An Election In Australia and Jerry Bowyer Makes A Silly

In contrasting the incumbent Kevin Rudd and the winner, Tony Abbot, Jerry Bowyer makes a number of points in this piece at Forbes.com.  Among them this one:

Social policy: Abbott, a practicing Roman Catholic (and former seminarian), opposed calls for same sex marriage, while Rudd argued for it, with awkward attempts to link the Bible’s opposition to homosexuality with its alleged support for slavery.

Alleged, Jerry?  We need to take a look at that.

But first let's take a step back.  What Jerry's referring to is this Q and A with Rudd a week or so ago:


From the Australian Broadcasting Corporation:

The pastor in the Brisbane audience asked the Prime Minister how he could support gay marriage "if you call yourself a Christian".

The Prime Minister responded by suggesting that line of thinking would also make slavery an acceptable proposition.

The pastor asked Mr Rudd: "Jesus said a man shall leave his father and mother and be married ... Kevin, if you call yourself a Christian, why don't you believe the words of Jesus in the Bible?"

"Well, mate if I was going to have that view, the Bible also says that slavery is a natural condition," Mr Rudd responded.

Mr Rudd's response received loud appaluse (sic) from the audience.

"Saint Paul said in the New Testament, 'slaves be obedient to your masters'," the Prime Minister continued.

I guess that's the part where Jerry Bowyer and Australia's ex-Prime Minister differ, hence the former's use of the adverb "allegedly."   But does Saint Paul actually say that?

Why, yes.  Yes, he does.  Ephesians 6:5-9:

5 Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. 6 Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. 7 Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not people, 8 because you know that the Lord will reward each one for whatever good they do, whether they are slave or free.

9 And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him.

He says almost exactly the same thing is said in Colossians 3:22-4:

22 Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to curry their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord. 23 Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, 24 since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.

But he's also not alone in The Good Book in allowing slavery.  It's also OK'ed in the Old Testament. As in Leviticus 25:44-46:

44 “‘Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. 45 You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. 46 You can bequeath them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly.

So, slaves obey your masters as you would obey The Lord, masters don't threaten your slaves as The Lord won't like it.  Israelites can own slaves, just as long as the other Israelites they own (temporarily) are not treated "ruthlessly."

I'm thinking we're way past "allegedly" on this one, aren't we Jerry?

I mean, correct me if I am wrong, please.  How do these texts say anything otherwise?  Show me the "allegedly."

Jack Kelly Sunday

I have assumed that the standard operating procedure for right wing pundits is to simply assert something as true and trust that few readers in the audience would bother to check the facts.

This assumption is not at all challenged by these paragraphs found in today's Jack Kelly column in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

We must intervene in the civil war in Syria because "if a thug and a murderer like Bashar al-Assad can gas thousands of his own people with impunity," it would set a bad example for others, Secretary of State John Kerry told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Tuesday.

Secretary Kerry's moral outrage would have been more moving if Sen. Kerry -- who met with the Syrian dictator six times and urged "engagement" with his regime -- hadn't said so many kind things about Mr. Assad in the recent past.

And Secretary Kerry's assertion that the use of chemical weapons justifies U.S. military intervention would be more persuasive if Sen. Kerry hadn't taken the opposite stance. Many more were killed when Saddam Hussein gassed the Kurdish village of Halabja than in the sarin gas attack in a Damascus suburb Aug. 21, but Sen. Kerry didn't think that justified U.S. intervention in Iraq.

By the way, I am leaning against any sort of intervention into Syria, but I am conflicted.  On the one hand something has to be done to punish a regime that uses chemical weapons, on the other I can't see anything good coming out of it.  By hurting the Assad regime, we'd end up helping the rather nasty folks he's fighting.  Given the "law" of unintended consequences, I'm sure lotsa bad stuff would follow - all with our name on it.  But doing nothing seems wrong as well.

So you see my issue.

But let's get back to Jack.  He's contrasting Secretary of State Kerry's response to Syria's use of gas with the then Senator Kerry's "opposite stance" regarding Saddam Hussein's use of gas in Halabja in 1988.  In doing so, he leaves out a few things:

• As Senator Kerry cosponsored SR 408 - a condemnation of Iraq's use of chemical weapons.
• Iraq was an ally of ours at that time during the Iran-Iraq war.

Hmm...military intervention with an ally.  That's what Jack thinks Senator Kerry should have been calling for back in 1988 in order for Secretary Kerry to sound credible now.

But let's take a deeper look at Halabja in 1988.  First some background from Foreign Policy:

In 1988, during the waning days of Iraq's war with Iran, the United States learned through satellite imagery that Iran was about to gain a major strategic advantage by exploiting a hole in Iraqi defenses. U.S. intelligence officials conveyed the location of the Iranian troops to Iraq, fully aware that Hussein's military would attack with chemical weapons, including sarin, a lethal nerve agent.

The intelligence included imagery and maps about Iranian troop movements, as well as the locations of Iranian logistics facilities and details about Iranian air defenses. The Iraqis used mustard gas and sarin prior to four major offensives in early 1988 that relied on U.S. satellite imagery, maps, and other intelligence. These attacks helped to tilt the war in Iraq's favor and bring Iran to the negotiating table, and they ensured that the Reagan administration's long-standing policy of securing an Iraqi victory would succeed. But they were also the last in a series of chemical strikes stretching back several years that the Reagan administration knew about and didn't disclose.

And:

By 1988, U.S. intelligence was flowing freely to Hussein's military. That March, Iraq launched a nerve gas attack on the Kurdish village of Halabja in northern Iraq.

And:

According to recently declassified CIA documents and interviews with former intelligence officials like [Air Force Col. Rick] Francona, the U.S. had firm evidence of Iraqi chemical attacks beginning in 1983.

And yet at the same time:

President Reagan yesterday condemned the use of outlawed chemical weapons in the Persian Gulf war, especially against the Kurdish minority in Iraq, and called for new global ban on such warfare.

"We condemn it," Reagan told the 43rd General Assembly in his final speech to the world body as president. "The use of chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq war - beyond its tragic human toll - jeopardises the moral and legal strictures that have held these weapons in check since World War I."

