The Time Has Come To State The Obvious

[Lord Jim]

Sales of Orwell's '1984' Jump Amid Focus on 'Alternative Facts'

NEW YORK —

George Orwell's 1984 novel about a dystopian future under an authoritarian regime, is back as a best-seller and being reprinted decades after it was written as readers grapple with the Trump administration's defense of "alternative facts."

The book, first published in 1949, features a devious "Big Brother" government that spies on its citizens and forces them into "doublethink," or simultaneously accepting contradictory versions of the truth.

Sales spiked after a senior White House official, Kellyanne Conway, used the term "alternative facts" on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday during a discussion about the size of the crowd at President Donald Trump's inauguration.

Some commentators denounced her expression as "Orwellian." By Monday, the novel by the late British author had hit Amazon's list of top 10 best-sellers, which is updated hourly. On Wednesday, it was No.1.

Responding to the renewed interest, its publisher ordered a 75,000-copy reprint this week, Signet Classics said in a statement. That's more than normally would be reprinted, a company spokesman told CNN late Tuesday.

http://www.voanews.com/a/sales-orwell-n ... 92742.html

[ex-khobar Andy]

This from The Guardian today:

Donald Trump’s executive order to close America’s borders to refugees and immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries has been swiftly enforced. The order blocks to the US from citizens from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Libya for 90 days and as well as indefinitely suspending admission of Syrian refugees

This includes green card holders. I have a green card although not from one of those countries. Like all green card holders I have all the protections of the Constitution and all the responsibilities of a citizen except that I cannot vote.

And of course if I were a paranoid Muslim hater I would point out that the executive order here would not have prevented 18/19 of the 9/11 criminals. So even in his own parallel universe this makes no sense. Bin Laden is laughing because those of us who think for more than 5 seconds at a time realized then that the 9/11 - Iraq WMD sequence was creating more recruits that ever could have been imagined by more conventional means; and we have just turned the doubling cube again.

[Bicycle Bill]

X-KA, that's probably OK with wes.  He strikes me as being similar to another former poster we all remember who proudly and unapologetically displayed a similar tendency to adhere to a single line of thought; in the other poster's case it was his thick-headed libertarian streak.  His main philosophy seems to be "If I am not going to use it, I should not have to pay for it" ... whether it was federal funds for highway repair in another part of the country, or funding for schools (since his children didn't go to 'those' schools), or public transportation, or infrastructure to make the roads safe and accessible for *ALL* users and not just the people with the 4X4 pick'em up trucks, or federal disaster funds since they were going to go to people like hurricane victims and there weren't too many hurricanes in Ohio, or even taxes collected to support public services like the fire or emergency rescue (remember?  He figured that if you had to call out the fire department you should then be expected to receive and pay a bill, as if you'd called Triple-A for road service or Domino's to order a pizza, for services rendered?)  So as far as wes is concerned, he's fine with the idea of the price of avocados or tequila going up.  He probably doesn't eat or drink them anyway, so it's no skin off his nose.

Although I it would be interesting to do one thing...  I'd love to stop out at wesw's place on the DelMarVa peninsula and drag out everything in his house that does *NOT* have a "Proudly Made in the USA" label or sticker on it, pile it up in the front yard, and set a match to it.  I'll betcha you'd be able to see the flames from space.

-"BB"-

[Guinevere]

This from The Guardian today:

Donald Trump’s executive order to close America’s borders to refugees and immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries has been swiftly enforced. The order blocks to the US from citizens from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Libya for 90 days and as well as indefinitely suspending admission of Syrian refugees

This includes green card holders. I have a green card although not from one of those countries. Like all green card holders I have all the protections of the Constitution and all the responsibilities of a citizen except that I cannot vote.

And of course if I were a paranoid Muslim hater I would point out that the executive order here would not have prevented 18/19 of the 9/11 criminals. So even in his own parallel universe this makes no sense. Bin Laden is laughing because those of us who think for more than 5 seconds at a time realized then that the 9/11 - Iraq WMD sequence was creating more recruits that ever could have been imagined by more conventional means; and we have just turned the doubling cube again.

You do realize the Islamic countries not included in the EO are ones where the King Trumpanzee has hotels or other business interests. Emoluments clause, anyone? How many more times do I have to say it......

