The Daily Gouge Archive, Wednesday, April 3rd, 2019

On April 4, 2019, in Uncategorized, by magoo1310

It’s Wednesday, April 3rd, 2019…but before we begin, The Year of Jenny has officially come to an end: today, TLJ turns 61.

Eat your heart out, Christie Brinkley!

Now, here’s The Gouge!

We lead off the TLJ birthday edition with a follow-up to an earlier item recording the latest act of corruption in the hopelessly misnamed Charm City, as the Baltimore Sun, one of the most biased rags in the history of jaundiced journalism, is forced to report…

Baltimore Mayor Pugh to take leave of absence in midst of ‘Healthy Holly’ book controversy

“Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh, facing a call by Gov. Larry Hogan for a criminal investigation into a book deal worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, announced Monday that she will take an indefinite leave of absence because of her health.

The Democratic mayor’s office issued a statement Monday saying she had been advised by her doctors to take time to recover from a bout of pneumonia that hospitalized her for five days last week. “With the mayor’s health deteriorating, she feels as though she is unable to fulfill her obligations as mayor of Baltimore city,” the statement read in part. “To that end, Mayor Pugh will be taking an indefinite leave of absence to recuperate from this serious illness.” (Editor’s note: And see if the heat over her book deal dies down!)

The statement did not address the scandal over the books…

City Solicitor Andre Davis confirmed Pugh’s leave will start at midnight and that the mayor will continue to be paid her $185,000 annual salary.

Council President Bernard C. “Jack” Young, also a Democrat, will take over temporarily as mayor. Young said in an interview that he was “heartbroken” by the mayor’s deteriorating health and that his first aim was to ensure stability in the city he will now lead. “People shouldn’t notice any difference,” Young said…”

Of THAT we have NO DOUBT! Baltimore hasn’t elected a Republican mayor since 1967, during which time one Dimocrat after another has done nothing but advance their own interests…as well as enrich themselves…at the expense of the city and its citizens.

Her real motivation notwithstanding, while Pugh only took a leave of absence, by electing the same kleptocrats again and again, residents of this increasingly charmless city have taken leave of their senses. We don’t refer to them as “Baltimorons” for nothing.

Our only question is how long it will take Kim Foxx…

…to develop pneumonia and leave town on the advice of her doctors?!? Particularly as her sponsor just got shellacked in the run-off for mayor.

Here’s to the Windy City and its first lesbian Black mayor. Yeah…

You’ll need it every bit as much as Baltimore.

Next, writing at his Morning Jolt, Jim Geraghty makes a great point about Progressives suddenly suggesting…

We Need to Have a Talk about Crazy Uncle Joe

“When I first heard about Lucy Flores’s account of her encounter with Joe Biden, I reacted with great cynicism. Here we have a Bernie Sanders supporter who is making an issue out of Joe Biden’s characteristically buffoonish behavior, five years after the fact, in a fairly transparent effort to scare him out of the 2020 presidential race. As Kyle Smith observed, after eight years of the media painting Biden as America’s wacky, lovable uncle and perfectly qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency, it is now socially acceptable to declare, “Joe Biden is a creepy old goat. Everyone knows this.”

But if you read Flores’s essay, you’ll notice that she’s diagnosing the same phenomenon about the national media and Democratic party that many of us on the Right have been complaining about for a long time: The degree to which allegations of inappropriate behavior or sexual misconduct are taken seriously — particularly whether they rise to the level of columns declaring “It’s time for a national conversation” — is heavily shaped by how important the accused is to the cause of progressivism at that given moment. In 1998, almost the entire Democratic party rushed to save Bill Clinton; now it’s okay to declare his behavior appalling and worthy of a forced resignation. We could only see Chappaquiddick portrayed on the silver screen after Ted Kennedy’s death.

Many might argue that Biden’s behavior never quite rose to the level where resignation was the appropriate consequence. On the other hand, most people don’t go around coming up behind strangers, rubbing their shoulders, and kissing them on the back of the head. This is clearly part of a pattern of behavior with Biden, and yesterday on CNN, Flores raised the question of whether anyone had ever told Biden that he should stop touching strangers that way:

…part of the reason why I decided to finally say something is because those behaviors were not being taken very seriously. They were not being considered from the perspective of the woman on the other side of that power dynamic, on the side of — on the receiving end. And I just can’t imagine that there was never a situation where someone said to him: “Vice President, Mr. Vice President, your — you probably should stop doing that. You should probably stop touching women in that way. You should probably keep your hands to yourself.”

