Over at Hot Air, Ed Morrissey has an invaluable post compiling HA’s coverage of the various climate-related scandals that have come to light over the past several months, all of which the American mainstream media has been almost completely AWOL on. It makes for a handy reference source the next time some clueless lefty blathers on about the science being “settled,” so make sure to bookmark it (while we’re on the subject, my takedown of FactCheck’s failed ClimateGate rebuttal, which also compiles several other useful links, would also be handy to have around).
dishonesty
A Special Message to My Special Friend Marcus
I made a new friend recently! He goes by the screen name “Marcus Brutus,” and attended my school, Hillsdale College, some time ago. Unfortunately, thanks to our disagreements about Ron Paul and the War on Terror, we didn’t exactly hit it off.
“Marcus” wants me to know that he fared much better academically than he supposes I did: “I’ll ask [Hillsdale President] Dr. [Larry P.] Arnn at the next fundraiser if you’ve had a chance to examine that desk of his yet…my name is on plaques at Hillsdale, and yours isn’t.” He doesn’t think I have much “intellectual cultivation,” or that I’d make it “as a secretary for any office in any level of the federalist society in [his] chapter.” Why, my heart positively shatters! (I don’t presume to be some great scholar, and I confess that I haven’t a single plaque to my name, but in my defense, I’m not exactly dead weight.)
His intellect, by contrast, is highly cultivated, and it’s very, very important for him that his readers know just how much, via seemingly-endless references to Scripture, English history, ancient Athens, and such. Since graduating, he professes to have had quite the accomplished career—Marine Corps, Iraq, application to the bar, even some time spent in Israel.
Unfortunately, I don’t think “Marcus’s” way of going about things is doing him any favors. In the spirit of friendship, allow me to humbly offer my fellow Hillsdalian some helpful advice.
Attention Righty Bloggers: Time to Edit Your Blogrolls
It’ll come as little surprise that John Doe of Smash Mouth Politics ain’t exactly the sharpest knife in the rack. But, it turns out, he’s also a lying demagogue. Nobody who would equate same-sex marriage support with PEDOPHILIA deserves the respect of anybody who claims to be a conservative or a Christian. The crap he spews is neither.
UPDATE: A new standard in discourse: “do you wear a skirt when you whine like that?” Truly, my friends, we are witnessing a master of his craft at work. Never before has such compelling logic and piercing insight been so succinctly packaged in such clarity!
Stay classy.
Charles Johnson’s Character Problem, Exhibit #6,174
Andrew Breitbart recently got into a fight with WorldNetDaily’s Joseph Farah over WND’s idiotic obsession with Barack Obama’s birth certificate. Now, one would imagine this would be reassuring to those who devote considerable attention to the problem of “extremism” and “bad craziness” on the Right, and that perhaps someone like that would give credit to Breitbart for standing up to Farah.
Unless, of course, that someone happens to be slanderous knuckle-dragger Charles Johnson.
To him, the story is – despite having quoted absolutely nothing to imply anything of the sort – that Breitbart somehow “want[s] us to think [he] didn’t see it coming” that Birtherism would come up at the Tea Party Convention.
There’s no reasoning with you. The only real flaw with Dennis Prager’s takedown of your lies is that he seems to think you still have a modicum of conscience to which he could appeal.
Dennis Prager Drop-Kicks the Little Green Football
The great Dennis Prager has penned an excellent takedown of libelous abomination Charles Johnson that really deserves to be reposted in full (hat tip to Robert Stacy McCain):
On Sunday, The New York Times Magazine featured an article on Charles Johnson, whose website — littlegreenfootballs — had for years been very popular among conservatives and among all those who believed that Islamic terror and Islamic religious totalitarianism were the greatest expressions of contemporary evil. The reason for the article was that Mr. Johnson has made a 180-degree turn and is now profoundly, even stridently, anti-right. This is my letter to him.
Dear Charles:
As you know, over the years, I was so impressed with your near-daily documentation of developments in the Islamist world that I twice had you on my national radio show — both times face to face in my studio. And you, in turn, periodically cited my radio show and would tell your many readers when they could hear you on my show.
So it came as somewhat of a shock to see your 180-degree turn from waging war on Islamist evil to waging war on your erstwhile allies and supporters on the right. You attempted to explain this reversal on Nov. 30, 2009, when you published “Why I Parted Ways With The Right.”
You offered 10 reasons, and I would like to respond to them.
