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Audacity of Truth
Whiner-in-Chief:
"[W]hether the grumbling is about Republicans on Fox or bloggers in pajamas, there's a word for what the president and his aides are doing. That word is "whining." And nothing [...] does more damage to Obama's credibility or authority than the sense that a popular president is becoming the whiner-in-chief."
- John Nichols, Nation Magazine - 10/12/09
What he said
(Bumping this post to the top – scroll down for updates and more thoughts)
Rick Moran blogs about the latest controversy involving comments Ann Coulter made in a recent interview with the Today Show’s Matt Lauer. First, the comments:
LAUER: On the 9-11 widows, an in particular a group that had been critical of the administration:
COULTER: “These self-obsessed women seem genuinely unaware that 9-11 was an attack on our nation and acted like as if the terrorist attack only happened to them. They believe the entire country was required to marinate in their exquisite personal agony. Apparently, denouncing Bush was part of the closure process.”
“These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by griefparrazies. I have never seen people enjoying their husband’s death so much.”
Of those comments, Moran writes:
This rhetoric is not designed to advance debate or even make any kind of a salient point about the political activism of grief stricken parents like Cindy Sheehan and the anti-Bush September 11 widows. The remarks were designed to hurt other people’s feelings in a deeply personal and entirely inappropriate way. Can you imagine some liberal commentator making similar remarks about Debra Burlingame, sister of Charles F. “Chic” Burlingame, III, captain of American Airlines flight 77, which was crashed at the Pentagon and who is fighting to keep the 9/11 Memorial from being hijacked by the anti-American left? We would be all over that worthy and deservedly so.
The anti-Bush 9/11 widows are not immune from criticism for their political positions nor even for the tactics they use to advance those positions. But to say that they are “enjoying” their status as widows is so far beyond the pale that anyone who makes such a statement deserves the most severe censure possible. And the networks who use Coulter as some kind of “Spokesman” for the right should be told in no uncertain terms by as many of us as possible that she doesn’t speak for any conservatives that we want to be associated with.
I couldn’t agree more.
Ann, of course, has the right to say whatever she wants – but was something like that right to say? I don’t think so. This isn’t about being uber-sensitive. It’s about there being a better way to get your point across without going overboard. No matter what the 9-11 widows have had to say about the President’s policies, Coulter saying they’ve been “enjoying” their husbands deaths is way beyond the pale.
This is yet another example of how sometimes conservative debate can turn from passion to poison.
James Joyner has a link roundup of blogger reax.
Read more via Captain Ed, AllahPundit
PM Update 11:47 ET: It’s ‘progressed’ (don’t know if that’s the best word for it) to a war of words been Coulter and Hillary.
Malkin makes a fair point here on what’s been lost in all this:
Unfortunately, lost in all the hype and hyperbole on both sides is the central point about the absolute moral authority the MSM confers on victims they agree with–while victims whose politics they do not share can’t get the time of day.
She’s absolutely right. Unfortunately, that central point won’t be the focus now. The focus is going to be on how hateful Ann is, and by association, conservatives, because she wrote about how the 9-11 widows were ‘enjoying’ their husbands’ deaths.
To add to my earlier points, on certain issues it helps to be tactful when attempting to get your point across. I have defended remarks made by other conservatives that I thought were taken out of context by the liberal mediots (Bill Bennett [scroll] and Rep. Jean Schmidt are two examples of that) because they deserved to be defended. The usual suspects took offense at Bennett’s and Schmidt’s remarks respectively – Bennett’s because he wasn’t being PC enough and Schmidt because she was supposedly ’smearing’ Vietnam vet Rep. John Murtha after he urged the US to essentially cut and run in Iraq. I cannot, however, do the same for Ann here.
Conservatives, including myself, are strong proponents of saying what needs to be said without worrying about who is going to get offended. The bane of progress on conservative priorities has been political correctness: we’ve been told for decades by Democrats that our ideas are offensive, mean-spirited and wrong – and when we act on our core beliefs (smaller gov’t, fiscal responsibility, etc) well, I don’t even have to give a rundown of the type of venom that spews out of the mouths of demagoguing blowhards like Ted Kennedy in response. In spite of the Ted Kennedys of the world, we need to keep on saying what needs to be said. But on certain issues, tact is important and this is indeed one of those issues.
