Why conservative talk makes more money than liberal talk: No thinking (is it true?)

January 15, 2011

Some say the success of conservative radio can be traced to 1987 when the Reagan administration put an end to the Fairness Doctrine, making it easier for broadcasters to be one-sided. Others cite the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which led to mega-chains of stations and the widespread duplication of successful formats – including conservative talk radio – which gradually took over the stronger radio outlets in most markets.

Peter Funt, of Candid Camera

Peter Funt, of Candid Camera

But such arguments really overlook the simpler truths of the matter: conservative broadcasters serve an audience that is often angry and easily stirred, that wants to be reinforced more than challenged, and that doesn’t always feel compelled to slavishly adhere to the facts of a matter.

More importantly, conservative broadcasters across the dial are vastly more entertaining than their liberal counterparts. Limbaugh and Beck are polished performers, with enough shtick in the tank to keep truckers engrossed over the long haul, or to rouse tired shift workers on the drive to and from home. Indeed, the daring diatribe of the right is so compelling that it often seems as if the most dedicated listeners of conservative broadcasters are their progressive competitors.

Peter Funt of Candid Camera, at the Cagle Post (Cagle Cartoons)

1 Comment | Journalism, Politics, Radio | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Typewriter of the moment: Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s policy machine and crystal ball

January 15, 2011

Daniel Patrick Moynihan at his typewriter - photo from the American Academy of Political and Social Science

Daniel Patrick Moynihan at his typewriter – photo from the American Academy of Political and Social Science

This photo adorns the page announcing and asking for nominations to the annual Daniel Patrick Moynihan Prize, at the site of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences.

Moynihan was the always-opinionated, rarely un-informed social scientist who caused a firestorm of criticism to rain down on Richard Nixon when Moynihan, working for Nixon, suggested that civil rights might benefit from a period of  “benign neglect” by the President.  Later he caused another firestorm, and along period of reflection, when he worried in a paper about the potential bad effects of social welfare programs that would ease suffering, but fail to achieve all of their loftier goals — the workers compensation program that could not restore a worker to full service, the program to provide food and shelter to the children of out-of-work parents if the parents could not find new jobs, etc.  He worried about the ‘culture of poverty.’

He raised hell as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

Time Magazine cover of UN Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Time Magazine cover of UN Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan

I knew him as the U.S. Senator from the State of New York, where he would shock his staff by showing up early on a Saturday morning to knock out a few letters to the editor, and op-ed pieces on his typewriter, without the bother of an in-session Senate to slow him down.  Later I worked for Checker Finn, who had worked with Moynihan when Moynihan was U.S. Ambassador to India.  Finn adopted many of his scholarly habits from Moynihan.  While working for Finn, nearly 25 years ago at the Department of Education, I got a taste of the world to come when Finn aggressively adopted e-mail messaging for himself and anyone of any executive influence under him, at the old Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI).  Aggressive adoption of new technologies can greatly improve organizations and organizational effectiveness.

Almost always with a bow tie.  Usually heavily editing his speeches, or writing his own op-ed pieces while other officials paid ghosts to do it for them.  Thinking thoughts Republicans would come to love, while a Democrat, but years before Republicans would come to love them.  Thinking thoughts Democrats would learn to love, but much later.

Few topics evaded his attention and careful thought.  He talked at length with David Gergen about the problem of Wikileaks, a dozen years before Wikileaks came to public attention (and years before Wikileaks even existed.)  He wrote books about international affairs, and education at home.  He pushed environmental laws to be better. Moynihan worried about the health of American families while James Dobson was still learning what a microphone and a family were.  In 1970, Moynihan warned the U.S. president that global warming is a problem.