First, as disappointed as I am with your metamorphosis, I still have gratitude for all the good you did and I respect your change as a sincere act of conscience. But neither this gratitude nor this respect elevates my regard for your 10 points. They are well beneath the intellectual and moral level of your prior work. They sound like something Keith Olbermann would write if he were given 10 minutes to come up with an attack on conservatives.
1. Support for fascists, both in America (see: Pat Buchanan, Robert Stacy McCain, etc.) and in Europe (see: Vlaams Belang, BNP, SIOE, etc.).
Associating the American right with fascism is done only by leftist ideologues and propagandists, not by serious critics. It is akin to calling everyone on the left a Communist. As for the specific examples, forgive me, but in 28 years as a talk show host and columnist, I had never heard of Robert Stacy McCain or of Vlaams Belang. Nor did the BNP or SIOE register on my intellectual radar screen.
I looked them up and found that McCain is a former editor at the Washington Times charged with racist views. So what?
The BNP is the British National Party, a racist group that in the last U.K. general election received 0.7 percent of the popular vote. So what?
SIOE stands for Stop Islamisation of Europe. I perused its website, and while there are ideas I disagree with (e.g., the group does not believe that there are any Muslim moderates), the desire to stop the “Islamization” of Europe is hardly fascist; it is more likely animated by anti-fascism.
Vlaams Belang is a Flemish nationalist political party that won 17 out of 150 seats in Belgium ’s Chamber of Representatives. From what I could gather from a cursory glance at the party’s platform, it is an ultra-nationalist Flemish party, many of whose language protection and secessionist ideals are virtually identical to those of the Party Quebecois, a party passionately supported by the left.
In any event, what do any of these groups have to do with mainstream American right institutions such the Hoover Institution, the Heritage Foundation or the American Enterprise Institute; or with mainstream conservative publications and websites such as the National Review, the Weekly Standard, Townhall.com or Commentary; or with mainstream American conservatives such as Bill Kristol, Thomas Sowell, Hugh Hewitt, Charles Krauthammer, George Will, Bill Bennett, Michael Medved, Dennis Prager, as well as Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh?
2. Support for bigotry, hatred, and white supremacism (see: Pat Buchanan, Ann Coulter, Robert Stacy McCain, Lew Rockwell, etc.).
I agree with the late William Buckley that some of Pat Buchanan’s views could be construed as anti-Jewish; I don’t know who McCain or Lew Rockwell represent among mainstream conservatives; and to label Ann Coulter a white supremacist (or bigot) is slander.
3. Support for throwing women back into the Dark Ages, and general religious fanaticism (see: Operation Rescue, anti-abortion groups, James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Tony Perkins, the entire religious right, etc.).
“The entire religious right” wants to throw “women back into the dark ages?” As a religious (Jewish) conservative, perhaps I am a member of that group, and I find the charge absurd. The one example you give — anti-abortion — is invalid. To those who regard the unborn as worthy of life (except in the almost never occurring case of it being a threat to its mother’s life), opposition to abortion is no more anti-woman than opposition to rape is anti-man. The only people who wish to throw women into the dark ages are the people you, Charles, used to fight. That is why your change of heart has actually hurt the battle for women’s dignity and equality.
4. Support for anti-science bad craziness (see: creationism, climate change denialism, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, James Inhofe, etc.).
So, Charles, all those scientists who question or deny that human activity is causing a global warming that will render much of life on earth extinct are “anti-science?”
Has the possibility occurred to you that those who are skeptical of what they consider hysteria cherish science at least as much as you do? In fact, they suspect that — for political, social, financial, psychological and/or herd-following reasons — it is the “global warming” hysterics who are more likely to be anti-science.
Activist scientists, liberal media and leftist interest groups brought us the false alarm of an imminent heterosexual AIDS pandemic in America , the false alarm about silicon breast implants leading to disease and the nonsense about how dangerous nuclear power is. They were anti-science, not us skeptics who have been right every time I can think of.
5. Support for homophobic bigotry (see: Sarah Palin, Dobson, the entire religious right, etc.).
This charge is particularly ugly. It appears that you have decided to fight all the “hate” you allege to be on the right with your own hate. Why exactly is it “homophobic bigotry” to want to maintain the millennia-old definition of marriage as the union of men and women? The hubris of those who not only want to change the definition of the most important institution in society but believe everyone who ever advocated male-female marriage was a bigot — meaning everyone who ever lived before you, Charles — is as breathtaking as it is speech-suppressing.
