In his comments over the past week, Obama has sounded some of the same themes we discussed back in 2013. He told Remnick: “Ideally, in a democracy, everybody would agree that climate change is the consequence of man-made behavior, because that’s what ninety-nine per cent of scientists tell us.” The 2009 revelations from the East Anglia emails that scientists had manipulated data and abused the peer-review process? Down the memory hole.
Remnick himself described the Obama presidency as “two terms long on dignity and short on scandal.” The IRS? The State Department scandal that arguably sank Mrs. Clinton’s campaign? Again, the memory hole.
In Lima on Sunday the president himself declared: “I am extremely proud of the fact that over eight years we have not had the kinds of scandals that have plagued other administrations.” That’s either delusional or very carefully worded: To our knowledge no other administration has used the IRS to punish ordinary citizens for dissent, nor faced FBI findings that the secretary of state treated classified information in an “extremely careless” fashion.
All this ‘new’ stuff coming out in the States that no one actually remembers, has anyone done a Google search on ‘American inventors‘?
Ah, Remnick – the “intellectual” version of Chris Matthews.
BTW, add the operation Gunrunner to the list of the outgoing (oh how I love the sound of that word) administration’s non-scandals.
In O’s mind, no act performed for the purpose of suppressing the Evil Right can ever be termed a scandal.
Thus, he was telling his own truth.
In the face of certain consequences….
Jake: No, I didn’t. Honest… I ran out of gas. I… I had a flat tire. I didn’t have enough money for cab fare. My tux didn’t come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from out of town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake. A terrible flood. Locusts! Fake news. I was on the golf course. My auto pen went rogue. RACISTS, The Russian reset button was broken. My National Debt American Express card limit ran out. The White House FENCE!. IT WASN’T MY FAULT, I. SWEAR. TO. GAWD!
PERIOD!
“I coulda’ been a CONTENDER”
Mr Ed, I think that’s happening because the Google algorithm is completing the word “American” with the word “African”, possibly because grade schools are asking students to write reports on African American inventors. If I type in “wawa” it completes it with “convenience store” because that’s the common search term. I don’t think there is anything more significant or Orwellian about this.
“No scandals” – the endless lies of Barack Obama, accepted by the echo chamber “mainstream” media, and the education system.
There is no study or poll that says 99% of scientists believe climate change to be manmade. Even the fake Ines don’t claim that.
Obama is ridiculous.
Ninety-nine percent of government scientists say whatever their employer wants them to say.
Is, I believe, the correct formulation.
The proved fraudulent propaganda is supposed to be 98%, not 99% of scientists (hell, they don’t even say climatologists) agree that Pepsi tastes better than Coke…or something like that.
Yes, proved false propaganda again, and again, and again…much like the fictional “wage gap because of penis” claim, the latter of which doesn’t even pass the laugh test. One needs to be completely financially illiterate before that bit of propaganda can work it’s magick on you.
But hell, why let a little thing like the truth get in the way of a perfectly serviceable political lie?
Alisa, and Operation Chokepoint. Yes, guns are available….but we’re going to starve you of available ammo.
“Extremely careless”…Gee, that’s a funny way of spelling criminal negligence.
That’s like saying, the four-cornered version of a triangle, lol.
“…add the operation Gunrunner…”
Was it actually called that by the ATF agents involved? I remember it being referred to as “Operation Fast & Furious” by U.S. gun bloggers at the time, though whether that was their own name for it or the ATF’s name, I can’t remember.
To actually name your clandestine, illegal operation by the noun most commonly associated with such clandestine, illegal operations is a pisstake of epic proportions.
Why all the attention to this person’s words, which are so much like the hound’s, reputed to submerge themselves in water with a stick in their jaws to be rid of fleas they have collected.
Soon to be gone, but fleas will be with us for some time, even if afloat in the waters.
Ignore him who was nothing, brought nothing and leaves nothing.
To peddle the 99% argument Obama is either lying or ignorant.
There were references to 98% from a self-reporting internet survey of about 70 people and the much ridiculed Cook study.
But 99% is just something the president plucked out of thin air as an argument to restructure the global economy.
Dom,
So much for tailored responses, and if it doesn’t look Orwellian, what does?
The fleas are not nothing, RRS – and yes, he did custivate quite a few extra ones.
Mike, I wondered about the name myself, and so went to check with Wikipedia, where this information seems to be well-referenced. First, it was Project Gunwalker (not operation, as I wrote yesterday), and it consisted of several operations – of which the two most notorious were operations ‘Wide Receiver’ and ‘Fast and Furious’. All of the above names seem to have originated with the bright minds who conceived the actual project and operations.
The families of the victims of Obama and Holder’s “Fast and Furious” program might disagree.
Is a scandal only a scandal if the press believe it to be a scandal?
An interesting philosophical question, which may be the only real legacy of President Obama’s eight years in office.