[Scooter]

Donald Trump’s executive order to close America’s borders to refugees and immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries has been swiftly enforced. The order blocks to the US from citizens from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Libya for 90 days and as well as indefinitely suspending admission of Syrian refugees

And yet it does not block refugees and immigrants from Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the UAE or Azerbaijan. Why? Because the Trump family has business interests in those countries.

[Guinevere]

Donald Trump’s executive order to close America’s borders to refugees and immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries has been swiftly enforced. The order blocks to the US from citizens from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Libya for 90 days and as well as indefinitely suspending admission of Syrian refugees

And yet it does not block refugees and immigrants from Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the UAE or Azerbaijan. Why? Because the Trump family has business interests in those countries.

Emoluments clause. Emoluments clause. Emoluments clause.

[Lord Jim]

Since there have been more Jihadist terrorist attacks carried out in Europe by people that hold Belgian citizenship then any of the seven countries on the hit list, maybe we should be banning Belgians from entering the country...

[BoSoxGal]

Actually Andy, thanks to Barack Hussein Obama, bin Laden's not laughing.

A whole lot of the rest of the world - including ISIS - is, though.

[rubato]

And the GOP doubles down on stupid:


http://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2 ... amar-smith

Donald Trump is the sole reliable source of truth, says chair of House Science Committee
“Better to get your news directly from the president,” said Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas.
Updated by David Roberts@drvoxdavid@vox.com Jan 27, 2017, 9:10am EST

Lamar Smith, tuned in to his own frequency. (Photo by Kirk Irwin/Getty Images for SiriusXM)

It is early days in the Trump administration. (I know it doesn’t feel like it. Check your calendar.) But there have already been disturbing signs of how the administration intends to treat science and government scientists.

Vox’s Brian Resnick and Julia Belluz have rounded up the strands of evidence from various agencies, and Brad Plumer has a post focusing on ominous moves at the Environmental Protection Agency.

It is worrying that the agency has frozen its grant program, that the climate change page has been taken down [CORRECTION: the White House climate page was taken down; EPA’s is still up], and that the spokesperson for Trump’s EPA “beachhead team” — none other than Doug Ericksen, the climate-denying, regulation-hating leader of the Washington state senate — told NPR that that EPA scientists will need to run any new scientific findings past the Trump team before they are published or publicized.

But allegedly these “freezes” on new agency grants and communications will end today. So, as Brad says, if you look at all these moves with maximum charity, you can still see them as more or less typical for a new administration. You can argue that it’s not yet time to panic, not yet clear whether Trump will launch a war on science to rival George W. Bush’s or Stephen Harper’s.

Still, color me pessimistic. For some reason, of all the disturbing stories this week, the one that struck me most as a harbinger of our science future is a goofy little story that most people didn’t hear about.
You can only trust Trump, says science guy

On Monday, Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, who has previously praised Trump’s “stamina” and “conviction,” gave a floor speech in the House in which lauded the president, celebrating his many accomplishments. According to Smith, you may not be familiar with those accomplishments, because the media won’t tell you.

“Better to get your news directly from the president,” Smith said. “In fact, it might be the only way to get the unvarnished truth.”

Let that sink in.

Now, a pol kissing up to the president is not any big news, but Smith is a very particular kind of pol.

He is perhaps the paradigm representative of the tribal approach to epistemology that dominates on the far right today. Tribal epistemology evaluates facts, information, and narratives primarily on whether they are advantageous to the tribe in their war against the opposing tribe (in this case, liberals).

Tribal epistemology is inherently hostile to institutions that claim independent authority based on transpartisan norms and standards — the academy, science, and journalism, in particular. They see those institutions as tools of their enemies.

I’ll have much, much more to say about this kind of epistemology in a coming post, but suffice to say here, Smith is in a position to put the perspective into action.

He is a member of the conservative Media Fairness Caucus, which issues such bold press releases as, “Fake News Includes Climate Change.”

But most significantly, Smith is the chair of the House Science Committee, which he has transformed into an aggressively partisan instrument, using its investigatory powers — including sweeping new subpoena powers granted by fellow Republicans in 2015 — to harass and intimidate individual scientists, agencies, and nonprofit organizations.

One of his more notable targets was scientist Thomas Karl of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), who published research in 2015 showing that the much-hyped global warming “pause” hadn’t actually happened.

Smith began hassling NOAA, demanding not only the data and methods behind the paper (which were already posted on the internet anyway) but all email communications related to the paper’s research and publication (which NOAA refused to give). That led to giant brouhaha, during which Smith openly accused NOAA of fraud and threatened NOAA administrator Kathryn Sullivan (the first woman to walk in space) with criminal charges. You can read all about here and here.

