Al Gore’s Convenient Untruths

Heh…

LONDON —Fox- A High Court judge in London has turned film critic, highlighting “nine scientific errors” in Al Gore’s documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. The judge said some of the errors had arisen in “the context of alarmism and exaggeration” to support the former US vice-president’s thesis on global warming.

The Government’s decision to show the film in secondary schools had come under attack from father-of-two Stewart Dimmock, a Kent school governor and a member of political group The New Party, who accused the Government of “brainwashing” children with propaganda.

Justice Burton ruled at London’s High Court that the film, much acclaimed by environmentalists, could be shown in schools as part of a climate change resource pack, but only if it was accompanied by new guidance notes to balance Gore’s “one-sided” views.

The article then goes on to list those particulars. Go and RTWT.

By way of Chuck Simmins, I see the 10th Mountain Division is wrapping up their deployment. Says Chuck about the 10th Mountain:

It is the most deployed brigade in the Army, 40 months in total at the end of this stint. It has not sustained a combat death since July and attacks are running 3-4 times less than they were at the start of their deployment. Lots of good info about the turnaround in the Baathist heartland.

Another job well done, guys. With a capital “Well”

Riehl World View says: 

Surprise, surprise, CNN had the courage to put the blame for the Frost fiasco right where it belongs, on the Democrats:

This morning, CNN aired its first report on the right-wing smear campaign against 12-year old SCHIP recipient Graeme Frost. CNN pinned the blame on Democrats for assault on the Frost family.

The Democrats can’t afford to have the debate be about means-testing, or income guidelines when it comes to government entitlements. The liberal cult of victimization, more ad campaign, than it is debating a political agenda, would paint every American as a victim of one thing, or another – and all in need of more and more government help.

And of course, the only ones capable of providing that help to everyone and everything, is the Democrats.  At least, to listen to them about it.

 CNN for a change got this one right.   Even if one assumes that S-CHIP is the way to go, the Democrats messed up the PR effort by picking the wrong poster child.

And let’s be honest; this isn’t about “the children”.   This is about Democratic party power.  Period.

Think not? Let’s try a little thought experiment; let’s say the Republicans came up with a child, who had benefited from private health insurance, which is demonstrably available.   Do you suppose the Democrats would not be searching for a flaw in the argument, and taking advantage of it when it happened, despite the presence of a child in the equation?  I don’t.  Nor should you.

DORKO TAKES COMMAND OF GULF REGION DIVISION

Posted: 10 Oct 2007 12:23 PM CDT

DORKO TAKES COMMAND OF GULF REGION DIVISION

IRAQI FORCES, U.S. SPECIAL FORCES DETAINED 11 SUSPECTED TERRORISTS, KILL ONE

Posted: 10 Oct 2007 12:17 PM CDT

IRAQI FORCES, U.S. SPECIAL FORCES DETAINED 11 SUSPECTED TERRORISTS, KILL ONE

Yeah, I know, I know.

But, see for yourself.

Be sure to take a shower before you come back.

Normally when you have a bunch of nuts like this agreeing with your positions, logic dictates that you seriously recess of those positions.  Somehow I don’t think Ron Paul will view this endorsement as a negative, however.

Which, to my mind, takes away any doubt there may have been that the guy was worth looking at.

Remember Dick Cheney’s Adam Clymer comment, and the resulting big media stink?   Well a ‘rat makes (profanity Cheney sound like a choir boy and aside from You Tube you’d never know it

Granted. James Oddo was a victim of a comedy prank.   However Oddo went ballistic after but two questions.

Hat Tip:  Mary Katherine Ham, Town Hall.

Michelle takes a baseball bat to Ezra Klein, today.

A good-faith debate would require that Respectable Liberal Blogger Ezra Klein actually be a person of good faith. He is treated as such in some elite conservative circles, where his work is linked frequently and intellectual repartee among the Beltway boys’ club is warm and chummy. He is free to continue traveling in those cozy circles where highbrow right-wingers are not so mean and scary.

But I’d just as soon share a stage, physical or virtual, with Respectable Liberal Blogger Ezra Klein as I would with Chris Matthews, Geraldo Rivera, or an overflowing vat of liquid radioactive waste.