Moynihan often appeared as the man who went everywhere, and did everything — after leaving Tulsa.  Moynihan studied everywhere.  He worked under New York Gov. Averell Harriman, and Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford, before serving a quarter century in the U.S. Senate (Is there some magic in that seat?  His predecessor was James Buckley; his successor was Hilary Rodham Clinton).   Here’s his brief Congressional biography:

MOYNIHAN, Daniel Patrick, a Senator from New York; born in Tulsa, Tulsa County, Okla., March 16, 1927; attended the public and parochial schools of New York City; attended City College of New York 1943; graduated, Tufts University, Medford, Mass., 1948; received graduate and law degrees from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy 1949, 1961, 1968; studied as a Fulbright fellow, London School of Economics and Political Science 1950-1951; served in the United States Navy 1944-1947; Navy reserve 1947-1966; assistant and secretary to New York Governor W. Averell Harriman 1955-1958; member, New York State Tenure Commission 1959-1960; director, Syracuse University’s New York State Government Research Project 1959-1961; director, Joint Center for Urban Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University 1966-1969; author; held cabinet or sub-cabinet positions under Presidents John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Gerald Ford 1961-1976; Ambassador to India 1973-1975; United States Permanent Representative to the United Nations 1975-1976; elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate in 1976; reelected in 1982, 1988, and 1994 and served from January 3, 1977, to January 3, 2001; was not a candidate for reelection in 2000; chairman, Committee on the Environment and Public Works (One Hundred Second and One Hundred Third Congresses); Committee on Finance (One Hundred Third Congress); awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on August 9, 2000; professor at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School 2001; senior scholar, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars 2001-2003; died of complications from a ruptured appendix on March 26, 2003; interment at Arlington National Cemetery.

Moynihan was a man ahead of his time.

In this photo, he’s making use of the technology of his time:  A typewriter (I think it’s an old Royal).  How much different would the world be had there been personal computers, and the internet, for Moynihan to toy with?

Moynihan was a writer, and the typewriter the chief tool of his trade.  How important was writing?  He gets his own page at Amazon.com.   Hendrik Hertzberg, in The New Yorker, last year:

Nevertheless, Pat Moynihan was, first, last, and always, a writer. “When I was five years old, I asked my mother, what does Dad do?” his daughter, Maura, recalls in a charming afterword to a splendid new book. “She replied, he’s a writer. And he was: he wrote every day—even at Christmas—articles, books, speeches, and, in great abundance, letters.” You might say he wrote his way to power. Without the writing, no foot-in-the-door job in John F. Kennedy’s Labor Department (and no influence once he was there), no high domestic-policy post in Richard Nixon’s White House, no ambassadorships to India and the United Nations, no twenty-four years in the Senate—and no Moynihan Station.

More, Resources:

Daniel Patrick Moynihan and typewriter, Harvard University

Daniel Patrick Moynihan and typewriter (Smith-Corona, I think) in his office at Harvard University – 1971. George Tames/The New York Times.

Leave a Comment » | History, Politics, Technology, Typewriters, U.S. Senate | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Millard Fillmore’s 211th

January 7, 2011

Millard Fillmore was born January 7, 1800. Had he lived, Millard Fillmore would be 211 years old today, very cranky, and looking for a good book to read.

Millard Fillmore clipart from University of South Florida

Millard Fillmore clipart from University of South Florida - Free! Click image to go to USF site.

Would you blame him for being cranky? He opened Japan to trade. He got from Mexico the land necessary to make Los Angeles a great world city and the Southern Pacific a great railroad, without firing a shot. Fillmore promoted economic development of the Mississippi River. He managed to keep a fractious nation together despite itself for another three years. Fillmore let end the practice of presidents using slaves to staff the White House, then called “the President’s Mansion,” eight years before the election of Abraham Lincoln.

Then in 1852 his own party refused to nominate him for a full term, making him the last Whig to be president. And to add insult to ignominy, H. L. Mencken falsely accused him of being known only for adding a bathtub to the White House, something he didn’t do.

As Antony said of Caesar, the good was interred with his bones — but Millard Fillmore doesn’t even get credit for whatever evil he might have done: Fillmore is remembered most for being the butt of a hoax gone awry, committed years after his death. Or worse, he’s misremembered for what the hoax alleged he did.

Even beneficiaries of his help promoting the Mississippi River have taken his name off their annual celebration of the event. Fillmore has been eclipsed, even in mediocrity (is there still a Millard Fillmore Society in Washington?).

Happy birthday, Millard Fillmore.

Millard Fillmore, free clipart from University of South Florida

Millard Fillmore, free clipart from University of South Florida

Millard Fillmore was a man of great civic spirit, a man who answered the call to serve even when most others couldn’t hear it at all. He was a successful lawyer, despite having had only six months of formal education (a tribute to non-high school graduates and lifelong learning). Unable to save the Union, he established the University of Buffalo and the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society.  During the Civil War, he led the local militia in support of the war effort, many rungs down from his role of Commander-in-Chief.  And, it is said of him that Queen Victoria said he was the most handsome man she had ever met.

