Blogito, Ergo Sum
by Gregg Calkins
6 December 2010, a Monday
Congressional Republicans and administration officials said they were close to a deal to keep the Bush-era tax cuts temporarily.
You can just imagine my surprise, can’t you?
WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, said in an interview broadcast on Sunday evening that rising inequality was eroding social cohesion and that Congress could help economic growth by making the tax code more efficient.
This is stunning, too. I mean, who knew? Apparently everyone in the US except the chairman of the Fed, that’s all.
Is
Paul Krugman ready to abandon the shaky ship?...if Democrats give in to the blackmailers now, they’ll just face more demands in the future. As long as Republicans believe that Mr. Obama will do anything to avoid short-term pain, they’ll have every incentive to keep taking hostages. If the president will endanger America’s fiscal future to avoid a tax increase, what will he give to avoid a government shutdown?
So Mr. Obama should draw a line in the sand, right here, right now. If Republicans hold out, and taxes go up, he should tell the nation the truth, and denounce the blackmail attempt for what it is.
Yes, letting taxes go up would be politically risky. But giving in would be risky, too — especially for a president whom voters are starting to write off as a man too timid to take a stand. Now is the time for him to prove them wrong.
And if he proves them right, what will Paul do?
Like I said, the Republicans have been portrayed as being "the party of the rich" for so long that the Democrats have been able to grow good populist hay with the notion, but the wealth factor has swung the other day in recent years. No matter what they say, if the tax cuts "for the wealthy" do not expire then it will be because the Democrats do not really want them to do so.
CILLIZZA | After finishing up as Secretary of State, will Clinton leave politics for good -- or might she run for president again in 2016?
Read Krugman again. If Democrats view their leader as a man too timid to take a stand for them and as more and more ineffective against the new congress, she’ll replace Obama in 2012 rather than take the chance of seeing a Republican beat him. At least that will be her thinking...whether she succeeds is another thing.
It depends on how Obama looks this time next year. If Krugman et al have abandoned ship then he’ll get a primary challenge and also a decent Republican challenger, and Hillary will not sit that one out...unless she really means this is her last term of public office. Uh huh.
A report on Cancun, from the
Telegraph:If, last week, frozen behind a snowdrift, you heard a faint hysterical squeaking, it might well have been the sound of those 20,000 delegates holed up behind a wall of armed security guards in the sun-drenched Mexican holiday resort of Cancun, telling each other that the world is more threatened by runaway global warming than ever. Between their tequilas and lavish meals paid for by the world’s taxpayers, they heard how, by 2060, global temperatures will have risen by 4 degrees Celsius; how the Maldives and Tuvalu are sinking below the waves faster than ever; how the survival of salmon is threatened by CO2-induced acidification of the oceans; how the UN must ban incandescent light bulbs throughout the world. ...
The most obvious thing about all this ritualised scaremongering was how stale it all was. Not one of these points hasn’t been a cliche for years. ... It is only those same old computer models that predict that Tuvalu and the Maldives are about to drown, when real measurements show the sea around them not to be rising at all. Far from the oceans acidifying, their pH currently ranges between 7.9 and 8.3, putting them very firmly on the alkaline side of the threshold, at 7.0.
The prediction that global temperatures will rise by four degrees in 50 years comes from that same UK Met Office computer which five weeks ago was telling us we were about to enjoy a "milder than average" winter, after three years when it has consistently got every one of its winter and summer forecasts hopelessly wrong. (And the reason why our local authorities are already fast running out of salt is that they were silly enough to believe them.)
When Vicky Pope, the Met Office’s Head of Climate Change Advice, wanted to fly out from Gatwick to Cancun to tell them that 2010 is the hottest year on record, she was trapped by inches of the same global warming that her £33 million computer had failed to predict. ...
What we are seeing here is one of the greatest collective flights from reality in the history of the human race. As western Europe shivers to a halt and our energy bills soar through the roof, the time has come when we should all start to get seriously angry with our politicians for being carried away by all this claptrap. ...
The global warming scare may have been fun for the children while it lasted. But the time has come for the joke to be declared well and truly over.
What the hysterical warmists have done with their irresponsible computer models is manage to discredit the truth about global warming. I believe some thought that if they did not over-dramatize the problem they would fail to capture the public interest, and there may well have been some truth to that, but doing so and losing all credibility has been worse.
The question is not whether the globe has been warming, because that’s been true for at least 12,000 years, but what the real reason behind it is and what, if anything, can—or should—be done about it.
And the fact is that the warming is not linear, there are warmer spots and cooler spots in the geologic and historic records, and the warmer spots have actually been the best times.
