Colin McNickle Of The Tribune-Review: Science Denier

In yesterday's Tribune-Review, columnist Colin McNickle uses a rather old-fashioned logical fallacy in his paper's ongoing crusade to discredit the undeniable - that Climate Science is valid and the Earth is warming up due to us..

Here's what he does:

“The Arctic seems to be warming up,” wrote George Nicolas Ifft, the American consul to Norway, in a report submitted to the State Department. “Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers who sail the seas ... all point to a radical change in climatic conditions and hitherto unheard of high temperatures on that part of Earth's surface.”

But this was no contemporary dispatch from a modern-day climate-clucker flapping his wings and his beak, squawking that the world as we know it will end unless the world reorders the world economy by essentially destroying the world economy to “save the world.” (Such fanatic rhetoricians typically repeat the word “world” far more times.)

No, Mr. Ifft's report was filed nearly 92 years ago, on Oct. 10, 1922. A month later, it was published in the Monthly Weather Review. And “change” hardly was framed as a pejorative. In fact, and if anything, Ifft's dispatch contains the hint of potential new business opportunities and, sorry, cluckers, intimations of the recognition of the vagaries of climate.

See that?  The arctic warmed up way back in 1922!  So all the science that says it's going on now is obviously false, right?

The only problem with this whole argument?

It was debunked 4 years ago.

Professor Goreau's explanation of this "Wagga Wagga" logical fallacy:

Those who seek to deny global warming constantly use transparently obvious tricks, selecting data from a single time, a single place, or both, to deny the larger long-term global patterns. This is easily done as climate is constantly fluctuating, so picking out the mean patterns and trends requires that one integrates the data over the largest time and space scales possible. So if one dishonestly wants to misrepresent the larger patterns, one can always find a particular place at a particular time that does not agree with the all the rest averaged together. This is sometimes referred to as the “It’s a cold day in Wagga Wagga” approach, and is repeatedly used by the climate change deniers to fool people who haven’t looked at the data themselves. The changes in Arctic Ice are no exception!

And he specifically cites Ifft's publication:

This set of observations from a limited area (Spitzbergen) in one year has been used by deniers to suggest that there are huge natural fluctuations, and to imply that there is no global warming.

Globally however the sea temperature trend is obvious:

Regionally, though, there does seem to be a rise in Arctic temperatures in the 20s:

But notice what McNickle decided not to tell you.  According to the data, there was a big increase in Arctic temperature followed by a big decrease that ended sometime in the early 60s.  Then another rise (one that corresponds with a rise in the "various sources of energy used during the century" (gas, coal, oil among them).  Imagine that.

So so interesting that Colin McNickle decided not to tell you the full truth.  It's either that or he failed to fully research his topic before writing his now debunked column.  Which is it?  Incompetence or dishonesty?

Colin, my friend, you really really need to do your homework better than this.  If you had, you wouldn't look as foolish as you do right now.

And Now They're Back To Confusing Weather and Climate

They just can't help themselves, I guess.

Any, again, by "they" I mean Scaife's editorial board - his braintrust.

Take a look at what they published this morning:

More chicken squawking: Theologians of the Church of Global Warming gathered in Pittsburgh on Monday. Before a conference sponsored by Allegheny County and Pitt, Penn State oceanography professor Raymond Najjar told the Trib that the Keystone State summers will feel more like Virginia, even if carbon emissions are not reduced. Be very afraid. And pay no attention to frost advisories on May 19 or forecasts of a cooler summer in the region. [Bolding in original] 

See that?  The long term predictions of raising temperatures by legitimate climate science is to be doubted because there were local frost advisories on one day in May - or that this summer might be cooler.

Meanwhile in reality across the globe, the first quarter of this year (January - March, 2014) has been the seventh warmest since 1880.

(But that can't possibly be true because yesterday there was frost on my car.)

More Non-Science At The Tribune-Review

Something must be in the water over there at Scaife's Tribune-Review.  They seem to be pushing the anti-science a bit more these days.  Three days in a row, I think.  Well if they want to keep going, I can keep debunking.

Eric Heyl's doing his best to spread the word with this week's "Q and A" column.  Let's get the easy stuff out of the way first.  Here's Heyl's opening:

James M. Taylor is a senior fellow at The Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based think tank, and managing editor of Environment & Climate News, a national publication focused on free-market environmentalism. He spoke to the Trib regarding a White House report released on Tuesday on the supposedly dire effects of climate change.

Here's Taylor's bio at the Heartland Institute website.  And here's what it says about his academic background:

Taylor received his bachelor's degree from Dartmouth College where he studied atmospheric science and majored in government. He received his Juris Doctorate from Syracuse University.

You'll note, of course, that he's not actually a climate scientist. He's a lawyer with, according to desmogblog, no research published in any peer-reviewed science journals. So, no. He's not a climate scientist.

But he works for the Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank funded by (among others) Exxon Mobil, and two foundations controlled by the owner of the Tribune-Review (The Sarah Scaife and Carthage foundations).

Summing up - James M. Taylor's a non-scientist funded (at least in part) by the petroleum industry and a buncha conservative foundations - I am sure he's completely non-biased.

But let's take a look at what he said (now that we've undermined whatever scientific credibility he would claim to have).  When asked about the "obvious flaws" in the recently released National Climate Assessment, he said:

Most prominent among the flaws are the assertions that global warming is causing an increase in extreme weather events and similar climate catastrophes. The assertion is that global warming is not only increasing extreme weather events, it's also increasing drought, it's increasing wintertime temperatures that have negative consequences for pine beetles, etc.

But all of these assertions are clearly contradicted by the objective data. For example, we know that winter temperatures in the United States have been declining for the past 20 years. Yet here we have in this document the assertion that winters are becoming warmer and this causes pine beetle outbreaks. There is nothing more obviously and blatantly false than that assertion.

(The study) goes on to make other assertions about heat waves and extreme weather events, and it's the same thing. The objective data are clear that as our planet has been modestly warming, we are seeing less frequent and extreme severe weather events. And this is just not reflected in the document. That just speaks to the overt political agenda in this document rather than objective science.

Well then, let's take a look at the scientific data, if only to see if the non-scientist is right.  First we'll take a look at his contradictory data.  Taylor asserts that "winter temperatures in the United States have been declining for the past 20 years" as a counter to the whole of the global data.  This should raise more than a few cherry-picking red flags.  Three by my count:

• winter temperatures - why not yearly temperatures?
• temperatures in the United States - why not global temperatures?
• the past 20 years - why not a larger time frame?

Each of those filters, presumably, would allow Mr Taylor to show you only what he wants you to see.  But let's open up a few of those filters.  If, as he asserts, "winter temperatures in the United States have been declining for the past 20 years," then how is it possible for Canadian winters to be getting warmer over a longer period?  Our friends up north even have a graph to illustrate:

How about Europe over an even longer period, say 100 years?  NOAA has a map for that:

See all the browns and yellow?  Those are the places where it's been colder on average in the United States over a century.  You see, by concentrating on a limited time frame (only winters and only in the last 20 years) and a limited geographic space (the United States), Taylor's able to skew the numbers as he sees fit.

By the way, he attempts to undermine the credibility of the authors of the report with this:

This report is the predictable result of setting up the environmental activists to write a report for the Obama administration. Among the lead authors you have staffers for the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Nature Conservancy and then other environmental activist groups.

