Without even invoking the angst the media had over climategate emails, where somebody simply got fed up with the constant illegal sidestepping of FOI requests and dumped the whole lot…
FOIA said
November 17, 2009 at 9:57 pm e
We feel that climate science is, in the current situation, too important to be kept under wraps.
We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, code, and documents. Hopefully it will give some insight into the science and the people behind it.
…we have this comment via Instapundit about the current state of affairs related to obtaining public emails:
BLOG COMMENT OF THE DAY: “The Washington Post thinks it’s ‘harassment’ to request Michael Mann’s files from the University of Virginia (their Memorial Day editorial) but it’s cool with requesting and obtaining and asking for citizen-journalists to go through 24,000 of the State of Alaska’s emails involving Sarah Palin.”
I never thought I’d see any comparison of any kind between Michael Mann and Sarah Palin, and yet, here we are.
ZT says:
June 12, 2011 at 7:45 am
Sarah is a hockey Mom and Mann is a hockey
Dadpuck._____________________________________________
Fixed that for ya.
Instapundit is my all time favorite blog. Legal Insurrection, where the comment came from, is terrific as well.
Chris F says:
June 12, 2011 at 5:56 am
The left are the most hypocritical and hateful people we have in this country and they continue to expose themselves as such every day.
I would like to commend to you the idea of avoiding that generalisation in future.
It smears the actions of what I presume are just one reporter across 72 million Democrats the way warmists smear West Antarctic temperatures across the entire continent. Of those 72 million, almost every single individual believes themself to be a person of intelligence, goodwill and integrity. They know that since your claim about them is false, they can’t trust you on any other subject either.
American political discourse is farcically extreme at the moment, with each side assailing their opposition as if they were a uniform block.
Democrats are demonised as pro-abortion, anti employment, anti free market, gullible global warming suckers, hypocrites, etc.
On any issue that’s important to you, there will be some individuals ‘on the left’ who will agree with you about that issue.
The Party that will win your next election will be the ones who canpersuade their opposotion that they share some common ground with them.
In this case, I recommend “All people of good will, whether left or right, must reject the hypocrisy and double standard displayed here.” And you know- many on the left will agree with you, and think ‘tthe right is not just a bunch of ignorant bigots after all.”
all animals are equal.. except for pigs which are more equal….
Inquring minds want to know! How much money does Sarah Palin spend on manicures? Where does she buy her shoes? What’s the gossip on that hubby anyway???
Who cares about boring science! Everyone knows global warming is real.
But, anyway, back to the Palin’s. Does anyone know where she got her cool phone??? My credit card is burning a hole in my pocket… let’s go shopping!!!
Pingo says:
June 12, 2011 at 6:15 am
That was the first thing i thought when the BBC talked about the ‘release’ of Sarah’s emails. I don’t know much about american politics, but the hypocrisy stank with their differing treatment between that and Climategate.
==============================================================================
Sarah Palin is a lightening rod in American politics. While I don’t believe she’s electable to the highest office, she carries with her a very significant following and voter bloc. Any conservative seeking the presidency should also visibly seek her endorsement. She can activate a base like no one else. She also evokes some incredibly irrational behavior from our friends on the left. Hypocrisy knows no bounds when regarding Mrs. Palin. As witnessed by this asinine e-mail request. Heck, we can’t get our president to release his academic records, but they’re going to sift through 24,000 e-mails of an ex-Governor of our least populated state. And they think we’re harassing MM……. go figure. If she misstates something, its headline news. In all 57 states. Why just the other day in a helicopter under live fire……… even after we landed we were getting shot at…….
For those not familiar, the 57 state quote is attributable our president.(We only have 50.) The two helicopter offerings are fabrications given by our vice president and secretary of state trying to pretend they were some sort of war heroes or something. Apparently, for our MSM it is more acceptable to be lied to or that our smartest president evuh doesn’t know his constituency, or basic geography than it is to not be able to recollect all of the magazines we read.
Yes, Monique, I am of Italian descent and I live in New York (state) but no, juanslayton, I am not retired. Hunting and gathering here are not very profitable as the US and NY take about 80 cents of every dollar earned. Upstate New Yorkers are beaten and squeezed until every possible drop of wealth is extracted.
Our property taxes (my county has the highest in the nation) run at about 4% of assessed value while downstate (NYC area) and the capital district (where the cheating, lying scumbags (politicians)) live are taxed at about 1.5%.
Politicians aren’t intelligent, atleast not in the way most posters here are. They are adept at misrepresenting facts, awarding contracts to cronies, receiving kickbacks and trying to sell the populace on absurdities (the need for gay marriage as the most viable path to economic prosperity) as opposed to addressing real problems (massive debt and unfathomable amounts in unfunded obligations).
Welcome to my world. As a small business owner, I get a little depressed at times but, the Finger Lakes region is spectacular in the summer.
Thanks Sal, that was real.
I don’t think the managers of the Washington Post know how immature they appear. In their rush to destroy what they don’t agree with and to protect liberal causes at all costs, they have destroyed their business.
This was instantly apparent to me, as well.
Sarah Palin has real fire, and has demonstrated it.
