Is it warm here or is it just NASA?

NASA, home to global warming activists Gavin Schmidt (of realclimate.org) and James Hansen, has been caught again hyping false warming data.

Michael Crichton, RIP

Michael Crichton (1942-2008)  is well known as an author of fiction. It is less well-known that he was a highly educated thinker:  he "graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College, received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, researching public policy with Jacob Bronowski. He taught courses in anthropology at Cambridge University and writing at MIT," according to his bio.  In 2003, he lectured on the nature of science and its misuse in public policy debates.  He observed, for example:

I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way. . . .

and reaches the conclusion:

Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.

Unbiased reporters and Palin Derangement Syndrome

AP reports that MSNBC has just admitted being the victim of a hoax when it reported that Gov. Palin didn't know that Africa was a continent, not a country.  It wasn't just MSNBC and Fox News that fell for this hoax.  (As I write this, a Google search on "Sarah Palin Africa Country" produces 385,000 hits with the top ones about the claim that Gov. Palin thought Africa was a country while the more selective Google News produces 8,219 hits on the same topic.)  Newsbusters spotted the hoax several days ago.

Lack of scepticism when it comes to smears against Republicans is part of a pattern.  After the election, even the Washington Post ombudsman admits its coverage was pro-Obama.

Obama and change or just following George Orwell

One of the most frightening things about Sen. Obama's election is as president is that he might do what he had promised.  Apparently, that won't be a problem.  The Washington Times reports that Obama has just deleted his agenda from his change.gov website:

Over the weekend President-elect Barack Obama scrubbed Change.gov, his transition Web site, deleting most of what had been a massive agenda copied directly from his campaign Web site.

Gone are the promises on how an Obama administration would handle 25 different agenda items - everything from Iraq and immigration to taxesand urban policy - all items laid out on his campaign Web site, www.BarackObama.com.

Will this development be significant enough that the Stock Market will recover from its worst election week ever?

Dem's top priority: more corporate welfare

Looking forward to same-party control of house, senate, and executive branches, Sen. Reid and Rep. Pelosi have called for government assistance for the auto industry.

Rahm Emanuel: hard-nosed moderate?

Incoming Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has a reputation as a hard-nosed partisan but, according to Jason Riley of the Wall Street Journal, he is not a hard-nosed liberal.  Riley reviews some of Emanuel's background:

As head of the DCCC, he was not only responsible for fund raising but also for vetting candidates. His methods often upset members of his own party, even when they were successful. In 2006, he made a tactical decision to recruit candidates who opposed abortion rights and gun control to run in more conservative-leaning districts. And although the strategy worked, it meant passing over more ideologically pure candidates, which didn't sit well with some orthodox liberals.

And also:

Policy-wise, Mr. Emanuel has fashioned himself as a "New Democrat" in the Clinton mold. He has long been an advocate of governing from the center, reaching across the aisle to seek consensus. As a Clinton adviser, he championed welfare reform and free trade. He's even called for a flatter, less progressive system of taxation. As a congressman, Mr. Emanuel supported the Bush administration's decision to remove Saddam Hussein, though he subsequently criticized the president's management of the war in Iraq.

In Chicago, Obama may have been a G-D-America leftist. His selection of Rep. Emanuel at least provides hope that, as president, he will be more closely tied to reality.

Pelosi and the logic of bipartisanship

Speaker Pelosi explains what the next congress will be like:

"Elect us, hold us accountable, and make a judgment and then go from there. But I do tell you that if the Democrats win, and have substantial majorities, Congress of the United States will be more bipartisan."

Apparently, in her definition, "bipartisan" means doing everything the Democratic way.

Update (Feb 2009): Speaker Pelosi now sees 'bipartisanship' as an obstacle to her goals.

A Democrat opposes sexism

Writer-producer Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, a self-proclaimed liberal Democrat who achieved public notice as an advisor to Bill Clinton, said this of the current liberal-media sexism:

Bloodworth-Thomason and others seemed especially critical of the way MSNBC -- and other media -- has attacked Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin while demeaning her supporters.

"We should stop the demonizing," she said, adding that Democrats have been worse than Republicans as far as personal attacks on candidates are concerned. "It diminishes us," she said of her fellow Democrats.

