Right Wing Nut House

The meltdown continues among those who sought to stifle scientific debate about man made global warming by claiming the science proving such was “settled,” or “solid,” or undeniable.”

Latest to make an ass of himself is Alan Combs who is a few days behind the curve as far as what the CRU hack has revealed:

Climate scientists who just released “The Copenhagen Diagnosis” say ice sheets are melting at an increased rate, and future sea-level rise will be higher than previously forecast. But scientific evidence means nothing to those with an anti-global warming agenda, who point to illegally hacked mails to try to prove that global warming is a hoax. Sadly for them, the anti-global-warming hysteria isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Sadly for Alan, the emails constituted about 5% of the total information that has been spilling out on to the internet for nearly a week now. Charlie Martin went into the “Harry Read Me” file that was kept by a harried programmer who couldn’t replicate the “scientific” findings of Mann and Jones because the computer code they used to reach their conclusion was such a mess. Earth to Alan: If you or others can’t duplicate your experimental results - in this case, temperature data - then your theory doesn’t pass muster.

Then there’s Marc Sheppard’s piece that delves more deeply into the codes and finds enormous problems with them. Evidence of fraud? The jury is out on that. But even giving the scientists in question the benefit of the doubt any fool can see that their theory on millenial temps is in deep, deep trouble.

Except the science is settled, right? Al Gore said so back in 2007:

Even once-skeptical Republicans are coming over to Gore’s side — and it seems the debate has shifted from arguing whether there is a climate crisis to disagreement over how to fix it.

The science is settled, Gore told the lawmakers. Carbon-dioxide emissions — from cars, power plants, buildings and other sources — are heating the Earth’s atmosphere.

Others agreed:

John Quiggin, economist

* “There’s no longer any serious debate among climate scientists about either the reality of global warming or about the fact that its substantially caused by human activity…” [2]

David Milliband, UK Environment Minister

* “I think that the scientific debate has now closed on global warming, and the popular debate is closing as well”[3]

Camilla Cavendish

* “The science debate is effectively over. The Stern review means that the economic debate is all but over. Only the political debate is left…”[4]

The science has never been “settled,” or “closed, or “effectively over.” There is good evidence that supports the theory and good evidence that rejects it. What is so hard about accepting that fact? What is so difficult about having an open debate without having skeptics compared to Holocaust deniers and Nazis?

Colmes and others who are seeing the ground shift under their feet as their long held beliefs are revealed as not set in stone, are dealing with this situation by saying they were for open debate all along and it is the skeptics that were for closing it!

RealClimate - a creature of the very lab where the emails and other data emerged - is now sounding a reasonable note:

More interesting is what is not contained in the emails. There is no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research, no grand plan to ‘get rid of the MWP’, no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no ‘marching orders’ from our socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords. The truly paranoid will put this down to the hackers also being in on the plot though.

Instead, there is a peek into how scientists actually interact and the conflicts show that the community is a far cry from the monolith that is sometimes imagined. People working constructively to improve joint publications; scientists who are friendly and agree on many of the big picture issues, disagreeing at times about details and engaging in ‘robust’ discussions; Scientists expressing frustration at the misrepresentation of their work in politicized arenas and complaining when media reports get it wrong; Scientists resenting the time they have to take out of their research to deal with over-hyped nonsense. None of this should be shocking.

They sound almost reasonable, don’t they? Of course, the real skeptics in the scientific community did not accuse the CRU or any other lab of being communists, or part of a global conspiracy. That’s for the nutcases who are saying today that the entire warming theory has been “disproved.” No responsible skeptic has made that claim as far as I can tell. If they have, they are as bad as Colmes and his ilk who are ignoring the probability of at least some fraud and certainly an effort to stifle dissent in the crudest way imaginable at the CRU lab.

George Monbiot blames…the skeptics!

It is true that much of what has been revealed could be explained as the usual cut and thrust of the peer review process, exacerbated by the extraordinary pressure the scientists were facing from a denial industry determined to crush them. One of the most damaging emails was sent by the head of the climatic research unit, Phil Jones. He wrote “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow - even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”

One of these papers which was published in the journal Climate Research turned out to be so badly flawed that the scandal resulted in the resignation of the editor-in-chief. Jones knew that any incorrect papers by sceptical scientists would be picked up and amplified by climate change deniers funded by the fossil fuel industry, who often – as I documented in my book Heat – use all sorts of dirty tricks to advance their cause.

Yes - all that “extraordinary pressure” from fellow scientists determined to “crush them” brings out the momma in me. I just want to wrap my arms around Jones et. al. and protect them from those mean old meanies who disagree with them.

Proof that deniers are all funded by oil companies - or even prominent ones like Lindzen or McIntyre - is a little scarce from George. And how ironic is it to accuse skeptics of “dirty tricks” when the emails show that Jones and Mann used every trick in the book to keep dissenting views out of important journals?

But Monbiot sees a “crisis” for the global warming community. I don’t see it as a crisis at all. This is the absolute best thing that could have happened to the debate over climate change.

When I asked Charlie Martin on my show the other night whether I thought this would slow down cap and trade and other AGW gimmicks he thought it wouldn’t, although cap and trade may already have been dead in the US senate. But I have to disagree. The story is out there despite an amusing refusal by the major media to cover it. What makes it amusing is that they still believe they are the gatekeepers with the ability to keep a story they don’t like under wraps. But people get a lot of their news now from the internet and there is just no way this story will die anytime soon.

This will give new impetus to skeptics who may find the atmosphere to publish their findings a little friendlier. And if their papers are bogus, or flawed, they will be handled the way all science should be handled; their peers will vet their findings ruthlessly and thoroughly. If they can’t stand up to scrutiny then they will be rejected. And the same goes for the other side in the debate.

It won’t be perfect. One thing those emails honestly show is that the scientists are human. They are as susceptible to human emotions like jealousy, anger, and envy as non-scientists. They are not robots and therefore, the process will not be without problems.

But it is a process that has served us well for 500 years and has led to astonishing breakthroughs in knowledge despite the problems. Eventually, the observed phenomenon and measured data will give us enough facts to honestly reach conclusions about AGW - hopefully without much political pressure. That last may be a pipe dream but if anything can teach the scientific community to leave politics to the side, it is this scientific scandal that is as much about the politics of global warming as anything else.

I like Uncle Jimbo over at Blackfive. He usually has something interesting to say about hot military issues and is passionate about defending our people in uniform.

He is a retired Special Operations Master Sergeant so his bona fides to comment on this Allahpundit post are not in question.

It is his over the top, un-called for response to Allah’s observations about the Special Forces men who captured a wanted terrorist and now face assault charges, that is the issue. And Jimbo does not come out of the scrum looking very good. In fact, he raises some issues that need addressing not so much because Allah needs defending (if he wishes, Allah can do that himself), but because in a democracy with an all-volunteer military, there are lines in debate that must not be crossed by either side.