Even if Tuvalu and the Maldives drown, so what else is new? Global sea levels have been rising for 12,000 years, too...this isn’t something extraordinary. When you melt trillions of tons of continental glaciers off of the northern hemisphere the water has to go somewhere, and it has been doing so all along.
The good thing the extremists have done for us is give cooler heads (sorry, couldn’t resist) a chance to realize that throwing the baby out with the bath water wasn’t a rational solution to a problem that might not even exist, particularly if warming really is better than cooling.
Which is the very first thing the scammers had to sell you, remember. FIRST you tell people that warming is bad and will cause all sorts of harm. After you have successfully sold that first part to the credulous, all else follows.
But how silly is it, tactically, to hold global warming scare conferences during the northern hemisphere’s winter? Moving from Copenhagen to Cancun helped in that the conventioneers were not caught being snowbound on camera, but otherwise that’s a recipe for PR disaster. Al Gore, Lord love him (I can’t), held a couple of his scareminars on what turned out to be days of record cold so bad that not all of his would-be attendees could make it. You can only thank whatever gods may be for opponents as clueless as that.
Speaking of clueless,
Roger Simon writes:I was amused to read the following from
His actual explanation for the ataque de nervios is clueless, or should I say reified? Try as he may, he can’t get outside his traditional mindset:
"Democrats are understandably — and largely justified in being — frustrated that they lost an election based on Republicans defending tax cuts for the wealthy that are only expiring because of a budget gimmick championed by George Bush — and based on criticism of their apparent lack of concern over the deficit, by a party that has shown no past or current seriousness about deficit reduction and the hard choices involved. Losing those political fights was as inexplicable as it was hard for the Democrats. Maybe that’s why Thursday seemed to have donkeys melting down all over the place."
Largely justified?! Oh, I see. It’s about George Bush again. Eureka! Never mind that all those tea party demonstrators — you know, the ones that just helped elect the new Congress — were more than willing to criticize Bush spending policies as well. They were a mirage (or, I forgot, racists).
Democrats have not yet figured out that even mentioning George Bush’s name has become as ineffective as holding global warming conferences in the northern hemisphere’s wintertime. Even if you are right as rain, that mule has been whipped so badly that even a redneck would raise an eyebrow.
No, like a good Time mag boy, Halperin is simply kicking the can down the road, when the reasons for the Democratic breakdown are infinitely more serious, starting with this little tidbit — Keynesian economics is dead. Giving away money as the route to political success or attempted social justice just isn’t going to work anymore, because there isn’t any money to give away. And it’s only going to get worse as the population ages. The whole justification for the Democratic Party — the welfare state — is one giant Ponzi scheme that makes Madoff seem like a piker.
And everybody knows it. All across the world, from Portugal to Japan, the system is in free fall. And the only thing that could possibly save it (and even that may not be able to ) is the free market...
Talk about reasons for an ataque de nervios. How about a full bore psychotic break?
The Democratic Party will have to reinvent itself or become a major instrument of American, even global, decline.
A bit overdramatic, perhaps, but still a good point.
Claudia Rosett has mixed emotions:Pity a world in which any information that can be downloaded onto the internet is advertised as serving the high cause of "truth," no matter who gets hurt.
Not that the wikileaked cables aren’t interesting. They’re fascinating. In the trove released to date, there are cables that deserved to be leaked. They expose a wealth of important information, from the begging and finagling with which the Obama administration has been pursuing an economically disastrous accord on "climate," to the hypocrisies of Arab rulers who foster mindsets profoundly dangerous to the U.S. and its democratic allies, but plead privately with American officials for the U.S. to save their necks by cutting the head off the Iranian snake.
One hopes they will also help put ‘paid’ to the climate scam.
Go to the link for the full story on this one, but you ought to find this rather amusing no matter what position you have decided to take in regard to global warming/climate change.
The author decided to do some research on what the MSM had reported over time in an item titled:
MSM Inertia: What We Can Learn from 120 Years of Climate Catastrophe Reporting. I have decided to just clip a few of the headlines without going into the scientific explanation behind what was actually happening, leaving that for the serious readers. But the headline items alone should be interesting reading just for their historic value....the reporting of climate catastrophe has been going on for over 120 years.
What’s fascinating about the reporting is that it has encompassed the full range of temperature: searing heat and bitter cold, both reported as real and potentially deadly. ...
But when one looks back at the history of climate reporting, you find a remarkably consistent and recurring theme. The global temperature has cycled from cold to warm to cold to warm again over the last 120 years. The media cycles of impending climatic doom mirror the climate cycles themselves, but with a roughly ten- to fifteen-year lag. ...
On February 24, 1895, the New York Times reported: "Geologists think the world may be frozen up again." The story wondered "whether recent and long continued observations do not point to the advent of a second glacial period."