I know some of my readers disagree with me on this, which is fine because a world in which we always agreed with each other would be quite boring. But I want to reiterate that this is not about political correctness or being uber-sensitive, but instead knowing which issues to approach tactfully and which ones not to. Because of the way Ann chose to make her point on the “Jersey girls” – by saying they were “enjoying” their husbands’ deaths, the real point – as Malkin noted – the one that really should be the focal point, has been lost. It’s become a personality debate now rather than a substantive debate and that is the most regrettable thing out of all this.
(Original post time before the update and bump: 10:16 a.m.)
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Raymond Bradley from RealClimate.org contributed to Democrat John Olver from Massachusetts.
Here’s RealClimate’s take on Algore’s new moview
Excerpt:
It is an inspiring film, and is decidedly non-partisan in its outlook (though there are a few subtle references to the Bush administration’s lack of leadership on this and other environmental issues).
Another excerpt:
For the most part, I think Gore gets the science right, just as he did in Earth in the Balance. The small errors don’t detract from Gore’s main point, which is that we in the United States have the technological and institutional ability to have a significant impact on the future trajectory of climate change. This is not entirely a scientific issue — indeed, Gore repeatedly makes the point that it is a moral issue
Decidedly non-partisan?
Hehe, Gore making something non-partisan is as likely as Cheney making a pro-gun control commercial. I only saw one clip from that show, where he said the hottest year on record is 2005 (no, it’s still 1998), but it was enough to assure me that it was going to be a Michael Moore type propaganda film.
“Raymond Bradley from RealClimate.org contributed to Democrat John Olver from Massachusetts.”
Once someone contributes to a partisan cause, everything they do is tainted.
No. It’s just evidence along with the other things I cited.
“No. It’s just evidence along with the other things I cited.”
That’s what I mean. This evidence taints everythign else they do. Nothing escapes it.
- Now you’re catching on andrew. The Left, basically powerless right now, are down too “tactics”, sowing hysteria, race baiting, victimhood, class warfare, demi-gogging, demonizing, and so forth. Nothing wrong with that. As long as you don’t really expect too fool anyone.
- Bang
” The Left, basically powerless right now, are down too “tactics”, sowing hysteria, race baiting, victimhood, class warfare, demi-gogging, demonizing, and so forth.”
Who’s pushing this federal marriage amendment?
Who’s pushing for gay marriage to be legal?
“Who’s pushing for gay marriage to be legal? ”
Can’t be someone sowing hysteria.
If you would have talked about flag-burning, I would have said ‘touche’ though
That’s waht I mean
What you mean is off target. A deflection. Wierd. Stupid. Ignorant. Must I keep repeating myself? The evidence is what they do. You can act like the are just about science but I GAVE you examples of the fact that they AREN’T.
Keep on keeping on being negligent and lazy!!!
- Actually andrew, as usual you pick the worst possible example to try to evade my point. A great many Conservatives, and Independents, think this whole Federal messing in States rights is stupid, and Constitutionally wrong. I really don’t care if some states want to flaunt the wishes of their constituents, and force legislation against the voters will. That sort of thing generally corrects and takes care of itself in good time, and if that’s really what the majority of voters in a State wants, then fine.
- Bush is just using that to deflect, and take the heat off the immigration issue.
- Bang
BBH, You forgot to mention we (conservatives) ain’t fallin’ for it. I must commend both you and Baklava for trying to edgimicate Andrew on the global-warming fear-mongerers. But some people are lost causes. W.C Fields was right when he said, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it.” Andy really wants to believe that humans are destroying the world. People have thought this very notion ad-infinitum. That they were wrong doesn’t matter to them or their followers. Just look at the people who join ‘Greenpeace’ if you disagree.
ps. I’ve lived in Louisiana for almost 5 years. I’m legally allowed to say things like “edgimicate”. Replacing g’s with a simple apostrophe is also protected under La law. Sayin’ “ain’t”? Don’t even get me started… I reckon.
