ask me why I think Russia has an aggressive foreign policy because, gosh,theydon’t see that at all — well, there just isn’t the time or energy to take the questioner through the years of education and experience that I have and they don’t.
...
Part of this dismissal of expertise is the positive hostility to advanced degrees, an emotion almost entirely centered among people who do not have them. So, sure, some of it is envy, but some of it is based in ignorance about what a PhDmeans. Too many people, including the hapless folks who foolishly embarked on grad programs they can never finish, think a PhD is just several more years of college. It’s not.
I could go on, but by now you've noticed the Learned Expert's habit of setting up straw men. No, anger at the NSA's spying program isn't founded in a feeling that it's unconstitutional and damaging to America's economy and security, it's because we disrespect Mr. Schindler's advanced education. No, we do not question Expert Foreign Policy opinions on Russia because of spectacular failures of past Russian Policy Experts (c.f. the CIA's assessment that the USSR was the world's 3rd largest economy in 1988), it's because we don't appreciate his PhD. No, we don't question the research from the current Academic Establishment because it has produced oddball policy recommendations regarding Global Warming and Keynesian Economics - it's because we don't even understand what a PhD means.
Oooooh kaaaaaay.
My take is that Tom Nichols is a very smart guy who needs to get out more often. In particular, he needs to hear more people voicing (legitimate) complaints about the Elite's lack of transparency, accountability, and propensity to game the system in pursuit of tenure and grant funding.
The Democratic Convention opened with a bang. Specifically, this bang:
I never knew that it was cool to belong to the Government. Then I though about all the Cultural Icons that I grew up with, and how they thought that this was just what it meant to be American:
I feel like such a great American. Thanks, Democrats!
After spending 15 years furiously turning their high trust environment into a low trust one (want to buy some Texas Air National Guard memos? Only driven on Sundays!), the Einsteins in the Press have a cunning new plan: Fact Check!
You see, they're going to "fact check" the claims by the politicians. What could be more journolistic?
I suppose it would be easier to muster the media-desired amount of
outrage on media-command if one had no memory of the previous election
cycle in which all the (R)s were also, coincidentally, called “liars”.
Or the one before that. Or, really, any situation involving an (R) that
has been observed and then punditized all over on by some bright young
Ivy Leaguer with a WaPo career in his future or present. But this
“liars” thing has always been with us, going back as far as I can remember. The administration of George W. Bush, for example, was so
dishonest that punditlings all felt the need to break out their
thesauri and search for synonyms, presumably just so they wouldn’t all
bore themselves (‘mendacious’ was evidently hit upon as the preferred
synonym, by some sort of tacit universal agreement). Come on! He ‘lied
us into’ a war. He was the head Lying Liar And The Lying Liars Who Lie.
There was also Sarah Palin who said she could see Russia AND SHE
COULDN’T and said she went to Iraq at a certain time AND SHE DIDN’T.
It’s always like this; spot-the-(R)-lie is journalists’ favorite parlor game, for crying out loud. It’s their calling.
We remember that Drudge broke the Lewinsky story, because the press found a "lie" that they didn't think was important. We remember that the New York Times let themselves be scooped by the National Inquirer on the story of John Edwards' mistress, and his lies about same weren't lies sufficiently grave for the fact checkers. And as I pointed out, they took lies written in Microsoft Word - not even convincing lies at that - because it was useful to be used against George W. Bush.
Ah, but this time will be different, because they're ... well, just because. Ooooooh kaaaaay.
And so is it too much to ask that mouth breathing Senators (Idiot - New Jersey) stop saying that it is?
It's not. You don't even have to read past page 1, Scooter.
Is it too much to ask that sitting US Senators actually have a basic grasp of the law (both Federal and State) before the open their yaps to suggest some "common sense" gun control laws? We might think that your "common sense" made some actual sense if you had any sort of grasp of current statute.
Helpful pro tip to gun grabbing statist pricks: maybe this is why nobody believes you even when you use the magic words 'common sense".
But ZOMG Sarah Palin is soooooo dumb!!!!11!!! Or something.
Five years ago, it took the skeptic community years and years to demolish bad science from the Climate Science Establishment. Three years ago with Climategate it took the skeptic community months and months to demolish bad science from the Climate Science Establishment. As short a time ago as last year, it took the skeptic community days and days to demolish bad science from the Climate Science Establishment.
Last October, I advanced a number of (sophisticated!) criticisms of BEST’s “sophisticated” methods (here and here).
