16.May 2012
Everybody should get out their checkbooks
Not to give my, or anybody's conservative uncle and his crazy emails a
bad name... but really, people, Fox News?
"Less than flattering terms" is a beautiful construct, innit? You
remember flattery, of course—that thing that's supposed to get you
nowhere. More than flattering terms would be fulsome; equal to
flattering is excessive, usually intended for ingratiation; and less
than flattering... well, it might be accurate. Let's go look at
this
website where those terms are spelled out. Scrolling...
Frank Vandersloot is the national finance co-chairman of the Romney
campaign and, through his company Melaleuca, has donated $1 million to
Restore Our Future. He is also a "litigious, combative, and
a
bitter foe of the gay rights movement" who "spent big" on ads in an
"ultimately unsuccessful effort to force Idaho Public Television to
cancel a program that showed gays and lesbians in a favorable light to
school children."
Yup, that's less than flattering. Must be a good example of...
Obama terrorism?! Sliming and smearing, and ample reason to have Mitt
Romney's national finance co-chairman on for five fundraising (aka
"news") segments.
Rachel Maddow on
a new national ride
on teh crazy, "alternate reality conservative media scandal that
makes sense to nobody outside the conservative mediasphere," wherein
Frank Vandersloot plays the victim card, and Bill O'Reilly puts his
money where Mitt's mouthpiece is.
Prunus
We stopped at
Skookumchuck
on the way home Monday, MDT lunchtime on a perfect spring morning in the
Salmon River valley. The centerpiece of the picnic area is a big old
plum tree, maybe a hundred years old? Its blossoms had come and gone,
and fruit is on the way.
Two things in Nassrine Azimi's op-ed piece,
Cherry
Blossoms in Fukushima connect to those dots: how much further along
the season is in one of Idaho's warm valleys, and old trees. Very
old trees:
"In Fukushima we had tried to see the famous Takizakura, the 1000-year
old weeping cherry tree and a national treasure, in full bloom just
then. News stories were circulating about how residents of temporary
housing units were finding solace in this ancient beauty. Not
surprisingly, it was so crowded we gave up.
"Instead, that evening we visited a younger cherry tree in a nearby
valley—this one a gentle giant of about 400 years. It stood by a
stream, showering the small temple next to it with pink petals. The
perfume of spring was everywhere and I could hear the reassuring
croaking of the frogs."
15.May 2012
Reality disconnect
The Romney campaign's writers came up with a new meme for the day,
trying to ignite some enthusiasm for their guy. Our "spending inferno"
is a "prairie fire," don't you know, just the message to wake up Iowans,
who haven't hosted much in the way of "prairie" for what, three or four
generations?
But everbody understands big red truck, and the manly hero of childhood
fantasy, even if a guy in a suit and tie proposing he'll "bring us
together to put out the fire" sounds vaguely cock-eyed. It's a
metaphoric fire, so maybe a metaphoric CEO/fire-fighter would be
the very thing.
Not that his supporters are big on facts and figures, but if they were,
they might notice that
Mitt's
pants are on fire, mostly.
The verdict is in
George W. Bush, Richard B. "Dick" Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld,
Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, William Haynes, Jay Bybee and John
Yoo,
war
criminals, according to the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission.
They'll be forwarding their materials to the Chief Prosecutor of the
International Criminal Court, as well as the United Nations and the
Security Council.
Renouncing my affiliation
It's been three or four hours since we rode our bike to Leisure Villa
and cast our votes. Since it's a matter of public record now, no reason
to beat around the bush. Jeanette looked over the three step
instructions posted on the door and decided my plan made sense to her,
but then discovered she had a pre-set affiliation; something about being
on the ballot for Democratic precinct committeeman, we assume.
I declared my affiliation for the Republican Party, just to go on record
in the least useful way for the idiots who have inserted three steps
between me and a primary ballot. I voted Democratic because that was
where my vote was most needed for the races in our district, and because
Jeanatte was on the ballot, and how could I not vote for her?
And now, I'm happy to renounce my affiliation with the Republican Party
and
the
crazy horse it rode in on.
Love and weasels
The Gregory Brothers mash-up Mitt's
many
likes and loves. Almost heart-warming.