I’ve had similar comments about the man in these spaces for some time now.  As an example:

The man turned himself into an apologist for the left, and found that ditching his integrity by the side of the road to do it was necessary . One simply cannot make the arguments he makes, without doing so.

Michelle, however, takes it to the house:

First, let’s bust the cherished myth that Respectable Liberal Blogger Ezra Klein is as brilliant as he, the nutroots, and his respectable conservative friends think he is.

He is proudly touting the discovery of a blog post I wrote about my experience with Maryland’s individual health insurance market in 2004. He excerpts this part:

I have commented before on the problems with central planning in health care. I certainly am not convinced that a government-run system is the answer, but I do agree with Krugman that there are serious problems with our health insurance system, particularly in the market for individually-purchased (non-group) coverage.

After my husband quit his job earlier this year (to become a full-time stay-at-home dad), we had a choice. We could either buy health insurance from his former employer through a program called COBRA at a cost of more than $1,000 per month(!) or we could go it alone in Maryland’s individual market. Given our financial circumstances, that “choice” wasn’t much of a choice at all. We had to go on our own.

We discovered that the most generous plans in Maryland’s individual market cost $700 per month yet provide no more than $1,500 per year of prescription drug coverage-a drop in the bucket if someone in our family were to be diagnosed with a serious illness.

With health insurance choices like that, no wonder so many people opt to go uninsured.

What he fails to excerpt is the rest of the post:

In the end, we decided to purchase a very high-deductible plan (sold by Golden Rule Insurance Co.) coupled with a tax-sheltered Medical Savings Account (MSA). We couldn’t qualify for the preferred rate because Golden Rule says I am underweight. Hmph! In any case, while Krugman and most Democrats don’t seem to like MSAs, in our case we were glad they were an option.

Update: The Times reports that the proportion of Americans without health insurance is on the rise. The Wall Street Journal, on the other hand, says the proportion has remained steady. (Both are right; it depends on which timeframe one is talking about.) The WSJ editorial writers suggest:

States like New York could do a lot for [those who cannot obtain health insurance] merely by getting rid of the state insurance regulations that make a basic policy roughly 10 times more expensive than it is in neighboring Connecticut. Better still, Congress could save poor New Yorkers from the tyranny of Albany by putting an end to our Balkanized and anachronistic 50-state insurance market and simply decreeing that there shall be nationwide commerce in health insurance. They could then buy policies issued in saner states or over the Internet.

Respectable Liberal Blogger Ezra Klein and his Pavlovian (Yet Respectable) boosters are treating my 2004 post as proof-positive of my utterly flabbergasting HYPOCRISY!

Look! The wingnut complained about the health insurance market! Ergo, she is a HYYYYPPPPOCRITE. And stupid! And a Nazi bitch!

Continue flinging your peas. I do have a spit shield now.

Grown-ups, on the other hand, will be able to grasp effortlessly that if I had decided not to buy private insurance and then demanded that the government cover my medical expenses and insure me after a catastrophic accident, then, yes, why, yes, you could flap two HYPOCRISY! cards up and down in each hand until your feet lifted off the ground.

In fact, I advocated MSAs and noted approvingly the Wall Street Journal’s suggestion that the cure for limited market choices was less government intervention. Not more.

This is perfectly consistent, in other words, with my INHUMAN, FASCIST, CAPITALIST, WINGNUT views.

This is actually fairly standard fare when dealing with Klein.  Taking notice of the inconsistencies, and the omissions of Klein’s ravings, has become something of a national sport of late. There’s certainly enough of each to go around. Invariably, Klein will support larger government.  He will claim that’s not what he’s about, but the pattern becomes clear after only a short period of time.  If he notices that pattern himself, he doesn’t have the integrity to make mention of it, much less adjust away from the problem.  No shock, we labeled him here, quite a while ago, as not having the ability… such is, after all, modern leftism, today. If he were to step away from such inconsistencies, and he would cease being Liberal…  the former, being part and parcel of the latter.

