Tag Archives: ethics

An Example of the Climatistas’ Political Failure

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Neil deGrasse Tyson in some recent remarks:

…when it comes time to make decisions about science, it seems to me that people have lost the ability…to judge…what is true, and what is not.  What is reliable, what is not reliable.  What should you believe, what should you not believe.

And

When you have people who don’t know much about science, standing in denial of it, and rising to power, that is a recipe for the complete dismantling of our informed democracy.

Indeed.  And yet guys like Tyson are loathe to look into the mirror and see who it is that stand in denial of science, even of the basic tenets of science, like constant questioning, comparing theory with observation and adjusting theory to fit the observations—rather than the climate pseudo-scientists’ practice of ignoring those offending observations while decrying those who disagree with their settled science.

Climate pseudo-science has a long and venerable track record of failed predictions; it’s models still can’t predict simultaneously the past and the present.  Indeed, its predictions of the present are wildly at odds with empirical observations from satellites and high-altitude balloons.  Global temperatures haven’t risen significantly for nearly 20 years, and the rise since the early 19th century still leaves us below the long-term global average.  Atmospheric CO2, far from being a pollutant (a bald, unsubstantiated declaration of the EPA’s pseudo-science), is a well-known plant food.

The only tangible effect of anthropogenic CO2 to date is that CO2 is greening the Earth, stimulating faster plant growth, and more drought resilience across a broad range of species.

And so guys like Tyson decry the failure of democracy and of democratic principles because other guys, of whom they disapprove, get elected.

Because only the correct outcome is democratic.

This isn’t petty hubris.  It’s dishonesty.

Filibusters

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Since the Progressive-Democrats in the Senate are dead set on shutting down the Federal government (I won’t argue the utility of the government being shut down or by how much it actually would be) for the sake of their own petty political egos, it’s time to get rid of the filibuster on all matters relating to the budget, spending, and revenues.

It’s time to put an end to the obstructionism of these Precious Ones.

Full stop.

Distortions

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New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) is upset over his administration’s having been called soft on crime by that impertinent man, Attorney General Jeff Sessions.  Sessions, after all, said that New York

continues to see gang murder after gang murder, the predictable consequence of the city’s “soft on crime” stance.

De Blasio’s response?  He transferred the target of the remark to the police themselves, pretending to wonder why the AG has

insult[ed] the men and women who do this work every day, who put their lives on the line and who have achieved so much?

Never mind that this is a naked distortion.  Sessions clearly laid the lackadaisical enforcement attitude on the city’s administration—which would include Da Mair (oh, wait—that’s the late Mayor Richard Daley (D).  But who can tell the difference, anyway?).  It’s the “men and women who do this work every day” who are the ones dangerously hampered by de Blasio’s position on law enforcement.

This is an example of why we can’t have nice things in Democrat-run cities and towns.

Confusion

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There is some concerning Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ moves at DoJ concerning local police forces and local policing.  An example is provided in the lede to a recent Wall Street Journal article:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ decision this week to review concessions by local police departments accused of misconduct is part of a seismic shift at the Justice Department, which has quickly changed its emphasis under the Trump administration from protecting civil rights to promoting law and order.

Of course, there is no dichotomy between protecting civil rights and promoting law and order.  Indeed, the two are inseparable: it isn’t possible to protect civil rights without promoting law and order: it’s those laws and the order they engender that are at the foundation of civil rights—which themselves are matters of those laws and that order.

The confusion extends to the Federal government’s role in overseeing local police institutions, including particularly “consent” decrees concluded or in progress involving Federal demands for police department reforms satisfactory to the Federal government.  Sessions has ordered a review of these and has taken steps to begin rescission of some.  However,

Officials in Baltimore and Chicago say they remain committed to overhauling police forces….

These officials say they’ll proceed within the parameters of existing consent decrees, but the illustration remains: local officials are fully capable both legally and morally to overhaul, to reform, without Federal involvement, and that’s as it should be.  Each locale is different, and each local police force will need its unique and locally oriented reform.  Federal involvement might be needed to clear away impediments to reform, but it is not needed to mandate the nature or structure of reform.

In the end, reasonable men can debate the methods of law and order, and reasonable men can argue whether current law is sufficient for civil rights (beyond that, the question of current law’s adequacy in implementing inalienable rights has been debated since the Federalist Papers, the Anti-Federalist Papers, and before).  The immutable fact remains, though, that there are no civil rights, no matter what laws might assert, without laws being enforced—law and order.  And that is, of necessity, a local matter.

Northern Korea and the People’s Republic of China

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On the day before the PRC’s President, Xi Jinping, is to meet with President Donald Trump, northern Korea fired another ballistic missile (this one apparently another test of its solid-fueled model).  Of course, the careful timing of Baby Kim’s missile launch has been denied by the PRC’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying.  There is no “direct relation” between the missile launch and the Trump-Xi meeting, she insisted.

The more telling description of events and event relations, though, was provided by Shi Yinhong, Director of the Center on American Studies at Renmin University in Beijing:

China has nearly exhausted its leverage with North Korea.

Whether that’s true or the PRC is simply continuing to wash its hands of its responsibility for its client state, Shi’s remark makes one thing increasingly clear: we must take more direct action vis-à-vis northern Korea, and that action must come without PRC involvement; they’ll just be left behind.