A Quick Tour of the 'Sphere and "My Environment"

An interesting deconstruction of an AP article by John Hinderaker at Power Line entitled “Media Bias: How It Works.”

Yesterday, in an interview with the Associated Press, one of the world's leading weather experts, Dr. William Gray, blasted Al Gore for perpetrating global warming hysteria. Since Dr. Gray is generally recognized as the world's leading expert in the science of forecasting hurricanes, this is news. But let's examine how the AP handled it in the article that resulted from their interview.

[…]

Gray is implicitly depicted as a crank; he "rails." Note that the hysterical and ill-informed Gore never "rails." Further, Gray "has long railed," which suggests that, rather than being a consistent critic of an unproven theory, he is a tiresome eccentric whose views have been heard and discounted.

Instructive, and one of the reasons why “keeping abreast of the issues” is much more work than it should be. There isn’t much, if any, hard news published by Big Media that can be taken at face value. One must question, evaluate, and seek other points of view before making up one’s mind. But then I guess it’s always been this way. It just seems worse these days…

Beating back stupidity in Colorado… I’m a lil late to this party (as usual), but there’s reason to hope all is not lost in America. I’m not going to reconstruct the chain of events surrounding the statue of fallen hero Danny P. Dietz, Gunner's Mate Second Class, United States Navy. Ms. Malkin has already done it and provides relevant citations and links.

Petty Officer Dietz, a Navy SEAL who was killed in Afghanistan, was awarded the Navy Cross for actions “above and beyond.” The flap arose because a proposed statue honoring PO Dietz in his home town of Littleton, CO, depicted him carrying his M-16. The Peace-At-Any-Cost crowd didn’t like the war-like implications of the statue, suggesting that a “peace dove” would be more appropriate:

"We're continuing to try to spread our message," Cassidy said. "The message is not against Danny Dietz, his family or the war. It's location, location and the audience that will view it."

..."A statue of a soldier holding a child would send a better message," said Calvin Freehling, a Vietnam veteran from Indianola, Neb., who e-mailed The Denver Post. "An automatic weapon doesn't signify protection. It signifies violence. I'm 64 years old now, and I'm tired of violence."

Ann Levy of Denver, who calls herself a "peacenik," would like to see Dietz's sacrifice honored in a different way.

"They should be putting up a peace dove instead," she said. "The question is do we stand for peace or do we stand for war?"

Common sense prevailed in the end, thankfully. Read the whole thing if you haven’t been there yet.

Just Sayin’…over at Reason Magazine:

Environmentalists constantly reference the scientific consensus that human activity is changing the global climate.

"You have the strongest consensus we have seen in the science community about global climate change since the conclusion that tobacco caused lung cancer," asserts Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) president Kevin Knobloch. Greenpeace also argues, "There is, in fact, a broad and overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is occurring, is caused in large part by human activities." And Friends of the Earth has gone after Exxon Mobil because it "has repeatedly attempted to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change and actively resisted attempts to limit carbon dioxide emissions through law."

Clearly when it comes to climate change, environmentalists righteously wrap themselves in the cloak of scientific "consensus." They excoriate scientists and others who doubt that man-made climate change will necessarily be disastrous, accusing some of being essentially paid liars for the fossil fuel industry. But for many environmentalist groups not all scientific consensuses are equal. Consider the case of genetically enhanced crops.

There are lotsa good links above, and in the rest of the article. The article is much more about GMOs [genetically modified organisms] than it is about anthropogenic climate change. Still and even, the point is well-made about “scientific consensus.” Doom-and-gloom mongers can’t have it both ways, now, can they? But it certainly appears to be that way…

And last, but certainly NOT least…an essay entitled Dealing with Leftists who "Support the Troops" over at American Thinker. Excerpt:

One of the biggest problems we conservatives have always faced is language. Conservatives all too often allow liberals to bamboozle us into arguing issues on liberal terms.

For example: why are we even discussing the "war in Iraq"? What is going on now is not war, but reconstruction. Or more precisely, providing military security for Iraq's social, political and economic reconstruction. The war was clearly over at "Mission Accomplished", and we quickly pulled our major hardware presence from the arena.

[…]

So when a liberal says to me that (altogether now) "I support the troops, just not the mission", I don't lie to them anymore.

And one particular conversation I recently had with a liberal went like this:

"I support the troops, just not the mission"
"Nice patriotism."
"That's mean!"
"It's the truth."
"You can't question my patriotism!"
"Then stop saying unpatriotic things!"
"Just because I question the President doesn't make me unpatriotic!"
"No... but trying to subvert his constitutional authority and foreign policy just because you disagree, does."
"You make it sound like I'm a traitor."
"How would your behavior be different if you were?"

That usually stops them right there, at least for a moment.

But last Martin Luther King Day, I received a gift of inspiration. I finally found a way to make a liberal understand. I'm not sure if I changed his mind, but he hasn't mentioned it since.

Read on… It ain’t a foolproof way to disconcert those who “support the troops but not their mission,” but it’s the best I’ve seen lately.

Today’s Pic(s): Photo Number One is what I euphemistically call the verandah…it’s where I take my morning coffee and the odd cigar/single malt/Fat Tire in the evenings, now that the weather has (hah!) warmed up. Not today!

Photo Number Two is the way El Casa Móvil De Pennington looks, as we speak.

Just… you know… for the record. About ten minutes ago.