Reagan indirectly criticized Iraq's use of poison gas against Iraqi Kurds and Iranians. He cited the Kurdish area of Halabja in Iraq and Maidan Shahr on the border as "terrible new names added to the roll call of human horror."

Something that's been known for more than a decade:

A covert American program during the Reagan administration provided Iraq with critical battle planning assistance at a time when American intelligence agencies knew that Iraqi commanders would employ chemical weapons in waging the decisive battles of the Iran-Iraq war, according to senior military officers with direct knowledge of the program.

So yea, Secretary of State Kerry's the one whose credibility should be questioned here.

By the way, Jack Kelly was an deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force during the Reagan Administration - starting in December 1983.  Considering that the Reagan Administration had firm evidence of Iraqi chemical attacks since, well, more or less exactly when Jack started working for it, did he know that the Reagan was lying through its teeth when his administration was both aiding Iraq's use of chemical weapons and yet condemning it all at the same time?

Really? Objective NEWS From The Trib?

I saw this commercial a few days ago:


The text (the best of what I could make of it):

"...reporting the truth.  We ask the tough questions and never give up until we've covered the complete story and then report it to you.  Accurately.  Sure we lean to the right on our editorial [...] but when it comes to hard news, right down the middle.  The Trib.  Conservative views, objective views.  Get it right.  Now.

Ok, fine.  So they're promising "objective" news reporting "the complete story" while admitting to "lean[ing] right" on the op-ed page.

So what should we make of this recent news coverage:

The head of a conservative think tank said Wednesday that withholding funding for President Obama's health care overhaul could halt some government services, but it's worth the political risk.

“The reason we're not wincing on that is because the alternative is really, really serious,” former South Carolina Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, president of the Washington-based Heritage Foundation, said during a meeting with Tribune-Review editors and reporters.

If Tom Fontaine (the reporter of this story) was giving us "the complete story" then why didn't he mention that his boss (ie the owner of the paper he works for, Richard Mellon Scaife)  is vice chairman of the Board of Trustees for the very foundation he's covering?

Or that foundations his boss controls have given tens of millions of dollars to the Heritage Foundation?

Or that the idea for the individual mandate actually came from the Heritage Foundation?

That's right.  That part might need some further explaining so here's Avik Roy (Romney advisor and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute) writing at Forbes.com:

James Taranto, who writes the Wall Street Journal’s excellent “Best of the Web” column, put forth a lengthy and informative discussion yesterday on the conservative origins of the individual mandate, whose inclusion in Obamacare is today its most controversial feature on the Right.

And those "conservative origins" are described by Taranto at the above link at the Wall Street Journal:

Heritage did put forward the idea of an individual mandate, though it predated HillaryCare by several years. We know this because we were there: In 1988-90, we were employed at Heritage as a public relations associate (a junior writer and editor), and we wrote at least one press release for a publication touting Heritage’s plan for comprehensive legislation to provide universal “quality, affordable health care.”

So why wasn't any of this mentioned in a news report outlining the Heritage Foundation's resistance to Obamacare?  Especially a news report that included:

DeMint thinks it will drive up health care costs and insurance premiums.

He said the national tour is the largest effort of its kind by Heritage. Its political arm, Heritage Action for America, is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on ads targeting several Republican congressmen who have not gotten on board with plans to defund the health care law — including Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., who called defunding the plan the “dumbest idea I've ever heard.”

The effort is being tied to a government funding bill that expires Sept. 30. Congress needs to pass legislation, including money for the law, or risk letting parts of the federal government shut down.

“I don't care if the government shuts down. It's no good anyway. Obamacare has to go,” said Michele Zolnier, who drove from Hermitage in Mercer County, to attend the town hall meeting.

Complete story?

Sorry, Tom.  Not today.

Tracking Teh Crazie At WND

Teh Crazie's still at it.

Take a look at this opening paragraph from Bob Unruh over at World Net Daily:

Let’s see, under Barack Obama the IRS targeted conservatives and Christians with harassment, dozens of “czars” were appointed, Arizona was sued for trying to enforce federal immigration laws, the government refused to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act and the National Security Agency spied on Americans.

If ever you need to know what teh rightwing crazies are thinking, WND is the place to go to find out.  From his opening, Unruh goes on to more about the IRS "target[ing] conservatives" and the poll data showing growing support for impeachment because of it.

It's only when you take a look at the question asked in the poll do you see the fakery going on.  Here's the question:

Under President Obama, the Internal Revenue Service has targeted conservative nonprofit groups for special scrutiny, including audits, which hampered those groups from organizing to oppose him and other Democrats in the 2012 elections. Do you agree or disagree that President Obama should be impeached for his handling of this situation?

The only problem with this push poll question is its entire premise.

Take a look at this from Salon from August 20:

We already know that the IRS targeted progressive groups in addition to Tea Party ones, but new information released today adds further details, showing that the tax agency also targeted “ACORN successors” and left-leaning “Emerge” groups. Emerge Nevada, Emerge Maine and Emerge Massachusetts were the only groups to have their applications actually denied 501(c)4 tax-exempt status. Conservative groups had their applications delayed, in some cases for over a year, but not rejected outright.

Think of what that means for the poll question.  If the initial premise is incorrect (as it is here) then all of the data that follows is also incorrect.

And for this teh crazies want to impeach.

How The GOP Lies

Subtly, very subtly.

Take a look at this from Talkingpointsmemo:

Mitch McConnell’s re-election campaign is touting his support for the Violence Against Women Act — even though the Republican Senate minority leader has a consistent record of voting against the anti-domestic violence legislation.

Um, what?  How can they possibly do that honestly?

Here's how:

A press packet that McConnell’s spokeswoman distributed to reporters at a Friday event titled “Women For Team Mitch” features testimonials from Kentucky women. One of them caught the eye of Joe Sonka, a reporter for the Louisville-based LEO Weekly, who posted it on Twitter.

The quote, attributed to a woman named Angela Leet in Jefferson County, read, “Mitch was the co-sponsor of the original Violence Against Women Act- and continues to advocate for stronger policies to protect women. I am proud to call him my senator.”