But what really catches my attention, is this passage:

True to form, however, other Respectable Liberal Bloggers are mindlessly promoting Respectable Liberal Blogger Ezra Klein’s discovery of my observations as the Holy Grail of Hypocrisy Cards-and falsely characterizing my post to boot. Respectable Liberal Blogger Jonathan Cohn at TNR’s The Plank claims that “I couldn’t find health insurance” and that “there was no affordable coverage to be had.”

Reading comprehension grade: F.
Nutroots pandering grade: A+ with an unhinged smiley face!

Yes, but it is the consensus.  You may remember we discussed consensus, and the echo chamber thereof, and, it’s damaging effects, the other day.  It would appear that this is yet another one of those situations where the consensus is that fire is not hot, and you’re not going to tell anyone of these people any different…. even when the true facts of the matter are in the source material they are quoting.

And let’s address this issue of respectability that Michelle brings up; On the whole, I think if liberals actually found me respectable, I would consider my credibility highly suspect.  As it is, I think it’s intact. Certainly, so is that of Michelle, too. Meanwhile….

Message Ezra Klein: Have the courage and integrity to step out of the leftist echo chamber, Ezra, and out into the real world.

Others: Riehl World View, Wizbang, RCP

I note that that Don has picked up the Swamp meme.

How bad in the stench of Mrs. Pelosi’s Swamp?  Even the ‘rats are fleeing:

I live in Nancy’s neighborhood, and we’ve bumped into each other, although not much. Having run against her (as the Republican nominee) in 1996, I had a bit of trouble getting her into a face-to-face: she refused to debate, and this imperious attitude evoked not a murmur of comment on the local political scene. I ran as the antiwar candidate, but since the war I was protesting back then was the Kosovo war, Bay Area liberals weren’t interested. Now, of course, there are people camped out on her lawn, trying to get an audience with Her Imperial(ist) Majesty, to no avail.

The source of this animus toward Mrs. Pelosi – AntiWar.com

Addendum: (Bit) Michelle has this one, too. 

What ole Jimmy Carter lacks in brains he more than makes up in his over sized ego.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Former President Jimmy Carter on Wednesday denounced Vice President Dick Cheney as a “disaster” for the country and a “militant” who has had an excessive influence in setting foreign policy.

Given Carter’s record, the misery index, the hostage crisis and his preference for thugs, Castro, Chavez, I think Dick Cheney ought to send ole Jimmy a thank-you note.  I have for more respect for the people Carter dislikes than I do the ones he likes.

Hampton, Iowa -The Trail-Washington Post- A campaign van carrying the wife of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) collided with a motorcycle on a two-lane country road in central Iowa on Tuesday, sending the motorcyclist to the hospital.

Can’t you just imagine the van driver saying in his stupor, “Wow… I didn’t know they had other CARS in Iowa….”

No one in Michelle Obama’s Chevrolet Uplander was hurt, despite the fact that the van was not drivable. The campaign suspended its final event of the day.

The wreck occurred on State Road 65 as Obama’s two-car caravan headed to an event in a Franklin County park. As the van, driven by a campaign aide, started to make a left turn, a motorcycle that had been traveling in the same direction and rapidly passing cars on the left crashed into the van’s left side.

So, the Uplander got totaled by a motorcycle?   Yeah.

Ask me again why I don’t drive one of those fiberglass beauties anymore.

CW Nevius at the SanFran Chron:

 San Francisco – the liberal, left-coast city conservatives love to mock – could be undergoing a transformation when it comes to homeless people. Although the city would still be a poor choice for a pep rally for the war in Iraq, indications are that residents have had it with aggressive panhandlers, street squatters and drug users.

Well, it’s not a full turnaround, but one step at a time.

The thing that worries me about this is they were successful in learning their lesson only after the aggressive homeless types came along with a somewhat ratty 2*4 and whooped them upside the head with it. Wow. Reality.  What a concept!

One would hope that they learn the reality of the Iraq war situation before someone shouting “Allah Akbar” (Boom) gets to teach them on the point.

Dan Drezner:

Last week I asked which major party was going to be more trade-friendly.Yesterday, Hillary Clinton provided part of the answer. The Financial Times’ Edward Luce summarizes:

Hillary Clinton, frontrunner for the Democratic party’s presidential nomination, on Monday said that all US trade agreements should be evaluated every five years and, if necessary, amended.The process should start with the North America Free Trade Agreement, which was the signature trade pact of her husband, Bill Clinton, when he was president.

