Political Roundtable Part XII

[gtn130]

World Leaders Duped into Investing Billions over Manipulated Global Warming Data

The Mail on Sunday today reveals astonishing evidence that the organisation that is the world’s leading source of climate data rushed to publish a landmark paper that exaggerated global warming and was timed to influence the historic Paris Agreement on climate change.

A high-level whistleblower has told this newspaper that America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) breached its own rules on scientific integrity when it published the sensational but flawed report, aimed at making the maximum possible impact on world leaders including Barack Obama and David Cameron at the UN climate conference in Paris in 2015.

The report claimed that the ‘pause’ or ‘slowdown’ in global warming in the period since 1998 – revealed by UN scientists in 2013 – never existed, and that world temperatures had been rising faster than scientists expected. Launched by NOAA with a public relations fanfare, it was splashed across the world’s media, and cited repeatedly by politicians and policy makers.

But the whistleblower, Dr John Bates, a top NOAA scientist with an impeccable reputation, has shown The Mail on Sunday irrefutable evidence that the paper was based on misleading, ‘unverified’ data.

wow i could have never predicted in a million years that nate would be a climate change denier

[nate33]

https://xkcd.com/1357/

Strawman. Neither Milo nor anyone else is arguing that his 1st Amendment rights are being infringed. People can boycott Milo all they want. What's unacceptable is rioting, vandalism and assault. Those are crimes unrelated to the 1st Amendment.

One can also question whether public institutions funded by the taxpayer have the right to infringe free political speech.

You think people have an inherent right to give political speeches at UC Berkeley's campus?

I think the government has a say in who gets to give political speeches at Berkeley if Berkeley is being funded by government sources. Having government sponsor only left wing political speech is a violation of the 1st Amendment.

[gtn130]

it's amazing how all these trump acolytes think they're SO WOKE questioning the LAMESTREAM MEDIA and then towing the party line for their man Trump on every. single. issue. stay woke, bros!

[Zonkerbl]

So, cowardly online bully anonymously insults other person who makes statement against online bullying.

Brave.

What happened to it takes two to tango? Whatever, I don't really want to go back and forth with you, I don't think anyone else cares. My bad.

I'll unilaterally forgive you because you have a history of talking out of your butt. I would recommend you turn the "don't be a jerk" knob on your internal filter up a notch or two.

[AFM]

Getting back on track...
A UC Berkeley professor thinks the UC riots were masterminded by Trump and Bannon:
http://robertreich.org/post/156777888615

Hmmm. Connect these dots:

(1) Yinnopoulos writes for Breitbart News, which Steve Bannon – Trump’s strategy director – ran before joining Trump.

(2) Before Yiannopoulos speaks at Berkeley, Breitbart publishes an article saying that Yiannopoulos will call for the withdrawal of federal grants and the prosecution of university officials who endanger their students with their policies.

(3) Berkeley opens its doors to Yiannopoulos, but campus police have to cancel the event because of masked agitators.

(4) Hours later, Trump issues a misleading tweet, accusing the university of not allowing free speech and promoting violence against innocent people with different views, and threatening to withhold federal funds.

(5) The next night, Yiannopoulos on Fox News says the incident proves that universities like Berkeley don’t deserve federal grants by cracking down on free speech.

(6) That same night, on CNN, I raise the possibility that Yiannopoulos and Breitbart could have been collaborating with the agitators – saying “I wouldn’t bet against it.” This generates a belligerent column in Breitbart with a misleading headline calling me a liar for claiming that Breitbart News organized the riots.

I don’t want to add to the conspiratorial musings of so many about this very conspiratorial administration, but it strikes me there may be something worrying going on here.

I wouldn’t bet against it.

[AFM]

So, cowardly online bully anonymously insults other person who makes statement against online bullying.

Brave.

What happened to it takes two to tango? Whatever, I don't really want to go back and forth with you, I don't think anyone else cares. My bad.

I'll unilaterally forgive you because you have a history of talking out of your butt. I would recommend you turn the "don't be a jerk" knob on your internal filter up a notch or two.

I take back my apology.

