Cowboy Confessional

faith, n. Tactical truth avoidance.

As a writer and political junkie, I stand amused, bemused, offended and (very) occasionally amazed at the way my language is manipulated, manhandled and forcefully deflowered. Politicians – the world’s original liars – have desensitized me to all the common linguistic spin cycles, and it is a cold, cold day when I encounter semantic sophism that makes me sputter.

It took scientists talking like congress critters to redecorate my computer monitor this morning.

I have not written about Climategate because it was too predictable. Anyone with on-duty dendra has been skeptical about anthropogenic global warming (AGW). I even cut a cute little video about the buncombe. Through the back and forth of the warring factions, scientific ethics had been questioned. Select scientists resigned the IPCC – the United Nations scientific cesspool – in protest for their minority report being downplayed. Certain data and modeling criteria was not shared, an almost unheard of refusal among real scientists. Repeated problems in process, proportionality and programming were uncovered. Yet promoters of AGW leaned heavily upon suspect scientists and maintained momentum due to their alleged inalienable integrity.

So leaked emails showing they are as craven as their criminal cohorts in Congress were only minor surprises. After all, when you are riding a publicity wave and making more money than every other scientist you know, it is human nature to keep the canard going.

What floored me this morning was the nearly Senatorial scheisse scientists spoke. George Orwell looked up from his fifth ring-side seat in Hell and said “Good play old man.”

The initial utterance appeared when requests for core data were denied. It seems that temperature data presented to the public had been adjusted. This is not necessisarily criminal – occasionally data from multiple points needs to be correlated. What was curious is that the original raw data had been disposed of, leaving only the doctored dope. While attempting to explain missing raw data, a spokesdroid said:

“We do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (quality controlled and homogenised) data.”

Can you spot the two twists in this tragic testimony? First is the assertion that under-detailed mathematical changes to the raw data added value. “Value” is highly subjective. DuPont chemical plants produce value for the corporation and the people who use the products it produces, but the value-add to deformed peasant children living downstream may not be well understood … to them.

More inane and insane is the self-contradictory statements about dumping data (which in computerized form takes no real room) and “quality control”. ‘Quality’ and ‘control’ insinuate that one controls quality, and in scientific research this means being able to reproduce experiments and calculation on demand (and, ahem, allowing other people to review and attempt to duplicate the same). Thus the scoundrel speaking this sputum asserted that the quality of manipulated data was controlled, but there was no control over the quality of their data storage in general.

Somebody, please call the Gobbles Political Communications Institute – I found their new fellowship candidate.

This does raise one question: Can the original data be reconstructed? The villains in this story have not claimed that the adjustment process is unknown. Could the current “value-added” data have the adjustments removed/reversed and thus the original data be reconstituted? Who is willing to beg the question publicly?

In a somewhat related story, another marcom cretin claimed that their organization refused to share information as required by law, saying:

When he submitted a request for the figures under freedom of information laws he was refused because it was “not in the public interest”.

Odd. I have been under a life long assumption that scientific data, knowledge and validation were the public’s interest? I can only speculate that the policy makers herein are afraid that public access would add value. Interestingly, freedom of information legislation was invented to force disclosure because transparency is in the public interest, and it was the public who enacted the law. Any employee of the people who does not perceive this principle needs to pack-up their personal belongings and exit the building immediately, because they are too dense to hold any job aside from elected office.

Expect more of the same in the days to come. With the Copenhagen summit approaching, and with AGW agitators getting defensive, industrial level adulteration of language is assured. It will be as grotesque as Copenhagen Chew residue.

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Damn oceans.

If you had not noticed, this joint called Earth is a soggy place. Water covers about 71% of the surface and plunges nearly seven miles down, a depth slightly deeper and colder than Al Gore’s soul. If you stood every existing human side by side they would not cover a fraction of Lake Maracaibo, which is still a quarter of Al Gores growing girth.

Which may well explain why the planet is cooling and my green friends are in dithers.

Not that local San Francisco greenies need much motivation to fret, which is seemingly their very purpose in life. Aside from smoking vast quantities of medical marijuana, what has them most perplexed is that during the current decade our planet has cooled off a might. This contradicts United Nations climatologists and other enfeebled persons, and thus conflicts my green leaning associates.

Have a tofu burger. You’ll feel better.