Which the story of Romney's high-school bullying is not. The dust-up in
the news last week caught my attention, but without knowing if it was
one person's hearsay, or what, I was waiting to see what it amounted to.
Friday's
account in The Washington Post gives what seems to be
adequate documentation of what happened, the incident "recalled
similarly by five students, who gave their accounts independently of one
another."
And Romney says he doesn't even remember it happening.
Or at least he has a spokeswoman to forward his non-memory.
Andrea Saul, said in a statement that "anyone who knows Mitt Romney
knows that he doesn't have a mean-spirited bone in his body. The stories
of fifty years ago seem exaggerated and off base and Governor Romney has
no memory of participating in these incidents."
But in any case, this isn't one of the "youthful antics" showing Mr.
Romney's "capacity for harmless, humanizing pranks and as an indication
of his looser, less wooden self."
Timothy Egan's not reading it as evidence of anything in particular, but
the present-day response adding to the pattern of "continuing inability
to honestly face up to his own life story," and "a tendency to dodge,
weave, parse or deny in such a way that it outweighs the original
offense." It's not a bully problem, it's
a
weasel problem.
14.May 2012
Blogiversary
Not a lot to say for the last couple of days, because I've been off on
whatever you'd call a break from the regular routine and you go and
work your butt off on a little construction project. The topic was a
garage of a certain age, old enough to have acquired cedar shingles and
then two layers of asphalt shingles, and then to need all that torn off
and start over. It had a style about it, made to match the hundred
year-old house it accompanies, but we don't think it was quite that old.
Maybe half? There have now been four generations of Driskells up on
that roof, working to keep the insides dry. (That's one of Gen 3 in
the photo, nailing the last of the sheathing on Monday morning.)
Anyway, what I said to kick this thing
off 12 years ago today still seems like a pithy observation about where
we are, even if the "blogging" reaching mainstream seems an internet
century ago:
This is what those thousands of years of evolution were all about:
being able to share our thoughts with a million other humans.
Not that I've reached a million readers, but you never know.
10.May.2012
You're welcome to vote Democratic on Tuesday
No tax dollars needed for the
Idaho
Democratic Party's presser
reminding voters that when they go to the polls next week, anyone who
wants to can vote Democratic, regardless of the affiliation we now get
to publicly express for the benefit of Rod Beck, Norm Semanko and their
ilk. (I just love it when I get to say "ilk," don't you?)
Unaffiliated, Democrat, Republican, Constitutionalist, Libertarian,
bring us your poor, your huddled votes yearning to breathe free, they're
all welcome.
"Republicans are the only party that is choosing to be exclusionary. They
will only let registered Republicans vote in the Republican primary.
They sued the state to impose this restriction on Idaho voters, and they
succeeded."
The Dems spent some staff time I suppose, but not even 1% of the $200,000
the Secretary of State spent on their information campaign. For
supposedly being the party of fiscal responsibility and smaller
government, the Republicans turn out to be rather expensive to keep
around.
We
had to pay their lawyers for suing the state, too.
Democratic Party chairman Larry Grant:
"Republicans closed their primary election in an effort to purify their
ranks and purge moderate and reasonable candidates. Thank Republicans
for the confusion and angst among voters. Democrats respect that Idaho
voters pride themselves on independence and respect their desire for
privacy in the voting booth. We welcome all to vote in the Democratic
primary."
And after the Republicans provided for an arrangement very few voters
had any interest in, made us pay for them to do it to us, made us pay
for it again with a needed voter information campaign, they
rolled out their chairman, Norm Semanko, to tell us how open and inclusive they are, because...
- you couldn't hardly tell from the facts of the matter;
- if they say it often enough, it will be true;
- when you wish upon a star and lie through your teeth, your nose will
grow; or
- all of the above.
If only Obama could be more like Dick
Maybe you've heard that
the
President of the United States said
that he thinks same sex couples should be able to get married.
Not to put too fine a point on it.
We recognize that some folks are upset about this and aren't prepared to
admit this is a civil rights issue, and if it goes against their
religion, or whatever, that's ok, they don't have to do it themselves.