At least some of the study authors know of these criticisms: I emailed
Muller, Charlotte Wickham, and Judy Curry, but only received a reply
from Curry (on her blog).
As far as I can tell, none of the criticisms I made, nor any of the
criticisms advanced by D.J. Keenan, have been answered satisfactorily;
indeed, they have not been answered at all. I must admit that in
politics, it is sometimes best not to acknowledge your critics. In this
sense, Muller may be wise.
Muller has two op eds out today,
a double whammy meant to influence politics. Well, this blog is meant
to influence politics, so there’s noting in the world wrong with that.
But just you count how many people, in support of Muller’s position,
will call his pieces “science” and not polemic; whereas the opposite
labels will be applied to Muller’s critics.
Oh, and the snarky comment on "sophisticated" statistical methods? That's from William Briggs, a statistician. A statistician who seemingly offered criticisms to improve the paper during the review process, and whose criticisms went unanswered. Science!
But the most brutal take down comes from Christopher Monckton in a piece hosted many places, including at Briggs': Dr. Muller is ignorant of history:
Yes, the world has warmed since 1750. However, even if one accepts Dr. Müller’s estimate of 1.5 Co
warming since then, that rate is indeed well within the natural
variability of the climate. Indeed, in the 40 years from 1695 to 1735,
Central England (not a bad proxy for global temperature change) warmed
naturally at 0.4 Co per decade, seven times faster than the 0.057 Co per decade he finds in the 262 years during which we are supposed to have influenced the weather.
Natural variability, therefore, is sufficient to explain all of the
warming since 1750. No other explanation is necessary. Accordingly, it
is not legitimate to claim, as the Berkeley team claim, that in the
absence of any other explanation the warming must be attributed to CO2.
That claim is an instance of the argumentum ad ignorantiam, the fundamental logical fallacy of argument from ignorance. It is not sound science.
There's a lot more there, but this pretty much leaves the whole theory gutshot. We have undenied evidence that past climate variability considerably exceeded current variability. This argument is quite simply never addressed by the Climate Science Establishment. In fact, this historical approach to the question is one that I myself laid out in some detail. Oddly, the Climate Science Establishment seems never to address the questions. I recommend that you RTWT here.
But back to the science. Judith Curry - who believes that CO2 emissions are indeed causing the planet to warm - is scathing:
Muller bases his ‘conversion’ on the results of their recent paper.
So, how convincing is the analysis in Rohde et al.’s new paper A new estimate of the average surface land temperature spanning 1753-2011?
Their analysis is based upon curve fits to volcanic forcing and the
logarithm of the CO2 forcing (addition of solar forcing did not improve
the curve fit.)
I have made public statements that I am unconvinced by their
analysis. I do not see any justification in their argument for making a
stronger attribution statement than has been made by the IPCC AR4. I
have written MANY posts that critique the IPCC’s attribution analysis.
Here I try to give a sense of the challenges in attributing climate
change to causal factors.
Muller seemingly invited Curry to be an author of the paper; she seemingly refused. He seemingly ignored her comments during peer-review. Her post seemingly is her reply.
Add in that Muller's paper has not been published - i.e. it fails what we've been told for the last several years is the sine qua non test of Authorized™ Science®, this is very weak beer. Add in the splash of an introduction not via Science or Nature or Geophysical Research Letters, and the whole "scientific" stage appears to be nothing but a story told by an idiot, full of sound and fury but signifying nothing.
And all in the space of a day. That's some righteous Science® right there.
Oops, got to go - it's those darn Deniers, back on my lawn ...
We've heard for a while how Global Warming "Deniers" should be jailed (or blown up). We've been told that "the science is settled". Now we see that there's a linkage between these two: any scientist that doesn't toe the ZOMG Thermageddon!!!11!!!eleventy!! line gets summarily fired:
Five years ago, Oregon State Climatologist George Taylor went around quietly saying that he was not a believer. Then Governor Ted Kulongoski and many faculty at OSU including Dr. Jane Lubchenco made life impossible for Taylor, and he retired. (Lubchenco is now head of NOAA in the Obama administration.) Under those currently in charge, OSU climate research has grown to be a huge business, reportedly $90 million per year with no real deliverables beyond solid academic support for climate hysteria. A small army of researchers ponder the effects of Global Warming on all sorts of things from tube worms living along the Oregon Coast to butterflies inland. When the climate refuses to warm (as it has for the last twenty years), they just study ‘warming in reverse!’ Most of us call that “cooling,” but they are very careful not to upset their Obama administration contract monitors with politically incorrect terminology.