A guy like that deserves a toast, don’t you think?

Resources:

Leave a Comment » | Civil War, H. L. Mencken, History, Japan, Millard Fillmore, Politics, Presidents | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Just how broken is the U.S. Senate?

January 3, 2011

Important question.

George Packer asked in back in August, in an article he wrote for The New Yorker, “The Empty Chamber.”

Illustration of U.S. Senators for New Yorker, August 2010

Illustration from The New Yorker. Caption from the magazine: “Sit and watch us for seven days,” one senator says of the deadlocked chamber. “You know what you’ll see happening? Nothing.” (Is there any Republican portrayed in this illustration?)

It’s troubling to me that back in August Packer could note a list of subjects critical to our nation that the Senate had been blocked from considering, and even after a “record setting” lame-duck session, all but one of those issues remain untouched.

Packer wrote:

On July 21st, President Obama signed the completed bill. The two lasting achievements of this Senate, financial regulation and health care, required a year and a half of legislative warfare that nearly destroyed the body. They depended on a set of circumstances—a large majority of Democrats, a charismatic President with an electoral mandate, and a national crisis—that will not last long or be repeated anytime soon. Two days after financial reform became law, Harry Reid announced that the Senate would not take up comprehensive energy-reform legislation for the rest of the year. And so climate change joined immigration, job creation, food safety, pilot training, veterans’ care, campaign finance, transportation security, labor law, mine safety, wildfire management, and scores of executive and judicial appointments on the list of matters that the world’s greatest deliberative body is incapable of addressing. Already, you can feel the Senate slipping back into stagnant waters.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/09/100809fa_fact_packer#ixzz19wpuFk4q

Only food safety got done, though a few judicial appointments squeaked through (less than two dozen).

5 Comments | Government, Health care, History, Politics, U.S. Senate | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

How to find “separation of church and state” in the Constitution

December 27, 2010

It’s been at least 20 years since I first heard the old canard of an argument that “there’s no separation of church and state in the Constitution.”  I think I first heard it attributed to David Barton, which would make sense, since he doesn’t understand the Constitution, but neither does he fear sharing his misunderstandings.

It was an incorrect statement then, and it’s been incorrect since September 1787.  Separation of state and church is woven throughout the Constitution, part of the warp and woof.

Recently, latter-day Constitution ignorami repeat the old canard.

Toles cartoon on dangers of marrying church and state

Toles cartoon on dangers of marrying church and state

I was surprised to discover I’ve not posted this before on this blog.  So here’s a slightly-edited version of a response I gave many months ago to someone who made that silly claim, a basic description that I developed years ago to explain the issue, in speeches by members of the Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution:

Separation of church and state: It’s in the Constitution.

I don’t play a constitutional lawyer on television, I am one*, but it seems to me anyone can read the Constitution and see. One can see especially if one understands that the Constitution sets up a limited government, as Madison described, one that can do only what is delegated to it. The Constitution is a short document.

Where should you look to find separation of church and state in the Constitution?

First, look in the Preamble.  It is made clear that the document is a compact between citizens: “We the people . . . do ordain and establish this Constitution . . .” The usual role of God ordaining (in some western nations) is altered, intentionally. It is not God who establishes this government, but you and I, together. From the first words of the Constitution, there is separation of church and state.  The power of our government grows out of a secular compact between you and me, and 308 million other residents of the nation.   We have a government created by consent of the governed, as the Declaration of Independence said a just government should be.  It is not a government created by the will of God directly (though some, including the Mormons, argue it is divinely inspired).  We have no divine right kings or other monarchs under the Constitution.  The government is not the grantor of rights from God, but is instead the protector of the rights of citizens, whatever the source of the rights and whatever the rights.

Second, look in the key parts of the document itself.  Start with Article 1.  The legislative branch is given no role in religion; neither is any religion given any role in the legislature. In Article 2, the executive branch gets no role in religion, and religion gets no role in the executive branch. In Article 3, the judicial branch gets no role in religion, and religion gets no role in the judicial branch. In Article 4, the people get a guarantee of a republican form of government in the states, but the states get no role in religion, and religion gets no role in state government. This is, by design of the founders, a perfect separation of church and state.