Bishop Harry Jackson of Hope Christian Church is so upset, he was
falling
all over the false equivalency of how "there is not that same kind
of oppression and opposition, though it's always bandied about that it's
just like the black civil rights movement," and he "[hasn't] seen a lot
of gay people in the back of the bus recently or lynched or some of the
things that blacks went through," and "is this more of a recruiting
mechanism for the gay lifestyle, as opposed to a genuine, legitimate
absence of civil rights?"
(Evan Wolfson tried to reassure him with the results in the state of
New York, where "the gay people didn't use up all the marriage licenses.
Nothing bad happened. No one was hurt.")
We understand this may be polarizing for some folks. But
the
Log Cabin Republicans? These people need a serious stretch to find
the bad in this. Obama didn't do it soon enough to stop the
people of North Carolina from outlawing same sex marriage at their polls
this week, don't you know. And it took so long for him to "finally come
in line with leaders like Vice President Dick Cheney on this issue."
I mean,
three
measly pages of accomplishments? What's up with that? And this
wishy-washy statement from last October:
"Every single American—gay, straight, lesbian, bisexual,
transgender—every single American deserves to be treated equally
in the eyes of the law and in the eyes of our society. It's a pretty
simple proposition."
But seriously, Dick Cheney? In the 2004 campaign, he and his
running mate
engineered
initiatives against gay marriage in a series of swing states," if
you want to talk about calculating. And once he was safely into
history's footnotes, he made a lukewarm, if surprising
statement
of support for "any kind of union they wish," as regulated
state-by-state, so in 31 states (as of North Carolina's Tuesday vote),
that would be no support whatsoever.
I'll go with the current President on this issue, notwithstanding the
Log Cabin folk.
9.May.2012
Closed primary, brought to you by an open and inclusive party
Supposedly, cross-over voters in Idaho were monkey-wrenching the
Republicans' desire to be as crazy as they wanted to be, and they sued
to be able to exclude the riff-raff. Never mind that they have a
super-majority in both bodies of the legislature, all the statewide
offices, in "the most one-party state and least electorally competitive
state in the United States," independents, Democrats and the other party
people were hurting them! Given a chance to make their case in court,
they... didn't actually offer any evidence of harm. So that failed.
But freedom of association! That won the day,
Judge
Lynn Winmill ruling that they could indeed freely associate, and
disassociate, and close their primary, in order to choose more
ideologically extreme candidates, if that's what they want.
And that is so what Norm Semanko's wing of the party does want.
Come next Tuesday, voters will have to declare an affiliation (or lack
thereof) before voting in the primary, and only those who declare
Republican can obtain and cast a GOP ballot.
Norm Semanko issued an
editorial
[sic] today, breaking it down in terms his readers could relate to: a
football analogy, using the "rivalary" [sic] between the Boise State
Broncos and the Idaho Vandals as (rather apt) stand-ins for the
Republicans and Democrats.
"[I]t might help to imagine a rivalry football game between the Boise
State Broncos and the Idaho Vandals ... in which Coach Peterson
selected the starting lineup for the Vandals, and Coach Akey selected
the starting lineup for the Broncos. You would say that is crazy! But
that is precisely what has happened in Idaho primary elections for
almost 40 years. Non-GOP voters regularly switched over and voted in
the Republican primary since they know their parties have difficulties
electing their own candidates. In fact, a survey conducted in 2010 by a
professional pollster found that almost 40% of non-GOP voters in Idaho
admitted to having voted in a Republican primary."
Now the GOP chairman might have used this convenient
excuse—Democrats have picked their starting lineup for almost 40
years!—to explain the sorry state of state politics, but no, he's
just mindlessly thumping a Vote Republican drum. (Just like it used
to be, except now you have to make a declaration and go on record
before voting Republican. Watch for a campaign contribution solicitation
in a mailbox near you!)
Meanwhile, we have the interesting spectacle of GOP stalwarts
eating
their own, as back room hacks such as Lou Esposito shuffle PAC money
into primary matchups rejiggered by redistricting. (Esposito had done
his best to hack the redistricting process too, but failed at that,
leaving a slightly less partisan group to finalize it.)