[Zonkerbl]

Strawman. Neither Milo nor anyone else is arguing that his 1st Amendment rights are being infringed. People can boycott Milo all they want. What's unacceptable is rioting, vandalism and assault. Those are crimes unrelated to the 1st Amendment.

One can also question whether public institutions funded by the taxpayer have the right to infringe free political speech.

You think people have an inherent right to give political speeches at UC Berkeley's campus?

I think the government has a say in who gets to give political speeches at Berkeley if Berkeley is being funded by government sources. Having government sponsor only left wing political speech is a violation of the 1st Amendment.

Actually it's the other way around. The government can't dictate who they invite and who they don't.

[nate33]

World Leaders Duped into Investing Billions over Manipulated Global Warming Data

The Mail on Sunday today reveals astonishing evidence that the organisation that is the world’s leading source of climate data rushed to publish a landmark paper that exaggerated global warming and was timed to influence the historic Paris Agreement on climate change.

A high-level whistleblower has told this newspaper that America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) breached its own rules on scientific integrity when it published the sensational but flawed report, aimed at making the maximum possible impact on world leaders including Barack Obama and David Cameron at the UN climate conference in Paris in 2015.

The report claimed that the ‘pause’ or ‘slowdown’ in global warming in the period since 1998 – revealed by UN scientists in 2013 – never existed, and that world temperatures had been rising faster than scientists expected. Launched by NOAA with a public relations fanfare, it was splashed across the world’s media, and cited repeatedly by politicians and policy makers.

But the whistleblower, Dr John Bates, a top NOAA scientist with an impeccable reputation, has shown The Mail on Sunday irrefutable evidence that the paper was based on misleading, ‘unverified’ data.

wow i could have never predicted in a million years that nate would be a climate change denier

I am a climate change skeptic. I believe there has been some manmade global warming, but I believe that the extent of the warming is far less than the alarmism suggests, and I question whether the harm imposed by modest global warming outweighs the costs of trying to mitigate it. (Indeed, I think it is likely that global warming, on balance, will be helpful to humanity.) I also think that combatting global warming with reflective technologies would be far less costly and far more effective than abandoning fossil fuels. Finally, I think that many with a global warming agenda do so for their own personal profit and control.

[gtn130]

World Leaders Duped into Investing Billions over Manipulated Global Warming Data

wow i could have never predicted in a million years that nate would be a climate change denier

I am a climate change skeptic. I believe there has been some manmade global warming, but I believe that the extent of the warming is far less than the alarmism suggests, and I question whether the harm imposed by modest global warming outweighs the costs of trying to mitigate it. (Indeed, I think it is likely that global warming, on balance, will be helpful to humanity.) I also think that combatting global warming with reflective technologies would be far less costly and far more effective than abandoning fossil fuels. Finally, I think that many with a global warming agenda do so for their own personal profit and control.

dude, you don't think there are bigger/clearer/more obvious agendas for climate change deniers than believers? Like, isn't it abundantly clear that climate change policy harms pretty much the entire energy sector? Wouldn't someone like Rex Tillerson have OBVIOUS reasons to "doubt" climate change and invest in delegitimizing it?

I'm not a climate scientist, and I have zero first-hand knowledge or understanding of climate change. But something like 97% of climate scientists agree on climate change, so I'm siding with what they're saying.

[TGW]

A great interview with Howard Stern and his personal insights on Trump:

Watch on YouTube

[montestewart]

Yeah, don't worry about the violence in the streets against anyone who supports Trump. It's no big deal. Stop whining!

You severely misunderstand if you think the point was to say "don't worry"

I guess I did. It sounds like you are saying Milo is merely a troll and the outrage is all faux outrage.

Much closer, although I think much of the outrage is an authentic and intended end result. Not to give Trump too much credit for being "brilliant," but there is something to be said for having great intuition, regardless of how you test. He and others (MY among them) have ratcheted up a provocative/confrontational style and unleashed it on political discourse. Like it or not, it isn't really surprising that it would provoke responses such as seen in the increasing number of videos available. It makes lefties angry, and when they respond with assaults, it makes righties outraged. It's not clear just how many of the lefties or righties realize they were trolled.