Over the weekend, Biden said he had no idea that his actions were perceived that way, that he had no ill intentions, and that he didn’t necessarily remember their encounter the same way.

While he hasn’t yet been asked directly, it seems likely that if asked if he was ever discouraged from touching women he didn’t know that way, Biden would say he had not.

Flores’s description of Biden’s behavior is not all that surprising to those of us who were paying attention during the Obama years:

Time passed and pictures started to surface of Vice-President Biden getting uncomfortably close with women and young girls. Biden nuzzling the neck of the Defense secretary’s wife; Biden kissing a senator’s wife on the lips; Biden whispering in women’s ears; Biden snuggling female constituents. I saw obvious discomfort in the women’s faces, and Biden, I’m sure, never thought twice about how it made them feel. I knew I couldn’t say anything publicly about what those pictures surfaced for me; my anger and my resentment grew.

Had I never seen those pictures, I may have been able to give Biden the benefit of the doubt. Had there not been multiple articles written over the years about the exact same thing — calling his creepy behavior an “open secret” — perhaps it would feel less offensive. And yet despite the steady stream of pictures and the occasional article, Biden retained his title of America’s Favorite Uncle. On occasion that title was downgraded to America’s Creepy Uncle but that in and of itself implied a certain level of acceptance.

(It is worth noting that Stephanie Carter, the wife of Ash Carter, has an essay out this morning declaring that the image of Biden putting his hands on her shoulders was not inappropriate or uninvited at all but purely a gesture of reassurance that was taken out of context by a still photo.)

There’s one other comment from Flores in her CNN interview that should raise eyebrows:

Part of the reason why I felt a little bit less pressure in terms of speaking out is that we’re often pressured to keep our mouths shut about anything. We, as party loyalists, as party stalwarts, as — are foot soldiers for the party.

We are expected to — quote, unquote – “keep our dirty laundry” to ourselves. And it’s always in service to the party. And, in this case, there are so many more incredible candidates that are just as likely and, I believe, are competent and amazing and can beat Donald Trump. (Which begs the question how Flores’s story might change if there weren’t?!?)

“We’re often pressured to keep our mouths shut about anything.” Who’s pressuring who? About what? That comment suggests that there’s a lot of inappropriate behavior going on that is covered up in the name of party loyalty.

Some on the Right argue that “They never take sexual harassment seriously if a Democrat is accused!” which is not quite right. Minnesota Senator Al Franken was forced to resign, but Democrats could afford to lose him, as a Democratic governor would appoint a like-minded replacement — and a similar ideological trade was at work in the cases of Eliot Spitzer, Anthony Weiner, Eric Schneiderman. But when a Democrat’s resignation might lead to a Republican taking his place, then a lot of people start looking at their feet or otherwise averting their eyes.

In Virginia, Vanessa Tyson and Meredith Watson, the two accusers of lieutenant governor Justin Fairfax are telling their story on camera with CBS News this morning. The first accusation came out in early February. Many Democrats called for Fairfax’s resignation, and when it became clear that Fairfax would not resign…they pretty much moved on. (One big question is how and where the accusation should be adjudicated.)

In February, David Leonhardt lamented that replacing Ralph Northam, Mark Herring, and Fairfax would amount to a “partisan coup.” Today marks two months since Northam’s yearbook came to light. We never got an explanation about who was in the picture. We never got an explanation about how this ended up on Northam’s yearbook page. We never got an explanation about his nickname “Coonman.” And Northam is still governor, still going around the state, doing events about how terrible it is that drivers use their cellphones while behind the wheel, as if nothing had ever happened.

Northam is hanging on because if he goes, Herring probably has to go too, and if both of them go, and another shoe drops with Fairfax, Virginia could end up with a Republican governor –and to a lot of Virginia Democrats, that scenario is much worse than anything Northam, Fairfax, or Herring did.“

In his next edition of the Morning Jolt (which is also well worth your time, if for only the recounting of the discomfort female members of Biden’s Secret Service detail experienced while he swam naked in his pool!), Geraghty offers a quote from one Katherine Miller writing at BuzzFeed which makes his point:

“Everybody already knows what they think about Joe Biden putting his hands on people, because we’ve all seen this happen in public. We’ve seen Biden kiss people at public events! We’ve all had years to think about it!”

