Perspective

Only 9,098 Of Last 10,500 Years Warmer Than 2010

This is going to go down as the greatest scientific boondoggle of all time, the Piltdown Man of the atmospheric and earth sciences.

That's not to say there's no upside, heavens no:  Al Gore made gargantuan sums of money, lots of junior faculty got enough publications to be tenured, tons of taxpayer money got spread around as research grants, folks got to attend oodles of expense-paid scientific conferences in swank locations, programers got nicely paid to optimize poorly specified computer simulations replete with measurement error... The list goes on and on, a sorry banquet if there ever was one.

The Climate Change bandwagon is science at its very finest -- In the same sense that snake handling is religion at its very finest.

Byron

Journalism

The liberal media has its agenda, and it's sticking to it.





Bozell Column: Skipping an Abortionist's 'House of Horrors'

Abortionist Kermit Gosnell is on trial in Philadelphia, and not just for killing babies outside the womb, but also for killing a mother  through reckless use of anesthesia. Network TV coverage of the trial? Zero on ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, NPR, and PBS. CNN’s entire coverage seems to be one sentence from Jake Tapper on March 21.

The New York Times wrote one story before the trial began on March 19 (buried on page A-17). The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and USA Today couldn’t be “national” newspapers and report this trial.

They’re not unaware of it. CBS aired one story after the initial clinic raid in 2011. NBC offered 50 words. CBS even passed along that Gosnell's clinic was described as a "house of horrors."  Now it’s in court, and the networks can't find any horrors.

ABC, CBS, and NBC piled up 96 stories on Todd Akin’s medically inept comments on rape and abortion, and also wallowed in outrage over Richard Mourdock’s remarks on God’s will and a child conceived in rape. Their pro-life rhetoric was sold as a major scandal. It’s unbelievable that Dr. Gosnell’s trial for his actions inside his “house of horrors” haven't drawn one network story.

It's only unbelievable if you so naive as to think the media are in the business of journalism by any traditional definition.

They aren't.

It used to be considered cynical to say about the media that "if it bleeds, it leads." Yet, this story goes far beyond mere bleeding, and still the media won't report it.  (Like they won't report incidents where lives are saved by an armed citizen, because those don't fit the media's anti-gun agenda. Molding public perceptions and opinion is Job One, after all.)

The story here is not another pro-choice vs. pro-life dust-up, it's about a rogue doctor running a human slaughterhouse in the Philadelphia ghetto.  In this case, the media's social-political agenda about reproductive rights trumps everything else -- even the poor-black-female race/class/gender angle.  (That's interesting, and something poor black women might want to think about. To be useful in the role of allies of convenience may be fine, but only to a point.)

"Ink-stained wretches," the old backhanded compliment to the working press, needs revision.  "Lapdog toadies and whores" leaps to mind.  But that's far too kind, because it suggests that they're merely a pack witless dupes.  They aren't. They know exactly what they're doing.

Byron

Tiresome

Huckabee: If the GOP switches on gay marriage, evangelicals walk

Watch that door, Huck.

Churches, synagogues, and mosques cannot be forced to perform same-sex marriages, and they have a perfect right to refuse to do so.  I presume they also have the right not recognize such marriages on religious principle.

But civil society has a right to define civil marriage as it wishes.

This is not a theocracy.

If evangelicals can't stand that, too bad. They have been free to make their case as persuasively as they can in every legal way, but it seems that they have not been able to move enough people to their side to control the issue.

Win some, lose some. That's how secular democracies are supposed to work, Huck. If that's unacceptable, then go ahead and walk to wherever it is you'd walk to.

Your ultimatum is unpersuasive in any case. The GOP has certainly had no trouble losing with the evangelicals. Who knows, could it find it easier to win without them?

Byron

Quote

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."  --- C.S. Lewis

Socialism is an attractive sounding social-economic theory, but in practice it's unproductive and finally goes broke. Its proponents respond that, yes, but it would work very nicely if only human beings were better in various ways: if they were less competitive, less hierarchical, and above all less selfish. The problem is not the socialist model, the problem is people who can't or won't live up to it.

Part of the socialist program, therefore, must always be to improve people -- to create societies filled with people who will naturally act in ways that make the socialist model work. This improved model human is sometimes referred to as the "New Socialist Man."  (It's obvious why the Left has always rejected any notion of a biologically determined human nature, insisting that we are entirely products of our environment and therefore we are moldable in whatever new direction socialism requires.)

There are two general ways to accomplish this restocking of society. One is the Nanny State, which in its full flowering is literally that, since many plans for the socialist utopia involve children being reared in specialized child development centers, away from the bad influences of the parent generation. (The Israeli kibbutz is often pointed to as the model.) The other approach is through selection: to murder or exile the wrong-thinking, leaving as survivors those best fitted to the new society. That's the model provided by the 1930's Soviet Union and China under Mao.)

In either case morality is not seen as problematic, because it's all in the longer-term service of a far greater moral ideal. As the Lewis quote says, it's done "with the approval of their own conscience."  Or as Lenin expressed it, "You can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs."

Raw capitalism is not sustainable, either. The trick is to find social arrangements that combine a satisfactory level of capitalist productivity with a decent level of socialist concern for individuals.  The U.S. has had a long-term movement away from the raw capitalism of the 19th century toward more socialist concern for individuals. Scandinavian countries have lately been moving in the opposite direction, away from a suffocating nanny state socialism toward more capitalistic production arrangements. These are highly interesting experiments. If there is an optimal middle to be found, both of these should end up in approximately the same place.

Byron

Entirely predictable

Seven of the 10 richest counties in America now surround DC.

There are about 1.5 million federal workers here.

Coincidence?

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Yeah, like the Moon and the tides.

We're starting to resemble the typical third-world country, with wealth and power concentrated in the capital city. It happens when success depends on Government favors and influence, not on accomplishment in the private sector. In that context "entrepreneurship" means finding the money to buy yourself a Government concession -- that is, to be granted a monopoly over some product or service. If you manage to get the concession to import and sell Mercedes-Benz automobiles, for example, you are set for life or the next coup, whichever comes first. Meanwhile, the tentacles of Government corrupt and debase the entire society, top to bottom.

In 1814, Washington was sacked and burned by the British. For the 200th anniversary of that event, we might consider inviting them back for a reenactment. In 1814 they were marauders, now they'd be more like saviors.  The nation would not just survive, it would thrive.

Byron