Where Have You Gone, Joe Dimaggio?

Maureen Dowd delivers drivel about the calamitous collapses of Tiger Woods and Desiree Rogers but she closes with half an insight:

Now all we have left to look up to is Derek Jeter.

And Mariano.

Comments

[Thomas Collins]

Forgive me for going off topic on MoDo, but the key question of the morning is whether the replay folks were correct in overturning the call on the field that the game was over with Nebraska a 12-10 victor over Texas. With the second being put back on the clock, Texas got the game winning field goal. See LUN.

By the way, TM, I could understand you ignoring the BCS on Sunday morning for the latest on WarmingTrueBelieversGate or ObamaCare or War in Central Asia, but to ignore the BCS for MoDo really disappoints me!! :-))

[sylvia]

Yeah I'm not so sure on this "getting it all out there idea". Mark Sanford did that and it didn't get him anywhere. The trick is to not tell stupid lies that can be easily disproven. I say be vague, be a "vaguer", not a liar. (Okay I just made up another word. Let's see how long this one takes to spread.)

I think Tiger did about the best one could do in that situation. He told some, didn't lie, but didn't tell too much, and expressed regret.

[Thomas Collins]

"Maureen Dowd delivers drivel" is about as newsworthy as "male dog lifts hind leg at tree."

[clarice]

Her editors have moved into the fake but accurate mode on climategate and at AT, Marc Sheppard explains it all for us with nice graphs--and it's fake AND false.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/12/understanding_climategates_hid.html

[jimmyk]

Her editors

I assume you're referring to Clark Hoyt's latest rubber stamp?

[narciso]

He got his training at McClatchy, dodging inconvenient facts like the Saddam AQ relationship, as the ombudsmen there

[Rick Ballard]

Clarice,

Thank you for the link to the most comprehensive explanation in laymen's terms that I have seen to date.

If you wish to understand the utter fraud involved, read it. Read it clear down to where you find this gem:

Would you be shocked to learn that at ICCC 3, Watts told us he had calculated such adjustments to raw temperature data between 1940 and 1999 to be 0.5°F to the positive? That accounts for almost one half of the 1.2°F warming over the last century.

Hansen, Wigley and Jones are the responsible parties for that aspect of the fraud and my bet is that the record from 1910-1940 will be shown to have been adjusted downward by 0.2°F in order to strengthen the illusion of additional warming.

It's a really great scandal that is being rather ignored by those with a pecunaiary interest in the viability of the great whorehouses lining Wall and Broad. I suppose that the thought of all the pelf that could have been stripped from the pockets of the unwary by the investment banks which have done so very much to put the country where it is today is just too saddening. That or someone has been actually believing the propaganda generated by Revkin.

[Captain Hate]

MoDo threads should be titled "Where have you gone, Michael Douglas?" with the answer being "to a much better place while you went on a drying-out rehab session sabbatical."

[Jane]

I don't know where to put this but it is going here. Yesterday my niece brought an old friend over. I've know this kid since he was born, so it was fun to see him.

He is collecting unemployment. He told me he could get a job tomorrow but the unemployment pays more than any job he can get.

So that's one problem, but here is another: He is bored to the point of self destruction. He's struggled with drugs in the past, and this 24/7 doing nothing is not helping.

I encouraged him to laugh in the face of unemployment and go out and get a job even if it paid less, because boredom was a bigger crisis to him than money. He said he would. We shall see.

[Thomas Collins]

See LUN for an op ed that can only be described as exquisite unintentional self parody of the see no evil, hear no evil attitude of the Climate Scientologists. It is a useful exercise to read the fine American Thinker piece and the LUNed piece back to back as two sides of climate journalism (clearheaded analysis versus buffoonery).

[hit and run]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091206/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_obama_open_government;_ylt=Al2GV2CY4URe25ykMCHY2VGs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTFlcWVjbjhsBHBvcwM4NARzZWMDYWNjb3JkaW9uX3BvbGl0aWNzBHNsawNwcm9taXNlc3Byb20->AP on Obama:

WASHINGTON – It's hardly the image of transparency the Obama administration wants to project: A workshop on government openness is closed to the public.

The event Monday for federal employees is a fitting symbol of President Barack Obama's uneven record so far on the Freedom of Information Act, a big part of keeping his campaign promise to make his administration the most transparent ever. As Obama's first year in office ends, the government's actions when the public and press seek information are not yet matching up with the president's words.