…Miller concludes, “Flores basically kicked the door in on a deferred debate.” This dances around the question of why that debate was deferred…”

“Deferred”…until he was of no further value; perhaps even, like Bill Clinton, a liability.

P.S. Hat tip to Shannon Bush for the Creepy Uncle Joe cartoon.

Moving on, writing at NRO, Madeleine Kearns highlights the need for…

A Franker Gender Debate

Transgender extremists are exploiting ‘courtesy’ to shut down debate.

“As I wrote last week, Caroline Farrow, a British journalist, was recently investigated by Surrey police after a complaint by Susie Green, CEO of Mermaids, a well-funded charity that advocates sex-change treatments for gender-confused young people. Green has since dropped the charges and the police have said they will take no further action.

It is deeply sinister that the police are investigating law-abiding citizens, let alone a journalist, at the behest of transgender activists. But one reason we are in this situation is that many skeptics of gender ideology (journalists included) made fatal linguistic concessions early on that have skewed the debate…”

Which, as you’ll learn shortly, provides the perfect lead-in for the EnvironMental Moment, courtesy today of Watts Up With That and Jeff Foutch. What follows is perhaps the most comprehensive and damning refutation of the junk science that is the “theory” of anthropogenic global warming we’ve ever read. It’s lengthy, but if time’s valuable, this article’s priceless. And if you’ve ever needed or wanted ammo to combat the claims of the climate scammers, author Dr. Tim Ball provides it in abundant supply:

Time to Straighten out Damage from the Big Lie of Global Warming Starting With Voltaire’s Admonition

“If you wish to converse with me, define your terms.” – Voltaire

“The big lie that humans are causing climate change spreads as it is promoted by those with a political agenda and their use of a familiar technique to ensnare high profile people. This practice is a fallacious form of argument called Argumentum Ad Verecundiam defined as:

…an appeal to the testimony of an authority outside the authority’s special field of expertise.

The latest well-known person exploited in this way is documentary producer Sir David Attenborough, who was taken in by the false story of anthropogenic global warming (AGW). It appears he let his socialist views over-ride any sense of science he might have. The trouble is he doesn’t appear to have any science training. He is an English Grammar School graduate who identifies himself as a naturalist. This is like the practice of people identifying themselves as environmentalists. The truth is that we are all naturalists and environmentalists. It simply denotes that a person cares, but it is not a measure of their knowledge or understanding.

Unfortunately, if you don’t know or understand…

“Hey, Beto only gives us 10!!!”

…it is very easy to fall for the biggest lie in scientific history, especially if you are politically and emotionally disposed. The question is, how could Attenborough spend all that time looking at the geology of the planet and not see the extent to which climate changes naturally throughout 4.5 billion years? If he looked, it is startlingly apparent that the current climate situation is well within that natural range. You can only conclude that his lack of scientific objectivity and human response to hero worship, made him easy prey to purveyors of a false message.

Will somebody in contact with Attenborough, preferably someone who claims to know about climate, show him the latest lower Troposphere temperature graph. The data is available to anyone who wants to check it, as David Archibald recently did in his article “Climate: In Case You Were Wondering” (Figure 1 [below]). It shows 41 years of no temperature increase, a period that covers most of Attenborough’s adult life and the period when he travelled the world filming nature. During that time, CO2 levels continued to rise in complete contradiction to the original theory. The red line in Figure 1 marks 2004, the year that creators and promoters of the big lie tried to ignore the evidence that showed their theory was wrong.

Proof that they knew is in the fact that they changed the name from global warming to climate change.

One option when a big lie is exposed is to admit it; however, the nature of the lie prevents that happening. You understand that when you learn of the original historical definition and objectives of the Big Lie…

…The definition is by Joseph Goebbels and describes the big lie of Nazism with its ultimate goal of a Third Reich to rule the world for a thousand years. It applies just as effectively to the big lie about anthropogenic global warming (AGW) with its goal of establishing a world government through the UN.

The AGW promoters knew from the start it was a lie. Climatologist Stephen Schneider set the tone when he said, in Discover magazine in 1989:

On the one hand we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but& which means that we must include all the doubts, caveats, ifs and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists, but human beings as well. And like most people, we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change. To do that we have to get some broad-based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This double ethical bind which we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.

Just four years later Senator Timothy Wirth, said it didn’t mean both.