Here’s what Allah wrote about the event:

I like Goldfarb’s take: “A fat lip? That’s enough to get you rough military justice from the Obama administration, but blow up the World Trade Center and you get all the due process rights of the civilian criminal justice system.” Even so, the fact that this turd got the Iraqi authorities involved may have left Central Command with little choice here. The last thing the military needs right now is another detainee-abuse headache, especially with some Iraqi pols already leaning on them about withdrawal. Giving the SEALs a zero-tolerance wrist slap reminds other troops not to do anything more seriously stupid that might be exploited politically. And it will be a wrist slap, I’m sure: The last thing The One needs after shipping KSM off to NYC for his close-up is the image of SEALs being hauled off to prison for busting some jihadi in the face. In fact, according to Fox, the SEALs requested a court-martial rather than nonjudicial punishment, presumably because they know full well how awful this looks for the military. Prediction: Wrist slap.

Jimbo thinks Allah too dismissive:

Aww c’mon now. I do my best to avoid red on red fire, but sometimes it is absolutely called for. Noted beta male and “many moons ago” entertaining blogger Allahpundit at Hot Air throws three Navy SEALs under the bus just to appease people who are only safe to be appeased, himself included, because of these rough men. No link from me.

Yes, yes, lets all whip it out and compare. No doubt Jimbo’s is bigger than Allah’s. But beyond the testosterone challenge to the “beta male,” there is a an unsettling reference and echo of the “chickenhawk” argument used by the left against supporters of the war who criticized soldiers that came out against the conflict; only those who enjoy the absolute moral authority of having served or who are serving, can criticize the military.

Jimbo returns to this despicable lefty meme at the end of his tirade:

I realize you get paid to say controversial shite all day long. Every once in a while you ought to take a gander at who gives you the freedom to flap your freakin’ gums and think twice before you decide that zero-tolerance demands that your betters suffer for some bullshit like this. Don’t offer the PC losers cover, ever. They will use it against my friends.

Who, in fact, gives Allah the “freedom to flap [his] freakin’ gums” about anything? That would be the Constitution, of course, and the men and women who make its precepts come alive.

Some of them are in the military, our intelligence services, our Coast Guard. I would argue that it’s also the cop on the beat, the sheriff on our interstates, and the state police who also stand watch over our freedoms as well. No law and order - precious little freedom.

And behind them, a veritable army that keeps our military supplied with equipment and the tools necessary to do their job. Our hero warriors are not alone on a hill, standing a silent sentinel to protect us. He is not naked, armed with a spear to fight off the wolves and brigands who would attack us. In addition to possessing the courage and dedication to duty, he is the best armed, best equipped, most technologically advanced, most deadly tool of war civilization has ever seen. And he didn’t get that way all by himself.

The rest of us who were not called to service - and there is little doubt in this day and age that military service is a calling - are as much a part of the defense of this nation as Jimbo. We are grateful for his service, grateful for his comrades who are still serving. But to posit the notion that they alone have the ability, the right to criticize or comment on their efforts to defend us is arrogant posturing.

Allah’s rather mild observations about the politics of the situation may have been off putting to some. Clearly, he was unaware that a “wrist slap” would have serious repercussions for the careers of the Special Forces soldiers who captured the terrorist, as Jimbo heatedly points out.

But to use the chickenhawk argument as Jimbo is doing to lambaste the writer is sickening - and ironic given Jimbo’s remonstrance that Allah was criticizing the soldiers “just to appease people who are only safe to be appeased… because of these rough men.” It is ironic because he is using a lefty meme to criticize Allah for believing as they do - strange rhetorical bedfellows indeed.

The military is not infallible, as Jimbo has pointed out frequently. But neither should those who serve in it be elevated to a separate, higher moral plane in our culture. Being a member of the warrior fraternity in America is a voluntary undertaking. While this bestows a responsibility which the rest of us are not encumbered, no special rights are granted as a result of their volunteerism that would endow their speech with extra impetus, or give their thoughts a patina of moral infallibility - most especially when the argument is advanced that not having served in the military makes one less concerned, less morally responsible for our national security, and hence, their criticism less valid.

All of us contribute to our national defense what we can, where we can. It is a sophist’s argument that serving or not serving matters one whit to the power and cogency of one’s arguments. Some of Jimbo’s criticism of Allah’s analysis rings true. But he was dead wrong to bring up the chickenhawk meme to try and discredit it.

You won’t want to miss tonight’s Rick Moran Show, one of the most popular conservative talk shows on Blog Talk Radio.

Tonight, I welcome technology writer Charlie Martin to discuss the CRU scandal and its implications for science, for AGW, and for society.

The show will air from 7:00 - 8:00 PM Central time. You can access the live stream here. A podcast will be available for streaming or download shortly after the end of the broadcast.

Click on the stream below and join in on what one wag called a “Wayne’s World for adults.”

The Chat Room will open around 15 minutes before the show opens,

Also, if you’d like to call in and put your two cents in, you can dial (718) 664-9764.

When I was in grade school (St. Raymond, Mount Prospect, IL), there was a ritual that we looked forward to every Friday afternoon.

Along about two O’Clock, the nuns would herd us into the church so that the good priests (and they were good) could hear our confessions.

Now I don’t know how confession is done today in the Catholic church, having lapsed into first apostasy, then agnosticism, and finally atheism. But back then, you went into a closet sized little room with a wall separating you and the priest where you were supposed to spill the beans on all the sins you committed for the past week.

I should mention that if we were really lucky, confessions would last until three O’Clock which meant no more school for the day and an early start to the weekend. (In 8th grade, a few of us rowdies would make sure of this by spending 5 minutes listing our sins, thus assuring a glacial pace to the proceedings. One of the priests caught on and, although amused, asked us not to commit such sacrilege against the sacraments again.)

To be honest, I hated the whole idea of confession. I thought back then that it was one of those little tortures the Catholic Church invented to control their flock. The priest, after all, knew damn well who most of the penitents were - especially in my case since we lived 3 doors down from the rectory. What better way to control another than know their sins?

At any rate, the way I “confessed” was tell the priest stuff like “I sinned against the 2nd commandment 10 times, the 6th commandment 5 times, the 7th commandment twice…and I had impure thoughts 3 times!”

“Impure thoughts” at my age was making goo-eyes at Rene Russo and wishing I could see her with almost no clothes on while kissing her - on the lips! Our nuns (Sisters of Mercy) were very, very big on impure thoughts and constantly warned us how such could lead to hellfire and damnation.

It was all made up anyway. As a 14 year old, you probably have “impure thoughts” three times a minute much less in a week. And counting the transgressions against the second commandment of taking God’s name in vain would have required a room-sized computer to properly calculate.

