Category Archives: ethics

Climate Change and Science

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Dr Tim Ball has an excellent piece on Watts Up With That about the politicization of climate change pseudo-science (my characterization, not his).  This excerpt is centered on the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but it illustrates the general, broad, and sole politicization of climate change pseudo-science [emphasis added].

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) cannot survive. It was designed to achieve a deceptive result by limiting the research to only human causes of climate change. They effectively made reform or change impossible because each set of Reports is cumulative. That is, each Report simply adds new information to a very limited number of variables. The reality is you can only determine the human impact by knowing and understanding all the variables and mechanisms of natural climate. Most of the public think the IPCC look at climate and climate change in total and IPCC participants and promoters did nothing to dissuade them of that error. This is part of the proof that IPCC creators had a singular political objective for which natural variability was a problem. Without the political objective there is no need for a government agency like the IPCC even to determine natural climate and climate change.

Ball’s article is long-ish, but it’s well worth the read.

One China and One China

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Here’s the People’s Republic of China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Geng Shuang, still on about the Republic of China’s President, Tsai Ing-wen’s congratulatory telecon with President-Elect Donald Trump:

We urge the new US leader and government to fully understand the seriousness of the Taiwan issue, and to continue to stick to the one-China policy[.]

He went on to say that US-PRC relations would be “badly affected” were such behaviors to continue.

Indeed we do fully understand the seriousness of the Taiwan issue and the seriousness of the status of the RoC, which sits on that island.  It’s about time our administration gained that understanding, too, and began moving away from the…foolishness…of the last 45 years.

And Geng had this:

The Taiwan question has a bearing on China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and is one of China’s core interests.

Indeed.  The “Taiwan” question has a very large bearing on the island nation’s sovereignty and its territorial integrity and is at the center of the RoC’s core interests.

If our relationship with the mainland Chinese government is “badly affected,” that would be to the PRC’s detriment, not ours.  Furthermore, our relationship with the mainland already is—or would be with a less timid administration—badly affected by the PRC’s naked aggression in the East and South China Seas and by its use of northern Korea’s behaviors as levers against the Republic of Korea, Japan, and us.

The PRC isn’t helping matters either, when it trots out its token, and crony, capitalist Wang Jianlin to make naked threats against American citizens:

I’ve invested $10 billion in the U.S. I have 20,000 employees there.  If things aren’t handled well, those 20,000 people won’t have food to eat[.]

(The PRC and Wang are projecting their own failings, too: Americans don’t starve from our government’s retaliation against those who disobey it.)

The beginning of Trump’s recognition:

Trump said on “Fox News Sunday” that he doesn’t feel “bound by a one-China policy unless we make a deal with China having to do with other things, including trade.”

It’s remotely possible for reasonable men to debate the degree of linkage involved in the fate of a sovereign nation, but it’s entirely appropriate for Trump—or anyone—to not feel bound by a “one-China” policy.  Throughout these last 45 years, the US has never recognized a one-China policy; we’ve only acknowledged that the PRC and an early, weak RoC had such a policy, even though too many American administrations have meekly behaved as though we accepted it.

On the other hand, one China: The Republic of China.  One China: The People’s Republic of China.

One China, and one China.

A Hack

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The Russians are alleged to be behind the hacks into the Democrats’ IT systems, and they’re alleged to have so engaged in order to sow distrust in our election system and procedures and especially to influence our just concluded election in favor of the ultimate winner, President-Elect Donald Trump.  Indeed, the CIA and other of our intelligence agencies have said that the hacks have all the earmarks of Russian hackers.

A couple things about that.  The NLMSM’s bold, declarative statements based on those intelligence agency statements that the Russians did it notwithstanding, “have all the earmarks” does not mean the Russians did it, only that it looks like they did it.  Of course getting actual proof in the intelligence or the hacking world is more difficult even than getting “proof”—sufficient reduction of reasonable doubt—in a criminal trial.  Nor does that difficulty, or the limitation of a statement of “all the earmarks,” mean the Russians didn’t do it, especially in the face of their history.