Third, in Article 6, the convention wrote the hard and fast rule that no religious test can be used for any office in government, federal, state or local, means that no official will have a formal, governmental role in religion, and no religion can insist on a role in any official’s duties.

Fourth, Amendment 1 closes the door to weasling around it: Congress is prohibited from even considering any legislation that might grant a new bureaucracy or a new power to get around the other bans on state and church marriage, plus the peoples’ rights in religion are enumerated.

Fifth: In 1801 the Baptists (!) in Danbury, Connecticut, grew concerned that Connecticut would act to infringe on their church services, or teachings, or right to exist. So they wrote to President Jefferson. Jefferson responded with an official declaration of government policy on what the First Amendment and Constitution mean in such cases. Jefferson carefully constructed the form of the device as well as the content with his Attorney General, Levi Lincoln, to be sure that it would state what the law was. This “letter” is the proclamation. It’s an official statement of the U.S. government, collected in the president’s official papers and not in his personal papers. Make no mistake: Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists was an official act, an official statement of the law of the United States. Jefferson intended it to assuage the Baptists in Danbury, to inform and warn the Connecticut legislatures, and to be a touchstone to which future Americans could turn for information. It was only fitting and proper for the Supreme Court to use the letter in this capacity as it has done several times.

Sixth: The phrase, “separation of church and state” dates back another 100 years and more, to the founding of Rhode Island. It is the religion/state facet of the idea of government by consent of the governed without interference from religious entities, expressed so well in the Mayflower Compact, in the first paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence, and carried through in the Constitution (see especially the Preamble, above).

No, the phrase “separation of church and state” never appears in the Constitution. The principles of separation of church and state are part of the warp and woof, and history, of the document, however. The law is clear, the law was clear, the law has always been clear, and denying the Constitution says what it says, won’t change it or make it go away.  You could just as easily point out that the word “democracy” or “democratic” never appears in the document, though we rely on democratic mechanisms and institutions to make it work.  You could point out that nowhere does it say that our national government is a republic, though it is.  The Constitution doesn’t say “checks and balances,” nor does it say “federalism.”  The Constitution doesn’t mention political parties.  The Constitution was written before the advent of broadcasting, and makes no mention of radio nor television, nor of the internet — but the First Amendment freedoms apply there anyway.  The Constitution doesn’t say “privacy,” though it protects your right to privacy.

You won’t find “separation of church and state” as a phrase in the Constitution.  If you read it, you’ll find that the concept of the separation of state and church can’t be taken out of the document, either — it’s a fundamental principle of our government.

More, and Resources:

__________

*  A non-practicing one.  We have way more than 50,000 lawyers in Texas.  That’s enough trouble for one lifetime.  Someone has to look out for the welfare of the world.

110 Comments | History, Law, Politics, Religious Freedom, Separation of church and state, U.S. Constitution | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Lens incompetence: Watts Up looks through the wrong end of the telescope

December 27, 2010

The wags and denialists over at Anthony Watts’ joint are up to their old tricks, accusing others of their own errors.  Today it’s a guest post by Bernie Lewin, in which he claims that climate warming was all psychological, a “scare”:

Yet we can find precedents to this science-base scare in many health scares of recent decades, and also in environmental scares since the DDT cancer scare triggered by Silent Spring, politicised by the EDF and legalized by the newly formed EPA. (See Scared to Death which finds a repeating pattern to these science-based scares.)

Woman looking through the wrong end of a telescope

This woman might be corrected; global warming denialists will staunchly insist she knows what she’s doing and doesn’t need YOUR advice.

He fails to even think that Rachel Carson was right.  Lewin demonstrates incompetence at history, law and science, and the first point of the Scout Law, all in one sentence.

So much error.  So little time to correct.