6. Support for anti-government lunacy (see: tea parties, militias, Fox News, Glenn Beck, etc.).
What you call “anti-government lunacy” most Americans regard as preserving the greatest protector of individual liberty — limited government.
7. Support for conspiracy theories and hate speech (see: Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Birthers, creationists, climate deniers, etc.).
I am no fan of Alex Jones, who, coincidentally, has attacked me on his website as a “Jewish propagandist.” But please. The amount of hate speech in one Keith Olbermann commentary dwarfs any 12 months of Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck. In any event, the real irony here is that before your inexplicable change, it was you who devoted years to documenting the greatest amount of hate speech on earth today — that coming from within the Islamic world. If you still hated hate speech, you would still be doing that important work.
As for believing in conspiracy theories, your new team wins hands down — from multiple assassins of JFK to the American government being behind 9-11 (it was even believed by a high-ranking member of the Obama administration) to the war in Iraq waged on behalf of Halliburton.
8. A right-wing blogosphere that is almost universally dominated by raging hate speech (see: Hot Air, Free Republic , Ace of Spades, etc.).
From what I have seen, your examples do not justify your charge. Moreover, for every right-wing “raging hate” speech website, there are probably three on the left. The major conservative sites are overwhelmingly rational and devoid of “raging hate.” Given my longtime respect for you, Charles, it pains me that it is your list of 10 reasons for abandoning the right that is a prime example of “raging hate.”
9. Anti-Islamic bigotry that goes far beyond simply criticizing radical Islam, into support for fascism, violence, and genocide (see: Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, etc.).
I saw Pamela Geller’s site (The New York Times Magazine article about you cited it — Atlas Shrugs — and mentioned nothing remotely approaching your charges against her or her site) and I’ve interviewed Robert Spencer. Your charges against them only cheapen the words “fascism,” violence” and “genocide.”
10. Hatred for President Obama that goes far beyond simply criticizing his policies, into racism, hate speech, and bizarre conspiracy theories (see: witch doctor pictures, tea parties, Birthers, Michelle Malkin, Fox News, World Net Daily, Newsmax, and every other right wing source).
The charge is a lie. Period. Those who cannot argue with the right always accuse it of racism. It used to work, Charles. But it is increasingly obvious to all but fellow leftists that the charge is specious. Opposition to President Obama has nothing to do with his race. Indeed, he continues to be more popular than his policies.
When you were on the politically and morally right side, Charles, you provided massive evidence for your positions. Now you throw verbal bombs. What happened? If you would like to tell me on my radio show, you are invited to do so. I miss you.
The Vile One promises a more comprehensive rebuttal tomorrow, but claims that Prager’s last point is invalid because…somebody anonymously left a “racist” comment on his article. Grow up, Chuck…
I’d love to see Johnson take Prager up on his offer for a radio interview, even if it would be kinda like Jackie Chan vs. Jackie Mason. Adding Stacy into the mix would be icing on the cake.
ClimateGate Part II
And we thought the CRU was bad.
Marc Sheppard at American Thinker has a lengthy, disturbing article on new evidence of climate fraud in major American climate institutes (hat tip to NewsReal’s Michael van der Gailen):
Perhaps the key point discovered by Smith was that by 1990, NOAA had deleted from its datasets all but 1,500 of the 6,000 thermometers in service around the globe.
Now, 75% represents quite a drop in sampling population, particularly considering that these stations provide the readings used to compile both the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN) and United States Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) datasets. These are the same datasets, incidentally, which serve as primary sources of temperature data not only for climate researchers and universities worldwide, but also for the many international agencies using the data to create analytical temperature anomaly maps and charts.
Yet as disturbing as the number of dropped stations was, it is the nature of NOAA’s “selection bias” that Smith found infinitely more troubling.
It seems that stations placed in historically cooler, rural areas of higher latitude and elevation were scrapped from the data series in favor of more urban locales at lower latitudes and elevations. Consequently, post-1990 readings have been biased to the warm side not only by selective geographic location, but also by the anthropogenic heating influence of a phenomenon known as the Urban Heat Island Effect (UHI).
For example, Canada’s reporting stations dropped from 496 in 1989 to 44 in 1991, with the percentage of stations at lower elevations tripling while the numbers of those at higher elevations dropped to one. That’s right: As Smith wrote in his blog, they left “one thermometer for everything north of LAT 65.” And that one resides in a place called Eureka, which has been described as “The Garden Spot of the Arctic” due to its unusually moderate summers.