It's so cute how they throw in that "yet" as if there is any reasonable expectation that Obama ever intended to match up his words with actions.

[Rick Ballard]

EPA Set to Declare Carbon Dioxide a Public Danger

Air is a public danger? Perhaps we should dedicate ourselves to preventing the pols and their Wall Street buddies from poisoning themselves. I wonder if that would count as a "tradeable carbon offset"?

[caro]

I hate the EPA.

[clarice]

jminnyk, it's this piece of NYT carp that I was referring to--fake but accurate at the grey lady:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/opinion/06sun3.html

[daddy]

Who's TM's most irrelevant "go-to" journalist?

MoDo, Sully, Brook's, Rich or Kruggy?

I'm not a New Yorker so that's a bit of a bizarre world for me to analyze, but I would say Rich because he is in my view not a "must read," so his brand of mental poison in my view has less of a day to day effect on the ignorant and the national dialog than the blatherings of this nutcase Modo.

Modo I'd stick in 2nd as most irrelevant, followed by Sully, then Krugman, then finally Brooks as most relevant.

I place Brooks above Kruggy because as "a Conservative", he is easier for the Left to use as a pretend lens of the right to bash the Right and exalt Obama, whereas Kruggy is such a broken record that even with his Pulitzer's/Nobel's whatever, he's simply a one trick pony.

Anyhow, other than that I find nothing of relevance regarding what MoDo writes. And for Danny Fagan fan's, if Modo pens an anti-Sarah screed, prior to his recent Mea Culpa" Fagan always made sure to post it on his Alaska Standard Blog and to quote from it on his Radio Show.

[clarice]

jimmyk From the editorial:

"Despite what the skeptics say, they [the emails] demonstrate just how rigorously scientists have worked to figure out whether global warming is real and the true role that human activities play."

This is what happens when the editors all got their science education at Little Red School House in the Village and went on Hamilton College's crack liberal arts school

[narciso]

Look at this UN

[daddy]

Excellent story on "Hide The Decline" you linked to at AT Clarice.

FWIW, It seemed that on my last trip to Europe, CNN was much less prominent on the TV's in the Hotel rooms I was billeted in. Usually its CNN or BBC right out of the box in the low numbers 2, 3, or 4 when you turn on the tube and start clicking.
This time, in 2 separate Paris Hotels, a Dubai and a Cologne, CNN was hard to find (down in the 30's to 50's) and BBC was usually somewhere near CNN on the dial.

This I found positive, as anything that reduces the influence of those 2 Media organs is a positive thing in my view.

Wonder of Elliott had the same impression?

[clarice]

That would be great, daddy..Next the airport monopoly!!

Last year when I was in France I didn't spend enough time in the hotel to turn on the set and never watched it when with my friends in Provence so I've no idea.

[clarice]

narciso, Anything's possible. Even the Saudis could have handled this, but I truly believe it was an insider and the Russian server as you recalled was the backup--the emails had first been sent to the BBC and then elsewhere when the BBC refused to report on them.

[jimmyk]

From the editorial

Thanks, Clarice. Hoyt's whitewash is pretty pathetic, though. He doesn't seem to get the problem with Revkin. It's not that there's necessarily a smoking gun in the e-mails. It's more like Holmes's dog that didn't bark: Revkin is getting his information from these guys. Was he also getting McIntyre's and others' points of view? Or was he taking Mann's dismissals of the skeptics at face value?

Mann resorts to the "peer reviewed" line that Mark Steyn made hash of in his recent column in dissing McIntyre, and Revkin seems to fall for it, not figuring out that these guys were in control of the peer review process and possibly quashing anything that challenged them. So the best that you can say about Revkin is that he's a dupe.

[Rick Ballard]

"So the best that you can say about Revkin is that he's a dupe."

Jimmy,

Based upon the availibility and clarity of the Wegman Report, I don't believe that Revkin can be classified as better than a willing accomplice or a shill. The emails actually only "reveal" the flaming obvious. Climate Scientologists have been cooking the books in clear sight for years and BigGov and BigBiz have been rubbing their stinking hands in glee thinking about the payoff in taxes and increased entrance barriers.

Why in the world would sellers of products with relatively low elasticity of demand seek to keep the product's cost low? All the increases in cost due to the imposition of carbon "credits" will be passed to consumers who really don't have an alternative.