“We’ve got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing, in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”

The creators and promoters of the big lie began by narrowing the number of variables to a few of little importance. Then, with the false assumption that an increase in CO2 would cause an increase in temperature, it told the big lie, cloaked in the mystique of a computer model projection. They were wrong because in the historical record temperature increases before CO2; therefore, it does not and cannot cause global warming or climate change.

The only place in the world where a CO2 increase causes a temperature increase is in the computer models of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This is the main reason why the model predictions are always wrong. However, the objective of a big lie is to override the truth for as long as possible. One way to do this is to confuse the message by creating a different language or, “Newspeak,” as George Orwell referred to it in his 1949 book 1984. (Editor’s note: See the discussion of the gender “debate” above.)

Newspeak was a language favored by the minions of Big Brother and, in Orwell’s words, “designed to diminish the range of thought.” Newspeak was characterized by the elimination or alteration of certain words, the substitution of one word for another, the interchangeability of parts of speech, and the creation of words for political purposes. The word has caught on in general use to refer to confusing or deceptive bureaucratic jargon.

Every day you hear words and phrases about the weather, climate, and climate change used incorrectly or inappropriately. All of it is part of the deliberate plot to use science for the political agenda and blame humans for what are natural climate conditions. It was deliberately orchestrated to create confusion, and language was at the heart…”

Just as Newspeak is at the core of every single policy and program Progressives have ever promoted.

In a related item, the editors at the WSJ relate the latest example of…

Jackpot Junk Science

Scientists say a weed killer is safe, but a judge excludes evidence.

“The vagaries of American tort law were on display in San Francisco last week as six jurors decided that Bayer AG is liable for $80.3 million in damages for allegedly causing a Sonoma man’s non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The scientific consensus is that Bayer’s Roundup herbicide is safe, but the company is now open for looting as it faces lawsuits from some 11,200 similar plaintiffs.

Edwin Hardeman, who used the herbicide to ward off poison oak and other weeds, testified about his grim day in 2015 when “the phone rang and my wife Mary was with me, we put it on the speakerphone, and [my doctor] said, ‘I’m sorry to inform you that you have cancer.’ And we were just shocked.” He spoke of his anguish as he endured nausea, bone pain and other side-effects of chemotherapy. No one can listen to that testimony and not be moved.

Yet there’s overwhelming evidence that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, is unlikely to have caused Mr. Hardeman’s illness. His lawyers emphasized 2015 findings from the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer, which concluded that glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic” to humans. But this outfit has also claimed you can get cancer from working the night shift, drinking hot beverages, eating red meat—or nearly anything else you can eat, touch or do.

The agency’s findings were further undermined by a conflict of interest. Christopher Portier advised on its glyphosate assessment even as he was paid by Lundy, Lundy, Soleau & South, a plaintiffs firm. Mr. Portier testified for Mr. Hardeman, and you can bet he’ll be ubiquitous as the Roundup cases continue.

After the WHO agency’s determination, the Environmental Protection Agency convened its own panel to review glyphosate. The scientists conducted a “comprehensive systematic review of studies submitted to the agency and available in the open literature,” the EPA’s director of the Office of Pesticide Programs, Richard Keigwin, wrote last year. They concluded “glyphosate is not likely to be carcinogenic in humans.”

The public-health agency Health Canada says it “left no stone unturned” in evaluating glyphosate in 2017. It found no likely cancer risk and notes that “no pesticide regulatory authority in the world currently considers glyphosate to be a cancer risk to humans at the levels at which humans are currently exposed.”

Yet in the Hardeman case, federal Judge Vince Chhabria strictly limited discussion of the EPA’s analysis of glyphosate “to avoid wasting time or misleading the jury, because the primary inquiry is what the scientific studies show, not what the EPA concluded they show.” He also barred Bayer from discussing almost all conclusions foreign regulators had reached.

Judge Chhabria also limited the plaintiff’s admissible evidence, but attorney Aimee Wagstaff repeatedly ignored his instructions during her opening statement, possibly prejudicing the jury. These violations “were intentional and committed in bad faith,” Judge Chhabria said, but he fined her a mere $500.

It’s tough to win on the merits when you can’t present the full story…”

So much for “science”, settled or otherwise. While in no way wishing Mr. Hardeman ill, let alone making light of his condition, we hope he never sees a dime of the amount he’s been awarded. Though given the judge’s injudicious conduct of this trial, he’s likely to lose on appeal.

Since we’re on the subject of bullsh*t originating in San Francisco, here’s a headline which left us unsure whether to laugh or cry: