I would hope most people reading this have, at some point, heard of Godwin’s Law and its most famous corollaries. The most well known amongst them being that as soon as someone compares a person or position they disagree with to Hitler (or Nazis in general) he or she, by default, loses the argument. In classic logic, this would be referred to as Reductio ad Hitlerum. I would like to propose an addendum to this. If you refer to a person or position as some extremist terrorist group then you also lose the argument by default*.

Today’s perpetrator is none other than Thomas Friedman over at the New York Times. He has deigned to weigh in on the Debt Ceiling debate and, as I’m sure you can guess, he is less than pleased with what he sees. Along the way he commits horrendous acts of inappropriate metaphors, poor analysis and heinous partisanship.

The main broadside of Friedman’s vitriol is, of course, saved for the tea party. He does build up to it. Making an attempt at being equitable Friedman starts by attacking both Democrats and Republicans for not dealing with this problem two years ago. What he seems to have forgotten is that two years ago there were no Republicans anywhere in power, so this is one that he should be laying squarely at the feet of Democrats.

“What business do you know — that is still in business — that would operate this way: making massive long-term cuts, negotiated by exhausted executives, without any strategic plan? It certainly wouldn’t be a business you’d expect to thrive. Maybe you can grow without a plan. But if you cut without a plan, you will almost surely hit an artery or a bone that could really debilitate you.”

Allow me to answer that with another question. What business do you know – that is still in business – that spends 60% more than it brings in? Not for one year, not for two years, but decades and decades on end. Not only that, but that business plans to continue to do so. A business in that situation, if it didn’t sit down at that exact moment in time and cut every single expenditure possible, would be filing for bankruptcy within minutes. There are two ways to reduce debt, as any qualified financial planner can tell you: increase income and reduce outlay. Increasing income takes time and is not guaranteed to be possible. The only sure-fire way to reduce debt is to cut spending to below the current income. This is simple logic. There is nothing extreme here, anyone with an ounce of business experience, something sorely lacking in the upper echelons of the New York Times as well as Congress, could tell you the same thing. Friedman’s plan is based on what he calls the five pillars that have gotten America to where it is today.

(more…)

Sometimes I get tired of hashing over the same arguments again and again. Unfortunately “respected” people keep making the same debunked arguments again and again, ignoring hundreds of years of history and thinking that, this time, things will be different.

Case in point: Thomas Friedman. I know his disdain for Israel and her safety is nothing new. The problem is, he keeps spewing his idiotic ideas and the New York Times, which for better or worse is still a widely read and respected rag, keeps publishing his drivel.

There is really no need to read the stuff, it’s all pretty boilerplate. The Israeli intransigence is the reason behind the lack of peace in the Middle East. Really, that’s all there is to it. If only those darn Jews would forget the last 64 years of Arab denial of their right to exist, all will be well. This is actually what he says. He suggests that the UN Security Council adopt a binding resolution based on General Assembly Resolution 181, A Palestinian Arab state and a Jewish state based on the pre-1967 borders. The UN would then recognize the nascent Palestinian state and negotiations could proceed.

Where to begin? This has the distinct whiff of the Pelosi “we have to pass the bill to see what’s in it” type of stench. Let’s give the Palestinians exactly what they want and go from there. Well, not everything they want, those things are left up to negotiations. Land swaps? What incentive do the Arabs have to make land swaps after the UN has already agreed that the land is theirs?

What does Israel get out of this? Hundreds of thousands of refugees expelled from their homes, expelled from land that, with the exception of 18 years between 1949 and 1967, has been the home to Jews since time immemorial?

(more…)

A new piece by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman will be largely ignored by the MSM because it doesn’t fit their Bush-Bashing template. Yesterday, Friedman wrote this in an op-ed column entitled “It’s Up to Iraqis Now. Good Luck.”

Saddam’s Iraq was a temporary iron-fisted bulwark against Iranian expansion. But if Iraq has any sort of decent outcome — and becomes a real Shiite-majority, multiethnic democracy right next door to the phony Iranian version — it will be a source of permanent pressure on the Iranian regime. It will be a constant reminder that “Islamic democracy” — the rigged system the Iranians set up — is nonsense. Real “Islamic democracy” is just like any other democracy, except with Muslims voting.