Michael Mann pretends to have fire, but won’t show it.
Could the two be any more different?
Accurate portrayal is not demonization, however, contrary to continued claims and assertions by those being accurately portrayed (a stuck pig crying the loudest and all that) …
.
John_in_Oz says:
June 12, 2011 at 8:39 am
“American political discourse is farcically extreme at the moment, with each side assailing their opposition as if they were a uniform block. The Party that will win your next election will be the ones who can persuade their opposotion (sic) that they share some common ground with them.”
John,
The US of A is nearly bankrupt, from decades of the ‘right’ compromising with the socialist left. The socialist left ‘compromises’ only when it advances their agenda. Otherwise, they divide the voters by pitting race against race, young against old, rich against poor, women against men, children against parents, union members against the majority of hardworking independent workers, legal immigrants and native born citizens against illegal aliens, public sector spending versus private sector creation of wealth, jobs, and tax revenues, etc., etc., etc.
Fundamentally, the ongoing argument is about how we achieve our ‘unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’. Socialists seek government intervention, to redistribute wealth from citizens that earned it to citizens and noncitizens that did not, and create endless layers of regulations to prevent anything they perceive as unacceptable to a socialist society. They are never happy with their ‘successes’, always seeking greater redistribution of wealth and greater regulation of the society. Their unhappiness reflects their conscious and subconscious recognition that they have forfeited their liberty and much control of their life, for the trap of a wealth consuming and often failing government delivery of unearned socialist handouts. Socialism has created a morbidly obese culture and government. The road to economic and cultural health now requires harsh measures to ‘cut the fat’ and restore a lean, agile, and powerful US of A. Do you think we can convince the socialist opposition that our shared common ground is a return to individual responsibility for our lives, much smaller and less intrusive government, and less constraints on capitalism?
The time for ‘compromise’ is past. We are on the cusp of economically and socially destroying our country. From here on, we must progressively dismantle the strangling burdens of socialist welfare programs and socialist regulations and free ourselves of these self-defeating burdens. The socialists will not ‘compromise’ on this. Confrontation is unavoidable…. but absolutely essential, lest this unique first experiment in our representative republic form of state and federal governments perish forever from the face of the earth.
Conservatives greatly outnumber Liberals in America: click
Comparison between the Weenie-in-Chief on a girl’s bike, and a real American on a real bike: click ☺
John_in_Oz says:
June 12, 2011 at 8:39 am
Chris F says:
June 12, 2011 at 5:56 am
The left are the most hypocritical and hateful people we have in this country and they continue to expose themselves as such every day.
“I would like to commend to you the idea of avoiding that generalisation in future.
It smears the actions of what I presume are just one reporter across 72 million Democrats the way warmists smear West Antarctic temperatures across the entire continent. Of those 72 million, almost every single individual believes themself to be a person of intelligence, goodwill and integrity. They know that since your claim about them is false, they can’t trust you on any other subject either.
American political discourse is farcically extreme at the moment, with each side assailing their opposition as if they were a uniform block.”
The ignorance shown in this comment, whether willful or not, is breath-taking. The Left has been led since at least the 1960s by Alinskyites who practice semantic warfare to a degree that would have startled Orwell. In Orwell’s time, you had to have the guns to back you up before you could practice unbridled semantic warfare. No longer. Now you have the president of the USA, the AG, all of the Cabinet really, the military Chiefs of Staff, and the entire Democratic hierarchy practicing Semantic Warfare against ordinary language and the nation. What proof do I have?
How about Joe Lieberman? What more do you need? How about “wise latina?’ But here is the clincher. The Alinskyite Left created Rush Limbaugh. They did so through their remarkably aggressive and arrogant debasement of the language. PC means that the Alinskyite Left is permitted to designate what can be said and what cannot be said. Limbaugh lives off the Left’s folly. All he has to do is highlight the most recent egregious piece of semantic legislation and analyze it in terms of ordinary language. That’s all he does. Out of that material he produces great political analysis and hilarious send-ups. Limbaugh is simply ordinary language’s response to the Alinskyite Humpty-Dumpty who insists that words mean exactly what he/she says they mean, nothing more and nothing less.
What does this have to do with climate science? Warmista practice in exactly the same way as the Alinskyite Left. They reserve to themselves the meanings of the terms found in the science. Dispute one of their claims and they will respond in the most arrogant way with the Village Idiot’s typical Begging of the Question by asserting that you do not understand their meaning. Well, Duh, by their definition we do not understand their meaning, until we learn to applaud at the right spots – that is all the understanding that we are permitted and that we deserve. Warmista are now locked inside their Gaia Models and have no contact with human experience of the world. That is by design. Otherwise, they would have to explicate their claims in ordinary language. That they adamantly refuse to do. The extreme example of this sort of thing is Post-Modern Science, so-called, which wants to clear the boards of scientific method, cumulative Natural History, and all empirical evidence. However, scratch the surface of PMS and all you find are relabeled versions of William James’ work found in his article “The Will to Believe.” For example, “The Precautionary Principle” is nothing more than a recycled decision matrix from Jame’s explication of Pascal’s Wager. Will they discuss James? Heavens no! Why? Because their ability to legislate the meanings of terms would be limited by James’ writings and, therefore, their non-reasoning would be laid bare for the world to see.
