Archive for the ‘internet/free speech’ Category

Obama, Birthers and Batman

Posted: December 4, 2009 by datechguy in internet/free speech, opinion/news
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I started collecting comics around 1975 when I was 12. Unlike the “cool” comic collectors I was a DC guy and one of the things I enjoyed was a lot was Batman. One story always stuck with me and that was in Batman 283.

The story “Omega Bomb Target: Gotham City” was a neat story about a blackmail attempt on Gotham city. A Hungarian nuclear scientist is kidnapped by a group who anchors a ship supposedly containing a nuclear device in Gotham harbor. They demand a ransom of 1 billion dollars. (As you can see they were way ahead of Dr. Evil).

Batman manages to rescue professor Nagy he is out of it but keeps muttering “Nembomba”. Batman then boards the ship and catches the baddies because “Nembomba” means “No Bomb”.

Batman explains to Commissioner Gordan that it was all a bluff saying:

What’s the next best thing to having the bomb? Convincing everyone else you have the bomb.”

Although Saddam might disagree that line stuck with me all these years and brings to mind the whole Birther issue.

I have already said that President Obama was born in the US, his overseas travel (passports requires birth certificates) and the birth announcement from the paper all in the days before his prominence are to me strong and the Clinton’s non action with the presidency at stake make it conclusive.

One question often asked is why doesn’t the president just release the original records? Hotair’s explanation:

The biggest reason? It wouldn’t work. The same people who believe that Obama forged a Certificate of Live Birth twice corroborated by the state that issued it will insist that Obama got someone to forge any new records produced by Hawaii as well. It’s the same reason that having Palin produce her gynecological records won’t satisfy Andrew Sullivan and why producing the phone records from United 93 families to prove that they haven’t been in contact with the supposedly still-alive-but-hiding passengers on the 9/11 flight won’t change Truther minds. The conspiracy theorists have far too much invested in their argument to retreat.

Good argument but WRONG! The president isn’t holding back because it is futile, he’s holding back because it is not.

It a bluff. They WANT this stuff to suck as many people into it as possible. Every day that people are talking about “Birth” stuff is a day they don’t have to talk about every dumb this president is doing. I said this back on July 28th and it’s even more true today. Today’s 1-2 punch on MSNBC is a great example of this. This is Longstreet waiting for the last Union reserves to go in before using his artillery to break them at 2nd Bull Run.

If the truthers are confined to cranks like Philip Berg who is just out to con people out of a buck, then the Obama administration gets no political capital out of it. If by suspicious behavior and omissions they can arouse interest in the general conservative movement then it can be a winner. This can only be done if people think there is something being hidden, or to paraphrase Batman above:

What’s the next best thing to having a hidden smoking gun? Making everyone THINK you have a hidden smoking gun.

The best part about it is they can wait till there is a big fish deep in the net before landing them and can play it any time in the next 3 years or beyond as needed.

The entire birther business is a trap and conservatives, would be smart to avoid it.

Palin is discrediting “Science”…

Posted: December 4, 2009 by datechguy in internet/free speech, opinion/news

…by going after Copenhagen, says Morning Joe. Apparently according to Dr. Jeffery Sacks their guest is saying that we on the right are “politicizing science”.

I must admit I’ve very surprised, I expected to a very different direction. The primary target is the Wall Street Journal:

Surely there must have been serious men and women in the hard sciences who at some point worried that their colleagues in the global warming movement were putting at risk the credibility of everyone in science. The nature of that risk has been twofold: First, that the claims of the climate scientists might buckle beneath the weight of their breathtaking complexity. Second, that the crudeness of modern politics, once in motion, would trample the traditions and culture of science to achieve its own policy goals. With the scandal at the East Anglia Climate Research Unit, both have happened at once.

the Journal is a serious paper so they are using the fact that Palin has spoken out on it they are using it to discredit the people who are bringing up these objections.

Apparently the Jon Stewart situation was too critical to ignore!

What is going on here is generally known as “projection”.