Smith also discovered that in California, only four stations remain – one in San Francisco and three in Southern L.A. near the beach – and he rightly observed that
“It is certainly impossible to compare it with the past record that had thermometers in the snowy mountains. So we can have no idea if California is warming or cooling by looking at the USHCN data set or the GHCN data set.”
That’s because the baseline temperatures to which current readings are compared were a true averaging of both warmer and cooler locations. And comparing these historic true averages to contemporary false averages – which have had the lower end of their numbers intentionally stripped out – will always yield a warming trend, even when temperatures have actually dropped.
There’s much more where that came from—be sure to read the rest here.
Michael Medved: What Does “Get Back to the Constitution” Mean?
Michael Medved is, bar none, one of the most intelligent, knowledgeable, and eloquent guys in all of talk radio—which is why it’s such a shame that he devotes so much of his skill to deflecting substantive criticism away from the Republican Party. Townhall’s Greg Hengler highlights the following exchange between Medved and a caller (h/t to Hot Air):
Here is a great exchange between a caller to Michael Medved’s radio show who’s obviously influenced by Glenn Beck’s daily mantras like “There is no difference between the two parties — they’re both ‘progressive’,” etc. Without naming Beck’s name, Medved goes off on this caller (read: Glenn Beck). Take a listen:
I’ll be the first to agree that Beck substantially overstates the similarities between Republicans and Democrats (in fact, I’ll go even further and say that Beck’s analysis often comes across as impulsive and poorly thought out), and this particular caller does not make his case well at all. But while Beck overstates the problem, that doesn’t exonerate Medved from understating it. He challenges the caller to provide a single example of an issue on which John McCain and Barack Obama were on the same page.
I’ll take that challenge, Michael: not only is McCain’s role in campaign finance reform the stuff of legend, but it could even be argued that he’s even more to the left here than Obama is.
I do believe that satisfies the original challenge, but let’s throw in a second, for good measure: immigration. McCain is also infamous for his left-wing zealotry in favor of amnesty, and though he may have backpedaled ever so slightly in 2008 for political expediency, he incredibly ran an ad running to Obama’s left here as well, accusing Obama of playing a role in killing 2007’s amnesty bill.
Besides, being somewhat better than the alternative is still not sufficient to rise to the level of good. Take abortion, for example—when your opponent gets caught red-handed on the wrong side of starving newborns to death in broom closets, it doesn’t take much effort to look good by comparison.
On almost every conceivable issue, John McCain’s conservative credentials have serious flaws, not the least of which was the mainstream conservative Club for Growth’s judgment that his “overall record is tainted by a marked antipathy towards the free market and individual freedom.”
I voted for McCain. I understand that half a loaf is better than no loaf. I don’t demand 100% ideological purity from every single politician. But the GOP’s lack of commitment to conservatism is bigger than a handful of isolated blemishes; it’s an identity crisis that caused and enabled many of the Bush presidency’s failings and led to the election of Barack Obama. Will Medved admit that this is a real, legitimate problem? How does he propose that we address it? (And no, throwaway admissions that “Republicans aren’t perfect” don’t count.)
As to the third party question: it’s true that anyone who expects a third party candidate to actually win the White House is delusional, and I’m not aware of any existing third parties that deserve to be taken seriously. But while many disgruntled conservatives may have mixed-up views of them, a decent third party might be useful in a different way: not as a replacement for the GOP, but as the catalyst for real GOP reform. As long as Republicans keep limping along on life support, the Beltway types will take their every victory as an affirmation that they’re doing enough right that they’re justified in maintaining the status quo. It’s doubtful that anything less than a real threat to Republican viability would be enough to force any real self-reflection.
What’s most shameful is Medved’s angry, impatient reaction to the idea that Republicans need to “get back to the Constitution”:
What does that mean? Stop with the slogans! Talk to me about reality! Americans are out of jobs, there’s 10% unemployment in this country. We are being spent into oblivion […] so why are you talking about pie-in-the-sky stupidity, fantasy land, kindergarten, childish idiot stuff? I mean, and you are!