In 1912, shortly after the sinking of the Titanic by an iceberg, the New York Times reported on a professor from a Cornell University: "Professor Schmidt warns us of an encroaching ice age."
On the very same day, the Los Angles Times reported: "Fifth ice age is on the way. … Human race will have to fight for its existence against the cold."
... The temperature records from the
On July 3, 1923, the Christian Science Monitor reported: "Captain MacMillan left Wiscasset, Maine, announcing that one of the purposes of his cruise was to determine whether there was the beginning of another ice age as the advance of glaciers in the last 70 years would seem to indicate."
... on April 6, 1924, the LA Times reported that Swedish scientist Rutger Sernander claimed there were "scientific grounds for believing" that "when all winds will bring snow, the Sun cannot prevail against the clouds and three winters will come in one, with no summer between."
On September 18, 1924, the New York Times declared the threat was real, saying: "MacMillan reports signs of new ice age." ...
On March 11, 1929, the LA Times reported: "Most geologists think the world is growing warmer and that it will continue to get warmer."
On March 27, 1933, the New York Times headline read: "The next ice age, if it is coming … is still a long way off."
... meteorologist J.B. Kincer of the United States Weather Bureau published in the September 1933 Monthly Weather Review: "Wide-spread and persistent tendency towards warmer weather." He noted that of the 21 winters prior to 1933 in Washington, D.C.: "Eighteen were warmer than normal and all of the past 13 were mild." ...
By November 6, 1939, the Chicago Daily Tribune published the story: "Experts puzzle over 20-year mercury rise." The story noted: "Chicago is in the front rank of thousands of cites throughout the world which have been affected by a mysterious trend towards warmer climate in the last two decades." ...
On August 2, 1952, the New York Times reported that Eskimos were eating cod, a fish not previously in their diet. The following year the Times reported that studies confirmed summers and winters were getting warmer. ...
On February 15, 1959, the New York Times reported: "Arctic findings in particular support theory of rising global temperatures." ...
On November 15, 1969, Science News quoted meteorologist Dr. J. Murray Mitchell Jr.: "How long the current cooling trend continues is one of the most important problems of our civilizations. … If the cooling continues for another 200 to 300 years the Earth could be plunged into an ice age."
On January 11, 1970, the
Washington Post reported: "Colder Winters Held Dawn of New Ice Age. … Better get a good grip on your long johns, cold weather haters, the worst may be yet to come."Fortune
reported in February 1974: "It is the root cause of a lot of that unpleasant weather around the world and they warn that it carries the potential for human disasters of unprecedented magnitude."On June 24, 1974, Time wrote: "Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age."
Newsweek
said on April 28, 1975: "The Earth’s climate seems to be cooling down. … [Meteorologists were] Almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century." ...(But) by 1993, from U.S. News and World Report: "Global Climate Change (warming) may alter temperature and rainfall patterns, many scientists fear, with uncertain consequences for agriculture."
Time wrote on November 13, 2000, that 27 European climatologists have become worried that the warming trend "may be irreversible, at least over most of the coming century." ...On April 3, 2006,
Time magazine’s cover story — accompanied by a picture of a lonely polar bear on a small piece of ice — read: "Be Worried, be very worried. Climate change isn’t some vague future problem — it’s already damaging the planet at an alarming pace." It also stated on the cover in bold: "Earth at the tipping point. How it threatens your health. How China and India can help save the world, or destroy it."Well, like I say, read the whole thing, but the headline excerpts ought to tickle your funny-bone if nothing else does.
Which I needed, because this one smarts:
Mr. Meredith, pictured with Howard Cosell and Frank Gifford on "Monday Night Football" on ABC in 1973, played for the Dallas Cowboys from 1960-1968.
Those were the years I lived for and loved Monday Night Football. I loved it when Meredith used to carve up Cosell so deftly, especially since Cosell obviously felt he was so clearly the intellectual superior of Meredith. Maybe he was, in some ways, but Meredith had the wit and the charm.
The only sports announcing team I liked better was that of Dizzy Dean and Pee Wee Reese doing baseball. I swear, Dizzy was one of the funniest and most charming rascals alive and he was enjoying life so immensely it was uplifting just watching him. Poor Pee Wee, he was trying very diligently to be a REAL announcer, not just another aged baseball player hired to talk, he was a professional that way, too, but every time he started thinking a little bit too much of himself here would come Diz to bring him back down to earth.
You’ve heard this one before but can I ever mention those two without telling one of my favorite stories? They were announcing a game somewhere, probably a day game at Wrigley Field, and in between plays the cameraman kept playfully returning to a young couple necking enthusiastically in the bleachers, oblivious to the game. Diz and Pee Wee would make speculative comments every time the camera caught the couple in another smooch, and finally Diz said "Podnuh, I done figgered it out." Pee Wee was maybe suckered into his question but maybe just unsuspecting. "What, Diz?" he asked.