It was a hoax

The woman who had claimed to have been assaulted because she had a McCain-Palin sticker on her car now admits to making the whole thing up.  Michelle Malkin deserves credit for having spotted early that it was a likely hoax.

On a mission from God

In Northern Virginia, Sen. Obama told a crowd of 35,000:

"If you'll stand with me, then I know that we can win Virginia and we can win this election and we can finally bring the change we need to Washington. I feel like we got a righteous wind at our backs here."

Ministry of Truth

"Progressive" Maria Warren, had a blog post describing the fundraiser she attended at Bill Ayers house that launched Obama's political career.  Then she deleted it.  Unfortunately for her and the Ministry of Truth at the LA Times, Archive.org remembers the post and Patterico has a screenshot of it.

An insider's guide to vote fraud

Acorn hires canvassers at $8/hour to collect 22 voter registrations a day. The NY Post reports on what it is like to work for Acorn:

Pushed to meet daily quotas and bullied by bosses if they didn't, Ohio ACORN workers faked voter registrations, signed up people more than once, and even paid off registrants to keep from being fired, its canvassers told The Post.

"Every day, there was pressure on us. Every single day," said Teshika Elder, a Cleveland single mom of three who worked for ACORN this summer.

"We had meetings every morning where they'd go over your quota; they'd yell at you if you were low," said Elder, 21. "They'd sit us down and say if you didn't do better, they'd suspend you. They'd say, 'Try harder next time,' [and] if you didn't get it, you'd be fired."

The pressure had an effect.  In Cuyahoga County, for example:

The [Election] board, which estimates it got more than 8,700 suspect cards - with multiple registrations, bad addresses or phony information - from ACORN has turned the matter over to local prosecutors.

Financial crisis in review

The Wall Street Journal has collected excerpts from congressional hearings on Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and housing loans from 2003 through 2005.  It makes it quite clear who was blocking reform and adequate regulation.

Democrats and their Sex-Symbol-in-Chief

ABC News reports on Sen. Obama:

The rain pouring down, his jacket off, his white dress-shirt clinging to his body, Barack Obama played to a crowd ....

That does sound more like a romance novel than a news report, doesn't it?

The New York Times wrote a similar sounding report about Al Gore during his 1988 run for the Democratic nomination:

If politics is the art of pleasing different groups of people simultaneously, Senator Albert Gore Jr., Democrat of Tennessee, seems to have chosen the right profession. ....

Mr. Gore is solidly built, dark and indisputably handsome.

In Sept. 2003, the (UK) Independent saw then candidate Sen. John Kerry in the same light:

Construct your identikit Democratic Presidential candidate and you would come up with someone pretty much like John Forbes Kerry. Handsome, tall and intelligent. Jutting jaw and gravitas by the bucketful.

The weird thing about Democrats sexualizing their presidential candidates is that they also see US presidents as father figures.

Missing the story

Robert Stacy McCain summarizes the news coverage of the Palin e-mail theft story and concludes:

It’s an perfect lesson in what’s gone wrong with America’s major media. No potential scoop is so big that it can’t be ignored if it doesn’t conform to the regnant political bias. A Republican with a personal email account? Scandal! A Democrat who hacks a Republican’s personal email account? Ho-hum.

Hat tip: Instapundit.

Unbalanced in Berkeley

Berkeley, California, is famous for its left-liberal politics. It is even a "nuclear free zone." So what is it like shopping in a Berkeley grocery store? The LA Times reports:

As most veteran customers know, it takes a pretty thick skin to successfully navigate the Berkeley Bowl, this strident city's most popular grocery store.

Outside, petitioners seeking signatures for ballot measures have come to blows with opinionated residents. In the tiny parking lot, nicknamed the Berkeley Brawl, frustrated motorists have been known to ram one another's cars. At the checkout, people have thrown punches and unripened avocados at suspected line-cutters.

When one shopper was told she couldn't return a bag of granola, she showily dumped its contents on the floor. Culyon Garrison, who works at the customer-service desk, recently had a loaf of bread thrown at him.

The produce emporium -- one of the nation's most renowned retailers of exotic fruits and vegetables -- creates its own bad behavior. Kamikaze shoppers crash down crowded aisles without eye contact or apology for fender-benders. ....