Anyway, it’s a good thing some Republicans are on the ball when it comes to those in the party who might be thinking “impure thoughts” and thus transgress against the “principles” for which the GOP stands:

The battle among Republicans over what the party should stand for — and how much it should accommodate dissenting views on important issues — is probably going to move from the states to the Republican National Committee when it holds its winter meeting this January in Honolulu.

Republican leaders are circulating a resolution listing 10 positions Republican candidates should support to demonstrate that they “espouse conservative principles and public policies” that are in opposition to “Obama’s socialist agenda.” According to the resolution, any Republican candidate who broke with the party on three or more of these issues– in votes cast, public statements made or answering a questionnaire – would be penalized by being denied party funds or the party endorsement.

The proposed resolution was signed by 10 Republican national committee members and was distributed on Monday morning. They are asking for the resolution to be debated when Republicans gather for their winter meeting.

The resolution invokes Ronald Reagan, and noted that Mr. Reagan had said the Republican Party should be devoted to conservative principles but also be open to diverse views. President Reagan believed, the resolution notes, “that someone who agreed with him 8 out of 10 times was his friend, not his opponent.”

Looking over the list, I am happy to report that I support at least 8 and maybe 9 of the litmus test positions. (Long time readers might have some fun by guessing which one - or two - I can be considered “impure” for not supporting):

(1) We support smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s “stimulus” bill;

(2) We support market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run health care;

(3) We support market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;

(4) We support workers’ right to secret ballot by opposing card check;

(5) We support legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;

(6) We support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;

(7) We support containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat;

(8) We support retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;

(9) We support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion; and

(10) We support the right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership.

A few quibbles; what is “effective action” against Iran and North Korea (#7)? I don’t support military action unless they are an imminent threat to us or Israel (or South Korea).

Also, “rationing and denial of health care” (#9) is already with us in private insurance company decisions. Is it the GOP position that it is ok for private industry to ration but not government? Tell that one to the old folks.

Of the rest, I think DOMA has got to go. Otherwise, I score well on this test and demand my copy receive a Gold Star and that I get an extra ration of chocolate milk at lunch.

But what’s the point? About 99% of Republicans support 8-10 of those litmus tests. Probably 90% support all 10. Instead of silly, stupid gimmicks, why not just come out and say, “Snowe, Collins, Crist, and the rest of you RINO’s get squat from us!” Why go through the rigmarole of pretending to weed out apostates by giving grown men and women a childish “test” of purity?

I will answer that by saying simply that we have a bunch of idiots in charge of the party. They - the elites - think they are being quite clever by trying to satisfy the base by showing that they are getting tough by denying funds to those who don’t quite measure up to “conservative principles.”

You want conservative principles” How about prudence? How “prudent” is it to brand the Obama administration “socialist?” What about “probity?” Integrity and honesty is lacking in a party that tolerates its members festooning bills with earmarks. What about “variety” which is a Kirkian principle of eschewing systems that promote a “deadening conformity?” What are these litmus tests but the very definition of conformity?

What about the principle “that permanence and change must be recognized and reconciled in a vigorous society.” I see quite a bit of “permanence” in those 10 litmus tests, but no room for the American virtue of “change.” It’s the same old, same old in this stale repetition of talking points, not a reaffirmation of the viability of conservatism in American society.

Yes, deny funds to those who make a mockery of party principles and conservative ideas. This isn’t rocket science. Everybody knows who they are and party leaders are only making the GOP look ridiculous by making candidates act like 10 year olds, forcing this kind of conformity in the form of a “purity test” on them.

The nuns at St. Raymonds would no doubt have approved, however. Nothing they liked better than sniffing out “impure thoughts.”

Perhaps the next missive from national party leaders will contain the “penance” that must be performed before the transgressors get back in their good graces.

Five “Our Fathers” and whole recitation of the rosary ought to do the trick.

I watched this 60 Minutes segment last night on “The Cost of Dying” with extraordinarily mixed emotions. From anger to fear to horror, I have rarely had such an emotional reaction to an issue.

But once past the knee jerk outrage, I began to assess the moral and ethical dimensions of the problem and am extremely unsettled in where these questions lead me.

Some background on the segment:

Last year, Medicare paid $50 billion just for doctor and hospital bills during the last two months of patients’ lives - that’s more than the budget of the Department of Homeland Security or the Department of Education.

And it has been estimated that 20 to 30 percent of these medical expenditures may have had no meaningful impact. Most of the bills are paid for by the federal government with few or no questions asked.

You might think this would be an obvious thing for Congress and the president to address as they try to reform health care. But what used to be a bipartisan issue has become a politically explosive one - a perfect example of the costs that threaten to bankrupt the country and how hard it’s going to be to rein them in. Dr. Byock leads a team that treats and counsels patients with advanced illnesses.

He says modern medicine has become so good at keeping the terminally ill alive by treating the complications of underlying disease that the inevitable process of dying has become much harder and is often prolonged unnecessarily.

“Families cannot imagine there could be anything worse than their loved one dying. But in fact, there are things worse. Most generally, it’s having someone you love die badly,” Byock said.

Asked what he means by “die badly,” Byock told Kroft, “Dying suffering. Dying connected to machines. I mean, denial of death at some point becomes a delusion, and we start acting in ways that make no sense whatsoever. And I think that’s collectively what we’re doing.”

Now for the moral questions raised by the piece; How much do we, as a society, value individual life? At what point does what’s good for the many outweigh what’s good for the one? Should anyone - insurance companies, government, or a “death panel” - have the right to tell a patient and their family when it is time to let go of life and allow the natural progression of their disease to kill them?

All of these questions and more like it are asked with the costs associated with end of life treatment always in the background. And it isn’t just the costs. It is the tremendous amount of health care resources devoted to people who have no hope of recovery but make choices like this patient:

Charlie Haggart is 68 years old and suffering from liver and kidney failure. He wants a double transplant, which would cost about $450,000. But doctors have told him he’s currently too weak to be a candidate for the procedure.

At a meeting with Haggart’s family and his doctors, Dr. Byock raised the awkward question of what should be done if he got worse and his heart or lungs were to give out.

He said that all of the available data showed that CPR very rarely works on someone in Haggart’s condition, and that it could lead to a drawn out death in the ICU.

“Either way you decide, we will honor your choice, and that’s the truth,” Byock reassured Haggart. “Should we do CPR if your heart were to suddenly stop?”

“Yes,” he replied.

“You’d be okay with being in the ICU again?” Byock asked.

“Yes,” Haggart said.

“I know it’s an awkward conversation,” Byock said.

“It beats second place,” Haggart joked, laughing.

Should someone make the decision to resuscitate this gentleman for him? Who?