[clarice]

Well, maybe some big biz but I think a lot of others have gotten into this because they saw what they thought was the handwriting on the wall and wanted some say in where it was going and to garner good will from a deluded muddle, Rick.

[daddy]

"So the best that you can say about Revkin is that he's a dupe."

Concerning Revkin:

Insty provides ">http://nlt.ashbrook.org/2009/12/climate-scientist-to-revkin-we-can-lo-longer-trust-you-to-carry-water-for-us.php"> this story telling us exactly where Revkin gets his input from, and now the anger at Revkin for even deigning to mention anything that doesn't exactly follow the straight AGW Gospel as dispensed by the Climate Scientology Priesthood.

Brief, but a worthwhile read.

[clarice]

Pretty soon we can ignore the NYT entirely. Murdoch is putting a lot of money into a beefed up MY metro edition and that should allow Pinch and his friends to work full time on fundraising for Little Red Schoolhouse.

[clarice]

**NY metro***

[Old Lurker]

What is a NYT?

[clarice]

New York Times,OL

[Old Lurker]

Just being silly, C.

Seriously, the $15M that the WSJ is spending on their city section should put the NYT down for good.

[daddy]

And concerning suspect reporters and Climate-Gate reporting:

This UK Telegraph Story, ">http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6736517/Copenhagen-climate-summit-1200-limos-140-private-planes-and-caviar-wedges.html"> Copenhagen climate summit: 1,200 limos, 140 private planes and caviar wedgesis definitely worth a read, but the reporter is Andrew Gilligan.

From googling it appears to me this is the same">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Gilligan"> Andrew Gilligan, previously working for the BBC, who did very suspect Iraq war reporting, initially claiming that he was in the middle of Baghdad and that the US was lying when it said it had entered the city, and later being the guy responsible for saying Blair had "sexed up" the Iraqi capabilities report, ultimately resulting in Gilligan's source to commit suicide.
Gilligan was fired by the BBC, hollered if I recall that he was railroaded, and kicked around at The Guardian, before being accused of "sock-puppeting."

From all I can tell, this is the same reporter now doing a very decent hypocrisy piece on the Copenhagen AGWer's. If it is the same guy, maybe he knows where the BBC bodies are buried and is on a personal vendetta for some sort of revenge to counterattack the BBC. With his former BBC experience, he'd know exactly how the BullS#$& flows in the organization.

Anyhow, just thought I'd throw this out there FYI.

If it's a different guy, please correct me.

[Rick Ballard]

Clarice,

I suppose I should clarify what constitutes BigBiz in my mind.

1) All the huge brothels in Manhattan, dedicated to increasing the friction costs associated with the use of capital are salivating at the possibility of trading a totally synthetic product where their profits can be managed through simple lease/rental agreements made at the Parliament of Whores in DC.

2) Utilities which can raise capital at the brothels in Manhattan to construct the totally useless "scrubbers" that will cleanse the nasty, dirty EPA declared, evil air form the fresh, lovely government approved air - and roll those useless scrubbers right into their rate base so that the Muddle can pay for its stupidty every month forever.

3) Govmo - will build the new WidowMakers on command from the Parliament of Whores in order to avoid their very well deserved BK. They always welcome "manageable" regulation which raises the cost of their product and increases the height of the entry barrier.

4) Big oil/Big energy - always happy to collect another tax for their lessees in the Parliament of Whores. If the Muddle is dumb enough to keep electing prostitutes, why shouldn't they be used and the cost for their usage passed on to the fools who keep sending them to DC?

The only one of those four which used to have a problem with elasticity of demand was the automakers. Becoming Govmo took care of that problem.

[Old Lurker]

Well..."down for good" might be a bit optimistic on my part. OTOH, they have so much debt, who knows.

[clarice]

Don't you suppose, Rick, that the EPA ruling on CO2 will be subject to a ferocious court challenge now?

[pagar]

"All the increases in cost due to the imposition of carbon "credits" will be passed to consumers who really don't have an alternative."

In the LUN that someone posted yesterday, a figure of 126 billion in carbon credits was mentioned. Anyone want to bet how much of that was sucked directly out of the pockets of consumers? If one goes further into the article, "projected to grow to become a $2-$10 trillion dollar market"

$2-$10 trillion worth of Nothing except pure BS. No oil, wheat, hog bellies, just pure absolute nothing. Bernard Madoff gets 130 years in prison for a some two digit amount of millions ripoff. Here are people planning to ripoff $2-$10 trillion and very few people seem to care.

