The Atheist Communist Caliphate Made Flesh, Spread the Clusterfuck Around Thread

[Brownie]

TPD, but this VF article on Sarah Palin is amazing.

What does it say about the nature of modern American politics that a public official who often seems proud of what she does not know is not only accepted but applauded? What does her prominence say about the importance of having (or lacking) a record of achievement in public life? Why did so many skilled veterans of the Republican Party—long regarded as the more adroit team in presidential politics—keep loyally working for her election even after they privately realized she was casual about the truth and totally unfit for the vice-presidency? Perhaps most painful, how could John McCain, one of the cagiest survivors in contemporary politics—with a fine appreciation of life's injustices and absurdities, a love for the sweep of history, and an overdeveloped sense of his own integrity and honor—ever have picked a person whose utter shortage of qualification for her proposed job all but disqualified him for his?

I'm unimpressed. I'm wouldn't say I'm a Palin apologist, but facts are stubborn things as John Adams said, and the excerpt you gave me revealed three facts:

1) The author HATES Palin. Fine.
2) Sarah Palin once said "Does any of this really matter" to Andrew Halcro about something.
3) John Adams once said "Facts are stubborn things."

But here's the real question, posed by National Review's Jim Geraghty, who has yet to find an answer: Where has Sarah Palin expressed pride in not knowing something?

Finally, she went from Mayor to Governor. Obama went from state senator to US Senator. She has a record as Governor, and whether we agree with her tactics as Governor, she has been very popular in her home state.

I will try and read the article sometime this week, but I am told that it is about 9,000 words. Just don't have the time right now to wade through it. But if those excerpts are any indication of the substance of the article, I'm very disappointed in VF. I can write 9,000 words on how I don't like somebody, too.

[powen01]

TPD, but this VF article on Sarah Palin is amazing.

What does it say about the nature of modern American politics that a public official who often seems proud of what she does not know is not only accepted but applauded? What does her prominence say about the importance of having (or lacking) a record of achievement in public life? Why did so many skilled veterans of the Republican Party—long regarded as the more adroit team in presidential politics—keep loyally working for her election even after they privately realized she was casual about the truth and totally unfit for the vice-presidency? Perhaps most painful, how could John McCain, one of the cagiest survivors in contemporary politics—with a fine appreciation of life's injustices and absurdities, a love for the sweep of history, and an overdeveloped sense of his own integrity and honor—ever have picked a person whose utter shortage of qualification for her proposed job all but disqualified him for his?

I'm unimpressed. I'm wouldn't say I'm a Palin apologist, but facts are stubborn things as John Adams said, and the excerpt you gave me revealed three facts:

1) The author HATES Palin. Fine.
2) Sarah Palin once said "Does any of this really matter" to Andrew Halcro about something.
3) John Adams once said "Facts are stubborn things."

But here's the real question, posed by National Review's Jim Geraghty, who has yet to find an answer: Where has Sarah Palin expressed pride in not knowing something?

Finally, she went from Mayor to Governor. Obama went from state senator to US Senator. She has a record as Governor, and whether we agree with her tactics as Governor, she has been very popular in her home state.

I will try and read the article sometime this week, but I am told that it is about 9,000 words. Just don't have the time right now to wade through it. But if those excerpts are any indication of the substance of the article, I'm very disappointed in VF. I can write 9,000 words on how I don't like somebody, too.

Prove it.

[Chuck to Chuck]

I can write 9,000 words on how I don't like somebody, too.

Prove it.

Well, it's not Teej's writing, but IvyChat is plenty of evidence that it's possible.

[Jon]

I can write 9,000 words on how I don't like somebody, too.

Prove it.

Well, it's not Teej's writing, but IvyChat is plenty of evidence that it's possible.

IvyChat is the same 90 words 100 times. That doesn't count.

[Quality Start Machine]

So the LIBRULS are piling on Palin like Conservatives did on Hillary. BFD.

She started running for President a week before the election. Hey, it's a free country.

After saying Barry Hussein "palled around with TEARISTS!", then playing the victim each time she gets any negative ink/air is proving she's a lightweight on the National stage.

The simple fact is, she's the barometer/white flag on how beatable the GOP thinks Barry Hussein is...