You'll note the word "original" in the tweet.  That's how they get to say that the guy who's consistently voted against VAWA gets to look like he supports it.

A few more things to note about McConnell's support of the bill.  According to this page from Thomas, the principal sponsor of the bill was a certain Senator from Delaware: Joe Biden.

Yes, the same Joe Biden who's now President Obama's Vice-President.

Gee, that being the case, I wonder why didn't the McConnell campaign say he "co-sponsored Vice-President Joe Biden's original Violence Against Women Act"?

By the time the bill was reintroduced - in 1993 with a Democrat in the White House, (a coincidence, no doubt), McConnell voted against it.

This is how they get to lie.

The Brainstrust Dazzles Us With Its Command Of The Facts. Again.

We'll start with what they published today:

Speaking of guns, a new Harvard study concludes that more gun control does not necessarily lead to lower death rates (homicide and suicide) or violent crime. “(T)hose correlations are not observed when a large number of nations are compared around the world,” the study says. Translation: That dog won't hunt. [Bolding in original.]

Do you see the fifth word in that? It's the word "new" and its meaning should be obvious to everyone even remotely conversant in English.

Now let's go to the "study" they call "new"  Here it is.  It's volume 30 of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy and according to the HJLPP's website, this article was published in the Spring of 2007.

How, exactly, is that "new"?

And is this really a Harvard study (new or otherwise)?  Depends on how you define "Harvard study" I guess.  As stated above, it's from the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy (www.harvard-jlpp.com) - but what is that, exactly?

First, you'll note that the URL ends with a ".com" rather than a ".edu" like say where the Harvard School of Public Health publishes its Firearms data (www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/). See the .edu?  That means it's from Harvard University.

On the other hand, the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy describes itself as:

[A]n organization of Harvard Law School students. The Journal is one of the most widely circulated student-edited law reviews and the nation’s leading forum for conservative and libertarian legal scholarship.

So we're not exactly talking peer-reviewed social science here, are we?  From there you can decide for yourself whether that constitutes or subverts the notion of this paper being a study from Harvard.

And so are there any actual studies published in the peer-reviewed Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy that look at whatever connection that may exist between the number of firearms and homicide?

I am so glad you asked.  Take a look at what's available on this page:

Our review of the academic literature found that a broad array of evidence indicates that gun availability is a risk factor for homicide, both in the United States and across high-income countries. Case-control studies, ecological time-series and cross-sectional studies indicate that in homes, cities, states and regions in the US, where there are more guns, both men and women are at higher risk for homicide, particularly firearm homicide.

Hepburn, Lisa; Hemenway, David. Firearm availability and homicide: A review of the literature. Aggression and Violent Behavior: A Review Journal. 2004; 9:417-40. [Bolding and italics in original.]

But let's look at some of the facts presented by the paper being touted by Scaife's braintrust.

On page 652, there's a table titled:

Table 1: European Gun Ownership and Murder Rates

And this table tells us that the tiny country of Luxembourg had, in 2002, a murder rate of about 9 per 100,000 people. That means that given a population of about 500,000 there were would have been about 45 homicides in 2002, right?  It's such a prominent "fact" that it's presented prominently in the text:

These countries, however, have murder rates as low or lower than many developed nations in which gun ownership is much rarer. For example, Luxembourg, where handguns are totally banned and ownership of any kind of gun is minimal, had a murder rate nine times higher than Germany in 2002.

This must've come as a surprise to the researchers who compiled the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.  Their Eighth Survey covered the years 2001-2002 and their data shows that Luxembourg had a total number of 4 homicides in 2002 or a rate of .9 per 100,000 inhabitants.

4 not 45.  0.9 not 9.01.  (It's on page 185 of this document if you want to check my work.)

Shabby work.  Old(ish) shabby work, too!

Now go back and look at what Scaife's braintrust wrote.  How valid do YOU think it is?

Ten Commandments Update

I am not sure who's more confused, me or The Rev. Ewing Marietta.

Well, that's a bit facetious on my part I must admit. Perhaps neither of us are confused.  Perhaps each of us is only a teensy bit confused but confused about different things.  Who know?  Whatever the case, it sure looks to me like the good pastor is missing the point about why the Ten Commandment monument at the Connellsville Jr High is so offensive.

Or maybe he gets the point and is just looking to save face, as it were.

Let's go to the news coverage at the Trib:

The Thou Shall Not Move group plans to erect four new Ten Commandments monuments at upcoming dedication ceremonies while the Connellsville School District and the Freedom From Religion Foundation continue to wage a legal battle over a monument that has been located on school property for more than a half century.

The Rev. Ewing Marietta, pastor of Liberty Baptist Church and an organizer of Thou Shall Not Move, said the dedication events will take place at 12:45 p.m. Sept. 8 at 301 S. Pittsburgh St., Connellsville; 5 p.m. Sept. 15 at the corner of North Arch and Water streets near the Amtrak train station; 1 p.m. Sept. 29 near a bus stop in Dunbar; and 7 p.m. Oct. 5 at 105 Hoke St., Bullskin Township.

Looks like they're erecting some new monuments in the area but it also looks like these erections are on private property.

“We have requests from 52 different places that want Ten Commandments monuments placed on their property,” he said. “We're going down the list and starting with the places that requested the monuments first.”

Marietta said the monuments have already been placed outside the Connellsville Eagles Club on Arch Street, on the grounds of St. Paul's AME Church on Morgantown Street in Uniontown and at the Juniata United Methodist Church in Dunbar.

This, of course, is completely constitutional as each of these spaces is private property.

And I am not sure whether Marietta gets the irony of the Trib's last paragraph:

“Pennsylvania was founded by William Penn, a Quaker who was in prison in England three times because of his religion, and came to this country for religious freedom,” Marietta said. “People should be able to hold onto their religious morals and values without the threat of being thrown into jail. We don't want to force the Ten Commandments monuments on anyone, but we don't want them taken away from the public eye.”

Still don't see the irony here?  I'll give you a hint from pa.gov:

Many Englishmen accused the Friends of disloyalty to the Crown as well as to the Church of England. As a result, the British Parliament enacted a series of repressive religious measures known as the Clarendon Code. The strictures elevated Anglicanism to "established church" status and declared all other religious observances to be "non-conformist" and, hence, illegal.