In fact, we're told that it will require
1200 LIMOS and 140 PRIVATE PLANES just to haul it all off.

Link

If it were a bank robbery and they posted in advance where the robbery was going to occur, the police would probably set up a plan to catch them. But, here everyone just sets back and wait to be robbed.

[clarice]

Apparently your mileage varies, Rick. I know that a lot of these energy companies saw the writing on the wall and decided they'd be steam rolled into worse stuff if they didn't play alone .As you know most people still get their into from the MSM and as you can see they are still plugging the dikes.

[Rick Ballard]

Clarice,

Who would fund the challenge? Take it to the Supremes and think about Kennedy having another Kelo moment. Always remembering, of course, the "luck" that Pew and Fenton Communications had in foisting Campaign Finance Reform on a public too stupid to recognize a noose being dropped over its neck.

It's not hopeless by any means but it will take an electoral movement rather than the prog dominated courts to assert a cure. Otherwise it's the "blood of patriots and tyrants" route and we're at about 1765 year marker on that one. Maybe 1770.

[pagar]

Here's some thoughts on how bad it has already gotten for the Europeans.

" Before Americans adopt a cap-and-trade scheme of their own, it is vital that they take a serious look at how things have gone in Europe".

"The first thing to note is that the scheme has cost European consumers a fortune. There was a total bill of $123 billion between the introduction of the scheme in January 2005 and the end of 2008. That is $245 for every man, woman, and child across an area where average incomes are considerably lower than they are in the United States. That bill is expected to rise in the years to come. And the people who pay the heaviest price are those least able to bear it."

I got that info from an article shown if you look for an article titled

"The expensive failure of Europe’s emissions trading scheme
in the LUN

[clarice]

I agree the major chnge has to be electoral but in the face of the emails and the ongoing investigations I think it might be possible to make a strong case for relief enjoining the imposition of these rules until there is so solid proof that this is not a simple fraud.In any even one can also argue that the administraiton may not make such a sharp change by administrative action when Congress has repeatedly refused to do this by legislation.

[Charlie (Colorado)]

See Pielke Jr on "The Big Cutoff".

(I'm listening to Juan Williams talking about this; it's kinda sad, really. Completely clueless.)

[Old Lurker]

Chaco: "(I'm listening to Juan Williams talking about this; it's kinda sad, really. Completely clueless.)"

I was watching that too. Sad, indeed, but expected from the NPR twins. What made me throw a shoe was after Juan ranted, Dana Perino reminded us that Bush agreed that the earth is warming and man is causing it. Thanks, W! Bill Crystal didn't do very much in explaining Steve Haye's piece in the Weekly Standard, so the impression left was unconvincing to say the least. Jeeze.

[Captain Hate]

Yeah OL I was pretty depressed by Kristol and Perino's lack of rebuttal to Juan's inane commentary.

[Elliott]

daddy,

At the airport, everyone was subjected to the BBC and the Iraq inquiry.

[narciso]

Well she was the one that didn't remember the Cuban Missile Crisis, but Kristol was more of a dissapointment

[daddy]

Thanks Elliott,

Sad but understandable.

On the topic of Bill Kristol etc doing a lousy job rebutting Juan Williams-like arguments, does anybody know where a good list exists of the top 20 or so Scientists implicated in the CRU E-mail dump?

The Media boys keep saying the Science remains settled.

I'd like to see if I could track down statements by these top 20 or so guys, and see if they had ever made any statements previously on other "settled science" issues, such as "eco-poisons causing missing frogs legs", etc.

If they did, at least to the non-science public, we could point and make the simplistic and easily understandable but true argument of "You were wrong about that "settled science" so why are you so sure about this "settled science", especially now that the documents prove you lied and altered the data, and that you can't reproduce your findings, and that the dog ate your homework."

If such statements exist, even Bill Kristol could make that argument. Plus un-scientific middle America would understand it, because it doesn't require any knowledge of the particulars of the science---simply a definitive statement that they were previously wrong about what they knew to be right.

[Thomas Collins]

And now, what you've all been waiting for. The Outback Bowl on January 1st will have Northwestern battling Auburn.

Oh, and for the minor bowls, Alabama goes against Texas in the BCS Championship Game, Oregon takes on Ohio State in the Rose Bowl, Boise State battles TCU in the Fiesta Bowl, Georgia Tech tangles with Iowa in the Orange Bowl and Florida has a date with Cincinnati in the Sugar Bowl.