Their confusion is understandable. After all, with China now the top producer of raw atmospheric pollution, with America not reducing its carbon footprint, and with India playing industrial catch-up, Al Gore’s canard clearly states that we should be roasting in our own juices. For the planet to cool while mankind is releasing more carbon than ever in our industrial history defies the theory.

Which means the theory might just be hokum.

But recent global cooling begs a couple of questions, namely why in Hell is it getting colder and who is going to pay my heating bill? Some scientists think the answer to the first question is that oceans are to blame. Maybe I can hit Gore up for the latter. After all he could produce enough hot air to thaw Rahm Emanuel’s heart.

Much of the problem with global warming theory is the inappropriate grafting of recent thermometer readings onto long term, proxy derived temperature estimates, and projecting just the new data into the future. Such bad methodology should be embarrassing to alleged scientists, but in pursuit of government grants even scientists can be dastardly. Most government generated schemes for dealing with the now inverted “global climate crisis” involve taxing somebody and giving the money to somebody else (i.e., theft). With trillions of dollars riding on such legislation, tossing a few quid to unethical or incapable academics is a good way to create public demand for the plan.

Which would work if it wasn’t for those damn oceans.

Some bright folk at Kiel University decided to see if all that water had any recurring effects (click the chart for a bigger one). After all, Mother Nature is a cyclic bitch. Most everything in nature moves in circles, cycles and recycling programs. Nothing nature does is linear with the possible exception of entropy, and I have my doubts about that. Mojib Latif decided to overlay oceanographic temperature data with United Nations scientific effluvium and see how agreeable the two were, discovering that they weren’t. Using a little sign wave logic, they show that the planet appears to be in the early phase of a nominal cooling cycle. Yes, my friend in Alaska – it will get much colder up there in the next 30 years.

Buy an extra parka.

This all makes intuitive sense, which is why United Nations scientists don’t get it. The industrial revolution began at about the same time the Little Ice Age ended. Depending on who answers the question, the Little Ice Age lasted between 200 and 600 years, bringing global temperatures well below average. The long term rise in temperatures from the mid 1800’s appears to be a recovery from excessive global cooling, slowed by those ornery oceans having to go through their cyclic variations.

There are a couple of grand takeaways from this analysis. First and foremost is the understanding that humans are a puny lot and our total effect on the climate doesn’t add up to that of a large lake. Equally important to understand is that if the trend cited by the oceanographers is correct, the worst we will endure this century is a 1/2oC rise in temperature, which might produce enough sweat to moisten Hillary’s dusty labia.

Foremost is shows that United Nations computer projections are buncombe and yet another reason for civilized countries to defund that intellectual brothel.

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With Obama’s help I could be wearing a solid gold cast. That is what my share of $1.6 trillion dollars would buy.

Sadly, I am currently sporting a plain plaster variety, having cracked a fibular while in combat with a larger opponent. For all my martial arts training, it is irony personified that that I was broken during a light sparing session. A lesson to other roughnecks: never allow a larger opponent to stay in a head-to-head position where they can charge forward like a blind bull.

Like 85% of Americans, I have private health insurance. For whatever maladies Americans face, our capitalist system has assured that the vast majority of Homo sapiens roaming the American tundra and in the concrete canyons of our big cities have coverage. Contrast this with any third world country or Compton, where people are allowed to die in the streets, this accomplishment of capitalism is compelling.

This perspective is not discussed by Obama. Politicians avoid perspective because it has the nasty habit of preventing legislative larceny. Thus they rely on large, scary sounding numbers routinely amplified with words like ‘crisis’. Barack and other capital courtesans have of late been repeating the sound bite that ‘there are 45 million uninsured Americans.’

Obama’s cure costs a mere $1.6 trillion dollars.

(A brief aside. Long ago a sitting senator joked “A billion here, a billion there, and soon we’re talking real money.” In the last year we have routinely talked about trillions, thanks to a series of government interventions into non-catastrophes. Obama is capitalizing on our collective fiscal desensitization. After all, what’s a trillion dollars between friends and future serfs?)

A trillion and a half bucks is a big investment even by beltway budget standards. Since this is coming out of your pocket, it might be worth examining who these 45 million uninsured people are. You deserve to know – you are their financier (click the chart to get a bigger picture of the fraud de jour).

According to the Census Bureau, there is a little north of 300 million head of humans in The States. Subtract Obama’s alleged 45 million uninsured individuals and you can calculate that 85% have coverage. Various governments insure or repair roughly another 5% through existing programs like Medicare or through prison infirmaries (these estimates are based on government statistics concerning safety net healthcare programs and national incarceration rates).