So he was arrested for not conforming to an established church.  Isn't the establishment of a state church something barred by the 1st Amendment?  And isn't posting religious instructions on school property something that is just too close to establishing a state church to be constitutionally acceptable?

Why yes, yes it is.

And so is The Rev. Ewing Marietta as wrong about this historical metaphor as he is about the nature of the separation of church and state?

Hot patootie and bless my soul, he certainly is.

Amazing

Listening to someone named Wes Minter on KDKA right now.  He's sitting in for my good friend Mike Pintek.

After listening for a few minutes, this is the message I sent in via the Dollar Bank instant access line:

It's amazing to hear conservatives say "unless we were attacked, where to we get off being the attacker?" regarding Syria. It's amazing to hear conservatives SUDDENLY want to be 100% sure about the use of WMD.

Where were these exact same conservatives in 2003? We weren't attacked by Iraq yet they said we had to attack. Iraq didn't have WND yet they said we had to attack.

And yet those same lies led to the deaths of 4500 American servicemen and women and yet for conservatives any criticism of the Bush administration's decision of war was tantamount to treason.

For the record I am not in favor of attacking Syria - but then I wasn't in favor of the illegal war in Iraq, either.

So far, no response from Mr Minter.

The Trib Covers A Source.

Yes, they're still at it.

From today's Tribune-Review editorial page:

The left and “progressives” love to blame wage stagnation on greedy businesses wanting to gobble a larger share of the pie. But it's actually a product of businesses' uncertainty about taxes, regulations and employee-benefit costs — which the Obama administration has exacerbated.

Merrill Matthews, resident scholar at the nonpartisan, free-market Institute for Policy Innovation (ipi.org), notes...

Regardless of what Mr Matthews actually said regarding wages, take a look at how Scaife's braintrust characterizes the IPI -  "nonpartisan" and "free-market."

Really?  Nonpartisan? Let's go take a look.

Back in October, 2012, American Enterprise Institute scholar J. D. Kleinke published a piece in the New York Times called "The Conservative Case for Obamacare" and for that he was, according to Forbes.com "pilloried" by what they call "Conservative policy experts."

Among them:

Merrill Matthews, resident scholar at the Institute for Policy Innovation: “The fundamental philosophical difference is that liberals do not think the free market can work in health care and so the government must make it work. Conservatives think the free market has never been tried. Kleinke is clearly in the former camp and is thus making the liberal, not the conservative, case for ObamaCare.” [Bolding in original.]

In 2002 the Capital Research Center, a conservative think-tank that is itself the beneficiary of almost $5.3 million of Scaife foundation money over the years rated the Institute for Policy Innovation as an "8" on a "1 to 8"/"Left to Right"scale.

And since we mentioned the Scaife money, how much has this "nonpartisan" think tank received from foundations controlled by my good friend Richard Mellon Scaife?

Of the $2 million or so it's received from various foundations, the IPI got about a quarter of that ($470,000) from The Sarah Scaife and Carthage Foundations.

Finally, if the place were so "nonpartisan" why would TeaParty Senator Ted Cruz be a part of its 25th Anniversary gala?

Nonpartisan?  Not even close.

Disassembling The Trib's Climate Science Denial

Let's start with what Scaife's braintrust published this morning at the Tribune-Review and then unweave point by point:

Al Gore, who profited handsomely paving the way for Al Jazeera's U.S. entree, likens climate change skeptics to racists, homophobes and those who enable an alcoholic's denial. Oh, this just in — the United States recorded 2,899 record cold temperatures versus 667 record warm temperatures between July 24 and Aug. 19.[Bolding in original.]

There are two points I want to look at here; what Al Gore said and the data being used to "debunk" the climate science.

First, what did Gore actually say?  Did he really "liken climate change skeptics to racists..." and so on?

No, not really.  In a piece in a Washington Post piece about how and why he's "optimistic" about the future regarding climate science, this is what Gore actually said:

Well, I think the most important part of it is winning the conversation. I remember as a boy when the conversation on civil rights was won in the South. I remember a time when one of my friends made a racist joke and another said, hey man, we don’t go for that anymore. The same thing happened on apartheid. The same thing happened on the nuclear arms race with the freeze movement. The same thing happened in an earlier era with abolition. A few months ago, I saw an article about two gay men standing in line for pizza and some homophobe made an ugly comment about them holding hands and everyone else in line told them to shut up. We’re winning that conversation.

The conversation on global warming has been stalled because a shrinking group of denialists fly into a rage when it’s mentioned. It’s like a family with an alcoholic father who flies into a rage every time a subject is mentioned and so everybody avoids the elephant in the room to keep the peace. But the political climate is changing. Something like Chris Hayes’s excellent documentary on climate change wouldn’t have made it on TV a few years ago. And as I said, many Republicans who’re still timid on the issue are now openly embarrassed about the extreme deniers. The deniers are being hit politically. They’re being subjected to ridicule, which stings. The polling is going back up in favor of doing something on this issue. The ability of the raging deniers to stop progress is waning every single day.

So it's not really about "likening" deniers to racists, homophobes and so on.  It's really about how the conversation is changing.  In the past (before "civil rights was won in the South") a racist joke was far more acceptable in day to day discourse.  Same thing regarding members of the various LGBTQ communities across the country.  Not that everything's fixed, mind you, but the conversation's changed enough that two gay men can hold hands in a fast food restaurant and the homophobes who try to ridicule them are themselves subject to public shaming.

Imagine that 20 years ago.  Or 10.

The conversation is changing, he said.  The deniers are the ones subject to ridicule (like this from just last week) because their position is simply embarrassing.

Now let's take a look at the data the braintrust is trying to use to undermine the science.  I haven't been able to track down it's exact source, but let's (for the minute) assume it's true - that United States recorded 2,899 record cold temperatures versus 667 record warm temperatures between July 24 and Aug. 19. 

Even if that's true, so what?