I didn’t get to Morning Joe right away so I see the plan, Politico first hits the Palin interview story. This allows the use of one to discredit the other, smart move by NBC, the Green Network. (At 7 a.m. they plugged the Palin interview so that must be the plan.

With new speculation and confidence collapsing publicly they have to move quickly this is their move to stem the tie.

Funny they didn’t have much to say about the journal when they talked about dissenters on the subject SIX MONTHS AGO:

The collapse of the “consensus” has been driven by reality. The inconvenient truth is that the earth’s temperatures have flat-lined since 2001, despite growing concentrations of C02. Peer-reviewed research has debunked doomsday scenarios about the polar ice caps, hurricanes, malaria, extinctions, rising oceans. A global financial crisis has politicians taking a harder look at the science that would require them to hamstring their economies to rein in carbon.

Credit for Australia’s own era of renewed enlightenment goes to Dr. Ian Plimer, a well-known Australian geologist. Earlier this year he published “Heaven and Earth,” a damning critique of the “evidence” underpinning man-made global warming. The book is already in its fifth printing. So compelling is it that Paul Sheehan, a noted Australian columnist — and ardent global warming believer — in April humbly pronounced it “an evidence-based attack on conformity and orthodoxy, including my own, and a reminder to respect informed dissent and beware of ideology subverting evidence.” Australian polls have shown a sharp uptick in public skepticism; the press is back to questioning scientific dogma; blogs are having a field day.

Why not? Because they didn’t have the Palin combo to hit them back with and Jon Stewart pushing the scandal to the fore.

BTW you will not I didn’t label this one Palin derangement syndrome in tags, that’s because the interview is a legit story.

I guess Jon Stewart was right …

Posted: December 3, 2009 by datechguy in internet/free speech, opinion/news
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…Al Gore defeated by the very internet he invented:

Berlingske Media må med beklagelse meddele, at Al Gore har aflyst sit arrangement. De over 3.000 læsere, der har købt billet, får pengene retur.

For those of you who don’t speak Danish Don Surber has a translation:

Berlingske regret to announce that Al Gore has canceled his event. The more than 3,000 readers who bought a ticket, get money back.

Al Gore has this morning told Berlingske Media’s great annoyance has canceled his planned major climate talks for Danes 16th December 1 Tap in the old Carlsberg because, under the title “Climate Conclusion”.

Cancellation comes with regard to unforeseen changes in Al Gore’s program for the climate summit, COP 15.

If Gore who is rightly considered the single most expert pol on the subject is running scared from uncomfortable defending his Global Warming stance in the face of the scandal then what chance to other pols have?

The fall of house of cards can’t be far behind.

Via Prison Planet where I found it first. Can’t find an English language paper with it yet.

Update: Newsbusters and Nicedeb have it now.

Update 2: the Washington times has it now as does Memeorandum., would have had it sooner but cooked dinner and spent the last 100 minutes on the phone with a charming Catholic lady.

I guess they must be Rihanna fans

Posted: December 3, 2009 by datechguy in internet/free speech, oddities, opinion/news
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What are the odds of this post and this story coming on the same day?

Police in Greensburg said a 14-year-old girl and two 15-year-old girls at Greensburg Salem High School sent the pictures to their teenage boyfriends, who are 15, 16 and 17 years old. None is being identified because most criminal cases in Pennsylvania juvenile courts are not made public.

Police said the teens are part of a new trend known as “sexting.”

“It’s very dangerous. Once it’s on a cell phone, it can be put on the Internet where everybody in the world can get access to that picture. You don’t realize what you’re doing until it’s already done,” said Capt. George Seranko of the Greensburg Police Department.

Hey given the choice of listening to Rihanna; a well known pop star, or some old unemployed guy who doesn’t even know the difference between Lady Gaga and Christiana Aguilara, whose advice to you expect them to take?

Via the Incredibly not work safe Doc Weasel blog. The relevant post is the one before this work safe one. The fact that there is no direct link tells you how work safe the post is.

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