Let's just look at the section of the report dealing with "Recent Temperature Trends."  Who wrote it?  Here's the list of Lead Authors:

Katharine Hayhoe, Texas Tech University
James Kossin, NOAA, National Climatic Data Center
Kenneth Kunkel, CICS-NC, North Carolina State Univ., NOAA National Climatic Data Center
Graeme Stephens, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Peter Thorne, Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center
Russell Vose, NOAA National Climatic Data Center
Michael Wehner, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Josh Willis, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory 

I checked.  Each earned a Ph.D. in an actual climate science.  Each is an actual climate scientist.  And yet the non-scientist with a JD from Syracuse University seems to think he has a better handle on the science than they do.

What nonsense.

And Now They're Confusing Science and Non-Science

And, again, by "they" I mean, of course, Scaife's braintrust on the editorial board at his Tribune-Review.

Take a look at this morning's nonsense (Get it?  Nonsense and Non-science  Get it?):

Surveying genuine science excluded from the one-sided reports with which the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) supports its radical alarmism, the latest report from the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) shows global warming is no crisis — and even has benefits.

The previous NIPCC report showed that alarmists' climate models are inaccurate, warming (before the current plateau) is within natural variability and humanity's climate impact is negligible. Its new report, “Climate Change Reconsidered II: Biological Impacts,” concludes that warming and rising carbon dioxide levels cause “no net harm” and often result in “net benefits to plants, including important food crops, and to animals and human health.”

The NIPCC says that with CO2 — which isn't a pollutant — rising, there's “a great greening of the Earth” that brings “rising agricultural productivity” with “little or no risk of increasing food insecurity.” Plants and animals on land and in the sea either feel no impact or see “habitats, ranges and populations” expanding. And because warming more than offsets deaths related to cold, it actually saves human lives.

Independently evaluating scientific evidence without taking government or corporate money, the NIPCC confronts climate alarmists with inconvenient truths that expose the IPCC's real mission: slanting genuine science, blaming mankind and forecasting doomsday to justify governments' drastic anti-growth diktats.

The braintrust is looking (again) to counter the scientific IPCC report with the non-scientific NIPCC report, obviously.  What do you think we'll find if dig a little into the NIPCC report?

Actually, we've already done this - this past September.

Let's review, then.  Back then I linked to this piece in The Guardian:

The report is the latest in the Heartland Institute's "Climate Change Reconsidered" series and the cornerstone of its campaign against the IPCC's fifth assessment. Heartland is aggressively pushing the report in op-eds, blogs and in articles in conservative newspapers and news stations. Among others, it has received coverage in the Australian newspaper The Daily Telegraph, The Washington Times and the UK's Daily Mail, in an article that had to be "significantly" changed due to errors.

Other groups participating in the report include the Science & Environmental Policy Project, a research and advocacy group founded by climate skeptic Fred Singer—who is also the director of Heartland's Science and Environmental Policy Project—and the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, an Arizona-based climate skeptic group partly funded by ExxonMobil.

And then from there I found the money trail from (among other places) The Sarah Scaife Foundation to the Heartland Institute - the organization that puts out the NIPCC report.

Funny that the braintrust never ever seems to mention that.  But I'm not the only one to find the connection.  Here's Rollingstone Magazine (sub req'd) from a coupla years ago:

The Hack Scientist
Fred Singer
Retired physicist, University of Virginia

A former mouthpiece for the tobacco industry, the 85-year-old Singer is the granddaddy of fake "science" designed to debunk global warming. The retired physicist — who also tried to downplay the danger of the hole in the ozone layer — is still wheeled out as an authority by big polluters determined to kill climate legislation. For years, Singer steadfastly denied that the world is heating up: Citing satellite data that has since been discredited, he even made the unhinged claim that "the climate has been cooling just slightly." Last year, Singer served as a lead author of "Climate Change Reconsidered" — an 880-page report by the right-wing Heartland Institute that was laughably presented as a counterweight to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world's scientific authority on global warming. Singer concludes that the unchecked growth of climate-cooking pollution is "unequivocally good news." Why? Because "rising CO2 levels increase plant growth and make plants more resistant to drought and pests." Small wonder that Heartland's climate work has long been funded by the likes of Exxon and reactionary energy barons like Charles Koch and Richard Mellon Scaife.

Independent?

And the part (in the Trib) about how the rising levels of CO2 have no net negative harm?  Take a look at this from the National Geographic:

Crops grown in the high-CO2 atmosphere of the future could be significantly less nutritious, a new study published today in Nature suggests. Based on hundreds of experiments in the field, the work reveals a new challenge as society reckons with both rising carbon emissions and malnutrition in the future.

Scientists generally predict that crop yields could fall in a warmer world—though higher atmospheric CO2 by itself should raise yields, as plants find it easier to extract CO2 from the air to make carbohydrates.

Here's that paper in Nature.  Do you need to know that Nature is a peer-reviewed journal?  That means it's science and not "non-science."

So how much more do I need to tell you about the NIPCC, Peter Singer, and the scientific illiteracy on Scaife's braintrust for you to accept that they've written complete non-science nonsense today?

And Now They Confuse "Weather" and "Climate"

And by "they" I mean the editorial board at Scaife's Tribune-Review.

Take a look at what they're pushing today:

The New York Times reports that the stubborn cool spring in the Midwest has produced the most dismal start to the nursery season in decades. Darn that “climate change.”

Here's the Times piece upon which they're basing their contra-evidence.  Amazing how far flung they now have to go.  It's a piece on gardening.

But it illustrates one of the faux "debunkings" of climate change: namely that it's cold outside my window now, so therefore the climate can't be warming up.  Here's now the Times piece begins:

The freakishly cold Midwestern winter of 2014 has given way to the frustrated Midwestern gardener.

The stubbornly cool spring, on the heels of a bone-chilling winter, has produced the most dismal start to the season in decades, nursery owners say. In previous years, some garden centers may have sold half their stock at this point in the spring. Now they are barely getting started.

So this is about, at least in part, about the Polar Vortex that it the midwest and east coast this past Winter.  But did you know that while we were freezing the otherside of the world was burning?

Take a look.  From the AP:

Bats are dropping from trees, kangaroos are collapsing in the Outback and gardens are turning brown. While North America freezes under record polar temperatures, the southern hemisphere is experiencing the opposite extreme as heat records are being set in Australia after the hottest year ever.

Weather is localized.  Climate is global.  And what's the story on the global picture?

Let's go to NOAA:

The average temperature across global land and ocean surfaces for the first quarter (January–March) of 2014 was the seventh warmest such period on record. This is particularly notable since February ranked only as the 21st warmest on record. However, January and March were both among the five warmest for their respective months. The warmth was relatively evenly distributed between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, with each also observing their seventh warmest January–March on record.

In fact according to some new data:

While April was an uneventful month temperature-wise in the U.S., with most areas experiencing near-average temperatures, the month was the second-warmest April on record globally, according to new NASA data.

That makes April the 350th month in a row — more than 29 years — with above-average temperatures, largely caused by the buildup of manmade greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere.

And yet because the braintrust reads that gardeners in the midwest are having a hard time this year because of the localized cold, all that science is wrong.