  1. Carson didn’t claim DDT caused cancer. She noted that we create thousands of chemicals that may cause cancer, that cancers were rising in frequency, and that there was no testing of the new substances prior to their marketing.   Was there a DDT/cancer scare?  Lewin doesn’t offer any evidence.  (We had to correct Matt Ridley on this a couple of weeks ago — see his post here.)
  2. EDF (Environmental Defense Fund, now known as Environmental Defense) was on DDT without Carson — suing to stop DDT spraying (for no good reason) on Long Island in 1968.  EDF relied on science that was courtroom ready.  (I had misremembered the year of EDF’s suit in an earlier version of this post; my apologies to the two or three who may have read it.)  EDF’s suits established, on the basis of science, that DDT is an uncontrollable poison in the wild.  Lewin ignores science and law in his off-hand indictment of Carson’s book and ED.
  3. EPA didn’t act against DDT until 1972.  EPA banned DDT use on agricultural crops in the U.S. because DDT kills non-target species and, basically, entire ecosystems.  EPA was specific:  The ban had nothing to do with cancer.  Once again, Lewin ignores history, science and law.

So, in Lewin’s guest post, we see the pattern that continues at Watts’s place — unfair and wrong indictments of science, ignorance of history, little understanding of law.

All while trying to mock scientists:  ‘Of course scientists are almost always wrong,’ Watts’s blog argues, once again.

Watts won’t let me correct his errors there, even though he’s still coddling those who misdescribe Rachel Carson as a mass murderer, while denying he does it himself.  Consequently his readers won’t be alerted to this post because Watts or his minions will edit out the automatic ping his blog gets that this post is here.  Propaganda promoting falsehood can’t stand the sunlight of fact and truth.

Just because there’s a scare doesn’t mean there’s not a reason to be scared.  DDT is a deadly toxin, so long-lived that it almost cannot ever be eradicated from the environment.  It kills everything small, quickly, unless so much of it is used that the small things evolve quickly to be resistant and immune to it.

So, if we are to assume, as Lewin wrote, that the anti-warming bunch is to warming what the campaign against Rachel Carson by the DDT manufacturers was to DDT’s harms, we get a hint of what’s really up at Watts Up:  Any anti-warming claim is a hoax.  Why put it so cryptically, if that’s what they meant to say?

When Lewin looks at the history of DDT and Rachel Carson, he’s looking at the false history, and he draws the wrong conclusions.  Should we trust a guy so sloppy with the facts to be right on anything else?

9 Comments | DDT, denialism, Global warming, Green Politics, History, Hoaxes, Law, Politics, Rachel Carson, Science, War on Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Nuclear weapons: History and policy, in a poster

December 23, 2010

Wish I knew who created this poster, and how.  Some minor inaccuracies — can you find them?  Could you prevail on the Big Format Printer person at your school to print one of these full size for your U.S. history, world history or government class?

Nuclear Weapons, a poster

Nuclear Weapons, a poster

How about a similar poster for the Cold War?  Vietnam War?  Civil Rights Movement?  Gilded Age?

Tip of the old scrub brush to Kenny, cold in Pinggu.

2 Comments | Atomic Bomb, Education, History, History images, Nuclear Nonproliferation, Nuclear weapons, Politics, Presentations, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

A president who knows what he’s doing

December 23, 2010

Barack Obama, photo collage by Charis Tsevis, copyright 2008

Barack Obama, photo collage by Charis Tsevis, copyright 2008

Gail Collins, in the New York Times:

Good work, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Unlike your hapless predecessor, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, you’ve had legislation shooting off to the White House like angry birds in that video game. Unemployment compensation! Gay rights! Food safety! Judicial appointments! Arms control! Health care for 9/11 responders!

But let’s admit it. Nothing would have gotten done if Obama hadn’t swallowed that loathsome compromise on tax cuts for the wealthy.

If he’d taken the high road, Congress would be in a holiday war. The long-term unemployed would be staggering into the new year without benefits. The rest of the world would look upon the United States as a country so dysfunctional that it can’t even ratify a treaty to help keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists. The people who worked at ground zero would still be uncertain about their future, and our gay and lesbian soldiers would still be living in fear.

It’s depressing to think that there was no way to win that would not have involved giving away billions of dollars to people who don’t need it. But it’s kind of cheery to think we have a president who actually does know what he’s doing.

Merry Christmas!  Ho! Ho! Ho!

What a difference a few weeks makes.