There are also a significant number – about half – of young adults who can afford to buy insurance but opt not to. Young men and women have other priorities, namely stylish clothing and copious alcohol consumption. The alcohol is a primary tool to get other young adults to remove their stylish clothing.

As interesting as the mating habits of the young and inebriated may be, their uninsured status is completely voluntary. In California, one of the more expensive states in which to be insured, a twenty-something specimen in their vertical and clothed condition can walk into any insurance office and buy a major medical policy for $100 a month. Unclothed applicants might receive a discount. That young adult’s priorities are slightly misplaced is predictable, amusing but not a public policy issue.

This leaves about 5% American residents – as opposed to Americans – uninsured and not covered by existing government programs. This five percent is approximately 16 million mortals, which oddly enough is roughly the number of assumed illegal aliens in residence.

Divide a few of these numbers and you discover that over the ten year budget horizon, Obama plans to purchase insurance for structurally uninsured individuals at a rate of $833 per person per month, or about eight times the going commercial rate. Oddly this speaks well of Obama’s plan given most government run programs are not nearly this financially efficient.

Nobody is accusing Obama of trying to pick the national pocket to support and encourage illegal immigrants and immigration. We have to take Obama on his word the he intends to have the government underwrite 45 million folk. To do so would require insuring those who can afford it, effectively transforming independent and self-sufficient young citizens into a dependant class. Minting disciples among the young is an effective means to manufacture loyalty.

Just ask Nicolae Ceauşescu, though his final outcome was not entirely to his liking.

Let’s assume for a moment that the structurally uninsured could skim by on major medical coverage and that their rates are not much different than most middle aged men. Sixteen million mammals could be covered for the relatively low sum of $19 billion over a ten year stretch, or about 1% of what Obama wants to squander.

A trillion here, and a trillion there. Pretty soon we’re talking about Obama’s budget.

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It never troubles me to call out a liar. When they work in the media it is a downright pleasure.

This tiny tale relates the troubled souls of the Oakland Tribune, two of their writers and its Gollum editor Martin Reynolds. Martin’s misdeeds are a case study in why old media in general and newspapers in particular are a dying breed.

In May the Trib ran an article penned in tag team by two of their journalist. I misuse the term journalist herein because what they wrote in no way resembles reporting. The topic of their corrupt correspondence was gun control, and the piece was proffered in advance of a mayoral campaign by a well known advocate of gun control. I will not accuse these literary desperadoes of prostituting themselves for a politician, especially one known as the “Bay Area Bagman” and under investigation by the FBI. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if these hacks turned a trick, bending over for an elected thief.

Their reporting was contemptible correspondence. This peculiar piece did not meet minimal journalistic standards and was beyond slanted. Any reporter with integrity would have sought balanced sources, multiple perspectives and dug under the issue’s skin. These folks didn’t bother to look beneath their own distorted and seemingly psychotic version of reality. They spoke only to representatives of the gun control industry, misstated facts, cited unreliable sources and quoted discredited researchers.

They may well have smoked their breakfast. After all, they work in Oaksterdam.

I popped off a tirade to the Trib, demanding they print a retraction. I knew exactly what I was asking and did not take my demand lightly. A retraction is an admission of guilt by a newspaper for printing something they shouldn’t have. In the case of this pile of journalistic dung, a retraction was in order. A retraction, an apology, several thousand Hail Marys and possibly even a human sacrifice — the Trib had two reporters who were worthy candidates for the latter.

Martin Reynolds, the editor of the Oakland Tribune, emailed me shortly thereafter, saying in part:

However, the points you have made from what I can tell don’t come close to constituting the need for a retraction. You may not agree with the tenor of the story, or agree with the way it was sourced and what information was not reported, but writing a story in this manner does not warrant a retraction. Not even close.

Martin conveniently missed the point. I never complained about the “tenor” of the piece. I complained that their reporters abdicated their responsibilities as journalist. Anyone even faintly acquainted the political football of gun control would agree that the Oakland Tribune’s reporting lay somewhere between negligent and fraudulent. Martin might not appreciate blunt assessments of his staff’s shortcomings as journalists and human beings, but he misrepresented the nature of the problem and complaint as slickly as his two reporters misrepresented everything.