Former President George W. Bush’s gut instinct that this region craved and needed democracy was always right. It should have and could have been pursued with much better planning and execution. This war has been extraordinarily painful and costly. But democracy was never going to have a virgin birth in a place like Iraq, which has never known any such thing.

Yes, that appeared in the New York Times. (more…)

You need to give me some money.  And you need to do it right now.

Let’s be clear – this is an emergency.  The time for debate is over.  The time for action is now.  There is a clear consensus among experts in the field of law, like me, that you are legally obligated to give me some money.

Why?  Well, it’s a legal thing, and frankly you wouldn’t understand.  I’m a lawyer; I do understand these things.  You need to trust me.  Our futures – and our children’s futures (particularly my children’s) – depend on it.

Now, I reject any attempt to compare this important crusade to the advocacy of the anthropogenic global warming believers.  Sure, as the latest New York Times op-ed by Al Gore shows, there are some superficial similarities.  Yes, the global warming crowd tells you to believe the “experts” and here I’m telling you to do the same.  But “experts” do play an important role. (more…)

As a trial lawyer, I am jealous of Tom Friedman, that prophet of painfully conventional “wisdom” whose insights grace the ever dustier New York Times op-ed pages.  His latest column, “Global Weirding Is Here”, has managed to achieve what I only dream about as an attorney -– a self-proving argument.

Tom is, of course, an anthropological global-warming disciple and a lay Grand Inquisitor.

So, naturally, the uncooperative weather – you know, those giant snowstorms folks back east might have noticed – provide him with a quandary.  How does one reconcile his faith that the world is becoming one gigantic orchid hothouse with the fact that it seems to be colder all the time?

Well, you start by mocking the heretics – excuse me, the “deniers”: (more…)

Global warming hysteria has often been compared to religion, and rightly so. But, there’s also many theatrical elements to be found, facets of the genre “green drama” that are so very familiar to those of us who have spent our professional careers watching environmental tragedies debut year after year.

Global warming is the blockbuster production of the environmental movement. It’s the Broadway hit that has maintained the rapt attention of environmental activists and policy-makers throughout the course of three decades. The players are familiar, having honed their roles after years of practice.

The directors naturally, and predictably, cast big, bad corporations as villains, with Exxon-Mobil supposedly skulking behind the scenes, passing out bribes to spineless skeptical scientists and obstructing the heroic politicians and activists trying to save innocent mother earth, before it’s too late.  And what a victim to have! Sure, your average activist would be happy to be part of the local neighborhood production of: “Stop Building That New Factory Before It Kills All The Babies In Town (The Musical)”, but the Global Warming Show is truly big time. It’s not just the babies in town that are in danger, it’s everyone’s babies, everywhere. This production has innocent tribes living on sinking tropical islands and disappearing glaciers and forlorn polar bears. Global Warming; it’s the show that’s got it all! (more…)

PART III – A global warming skeptic receives the leaked files from an anonymous “Deep-Climate” insider. Release of files exposes gatekeeping and leads to the maturing of a new science movement – that of peer-to-peer review.  Last in a series.  Please click for Part I and Part II.

Few outside the climate skeptic circle have ever heard of Steven Mosher. An open-source software developer, statistical data analyst, and thought of as the spokesperson of the lukewarmer set, Mosher hasn’t made any of the mainstream media outlets covering the story of Climategate. But make no mistake about it – when it comes to dissemination of the story, Steven Mosher is to Climategate what Woodward and Bernstein were to Watergate. He was just the right person, with just the right influence, and just the right expertise to be at the heart of the promulgation of the files.

One could even argue that Mosher is one of the few people with the right assortment of circumstances, and associates, to understand the significance of the Climategate files and the technical expertise to post them on various locations using open proxies, a method hackers use to hide their identities while online. Given that the Climategate files came from computers with IP addresses in Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, open proxies is most likely the technique used by the person who posted the files and links on ClimateAudit, RealClimate, and the Air Vent. (more…)