9 Comments | 2010 Elections, Politics, President Obama, U.S. Congress | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

60-second climate skeptic: A 20-second refutation (in about a minute)

December 22, 2010

Back in the life as a corporate consultant and occasional (too-seldom) lecturer, Perry W. Buffington and I got some good mileage out of our observation that, were you in need of delicate brain surgery, you’d probably cross off your list of potential surgeons the guy who had a copy of The One-Minute Brain Surgeon on his desk.  You wouldn’t trust your future to anyone who displayed The One-Minute Financial Planner.

Why in the world would you be ecstatic when your boss read a copy of The One-Minute Manager?”

My recollection is that the first time I actually heard Buff use the line, he got an immediate standing ovation from the very large assembly of workers and middle managers (hey, he’s good — audiences really like his stuff). Someone whose study of their profession is limited to one-minute bon mots, should be regarded with great skepticism, or perhaps be ignored completely,  no matter how bon the mots.  One-Minute [insert your profession here] makes a catchy title, and may even carry some good value in new ideas and good ideas reduced to readable length.  Ken Blanchard, the lead author of the One-Minute Manager series, did not intend his book to be the only text anyone used on a path to an MBA.  It’s frosting, it’s not the cake.  It’s quip, not quote, not prose.  Remember that.

One-minute experts do not exist.  (Some experts may refresh themselves with one-minute reviews of material — but you won’t take pharmaceuticals from the “One-Minute Pharmacist,” if you’re wise.)

Now comes Coyote Blog with a post, “The 60-second Climate Skeptic.”

One minute climate expert?  No.  That dog won’t hunt.

And here’s why, in 20 seconds:  Our concern for global warming is not produced by charts that show rising temperatures, but by two centuries of observations that natural plants and animals, and ice and weather, show effects from climate warming, and the thermometer measurements confirm that the planet is warming.  The Earth still warms, regardless what any chart says.

Here’s the 60 second explanation for the 20-second rebuttal.  Coyote blog makes eight statements or observations, all of them based on the science of carbon dioxide, a science which the author himself appears not to have mastered (he argues that additional carbon dioxide molecules in the atmosphere are immune from absorbing energy, if there are a lot of carbon dioxide molecules already present, apparently due to some magic mechanism he never mentions)

For 200 years scientists have measured carbon dioxide in the atmosphere — since at least 1960, with special concern for getting the measurements done accurately and right, because our industrial cultures dump a lot of CO2 waste into the air and any scientist understands that wastes cannot be absorbed without effect forever.  (Newton, Coyote.  You’ve heard of Newton?)  These measurements show increasing CO2.

Separately, botanists, zoologists, other biologists and especially those practicing ecology observed that plants and animals migrate north in the Northern Hemisphere, and south in the Southern Hemisphere, plus up mountain slopes where mountains exist, as if climate were warming, and it this warming were changing their climates, and hence, their habitat.

Beginning about 1965, atmospheric scientists have discussed what might be causing this warming.  At great length, after having eliminated every other known explanation (in true science and Sherlock Holmes fashion), CO2 is left as the likely culprit, the one changing thing that best explains the rise in global temperatures well past the time that paleoclimatologists rather expected a turn toward the cooler.

In short, the charts are used to try to explain the actual observations and measurements, and no matter how badly those charts may have been botched, the plants and animals have really moved, and the measured temperatures have really risen.

Coyote Blog tries to explain away reality as a figment of a scientist’s imagination.  But the Earth is still here.  As Galileo is reputed to have observed, regardless your religious views on heliocentricity, the Earth, she still moves.  Similarly, regardless one’s views on the dastardliness of scientists who carp in e-mails about unfair attacks on them, regardless how  badly one misunderstands CO2 chemistry, regardless any errors in creating charts for a UN agency, the Earth, she still warms.

Coyote Blog fails to discuss any of the effects or observations which lead to the charts on CO2.

“One-minute climate skeptics” can make a great contribution to science:  They are models of the Dunning-Kruger effect, and may be studied to understand that science.

 

Christopher Monckton out of focus

A dictionary could save space, using the same photo for definitions of "climate warming skeptic" and "Dunning-Kruger Effect." In the photo, Monckton is not quite so out-of-focus as usual.

19 Comments | Climate change, climate_change, Politics, Science | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Secession? Matthews sounds off, appropriately

December 22, 2010

All that talk about secession, and nullification, and states’ rights? Matthews calls it for what it is.