...
The fact of the matter is that it is now two weeks since I was fired and no one has had the cajones or the common courtesy to even tell me why. I have spoken with the Dept. Chair (Rich Carter) who fired me, and he refused to tell me why. I spoke to the Dean of Science (Vince Remcho) and he couldn’t tell me why. I spoke to HR who set up a meeting with me, then cancelled it an hour before. Then I went to the Vice President of Academic Affairs (Becky Warner) and she sent me back to Rich Carter, the chemistry chair.
It’s just a sad, sad state of affairs that an institution like OSU would fire a good employee for (ostensibly) no reason and then run around and hide from the person they fired. I had stellar teaching evaluations, I won College of Science awards for teaching, and published textbooks. My class sections were always full and I was well-liked by students (see ratemyprofessors.com). I was doing my job very well. But I guess I didn’t march in step with their philosophies.
There were quite a few student protests over this at OSU (Barometer, Facebook, etc.) but to no avail.
I was given no severance and had no warning this was about to happen. In fact, I was lured into the chair’s office under the guise of a fallacious story before being fired.
As you know, I was probably the most visibly-outspoken critic of the Global Warming doctrine at OSU. I gave several public talks on the topic and did research in the area which I regularly posted on the web. I was also on a few talk radio shows in the area. I think they finally just said, we can’t have this.
The Left likes to pat itself on the back for how they're the Defenders of Science, protecting Enlightenment principles of skeptical and unflinching analysis of nature from the ebil ReTHUGlican War on Science™. They like to pat themselves on the back about how they stand up for the rights of the Little Guy, and think it's appalling that the private sector might fire someone without cause, notice, or severance. They spent all of 2009 and 2010 talking about how horrible it was that someone might lose their job, and their small child no longer might have health insurance for a serious disease.
And no way that would ever ever ever ever ever be done by people in their tribe. No way that filthy lucre might cause Good Progressives to go full frontal Simon LaGree. Nope. It's Moral High Ground everywhere you look, as they march shoulder to shoulder towards the New Progressive Jerusalem®.
Excuse me while I barf. Progressives, this is your moment. You keep saying that with the Right Sort Of People running things, that Government will be a force for good. You keep saying that intelligently directed government power is a force for good in society. You keep telling us that we should give you more power and money, because we can trust you. You keep telling us that scientific funding for Progressive causes would never corrupt the scientific establishment like private funding for private causes (e.g. the health effects of tobacco) would.
OK, here's your opportunity to excel. Prove it. Progressives in Oregon in particular, we're looking at you to right this wrong. Obama supporters in particular, we're looking at you to right this wrong.
Because I think it's all a bunch of drivel that you spout, to pump up your pathetic intellectual egos by wrapping yourselves in white lab coats, to signal belonging to the right Tribe other Progressives. I think that it's a pathetically weak sort of drivel, and dream that one day you'll give us a higher caliber of drivel. I think that you're a bunch of clueless idiots who shouldn't be given money and power any more than, in P.J. O'Rourke's famous saying, booze and car keys should get handed to teenagers.
I'd be willing to see your actions prove me wrong. This is your moment. Go ahead, dazzle me.
Yeah, I didn't think so. Let us not assassinate this lad further. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?
Everyone else, please help spread the word.
UPDATE 15 June 2012 08:18: Think that this is a one off, a "black swan? UCLA fires a whistleblower exposing politically motivated junk science.
Everyone's talking about Obama's slip of the tongue, where he said that the private sector was "doing fine". This is increasingly seen as not a simple gaffe, but rather as his actual beliefs slipping out. I think that's right, and is in general reflective of the view of the Left in general. This view is decidedly different from what the Right believes, and this difference is basic and unbridgeable.
The Left believes that private sector growth (and GDP growth in general) is a given, a baseline if you will. They've convinced themselves that the Keynesian multiplier is greater than 1.0, in other words removing capital from the private sector in the form of taxes and spending that on various forms of government-sponsored consumption results in a higher overall GDP than leaving the capital in the private sector.
The Right believes that this is nonsense on stilts: that the multiplier is certainly less than 1.0, and may even be negative for many types of government spending; that the drag of increased government headcount leads to make work jobs which result in the creation of regulations that depress private sector GDP growth; that spending programs are not designed by Philosopher Kings, rationally analyzing which programs would produce the greatest multiplier effect, but rather are determined by political lobbying from powerful interest groups.