The United States only makes up about 6.6% of the total land mass of the planet (or only about 2% of its total surface area).  Assuming a world wide pattern from such a small selection of the data is misleading (at best).   But even if it does point out a large scale trend (that there were fewer "record-setting hot days in that month") again, so what?

What's the larger global trend?  The selected data the braintrust uses doesn't go anywhere near the global trend.

Which is still getting warmer.

The braintrust is running out of ways to mislead on climate science.

The Trib's Climate Strawman Argument

Before proceeding, we gotta answer the question, "What's a strawman argument?"

Here's an answer:

A straw man argument is one that misrepresents a position in order to make it appear weaker than it actually is, refutes this misrepresentation of the position, and then concludes that the real position has been refuted.

So. How has Scaife's braintrust on the editorial board of the Tribune-Review committed that local fallacy today?

Take a look:

A funny thing happened on the way to Obama & Co.'s “grassroots” effort claiming “climate change” is wreaking all manner of weather havoc. The website wattsupwiththat.com notes that we typically have about 1,200 tornadoes by this time each year. But this year, there have been only about 720 reported twisters. What's a climate clucker to do? [Bolding in original]

Their point only makes sense if ""wreaking all manner of weather havoc" includes an increase in the number of tornadoes.  Meaning that if the "climate cluckers" are saying that climate change will increase the number of tornadoes while the number of tornadoes has actually decreased, then there'd be a problem, right?

Too bad that's not the "climate cluckers" argument.  How do I know?

From the IPCC report:

Although some evidence is available regarding increases in the intensity and frequency of some extreme weather events, it is not yet clear how tornadoes will be affected.

And according to wunderground, this has been the position of the IPCC since 2007.

Um, guys?  Do you even bother to do any independent research before writing your editorials?  Merely echoing stuff you find on science denial websites does not constitute adequate research and you're deceiving your readership by doing so.

Tracking Teh Crazie - Cruz And The Birthers!

Over at Talkingpointsmemo, Josh Marshall has been spending some time on Senator Ted Cruz' presidential eligibility (given that the Senator was born in Canada to an American mother).

For the record Marshall writes:

I can tell you Ted Cruz’s politics are awful. And having had significant life overlap with him I can tell you that at virtually every point in his life - at least from his late teens through mid-thirties (after that I have less evidence) - he’s quickly developed a reputation as a raging a-hole. His new workplace - the Senate of the United States - just continues the pattern. But he’s definitely a ‘natural born’ citizen and thus constitutionally qualified to serve as President of the United States.

And for the record I am total agreement with Marshall on this.

That's not to say that that it's not great fun to watch Cruz squirm on his own eligibility question.  If there's no issue about his eligibility then why did he feel it necessary to release his birth certificate?  Or renounce his Canadian citizenship?

This is why.  From World Net Daily (aka birther central):

Conservative icon, radio host and author of the No. 1 book in the country right now, Mark Levin said he’s sick of “birthers” after encountering a particularly “obnoxious” one at a hot, crowded book-signing event.

The man, whom Levin described as “disrespectful” toward him and the other fans, reportedly pointed at Levin and told him he was wrong in concluding that Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, is eligible to be president.

The issue of constitutional eligibility, which reached the U.S. Supreme Court multiple times during Barack Obama’s runup to the White House, now is surging again, only the target this time is Cruz, who was born in Canada to an American mother and a Cuban father.

But you'll note the attack is not coming from the left (see Josh Marshall, above) but from the birthers now confronting other conservatives (like Levin) using the same "logic" that they used to prop up their previous Obama-birther frenzy.

For example, let's look at the "dual citizenship" part of the story - from the flawed camera obscura that is Jerome Corsi:

The State Department is maintaining a “counter-misinformation” page on an America.gov blog that attempts to “debunk a conspiracy theory” that President Obama was not born in the United States, as if the topic were equivalent to believing space aliens visit Earth in flying saucers.

However, in the attempt to debunk the Obama birth-certificate controversy, the State Department author confirmed Obama was a dual citizen of the U.K. and the U.S. from 1961 to 1963 and a dual citizen of Kenya and the U.S. from 1963 to 1982, because his father was a Kenyan citizen when Obama was born in 1961.

In a number of court cases challenging Obama’s eligibility, dual citizenship has been raised as a factor that could compromise his “natural born” status under Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution. The cases argue dual citizenship would make Obama ineligible even if documentary evidence were shown the public, such as the hospital-issued long-form birth certificate that indicates the place of his birth and the name of the attending physician. [Emphasis added.]

It's the same for the "American mother gives birth abroad" side.  If it didn't work for Obama then how can a true American (like the one who confronted Levin) think it's OK for anyone else?

This has been the birther discourse for years.  We shouldn't be surprised that they're going after one of their own.

Funny how that works out, eh?

Yea, What Mr. Ruffalo Said

From Salon.com:

Actor and activist Mark Ruffalo wrote a really moving defense of safe abortion care and women’s reproductive rights over the weekend, and shared how his mother’s own experience obtaining an illegal abortion shaped his views about a woman’s legal right to decide if, when, and under what circumstances she will have a child.

Some highlights:

What happened to my mother was a relic of an America that was not free nor equal nor very kind. My mother’s illegal abortion marked a time in America that we have worked long and hard to leave behind. It was a time when women were seen as second rate citizens who were not smart enough, nor responsible enough, nor capable enough to make decisions about their lives. It was a time that deserved to be left behind, and leave it behind we did, or so it seemed. We made abortion and a woman’s ability to be her own master a right. That right was codified into law. That law was the law of the land for decades.

And:

So that is why I am lending my voice to you and your movement today. Because I actually trust the women I know. I trust them with their choices, I trust them with their bodies and I trust them with their children. I trust that they are decent enough and wise enough and worthy enough to carry the right of Abortion and not be forced to criminally exercise that Right at the risk of death or jail time.

Damn straight.

They're Cherry Picking Again

And by that I mean the Tribune-Review editorial boards recurring (and yet always failing) science denial.  From this past Thursday:

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says 2012 “was among the 10 warmest years on record.” But as climate blogger Pierre Gosselin notes, the report fails to mention that last year was one of the coolest of the decade. “(T)he report gives the ... impression that warming is galloping ahead out of control. But (NOAA's) data show just the opposite.” There's “science” and then there's science.
[Bolding in original.]