This is what end of life caregivers are asking these days. And the solution, in an echo of Sarah Palin’s “death panels,” may be hard and fast rules on what kind of care the terminally ill can demand of the system:

By law, Medicare cannot reject any treatment based upon cost. It will pay $55,000 for patients with advanced breast cancer to receive the chemotherapy drug Avastin, even though it extends life only an average of a month and a half; it will pay $40,000 for a 93-year-old man with terminal cancer to get a surgically implanted defibrillator if he happens to have heart problems too.

“I think you cannot make these decisions on a case-by-case basis,” Byock said. “It would be much easier for us to say ‘We simply do not put defibrillators into people in this condition.’ Meaning your age, your functional status, the ability to make full benefit of the defibrillator. Now that’s going to outrage a lot of people.”

“But you think that should happen?” Kroft asked.

“I think at some point it has to happen,” Byock said.

Is Byock a ghoul? Or is he talking sense? This is a compassionate conflicted man if you watch the segment. The chasm he has opened beneath our feet is both a moral and practical one and the tightrope he is asking us to walk is very thin indeed. If we decide to take these circumstances and apply universal guidelines for the treatment of the dying, won’t individuals “slip through the cracks” and be condemned to die who might otherwise outlive a doctor’s expectations with treatment? How many people who are given 2 months, three months, six months to live end up amazing their physician by surviving for years?

And then there’s the question of resources devoted to the dying. Here’s a Dartmouth researcher who did a detailed study on patients in the last two years of their lives:

The institute did a detailed analysis of Medicare records for patients in the last two years of their lives. Fisher says it is more efficient for doctors to manage patients who are seriously ill in a hospital situation, and there are other incentives that affect the cost and the care patients receive. Among them: the fact that most doctors get paid based on the number of patients that they see, and most hospitals get paid for the patients they admit.

“The way we set up the system right now, primary care physicians don’t have time to spend an hour with you, see how you respond, if they wanted to adjust your medication,” Fisher said. “So, the easiest thing for everybody up the stream is to admit you to the hospital. I think 30 percent of hospital stays in the United States are probably unnecessary given what our research looks like.”

[...]

“In medicine we have turned the laws of supply and demand upside down,” Elliot Fisher said. “Supply drives its own demand. If you’re running a hospital, you have to keep that hospital full of paying patients. In order to, you know, to meet your payroll. In order to pay off your bonds.”

And, of course, the fact that these costs are rising at a frightening pace is also driving the debate over end of life care:

“The perverse incentives that exist in our system are magnified at end of life,” David Walker, the government’s former top accountant told Kroft.

Walker used to be the head of the Government Accountability Office. He now heads the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, which is a strong advocate for reducing government debt. He says that 85 percent of the health care bills are paid by the government or private insurers, not by patients themselves. In fact most patients don’t even look at the bills.

“Does that make any sense to have, I mean, most things you buy, the customer has some impact,” Kroft remarked.

“We have a system where everybody wants as much as they can get, and they don’t understand the true cost of what they’re getting. The one thing that could bankrupt America is out of control health care costs. And if we don’t get them under control, that’s where we’re headed,” Walker said.

What all of this adds up to is that America is headed for the most difficult ethical and moral dilemmas in its history - questions that go to the very heart of what our country stands for, how we see ourselves; questions that deal with our deeply held religious beliefs, and perhaps most uncomfortable of all, cultural questions about the nature of life and death.

In all of this, the individual, and choices they have been able to make in the past about how they wish to exit this world, may very well be taken from them for the “good of the many.”

(Note: I hasten to add that there is nothing in either the Senate or House bill that directly deals with these questions, although the Medicare Cost Control panel certainly has that potential.)

When a society is faced with a crisis that may lead to its dissolution, is it a higher moral choice to abandon individual ethics and morality to save it? Are we really facing this kind of moral conundrum or am I setting up a “false choice” where another solution is available but I am refusing to acknowledge it?

I would like to think I have fairly presented the questions asked in the 60 Minutes segment. My personal belief is that the issues raised are impossible to discuss at this point because of the debate over reform and the political ramifications of discussing end of life treatment that would necessarily play into the fear mongering that arises whenever “unplugging grandma” is mixed in.

Here’s Doctor Byock on that subject:

“Well, this is a version then of pulling Grandma off the machine?” Kroft asked.

“You know, I have to say, I think that’s offensive. I spend my life in the service of affirming life. I really do. To say we’re gonna pull Grandma off the machine by not offering her liver transplant or her fourth cardiac bypass surgery or something is really just scurrilous. And it’s certainly scurrilous when we have 46 million Americans who are uninsured,” Byock said.

One thing that can be done was removed from the House bill because of Palin’s fearmongering; family doctors being paid to sit down with their Medicare patients to discuss living wills, end of life options, and educating their patients on the death process. The number of people who are unaware of these simple, common sense options are staggering. The idea that this is somehow cruel or would lead to doctors recommending that patients simply allow themselves to die was idiotic when the argument was made and, if you watch this segment closely, even more idiotic now.

A word about “rationing” which is the 800 lb gorilla in the room that I have avoided because of the idea that many opponents of health care reform can’t face the fact that we are already rationing resources. What’s interesting - and gives a depth of understanding to the moral dilemma we face - is that according to the Dartmouth study, rationing would be unnecessary if we dealt with end of life issues:

After analyzing Medicare records for end-of-life treatment, Fisher is convinced that there is so much waste in the present system that if it were eliminated there would be no need to ration beneficial care to anyone.

Multiple studies have concluded that most patients and their families are not even familiar with end-of-life options and things like living wills, home hospice and pain management.

“The real problem is that many of the patients that are being treated aggressively, if you ask them, they would prefer less aggressive care. They would prefer to be cared for at home. They’d prefer to go to hospice. If they were given a choice. But we don’t adequately give them a choice,” Fisher said.

“At some point, most doctors know that a patient’s not likely to get better,” Kroft remarked.

“Absolutely,” Fisher agreed. “Sometimes there’s a good conversation. Often there’s not. You know, patients are left alone to sort of figure it out themselves.”

I can’t stand people who approach these issues as if there is no real moral or ethical dilemma; that people should either be forced to die or that they should get any care they wish in order to hang on to life even after hope for recovery has expired. We are fast approaching a time when we will forced to make this choice and there is nothing easy or pat about it.

Those so certain of the moral ground beneath their feet are oblivious to the fact that they are really standing in quicksand. And their arrogant certainty about right and wrong is exposed as the sophistry it truly is.

“Prejudices are what fools use for reason.” - Voltaire.

Matt Taibbi this morning:

At the end of this decade what we call “politics” has devolved into a kind of ongoing, brainless soap opera about dueling cultural resentments and the really cool thing about it, if you’re a TV news producer or a talk radio host, is that you can build the next day’s news cycle meme around pretty much anything at all, no matter how irrelevant — like who’s wearing a flag lapel pin and who isn’t, who spent $150K worth of campaign funds on clothes and who didn’t, who wore a t-shirt calling someone a cunt and who didn’t, and who put a picture of a former Vice Presidential candidate in jogging shorts on his magazine cover (and who didn’t).