The Braintrust Confuses Antarctic "Sea Ice" and "Ice Sheet"

In today's Tribune-Review (the op-ed page), the braintrust writes:

The West Antarctic ice sheet has begun falling apart, two papers published in the journals Science and Geophysical Research Letters conclude. And many of the usual players in the “climate change” game are sounding the alarms of gloom, doom and holy moley pumpkin pie, we're all going to die.

But curiously not mentioned in The Times' report — and woefully too few other reports — is this salient fact:

East Antarctic sea ice coverage reached a record 3.5 million square miles in April, reports the National Snow and Ice Data Center. And the center says ice formation thus far in May continues at a record pace. The development has caught more than a few climate scientists by surprise — which is what happens when data that contradict the theology of global warming are ignored.

Thus "confirming" the "two sides to every story" meme and further "confirming" that only one side is being told by the climate scientists.

Too bad they get their science wrong.

You see, my friends, there's a difference between the Antarctic ice sheet (which, when melted would contribute to a rise in sea levels) and the Antarctic sea ice (which, when it freezes and melts, doesn't).

The braintrust tries to show how this debunks the climate science evidence of global warming.  Too bad the very same page that pointed out the data of the Antarctic sea ice, we can read:

However, across much of the far Southern Hemisphere, temperatures have been above average: for example, in the southern Antarctic Peninsula, temperatures have been 1 to 2 degrees Celsius (2 to 4 degrees Fahrenheit) above average; in the southern South Pacific, temperatures have been 1.5 to 2.5 degrees Celsius (3 to 4 degrees Fahrenheit) above average, and up to 4 degrees Celsius (7 degrees Fahrenheit) above average in the area near the South Pole.

So how can it be that a warmer climate can cause more Antarctic sea ice?

Skeptical Science has the answer:

Antarctic sea ice has shown long term growth since satellites began measurements in 1979. This is an observation that has been often cited as proof against global warming. However, rarely is the question raised: why is Antarctic sea ice increasing? The implicit assumption is it must be cooling around Antarctica. This is decidedly not the case. In fact, the Southern Ocean has been warming faster than the rest of the world's oceans. Globally from 1955 to 1995, oceans have been warming at 0.1°C per decade. In contrast, the Southern Ocean has been warming at 0.17°C per decade. Not only is the Southern Ocean warming, it is warming faster than the global trend.

And then:

If the Southern Ocean is warming, why is Antarctic sea ice increasing? There are several contributing factors. One is the drop in ozone levels over Antarctica. The hole in the ozone layer above the South Pole has caused cooling in the stratosphere (Gillet 2003). This strengthens the cyclonic winds that circle the Antarctic continent (Thompson 2002). The wind pushes sea ice around, creating areas of open water known as polynyas. More polynyas lead to increased sea ice production (Turner 2009).

Another contributor is changes in ocean circulation. The Southern Ocean consists of a layer of cold water near the surface and a layer of warmer water below. Water from the warmer layer rises up to the surface, melting sea ice. However, as air temperatures warm, the amount of rain and snowfall also increases. This freshens the surface waters, leading to a surface layer less dense than the saltier, warmer water below. The layers become more stratified and mix less. Less heat is transported upwards from the deeper, warmer layer. Hence less sea ice is melted (Zhang 2007). An increase in melting of Antarctic land ice will also contribute to the increased sea ice production (Bintanga et al. 2013).

In summary, Antarctic sea ice is a complex and unique phenomenon. The simplistic interpretation that it must be cooling around Antarctica is decidedly not the case. Warming is happening - how it affects specific regions is complicated.

Amazing what happens when you actually look at the science.

And it's amazing how stupid you look when you don't.

Inevitable. Just Inevitable

It's been said that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

So let me ask you, where's the evidence in this inevitable anti-science editorial from Scaife's Tribune-Review?

The Obama administration released the National Climate Assessment on Tuesday. And to sell its latest installment of pseudoscience in promotion of social re-engineering required to combat “man-made” climate change, it invited in select meteorologists to indoctrinate them in how to propagandize the report and bring climate-cluckerism into every home. Be afraid — be very afraid.

So wrong in so many of its alleged causes and effects — a natural consequence of being so injurious to the scientific process — the assessment must be considered for what it is: a political manifesto that seeks to reorder the world economy for “the greater good,” a “good” that serves not mankind nor even the planet but those in positions of government power.

You'll notice there are no actual facts here.  No references to evidence, experts or any scientific experts.  Their argument, such as it is, has no such things.  There's not even a good fake any more.

So where is the science?  The evidence?  The experts?

Here, in the Climate Assessment released this week.  Take a look:

Evidence from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the oceans, collected by scientists and engineers from around the world, tells an unambiguous story: the planet is warming, and over the last half century, this warming has been driven primarily by human activity—predominantly the burning of fossil fuels.

What evidence?

How's this?

And here's the description:

Global annual average temperature (as measured over both land and oceans) has increased by more than 1.5°F (0.8°C) since 1880 (through 2012). Red bars show temperatures above the long-term average, and blue bars indicate temperatures below the long-term average. The black line shows atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration in parts per million (ppm). While there is a clear long-term global warming trend, some years do not show a temperature increase relative to the previous year, and some years show greater changes than others. These year-to-year fluctuations in temperature are due to natural processes, such as the effects of El Niños, La Niñas, and volcanic eruptions. (Figure source: updated from Karl et al. 2009)

Each one of those columns, red and blue, represent data.  Lots and lots of data - in this case global average temperatures.  The black like represents different data - CO2 in parts per million.  It all comes from vast reams of science journals - all tested and peer-reviewed.  It's something the science deniers don't have.

So unless you're going to make the extraordinary assertion that this is all a big fake, the evidence stands.  The science stands.  The world is warming up.

Where's the braintrust's extraordinary evidence to the contrary?

They don't tell you because they can't tell you.

And they can't tell you because it doesn't exist.

The Right Wing Web. Again.

Mediamatters has an interesting piece up on the latest "blistering new report" on the Benghazi "scandal.

In it they look at the birthers, anti-muslim activists and conspiracy theorists who put together the report.  Who are they?  The Dailymail has some info on that:

The commission, part of the center-right Accuracy In Media group, concluded that the Benghazi attack was a failed kidnapping plot

Ah, Accuracy in Media.  That would be the media watchdog that receives, according to the bridgeproject, 93% of its foundation funding from foundations controlled by Richard Mellon Scaife ($2,640,000 from Sarah Scaife and $1,720,000 from Carthage foundations divided by a total of $4,665,200).

Then there's this from Newsmax:

Former U.N. ambassador John Bolton says that had Benghazi happened during the administration of President George W. Bush, the mainstream media "would have been all over him."

Bolton told J.D. Hayworth and John Bachman on "America's Forum" on Newsmax TV that he marvels at how the Democratic slant on major news stories, like Benghazi, by network news outlets in this country is accepted as the norm.

And:

Bolton's comments come on the eve of the Citizens Commission on Benghazi's announcing its interim findings and new leads on the Sept. 11, 2011, attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya that left four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, dead.

Yea, Newsmax would be the "news" service owned by Clinton Conspiracist Christopher Ruddy and Richard Mellon Scaife.

And of course Bolton has a regular column in Scaife's newspaper.  Here's how he's described at the bottom of a recent column.

John Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute

American Enterprise Institute?  Oh, yea.  They've received $9,811,000 in Scaife money over the years.

Would any of this exist without Scaife's largess?

More Voter ID Hysteria From The Trib

Take a look at today's Tribune-Review:

Speaking of grove-variety pecans, “progressives” are in a tizzy-fit over a finding by Kim Strach, North Carolina's director of elections, that suggests nearly 36,000 people with the same names, birth dates and Social Security numbers voted both in the Tar Heel State and other states in 2012. Another 81 North Carolinians voted after they died, reports The Washington Times. But remember, voter fraud is a figment of the conservative imagination. [Bolding in original.]

Still is.

Here's the story:

This week, officials at the North Carolina State Board of Elections announced they had discovered possible evidence of widespread voter fraud in the battleground state.

By cross-checking North Carolina voter rolls with those in 28 other states, leaders of the board told state lawmakers they had found 35,750 records of people who voted in North Carolina and whose first name, last name and date of birth matched people who had voted in other states. More surprisingly, it also revealed 765 North Carolina voters in 2012 whose last four Social Security digits also matched those of people who voted in other states that year.

You might ask, where did they get this information? Did they generate it themselves? Is the source partisan or non-partisan?  And how reliable is it?

All good questions.  Here are some answers:

The cross-check of North Carolina voters was conducted by the office of Kris Kobach, the controversial Secretary of State in Kansas. A long-time Republican political operative, Kobach is known nationally as the architect of legislation cracking down on immigrants in Arizona and elsewhere, as well as severe voting restrictions.

Kobach launched the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program in 2005 as a free service to states — almost exclusively those led by Republican lawmakers — to flag voters who may be casting ballots in multiple states in the same election, which is a felony. In a traveling PowerPoint presentation Kobach’s office uses to pitch the program (for example, this recent presentation [PPT] in Indiana), they say it’s grown from four Midwestern states sharing 9 million voter records in 2005 to more than two dozen states states sharing 110 million files today.

Here’s how it works: A participating state sends its voter file to Kobach’s office, which compares it — free of charge — against the records from the other states. In 2013, the program flagged a staggering 5 million records of people whose names and date of birth appeared to match.

Wow.  Five million?  Is that evidence of five million double (and therefore felonious) votes?

No.  Did you know that the same Kris Kobach did the same sort of "research" for the State of Pennsylvania?  And did you know that they admitted a high number of "false positives"?  I'll let Vic Walczak of the Pennsylvania ACLU explain:

But the same materials, produced by the Kansas Secretary of State’s Office, candidly acknowledge that many of those potential duplicates are false positives: “Experience in the crosscheck program indicates that a significant number of apparent double votes are false positives and not double votes. Many are the result of errors voters sign the wrong line in the poll book, election clerks scan the wrong line with a barcode scanner, or there is confusion over the father/son voters (Sr. and Jr.).” The program thus flags a huge number of voters as potential duplicates, but admits a high error rate, elevating the ACLU’s concerns about how precisely Pennsylvania will handle voter-registration cancellations.

But that's not all, my friends.  No no.  There is more.

In hearing of this report Dick Morris wrote about the "widespread voter fraud" in North Carolina based on this research (or better, "research").  And doncha know, Politifact rated it false.

Their ruling?  Take a look:

Morris said that the large number of North Carolina voters matched with records in other states was proof that over 1 million people voted twice in the 2012 election. While Morris admittedly was extrapolating from the North Carolina data, his conclusion is flawed on several fronts.

The head of North Carolina’s board of elections did not claim that even the closest matches on name, birth date and Social Security numbers was conclusive evidence. She said more investigation was needed. The track record of the Interstate Crosscheck project shows that a tiny fraction of all potential matches represents any kind of voting fraud. In Kansas, out of more than 850,000 votes cast, only 14 names were recommended for prosecution and the Kansas Secretary of State reported no convictions.

In other states, database quirks, human error and the statistics of large numbers have been shown to trim the initial reports of widespread fraud down to the barest sliver of actual cases.

We rate the claim False.

False.  Scaife's braintrust really needs to do better than this.  But we all know they can't.

Embarrassing, Colin. Just Embarrassing.

Given the vast array of fact-checking tools (aka The Google) that should be available to the folks over at Scaife's Tribune-Review, you'd think that someone somewhere would check out Colin McNickle's opening quotation:

Why should freedom of speech and freedom of the press be allowed? Why should a government which is doing what it believes to be right allow itself to be criticized? It would not allow opposition by lethal weapons. Ideas are much more fatal things than guns. Why should any man be allowed to buy a printing press and disseminate pernicious opinions calculated to embarrass the government?

— Nikolai Lenin (1920)

We all know who Lenin was right?  He's the guy who founded the Russian Communist Party and is the "Lenin" part of "Marxist/Leninist" thought, right?  But Colin I gotta ask you, wasn't that Vladimir Lenin?

So who's this "Nikolai" quoted?  Couldn't possibly be Vladimir's younger brother Nikolai who died in infancy in 1873 when Vladimir was only three, right?  The source of the quotation couldn't be that Lenin because that Lenin wasn't even alive in 1920, right?

Doesn't The Google work on Tribune-Review drive?  Took me about 5 minutes to check this.

So that's mistake #1.  Colin McNickle meant to write Vladimir Lenin when he wrote Nikolai Lenin.

Mistake #2 is even bigger, though subtler.  Can we even be sure that Vladimir said what Colin McNickle mistakenly said that Nikolai said?

And...we can't.  Did you know that no less a source than the Oxford Dictionary of Political Quotations puts those words in the mouth of... Winston Churchill?  Perhaps they got it wrong, those Oxfordians, as they're basing their assertion on just one bio of Churchill, just one bio of Churchill, written by Piers Brendon.

Maybe Brendon got it wrong.

So where does the attribution to Lenin (Nikolai) come from?  According to the Quoteinvestigator, it comes from H. L. Mencken's 1942 Book of Quotations.  This is probably as far back as McNickle went.  He should have gone farther.  But where did Mencken get it?  From Quoteinvestigor:

QI has traced this expression back to a diary entry that was written in 1920 by George Riddell who was a powerful newspaperman and close friend of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom David Lloyd George. Riddell later became the 1st Baron Riddell. The text in Mencken’s reference is very similar to the text in Riddell’s diary, but it is not identical.

The words attributed to Churchill also appear in the passage in Riddell’s diary. But QI believes that Riddell was describing a speech by Lenin and not the words of Churchill. Hence, QI thinks that the ascription to Churchill is almost certainly incorrect.

Ah...so let's look at what Riddell wrote.  He wrote of a conversation he had with Churchill:

I told Winston of Lenin’s speech, in which he said that the day of pure democracy was finished and that freedom of speech and the freedom of the Press were its two chief characteristics. “Why should these things be allowed?” he went on. “Why should a Government which is doing what it believes to be right allow itself to be criticised? It would not allow opposition by lethal weapons. Ideas are much more fatal things than guns. And as to the freedom of the Press, why should any man be allowed to buy a printing press and disseminate pernicious opinions calculated to embarrass the Government?”

Brendon, obviously, thinks that Riddell is referring to Churchill in the second sentence and  Mencken thought Riddell was referring to Lenin.