Before I get to deconstructing the braintrust's "conflict" I'd like to point out a bit of "gee, maybe I dunno, Wally" plagiarism.  Take a look at this from CNSNews:

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently released its “State of the Climate in 2012” report, which states that “worldwide, 2012 was among the 10 warmest years on record.”

But the report “fails to mention [2012] was one of the coolest of the decade, and thus confirms the cooling trend,” according to an analysis by climate blogger Pierre Gosselin.

“To no one’s surprise, the report gives the reader the impression that warming is galloping ahead out of control,” writes Gosselin. “But their data shows just the opposite.”

How much closer could these two passages get?  But is this really plagiarism?  Considering the fact that it's from the "Cybercast News Service" and that the "Cybercast News Service" used to be the "Conservative News Service" and that the "Conservative News Service" is owned by the Media Research Center and Tribune-Review owner Richard Mellon Scaife is a huge financial supporter of the CNS, I suppose that even if it is plagiarism, Barbara Hollingsworth (writer of the CNS piece the braintrust filched) probably can't protest about it that much.

Back to the  braintrust debunking.  Let's look at Gosselin's blogpost first.  It's a typical case of cherry picking the data as you can see from his first chart:

See how it just goes back to 1998?  That's the first clue there's selective data choosing going on.  Gosselin goes on to say that the NOAA report actually "confirm(s) precisely what the skeptics have been claiming all along" ie that "The Earth has stopped warming."

Except that it doesn't.

We've dealt with this "no global warming since 1998" myth before.  If you focus on the last decade and a half it certainly looks like a stoppage in the warming.  But if you expand the view and take a rolling average, this is what it looks like:

See the upper right hand corner? That's just about all the data from the last decade or so (more or less exactly what Gosselin's basing his "the warming stopped" story on).  Looking at more than a century's worth of data, how anyone can say the warming's "stopped" is beyond me.

Indeed, there's no conflict between the two statements the braintrust wants you to think are in conflict.  It is possible for 2012 to be "among the warmest on record" and for it to be "one of coolest of the decade."

How?  Well, as NOAA says on the page describing the report:

Including the 2012 temperature, Earth is warming at a rate of 0.06°C (0.11°F) per decade since 1880 and a more rapid 0.16°C (0.28°F) per decade since 1970.

Ah...

So only by a careful selection of the data can you show that "the Earth stopped warming" in 1998.

So the braintrust is right, there's "science" and there's science.  Too bad they're wrong in thinking they're quoting science - when they're quoting non-climatologists (oops, did I fail to mention that he's not actually a climate scientist?  My bad.) like Pierre Gosselin, they're only dabbling in "science."

On the other hand, the data used by the NOAA report is actually "peer-reviewed."

So you can decide which is more scientifically reliable.

KDKA's Mike Pintek Supports Marriage Equality!

Yea, you read that right.

I got a chance to hear KDKA's afternoon drive guy, Mike Pintek (an unapologetic conservative) talk about marriage equality for an hour or so this afternoon.  The frame was (basically) found in this KDKA story:

Now that one county in Pennsylvania will issue marriage licenses to same sex couples, the question is who will marry those folks?

It turns out that there’s one mayor right here in this region who would be happy to do the honors.

“The government has no place in deciding who you can love as a person, and I would just welcome the chance of performing a same-sex ceremony,” Braddock Mayor John Fetterman told KDKA political editor Jon Delano on Friday.

Fetterman says some rights trump the law.

“Whether that’s civil disobedience, or breaking the law, it’s doing the right thing,” adds Fetterman.

A member of FreedomToMarry.Org, Mayor Adam Forgie of Turtle Creek supports same-sex marriage, but he won’t marry gay couples yet.

In discussing Mayors Fetterman and Forgie, Mike Pintek presented his own views (which are shockingly close to mine).  Basically, he said that:

• it wasn't the government's business to dictate who could or couldn't get married
• two consenting adults (of whatever gender) should be free to get married
• he never heard ANY good explanation about how two "gay guys" (his term, not mine) getting married affected anyone else's life or marriage

And so on.

He even deflected the silly "but marriage is for procreation" argument from at least one caller.

Let's give credit where credit is due.  As disagreeable as Mike Pintek could be on any number of other issues, on this one he's absolutely right (and good for him on this!).

Mike Pintek is in favor of marriage equality.

My Coffee With Congressman Doyle

One bright, sunshine day this past weekend, I had a very nice chat with the district's representatives in Congress, Mike Doyle.  It's been a while since we chatted face to face and he's looking fitter and trimmer than I remember.  He said he's lost a couple dozen pounds and given up ice cream and taken to going on 100 mile bike rides.  If you're keeping score, I've been doing none of those things and I'm looking pretty much the same as I have been for a while (that is to say, greying, plumping and balding).

I started off our chat by asking him how well he thought Congress was doing its job.  And that's all I needed to get a full hour of thoughtful analysis.  After chuckling sadly, he started to describe the House's current legislative gridlock.  The current edition.

Early on, he pushed Paul Krugman's article from the NYTimes and one of its main points:

The sad truth is that the modern G.O.P. is lost in fantasy, unable to participate in actual governing.

It's a complicated bind that we're all in generally and that Speaker Boehner is in particularly, but it can all be simplified into this: Because of the "us versus them/if you're not with us you're against us" mentality of the powerful Tea Party caucus of the House, political compromise in that body is impossible.

And because political compromise is impossible, work on any sort of a necessary post-sequestration budget is impossible.

And because any sort work on a post-sequestration budget is impossible, we're going to continue, after October 1, into another phase of the sequester that was not supposed to happen.

According to Doyle, while the Tea Party caucus likes the effects of the sequester (as it limits any growth of the guv'ment without them having do anything for which they can be blamed), those effects will eventually hurt us all.  And that's the bind we're all in because of them.

The inability "to participate in actual governing" extends to some of the most basic functions of congressional work.  For example, Doyle says, when a bill is passed in both houses a conference committee might need to be formed to settle whatever differences there may be between each version.  At present, that's not happening either.  Not without preconditions that the Democrats in Congress would never accept.  All this for a discussion between the two houses.