Republicans espousing the goal of making others' lives miserable... it's
almost like the Legislature is back in session.
Watch your step
Mother nature's up to a little of her own artwork this spring,
slimming down F.R. 327 along the north fork of the Boise river
from "road" to "pedestrian pathway." That would be the all-natural
weight loss plan. Thanks to the Boise NF for the picture, and
KBOI
for posting it on their website.
As of yesterday, the river managers were still running the main through
Boise at near-8,000 cfs, well above what's called "flood stage" now
(7k), and well over the natural flow as they reserve
>10% reservoir
capacity to deal with the vagaries of May weather. They're actually
draining the reservoir system, down from 90% to 87% at last report,
10k cfs out of the lowest one, vs. 7k natural flow.
Not sure what flood stage on the N fork is, but 3660 cfs is enough for
some remodeling, anyway.
Idaho roots
Our friend Jim Prall is getting some extra mileage out of his 15 minutes
of fame,
in
the Lewiston Morning Tribune. It's behind their paywall, but
on a recent visit to Boise, he told us pretty much everything he told
reporter David Johnson, and more, about making "amends" for
disturbing
the peaceful passage of ExxonMobil/Imperial Oil's oversized
equipment on its way from Korea to Alberta's tar sands.
(Was there ever a more aptly named company than "Imperial Oil"?)
He's planting some trees on the edge of Moscow, "converting his
five-acre hay field to an urban forest will be a lasting reminder that
natural resource extraction must be countered by restoration."
Call that "semi-urban," though: he's outside the city limits of north
Idaho's sleepy college town, and hoping to keep it that way.
Prall's experience with protesting goes back to the 1960s, when law
enforcement wasn't as polite as they were for this round:
"In the '60s, they didn't take you to jail. They just beat the crap out
of you. They carried Joan Baez and delicately placed her in the paddy
wagon. And then they turned around and wailed the tar out of us."
He admits his guilt:
"You bet I was disturbing the peace. I plead guilty to disturbing the
peace. I'm always disturbing the peace," he said. "The peace needs
disturbing more often around here to get these young people woke
up."
What a fine legacy he might leave, if his 25 white pine seedlings
survive the rodents and warming. One of our state's 14 native trees,
Pinus
monticola has had a hard go of it against loggers, pine beetles,
fire suppression (yes, suppression) and mostly, white pine blister rust.
Fewer than 10% of the trees survive from the good old days, making
its
designation as our "state tree" somewhat ironic. From the LMT:
When he's done, Prall estimated he'll have planted around 2,000 trees.
He acknowledged that he won't be around to see them at full maturity,
but he's giving them a start, creating, in effect, carbon credits for
the future.
"I'm out there on my hands and knees putting baby trees in the ground,"
Prall said, "to mitigate the fact that we're rushing headlong toward
destruction and that enough people aren't planting enough trees."
8.May.2012
Home of the whopper
Mitt Romney stumping in Ohio strains credulity farther than, well, you
would've thought was humanly possible:
"I'll take a lot of credit for that fact that [the auto industry] has
come back."
It's a coffee spitter, and he glides over it smoother than the Teflon
gipper. You say you'll what?
David
Firestone deconstructs.
fotoMuses
Bloomingdale( Illinois)'s oldest building, and some of my big sister's
newest work:
"One
by One" in Gallery II, opening reception 2-4pm on Sunday, May
20th. She's new to
the fotoMuses group, but looks
like a great addition if you ask me. Not that I'm unbiased or anything,
but she's showing some talent at this. So glad she gave up working for
hire and started working for love.
Sore losergram
Did you hear the news? If not, Rick Santorum's strategy to downplay
his
endorsement of Mitt Romney worked to a tee. We miss the splashier
swan song of a Newt Gingrich, or the I'm-not-dead-yet
political
machinations of Ron Paul's supporters. (Motto: "we could still
win!")
While some may find the question of whether Santorum will have a
speaking slot at the convention compelling, the only thing I'm left
wondering is which is less attractive, "lukewarm," or "tepid"?