[RV]

I recall when President Bush was repeatedly accused of putting politics in the way of science...

http://cei.org/news-release/2009/06/24/epa-suppresses-internal-global-warming-study

I'm a little late here, but:

First off the authors of the submission; Alan Carlin is an economist and John Davidson is an ex-member of the Carter administration Council of Environmental Quality. Neither are climate scientists. That's not necessarily a problem - perhaps they have mastered multiple fields? - but it is likely an indication that the analysis is not going to be very technical (and so it will prove). Curiously, while the authors work for the NCEE (National Center for Environmental Economics), part of the EPA, they appear to have rather closely collaborated with one Ken Gregory (his inline comments appear at multiple points in the draft). Ken Gregory if you don't know is a leading light of the Friends of Science - a astroturf anti-climate science lobbying group based in Alberta. Indeed, parts of the Carlin and Davidson report appear to be lifted directly from Ken's rambling magnum opus on the FoS site. However, despite this odd pedigree, the scientific points could still be valid.

One can see a number of basic flaws here; the complete lack of appreciation of the importance of natural variability on short time scales, the common but erroneous belief that any attribution of past climate change to solar or other forcing means that CO2 has no radiative effect, and a hopeless lack of familiarity of the basic science of detection and attribution.

But it gets worse, what solid peer reviewed science do they cite for support? A heavily-criticised blog posting showing that there are bi-decadal periods in climate data and that this proves it was the sun wot done it. The work of an award-winning astrologer (one Theodor Landscheidt, who also thought that the rise of Hitler and Stalin were due to cosmic cycles), a classic Courtillot paper we've discussed before, the aforementioned FoS web page, another web page run by Doug Hoyt, a paper by Garth Paltridge reporting on artifacts in the NCEP reanalysis of water vapour that are in contradiction to every other reanalysis, direct observations and satellite data, a complete reprint of another un-peer reviewed paper by William Gray, a nonsense paper by Miskolczi etc. etc.

They don't even notice the contradictions in their own cites. For instance, they show a figure that demonstrates that galactic cosmic ray and solar trends are non-existent from 1957 on, and yet cheerfully quote Scafetta and West who claim that almost all of the recent trend is solar driven! They claim that climate sensitivity is very small while failing to realise that this implies that solar variability can't have any effect either.

So in summary, what we have is a ragbag collection of un-peer reviewed web pages, an unhealthy dose of sunstroke, a dash of astrology and more cherries than you can poke a cocktail stick at. Seriously, if that's the best they can do, the EPA's ruling is on pretty safe ground.

[RV]

TPD, but this VF article on Sarah Palin is amazing.

What does it say about the nature of modern American politics that a public official who often seems proud of what she does not know is not only accepted but applauded? What does her prominence say about the importance of having (or lacking) a record of achievement in public life? Why did so many skilled veterans of the Republican Party—long regarded as the more adroit team in presidential politics—keep loyally working for her election even after they privately realized she was casual about the truth and totally unfit for the vice-presidency? Perhaps most painful, how could John McCain, one of the cagiest survivors in contemporary politics—with a fine appreciation of life's injustices and absurdities, a love for the sweep of history, and an overdeveloped sense of his own integrity and honor—ever have picked a person whose utter shortage of qualification for her proposed job all but disqualified him for his?

I'm unimpressed. I'm wouldn't say I'm a Palin apologist, but facts are stubborn things as John Adams said, and the excerpt you gave me revealed three facts:

1) The author HATES Palin. Fine.
2) Sarah Palin once said "Does any of this really matter" to Andrew Halcro about something.
3) John Adams once said "Facts are stubborn things."

But here's the real question, posed by National Review's Jim Geraghty, who has yet to find an answer: Where has Sarah Palin expressed pride in not knowing something?

Finally, she went from Mayor to Governor. Obama went from state senator to US Senator. She has a record as Governor, and whether we agree with her tactics as Governor, she has been very popular in her home state.

I will try and read the article sometime this week, but I am told that it is about 9,000 words. Just don't have the time right now to wade through it. But if those excerpts are any indication of the substance of the article, I'm very disappointed in VF. I can write 9,000 words on how I don't like somebody, too.

DPD, but TJ and the Economist are right. As someone who disagrees with Palin on anything and everything, even I think the article is more about the author's agenda than intrepid reporting.