Regardless of Brian’s inability to articulate his message, the fact remains there is no way Medved does not know exactly what “get back to the Constitution” means. He’s simply too smart, too informed, and too active a conservative intellectual not to. Take the courts—did the GOP put up much of a fight against Sonia Sotomayor? Federal influence in education, healthcare, and environmental & workplace regulations have obvious constitutional problems. In many cases, the GOP has been on the wrong side of these questions, and even when they haven’t, often they fail to make an issue of the constitutional aspect (though there are a few bright spots). Is restoring a proper understanding of & reverence for the Constitution no longer a major priority of conservatism, in Medved’s view?
This exchange was indeed educative, but not for the reason Hengler thinks. It demonstrates that, while talk radio personalities like Michael Medved are a tremendous asset in some ways, in others they’re part of the problem.
Fact-Checking FactCheck on ClimateGate
Liberal damage-control efforts in the wake of ClimateGate have found a handy tool in this FactCheck.org report, which concludes that the leaked CRU emails “show a few scientists in a bad light,” but “don’t change scientific consensus on global warming.” There’s obvious propaganda value in supportive articles from supposedly nonpartisan sources, especially to a movement constantly on the lookout for excuses to avoid honest debate. But, like past FactCheck treatments of abortion and gun rights, this “debunking” desperately needs a fact check of its own.
FactCheck admits that the emails show “a few scientists…sometimes being rude, dismissive, insular, or even behaving like jerks,” such as Ben Santer’s desire to “beat the crap out of” Pat Michaels, but that’s as far as their criticism of the East Anglia Climate Research Unit goes.
They preface their defense of the CRU with a note that, whatever the emails show, they don’t change the scientific consensus on global warming anyway, because the World Meteorological Organization and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change say the planet’s getting warmer, with the IPCC finding humans “very likely” to blame, and the CRU is only one of multiple sources of climate data.
What FactCheck doesn’t tell you: those other sources are questionable, too. Substantive concerns have been raised over the data adjustments made by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and NASA’s Goddard Institute has had issues with both incompetence and data withholding. As for the IPCC, which boasts “2,500 scientific expert reviewers,” FactCheck’s readers might be surprised to read this:
But what did those 2,500 scientists actually endorse? To find out, I contacted the Secretariat of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and asked for the names of the 2,500. I planned to canvas them to determine their precise views. The answer that came back from the Secretariat informed me that the names were not public, so I would not be able to survey them, and that the scientists were merely reviewers. The 2,500 had not endorsed the conclusions of the report and, in fact, the IPCC had not claimed that they did. Journalists had jumped to the conclusion that the scientists the IPCC had touted were endorsers and the IPCC never saw fit to correct the record.
A 2001 IPCC report presented 245 potential scenarios. The media publicity that followed focused on the most extreme scenario, prompting the report’s lead author, atmospheric scientist Dr. John Christy, to rebuke media sensationalism and affirm, “The world is in much better shape than this doomsday scenario paints … the worst-case scenario [is] not going to happen.” Clearly, the IPCC does not speak as one voice when leading scientists on its panel contradict its official position. The solution to this apparent riddle lies in the structure of the IPCC itself. What the media report are the policymakers’ summaries, not the far lengthier reports prepared by scientists. The policymakers’ summaries are produced by a committee of 51 government appointees, many of whom are not scientists. The policymakers’ summaries are presented as the “consensus” of 2,500 scientists who have contributed input to the IPCC’s scientific reports.
In one email, CRU’s Phil Jones writes, “Kevin and I will keep [two dissenting papers] out [of the IPCC report] somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!” But FactCheck dismisses this as a cause for concern, since those reports were cited, if not in the final IPCC report, but in one of the three working group reports from which the end product was synthesized. Putting aside the obvious question of whether or not they got a fair shake in that working group, since when do we dismiss clearly-stated intent to do something, just because that intent was evidently unsuccessful?
FactCheck does the same with Tom Wigley’s clear speculation that they could try to get Yale’s James Saiers “ousted” from his post at the journal Geophysical Research Letters if he turned out to be “in the greenhouse skeptics camp.” Saiers, it turns out, isn’t a skeptic and stepped down of his own volition. Again, the intent is still clear, and all FactCheck’s account indicates is that Wigley & Co. didn’t follow through because he was one of theirs anyway. This is supposed to reassure us?
We’re also supposed to remain unconcerned by their attempts to find ways to dodge Freedom of Information Act requests, since most of the data is already freely available (citing, um, East Anglia), and if any data destruction did occur, well, the investigation is ongoing. For an organization devoted to checking facts, FactCheck seems curiously content to take East Anglia at their word regarding the conduct of their own people, and suspiciously disinterested in either independently verifying East Anglia’s version or exploring its inconsistency with their earlier admission that “We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (i.e., quality controlled and homogenized) data.”