But is there any actual evidence that Lenin actually said it?  QI writes that no one's been able to find any reference to the speech in Lenin's other than Riddell's diary.  For example it's not found in the Marxists Internet Archive.

And yet Colin McNickle said it was from Lenin (though the wrong Lenin, of course).  Isn't that embarrassing?

This is not to say, of course, that Vladimir Lenin was a friend to the free press.  Did he, in fact write anything about a free press?  Why yes, yes he did.  In Letter To Gavril Myasnikov, dated 8/5/20, Lenin wrote:

All over the world, wherever there are capitalists, freedom of the press means freedom to buy up newspapers, to buy writers, to bribe, buy and fake “public opinion” for the benefit of the bourgeoisie.

Sound familiar?  If you're reading the Tribune-Review you're actually reading a real-life example of what Lenin actually described.  Need an example?  How about:

• This?
• Or this?
• Or this?

But what Lenin was describing of course wasn't actually a press that is free - he's describing a press that's bought and paid for.

I Guess We Gotta Keep Doing This

From today's Tribune-Review:

Laurel: To Jake Haulk. The Allegheny Institute for Public Policy boss pulls no punches in a post about Pittsburgh Public Schools: “(T)he poor academic performance and the high rates of absenteeism” (well over 40 percent, on average, at the high school level) “point to the same thing — a failed public school system.” He takes to task those who continue to think the “solution” is to throw more money at the problem. Anyone ready to listen yet? [Bolding in original.]

We've done this blog post a number of times before.  But Scaife's braintrust still keeps hiding the financial entanglements that connect their boss with the subject of their praise.

So we'll have to do it for them, I guess.

According to the data found at the Bridge Project, The Allegheny Institute for Public Policy has received $6,484,200 in foundation support and $5.801,000 of that comes from three foundations (The Allegheny, Carthage, and Sarah Scaife Foundations) controlled by Richard Mellon Scaife, owner of the Tribune-Review.

For those who don't have calculators handy, that's means that 89.46% of the total financial support the Allegheny Institute receives from foundations, it receives from one guy - the owner of the paper whose op-ed page just praised the Institute's president.

There's more.  According to the Trib, Haulk also sits on the board of the Lincoln Institute for Public Opinion Research.  And according to the data found at the Bridge Project, the Lincoln Institute has received $1,482,500 in foundation support and $980,000 of that comes from the above mentioned Allegheny Foundation.  That's 68.62%, by the way.

I am sure Jake Haulk is a very nice guy.  I am sure he's very smart, accomplished, respected and so on, but considering the above, I have to ask myself, "How prominent of an economic pundit would he have been without Scaife's largess?"

Now go back to today's op-ed praise by Scaife's braintrust and ask yourself that same question.

This is how the right wing noise machine works.

Patrick Moore Gets Fact-Checked! (And The Trib Looks Bad As A Consequence)

And who's Patrick Moore?

Here he is, showing up on my favorite editorial page (Scaife's Tribune-Review):

Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore told Congress last week “there's no scientific proof that human emissions of CO2 are the dominant cause of the minor warming of the Earth's atmosphere over the last 100 years.” What's a climate-clucker to do? [Bolding in original.]

I didn't get a chance to blog on this first time around but luckily Politifact took a look at Mr Moore a few days ago (h/t to Ed Heath for the Politifact link).

Moore was on Hannity and uses the rather old (and quite wrong) anti-science argument:

It has not warmed for the last 17 years. We know that for sure. And that brings into question the whole hypothesis.

We've whiffed this effluvium before.  From (among others):

• Allegheny County Council member, Heather Heidelbaugh 
• Post-Gazette Columnist Jack Kelly
• And of course, Scaife's Braintrust (going as far back as 2009)

Thing is, it's still wrong.  But let's quote politifact debunking Moore:

President Barack Obama warned the nation there will be consequences from not doing more to combat climate change in his 2013 State of the Union address, pointing out "the 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15."

PolitiFact rated his statement True. (Actually it’s 13 or 14 of the last 15.)

But that doesn’t necessarily rule out Moore’s claim about the earth not getting warmer lately. The statements can co-exist, with some additional context.

Moore’s claim is a popular argument of people who say climate change isn’t real. The problem is it is cherry-picked and leaves out the rest of the story about earth’s dramatic temperature increases over the last century.

And:

Moore cherry-picked a year when temperatures spiked. "What was an extraordinary event in 1998 is now the new normal," said Goddard Institute program analyst Reto Ruedy, program manager at NASA’s Goddard Institute.

Moore would be incorrect if he chose 1999, 1997, 1996 or any year before that.

"If you start with an extremely warm year, the warming trend going forward is going to be mostly flat," said Gordon Hamilton, associate research professor at the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine.

"You could easily choose 1999 and 1996 and you would find that there’s an upward trend," said Kevin Trenberth, a distinguished senior scientist in the climate analysis section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. "It’s cherry-picking to get the result that he apparently desires."

Apparently.

But what about his "founding" Greenpeace?  Politifact links to this Greenpeace page that says basically, uh...no:

Patrick Moore frequently portrays himself as a founder or co-founder of Greenpeace, and many news outlets have repeated this characterization. Although Mr. Moore played a significant role in Greenpeace Canada for several years, he did not found Greenpeace. Phil Cotes, Irving Stowe, and Jim Bohlen founded Greenpeace in 1970. Patrick Moore applied for a berth on the Phyllis Cormack in March, 1971 after the organization had already been in existence for a year. A copy of his application letter and Greenpeace's response are available here (PDF)

And did you also know that, according to Greenpeace:

Patrick Moore is a Paid Spokesperson for the Nuclear Industry

In April 2006, the Nuclear Energy Institute, the principal lobby for the nuclear industry, launched the Clean And Safe Energy Coalition and installed former Bush Administration EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman and Mr. Moore as its co-chairs. The Clean and Safe Energy Coalition was part of a public relations project spearheaded by the public relations giant Hill & Knowlton as part of its estimated $8 million contract with the nuclear industry. [Bolding in original.]

So if they wanted to characterize him accurately (yea, I know.  When has Scaife's Braintrust ever portrayed anything about climate change accurately?) they should have written:

Paid Spokesperson for the Nuclear Industry Patrick Moore told Congress...

But this is what passes for science literacy on the editorial page of Richard Mellon Scaife's Tribune-Review.

Look At This

Scaife's braintrust over at the Tribune-Review sticks its collective foot into its collective mouth.  It only took a few minutes of digging to find out how badly they failed to research this:

An Emory University student stood up in a public forum last month to defend President Barack Obama's extraconstitutional behavior by claiming he had invoked the Constitution's “Elastic Clause.” Of course, no such “clause” exists. The student must have picked up the notion in economics class. You know, Mush for Brains 101.[Bolding in original.]

The source of the story is a familiar name, J. Christian Adams.  He's the guy who pushed in 2009 the (as we all know by now false) THERE'S VOTER INTIMIDATION IN PHILLY! story.  I wonder why the braintrust didn't identify him as the source here.  Perhaps to do so would have been, considering his misplaced  (and false) VOTER INTIMIDATION IN PHILLY! story, an auto-discredit they wanted to avoid.

Anyway, J. writes:

If college students listened to Mark Levin or Rush Limbaugh, they would receive a better American history education than they are getting from their professors. I recently spoke at Emory University, where one student defended all of President Obama’s unconstitutional actions by invoking the Elastic Clause of the Constitution.