It doesn’t matter what the argument is about. What’s important is that once the argument starts, the two sides will automatically coalesce around the various instant-cocoa talking points and scream at each other until they’re blue in the face, or until the next argument starts.

And while some of us are old enough to remember that once upon a time, these arguments always had at least some sort of ideological flavor to them, i.e. the throwdowns were at least rooted in some sort of real political issue (war, taxes, immigration, etc.) we’ve now got a whole generation that is accustomed to screaming at cultural enemies as an end in itself, for the sheer dismal fun of it. Start fighting first, figure out the reasons later.

I must confess to the occasional foray into this kind of political “debate.” In a sense, it is irresistible. It gets tiresome writing about real issues, personalities, and “things that matter,” so a little devolution into the culture wars is sometimes just the thing to garner readers, get links, and start a lively conversation in the comments.

But is it really all a “distraction?” Many times, Americans argue by “substitution,” not able to finger exactly what it is that troubles us, and rather than explore the real reasons for our differences, use proxy issues instead. This convention is most pronounced when we try and talk about race, or more basically, our different worldviews. Most Americans don’t call out an opponent by screaming at him, “You Hegelian harlot! How dare you formulate your opinion based on the notion that Marx was right about religion being the opiate of the masses!” Instead, we just scream, “Socialist!” or “Fascist” at one another.

Is the “birther” argument a substitute for being uncomfortable about Obama’s race? Some would argue this is so. I think it deeper than that, going to the notion that Obama is so different from past presidents, not just racially, but his entire upbringing. He just isn’t like “us.” And since Americans like to think that presidents, regardless of party, share at least some of their “values,” it is much safer to argue that such a different man as Obama has no business being president because he wasn’t born here, or isn’t a “natural born” citizen.

Here, Taibbi really nails Palin to a cross:

Sarah Palin is the Empress-Queen of the screaming-for-screaming’s sake generation. The people who dismiss her book Going Rogue as the petty, vindictive meanderings of a preening paranoiac with the IQ of a celery stalk completely miss the book’s significance, because in some ways it’s really a revolutionary and innovative piece of literature.

Palin — and there’s just no way to deny this — is a supremely gifted politician. She has staked out, as her own personal political turf, the entire landscape of incoherent white American resentment. In this area she leaves even Rush Limbaugh in the dust.

The reason for that is that poor Rush is an anachronism, in the sense that his whole schtick revolves around talking about real political issues. And real political issues are boring.

Of course, Taibbi saying nothing that you haven’t read here - although, Damn! I wish I had come up with the “IQ of a celery stalk” jab first. But if you were to go to the comments below my recent PJM article, you would note that the overwhelming majority are not only Palin defenders, but that this strain of “resentment” - toward liberals, RINO’s, “elites,” or “the establishment” - colors their thinking to a degree not found anywhere else in American politics.

The left has its loons, for sure - rabidly partisan ideologues with the sense of humor of a Kangaroo and the ability to think independently of a locust. Their prejudices, however, are quite local; conservatives, Republicans, and the goober chewing, bible thumping, gun toting, rubes who live in flyover country.

But Palinites are universal resenters. I don’t think I’d go quite so far as Taibbi and bring race into the picture, but clearly these are “traditional Americans” who see the country changing politically, demographically, ethnically and are very uncomfortable about it. Palin, by speaking to their fears on a gut level, offers a refuge of sorts from the storm; reassuring those who need it that they are not alone, that there are others who share their fears.

They will tell you it’s all about “socialism” but these same folks didn’t seem to mind much when Bush pushed the prescription drug benefit, or the huge federal interference in education represented by the No Child Left Behind legislation. If Bush had gotten half the resistance on NCLB as these folks are giving the Democrats on health care, the education monstrosity would have died in committee.

I will admit that nationalizing the health care industry is a different kettle of fish altogether as is cap and trade, and card check. Government taking over 1/6 of the economy with consequences for personal liberty that can only be dimly glimpsed should be opposed. But Palin’s “death panels” demagoguery is proudly pointed to by her supporters as a “turning point” in the debate. Why fear mongering should be cause for celebration is beyond me, unless one is so besotted with ideological hatred of the opposition that reasoned debate over the many, many awful parts of the bills in question isn’t even considered.

As Taibbi points out, “reason” has got nothing to do with it:

Sarah Palin is on an endless crusade against assholes. It’s all she thinks about. She doesn’t really have any political ideas, in the classic sense of the word — in fact the only thing resembling real political convictions in Going Rogue revolve around the Trans-Alaska pipeline and how awesome she thinks it is.

Most of the rest of the book just catalogs her Gump-esque rise to national stardom (not having enough self-awareness to detect the monstrous narcissistic ambition that in reality was impelling her forward all along, she labors in the book to describe her various career leaps as lucky accidents or mystical acts of Providence) and the seemingly endless parade of meanies bent on tripping her up along the way. The book is really about her battles with these people, how much they did and do suck, and how difficult and inherently unfair life is for a decent hardworking American gal who just wants to live life, serve God, and try to be president without being bothered all the time.

Viewed through the prism of this particular brand of insanity (Palinsanity? does that work?), Katie Couric’s notorious Palin interview last year really was a cheap shot. After all, Katie was trying to nail Palin — which is mean! Who among us can’t sympathize with the experience of being sandbagged by some slick professional rival who catches you in a moment of weakness and, instead of lending a helping hand, drives a fireplace poker through your eye?

Palin has complained vociferously about press treatment of her. I agree it has been abominable, the worst, the most biased, the meanest I’ve seen since Nixon. The next question; “So? You expect you can do anything about it by whining?” Pointing a finger at the nattering nabobs of negative coverage has been tried already and only increased the venom. Smart politicians learn to ignore the slings and arrows of the press (or allow their partisans to defend them) while staying above the crap being tossed about by the likes of the NY Times or WaPo.

Taibbi is much meaner to Palin than I have been although many of his points are spot on. But unless she can somehow convince the Republican party that her appealing to our inner demons is the key to victory, she will continue to hover around 20% in the polls.

I know how tempting it is to take these files and emails and try to make a blanket condemnation of all the science that has been done on climate change. And there is no doubt that these specific scientists have a lot to explain with regard to some of their language used in the emails and apparent participation in at least some withholding of data that would contradict their findings.

But examining these revelations from a macro perspective would convince most reasonable skeptics that, while the case against AGW may be growing, the problem of climate change cannot be swept under the rug so easily.