Long story short, Smith makes Darrell Issa and Jason Chaffetz look like King Solomon.
Smith’s attitude toward science is the GOP’s attitude

Smith is for conservative media and against liberal media, for conservative science and against liberal science. He doesn’t acknowledge anything outside those categories.

In this, he is squarely in the mainstream of his party, which has long cultivated its own scientists and “experts” and pursued legislation that would bring independent scientific agencies under more direct partisan control. See, for instance, the REINS Act, which would submit all major science-based regulations to a vote of both houses of Congress.

Agencies like EPA were built, deliberately, to have a great deal of independence, so that scientists could do their work and regulators could assess that work without undue influence from lawmakers. Republicans like Smith don’t like that independence one bit — they think that the agency should produce conservative science when they are in charge — and they are doing everything they can to bring government scientists to heel.

Trump’s goals, it seems safe to say, are more likely to be executed when they line up with longstanding Republican goals. Putting government scientists under political control might just be one of those areas of alignment. It’s too soon to say, but I know which way I’m betting.

Only the Republicans have "liberal science" and "conservative science" the rest of the world just has science.




yrs,
rubato

[Lord Jim]

Say rube...

Speaking of science....

Have you figured out the difference between the testicles and the penis yet?

[Joe Guy]

Say rube...

Speaking of science....

Have you figured out the difference between the testicles and the penis yet?

I suspect that in his case, the use of either might be considered microaggression.

[rubato]

Say rube...

Speaking of science....

Have you figured out the difference between the testicles and the penis yet?

Have you learned to read yet? Or are you too drunk to recall what you have read?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castration

In ancient times, castration often involved the total removal of all the male genitalia. This involved great danger of death due to bleeding or infection and, in some states, such as the Byzantine Empire, was seen as the same as a death sentence. Removal of only the testicles had much less risk.

You are Trump are two peas in a pod. Just make shit up and never look at evidence.


yrs,
rubato

[Lord Jim]

ROTFLMAO!!!

Have you learned to read yet? Or are you too drunk to recall what you have read?

Questions you really need to ask yourself; permit me to refresh your enfeebled memory:

A valid comparison would be cutting off a 12 year old boy's penis using a sea shell. When that starts happening, come back to it. Otherwise, circumcision is absolutely not a comparison to the woman-hating cruelty of so-called FGM.

Thank you Meade.

During the slave trade between east Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, which only ended in the early 20th century, young boys were made more valuable by castrating them. A certain percentage didn't survive the procedure.


yrs,
rubato

cas·trate (kăs′trāt′)
tr.v. cas·trat·ed, cas·trat·ing, cas·trates
1. To remove the testicles of (a male); geld or emasculate.
2. To remove the ovaries of (a female); spay.
3. To deprive of virility or spirit; emasculate.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/castration

I shouldn't have thought the need would arise to point this out, but apparently some basic anatomy education is needed:

The testicles and the penis are two different things...

As are the clitoris and the ovaries...

(There must have been some serious deficiencies in the human reproduction instruction in the California public school system in the 1970s... )

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=16830&p=222340&hil ... my#p222340

Trump and I are two peas in a pod. Just make shit up and never look at evidence.



yrs,
rubato

FTFY...

Oh and before I forget; here ya go:

[rubato]

In addition to the wiki link above there are also accounts of castration including removal of the penis in the slave trade been East Africa and the Arabian peninsula up to the 2oth century. I'm not going to bother to dig it out the above proof is sufficient.

LJ has a Trumpian aversion to facts.


yrs,
rubato

[Guinevere]

Rube, you're all wrong. Lord knows I have disagreed with LJ over many things through the years, but there is nothing "Trumpian" about him.

[Econoline]

What Guin said.

[Lord Jim]

Rube, you're all wrong. Lord knows I have disagreed with LJ over many things through the years, but there is nothing "Trumpian" about him.

What Guin said.

Thank you...

I appreciate that.

[Scooter]

Me three. The man voted for Hillary Clinton, for cripes sake. A greater sign of a Republican's contempt for Donald Trump there could not be.

[dales]

Me 4.

I voted for HRC, knowing what an unmitigated disaster Drumfph would be as POTUS.

So far, looks like I've been proven right.

Sad.

[Joe Guy]

And don't forget, you're talking about Lord Plan B Person of the Year 2016 Jim. A position of honorable distinction thus far...