Citing the Elastic Clause could indeed justify a wide range of administration actions, except for one problem – it doesn’t exist.

But you couldn’t tell that to the student at Emory University who came to my speech last week on Obama’s abuses of power. He persisted in defending the actions through the Elastic Clause, as if the be-all, end-all provision was common knowledge.

From the sound of it, the Elastic Clause must be common knowledge in faculty lounges.

While it's true that the phrase "Elastic Clause" is no where to be found in the Constitution, the phrase "Elastic Clause" refers to a clause that certainly is found there.  Which clause? This one:

The Congress shall have power . . . To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.

And how do I know that the phrase "Elastic Clause" refers to Article I, section 8, clause 18 of the Constitution? Says so here and here and here and here.

Mr. Adams, but, Mr. Adams, while I cannot write with any style or proper etiquette (I'm but a simple trumpet player from Connecticut), I'd have to say that IF it's explained in such diverse places as the Gallagher Law Library at the University of Washington School of Law, Dictionary.com, uslegal.com AND answers.yahoo.com, it's probably what you'd have to refer to as "common knowledge."

Kinda embarrassed yourself by saying otherwise, don't you think?

Instead of denying the common knowledge that Article 1, section 8 exists, what you should have countered your Emory challengers with, Mr Adams, was this simple point: The clause in question is found in Article I of the Constitution and Article I defines the government's Legislative powers, not the it's Executive powers.  So it's a stretch the size of the Louisiana Purchase to use the Elastic Clause to describe President Obama's Executive powers.

Isn't it?

But what do I know?  I'm not a lawyer.  But it took me all of a half hour to find out.

The fact that so much wrong can be found in such a small space in the Tribune-Review is nothing new.

Refuting Spakovsky Who's "Refuting" Mediamatters

This'll be kinda circular so bear with me for a while.

In today's Tribune-Review my good friends on the [board who decides these things] decided to give Hans A. Von Spakovsky some space in (as the headline puts it):

Refuting (not rebutting) Media Matters
But with the usual misplacement of some very pertinent information (a practice so prevalent on the Trib editorial page), he does neither.

Hans begins:

Media Matters, the self-styled “media watchdog” of the left, has accused the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review of using “deceptive numbers” to “attack” immigration reform. But the Trib is exactly right when it says that the Obama administration is not committed to border enforcement and cannot be trusted to implement a comprehensive immigration reform plan.

The criticisms voiced by Media Matters are way off base — particularly their claims about so-called “secret numbers” from The Heritage Foundation and the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS).

Of course he leaves out how much money the owner of the paper's given to those two fine organizations. Here, let me help you with that:

•  The Center for Immigration Studies has recieved a total of $11,476,000 in foundation money over the years with 17% of it ($1,947,5000) coming from two foundations (Sarah Scaife and Carthage) controlled by Richard Mellon Scaife.  Indeed in the first decade of records found at the bridge project (1991,2001), Scaife's foundations gave about 66% of the total foundational support.  I think that's called "seed money" but I could be wrong.
• We all know about how much Scaife's sent to the Heritage Foundation.  A this point, Heritage has received $109,986,558 in foundation money with about 25% ($27,944,000) coming from three Scaife foundations (Allegheny, Carthage and Sarah Scaife).  In the first decade of Heritage numbers found at the Bridge Project (1985-1995), Scaife's foundations gave almost exactly half of the foundation money given to Heritage ($12,439,000 out of $25,138,677).  Again, seed money.

But that's old stuff.  While its omission invalidates anything that follows, still let's move on.  This is how the Media Matters posting Von Spakovsky found so offensive begins:

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review cited deceptive statistics from the Heritage Foundation to attack the immigration reform effort, falsely claiming that the Obama administration is not enforcing current laws and arguing that it would continue this practice under a comprehensive immigration reform law.

A December 15 editorial by the Tribune-Review cited a post by the Heritage Foundation to claim that "the deportation of illegal aliens, in fact, has sunk to its lowest level in 40 years" and that the Department of Homeland Security has accepted 81 percent of 580,000 applicants for provisional legal status under a program called the Deferred Act of Childhood Arrivals (DACA). The Tribune-Review argued that these numbers show that the Obama administration is not committed to border enforcement and therefore should not be trusted to roll out a comprehensive immigration reform plan.

But the Tribune-Review's analysis should be taken with a grain of salt since its Heritage Foundation numbers come from "secret numbers" obtained by the anti-immigrant nativist Center for Immigration Studies, which is known for fabricating information and pushing misleading studies.

Let's start with that "secret numbers" link since Von Spakovsky mentions it specifically.  It leads to this paragraph in this piece at the Washington Times:

Authorities deported fewer illegal immigrants in fiscal 2013 than at any time since President Obama took office, according to secret numbers obtained by the Center for Immigration Studies that suggest Mr. Obama’s nondeportation policies have hindered removals.

Just 364,700 illegal immigrants were removed in fiscal 2013, according to internal numbers from U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement that CIS released Wednesday — down 11 percent from the nearly 410,000 who were deported in 2012.

And here's that report from CIS - and I'll ask, where do you think the Washington Times came up with the phrase "secret numbers"?  Here:

The report also presents previously unpublished statistics disclosing the startlingly large number of cases on ICE’s post-final-order docket of aliens who have been ordered removed, but who remain living here in defiance of immigration enforcement.

Now let's go back to how Hans pumped up the charge against Media Matters:

...particularly their claims about so-called “secret numbers” from The Heritage Foundation and the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS)

He wants you to think that the charge of "secret numbers" came from Media Matters when it was actually from the Washington Times piece dutifully describing the very CIS "research" he's trying to defend.

Didn't he think someone would check?

Then there's Von Spakovsky's next charge:

Media Matters accused CIS of “fabricating information.”

But then he rebuts the charge by citing the very same Washington Times piece we've just been talking about.  The point being, he had to know about how they were the exact source of the "secret numbers" phrase and yet still decided not to tell you.

But let's look back at that "fabricating information" charge.  When and how did Media Matters say it?  What context?  It's in a sentence discrediting CIS in general - it's not about the specific charge Von Spakovsky attempts to rebut with the Washington Times piece.  The link at Media Matters leads to this PDF from the Center for New Community where we can read this description of CIS from the Southern Poverty Law Center:

CIS often manipulates data, relying on shaky statistics or faulty logic to come to the preordained conclusion that immigration is bad for this country.

That sentence is from this page at SPLC.  Here's an example of why the SPLC thinks CIS "fabricates information":

"Hello, I Love You, Won't You Tell Me Your Name: Inside the Green Card Marriage Phenomenon" (November 2008). This report alleges widespread fraud among marriages between American citizens and foreigners, but then goes on to admit that "there is no way of knowing" just how prevalent marriage fraud is because there is no systematic data. CIS even concedes that most marriages "between Americans and foreign nationals are legitimate." Then, based on this non-data, CIS gets to what seems to be the real point of its study — "if small-time con artists and Third-World gold-diggers can obtain green cards with so little resistance, then surely terrorists can." Fraudulent marriage applications, CIS concludes, are "prevalent among international terrorists, including members of Al-Qaeda. [Bolding in original.]

So much unmentioned by Von Spakovsky...kinda makes you wonder who's fabricating what information for which purpose.