He also did not bother to question his questioner. Had he performed two seconds of investigative journalism himself, he would have ascertained my position as one of the Bay Area’s top gun control policy experts (I even used my GunFacts.info email address, which should have been his first lead) and one who had published op/eds in his paper previously. This miscue became comically evident when he finished his email with:

And I don’t think you read the story very closely if you think the reporter equated guns shows (sic) with guns on the streets.

Silly me for not closely reading the article before demanding a retraction, and in the process detailing why the article was beneath the lowest of journalistic bars as well as contempt.

I fired off a reply to Martin offering that he or his minions contradict my observation. I suggested the Oakland Tribune serialize the article, having the original reporters interview criminologists with opposing views on the sources for crime guns, or at very least explain why they were excluded in the original story. I strongly suggested that his reporters at very least ask gun-owners rights groups for data that might counterpoint the sound bites they had blindly parroted for the Brady Campaign, the Violence Policy Center and the Joyce Foundation-funded university medical researcher they quoted.

Martin was unimpressed with my suggestion that his reporters commit work or journalism. He did take up my gauntlet, and replied:

As editor of this newspaper I endeavor to give voice to as many perspectives as possible. May I also suggest you write a letter to the editor, or a short 500 word opinion piece we call a “My Word” stating your views and concerns with the story. I would be happy to make sure it gets on our opinion page.

I emphasize the last sentence as prelude and the cornerstone of evidence that Martin Reynolds has no respect for his own integrity or that of his profession.

Most people would be intimidated by his offer. Being a writer, a gun policy expert and more than ready to lead public opinion back from the intellectual wastelands into which the Oakland Tribune led them, I sent off a piece within a couple of days. I did not attack the Trib, its writers or even Martin. I simply positioned the facts behind Oakland’s crime wave and how gun control was not the answer. As always, I tailed the submission with a small stack of citations from quality research and government sources. I sent the piece in reply email to Martin, copying his promise to publish. Then I waited.

And waited, and waited, and …

I gave Martin nearly a month to reply and/or publish, pinging him upon occasion, checking the Tribune web site and even resubmitting the op/ed through their online interface. Nada. I searched the Oakland Trib web site daily using both my name and various keywords to find my response to their journalistic lapse.

I finally gave up, rewrote the piece, submitted it to the San Francisco Chronicle. They printed it shortly thereafter.

Allow a tally:

• The Oakland Tribune published a piece of journalistic effluvium
• An expert on the topic complained
• The editor of the Trib promised to publish an opposing perspective
• The editor reneged on his promise

The price one places on their self-respect varies from person to person. The average man won’t sell his at any price. A politician or an Oakland Tribune reporter sells theirs at a discount. A street walker sells hers for spare change. But the editor of the Oakland Tribune gains not a penny for his – he cannot sell what he does not posses.

If you feel compelled to remind Marin that journalistic integrity is essential, feel free to pop him a note at mreynolds@bayareanewsgroup.com.

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George Bush the 1^st learned that mucking in markets is madness.

Bush the Elder imposed a 10% luxury tax during his only term as President. This tax on consumption by well-heeled folk had the peculiar effect of eliminating most of the Florida yacht building industry. Wealthy people (Republican-defined wealthy, not Democrat-defined) ran the numbers, determined they could buy yachts in neighboring countries for less and take a nice little vacation to pick up their boat with the spare change. And they did.

Fiberglass layers, engine mechanics, and sail makers … you know, the blue collar vote … all lost their jobs while Sunshine State yacht building companies tanked.

If anyone is wondering why gasoline prices are so high these days, a good first place to look is government and how they have mucked in the markets.

China admitted as much today as they raised gasoline prices by 18%, which is not a price hike at all.

China and India both are in hyper growth modes. Since most of their population is poor, and since continued industrialization requires energy and transportation, these countries subsidize gasoline prices. So does Iran, Venezuela, and other nations run by advanced-stage syphilis patients.

Gasoline in those countries is less expensive than the market would otherwise demand, and as a result, gas and oil consumption is higher than it would otherwise be. This artificially high demand creates artificial shortages, which causes prices to artificially rise.

Oil has risen, climbing 100% in the last year alone.

An unintended consequence of market meddling is that the difference in the artificially low price of gasoline and the artificially high price of oil is paid for by these insane regimes. This is the real reason why China is reducing subsidies in order to raise prices: they can’t afford to keep paying the ransom they created.

Monkey with any self-balancing system (like an open market economy) and the system falls out of balance. Typically it falls on the people who tossed the monkey wrench into the machinery.

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