I hate to disabuse some of the more excitable conspiracy theorists out there of their total AGW debunking dreams, but the climate is indeed, changing. It has been changing for 20,000 years and will continue to change. Sometimes,the change can be measured in decades, sometimes centuries, sometimes millenia. The question should be not whether the entire climate change community of thousands of scientists and hundreds of research labs is trying to put one over on us but whether there is anything we can or should be doing to deal with the problem.

It is unfortunate that so many non-scientists have latched on to AGW to promote their own political and economic agendas. I suggest that this is where the fight must be directed; governments, corporations, NGO’s, and the Al Gores of the world who stand to profit enormously from the ruinous policies they promote.

There appear to be many leading advocates for the AGW theory involved in this email controversy. But positing a “global conspiracy” is a stretch. The reason is that the AGW scientific community is just too diverse, too spread out over too many scientific disciplines for such a conspiracy to take root. To believe in such a conspiracy is to posit the idea that thousands of scientists are frauds - a laughable notion that is belied by solid evidence of warming in hundreds of observations and experiments around the world, published in peer reviewed journals for the express purpose of confirming - or denying - these conclusions.

And even some of the language in these emails that has been leapt upon by skeptics may, indeed, be misunderstood:

Dr. Mann, a professor at Pennsylvania State University, confirmed in an interview that the e-mail message was real. He said the choice of words by his colleague was poor but noted that scientists often used the word “trick” to refer to a good way to solve a problem, “and not something secret.”

At issue were sets of data, both employed in two studies. One data set showed long-term temperature effects on tree rings; the other, thermometer readings for the past 100 years.

Through the last century, tree rings and thermometers show a consistent rise in temperature until 1960, when some tree rings, for unknown reasons, no longer show that rise, while the thermometers continue to do so until the present.

Dr. Mann explained that the reliability of the tree-ring data was called into question, so they were no longer used to track temperature fluctuations. But he said dropping the use of the tree rings was never something that was hidden, and had been in the scientific literature for more than a decade. “It sounds incriminating, but when you look at what you’re talking about, there’s nothing there,” Dr. Mann said.

In addition, other independent but indirect measurements of temperature fluctuations in the studies broadly agreed with the thermometer data showing rising temperatures.

Believable? I would say at this point that the burden of proof is on Mann and his colleagues but that some of that explanation sounds reasonable.

This, however, is pretty damning:

Not surprisingly, the Keith mentioned is none other than CRU’s own Keith Briffa, another Hockey-Team leader, whose temperature graphs, derived from tree ring data from Yamal, Russia, were cited by the IPCC as supporting evidence of MBH’s assertion of unprecedented 20th-century warming. But as we reported at the time, that buttress crumbled last month when Briffa’s results were proven to stand no more reliably than Mann’s.

Ultimately, neither reconstruction attained its alarmist imperative goal of proving today’s global temperatures unprecedented. Despite repeated fraudulent efforts to demonstrate otherwise, 20th-century highs remain documented as several degrees cooler than those of the Medieval Warming Period of 900-1300 AD. Bad news for the mankind-stinks crowd in general; worse news for those actually involved in this devious deception.

Both Mann and Briffa had been challenged for years to produce their data, methods, and source code by Climate Audit’s Steve McIntyre. Both ignored the tenets of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) McIntyre cited and fought every effort to induce their coming clean. And actually not without good reason — last month, CRU was effectively forced to release the Yamal information, whereupon an analysis by McIntyre proved that Briffa et al. had cherry-picked and manipulated data, intentionally omitting records not friendly to their position.

The journal in which Mann and Briffa’s data was published failed to demand that the pair release the details of their studies on which the “hockey stick” graph was based, which flew in the face of their own policy! For his part, McIntyre has done a great service to science and the public with his single minded pursuit of the facts. (This WSJ article on McIntyre goes into detail about his quest.)

But does debunking the hockey stick graph debunk global warming as a theory? Not hardly. What makes AGW such a problematic theory is that the evidence is so contradictory, depending on which scientific discipline you choose to study. That, and the almost surreal opposition by AGW advocates in the scientific community to contrary findings. I say surreal because the scientific method does not allow for such rock solid certainty for a theory where the facts are still being gathered and analyzed. The atmosphere is such a monumentally complex system - the AGW theory itself is incredibly diversified to include the oceans, volcanoes, weathering of the mountains, meteorology, chemistry - all of this information plugged into models that so far, have been wildly inaccurate.

This in and of itself does not debunk global warming. As I’ve written previously, models that do not reflect reality are instructive for scientists in that it forces them to go back to the drawing board in order to improve their modeling. Trial and error is part of the scientific method - as long as it is done honestly and without cooking the books to achieve a desired result.

And yet, despite the uncertainty, the contradictory findings, and the almost religious fervor among both scientists and laymen who warn of catastrophe, we are being asked to ship trillions of dollars to other countries, allow the UN sovereignty-destroying power over our economy, and severely restrict industrial activity.

What’s wrong with that picture?

Even without this controversy, there were plenty of unanswered questions about AGW - enough to prevent non-scientists from hijacking the debate in order to achieve power, influence, and riches at the expense of healthy economies. At the very least, I hope that these revelations lead to slowdown in the rush to apply solutions that won’t address the problem as much as they cater to the desires of some powerful people.

I believe there is a case to be made to lower our emissions. This is common sense where uncertainty about AGW is prevelant. There is also an excellent case to be made to find alternative forms of energy to oil. Neither of these goals should be abandoned. But the draconian measures being proposed need to be deep sixed and climate change scientists need to abandon their opposition to skeptical viewpoints and get back to the business of discovering facts untainted by the desire for a specific outcome.

If that will be the lesson we take away from these troubling revelations, the world will be better for it.

The debate over “The Greatest Generation” and whether the way America is today could duplicate their stunning achievements in winning two wars and fighting through a depression while maintaining unity has been hashed and rehashed by far superior minds than mine.

But I just can’t help thinking about it after watching the History Channel this week and their excellent series, “Word War II in HD.”

If you haven’t been able to catch any of it, they will run the entire 10 hours on Saturday starting at 8:00 am central time.

Quite simply, it is the grandest, the most heartbreaking, the most stirring documentary series on World War II ever made. And that includes both “Victory at Sea” and “The World at War.”

TWAW is the gold standard - 32 hours of in-depth analysis of the politics, the strategy, the personalities, and ordeals experienced by civilians during the war. But it is rather soulless. It’s academic approach can be dry, although the images and words of survivors lend an emotionalism outside the rather clinical analysis offered.

“Victory at Sea,” on the other hand, went hard for dramatic effect. With the sonorous voice of Leonard Graves supplying the narration and music by Broadway impresario Richard Rodgers, VAS was a made for TV blockbuster that went right for the heart and kept the viewer entranced with its quick cuts, and snappy pace.

Other documentaries of individual battles (there have been a couple of excellent treatments of D-Day) have suffered from using stock footage that, if you watch enough of these things, you recognize from other projects.