There's no bridging this divide. This is a fundamental disagreement on starting principles.
Perhaps the greatest evidence that the Left is not smarter and more nuanced than everyone else is that they simply refuse to debate this disagreement. If their argument were as powerful as they claim, they'd be happy to do this. Instead, they point out that the debate is long over, and even Nixon said that "we're all Keynesians now".
Let me emphasize that: the Left is using Richard Nixon as an example of a Philosopher King. Seems legit ...
And so the private sector is "doing fine", by definition. Even Richard Nixon says so. And if you don't believe this, you're dumber than Sarah Palin. Or something.
And they call us idiots. It's drivel, and a shockingly low caliber of drivel. Personally, I'd like a higher quality drivel.
That would be Sabra, who unloads a righteous can of whoop-ass, culminating with this:
Shit like this is exactly why I so rarely pay attention to liberals these days. Because they lie. And then they lie some more. And then they claim it's the truth, and if you point out that nothing of the sort was ever said, why, don't you know that what was said was just racist code words?
Clearly, Sabra is a Patriarchal Oppressor, whose goal is to keep women helpless and without options for, oh, I don't know, higher education and bettering themselves and stuff. Oh, wait ...
Me, I just think she would like a higher caliber drivel from the Lefties.
He thinks I'm dumb enough to fall for that drivel. Newt takes him to the woodshed for as satisfying a thrashing as I've seen in a while. Good grief, what a maroon. He thinks he's as good a liar as Bill Clinton. He's not.
And I think I figured out what's so gay* about Mitt. Look at the goofy grin he has at around 1:40, while Newt is ripping him a new one. Just level with the American People is damn right.
* Not in a, you know gay sense (not that there is anything wrong with that), but in a gayer than Twilight sense. I have got to photoshop some sparkles onto Slick Willard.
On this day in 1170, three knights of Henry II Plantagenet cut down Archbishop Thomas à Becket at the high altar in Canterbury Cathedral. I wrote about how Becket vexed the King with his demands for limits on Royal Authority, and how today's Progressives feel that same vexation (now that the Right Sort Of Person is in the Oval Office, natch).
I'm struck on how this has disappeared down the Emily Latella Media's memory hole, along with Fast And Furious and the violent crime at #OccupyUSA. It's like they think we don't notice the bias of what's reported, and what isn't. Of what's a story, and what isn't.
Maybe Instapundit was right - you should always vote for the Republican for President, because then the Media will be zealous in reporting on civil liberties overreach by the Fed.Gov. It's a little sad that such a simple-minded theory seems to work so well in practice. I'd hoped that our Intellectual Superiors™ wouldn't be so, well, Middle School obvious. Well, a guy can hope, can't he?
It's drivel, and drivel of a shockingly low caliber. I'd like a higher caliber drivel, please.
Not that it matters much, or that he has much of a chance of winning. However, he's the best choice on offer. The reason is that he's the only one who plausibly will address the problem facing the Republic. Via Foseti, Wikipedia explains it:
What we have in this country today, then, is both anarchy (the failure of the state to enforce the laws) and, at the same time, tyranny—the enforcement of laws by the state for oppressive purposes; the criminalization of the law-abiding and innocent through exorbitant taxation, bureaucratic regulation, the invasion of privacy, and the engineering of social institutions, such as the family and local schools; the imposition of thought control through "sensitivity training" and multiculturalist curricula, "hate crime" laws, gun-control laws that punish or disarm otherwise law-abiding citizens but have no impact on violent criminals who get guns illegally, and a vast labyrinth of other measures. In a word, anarcho-tyranny.
Mitt Romney is a big government "fixer", which means that he instinctively reaches for the new regulation. While I have a lot of admiration for Romney's personal life and personal morals, I have nothing but contempt for his what-do-you-like-I-like-that-too attitude towards governing. I could easily see him bending to more of the "Domestic Terrorist" nonsense - or if he won't, he certainly has done nothing to convince me otherwise. Quite frankly, the noise about how he's the only viable candidate is just that - noise. It's the sound of the political elite trying to get a bandwagon rolling. A moment's thought will dispel this as the mirage it is.
