Politics and science, humor and hypocrisy. METANOODLE
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| Happy and hamming it up |
Cruz is going to scavenge Rubio's home state votes next Tuesday and let Trump romp home with 99 winner-take-all delegates. We've read elsewhere that Cruz is okay with that, expecting Rubio to pull out leaving a two man race.
"When it is time to clean up after a failed idea, no green environmentalists are to be found. Wind was free, natural, harnessing Earth’s bounty for the benefit of all mankind, sounded like a good idea. Wind turbines, like solar panels, break down. They produce less energy before they break down than the energy it took to make them. The wind does not blow all the time, or even most of the time. When it is not blowing, they require full-time backup from conventional power plants. Without government subsidy, they are unaffordable. With governments facing financial troubles, the subsidies are unaffordable. "
"And, finally, sixth: Donald’s daughter and Svengali Ivanka is a smart, smart, smart lady with an extraordinary intellect and influence on her father. We get the GOP’s own Valerie Jarrett, only this one with a sense of America’s role in the world and the same resolve to succeed as Jarrett possesses."It's not that Hugh would eagerly pick Trump and you remember Trump insulted Hugh after a "gotcha" interview back in September, but Hewitt has six good reasons to vote Trump:
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"When a country enjoys tactical military success as consistently as the United States, responsibility for strategic success must rest primarily with those who make strategy. The American military could be held culpable for recent strategic setbacks were it highly influential in the crafting of strategy. But its influence under the Bush administration was much more limited, and under the Obama administration its strategic advice has largely been ignored.
A review of America’s military interventions since 2001 reveals that seven broad errors account for America’s inability to turn tactical successes into strategic victories. These errors are described below. In every instance, the error was the direct result of presidential decisions on policy or strategy. Some of those decisions ran in direct contradiction of the military’s advice. The military can be faulted for some significant tactical errors, such as ignorance of counterinsurgency in the early years of the Iraq war and excessive reliance on population-centric counterinsurgency doctrine in the middle years of the Afghan war. But the military eventually corrected its major tactical problems, and none of those problems thwarted strategic success."
There's a reason why Sanders isn't getting the level of support Clinton is from Democratic Party leaders. While she has been a Democrat for decades, the same is not true for Sanders, who only caucuses with Democrats in the Senate. In fact, his Senate biography boasts that he is the "longest-serving independent member of Congress."
“Climate science is not solved,” declared Todd Lane, president of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society. “Most of the uncertainty in climate projections is due to uncertainty about the ways to represent physical processes in climate models.
I called this "hypocrisy" in the lede unfairly. The AGW triumphalism was the hypocrisy. This is a return to a more normal scientific state where hypothesis leads to tests and everything settled is tested and retested as knowledge comes to light. So I hope.
Will Steffen, Emeritus Professor at ANU and a Climate Councillor at the Climate Council of Australia. "We absolutely need to know more about the basic operation of the climate system".
John Church, a CSIRO climate researcher since 1978 who anticipates losing his job. “There is a clear need for ongoing sustained and enhanced observations. The science community is actually struggling to address these issues.”
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| Taking it easy like in the good old days. Not about to happen |
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| Image from linked story where more information is posted. |
" In 1989 I hitchhiked around America. At one point I found myself on the Island of Nantucket. It was early May, the height of Nantucket’s tourist season. I was pretty much out of money and bought myself a pack of hot dogs for supper. I went to the harbor to eat them while watching the boats sail around the Island. On one of the private docks there are bungalows that belong to slip owners. Out in front of one of those bungalows was a man grilling several steaks.
He saw me eating my raw hot dogs and offered to let me cook them on his grill. I put a couple of hot dogs on his grill, and gratefully accepted the beer he offered me. Then, to my surprise, as he was flipping one of his steaks, he knocked my hot dogs into the coals.
He feigned surprise and apologized, and gave me one of the steaks he was grilling.
Yes… the man I am talking about is Donald Trump. No, in 1998 I had no idea who Donald Trump was. I did not find out who he was for several more months.
During the time were were sitting there drinking Heineken’s and eating our steaks we talked. For probably about 2 and a half to 3 hours. The private Donald Trump is nothing like the person you guys see on television. His sense of humor is slightly ribald, he is soft spoken and gentle. He is amazingly comfortable in his own skin. If the nominee, I am still not sure I will vote for him. But this I do know, anyone expecting him to be rude or snide in victory or even in defeat, have no clue who Donald Trump really is. They are making up a version of him in their own minds, that does not exist."
"This analysis goes far beyond buses. The explanation for why politicians don’t do all sorts of reasonable-sounding things usually boils down to “insufficient opportunities for graft.” And, conversely, the reason why politicians choose to do many of the things that they do is ... you guessed it, sufficient opportunities for graft.My cure is letting more self-interested voters in to compete for the spoils. That's the beauty of the eWorld. It's not cynical to rely on human nature, because you can always count on it.
That graft may come in the form of bags of cash, or shady real-estate deals, or “consulting” gigs for a brother-in-law or child, but it may also come in broader terms of political support and even in opportunities for politicians to feel superior or to humiliate their enemies. What all these things have in common, though, is that they’re not about making life better for voters. They’re about making life better for politicians."