Last I checked, one of science’s most celebrated virtues was its constant self-reevaluation and complete transparency. Given that, I’d expect a little more concern over these scientists’ contempt for the very thought of sharing data with critics, or their attempts to avoid doing so. But maybe that’s just me. In any event, I hope the conclusion of East Anglia’s investigation, and the critical scrutiny it subsequently comes under, sheds more light on just what information is available, and what has been destroyed.
The CRU revelation that has gotten the most media attention is Phil Jones’ “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e., from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.” FactCheck fully reaffirms the spin that Jones was merely talking about presenting the data so as to account for discrepancies in temperature measurement methods. But Steve McIntyre offers a detailed analysis of the “trick,” which concludes that, while it was not an instance of outright data falsification, it was an attempt to package the data in an oversimplified way so as not to “detract from the clear message that the authors wanted sent.”
The media might have seized upon FactCheck’s piece to tell the masses “move along, nothing to see here,” but in the final analysis it seems terribly unimpressive, hardly objective, and a little short on checked facts.
* * *
For further background on ClimateGate, Power Line’s Scott Johnson has compiled a handy summary of ClimateGate resources here, including Steven Hayward’s excellent Weekly Standard summary, Power Line’s own careful analysis of several of the emails, and more. The National Post’s Lawrence Solomon has an eye-opening account of RealClimate.org’s William Connolley and his work transforming Wikipedia into an eco-propaganda vehicle (more on RealClimate.org here). Here is some background on the financial dimensions of the alarmism movement.
For continuing coverage of all things scientific from a skeptical perspective, Steve McIntyre’s Climate Audit, Anthony Watts’ Watts Up With That?, and National Review’s Planet Gore blog are tough to beat.
A Case Study in Republican Rhetorical Incompetence
Robert Stacy McCain has excerpts from a speech by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), in which he goes completely nuclear on opponents of ObamaCare. In Whitehouse’s alternate dimension, it seems Republicans have filled the debate with lies and distortions all aimed at frightening the American people, all because “The ‘birthers,’ the fanatics, the people running around in right-wing militias and Aryan support groups, it is unbearable to them that President Obama should exist.”
Of course, it couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the fact that nationalizing healthcare is a really bad idea with an abysmal track record. Heaven knows the right-wing “lies” couldn’t possibly be true, and that it couldn’t possibly be the Left who’s been lying. No, no, better to attribute the whole thing to extremists and be done with it.
Sen. John Kyl (R-AZ) has responded to Whitehouse’s un-medicated tirade with an explanation as to why people oppose ObamaCare in good faith, along with the following criticisms of his colleague’s outburst:
I don’t know whether it’s frustration or maybe just the lens through which partisans view things and their opponents, unfortunately, that spawned the remarks earlier today from one of our Democratic colleagues…I wonder if my colleagues really believe that our position is animated by hatred. Why else would we oppose this legislation?
If why Democrats routinely engage in hate-mongering still mystifies you, then maybe you shouldn’t be entrusted with a seat in the US Senate. It’s not that complicated: THEY DON’T CARE WHAT THE TRUTH IS. To the Left, it’s all political—tell any lie, ignore any evidence, shoot any messenger, all in the name of doing maximum damage to their opponents and intimidating as many as possible into silence. Punks like Whitehouse keep doing it because they know there’s no price to be paid. At most, they’ll get a timid, bumbling response like Kyl’s.
The GOP’s problems are many, but one of the biggest is that there are virtually no Ann Coulter types—people willing to talk frankly about the severe consequences of liberalism and honestly about the motives and character of their opponents—in Congress. Every time some liar pipes up about racist Republicans or conservatives hating poor people, he should be met with such a firestorm of condemnation that the very thought of trying it again should make him wet himself in terror. The Democrats understand that contemporary American politics is a knife fight—it’s time for Republicans to stop bringing pillows.
Little Green Freakshow
There’s a special place in hell waiting for Charles Johnson, regardless of whether or not he believes it’s really there.
Once one of the heavy hitters of the blogosphere (he helped in blowing the lid off Rathergate and founding Pajamas Media), in the past couple years Johnson has shifted the focus of Little Green Footballs to rooting out any perceived extremists (real & imagined alike) from the right-of-center, a venture that has its place (I’ve made clear my opposition to Birthers, Paultergeists, and other genuine loons & bigots), but for Johnson that crusade has morphed into something else entirely: a smear campaign based on specious (if any) evidence against…well, darn near every conservative blogger & commentator who isn’t him.