Sailing off through night and day and in and out of weeks
My memory of Where the Wild Things Are is inextricably bound with
the Whitefish Bay public library, and the children's section I haunted
around the time it came out. In
Maurice
Sendak's obituary today I see that was 1963, which would have been
near-perfect timing for my reading appetite. I wanted to know where the
other books like this one were.
Growing up in a safe and leafy suburb, the scary teeth of the monsters
were not all that sharp; unlike Sendak, the "looming terrors" in my life
were not very real. We had air raid drills and I could give some thought
to what would happen if the Communists started WW III, but it hardly
seemed likely and would be The End, at any rate, so What Me Worry? as I
was reminded by some of my other illustrated reading material. None of
the Depression, the war, or the Holocaust impinged on my awareness and
I'd never heard of the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby. And I had no
secret as dark as his to hide from my parents for ever and ever.
...he cherished the letters that individual children sent him unbidden,
which burst with the sparks that his work had ignited.
"Dear Mr. Sendak," read one, from an 8-year-old boy. "How much does it
cost to get to where the wild things are? If it is not expensive, my
sister and I would like to spend the summer there."
7.May.2012
Happy anniversary
The local paper made a bold move putting
Fred
Kaplan's May 1st opinion
at the top of the Insight section yesterday, under their own headline,
considerably more risible in this neighborhood of supporters for the
Republican nominee than what Slate used: Romney attacks on
Obama over bin Laden raid are preposterous.
"Preposterous" being the new normal in U.S. politics (and it is the
charge Kaplan himself leveled). Said supporters have long written off
the Idaho Statesman as just another example of the liberal
lamestream media, but I wouldn't be surprised by a flurry
of cancel-my-subscription letters on their way.
As Romney presses his case against an incumbent President, what Kaplan
said: anything bad that happened in recent memory is Obama's fault.
Anything good that happened was hardly his doing. And besides, it should
have been gooder. That's an easy argument to make for the economy, which
no one really understands, knows how to measure, or how to predict, and
the weather forecast, but not so easy for a successful military
intervention. The American people re-elected George W. Bush on the basis
of a largely unsuccessful military intervention, you might
recall. (Its primary virtue was timing: the full cost was still
unrealized in 2004, and George and Dick didn't need to give a fig about
John McCain's taking the hit 4 years later.)
And any mention of Jimmy Carter is a dog whistle brilliant argument.
"Even
Jimmy Carter" would have ordered the raid, and even Barack Obama's
re-election bid would have faltered had the raid failed in any
significant way. Had Carter's gutsy move to launch the mission to rescue
American hostages in Iran succeeded, the economy might have rebounded
out of malaise sooner, we'd remember Ronald Reagan as an OK
actor rather than the savior of the free world, the younger Bush
would have been recognized as having reached his Peter Pinnacle as
Governor of Texas, and Dick Cheney could have stayed under a Wyoming
rock.
But that was then, this is now.
Daring and skill and luck and deadly resolve and two extra helicopters
got the job done, and there is quite possibly nothing the Romney
campaign could talk about to less beneficial effect than foreign policy.
It's hard to forgo what has worked in the past, however, and the recent
Romney go was from an old playbook. Kaplan:
"Romney's position—or, more accurate, his pose—on these
issues is so preposterous, one can only surmise that he can't be
serious. More likely, he and his proxies in the right-wing press are
adopting Karl Rove's strategy of attacking the opponent's strengths. In
the 2004 election, Sen. John Kerry's war-hero status posed a threat
against George W. Bush, so Rove and the Swift Boaters painted Kerry as a
war coward; Kerry and his team were so flummoxed, they didn't know how
to respond. Now Mitt Romney, who has no foreign-policy experience
whatever, is painting Obama as the dangerous naif."
The anniversary is past, and the dust will settle, and we'll be back to
plan A: the bad economy is all Obama's fault, and the good economy isn't
as good as it should be if Mitt were king of the world instead of merely
heir apparent of a celestial kingdom in an undisclosed location.