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| Good decisions have some of the gold coloured virtues on the winning side. A better picture shows self interest represented in hundreds and even thousands on both sides of the balances, like a Massive Online Open Game |
Hollywood pays the big bucks out for star power. Top pitchers and quarterbacks command stunning sums. Campaigning is no different. The television people ascended to power in the fifties and have had half a century pulling the strings of public news and they pay for ratings. Paying candidates directly to appear on a show sounds iffy to me, but paying a tax to an honourable third party charity to have them on the show sounds just fine. Should they be elected to public office, the rules change for they owe an answer to the voters who put them there.
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The only way to trade with the world is through three narrow bottlenecks that her enemies can stopper. There is no great barrier of mountains or sea to hold off armed Europeans. She is always going to be poorer than her competitors who are rich in ports and she is always going to feel vulnerable without a buffer of client states. See Friedman's story here."God did not make us to stand patiently in queues and politely clap for our leaders no matter how distant, corrupt, and dismissive. That's why he made Canadians."Ace of Spades says it's time to be unruly in America and vote out clientist GOP nominees.
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Hmm. It's easy to imagine the perfect fat fix and hard to come up with a real (other than diet) but this sounds promising.Interviews with refugees from the fighting in Iraq and Syria as well as people still in those countries shows that over 80 percent believe the Islamic terrorists .... are creations of the West .... as a means to destroy their countries and Islam. This is nothing new and while all this is unbelievable to most Westerners and largely ignored by Western media and politicians it is very real and has been for a long time.
In the Islamic world, there is a lot of attention paid to sorcery and magic, and people accused of practicing such things are regularly attacked and sometimes executed because “sorcery” is a capital crime under Islamic law. Conspiracy theories are also a popular way to explain away inconvenient facts.
in 2008 many Pakistanis believed ...the Islamic terrorist attack in Mumbai, India was actually the work of the Israeli Mossad or the American CIA and not the Pakistani terrorists who were killed or captured and identified. Such fantasies are a common explanation, in Moslem nations, for Islamic terrorist atrocities. Especially when Moslems, particularly women and children are among the victims. In response many Moslems tend to accept fantastic explanations shifting the blame to infidels (non-Moslems).
The "inshallah" thing is made worse by a stronger belief in the supernatural and magic in general. This often extends to technology. Thus, many Iraqis believed that American troops wore sunglasses that enabled them to see through clothing, and had armor vests that were actually air conditioned. When they first encountered these beliefs, U.S. troops thought the Arabs were putting them on. Then it sank in that Arabs really believe this stuff. .. Even Western educated Arabs, speaking good English, will casually express, and accept, these tales of the Israeli Mossad staging the attacks
When troops at one base discovered that they weren't being attacked much because many of the locals believed that the base was surrounded by a force field the troops would casually make reference to their force field. They would do this inside the base if any Iraqis were nearby and especially when they were outside the wire and among the locals.
Cheat 2: The next time my belly bulged, I was puzzled until I spotted the cheat. I had taken to having little shots of Drambuie through the afternoon and evening, usually just a sip. How could a little bit of liquid make me fat? High alcohol drinks are the equivalent of drinking half water and half liquid fat. I started measuring the booze and my weight went down again. I also sip a little less, now that I know a sip of the golden liqueur is like swallowing fat. Hassle fix: I weigh the entire bottle at day's end and count just once what I drank. |
| I used to milk a Jersey and put it (the milk, not the cow) in just such a jar. |
Palin didn't buy "Elle" but she became an entertainment celebrity. She's now being trashed as a sell out but she's moving votes successfully. Copy her, rather than mock her, in our own Canadian way."For most people politics is about personality, identity, and group loyalties. This is more like rooting for a sports team than support for particular ideas, ideology, or policy. It's always has been this way and probably always will be."It's always going to be that way. Now that everyone can publish their opinion cheaply ( and that includes me), popular populist politicians are going to be the norm. Politics is changing and for the better because more players are in there trying to move the market in their favour. That's competition.
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"Conservatives exhibited more complex thinking on ... open-door immigration, smoking, castration, and easy access to birth control. Liberals were complex when discussing organized religion, abortion on demand, making racial discrimination illegal, and being assertive".A second study found dogmatism common to both left and right but the topics differed.
The researchers report, "Conservatives are indeed more dogmatic on the religious domain; but liberals are more dogmatic on the environmental domain."
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Big Government and Big Data are the new ties that bind. They will grow and not shrink and so will the dependency on support from strangers who don't love you. Politics is grooving to the left, fueled by demographics.
I don't see "The Waltons" or "Cheaper By The Dozen" making a comeback, but with pink-tinted glasses, I see networks forming through social media, networks that meet needs kin groups used to meet, networks that leapfrog right over Big Government and make such top down governance a teentsy bit obsolete.
“If they can’t, turn into nonpaper w no identifying heading and send nonsecure.” That’s an order to violate the laws handling classified material. There is no other way to read that demand.
"Here’s a fact of life, men don’t like men who don’t like sports. If you want to have influence on other men you have to be able to talk about sports knowledgeably. .. Treat it like homework." (more at the link)
It was beautifully choreographed, like a great ballet, and performed with consummate skill and understated eloquence. As for the substance of what Obama said, there was very little substance, and much of it false.
“I will get rid of gun-free zones in schools — you have to — and on military bases on my first day. It gets signed. My first day – there’s no more gun free zones,” Trump told supporters as they cheered wildly. Trump pointed out that gun-free zones were dangerous because they attracted people considering a mass shooting.