I'm not in favor of the assaults because (beyond not advocating support of violence) I think the assaults and rioting are often the intended outcome of the trollers, outcomes provoked to delegitimize opposition. In many quarters, it appears to be working. Some of these guys remind me of the cowboy you see in Westerns who exits through the saloon doors without a scratch as the barroom brawl he started rages behind him.

I don't have one of those hair trigger tempers, but (to name one example) I can understand why Richard Spencer, whose spoken and written words consciously evoke Nazi ideology and make reference to ethic purity and ethnic cleansing, is seen as a modern day successor to Nazis, using modified language to normalize acceptance of racist ideology, with an ultimate end game of violent suppression of non-whites. Maybe he didn't specifically want to get punched, and maybe he doesn't even believe what he says and writes, but it's not hard to imagine the punch serving his ends, and him being quite aware of that.

I noticed in the Comet Pizza protest video some of the counter-protesters getting within inches of the protesters (whose cause was anti-gay but otherwise unclear to me), and one counter-protester was repeatedly pushed by a pretty sturdy looking guy, and there were a couple of other pretty solid looking protesters there who looked like they might engage. That's when the police decided to get between the two sides. A few of the counter protesters seemed to be trying to verbally provoke the protesters, presumably to undermine the claim of peaceful protest. Is that trolling for good?

Likewise, the leftists ninjas (and similar) who follow around protests are now an established quantity. No matter how incendiary your message and how many people peacefully oppose, as long as you can incite some black masks, you'll have great optics to illustrate the poverty of the opposition. And maybe the ninjas don't care; maybe their goal has nothing to do with winners or losers, but rather merely the perpetuation of their own game (like spraying that girl at Cal). So maybe both ends are trolling; free speech, so complicated.

All of it increasingly resembles a play we studied in 10th grade.

[dobrojim]

Lord of the Flies?

[nate33]

You severely misunderstand if you think the point was to say "don't worry"

I guess I did. It sounds like you are saying Milo is merely a troll and the outrage is all faux outrage.

Much closer, although I think much of the outrage is an authentic and intended end result. Not to give Trump too much credit for being "brilliant," but there is something to be said for having great intuition, regardless of how you test. He and others (MY among them) have ratcheted up a provocative/confrontational style and unleashed it on political discourse. Like it or not, it isn't really surprising that it would provoke responses such as seen in the increasing number of videos available. It makes lefties angry, and when they respond with assaults, it makes righties outraged. It's not clear just how many of the lefties or righties realize they were trolled.

I'm not in favor of the assaults because (beyond not advocating support of violence) I think the assaults and rioting are often the intended outcome of the trollers, outcomes provoked to delegitimize opposition. In many quarters, it appears to be working. Some of these guys remind me of the cowboy you see in Westerns who exits through the saloon doors without a scratch as the barroom brawl he started rages behind him.

I don't have one of those hair trigger tempers, but (to name one example) I can understand why Richard Spencer, whose spoken and written words consciously evoke Nazi ideology and make reference to ethic purity and ethnic cleansing, is seen as a modern day successor to Nazis, using modified language to normalize acceptance of racist ideology, with an ultimate end game of violent suppression of non-whites. Maybe he didn't specifically want to get punched, and maybe he doesn't even believe what he says and writes, but it's not hard to imagine the punch serving his ends, and him being quite aware of that.

I noticed in the Comet Pizza protest video some of the counter-protesters getting within inches of the protesters (whose cause was anti-gay but otherwise unclear to me), and one counter-protester was repeatedly pushed by a pretty sturdy looking guy, and there were a couple of other pretty solid looking protesters there who looked like they might engage. That's when the police decided to get between the two sides. A few of the counter protesters seemed to be trying to verbally provoke the protesters, presumably to undermine the claim of peaceful protest. Is that trolling for good?

Likewise, the leftists ninjas (and similar) who follow around protests are now an established quantity. No matter how incendiary your message and how many people peacefully oppose, as long as you can incite some black masks, you'll have great optics to illustrate the poverty of the opposition. And maybe the ninjas don't care; maybe their goal has nothing to do with winners or losers, but rather merely the perpetuation of their own game (like spraying that girl at Cal). So maybe both ends are trolling; free speech, so complicated.

All of it increasingly resembles a play we studied in 10th grade.