Cinco de Mayo
Our tax dollars (and cents) in play
Middle of last summer, I got one of those dreaded piece of mail, from
the IRS. They'd found something wrong... but not much, and not
explained, and no immediate action needed. It seems that somehow, my
recordkeeping and the return that TurboTax generated and e-filed
did not line up with their calculations, to the tune of
$1.77. Since they tell you to round dollar amounts, I thought the
cents were odd, and I was curious how they'd arrived at the
figure, but the letter didn't explain, and the prospect of calling a
number and working through some number of support agents was not
quite so alluring that I was willing to give it a go. Neither did it
seem worth writing a letter and so on. (It certainly wouldn't be worth
it in the big scheme of things. There's no way the Department of
Treasury can receive and respond to a letter for less than ten times
the amount at issue.)
Since our estimated taxes for 2010 had been more than what we ended up
owing, and I'd told them to apply the refund (which was more than $1.77)
toward our 2011 taxes, the only thing I needed to do was to make a note
of the difference in what I thought we'd paid for 2011's estimated taxes
and what the IRS calculated.
Which of course I didn't do in the middle of last summer.
And didn't do when the mid-April deadline loomed and it was time to do
another year's returns.
Yesterday, another letter from the IRS arrived. Having not remembered
any of the forgoing, all I had was the same old "oh oh" feeling any such
letter provides. But reading the notice, it all started coming back to
me. We were $1.77 short again, and more: a
Failure-to-pay penalty of 0.01.
That's right, a penalty of one cent.
But the summary of the adjustment to my estimated tax total had a
curious new math to it, totalling up to an amount due of $0.00.
The What you need to do section, under If you agree with the
changes we made said:
"You don't need to respond to this notice. We reduced your account
balance to zero because the amount owed was so small. Please don't send
a payment."
Um, ok.
Funny thing is, after the returns were done and filed and the checks
cashed, I realized I'd forgotten a couple of charitable deductions for
Idaho educational institutions, for which the state provides a generous
50% tax credit, and so worth the trouble to amend our returns.
Which leaves the question of what to do about the $1.77.
3.May.2012
Head in the cloud
Sharon Fisher's piece on her Yottabytes blog,
I
Need a Synchronizer for My Cloud Storage Synchronizers is
entertaining, and shades of troubles to come for your and her and my
cloud-based storage. How do you keep track of the GB dribs and drabs all
over the place, and your credentials to get at them?
This is right in the sweet spot for what she rights about on IT
Knowledge Exchange, in the category of "storage and disaster recovery."
Sounds like a disaster already, doesn't it?
"What I really want is one thing that would check all my cloud
storage systems and tell me what's in each of them. And maybe while it's
at it, it could also keep track of all the various special offers I get
for more free cloud storage space—and when they're going to expire,
and how to move the files around so I don't get charged for anything.
..."
Spring runoff
The National Weather Service files it under
Flood
Warning
but the text starts with "FLOOD STATEMENT" which is more accurate for
the managed Boise River system: we dialed it up to 8,000 cfs, which is
"flooding," and we plan to keep it there through the end of the
week.
The (provisional)
teacup
tally shows the system with 10% space available, and natural flow
less than the 10,133 cfs coming out of Lucky Peak... but
rain in the forecast (and outside my window). Thus, management says:
flood a little now, to make sure we avoid the unmanaged flood later
on.
The USGS now has a data-rich web resource for
the
Boise River at the Glenwood Bridge, complete with an
interactive
Bridge Cam ("eLiveStream," get it?), which, um, could use a little
tree trimming.
Your tax dollars are also providing a nationwide
WaterWatch
facility, mapping flooding and high flow conditions across the
country.
As the local paper
picks
up the story (with a too-cute headline), I liked this observation
down near the bottom: "Hardman said homeowners should consider buying
flood insurance." Can you actually do that while the water is lapping at
(or over) your property line? "He said it takes 30 days to get it."
I would guess that the show will be over, one way or another, by the end
of May. But you never know; we might have a rainy month.
2.May.2012
The Kool-Aid of the left-wing liberal conspiracy
The Newshour segment on
the
balancing act teachers face over trying to teach about climate
change included this observation from Colorado H.S. science teacher
Cheryl Manning:
"I had students looking at data sets that were published online by NOAA
and NASA and other international science organizations. And I had them
comparing and looking at those and looking at projections and models,
what were the models indicating.