But the History Channel sojourn into the past with “World War II in HD” is everything a good documentary should be; highly original, well scripted, images lining up with narration in an artistic mix, all the while marching forward with a pace that allows the viewer to digest the information and feel what the documentarian is feeling about his subject.

But it is the images that capture the mind and rend the soul. Culled from literally thousands of home movies - many in color - and long lost color combat footage, there is a freshness and even an immediacy about the entire package that has held me absolutely in thrall for the entire run of the series.

The technique is itself, fresh and original. Focusing on several individuals who fought in both the Pacific and Atlantic theaters, the survivors take us through everything from the home front, their battle experiences, the horror, mud, blood, guts, and monumental sense of loss when a comrade falls. The narration is accompanied by stunning combat footage - real “You Are There” images of mortar rounds exploding just feet from the camera, horrific sights of the wounded and dead, and always, the total destruction that war leaves in its wake.

A small example of the originality of the series can be found in the way that the narration will, from time to time, fade out slowly and the reading of the script is picked up by the actual survivor. It is an extraordinarily effective technique in that it humanizes the actor reading the narration when, after just a few seconds of the survivor reading, the voice of the actor portraying him is slowly brought back up, while the survivor’s words fade away. This is not a new technique but it it works spectacularly.

The music is obtrusive without overwhelming the action. Indeed, the music is used as a dramatic device to measure the pace of the documentary, mirroring the pace of the excellent narration (Gary Sinise). Beautiful editing builds bridges to succeeding each scene, allowing for seamless segues from clip to clip. A truly masterful job.

A word about the HD: It could be that they really didn’t have anything else to call the project, what with “World War II in Color” already taken. Shooting the program in HD is not the reason to watch it, nor is much of it in HD anyway. The films, as you can imagine, are grainy, and out of focus at times so even with an HD TV, it really doesn’t enhance the viewing experience that much.

All in all, “World War II in HD” is a triumph of documentary film making that should do for World War II what Ken Burns’ “Civil War” did for that conflict; bringing the viewer up close to the war while allowing for us to get to know some fascinating characters who increase our understanding of the conflict. (Burns’ “The War” was good but lacked the dramatic punch of the History Channel treatment.)

And as the last scenes of the documentary faded and the survivors, now all near or over 80 years old were left with their memories, it hit me that the hackneyed question about whether America today could pull together and perform such magnificent feats of arms and industry as those of my father’s generation manged, needed another airing.

Strip away our gadgets, our scientific wonders, and all the cultural, economic, and social touchstones that make up America today and ask yourself; How much like them are we? There’s no doubt that we are quite different in some respects. But like Robert Graves, the great essayist of the World War I generation who saw extraordinary love in the sacrifice of soldiers who marched lockstep into the most murderous fire, is there that kind of feeling for America today that would allow us to meet such huge challenges?

By World War II standards, our military is tiny. More than 16,000,000 Americans wore their country’s uniform in the Second World War. But there is little doubt that our current military is every bit as good, soldier for soldier, as those who beat the Nazis and the Japanese. So the question isn’t really a military one. It is a question of character. The real question should be; How similar is the character of today’s American to that of the World War II generation? Are we made of the same stuff? Do we believe in America as passionately as they did - enough to put aside our political differences and unite to see the job through to its conclusion?

I have my doubts. The whole idea of American sovereignty is fast disappearing - or at least the sort of sovereignty the WWII generation believed in. Call it a blind faith if you will, or perhaps you think it small minded and childish to harbor such notions that sometimes, there is only one side to take and that is the side of the country of your birth. It’s called “chauvinism” today and is quite unfashionable. But without it, we might have quit in 1944. Without that absolute certainty that we were in the right felt by the overwhelming majority of Americans whether at the battlefront or the homefront - whether fighting with a gun, or laboring in the factories and fields - I don’t think we could have done it.

There are many who would celebrate this loss of faith as the inevitable result of America “growing up” or worse, the consequence of a government that has betrayed the people time and again whether it was Viet Nam, Watergate, or some other national event that showed our leaders using us, lying to us, or betraying the principles on which the country was founded.

And yet…

We don’t know, do we? As implacable a foe as radical Islamism, it can’t come close to the existential threat of Hitler and his thugs or the economic threat to our emerging commercial empire in the Far East by Japan. And remember, all of this played out with the backdrop of a national depression where unemployment was still over 10% and most people hurting economically.

I want to believe we’d be up to those kinds of threats regardless of about which generation of Americans you want to talk. I don’t think it would matter what era you choose, I still see Americans as comprising a specific, exceptional “race” if you will. There are national characteristics unique to people who live here that are found nowhere else. We simply couldn’t have achieved what we have achieved, overcome what we’ve been able to overcome (self-inflicted or otherwise) without some spark deep within us that makes us “Americans.”

The conventional answer might be that we wouldn’t stand a chance fighting a long war like WWII today. But one thing is for sure; if I were a foreign power, I wouldn’t make the mistake that the Kaiser made in 1917, Tojo and Hitler made in 1941, or Saddam made in 1991.

And that is underestimate the United States of America.

You’ve probably read it all here before but I decided to continue my quest to commit professional suicide and seek a larger audience for my Palin bashing.

From my latest column from PJ Media:

Reagan had a nimble mind and enjoyed jousting with the press, rarely complaining about the unfair treatment he received and, in fact, turning the tables on his adversaries by using self-deprecating humor to make them appear small and petty. Palin, while certainly having cause for complaint, nevertheless acts more like an aggrieved, whiny child who rails against the unfairness of it all.

I have written before of the self-defeating impulse of conservatives to try and anoint some personality as the “next Reagan” — or worse, to try and graft his ideas from 1980 onto solutions that would address our problems today.

Reagan is gone, and what we have is his legacy — a complicated mix of good and bad for which historians will be arguing over for decades to come. Palin and many of her supporters are stuck in this past, unable or unwilling to comprehend the basic reality that the world, America, and time itself have moved on, making whatever Reagan wanted or believed in the 1980s virtually irrelevant to where we are today and, more importantly, where we are headed in the future.

Palin is the anti-Reagan in this and many other respects. Where the Gipper had one eye on the past while trying to look over the next hill into the future, Palin and many of her supporters hold on to the past for dear life as the future rolls up to meet us. I believe this to be her basic attraction to so many conservatives. She offers a comfortable place for those who are so inclined to ignore the verity of the present and who, quite rightly, fear the future. The soothing yet empty bromides, the hackneyed and cliched talking points, and the familiar responses to America’s problems are indicative of a mind incapable of expanding to meet new challenges and new opportunities.

I note the comments are running pretty much as expected. Good thing tar and feathering has gone out of style, huh?