It wouldn’t matter if 100% of scientists said that human caused climate change was a huge problem. If it isn’t true, no amount of scientific consensus will make it so. Sound science tends to be rather good at making accurate predictions. The fact that climate scientists have such a terrible track record in this area should give any thoughtful person grounds to be sceptical.
Does anyone else sense that in both the U S and the UK there is a “popular” drift away from the “authority” that has been foisted and touted for the past 16 years?
Perhaps even some revulsion?
Chip: Obama is either lying or ignorant.
I believe we call this a false dilemma.
Or as they say on the interwebz: WNB
Chicago rules:
1. If you own the cop, you won’t get arrested.
2. If you own the judge, you won’t get convicted.
3. If you own the media, none of that will be reported.
Voila! Scandal free!
The Obama administration shows us what Watergate would have looked like if the press had actively taken Nixon’s side.
“To actually name your clandestine, illegal operation by the noun most commonly associated with such clandestine, illegal operations is a pisstake of epic proportions.”
It’s a concept Attorney General Holder picked up from Hillary a few years earlier, when Hillary was running her first secret op which she named “Cut My Husband Bill’s Testicles Off With Rusty Game Shears.” Bill spent a lot of time traveling overseas during this period, and always looked a little . . . nervous, validating the idea that an op name could be useful in and of itself.
Thank you Bobby for almost making me choke on my sandwich!
Stonyground said,
If the general public understood why the views of 100% of scientists doesn’t make make something certain, then they would understand why the views of 98% of scientists doesn’t make something 98% likely. But alas, most of the public are rubes when it comes to numbers. i.e. innumerate.
Indeed. The latest bit of juvenile ill-reasoning to come down the pike is that “Stephen Hawking says” we have only another 1000 habitable years on the planet.
Hawking is a mathematician and cosmologist. His views on planetary habitability and climate 1000yrs from now is LESS relevant than Einstein’s views on car repair. I’m sure Hawking is very good at what he does, but what he doesn’t do is know what the hell is going to happen in a 1000yrs. If he were an actual climatologist, HE WOULD KNOW THAT.
RRS said,
“Does anyone else sense that in both the U S and the UK there is a “popular” drift away from the “authority” that has been foisted and touted for the past 16 years?”
Perhaps even some revulsion?”
Yes indeed, because even sheeple are begining to realize that these “authorities” are not benevolent keepers, they’re what Ayn Rand termed Atilas and Witchdoctors, (what I call Warlocks).
Those barnyard technicians, those wonderful “shephards” aren’t wanting to pen you for your safety as much as they really intend to fleece you and eventually eat you….”for the greater good” of society of course.
The “you need to sacrifice for your fellow man” message is why they teach people to hate the rich. This is true of some religions as it is of Marxism.
Now please excuse me, I have a camel to shoved through a needle’s eye.
Thailover:
Step one – cremate the camel.
It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle if it is lightly greased – from The Profit by Kehlog Albran.
“…by Kehlog Albran.”
This place is becoming rather surreal.
On November 14, 2012, Obama said “What we do know is the temperature around the globe is increasing faster than was predicted even 10 years ago.”
On May 29, 2013, Obama said “… we also know that the climate is warming faster than anybody anticipated five or 10 years ago…”
Both of these statements are false.
Global temperature is not “increasing faster than predicted”, it is increasing slower than any prediction by the climate modelers who predicted and continue to predict global warming.
It is arguable – and has been argued – that the temperature record of the last 15 years is a temporary pause in a long-term process that will resume. But that the record shows higher-than-predicted warming is not arguable.
No scientist will endorse the quoted statements. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL, and Attorney-General designate) embarrassed four former EPA heads called as “expert witnesses” in support of “global warming” action by asking them to raise their hands if they agreed with Obama’s statements. They didn’t.
This invites the question of where he learned, or thought he learned, what he said. He has science advisers – did they lie to him, or did he ignore them?
The scientific observations (data) of climate from year dot to date are published and publicly available for anyone as wishes to inspect/analyse them. For example, I cut my eye teeth in Statistics 101 conducting an analysis of tree-ring climate data, exploring the MWP (Medieveal Warming Period) and extrapolating from that what it might be able to tell us about the accuracy of recorded history (e.g., vinyards planted in the South and East Anglia, in the UK).
The climate was progressively and statistically moving on a very gradually warming trend, but, as announced by the UK Met Office on New Year’s Eve 2012, there had been an approx. 15-year hiatus (flat, no trend, by 2012) in the temp anomaly, and now it is 19 years and the climate alarmists are apparently desperately hoping that the trend may have been restored (albeit temporarily) by the latest El Niño (El Niño and La Niña are the warm and cool phases of a recurring climate pattern across the tropical Pacific). We shall see.