if I maligned you blogagog then I apologize. The site I was referring to is the one provided by baklava. The full url is: LINK
If everyone on this site is so analytically inclined, capable and willing to look at facts independent of other considerations, everyone should agree with me that no matter what the truth of global warming may be, the passage concerning cows in the above mentioned article contains at the minimum a serious bit of bad writing. An easy way to tell when a scope shift occurs is to take out the statement in question (the Central Valley) and see if the paragraph continues to make sense. Another way is to negate the suspect statement and see if the meaning of the paragraph is changed. The problem is that although we are led to believe everything that happens in the San Joaquin Valley occurs in the Central Valley, the author actually tells us nothing about the situation in the Central Valley. We are led to believe that cows may be the cause of the Central Valley having the second highest level of ozone in the country but we don’t know if it has more cows than the San Joaquin Valley or less. In fact, there might be not a single cow in the Central Valley, we just don’t know. This is a really terrible omission. At a minimum, the editor of the piece should be pilloried.
I think this kind of sloppiness is far more serious than whether climate scientists admit that global warming is a hypothesis or not. Of course it is a hypothesis, but it is a hypothesis that all their data points them toward. The sole reason to insist on this kind of blatant admission is political and positional. If global warming is a hypothesis, then it is not certain and may be wrong. Objectivity of the kind that so many of you seem to insist upon does not require this kind of admission, all it requires is that when enough discordant data emerges, that you revise existing opinion.
The problem, of course, is that we need to act now to advert possible disaster. So what should we do? Let’s consider the Y2K bug, was that issue overblown? Certainly the world didn’t end so was it all bs or did the fact that companies around the world poured millions into correcting code prevent disaster? Since we don’t have access to an alternate world we will never know. Climate scientists, people who spend their lives working on this issue say that global warming is occurring, who am I to argue otherwise?
Don’t worry about my feelings jax. This is too important of a situation. People could waste billions of dollars (which equates to massive amounts of people who could have received that money who now will not) if the global warming doctrine is wrong, and we could all die if the global warming doctrine is right. We all need to be thick-skinned here. I’m not sure everyone here is analytically inclined, but I can say that I am, and that I believe it is the true path to knowledge.
I haven’t read the 102 page document, although in quick perusal it does have some interesting information (’specially the gallup polls!). I’m basing most of my opinion that the global warming idea is hype on the fact that ambient CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has no correlation with ambient temperature. Doesn’t it seem strange that the predictors of doom and gloom leave that tidbit out? We had a general cooling of the world for hundreds of thousands of years while the CO2 levels remained constant. Weird, huh? Here’s a link that shows that very clearly, yet draws the same end-of-the-world conclusion, simply because Greenland has less icepack on it. Really strange.
Sure, the y2k bug was overblown, just as the global warming doctrine is. The main difference is in the amount of people it will harm. Worrying over they y2k bug wasted a few billion dollars. Worrying over (and legislating against) global warming will cost lives. They won’t be attributed to it, but every dollar spent on a faux problem is a dollar not spent on a real one.
To repeat:
Are you sure? Are millions going to die as the slosh their way to their living rooms while the water gradually gets higher because of global warming until they finally drown? How ’bout we wait until there is an actual problem before we solve it? It worked with CFC’s didnt’ it?
Just thinkin.
No jasc….that’s exactly what we need NOT to do, act impulsively and run around like chickens. The left always seems to think that any amount of hair brained mistakes can be made up for by youthful enthusiasm. Damn the torpedo’s, full speed ahead. No. Down that path leads to a different sort of Chaos, and the law of unintended consequences. At best you end up causing people undue stress and horendous wastes of time and money, something like the rash of backyard Atom bomb shelters during the 50’s cold war scares, which were totally worthless. At worst you could cause a disaster. A mini version of which would be akin to the “killer bee” fiasco.
- Professionals in all the disciplines are constantly working on the three aspects of Climate control, and doing a damn fine job without any help from the alarmists.
- The part of the equation that the junk science proponents always leave out, is the factor that will undoubtedly count the most. Technological changes in the next “dreaded” 100 years. New sources of energy, far less polluting, will come on line and the entire disscussion with shift dramatically. Thats the probable future, not an end to mother earth. 100 years from now our descendents will look back and chuckle at some of our frenetic citizens, much as we do today when we look at old TV kinescopes of the “duck and cover” days in our cold war past.