Ever expressed doubt as to man’s contribution to global warming? Evolution? You’re an extremist who has to be destroyed. Host a blog, but don’t police the comment threads to Johnson’s exacting, jackbooted standards? You obviously endorse every word there, then. Is there an out-of-context or unsourced quote attributed to you floating around the Internet? Good enough for Chuck! Burn the witches!
Mind you, I hate Ron Paul every bit as much as the next sensible conservative, but that doesn’t justify dishonest attacks on him. Likewise, I happen to believe in evolution (yes, I’ve changed my position since reading Godless, thanks in part to the excellent work of Dr. Francis Collins), but is creationism in public schools really a dire threat to the Union? Please.
It was only natural that Johnson would jump on the bandwagon to keep Rush Limbaugh out of the NFL, and his conduct in this matter perfectly illustrates the (empty) content of his character. Ace picked up on Johnson’s sleazy peddling of a fraudulent list of racist Rush quotes, and his utter indifference to their veracity. Now the Media Research Center has released a report on the smear campaign, in which they mention Johnson as one of the perpetrators. Johnson’s reaction? Does he feel a shred of professional or personal obligation to honesty? Nope: “I’ve finally made it. I’m an “offender” in this Rush Limbaugh idolizing article at the far right Media Research Center. My life is complete.”
That and a list of “racist and race-baiting quotes from Rush Limbaugh that are sourced and verified”:
“Right. So you go into Darfur and you go into South Africa, you get rid of the white government there. You put sanctions on them. You stand behind Nelson Mandela — who was bankrolled by communists for a time, had the support of certain communist leaders. You go to Ethiopia. You do the same thing.”
If Johnson or Media Matters would care to explain how speculation about the motives behind inconsistent stances on Iraq & Darfur (right or wrong) constitutes racism, I’d love to hear it. Speaking bluntly about racial components to political issues is not “race-baiting.”
“Look, let me put it to you this way: the NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons. There, I said it.”
Rather than a “look at those violent blacks on the field!” comment that Johnson would like you to believe this is, it comes from a larger discussion on class & maturity in NFL culture—in which he compliments San Diego Chargers running back LaDainian Tomlinson and Philadelphia Colts wide receiver Marvin Harrison as “the two most classy individuals playing in the National Football League today, in skill positions.” As clicking on their names reveals, a little context can be a dangerous thing.
“Have you ever noticed how all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson?”
I can’t find context for this one (maybe Rush was trying to prod lefty sensibilities), but okay, it sure doesn’t sound good. Absent a good contextual basis, he should apologize. But is Rush Limbaugh a racist? Ask his producer.
“Take that bone out of your nose and call me back.”
Rush apparently said this early in his radio career, to an unintelligible black caller. Crude? Insensitive? Yes, but Rush openly regrets it, and an ill-considered quip uttered in frustration is hardly worth crucifying the guy over.
“I think the media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well. They’re interested in black coaches and black quarterbacks doing well. I think there’s a little hope invested in McNabb and he got a lot of credit for the performance of his team that he really didn’t deserve.”
This is commentary on media sensibilities regarding race, not race baiting. Next.
“Obama’s America: white kids getting beat up on school buses. You put your kids on a school bus, you expect safety, but in Obama’s America, white kids now get beat up, with the black kids cheering, ‘Yeah! Right on! Right on!’”
*sigh* Johnson has already been called out for this faux controversy.
Since I began writing this post, Johnson has updated his post with the Snopes analysis of the “disputed” (that’s LGF-speak for what the rest of us call “phony”) Rush quotes—y’know, the only ones that show any actual racism. He offers them without commentary, expresses no regret for his role in peddling them, and probably didn’t add them until it occurred to him that they might help him save face. To Charles Johnson, blogging means never having to say you’re sorry.
Why the obsession with smearing people? Why the abandonment of integrity? Who knows—maybe his departure from Pajamas Media left him with a chip on his shoulder. Maybe he’s overcompensating for similar charges that have been leveled against him in the past. Whatever the cause, Little Green Footballs is no longer worthy of its once-revered place in the blogosphere, and is now nothing more than a Little Green Freakshow.
Conservative Standards 