The other thing centers on the assumption that the Russians really did do the hacks and for the reasons named.  Now the NLMSM, whose favored Democrats were losers in the last election at all levels from the Presidential level on down, is pushing at the top of its collective lungs the idea that the Russians did it, and to favor Trump, as though these were facts.

So: assume the Russians really did do the hacks for the reasons named.  The NLMSM, in its temper tantrums over their loss and their having been ignored by American voters, is playing along with that Russian goal and with that serving, wittingly or not, to discredit Trump and the elections, and to sow doubt about the legitimacy of both.

Congress is pressing for bipartisan investigations into the matter, and it’s pushing for President Barack Obama to release all of the report that will result from the investigation he’s ordered into the matter.  He should, and so should President Trump if the Obama investigation isn’t complete before Trump takes office.

The question is valid, and it should be investigated and answered, but press hysteria contributes nothing to an objective resolution while sowing the doubts the press alleges the Russians want sown.

Foolishness

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Or sore, childish losers.  Or outright dishonesty.  That’s the behavior of a couple of Colorado Presidential Electors who are members, also, of the Democratic Party.  These two have filed a federal suit challenging the constitutionality of the State’s law that requires them to vote for the State’s choice in the just concluded Presidential election.  The State’s law is a winner-take-all requirement: Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton won Colorado, they’re required to cast their Electoral votes for Clinton—but they’re so desperate to block President-Elect Donald Trump, they don’t want to; they want to vote for a third party candidate if they can get enough other Electoral College voters to similarly turn their coats and vote for a common third party candidate to deny Trump 270 Electoral College votes.  (Never mind that that would just move the election to the Republican House of Representatives.  Logic has never been much of a player for the Left.)

These two persons are basing their suit’s claim on Article II and the 12th Amendment of the Constitution.

Though Hillary Clinton and Timothy Kaine won the majority vote in Colorado and are qualified for office, plaintiffs cannot be constitutionally compelled to vote for them.  Plaintiffs are entitled to exercise their judgment and free will to vote for whomever they believe to be the most qualified and fit for the offices of president and vice president, whether those candidates are Democrats, Republicans or from a third-party.

And from the complaint itself:

Many states, including Colorado, require their Presidential Electors to vote consistent with the popular vote in the state. Thus, despite the plain language of Article II of the US Constitution, as amended by the Twelfth Amendment, and the Founders’ intent that the Presidential Electors be a deliberative and independent body free to cast votes for whomever they deem to be the most fit and qualified candidates, Messrs Trump and Pence—if the state statutes are enforced—may “win” the election while also losing, by historical margins, the nationwide popular vote.

Since these persons mention the plain language of Article II and the 12th, they—and their lawyers—might want actually to review that plain language.  Here’s the relevant part of Article II:

Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress….

All the 12th Amendment does is fix the mechanics of voting and the number of still-eligible candidates if the contest must go to the Federal House and Senate.

[I]n such Manner as the Legislature…may direct: which plainly includes for whom and under what State-wide vote outcome as a State might choose to direct.  The Electors are representatives of the State, not of themselves.  No, they are not entitled (such a popular term for the denizens of the Left [/snark]) to exercise their judgment and free will.  They are required to reflect the collective will of their State.

The suit should be tossed, and the lawyers complicit in bringing it should be sanctioned by the Federal court whose time they wasted with this cynical frivolity.

Sexism in a Court

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The singer Kesha, in a Manhattan court, is suing Sony and ex-producer “Dr Luke” over allegations of having been drugged and raped.  There are (unsubstantiated) reports that the presiding judge, Shirley Kornreich, should be removed from the case because she’s married to Proskauer Rose law firm partner Edward Kornreich, and Proskauer Rose represents Sony.

Kornreich says the move is sexist.

If it’s an issue at all, it’s an issue because women are now part of the professional work force[.]

Kornreich reveals her own sexism with that claim.  The move, if it existed beyond press reports (Kesha’s lawyers say they weren’t going to file any recusal motion), was about conflicts of interest from family ties connecting a judge to one of the litigants; it had nothing to do with the genders of the individuals who are—or might be—tied.