All because the GOP as a whole has to placate it's Tea Party base.

Which leads to a deeper issue at hand than the "us vs them" mentality mentioned above.  From Krugman:

The sad truth is that the modern G.O.P. is lost in fantasy...

As an illustration of that point, Doyle said that the Republicans were convinced Romney was going to win in 2012. Now that it's obvious that he didn't, they're convinced Karl Rove lied to them about their chances.

[Unconnected to my chat with Doyle, but I gotta think that that last point has something to do with Groundswell.]

Part of the fantasy Krugman describes is also found in Doyle's rhetorical question regarding the House Republicans' reluctance to compromise with their colleagues from the Democratic Party:

• How do you compromise with a party run by a Kenyan-born secret-Muslim who's intent on imposing socialism on America?

The base that's placated by the Tea Party wing of the GOP (and thus the GOP itself) fervently believes teh crazie.  We've seen this before (this is from 2011):

Last August in a CNN/Opinion Research poll, when asked, "Do you think Barack Obama was definitely born in the United States, probably born in the United States, probably born in another country, or definitely born in another country? 44% of the Republicans got it wrong. 27% said he was "probably born in another country" while 14% said he was "definitely born in another country" and 3% had no opinion.

For example.

This is the base that's being placated by the GOP.  Until that ends things will get worse before they get better.  Until the base rejects the conspiracy theory it's been fed and says, "Enough!" things will get worse before they get better.  The House leadership's in a bind because if they don't appease teh crazies, they'll be replaced with a tea partier who will.  The non-crazies among the House GOP (and Doyle told me of many who don't like the TP members - they just can't admit it publicly) feel the same way.  If they disagree they risk a primary challenge from their right.

And until this changes...well, you get the picture.

As for a grade, Doyle gave the folks running the show in the House a solid F.

Is that a surprise?

And then he was gone...

39 Years Ago Today:

Video of the Day (Advertising to Women Edition)

(Posted with reservations because undoubtedly someone on the right will see this and think it is a real thing in the world.)

When Editorials Collide

Every now and then the editorial board over at the Tribune-Review takes issue with something the editorial board over at the Post-Gazette publishes.  More often than not, they don't like what they read.  Surprising, I know.

Which in itself is fine.  Conflicting between editorial boards is a good thing.  But only if both are honest with, you know, the facts.

And we all know by now that the relationship between Scaife's braintrust and the facts is iffy, at best.

Take a look at this from this morning:

Huh?: Those economic “scholars” at The Toledo, Ohio, Block Bugler once again are shilling for a higher minimum wage — this time for fast-food workers and to $10.50 an hour. And, hey, it argues (a word we use loosely), it would raise the price of a Big Mac by only a nickel. “That's a small amount to pay for meaningful change,” it says. Actually, it's a steep price to pay, given that the real result would be fewer of these entry-level jobs.

What they're talking about is this P-G editorial.  Look closely at how the braintrust characterizes the idea of raising the minimum wage to $10.50.  Now let's go see what the P-G editorial board actually says about it:

The low wages don't do great things for the restaurants, either. According to Time magazine, the National Restaurant Association estimates that a fast-food outlet sees 75 percent turnover in employees every year. The story also reported that a letter signed by more than 100 economists said that raising the minimum wage to $10.50 would add only a nickel to the price of a Big Mac.

That's a small amount to pay for meaningful change. We think most Americans would be willing to fork over a few more cents for a Happy Meal if it meant happier times for the workers who make them.

Wait, you mean that wasn't just an argument from the editorial board, but it was from something from Time Magazine?  And it's a group of 100 economists who are making the argument NOT the P-G editorial board? 

Huh, I guess that still would be some real "economic 'scholars'" but just not at the P-G.  Funny how that part got left out.  The argument looks a lot different if it comes from 100 economists, doesn't it?

Here's the Time article, by the way - the real source of that idea.

But why would those actual "economic scholars" say that about raising the minimun wage to $10.50?

Here's what they say from the petition:

We, the undersigned professional economists, support the “Catching Up to 1968 Act of 2013, ” sponsored by Congressman Alan Grayson of Florida. This measure would raise the federal minimum wage from its current level of $7.25, established in 2009, to $10.50 per hour , and with automatic increases indexed to inflation thereafter.

As is conveyed by the title of the bill itself, the real , inflation-adjusted, value of the federal minimum wage has fallen dramatically over time. In 1968, the real value of the minimum wage was $10.65, so that, in fact, an increase today to a $10.50 federal minimum would not even bring the minimum wage fully back to the 1968 standard.

And:

Businesses can readily absorb these small cost increases through minor increases in prices and productivity as well as enabling low-wage workers to receive a slightly larger share of businesses’ total revenues. On average, even fast-food restaurants, which employ a disproportionate share of minimum wage workers, are likely to see their overall business costs increase by only about 2. 7 percent from a rise today to a $10.50 federal minimum wage. That means, for example, that McDonalds could cover fully half of the cost increase by raising the price of a Big Mac, on average, from $4.00 to $4.05.

And as to whether that will decrease  minimum wage employment, they say:

Opponents of minimum wage increases frequently argue that such measures will mean fewer employment opportunities for low-wage workers because businesses will be less willing to hire workers at the increased wage level. But the weight of evidence from the extensive professional literature has , for decades, consistently found that no significant effects on employment opportunities result when the minimum wage rises in reasonable increments. This is because the increases in overall business costs resulting from a minimum wage increase are modest .

And there's more:

Moreover, the overwhelming factor determining employment opportunities for low - wage workers is macroeconomic conditions — whether the economy is growing or in a recession. Thus, in 1968, when the U.S. minimum wage reached $10.65 in real dollars, the overall unemployment rate was 3.6 percent. By contrast, during the depths of the 1982 recession, the real value of the minimum wage had fallen to $8.05 while unemployment peaked at 10.8 percent

You can even check out the economic scholarship supporting the petition here.  Where's the work supporting the braintrust's position?  Someplace NOT bought and paid for by Scaife foundation money, that is.