"Why," Diz announced triumphantly, "he’s kissing her on the strikes and she’s kissing him on the balls."
Television was still live in those days, or with no tape delay, and the camera caught one fleeting glimpse of Pee Wee’s scandalized expression and Dizzy’s triumphant smile before it switched to the playing field and stayed there very firmly while the mikes all went dead. We watched mute baseball for several minutes before the mikes went live again and the cameras returned to the announcers. Pee Wee spoke in carefully-modulated serious tones and refused to even glance in Dizzy’s direction, while Diz had the carefully controlled look of the cat who swallowed the canary...who, me? What did I do?
Oh, yeah...we never saw the kissing couple again.
Pee Wee paid Diz back. Once he had the cameraman catch Diz from behind, bending over. His behind easily matched that of Hillary, decades later, as she wore her swimming suit on the beach dancing with Bill, when they were still pretending to be a married couple.
Another time he had them catch Diz on his lunch break, just as he took a bite of a huge hamburger all the way up to his wrist, it looked like. I have to admit that I don’t think Diz thought these were as funny as when he was pulling his stunts.
After reading the other item up above, 120 years of headline items about alternate ice ages warnings with burning up,
here’s the problem we face today...the true believer, reported by another one, Andrew Revkin:In one of the sprawling buildings that are both exhibition space and a bus depot linking hotels and the negotiations, I found McKibben huddled with some of his indefatigable team of young activists at the booth of
Q: Given scant signs that diplomacy will produce a meaningful treaty, why does he keep focusing his movement on a global agreement as the necessary goal?
A: "The science is very clear. The window is narrower than we thought."
The problem is, of course, that the science is NOT clear when it comes to the effect of greenhouse gases on global temperatures. If it was then you could predict precisely what the temperature was going to be on July, 4, 2011, given the measured difference between CO2 concentrations on that date compared to July 4, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010 and the recorded temperatures for those dates.
However, you cannot, even given all of that data. If I were to take you aside and give you all of the carbon dioxide concentrations for every year, and then tell you what the all of the temperatures were for every year but one, and then ask you to calculate, using the "clear science" what the temperature was for that year, which I already know and you do not, how good do you think your answer would be? If the science was actually "very clear" then you’d be spot on.
Furthermore, you’d be spot on for July 4, 2012, as well, given a predicted CO2 concentration for that date.
In order to check your work you could go backwards and review all of the previous CO2/temperature correlations to a high degree of accuracy. Except it turns out that you cannot. None of the models used to predict the future have done anything close to a decent job of replicating the known past.
And having just read all of the semi-hysterical predictions of the previous 120 years you can see the problem faced by McKibben et al: they have become so close to the trees that they cannot see the forest. Everything is ‘now’ and everything is ‘immediate’ and all of the windows are narrower than they thought, even if they were the only ones who thought they knew the width of the windows in the first place.
"The basic issue of the planet right now is that it’s disintegrating. That’s even more basic than the fact that we have to keep developing and people need energy and all that. There’s no way anyone is going to develop anything, including energy or anything else, if their whole freaking country is washing away. ...
"There’s no happy ending where we prevent climate change any more. Now the question is, is it going to be a miserable century or an impossible one, and what comes after that."
As you can read from the headline items collected over only the last 120 years, a minuscule eyeblink in terms of planetary time, we never could prevent climate change...in fact, we couldn’t even predict what it would have been that we wanted to prevent in the event we had been able to do so.
Which, actually, is the good news. I’m still chuckling about the guys in the middle 1970s who wanted to spread carbon black on both polar ice caps to prevent the ice ages from returning...I mean, what if they had convinced some panicky governmental official who funded their project?
And some shrewd operator would have been selling them special premium purified carbon black at ‘only’ $5000 a pound.
Hmmm...here’s a question I’ve been wondering a lot about recently:
Could be, too.
Michael J. Totten with some very interesting numbers:A majority of citizens in 18 Arab countries think Iran is a bigger security threat than Israel, according to a region-wide survey conducted last year by YouGov and commissioned by Qatar's Doha Debates.
And a report from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy earlier this year revealed a substantial number of Saudi citizens even support military action. A third of respondents said they'd approve an American strike, and a quarter said they'd even back an Israeli strike. Support of any kind for Israel -- especially support for an Israeli war against a Muslim country -- is strictly taboo in the Arab world, so the percentage who feel this way but won't admit it to strangers is certainly higher.
Guys I never expected to find thinking like I do:
Dan Rather tells MSNBC that it is "almost guaranteed" that POTUS will be challenged from the Left in 2012