- As I tell my Liberal friends: “If you need something to woryy about, just too feel better, then aggonize over all the hot air pollution that opportunistic politico’s like AlGore, are adding to the atmosphere.
- Bang
Civil discussions require civil manners or things can become decidedly uncivil very quickly.
I have no idea whether CO2 levels should or should not correlate with ambient temperature. I lack the knowledge to make this kind of decision. Lacking knowledge, I have to ask what do the climate scientists say about this coloration. I am not being lazy when I do this I simply have no other option. I make a big deal about the cow passage because although I am not a scientist, I can follow the logic of an argument and I think there is something screwy going on there.
>>Sure, the Y2K bug was overblown
My point is that it might not have been overblown. The fact that millions of dollars was spent on the issue may have solved it before it became more serious.
>How ’bout we wait until there is an actual problem before we solve it?
If this were a real alternative I would be inclined to agree; but what possible solutions will we have then if we deny that it is occurring now? Global warming, if real, doesn’t seem like the kind of problem that can be solved on the spot. It would be helpful to the debate if Florida were to become suddenly submerged underwater but it takes place slowly in loss of coastlines, withdraw of glaciers, more volatile storms and loss of snowcaps from mountains. Any solution will likely take at least as long to take effect.
“Sure, the y2k bug was overblown”
Was it? or was it taken care of? I know people who did have to, and did, upgrade systems. Perhaps the difference with Y2K is that the costs were internal: if Y2K hit your company, it was your companys fault. And that made them fix it.
“The fact that millions of dollars was spent on the issue may have solved it before it became more serious.”
- It would really be helpful if posters would stick to things they actually knew something about.
- Millions of dollars had to be spent upgrading “COBOL” based systems, e.g. Elevator controls, old vending machines, medical electronics etc. Most current software at the time, took a few lines of code change. The real expense was entirely self incurred by delinquent upgrades. Another totally improper anology to any possible Climatic changes.
- Bang
However, there IS something to worry about in the Global Warming scare. We are all in serious trouble. Al Gore plans to create 1,000 propagandists to spread the doctrine! Be afraid, be very afraid.
“Most current software at the time, took a few lines of code change.”
A lot of people took the opportunity to make investments beyond simply making Y2K compliance.
” Another totally improper anology to any possible Climatic changes.”
What really makes the analogy improper is the external vs. internal nature of the costs. The costs to Y2K dangers were internal — it was your systems and company that would be hurt. The Costs to global climate change are externalised. The incentives to fix are quite different.
- You are correct to a point andrew. The other aspect that makes it “oranges and buicks”, is that what was needed to be done, the corrections for Y2K, were perfectly obvious, and doable. Climate prediction, and control, the whole panoply of this issue,is anything but obvious. Just one bone headed move, and you could end up with tem times the problems. So the analogy completely breaks down.
- By the way, I wonder how Mexico is coming along on those Y1K problems.
- Bang
>>It would really be helpful if posters would stick to things they actually knew something about.
Yes, this true. YOU should stop saying things that you know nothing about. Reading an article in the paper does not make you an expert.
>>- Millions of dollars had to be spent upgrading “COBOL” based systems, e.g. Elevator controls, old vending machines, medical electronics etc. Most current software at the time, took a few lines of code change.
Cobol systems are part of everyone’s daily life in one way or the other. It was one of the most popular programming languages in the world prior to the emergence of desktop pcs in late 1980’s. As a result, nearly everything developed during that time frame and had to be controlled by computer had a COBOL component somewhere in the background.
If a program only included a date value, modifying a program would only involve changing a few lines of code but this was not always true. The date, for example, could be used toward the calculation of another value. Regardless, the programmer’s task was not complete after making the actual change since the output of the program had to mesh correctly with all subsequent programs. A job stream from start to data in its final form could involve hundreds of programs each of which needed to be analyzed. So, even if the actual change took a short time to make, the upfront work needed to properly make that change was tremendous.
>>The real expense was entirely self incurred by delinquent upgrades
I have no idea what you mean by deliqunet update. Do you mean a full scale migration away from cobol? Although some companies may have decided to swallow the bitter pill and launch a complete migration from cobol systems to something else. I personally know no company that did so during that time. Migrating a production system is an enormous task and requires serious commitment in time and money. The city of New York has been undergoing a migration from cobol batch processing to the people soft platform for the past two years and is not scheduled to complete the migration for at least another year.