Maybe we should say he calls it out for what it is.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Secession? Matthews sounds off, appropriately, posted with vodpod

It’s time to stop the talk of tearing our nation apart. If you’ve been talking this smack, stop it.

Santayana’s Ghost keeps a wary eye on all such discussion.

Tip of the old scrub brush to Mike Heath sitting in for Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.

9 Comments | Civil War, Dissent, History, Politics, Rampant stupidity, Santayana's ghost, U.S. Constitution | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Fifth column in the War on Christmas

December 22, 2010

War on Christmas?  There are those who complain that failing to put “Christ” into every missive during this season is, somehow, a threat to Christianity and western culture.

War on Christmas comic book

From Yoism.com

Here in Dallas, First Baptist Church, the big one downtown, put up a site tracking businesses (GrinchAlert.com) they deem not sufficiently saved, who manifest their imagined antipathy to Christianity by failing to say “Merry Christmas” at every turn.  Some businesses substitute what these busy-body Baptists regard as near pagan rite:  “Happy Holidays!”  (Sample complaints:  “No Christmas Tree, No mangerscene” (sic); “Excessive use of ‘holiday’, no mention of Christmas. With a name like American Airlines, come on.”)

You may roll your eyes now.

Renowned preacher Fred Craddock, in a column in Christian Century, inadvertently reports that it is the self-appointed defenders of overweening Christian-ness themselves who do damage to the cause of Christianity. Everybody is so busy having Christmas, they forget about the Christian tradition, the necessity of Advent.  “Forget Advent,” they appear to say, “Have a ‘Merry Christmas,’ or else!”   Craddock’s words come here through the bulletin of the Church of the Saviour:

Inward/Outward from Church of the Saviour

We Wait

Fred Craddock

Every year for four weeks we wait. Ours is not a passive waiting; we wonder as we wait. We wait in the heavy joy of repentance, which cleanses us to be ready to receive the One Who Comes. We renew baptismal vows. We encourage one another in order to be a community of fresh expectancy.

And we pray, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” and “Come, O Long Expected Jesus.” At times we fuss at God: “How long, O Lord? How long will you tarry?”

Our generation is impatient. Advent lasts too long. Nasty notes are passed to the choirmaster: “We don’t know these Advent songs. Why don’t we sing some carols?” Everybody is already having Christmas except the church.

Source: The Christian Century (Dec. 14 2010)

3 Comments | Politics, Religion, Religious Freedom | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Sherffius cartoon on DADT repeal

December 19, 2010

Sherffius cartoon on repeal of Don't Ask/Don't Tell

When does Sherffius get the Pulitzer?

Sherffius, cartooning in the Boulder (Colorado) Daily Camera.  When does he get a Pulitzer?

8 Comments | Cartoons, Political cartoons, Politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Sherffius on tax cuts for the rich: When does he get the Pulitzer?

December 11, 2010

So, when will Sherffius win a Pulitzer for his cartoons?  Did you see what he had to say about the tax cut legislation?

Sherffius cartoon from the Boulder (Colorado) Daily Camera, via Lobsterscope

Sherffius cartoon on tax cuts, from the Boulder Daily Camera

Tip of the old scrub brush to Under the Lobsterscope.

50 Comments | Cartoons, Political cartoons, Politics, Taxes | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Protest signs with high qualifications

November 28, 2010

From John Stewart’s march for rational discussion, came this sign:

Protest sign: Evidence based change, after peer review

Protest sign from John Stewart's D.C. rally: Evidence based change, after peer review

That would take more than three cups of tea, certainly.

One of dozens of witty signs from that rally.

Tip of the old scrub brush to Kenny, near Beijing.

1 Comment | Dissent, Humor, Politics | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Back to the Eisenhower era? It’d be a smash

November 9, 2010

Sen.-elect Rand Paul wants to take us back to the Eisenhower era?  Too much regulation, “strangling business,” he says?

See what the Eisenhower-era Chevrolet does versus the Obama-era Chevrolet — Insurance Institute for Highway Safety crash tests:

There.  Feel safer?

Tip of the old scrub brush to Mary Almanza.

38 Comments | History, Humor, Politics, Regulation | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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