Newt Gengrich is without doubt the smartest man in the room (I'm not joking here), but the last three years have shown us the danger of electing a Professor-in-Chief. Plus, he's clearly overly comfortable sitting on the sofa spouting support for what was even then clearly a dead program, so just how smart is he? He said this was a mistake, but never said why he thought it was a good idea at the time. Now, I like a lot of his ideas; the problem is that I don't know which of those he'd try to get implemented. Given his unwillingness to explain the Nancy Pelosi thing, I suspect that I won't like the answer much.
R0n P4U1!!!!eleventy!!!! isn't just a kook, his response to the newsletter fiasco has turned a problem for his campaign into a disqualifying event. He didn't know what was being published in his newsletter? Oooooh kaaaay. I don't think that he's a racist, I think that he thinks that I'm a dim bulb. That expression of contempt for my intelligence is returned in equal measure. Don't let it hit you in the ass on the way out, R0n. He's simply dishonest and unwilling to take the heat, which means I don't want him anywhere near the Oval Office.
I don't think that Michelle Bachman is crazy, but she's far too socially conservative for me. Gay marriage is not the biggest crisis facing the Republic today, and so she's taking her eye off the ball.
The rest (Santorum? Huntsman? Not even sure who's there or why) are rounding error. They might make good Presidents, in some alternate universe where they break into double digits. It's possible that I could reconsider one of these in the unlikely event that they show signs of being contenders. But the first rule of getting elected is getting elected. Not much to see here so far.
Which leaves Rick Perry.
He's not glib, although he does decently well with a Teleprompter. People overly impressed with glibness will either vote for Obama anyway (Thomas Friedman), or will hold their noses and vote for him (Peggy Noonan). In other words, this is irrelevant. What is relevant is that he's the only candidate that's shown a long term instinct to resist the growing anarcho-tyranny of the current political elite.
The fact that the elite hate him is what the lawyers call admission against interest - we can infer the truth because it damages their case.
But I don't want someone who is so confident that he is a more capable administrator of federal power. I want someone who is skeptical of federal power no matter who wields it, no matter how skilled and able an administrator he might be, even if that administrator is he himself, and so always prefers to shunt power away from the government to to the states, and their citizens.
Quite frankly, he's the only one with a record of walking this walk. And this is the problem facing the Republic today - too much government, done in the interest of political lobbying, with government agencies writing thousands of new regulations in the interest of the special interests who have entirely captured those agencies.
At this point, I should confess that I don't much like Perry personally. That doesn't matter. He's the only one with his eye on the ball that actually counts.
UPDATE 28 December 2011 16:32: Via Hotair, here's Romney telling us that Massachusetts' RomneyCare was conservative, not liberal:
Presumably, that's why it's preferred 3:1 by those conservative Massachusetts voters.
He thinks that we're idiots, to swallow this drivel. I'd like a higher caliber of drivel.
UPDATE 28 December 16:45: Ron Paul is crazy as a coot. Foreign policy is messy, because international relations are chaotic. The only way to interpret this is that we have no interests in the rest of the world. Or he somehow thinks that his State Department will be staffed with Philosopher Kings, who won't make mistakes or fail to foresee what might happen twenty years down the road.
So what, I wonder, would be the unforeseen consequences (twenty years in the future) of withdrawing from the world? Again, via Hotair.
Ordinary folks might be unable to marshal facts and figures to counter such ludicrous claims, but they know bullshit when they see it. This has two effects on them: One, they feel profoundly disempowered watching their leaders deploy their smarts not on their behalf but against them. And two, since they can’t become experts and academics, they resist by retreating into their own simple certitudes drawn from folk wisdom, faith and founding principles. Indeed, Sarah Palin is as much Barack Obama’s gift to America as she is John McCain’s.
The great political divide right now is not between eggheads and blockheads, as Maureen Dowd puts it, or intellectualism and stupidity, as other self-serving liberal pundits sneer. It is between two types of activism: an irresponsible, pseudo-intellectual one and a retrograde, folksy one.
Look, I have as many intellectual bona fides as anyone, and more than most. And this simply infuriates me. It assumes that only an intellectual is fit to serve as President. Not only is that entirely unoriginal (dating back to Plato's Republic), but it's been known for decades that this is bollox of the first order.
And the author - Reason's Shikha Dalmia - clearly has absolutely no idea about this, while she drones on and on about how Republicans are dim witted, anti-intellectual bumpkins too stupid to understand what's going on:
Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann—women with better hairdos than heads ...