Further, in spite of the advance of microprocessors, for certain types of processing and for systems requiring nearly 100 percent uptime, cobol and mainframe systems remain remain without peer. Many companies continue to use cobol including nearly all banks, financial institutions, and insurance companies for this reason.
Nearly every person I know in the IT field spent sometime on this issue, at my company a department was even created to deal solely with this issue. During new year’s eve 1999, some departments were completely staffed to deal with possible y2k issues. (They were partly compensated for their time by a fully catered lobster dinner complete with waiters and white linen tables brought in from the outside.) Companies do not commit this kind of resources to an effort if they do not think that failure to do so would be detrimental to their business.
- Among other things as an IT Edited. –ST, I’ve written COBOL for a living on occassion….
- Does THAT make me an expert numbskull… Stick to safe ground like the cartoon section of the daily worker…. At least SOMETHING you know something about Sparky… Your Liberal bromides and mis-speak are as empty headed as you are.
- Bang
Bang, the climate is falling or rising or falling. The highest average world temperature of the century was 1998. But it doesn’t stop people like Gore from putting out movies that are alarmist in nature.
Get with the program. Be alarmed and blame conservatives and prosperity even though prosperity is what has helped American get it’s environmental act together in the last 2 decades. Now only if we can make even further strides without playing the blame game (that won’t happen) and without so-called enviros thinking their solutions are the only ones to the problems we face.
Bak – While all the Pol opportunists and press op-ed hounds are running aroound like chicken little, the larger group of sensible, honest, and careful scientists, meterologists, and climate engineers, are continuing the real work that makes sense and garners progress. I seldom even responde to the feckless, fact-starved, nonsense of the hard left anymore. they have the prospective of children. Best seen, but not heard.
- Bang
Bang, I just read that you have written COBOL for a living. My condolences, my friend. I don’t want to go off on a rant, but COBOL is a $%$#/!@ piece of $^&!/# language that is so @#%#!/&$ hard to follow that reading someone else’s code makes me want to $@!&^0@ punch someone.
That said, searching for the ‘time’ variable doesn’t seem all that difficult. Am I mistaken?
I think he meant that companies had to over-pay coders to get them to fix their computer problems in time because they waited so long.
Bah with a capitol B! Mainframes continue in their importance, but COBOL is history. COBOL is no more stable than C, perl, or any of the database programs like SQL. If you would have said ‘less stable’ I might have agreed with you. COBOL blows, plain and simple.
Sorry, that did kind of turn into a rant. My apologies.
UPDATE: I hate COBOL.
- Well in that you’re certainly not alone blogagog, so pity the poor guys like myself that actually had to wade into decades old scrambled, non-anotated speghetti code. I think the only language I hated more was ADA, and that at least had a lofty purpose when the gov. originally introduced it, albeit by the time it saw the light of day it was already outmoded, so typical of our eridite leadership inside the beltway…
- And no it wasn’t a “simple fix”, since there were always many multiple “references” to date bytes that had to chased down and feretted out. the worst thing you could have was a “mixed” set of references, for obvious reasons.
- Bang
Since you said the word, I can’t help posting this. My roomate in college wore a cap that said, “I’m eruditer than you”.
We used to say ‘he’s eh-rooditter than us’. Still not sure why that makes me laugh, but it does.
DOH ~ butchered the language yet again…..lolol
If you wrote Cobol code for a living why don’t you know better Edited. –ST? Did you work on the Cobol Y2K issue? You can dish out the bull but you can’t stomach it yourself. Every chance you get you dish out the liberal this and the liberal that. Is that the best you can do, to deride my political position? I’ve never called you names.
I’ve read your posts, you seem to claim intimate knowledge on everything from computers to global warming to statistics. Either you are one of the world’s great polymaths or you are one of the world’s great bullshitters. I think it is the latter. Isn’t that right sparky?
After editing two posts in this thread for insults, I think it’s time to close it. I didn’t even realize how far off topic it had gotten.
If anyone wants to continue the discussion,p lease do so in an open thread and do so sans insults, please. Thanks.