Ah...What We Find, When We Dig.

From today's Tuesday Takes:

The prospects for reining in the Obama administration's out-of-control Environmental Protection Agency are brighter because the U.S. Supreme Court will consider whether it has overstepped the authority to regulate “greenhouse gases” it was granted by the justices in 2007's Massachusetts v. EPA .

You'll note, of course, that the irony quotes are there for a reason.  But that's not what we're here for.  Scaife's braintrust does the usual "liberal EPA overstep" dance blah-blah-blah.  But let's take a look at what the Supreme Court actually said:

12-1146 ) UTILITY AIR REGULATORY GROUP V. EPA
12-1248 ) AM. CHEMISTRY COUNCIL, ET AL. V. EPA, ET AL.
12-1254 ) ENERGY-INTENSIVE MANUFACTURERS V. EPA, ET AL.
12-1268 ) SOUTHEASTERN LEGAL FOUNDATION V. EPA, ET AL.
12-1269 ) TEXAS, ET AL. V. EPA, ET AL.
12-1272 ) CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, ET AL. V. EPA, ET AL.

The petitions for writs of certiorari are granted limited to the following question: “Whether EPA permissibly determined that its regulation of greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles triggered permitting requirements under the Clean Air Act for stationary sources that emit greenhouse gases.” The cases are consolidated and a total of one hour is allotted for oral argument.

You'll note that nestled warmly among all the pro-business groups challenging the EPA in the list of cases to be consolidated is something called the "Southeastern Legal Foundation."

Guess who's given more than 58% of all the foundational support to the Southeastern Legal Foundation?

That's right, Tribune-Review owner Richard Mellon Scaife.

According to the Bridgeproject, the Southeastern Legal Foundation has received a total of $3.817 million dollars from various foundations over the years.  $2.225 million of which has come from either the Sarah Scaife or Carthage foundations, both controlled by Tribune-Review owner Richard Mellon Scaife.  Unless my math is wrong, that's a tad more than 58% of the total.

Hmmm...so a legal foundation's challenge to the EPA has made it to the Supreme Court and a conservative editorial board cheers them on - all with no mention whatsoever of the millions that their boss has funneled to it.

Ah, the things you find when you dig, just a little.

Bad News For RM Scaife

We all know how embedded Richard Mellon Scaife is with the Heritage Foundation.  The owner of the Tribune-Review is vice chairman of the board of trustees and his foundations have given wads of sweaty money (at least $24 million worth) to that venerable rightwing think tank.

But yesterday, Senator Orrin Hatch called them out:


The important part:

Heritage used to be the conservative organization helping Republicans and helping conservatives and helping us to be able to have the best intellectual conservative ideas. There's a real question on the minds of many Republicans now, and I'm not just thinking for myself, for a lot of people - is Heritage going to go so political that it doesn't amount to anything anymore? I hope not. I'm going to try to help survive and do well. But right now I think it's in danger of losing its clout and its power around Washington, DC.

Uh-oh.

So what's Scaife's braintrust gonna now do with Orrin?  Only last August they praised him for this speech on the Senate Floor.

Like the rest of the GOP's internal arguments, this'll be fun to watch.

Fun With Math - Right Wing Style!

Today, our friends on the Tribune-Review editorial board went with this:

Confirming the disconnect between the empty-promise pretenses on which ObamaCare was sold and its real-world effects in practice is a new report from Medicare actuaries that says health spending in ObamaCare's first 10 years will be about $621 billion higher than it would be without that train wreck of a law. That's $7,450 more in health spending per family of four through 2022, according to Duke University health-policy expert Chris Conover, writing for The Apothecary, a Forbes blog.

$7,450?  that's a lot of money!  But of course, this is right wing math which almost always means it's misleading.  And misleading it is.  Here's how Conover came by that result, as quoted in Wonkette:

So I have taken the latest year-by-year projections [of additional health spending attributable to the Affordable Care Act], divided by the projected U.S. population to determine the added amount per person and multiplied the result by 4.

Makes sense, right?  Except it's extremely silly.  And here's why (from thinkprogress):

One economist interviewed by ThinkProgress, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities’ Paul Van de Water, described this calculation as one of the stupidest things he’s read in a long time and likened it to arguing that college costs will increase for a “typical” family if the federal government adopts policies that help lower-income Americans afford college education. Yes, the nation will spend more on education if more students enroll in colleges and universities, but the “typical” student already attending college won’t; she or he will continuing paying tuition at more or less the same rate, while the newly-enrolled student will presumably benefit from some sort of subsidized tuition rate.

The same is true here. The so-called “typical” family that Conover describes already receives health care insurance through their employer. The existence of 30 million newly-insured people — many of whom will receive tax credits if they purchase insurance in the law’s exchanges — won’t do much to move their premiums in one way or another. (Health advocates hope that the law will slow the rate of growth in health care spending, but that’s a long-term proposition.)

Thinkprogress has more on Conover's misleading math.  First from an MIT professor:

“This is a typically misleading use of data by opponents of Obamacare,” MIT’s Jonathan Gruber added. “The bottom line is that the government has consistently reported that Obamacare will raise national health spending by about 1 to 2 percent.” “This is a small fraction of the typical 5 to 7 percent annual growth rate in health care – and is a small price to pay for insuring 30 million or more Americans.”

And then in an update from Kenneth Thomas, a Poli-Sci professor from University of Missouri-St. Louis:

Forbes’ most-read story of the day (with over 26,000 Facebook shares and 3400 tweets as I write this) is simply false. Between all the new taxes and the premiums from the newly insured, you can cover the total increase in health care spending. The typical, already insured family isn’t going to see increases due to the rise in overall health care spending. You add 30 million new insured at a far lower cost than what we currently spend per person. And the editors didn’t catch a blatant error on present value.

You can read Thomas' entire debunking here.

All in all typical bad math from the same crowd that bad maths climate science.

I Guess I Gotta Do This Again

How many "less than accurate" assertions can you spot in this latest from the Tribune-Review editorial board?

Not only did Barack Obama's IRS illegally target conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status with hellish harassment, it engaged in clandestine surveillance of them even after its illegalities were exposed, investigators say. If it takes an old-fashioned public pillorying followed by tarring and feathering to bring the IRS to justice, then so be it. [Bolding in original.]

 Let's start with the IRS targeting.  We've already posted this from Salon, but it bears another read:

We already know that the IRS targeted progressive groups in addition to Tea Party ones, but new information released today adds further details, showing that the tax agency also targeted “ACORN successors” and left-leaning “Emerge” groups. Emerge Nevada, Emerge Maine and Emerge Massachusetts were the only groups to have their applications actually denied 501(c)4 tax-exempt status. Conservative groups had their applications delayed, in some cases for over a year, but not rejected outright.

The above was from late August of this year.  The link in the first sentence goes back two more months to June, 2013.  So we've known for a while that it wasn't only conservative groups that were targeted but liberal ones as well.  It's just that there were more conservative groups than liberal groups applying for tax-exempt status.

But let's take on some more recent reporting on this issue.  Here's what the AP reported a few days ago:

A May report by the IRS inspector general said the agency gave extra scrutiny to 298 groups when they applied for tax exempt status from the spring of 2010 to the spring of 2012. The vast majority of the groups — 248 — were conservative, while 29 were liberal and 21 were neither, according to an analysis by the Republican staff of the House Ways and Means Committee.