I don't disagree with much of this. I even see your point regarding Richard Spencer. (I consider Spencer to be a media whore who jumped in front of the Alt-Right movement to claim leadership. Spencer is a Nazi, or at least he espouses a platform sufficiently similar to Nazis that I could understand if one assumes he is. The Alt-Right and the Nazi's are NOT synonymous. One can be a nationalist without being a Nazi.)

But the thing that interests me is that, being a provocateur like Milo is now considered unacceptable because Milo fights for the Right. There have been any number of outrageous provocateurs from the left over the years and nobody from the right has suggested that punching them in the face is justifiable.

"Instead of running for governor of Florida, they ought to put him against a wall and shoot him.” - Democratic Rep. Paul Kanjorski

"If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.” “We’re going to punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends…” - Barrack Obama

“Michele [Bachman], slit your wrist. Go ahead… or, do us all a better thing [sic]… start at the collarbone.” - Montel Williams

“All Hymie wants to talk about is Israel; every time you go to Hymietown, that’s all they want to talk about.” - Jesse Jackson

“I know how the ‘tea party’ people feel, the anger, venom and bile that many of them showed during the recent House vote on health care reform. I know because I want to spit on them, take one of their ‘Obama Plan White Slavery’ signs and knock every racist and homophobic tooth out of their Cro-Magnon heads.” - Courtland Milloy

“Republicans don’t believe in the imagination, partly because so few of them have one, but mostly because it gets in the way of their chosen work, which is to destroy the human race and the planet. Human beings, who have imaginations, can see a recipe for disaster in the making; Republicans, whose goal in life is to profit from disaster and who don’t give a hoot about human beings, either can’t or won’t. Which is why I personally think they should be exterminated before they cause any more harm.” - Michale Feingold of the Village Voice

And I won't even go into any number of nasty things said by the likes Alec Baldwin, Lena Dunham, Rosie O'Donnell and Bill Maher. When those guys do it, it's edgy. When Milo does it, it's open season against any of his supporters.

[Ruzious]

You severely misunderstand if you think the point was to say "don't worry"

I guess I did. It sounds like you are saying Milo is merely a troll and the outrage is all faux outrage.

Much closer, although I think much of the outrage is an authentic and intended end result. Not to give Trump too much credit for being "brilliant," but there is something to be said for having great intuition, regardless of how you test. He and others (MY among them) have ratcheted up a provocative/confrontational style and unleashed it on political discourse. Like it or not, it isn't really surprising that it would provoke responses such as seen in the increasing number of videos available. It makes lefties angry, and when they respond with assaults, it makes righties outraged. It's not clear just how many of the lefties or righties realize they were trolled.

I'm not in favor of the assaults because (beyond not advocating support of violence) I think the assaults and rioting are often the intended outcome of the trollers, outcomes provoked to delegitimize opposition. In many quarters, it appears to be working. Some of these guys remind me of the cowboy you see in Westerns who exits through the saloon doors without a scratch as the barroom brawl he started rages behind him.

I don't have one of those hair trigger tempers, but (to name one example) I can understand why Richard Spencer, whose spoken and written words consciously evoke Nazi ideology and make reference to ethic purity and ethnic cleansing, is seen as a modern day successor to Nazis, using modified language to normalize acceptance of racist ideology, with an ultimate end game of violent suppression of non-whites. Maybe he didn't specifically want to get punched, and maybe he doesn't even believe what he says and writes, but it's not hard to imagine the punch serving his ends, and him being quite aware of that.

I noticed in the Comet Pizza protest video some of the counter-protesters getting within inches of the protesters (whose cause was anti-gay but otherwise unclear to me), and one counter-protester was repeatedly pushed by a pretty sturdy looking guy, and there were a couple of other pretty solid looking protesters there who looked like they might engage. That's when the police decided to get between the two sides. A few of the counter protesters seemed to be trying to verbally provoke the protesters, presumably to undermine the claim of peaceful protest. Is that trolling for good?

Likewise, the leftists ninjas (and similar) who follow around protests are now an established quantity. No matter how incendiary your message and how many people peacefully oppose, as long as you can incite some black masks, you'll have great optics to illustrate the poverty of the opposition. And maybe the ninjas don't care; maybe their goal has nothing to do with winners or losers, but rather merely the perpetuation of their own game (like spraying that girl at Cal). So maybe both ends are trolling; free speech, so complicated.