The comments, which were aimed at union leaders who remain critical of Nafta, which they say has displaced US workers, amount to her strongest break so far with Mr Clinton’s pro-free trade agenda of the 1990s.

Mrs Clinton said Nafta suffered from “serious shortcomings”. She also reiterated her pledge to incorporate strong environmental and labour protections in future trade deals – a measure most economists view as protectionist.

“I think it is time that we assess trade agreements every five years to make sure they’re meeting their goals or to make adjustments if they are not,” she said in a speech in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, which stages the first caucus vote in the presidential nomination process next January. “And we should start by doing that with Nafta.”….

In addition to the five-year trade reviews, Mrs Clinton said she would appoint a federal trade enforcement officer who would monitor compliance with trade agreements.

Click here for more details (it’s not all bad; the proposal to expand trade adjustment assistance to cover service-sector workers makes sense). For a party that claims it wants to burnish America’s image abroad, the Democrats sure know how to propose specific steps that will piss off our trading partners.Seriously, if this kind of review is proposed, what incentive would any country have to sign an FTA with the United States?

Indeed; what country would want to sign any kind of trade agreement with the United States under those conditions? I’m telling you folks, the woman if she gets the chance we’ll end up in a world-wide a financial collapse. And the economic collapse may not be the worst of it. Her ineptness cuts across all categories.

Ive said it before, I will say it again, the Unions are killing America.

DETROIT — (AP) The United Auto Workers has set a deadline of 11 a.m. Wednesday to agree on a new contract with Chrysler LLC or workers could strike.
The deadline, confirmed Monday morning by Chrysler spokeswoman Michele Tinson, gives negotiators less than 48 hours until a strike could be called.Bargainers returned to the table Monday morning after spending most of the weekend in negotiations.

Just because a deadline has been set doesn’t mean a strike will happen, Tinson said. The union also could extend the contract hour-by-hour as negotiations continue, she said.

And check this:

Chrysler pays its workers an average of $75.86 per hour in wages, pension and health care costs, the highest among the Detroit automakers.

Read that again: $75.86 per hour in wages, pension and health care costs 

What is the strike over? Job security. These workers are afraid Chrysler’s going to move their jobs overseas. Now what incentive would they have to do that?  (Shake of the head) Is there anyone (besides the union workers themselves) who doesn’t understand that the biggest threat to the jobs of these union workers is their own huge money demands?

Oh, speaking of bias in the press, as we did in the Rather piece, below, observe what the New York Times (Also mentioned in the Rather piece) did to an interview with Michelle Malkin.

Go RTWT. it’s a clear demonstration of why the mainstream media has lost all credibility with the American people.

Boortz, yesterday:

Howard Kurtz has a new book out. He has been investigating the “Rather-Gate” for two years, and insists that Dan Rather did have a final say in running the forged documents. (Although Rather’s testimony begs to differ.)

But the night before the story was set to air, Rather called Josh Howard. Howard had been named the executive producer for 60 Minutes. Rather wanted to know what they were doing to promote his “story.”

Howard’s reply was “nothing.” Clearly that was not what Rather wanted to hear. It was then that he said this to Josh Howard:

“I’m going to give one of the documents to The New York Times to run in Wednesday’s paper … They’ll have to credit CBS News. That way we can put our stamp on it.”

Newsman or partisan hack? The answer is clear.

True.  There doesn’t seem to be argument over this, any longer.

The remaining question in my mind at the moment, is how this is going to affect the Rather lawsuit against CBS.  Rather must’ve known that this book was coming out.  You can bet your baby fat your house cat and your cowboy hat that it’s going to be used, and it seems likely that Kurtz will be called as a witness, or at the least a consultant by some litigant other than Rather.

Here’s the delicious irony in all of this; To prove itself innocent of Rather’s charges they (CBS) will have to prove themselves complicit in his crimes.  It doesn’tt seem to me likely that there will be legal repercussions, per se’ from such admissions. .. But the long charged liberal bias within the MSM will have been proven by the MSM itself, in an effort to defend itself from one of it’s own.