[glasater]

For anyone wanting a Cliff's Note version of Elliot's Iraq inquiry--here it is.

[Stephanie]

Got tickets to the Orange Bowl last night. Can't wait to get to some real warmening temperatures. I hear Miami was 82 today.

Oh and if anyone can get a message to him... remind AlGore to go to Canada during bowl season.

[glasater]

Had a brief vision that our Kim is Lucy Skywalker but then I thought nah....

[DrJ]

"The Media boys keep saying the Science remains settled. "

I've been pondering this statement. The science may well be settled, but the science has nothing to do with the global warming projections. That really is more engineering and statistics, which no one ever has claimed has been settled.

[Rick Ballard]

Daddy,

Interesting approach. The major player names can be culled from the Wegman Report beginning on PDF page 39. I would suggest Hansen and Wigley as being prime targets. I know that Hansen was in the "we're all gonna freeze" camp in the '70's as the last cooling cycle tapered off. Most of the players were recruited after that time with the full knowledge that playing "we're all gonna burn up" couldn't really get going until the mid to late '80's. Don't forget that AL. Ron Gore was targeting "deniers" by 1988. It was a full court press even that early.

We will be seeing the work by Anthony Watt mentioned in the AT piece pretty quickly. I have absolutely no doubt that he'll show that at least the 0.5°F adjustments were as phony as a $3 bill and he'll have the data to back it up.

I have very low expectations for the Credentialed Moron class on either side of the issue so Bill Kristol's performance is as unsurprising as Juan William's. They both start sliding off the loafers when trying to count higher than 10.

[Rick Ballard]

DrJ,

The Finns are very active in dendrochronology and climate science. The site hosting this poster has a number of papers which suggest that the science isn't quite settled on the dendro side. Check out the tentative forecast at the bottom of the poster if you feel a need to shiver slightly. Not as deep as the LIA but not a lot shallower either.

[Pofarmer]

That forecast doesn't look good at all Rick.

[Pofarmer]

In this months "Rural Missouri" magazine, put on by our electric coops.

"I told the committee that Missourians were concerned that the legislation they were considering treated them unfairly because it shortchanges Missouri on the carbon emission allowances needed to generate electricity. I told them it would lead to dramatic increases in the price we pay for electricity. And each senator received a copy of a study done by all the state’s utilities that shows rates could go up as much as 77 percent under one scenario.

The main point I was able to get across was that Missouri’s electric co-ops were following federal policy when they built their last baseload power plant 27 years ago. At the time, oil, natural gas and nuclear power options were off the table by federal decree. Coal was the only choice.

Missouri consumers see themselves about to be penalized for following federal policy and making the only choice that would reliably meet members’ needs. That, to me, is one bitter pill to swallow."

Yes, definitely, what we need is more govt intervention. How much further down the path to cheap, plentiful energy would we be if the govt hadn't hamstrung our electrical generation choices 40 years ago?

[daddy]

Thanks for the steer Rick,

You've given me some homework.

[whosonfirst]

God forbid someone might actually jump in and put this thread back on track but....if you knew the real Derek Jeter he would probably disappoint too.

[Captain Hate]

Boise State battles TCU in the Fiesta Bowl

They should rename this the Separate but Equal Bowl for the shaft job they're giving these two teams by not giving them the chance to completely embarrass upset a traditional power.

To hell with the BCS; despite their lofty praises to the golden calf of amateur athletics, they're just pimps for the bowl cities to entice schools that "travel well"; a loathsome phrase meaning having rich alumni with more idle cash than sense and a willingness to travel and spend it profusely. Cincy got elevated over TCU, perhaps the best school in the country but we'll never know because they don't "travel well" (or at least the slatterns in the bowl cities don't *think* they do and, horrors, they have CHRISTIAN in their name), after beating a mediocre Pitt team because of a missed extra point. I hope Tebow runs and throws for 7 touchdowns against them. Well done BCS; they've done the almost impossible by turning me against college football. May they all die in a fire.

[Thomas Collins]

Captain Hate, I look at it in a different way. Boise State/TCU is a great matchup, and who cares if some oligarchs will sneer at the matchup as having no power conference teams. I'm sure the Oregon folks don't think a bowl with Boise State this year is a weak bowl.

By the way, no offense to my JOM friends who are Big East fans, but should the Big East really have its power conference designation?