All of it increasingly resembles a play we studied in 10th grade.

Well, I think it's simpler than that. It's standing up to bullies. It's no secret that the owner of the restaurant is gay and has had to put up with fake news stories by arrogant bleepholes about his restuarant, a person actually believing the fake news and bringing a rifle into the restaurant and using it to shoot people... and then this group of protesters shouting on a megaphone the same hatefull fake news that drew the shooter... If that restaurant is in your neighborhood, wouldn't you want to stand up for the owner - whether you're gay or straight - against these bullies? At this point, I think it's more about standing up for your neighborhood more than anything else.

[nate33]

wow i could have never predicted in a million years that nate would be a climate change denier

I am a climate change skeptic. I believe there has been some manmade global warming, but I believe that the extent of the warming is far less than the alarmism suggests, and I question whether the harm imposed by modest global warming outweighs the costs of trying to mitigate it. (Indeed, I think it is likely that global warming, on balance, will be helpful to humanity.) I also think that combatting global warming with reflective technologies would be far less costly and far more effective than abandoning fossil fuels. Finally, I think that many with a global warming agenda do so for their own personal profit and control.

dude, you don't think there are bigger/clearer/more obvious agendas for climate change deniers than believers? Like, isn't it abundantly clear that climate change policy harms pretty much the entire energy sector? Wouldn't someone like Rex Tillerson have OBVIOUS reasons to "doubt" climate change and invest in delegitimizing it?

I'm not a climate scientist, and I have zero first-hand knowledge or understanding of climate change. But something like 97% of climate scientists agree on climate change, so I'm siding with what they're saying.

I'm sure there is an agenda for both sides. Just as long as we acknowledge that many on both sides have an agenda. And the 97% thing is a total hoax.

[nate33]

OMG violence in the streets against Trump supporters, my my!!!! *fans self*

Gimme a break. My daughter witnessed one of those episodes of violence. Her LGBTQ club organized a march and this one pro-Trump guy marched next to them harassing them non-stop until someone punched him in the face.

It's not like roving bands of liberal rioters are chasing pro-Trumpers down in the streets and beating them down (tempting as that sounds). It takes two to tango.

When the violence escalates and the Right actually fights back, I want you to remember this.

[Wizardspride]

Read on Twitter

[gtn130]

OMG violence in the streets against Trump supporters, my my!!!! *fans self*

Gimme a break. My daughter witnessed one of those episodes of violence. Her LGBTQ club organized a march and this one pro-Trump guy marched next to them harassing them non-stop until someone punched him in the face.

It's not like roving bands of liberal rioters are chasing pro-Trumpers down in the streets and beating them down (tempting as that sounds). It takes two to tango.

When the violence escalates and the Right actually fights back, I want you to remember this.

lol

[gtn130]

I am a climate change skeptic. I believe there has been some manmade global warming, but I believe that the extent of the warming is far less than the alarmism suggests, and I question whether the harm imposed by modest global warming outweighs the costs of trying to mitigate it. (Indeed, I think it is likely that global warming, on balance, will be helpful to humanity.) I also think that combatting global warming with reflective technologies would be far less costly and far more effective than abandoning fossil fuels. Finally, I think that many with a global warming agenda do so for their own personal profit and control.

dude, you don't think there are bigger/clearer/more obvious agendas for climate change deniers than believers? Like, isn't it abundantly clear that climate change policy harms pretty much the entire energy sector? Wouldn't someone like Rex Tillerson have OBVIOUS reasons to "doubt" climate change and invest in delegitimizing it?

I'm not a climate scientist, and I have zero first-hand knowledge or understanding of climate change. But something like 97% of climate scientists agree on climate change, so I'm siding with what they're saying.

I'm sure there is an agenda for both sides. Just as long as we acknowledge that many on both sides have an agenda. And the 97% thing is a total hoax.

Can you explain what this equal and opposite agenda is for inventing climate change?

[montestewart]

I guess I did. It sounds like you are saying Milo is merely a troll and the outrage is all faux outrage.