"There's a sense of entitlement to this town," [Store manager Larry] Evans said. "People think, 'If I want to do it, I'll do it, just try and stop me.' "

A "sense of entitlement"? That certainly explains much that is wrong with liberalism.

Mr. Evans also suggests anger issues, which would be consistent with what is known about Democrat psychology.

For an alternate opinion, see James Taranto who suggests that the cause is dietary.

Strange stereotypes

CNN reports that Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fl) is promoting stereotypes:

Rep. Alcee Hastings told an audience of Jewish Democrats Wednesday that they should be wary of Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin because “anybody toting guns and stripping moose don’t care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks.”

His Democratic audience cheered his bigotry.

Alcee Hastings was a judge until 1989 when he was removed from office after being impeached and convicted on bribery and perjury charges.  With a background in bribery and perjury, it was only natural that he would run for congress where he has served since 1992 and where he has risen to the position of Senior Democratic Whip.

Environmentalism and Narcissism, II

A study at Exeter University found that people who claimed to be environmentalists polluted more than the rest of us, principally because they do more air travel. The (UK) Guardian explains:

Stewart Barr, of Exeter University, who led the research, said: "Green living is largely something of a myth. There is this middle class environmentalism where being green is part of the desired image. But another part of the desired image is to fly off skiing twice a year. And the carbon savings they make by not driving their kids to school will be obliterated by the pollution from their flights."

Some people even said they deserved such flights as a reward for their green efforts, he added.

Yes, the big polluters thought they deserved a "reward" for their pretense of being "green."

Al Gore is exceptionally vocal about his 'environmentalism.' Consistent with the Exeter results, his carbon footprint is exceptionally large too.

PREVIOUSLY, seven examples of celebrity environmental narcissism are here . George Carlin's take on environmentalism is here . More on the strange psychology of environmentalism is here and here .

The space shuttle program was a mistake

So says Carolyn Porco, the Planetary Scientist with NASA who leads the imaging team of the Cassini mission to Saturn. She is not alone in that assessment: NASA chief Michael Griffin has said the same.

The general public intuitively thinks that, because the shuttle is "reusable," it must be better its predecessors.  As Ms. Porco points out, the shuttle was never able to carry the same payload as the bigger Apollo era rockets.  Part of the cause of this is that making the shuttle "reusable" makes it heavier than it would otherwise have to be and this makes it both more expensive and less capable than non-reusable rockets.

Hat tip: Instapundit.

Liberals projecting their hate onto Palin

James Taranto observes a detailed example of psychological projection among the liberals of Salon.com:

The left-liberal Webzine Salon has become something of a clearinghouse for rage against Alaska's governor. The latest contribution, from one Anne Lamott, actually uses the H word:

I sat outside a 7-Eleven and had a sacramental Dove chocolate bar. Jeez: Here we are again. A man and a woman whose values we loathe and despise--lying, rageful and incompetent, so dangerous to children and old people, to innocent people in every part of the world--are being worshiped, exalted by the media, in a position to take a swing at all that is loveliest about this earth and what's left of our precious freedoms.

When I got home from church, I drank a bunch of water to metabolize the Dove bar and called my Jesuit friend, who I know hates these people, too. I asked, "Don't you think God finds these smug egomaniacs morally repellent? Recoils from their smugness as from hot flame?"

And he said, "Absolutely. They are everything He or She hates in a Christian."

I have been in a better mood ever since, and have decided not to even say this woman's name anymore, because she fills me with such existential doubt, such a sense of impending doom and disbelief, that only the Germans could possibly have words for it.

What's hilarious about this is that, except for the obligatory "or She," Lamott and her unnamed interlocutor fit exactly the stereotype people on the left typically hold of conservatives, and religious conservatives in particular: smug yet insecure, dogmatic and intolerant and filled with hate and rage. Even Lamott's descriptions of Palin more aptly describe Lamott in the act of describing Palin!

PREVIOUSLY, an example of projection hate onto other liberals during the Democratic primaries was discussed here.  Projection by liberal-environmentalists was discussed here.  Projection by the editor of TNR was discussed here.  Rep. Rahm Emanuel projecting was discussed here. A poll showing the nature of liberal hatred was discussed here.