Seriously, there are several commenters who make the ridiculous assertion that my Palin bashing is a ploy to get on TV or something, or win points with the “elites” all the better to further my career. If it wasn’t questioning my integrity, I’d laugh. Not only am I not good enough to get a second look from any of the mainstream media or even the “elite” conservative press, but the fact that my audience for this site continues to dwindle - dropping more than 30% in the last year while traffic at other sites have skyrocketed. That should disprove any such outrageous accusation.

I write what I write because I feel like writing it. My opinions are my own and not disseminated to curry favor with anyone, anywhere, anytime. Disagreeing with conservatives, making a case for a more thoughtful approach to the issues, taking those conservatives to task who deserve it in my opinion - if I were doing this to win friends and advance my career, I am doing a piss poor job of it.

But the charge is indicative of the real problem with most of my detractors; they don’t think. Perhaps they can’t think. For all the Palin bashing I’ve done, all the criticism of conservatism, of Republicans, of the base, of everything else I see as wrong with the right - if that were to garner me attention from those who could advance my career, you would think I’d be making a gazillion dolllars. Instead, I am ensconced in this internet backwater where those precious few readers who discern a morsel or two of common sense from my writings come to visit.

The road to internet fame and riches is to agree with Palin, with the base, with big shot bloggers who get 10 times the traffic I do. So before questioning my integrity, you better have a damn sight more evidence than your idiotic, horse’s ass opinion.

And you know who you are.

Andrew Sullivan was something of a pioneer at one time - a blogger who inspired a lot of people to get take up the obsession and join the conversation that was just starting to take off. He made a name for himself saying it with style, poking a sharpened stick into his targets, repeatedly drawing blood. There was a zest about his writing - witty in a Dorothy Thompson sort of way - a one man Algonquin Roundtable who could spout about any issue from nuclear deterrence to women’s hemlines.

He still has a rough kind of integrity. I say that because he feels he is being true to himself even if he can’t see what a monumental spectacle he is making of himself. And as long as a writer feels he is doing that, who are we to say he “lacks integrity?” Writing is such a personal craft, a bare naked exposition of one’s soul on paper, that only the writer, in those secret places he visits for approval or condemnation in his own mind, can say if he has remained true to the vision he keeps of himself in his imagination.

Sullivan has lost all respect on most of the right. I still find some of what he writes about conservatism compelling if only because his criticisms echo some of my own. But he has lost objectivity and can rarely summon the kind of clear thinking and hard eyed pragmatism that would allow his critiques to blossom into serious, reflective observations.

Oh Andrew. Quo Vadis, my friend?

This is only the second time in its nearly ten-year history that the Dish has gone silent. The reason now is the same as the reason then. When dealing with a delusional fantasist like Sarah Palin, it takes time to absorb and make sense of the various competing narratives that she tells about her life. There are so many fabrications and delusions in the book, mixed in with facts, that just making sense of it - and comparing it with objective reality as we know it, and the subjective reality she has previously provided - is a bewildering task. She is a deeply disturbed person which makes this work of fiction and fact all the more challenging to read. And the fact that she is now the leader of the Republican party and a potential presidential candidate, makes this process of deconstruction an important civil responsibility. We take this seriously as we always have. We want to be fair to her, and to her family, and to the innocent people she has brought into the spotlight. And we are not reporters. We are merely analysts trying to make sense of evidence already in the public domain, evidence that points in all sorts of directions, only one of which can be true.

Since the Dish has tried to be rigorous and careful in analyzing Palin’s unhinged grip on reality from the very beginning - specifically her fantastic story of her fifth pregnancy - we feel it’s vital that we grapple with this new data as fairly and as rigorously as possible. That takes time to get right. And it is so complicated we simply cannot focus on anything else.

There are only three of us.

I would first note the towering arrogance to believe anyone - even avid Sully fans - needs to read 440 words of explanation for why the Daily Dish would not be publishing anymore that day. Unless one were so totally in love with themselves to the point of being addicted to practicing self-fellatio, I would think about 2 sentences could have sufficed.

And to make this exercise in vainglorious blogger self promotion even more bizarre, Sully makes himself out to be a liar by posting an update to why he is not writing anything else on the blog for the day.

That’s right. He wrote on the blog to tell us that he was still not going to write anything on the blog.

I will leave it to my honored enemy Ace to deliver the coup de grace - with a very rusty, very dull scimitar:

Anyone else know of a blogger whose guest bloggers come in to say “Please excuse the insanity demonstrated by my host, he means well enough and he is, as far as we can tell, not a threat to himself or others”? Gotta be a first, right?

And yet here s/he is squawking about Palin’s “unhinged grip on reality” (nice wordsmithing there, by the way: Don’t you hate it when your grip becomes unhinged? I hate when my grip comes off its hinges).

And of course also engaging in extraordinarily tasteless, oblivious self-revelations about his/her twisted psychology. I have never in my life heard a man/woman rant so angrily about a woman’s vagina.

Palin’s vagina, in Andrew Sullivan’s telling, is a member of the Bavarian Illuminati. They’re all there — the Bildergsbergers, the Medicis, the Pope and the Jesuits, the Ghost of Richard Milhouse Nixon, and, of course, Sarah Palin’s genitalia.

You would just think that a professional homosexual like himself would have the good sense to refrain from unhinged-grip (whatever) pronouncements like “it’s the worst form of torture for interrogators to pretend to smear a suspect with fake menstrual blood” and “Sarah Palin’s vagina is the font of all evil in the galaxy.”

Just, like, whoa, dude. Maybe better to keep that mask on, eh? Maybe better to be a little more self-aware, and self-protective, than to keep on with this too-much-information jihad against female genitalia.

We get it. Girl parts are icky and apparently capable of well-nigh-superhuman levels of fecundity. They’re just sort of low-brow and workin’ class. Crude and boorish and devious things, these female genitals.

We get it. Please stop. Please stop.

I don’t have the vision or the desire to look into Sullivan’s heart and glean his intent in all of this. Michelle Malkin believes he is mentally unbalanced and has suffered an episode. She’s not the only one. Who knows? Reading what he wrote above and the “update” I wouldn’t discount anything at this point.

Judging from the bloggers who are writing about this episode, none of Andrew’s erstwhile friends on the left seem to be coming to his defense, or sharing in his anticipation of whatever “subjective reality” Andrew will view Sarah Palin’s book through. Reminds me a little of Cindy Sheehan who was lionized by the left for having the “moral authority” to hate Bush because he killed her son. We noted at the time that the more bizarre Sheehan’s behavior got and the farther left she lurched, her former allies tiptoed away hoping no one would notice that they were previously comparing her to Mother Teresa and Rosa Parks.

Has such a moment arrived for Sullivan? Has he gone so far off the deep end with this Trig birther nonsense that his credibility has been shot even on the left?

A shame. A crying shame, it is.