The South East Anglia University CRU (Climate Research Unit) and the American hockeystick manufacturer had known of this hiatus/”pause”, as revealed in the Climategate release in November 2009 of their leaked emails, for example:
(This was just one of the very telling emails in the “FOI,zip” cache released anonymously on the Internet in November 2009, and discussed widely at the time – e.g.:
http://www.examiner.com/article/climategate-climate-center-s-server-hacked-revealing-documents-and-emails
https://web.archive.org/web/20150405052746/http://www.examiner.com/article/climategate-climate-center-s-server-hacked-revealing-documents-and-emails
)
The thing here is the mountain of evidence that these intelligent and determined people – so-called “climate scientists” – were apparently only too well-aware of the inconvenient reality of the climate statistics that collided with their theoretical dogma, and they sought to conceal that truth until it could be hidden no longer – hence the UK Met Office’s belated statement at the end of 2012 (the UK Met Office had apparently been on record as avoiding/denying the reality, and was also apparently implicated in the Climategate fraud).
The climate data sets (observational raw source data) regarding temps are regarded as being as accurate as we were able to get them, and, since the ’70s, the accuracy of modern climate data (temps and some sea level data) has improved tremendously with the advent of satellite-sourced observational data. However, that accuracy was prior to the more recent disgraceful practice of the custodians of that data conducting stochastic manipulation/alteration of the historical temp data sets – e.g., NASA, NOAA or whoever. They all seem to manufacture a colder history for the planet, so “It’s hotter than we thought!”. Odd that.
From an objective analysis, there is no debate about the data – it shows what it shows. The problem there seems to be that some people with a particular religio-political ideological bent don’t seem to like what it shows and want it to show something else, something that supports their manufactured argument in support of their particular objective, ideology or principles. Admittedly, some of them probably don’t give a toss for the ideology and principles and just want to make money/power from it, but that’s just human nature. No names, no pack drill.
So, they simply make it up – e.g., smoothing out the MWP (as though it’s history had never existed) to produce Michael Mann’s absurd but catchy “Hockeystick” diagram and “substantiating” it with a basic logical fallacy – an absurd appeal to an absurd consensus (“97% of scientists agree, so it must be true!”) – backing it up absurdly with photos of naturally melting ice and the Green fascist’s poster child, the polar bear – an animal species which has already survived as long as it has – like Man – by dint of its being supremely adaptable to tremendous climate change in its environment.
Absurdity piled upon absurdity. There’s no other polite way to describe it.
The Royal Society has as its now apparently forgotten motto “Nullius in verba” (Latin for ”Take nobody’s word for it/Find out for yourself”), but, alarmingly (for society) they – and most climate alarmists – do not adhere to that excellent maxim. This awfulness is further compounded by the separate Royal Society of Edinburgh, which apparently freely admits having never accepted any speaker to debate/dispute the oft-trumpeted climate “consensus”, thereby securing their own absurdity for history to judge. Regardless, for both “science” organisations that is not science and they make no effort to be scientific.
As @Stonyground wrote (November 22, 2016 at 12:19 pm):
If a person was deliberately making absurd statements about climate change doom, or something, then it would seem to indicate that the speaker was, by definition, either ignorant and/or empty-headed (e.g., they just “believed” what they were saying, without knowledge or the capacity to critically think it through), or flat-out lying (e.g., they had an ulterior motive and knew or did not care whether what they were saying was untrue).
Thus if that were true, then the depressing conclusion would seem to be that the current POTUS would presumably have to fall into one or the other of those two classes, but not both.
Either way, when people are trying to persuade one using absurd reasoning – and whether the subject is, for example, (say) climate change or binary trading – one is well-advised to keep one’s hands in one’s pockets.
““…by Kehlog Albran.”
This place is becoming rather surreal.” (Mike, supra.)
Watch him closely. If he does this again, he’ll be a cereal offender.
“Ideally, in a democracy, everybody would agree that climate change is the consequence of man-made behavior, because that’s what ninety-nine per cent of scientists tell us.”
Having given this statement a little more thought, I think that he is completely and utterly wrong. I am thinking of the old saying, ‘you can fool all of the people some of the time, you can fool some of the people all of the time, but you can never fool all of the people all of the time.’ He would like everybody to believe the same thing because, in this particular case, he believes it to be irrefutably true. The strength of democracy however, is in the diversity of opinion that is empowered by it. He is claiming that I must be some scientifically illiterate ignoramus if I disagree with the opinion of his imaginary 99% of scientists. The first step in convincing me of their case would be to answer the following questions to my satisfaction:
The Earth’s climate has been changing constantly for millions of years. Humans have been around for a few tens of thousands of years at most. If you are so certain that human rather than natural causes are causing the climate to change now, what was causing it before?
How do you know that the causes that you have cited for climate change in pre-human times are not causing the changes that we currently observe.
Are you not aware that warmer climates are far more benign than colder ones and that this means that warming is actually a good thing?
“Are you not aware that warmer climates are far more benign than colder ones and that this means that warming is actually a good thing?”
Depends on where you live. Here’s my favorite club song here in Minnesota.