Much closer, although I think much of the outrage is an authentic and intended end result. Not to give Trump too much credit for being "brilliant," but there is something to be said for having great intuition, regardless of how you test. He and others (MY among them) have ratcheted up a provocative/confrontational style and unleashed it on political discourse. Like it or not, it isn't really surprising that it would provoke responses such as seen in the increasing number of videos available. It makes lefties angry, and when they respond with assaults, it makes righties outraged. It's not clear just how many of the lefties or righties realize they were trolled.

I'm not in favor of the assaults because (beyond not advocating support of violence) I think the assaults and rioting are often the intended outcome of the trollers, outcomes provoked to delegitimize opposition. In many quarters, it appears to be working. Some of these guys remind me of the cowboy you see in Westerns who exits through the saloon doors without a scratch as the barroom brawl he started rages behind him.

I don't have one of those hair trigger tempers, but (to name one example) I can understand why Richard Spencer, whose spoken and written words consciously evoke Nazi ideology and make reference to ethic purity and ethnic cleansing, is seen as a modern day successor to Nazis, using modified language to normalize acceptance of racist ideology, with an ultimate end game of violent suppression of non-whites. Maybe he didn't specifically want to get punched, and maybe he doesn't even believe what he says and writes, but it's not hard to imagine the punch serving his ends, and him being quite aware of that.

I noticed in the Comet Pizza protest video some of the counter-protesters getting within inches of the protesters (whose cause was anti-gay but otherwise unclear to me), and one counter-protester was repeatedly pushed by a pretty sturdy looking guy, and there were a couple of other pretty solid looking protesters there who looked like they might engage. That's when the police decided to get between the two sides. A few of the counter protesters seemed to be trying to verbally provoke the protesters, presumably to undermine the claim of peaceful protest. Is that trolling for good?

Likewise, the leftists ninjas (and similar) who follow around protests are now an established quantity. No matter how incendiary your message and how many people peacefully oppose, as long as you can incite some black masks, you'll have great optics to illustrate the poverty of the opposition. And maybe the ninjas don't care; maybe their goal has nothing to do with winners or losers, but rather merely the perpetuation of their own game (like spraying that girl at Cal). So maybe both ends are trolling; free speech, so complicated.

All of it increasingly resembles a play we studied in 10th grade.

Well, I think it's simpler than that. It's standing up to bullies. It's no secret that the owner of the restaurant is gay and has had to put up with fake news stories by arrogant bleepholes about his restuarant, a person actually believing the fake news and bringing a rifle into the restaurant and using it to shoot people... and then this group of protesters shouting on a megaphone the same hatefull fake news that drew the shooter... If that restaurant is in your neighborhood, wouldn't you want to stand up for the owner - whether you're gay or straight - against these bullies? At this point, I think it's more about standing up for your neighborhood more than anything else.

Agree, I didn't intend to characterize the protest as that. It just looked like one or two of them were (maybe?) using that tactic. And along those lines, the anti-gay Comet protesters were pretty beefy, like they could take a punch. Maybe their goal was to incite violence, considering the extremity of many of their comments bellowed over a bullhorn (including the same apparently baseless pedophilia allegations).

All of that is speculation on my part, and all baiting doesn't come with the same level of calculation. I remember encountering a silent protest march through Lafayette Square, with signs condemning homosexuality and offering gay conversion therapy. One protester came up to me offering some literature, and I said, "But I like anal sex." Got some laughs from bystanders. It wasn't too calculated (I didn't know I'd see them) and maybe not trolling, but definitely baiting. His church trained him to stand up to such evil, so he just moved on to the next. Sure, Lafayette Square is not the same as someone's neighborhood, and I wasn't particularly angry, just spontaneously reacting with some free speech. This is democracy in action.

@ Nate, I'm not trying to justify violence against MY or anyone, or saying he's the same as Spencer, but he has made plenty of racially and sexually provocative comments. He apparently knows what he's doing, and thus it wouldn't surprise me if anticipating and even relishing a violent reaction is part of the calculation. He's occasionally witty (although the Dangerous F****t thing is pretty tired) and makes a few points, but trolling seems his primary function in life, and he seems to be doing pretty well with it.