And this, to me, is an anonymous smear with a hint of misogyny:

    All the while, Palin was coping not only with the crazed life of any national candidate on the road but also with the young children traveling with her. Some top aides worried about her mental state: was it possible that she was experiencing postpartum depression?

The open question here is whether Mr Purdum or any of those concerned aides (but not concerned enough to speak up at the time, naturally) have ever actually met a woman experiencing postpartum depression. Later in the piece Mr Purdum mentions that he came across multiple people in Alaska who mentioned "without prompting" that they had hauled out the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" and realised that Mrs Palin suffers narcissistic personality disorder. Armchair diagnoses from unnamed Alaskans. With all the well-documented nonsense that has come from and encloaked the governor and her associates, this needs to be included?

[RV]

TPD. This scathing hit job on Goldman Sachs will fill Oleg's socialist heart with indignant proletariat rage, and will hopefully result in a 9,000 page defense of unfettered capitalism from morph and/or TJ.

http://zerohedge.blogspot.com/2009/06/goldman-sachs-engineering-every-major.html

Rebuttal from Goldman.

Taibbi's rebuttal to the rebuttal.

[flannj]

TPD. This scathing hit job on Goldman Sachs will fill Oleg's socialist heart with indignant proletariat rage, and will hopefully result in a 9,000 page defense of unfettered capitalism from morph and/or TJ.

http://zerohedge.blogspot.com/2009/06/goldman-sachs-engineering-every-major.html

Rebuttal from Goldman.

Taibbi's rebuttal to the rebuttal.

The section on commodity trading is laughable in its ignorance.
Light weight, simple minded, inexperienced, agenda based reporting.

It's appropriate that the Jonas Brothers are on the cover of this issue.

[RV]

Health care lobbyists: more ethical than the Washington Post.

For $25,000 to $250,000, The Washington Post has offered lobbyists and association executives off-the-record, nonconfrontational access to "those powerful few": Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and — at first — even the paper's own reporters and editors.

The astonishing offer was detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he felt it was a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its "health care reporting and editorial staff."

Keep up the good work, Very Serious and Important mainstream media.

[morpheus]

TPD. This scathing hit job on Goldman Sachs will fill Oleg's socialist heart with indignant proletariat rage, and will hopefully result in a 9,000 page defense of unfettered capitalism from morph and/or TJ.

http://zerohedge.blogspot.com/2009/06/goldman-sachs-engineering-every-major.html

Rebuttal from Goldman.

Taibbi's rebuttal to the rebuttal.

The section on commodity trading is laughable in its ignorance.
Light weight, simple minded, inexperienced, agenda based reporting.

It's appropriate that the Jonas Brothers are on the cover of this issue.

9000 words not necessary - flannj summed it up nicely.

[Chuck to Chuck]

The Wasilla Whack Job quits.

The only tink I can think is that this has got to be a move on her and Todd's part to capitalize on their income potential.  She's worth a lot of money right now on the speakers' circuit.

Can't see her running for anything ever again and actually winning.

[Tank]

In searching for a transcript of her resignation speech, I inadvertently stumbled upon my new favorite international politician...

Conservative Australian MP Joe Hockey.

Maybe he should run for Governor of Alaska.

[Quality Start Machine]

The Wasilla Whack Job quits.

The only tink I can think is that this has got to be a move on her and Todd's part to capitalize on their income potential.  She's worth a lot of money right now on the speakers' circuit.

Can't see her running for anything ever again and actually winning.

They're going to get jobs at IPA.

[Wheezer]

But if those excerpts are any indication of the substance of the article, I'm very disappointed in VF. I can write 9,000 words on how I don't like somebody, too.

I'm only halfway through it, but I'm already very disappointed by the use of small caps for "IHOP" and the undefended assertion that "Lyndon Johnson could only have come from Texas."

[Edit.--"But is now a critic of the governor's"?  What is this, Marie Claire?]

[Edit 2.--"[Ross] had sown controversy over the years by referring to gays and lesbians as 'degenerates' (he later sought to downplay the remark, saying his aversion to homosexuals was no different from his aversion to lima beans)...." Score.]

[Edit 3.--"Palin was to have been an honored guest, but canceled owing to spring flooding in Alaska." It's more insidious than Marie Claire.]