Of the 111 conservative groups that had their applications approved, 38 were flagged for additional monitoring, according to the staff review. Of the 20 liberal groups that had their applications approved, seven were flagged for additional monitoring.

Take another look at that last paragraph.  A little over 34% (38/111 = .342) of the conservative groups approved were flagged for further review while a whopping 35% (7/20=.35) of liberal groups approved were also flagged for further review.

And yet this story is about how the IRS targeted the tea-party.

But did it?  Further down the AP story we read this:

After the hearing, the IRS issued a statement saying that while some groups had been flagged for additional scrutiny in the future, that monitoring never took place because the program was put on hold this summer.

‘‘This means that none of them received special scrutiny,’’ the IRS said. ‘‘This precautionary step was done out of an abundance of caution and to ensure a fresh, independent evaluation to determine if these groups needed review at a future point in time. We are continuing to assess the situation going forward.’’ [Emphasis added.]

Now of course the IRS could be lying.  But still it's a long way from the assertion that they had "engaged in clandestine surveillance" now isn't it?

But what would that monitoring have looked like had it taken place?

Cue the next AP paragraph:

The monitoring, known as a review of operations, would have fallen short of a full audit in most cases. Under the program, agents monitor groups to assess whether they are adhering to the activities described in their applications for tax-exempt status.

So Scaife's braintrust is saying that nothing like this should ever be taking place?  As I've written before, it's not the scrutiny that's offensive, it's the way the scrutiny took place.  Legal monitoring of this is absolutely necessary.

But let's move on to another "less than accurate" assertion from Scaife's braintrust.  We can all read this from the AP:

So far, congressional investigators have shown that IRS supervisors in Washington knew that applications by tea party groups were being delayed for months and even years. However, investigators have not publicly produced evidence that anyone outside the IRS ordered the targeting or knew it was happening.

That would include, of course, the White House.  But that didn't stop the braintrust from calling it "Barrack Obama's IRS" did it?

And then finally:

The IRS has been under siege since May when agency officials acknowledged that agents working in a Cincinnati office had improperly targeted tea party groups for extra scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status. Shortly after the revelation, President Barack Obama forced the acting IRS commissioner to resign and appointed Werfel to run the agency temporarily.

In August, Obama nominated John Koskinen, a retired corporate and government turnaround specialist, to a five-year term as commissioner. Werfel continues to run the agency while Koskinen awaits Senate confirmation.

Three congressional committees and the Justice Department have launched investigations, and much of the leadership at the IRS has been replaced.

The implication from the braintrust, of course, is that Barrack Obama's IRS has not yet been punished - because it's Barrack Obama's IRS.  And yet, in reality...

Did you get them all?

Scaife's Braintrust Must Be So Proud

Why?

Because they got fact-checked by Media Matters.

It's about this Tribune-Review op-ed from a few days ago and it's amazing how much the braintrust gets wrong.

(Well, maybe not so amazing, considering these are the same folks who've questioned the science of climate change repeatedly.  But I digress.)

Take a look.  This is what Mediamatters opened with:

Tribune-Review Described Common Core Education Standards As "Central Planning." In an editorial arguing that Common Core would dilute educational standards, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review stated that the practice would allow "a bureaucracy far removed from any school district" to control local education. It also claimed that the argument that Common Core sets "a floor of consistency" is "the same central-planning argument made by every education bureaucrat" since President Carter. [Bolding and Italics in original.]

HOWEVER, as Media Matters points out:

• Common Core Standards Are State-Led Educations Standards 
• Common Core Standards Are Not Mandatory

Do yerself a favor and read the rest.  It'll be an education in itself.

The Trib. Again. This Time It's ObamaCare. Again.

A few notes from today's Thursday Wrap:

Uh-oh, don't look now but the Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffett, says it's time to scrap ObamaCare and start over. “Attack the costs first and then worry about expanding coverage,” he told Money Morning. Bottom line: If President Obama has lost the usually ardent support of Mr. Buffett, ObamaCare is a lost cause. [Bolding in original]

Uh-oh, don't look now but the crack research team at the Trib has done it again - or rather failed to do it.  Adequate research, that is.

Take a look at this from the Scaife supported Newsbusters:

When Warren Buffett proposed higher taxes on millionaires in 2011, the media gushed and fawned giving him and his views airtime as if Elvis Presley returned from the dead.

Will they be as fascinating by the Oracle of Omaha stating that ObamaCare should be scrapped? [Emphasis added.]

Before moving on, let's all note the use of the phrase "Oracle of Obama."  Good clue that this was the braintrust's source for their Thursday Wrap blurb.  Anyway, Newsbusters then quotes the Monday Morning piece:

"Attack the costs first, and then worry about expanding coverage," he said.

And so on.

So what's the problem?

This is the problem for the Trib.   It's what's posted above the story at Newsbusters:

Executive editor's note: Due to an error made by a secondary source, the piece below incorrectly claimed that Warren Buffett had called for the repeal of Obamacare in 2013. The interview which was cited actually took place in 2010. We regret the error.[Emphasis added.]

In fact, the Money Morning piece that Scaife's own Newsbusters page links to no longer contains that "Attack the costs..." quotation.

So let's sum up.  The Scaife's braintrust at the Trib uses a quote to assert that Warren Buffet thinks that "Obamacare should be scrapped" while another Scaife supported "news" source corrects itself and says that it's piece (one that used the same quotation) was incorrect in saying exactly the same thing.

Oh, and that "Attack the costs..." line was actually from 2010.

If you can't even get this stuff right, then what good are you at all?

Then there's this:

The New York Post reports that under ObamaCare, doctors will be required to ask you “Are you sexually active?” and “If so, with one partner, multiple partners or same-sex partners?” To which any true-blue American should respond, “Tell the president it's none of his (expletive deleted) business.”

What they didn't tell you is that it wasn't a report from the Post, it was a column by Betsy McCaughey.

And as Wonkette points out:

If there’s anyone we can trust for her expertise on health care policy, it’s Betsy McCaughey, the genius who decided that if Medicare pays for seniors to meet with a doctor to discuss living wills, that’s a DEATH PANEL.

And then Mediamatters elaborates:

As Wonkette pointed out, McCaughey offered no evidence for her claims that the ACA changes existing practices. In fact, despite her fearmongering, sexual history questions are routine medical practice. The Centers For Disease Control calls such questions "an important part of a regular medical exam or physical history" and recommends that "[a] sexual history needs to be taken during a patient's initial visit, during routine preventive exams, and when you see signs of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs)." In fact, the very questions that McCaughey claims doctors will now be pressured to ask are the exact questions the CDC recommends doctors ask their patients.

In a post on The Incidental Economist, Aaron Carroll, a professor of pediatrics and director of the Center for Health Policy and Professionalism Research, accused McCaughey of inventing inaccurate "reasons to dislike Obamacare," pointing out that doctors ask about sexual history "because having multiple sexual partners greatly increases your risk of sexually transmitted infections. They're looking out for my health, and want to advise me best on how to manage it."

It's always amazing to me how Scaife's braintrust can get so much absolutely wrong in such a tiny space.  But once you fully grasp the depth and breadth of their various mendacities, how can you trust anything they have to say?