Republican intellectual defensiveness has hardened into intellectual goofiness. No longer is stupidity a disqualification, even for the highest office in the land. Palin, in fact, has turned her lack of intellectual talent into her biggest asset, like Snooki on “Jersey Shore.” ...
I've said before that I don't know if Palin would be a good president, but (a) it's hard to see her as worse than Obama, (b) she's clearly less loopy that Joe Biden, who sits today a heartbeat away from the Oval Office, and (c) Palin is changing politics in the country is a way that Dalmia simply can't seem to comprehend.
But the kicker is that Ms. Dalmia is entirely happy to lurch into a blanket condemnation of the majority of this country for being unthinking, while presenting her very own unthinking bona fides on display for us here. And not just the examples here - she serves up one herself:
The great hope from Obama was that he would be different. That his thoughtful, professorial demeanor would prompt him to look for policies that worked—not push a preconceived agenda. In fact, when he took office, I hoped that he would be an “empirical president” who dispassionately considered the evidence from all sides before making decisions.
Huh? What sort of idiot expected this? The Shikha Dalmia sort of idiot, that's who. You know, the type that still doesn't get it that intellectuals do not - and should not - have the trust of the majority of Americans, because they keep screwing up. Dalmia points this out in her article, and still complains that Americans are doing this.
She could have done some honest self-analysis. Instead, she looks at who's in the Intellectual in-group, and sneers at thom she's placed in the Intellectual out-group. That's one righteous display of brain power, right there.
Hey Ms. Dalmia - Sitting Bull called. He wants his Tribal Thinking back.
That's why I don't like to hang with Intellectuals very much anymore. Not only are they mostly stupid, they combine unthinking self-unawareness with viciousness in equal measures. It's too much drivel for me to stomach.
BRUSSELS — The Belgian top-flight encounter between Germinal Beerschot and Lierse on Friday was halted by the referee after Lierse goalkeeper Eiji Kawashima was taunted with chants about the Fukushima disaster.
Lierse had gone a goal up when visiting Beerschot fans threw a projectile in the direction of Japanese international 'keeper Kawashima before insulting him with chants of "Kawashima-Fukushima! Kawashima-Fukushima!" the Belga agency reported.
Following protests by Kawashima, the referee decided to bring play to a halt for several minutes until order was restored.
The match ended in a 1-1 draw, but Kawashima, 28, left the pitch at full-time in tears, and spoke of his anger at the chants.
Maybe Rick Perry? Couldn't be a case of bad mannered Euro-idiots. I mean, they're all like Einstein crossed with Shakespeare, right?
Can every Progressive that ever said we should "be more like Europe" please shut up and sit down in the back of the room? Grown-ups are talking.
A comprehensive study of web users has determined that the dumber you are, the more likely you are to use Microsoft Internet Explorer.
After measuring the IQs of exactly 101,326 users and correlating their scores with the browser they had used to access the test, "There was a clear indication ... that the subjects using any version of Internet Explorer ranked significantly lower on an average than others," concludes the study, conducted by the Vancouver, Canada, psychometric-assessment firm, AptiQuant.
Riddle me this, Psychometric Man: What is the difference between users of Internet Explorer and other browsers? Anyone? Bueller?
They're using the default browser that came with their Operating System. So did AptiQuant control for people who made a decision to change browsers vs. people who didn't? Did they study Apple users who use the default browser (Safari) vs. Apple users of other browsers?
[crickets]
Junk science. You find it everywhere, and it's always found through attention-grabbing headlines. The probability that the scientific content is junk increases with the number of views that the Press Release gets, p > 0.95.
And I say this as someone who's not a big Internet Explorer fan. Even with the newer version (8.0+, which is much, much improved) you're stuck with ActiveX. ActiveX is a sewer of security vulnerabilities:
Citrix's Access Gateway solution provides an SSL based VPN via the Web browser. This is accomplished through the use of an ActiveX control. The control itself is provided by the server upon connecting. Access Gateway functionality is provided by several models of Access Gateway Appliances. For more information, visit the URL referenced below.
Remote exploitation of an arbitrary library loading vulnerability in Citrix Systems, Inc.'s Access Gateway Client ActiveX control allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code.
Microsoft's architecture is so broken here that they take the hit for another company's security vulnerabilities, because their architecture lets that company's buggy code get delivered via the web and run as Administrator. Gah.
But the idea the people who use IE are dumber than other people is just dumb. And boring. I'd like a higher caliber drivel, please.