There's a lot behind the P-G editorial, isn't there?  Not so much for the editorial from the braintrust.

When editorials collide, said George Pal to his bride, I'm gonna give you some terrible thrills.

Some More Trib Climate Mendacity

From a few days ago at the Trib:

Mr. Obama warns that the climate today is warming at an accelerated rate — “faster than anybody anticipated five or 10 years ago” — and that the future “is going to depend on our willingness to deal with something we may not be able to see or smell.”

On the contrary, the smell of what's he's spreading around is quite distinctive.

At a recent Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing, a panel of five scientists were asked twice whether they stood by the president's assessment, The Heritage Foundation reports. Their initial response?

Silence.

I fear I risk alienating my audience out of sheer repetition by pointing out that here's yet another example of Richard Mellon Scaife's editorial board citing The Heritage Foundation with no mention of the millions upon millions of Scaife foundation dollars he's simply drenched it with.

So let's move on to the argument itself.  Here's what the president said (it was at a DCCC fundraiser at the home of Paul and Bettylu Saltzman):

We still have a situation in which, on the one hand, our energy future is more promising than we’ve ever allowed ourselves to believe. We will probably be a net exporter of traditional fossil fuels over the next 20 years -- within the next 20 years, probably a net exporter of natural gas in the next three or four years -- something that could not be imagined even five, 10 years ago -- because of the dynamism and technology that America has produced.

But the flipside is we also know that the climate is warming faster than anybody anticipated five or 10 years ago, and that the future of Bettylu’s grandkids, in part, is going to depend on our willingness to deal with something that we may not be able to see or smell the way you could when the Chicago River was on fire, or at least could have caught on fire, but is in some ways more serious, more fundamental. [Emphasis added.]

So far, so good. At least Scaife's braintrust didn't take those words out of context.  They said he said the earth was warming faster than anticipated.  And he did say that.

But is that true?

Well, according to this article at the Scientific American, it is:

Over the past decade scientists thought they had figured out how to protect humanity from the worst dangers of climate change. Keeping planetary warming below two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) would, it was thought, avoid such perils as catastrophic sea-level rise and searing droughts. Staying below two degrees C would require limiting the level of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 450 parts per million (ppm), up from today's 395 ppm and the preindustrial era's 280 ppm.

Now it appears that the assessment was too optimistic. The latest data from across the globe show that the planet is changing faster than expected.

Or this article from The Atlantic:

A new report from the International Energy Agency says global temperatures will rise twice as fast as projected if countries don't act to slash their admissions soon. Released this morning, the IEA report shows carbon diaoxide from energy emissions rose 1.4 percent globally last year, a new record, and puts the world on pace for a 5.3 degree Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) rise in global temperatures by 2020 if new steps aren't taken. In 2010, a UN summit agreed the goal would be to limit the rise in global temperatures to 2 degrees by 2020.

But take a look at what's being said: the planet's warming is happening faster than anticipated.

Now look at how Scaife's braintrust tries to debunk what the president said:

“There is little or no observational evidence that severe weather of any type has worsened over the last 30, 50 or 100 years, irrespective of whether any changes could be blamed on human activities anyway,” said Dr. Roy Spencer, principal research scientist at the University of Alabama, according to a Heritage report.[Emphasis added.]

While the president (and the IEA and Scientific American) was talking about rising temperatures, Climate model skeptic and evolution denier Dr. Spencer is talking about severe weather.  Here's what he said in his Senate testimony:

There is little or no observational evidence that severe weather of any type has worsened over the last 30, 50, or 100 years, irrespective of whether any such changes could be blamed on human activities, anyway. Long-term measurements of droughts, floods, strong tornadoes, hurricanes, severe thunderstorms etc. all show no obvious trends, but do show large variability from one decade to the next, or even one year to the next. While the 2003 heat wave in France and the 2010 heat wave in Russia were exceptional, so were the heat waves of the 1930s in the U.S., which cannot b e blamed on our greenhouse gas emissions.[Emphases added.]

Now, what does he say about global warming in general? Does he deny it?

No, not really:

My overall view of the influence of humans on climate is that we probably are having some influence, but it is impossible to know with any level of certainty how much influence. The difficulty in determining the human influence on climate arises from several sources: (1) weather and climate vary naturally, and by amounts that are not currently being exceeded; (2) global warming theory is just that – based upon theory; and (3) there is no unique fingerprint of human caused global warming.

My belief that some portion of recent warming is due to humans is based upon my faith in at least some portion of the theory: that the human contribution to atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations has resulted in an es timated 1% reduction in the Earth’s ability to cool to outer space, and so some level of warming can be expected to occur from that change.

Funny how that part didn't make it into what the braintrust wrote.

But the larger point is the subject change.  As I wrote a few paragraphs above, Obama's talking temperature and the braintrust counters with hurricanes and tornadoes.  And the guy they cite to make that counter actually does believe that the planet is warming up.

And anyway, did you know that there were two 5-expert panels at that hearing?  Scaife's braintrust and Scaife's Heritage Foundation only mention one.  On the other panel, we can find another climate expert, a Dr. Heidi Cullen who is Chief Climatologist at Climate Central, saying this:

Ongoing research (Francis and Vavrus, 2012; Petoukhov et al., 2013) suggests a possible mechanism for the increasing extremes we are beginning to see . Specifically, by changing the temperature balance between the Arctic and mid latitudes, rapid Arctic warming is altering the course of the jet stream, which is responsible for steering weather systems from west to east around the globe . The Arctic has been warming about twice as fast as the rest of the Northern Hemisphere, due to a combination of human emissions of greenhouse gases and unique feedbacks built into the Arctic climate system. According to this new research, the jet stream is becoming “wavier,” with steeper troughs and ridges. Weather systems are moving more slowly, increasing the chances for long duration extreme events, like droughts, floods, and heat waves. The tendency for weather to get stuck in one pattern is going to favor extreme weather.

Funny how that never made it into what the braintrust wrote, either.

It was said at the hearing, right?  It was spoken to the Senate committe, right?  So why didn't the braintrust bother telling you about it?  My guess is that since it doesn't fit into the reality they want you to accept, they don't think you need to know about it.

Same story, different day.