You doubt the claim that the Democratic hierarchy has bought into Semantic Warfare? Then tell me what the heck “individual mandate” means. Explicate it in ordinary language.
After not finding anything suitable for a character assassination, Der Spiegel decided to call Sarah Palin’s life “banal”. You gotta have something negative to say about your political opponent.
This is a sad day for leftist journalism and for leftism.
The mainstream media won’t cover stories like this:
Obama has added $2.3 Trillion in new debt in only two years, and has now begun a 4th undeclared war. He’s worse for America than Jimmy Carter, who was only incompetent. Obama is plainly anti-American.
And an interesting take on the Palin email feeding frenzy.
For anyone wondering if there is a bias in the media they only have to look at how ClimateGate emails vs. Palin emails are handled. Did the media even look up even one of the ClimateGate emails let alone scour all of them and ask the public for help in scouring them like they are doing with the Sarah Palin emails?
oh for corn sake, I’ve had about enough gee golly references to hockey sticks and gosh darn violence today, so put a sock in it there, or somebody’s going to get their patoot loaded into the hooskow!
That said, you folks seem to be a hecka fun crowd, doncha know, so I’m going to be inviting you to enjoy a little roller hockey (I know – rooooooller skates! but it’s better than nothin’ gee-golly!) out at Hamilton City where the North Valley Hockey kids will be setting up their rink and getting ready to play teams from towns like Antioch and Woodland and even Sonora. These kids are so gosh-darn excited to play hockey they’ll not only do it in roller skates they’ll do it in whatever old warehouse you got – lumber mill, old cold storage unit, whatever you got. We’ll rink it up and put down a few old folding chairs for gramma and grampa and there you go – HOCKEY! Right here in the rice fields of Northern California.
You can also check out the “recreation league” at Cal Skate, that’s starts up again next fall. And there’s a grown-up league. You want to hear something even crazier? Little girls and nice ladies play too! Sugar and spice and SLAPSHOTS!
Of course, we’re soliciting donations – hey, be the first one to get your fancy big ad on our wall of fame! See our website at http://nvhsc.org/
Yep, shameless plug, geeshy sakes!
So, you kids mind your p’s and q’s and keep that stick on the…er….cement… THANKS ANTHONY! Hope to see you rinkside!
Latitude says:
June 12, 2011 at 7:13 am
This is funny….
…..something for the MSM to talk about besides………..
“Anthony Weiner (Pelosi’s pet attack dog) of New York on Saturday said he was entering a psychological treatment center and seeking a leave of absence from the House to deal with a …
Hey Latitude would it be this?
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=family+guy+++spicy+weiner&sk=&mid=4B6BC28B0F26DE31CEC94B6BC28B0F26DE31CEC9&FORM=LKVR#
Mike Mangan says:
June 12, 2011 at 8:25 am
“Instapundit is my all time favorite blog.”
I second that…Instapundit is my go-to blog for…well…nearly everything (I come to WUWT for climate news :^)!
One Instapundit staple that we should adopt here at WUWT is the term “Unexpectedly.” For example, we all know the economy is lousy, but Reuters, AP, and other MSM outlets always include this term in their headlines when they can’t figure out why the economy is not doing better under Obama, as in “Unemployment unexpectedly rises to 9%!”
So, we should apply the term to events which confound the climate alarmists, such as “Snowpack in Colorado is unexpectedly at record levels!” or “The rate of sea level rise declines unexpectedly!”
Smokey says:
June 12, 2011 at 11:54 am
Come to think of it, Smokey, the reason they are busying themselves with her emails is that she gets into their heads and ruins their game plan. John Madden has often referred to this phenomena during SuperBowls. The wheels really come off when it happens.
Her latest stint of touring the country (conveniently not campaigning or talking to the MSM) has them baffled.
They don’t have an app for that.
Frank K. says:
June 12, 2011 at 2:29 pm
Good suggestion! A little push-back in the semantic war.
From attack dog to wiener-dog!
(The Rake’s Progress)
Theo Goodwin.
Thanks for bringing up Alinsky…I’ll check him out.
But I should add that the creative use of language by the Greens leaves the rest of us dangling in the wind.
My two favourite examples of this type of ‘semantic warfare’ are:
‘Greenpeace’…how can anyone be opposed to GREEN PEACE?…Because of the way language works – being opposed to Green Peace means that you are in favour of BROWN WAR (or thereabouts).
But their greatest success, the area where they have literally taken the high ground…is the term GREEN HOUSE EFFECT. Anyone who has ever entered a greenhouse knows it is a HEAT TRAP and that the heat is trapped by a physical barrier…anyone who understands the actual science of convection and radiation understands that what happens five or ten miles above our heads is complex but that there is no physical barrier to heat loss between the atmosphere and space. Maybe this is why they don’t like us flying…that temperature gauge on the inflight display is very educational! Even skeptical scientists are forced to used terms like ‘greenhouse gases’.
Until such times as we come up with better terminology to describe our atmospheric ‘blanket’ we cannot win over the doubters.