"And I had some parents come to me during parent-teacher conference, and
they were very upset that I was teaching about this. And they referred
to peer-reviewed sciences, the Kool-Aid of the left-wing liberal
conspiracy. And it was at that point where I realized what I was up
against with this group of parents, and I knew that I needed to get some
help."
Which I guess would justify
destroying
public education to save our children from the demon of
peer-reviewed science.
May Day
Mr. Freedom strikes again
Ex-reporter and now right-wing gadfly Wayne Hoffman is doing a fine job
of self-promotion and
corporate
shilling, most recently getting free ink and pixels from the
Idaho Press-Tribune to sing the praises of the American
Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).
The page looks to be one of those "how many things can you find wrong
with this picture?" puzzle, starting with the too-big, oversharpened mug
shot, for which I must apologize for pointing you to in advance. (Was
the P-T piling irony on top of his straw man sarcasm and ridicule by
positioning it next to his "it's an interesting picture" claim? If so,
well done.)
"ALEC has been an invaluable resource and friend to me and the Idaho
Freedom Foundation. Few people know how often I have asked ALEC's staff
for help battling big-government ideas, including the federal health
care takeover and the imposition of confiscatory tax polices."
Few people know? Well, you could come right out and tell us, just as you
could tell us who it is who funds your non-profit foundation, but no,
you don't do that, because you (and they) have no interest in full
disclosure.
"Corporate and individual donors give to groups like ALEC and IFF
because they know that in order to improve the human condition, there is
no substitute on Earth for free-market public policies."
And there is no substitute on Earth for effective manipulation of state
legislatures to obtain corporate and individual benefits, even as one
rails against "mammoth-sized, well-funded, take-no-prisoners opposition."
(Seriously?) That opposition is "the statists' Goliath," not to put too
fine a point on it, something Mr. Hoffman has never been accused of
doing.
The online comments are more worthy than the puff opinion above them.
ALEC is "a crony network that allows special interests to schmooze" with
legislators, "providing an easy template for legislation that would
better be crafted in an open forum with participation of those whose
interests genuinely are at stake—not those with the most
money."
And yes to bubbagump, it's not just you:
Wayne Hoffman is becoming increasingly outrageous.
Sky not falling?
So many things I would've done, but clouds got in my way...
but maybe they'll save the day, and keep our planet from overheating.
(Just like, um, Venus?) That's
what
MIT professor of metereology Richard Lindzen is saying, as "the
credible climate skeptics" push "all their chips onto clouds," according
to Justin Gillis' report for the New York Times.
There's certainly a lot about clouds I don't know, and I can
believe scientists are still sorting them out. But to go from that to
the happy forecast that "less coverage by high clouds in the tropics
will allow more heat to escape to space, countering the temperature
increase" on the planet and Goldilocks continues her run, let's just say
the risk of confirmation bias is rather high. This much is clear as
day:
"[P]oliticians looking for reasons not to tackle climate change have
embraced Dr. Lindzen and other skeptics, elevating their role in the
public debate."
Nothing is quite so persuasive as a reason not to do something
difficult. Lindzen's insouciant about the risk:
"If I'm right, we'll have saved money" by avoiding measures to limit
emissions, Dr. Lindzen said in the interview. "If I'm wrong, we'll know
it in 50 years and can do something."
Do nothing, for 50 years? Now there's an idea the U.S. Congress could
get behind, don't you think? In the meantime, I appreciate the NYT
account for its acknowledgment that there are some credible climate
skeptics; that dissenting views may have to struggle to compete against
consensus (if you think the mainstream is right, or "groupthink" if you
think it's wrong); and some sense of how much of the dissent is arrant
noise.
If you check it out, don't miss the colorful interactive
sidebar,
Clouds and Climate, which starts with the interesting factoid that
at any moment, about 60% of the earth is covered by clouds.
raveling
Tom von Alten
tva_∂t_fortboise_⋅_org
Home
Weblog
Useful
Sporting
Sailing
Friendly
Site map
Fine Print
Wednesday, 16-May-2012 11:14:18 MDT
http://www.fortboise.org/blog/index.html
