More Cherry Picking polls

I was out of town for Christmas break. Yesterday, I returned and caught up on some of the editorials. Once again, I found Michael Ryan cherry picking polls--this time to the point of absurdity.

He was trying to establish how unpopular the new health care plan is. So he mentioned the Rasmussen poll which shows President Obama with a negative approval rating.

But what he doesn't mention is that the Rasmussen poll is the only one that gives President Obama a negative approval rating--44%-56%. All 7 of the other major polls give President Obama a positive approval rating including CNN (54%-44%), Fox (50%-44%), AP (56%-42%), and Pew (49%-40%). CNN's approval rating jumped 6 points just after the Senate resolution passed. Source: www.realclearpolitics.com

Polls showing the public's disapproval of the the health care plan don't break down the opposition. Much of it is from progressives upset that it doesn't include a public option. In any case, it's never a good idea to administer a government based on polls. Mr. Ryan's point in this editorial was simply irrelevant. He's still unaware of who won the 2008 election.

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Re: "Unleash power of the people," from the December 23rd edition of the Augusta Chronicle editorial page.

I did agree with one point made in this editorial. I think a crash Manhattan style program to establish green energy is a good idea.

However, this editorial contained some twisted hyperbole that was particularly outrageous.

Here is the offending quote: "Scientists promoting the man-made theory are now being investigated for massive fraud and junk science."

There are so many things wrong with this statement it's difficult to know where to begin. First, he's referring to the anthropogenic influence on greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming. Sheesh! He can't even write it correctly, demonstrating that he just doesn't know what he's talking about. Second, there are only a few scientists being investigated--out of the thousands of climate scientists worldwide who are convinced man's activities are influencing the climate. Third, these scientists are not being investigated for massive fraud and junk science. They're being investigated to see if they did anything academically unsavory. According to www.factcheck.org , it doesn't look like they did. Fourth, scientists are not promoting this theory. Using the word, promote, makes it sound like they're making money from it. They are no more promoting this theory than a mathmatician promotes the fact that 2 + 2 = 4.

Further on in the editorial, Mr. Ryan advocates nuclear energy writing, "...It releases none of the greenhouse gases the left-wing alarmists are worried about."

True. Instead it releases radiation that can poison the environment for tens of thousands of years.

What an idiot shmuck, Mr. Ryan is.


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I wish the Augusta Chronicle would run Paul Krugman's column. I read the Chattanooga paper while I was out of town and they print it. Paul Krugman is an intelligent progressive, like Eugene Robinson. The Chronicle prints Mr. Robinson, why not Krugman.

Michael Ryan's Imaginary Additions to the Bill of Rights

My phone line was out of order for over a week, but I'm back.

Re: "Rights worth fighting for," from the December 13th edition of the Augusta Chronicle.

Michael Ryan thinks the Bill of Rights has some amendments that don't exist. There's nothing in the Bill of Rights that says we can't have government run health care. I'd like to ask Mr. Ryan which part of the Bill of Rights declares that the "Government can not run health care."

This column also contains some other misconceptions he has about the Bill of Rights. He writes "Liberals have long wanted to squelch freedom of speech by clamping down on talk radio." This is such an obvious lie. Liberals have never wanted to clamp down on talk radio. Forcing radio stations to give equal time to opposing viewpoints doesn't squelch free speech. In reality, it's commercial radio that squelches free speech because liberal points of view are usually not commercially successful and therefore not heard.

He's wrong about the Second amendment too. The Second amendment is poorly written and ambigous so that it's impossible to tell whether the founding fathers meant the people had the right to bear firearms as individuals or as a group. Thus the continuing argument.

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Re: "Get healthy attitude toward reform," from the December 19th edition of the Augusta Chronicle editorial page.

Mr. Ryan is still not clear on who won the election. The democrats did. When the republicans won office, they didn't exactly reach across the aisle for bipartisan agreement.

We know what the republicans goal is in this health care debate. Their leader, Rush Limbaugh, said he wants Obama to fail. If this health care legislation passes, it will be a political victory for Obama. That's what Mr. Ryan and all of the conservative jerks out there are afraid of.

Oh and btw, the Congressional Budget Office determined that the republican plan put forth would not reduce the deficit but it would leave even more people without insurance. The republican plan was a worthless, heartless piece of garbage.

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Re: "It's a health care disgrace," from the December 22nd edition of the Augusta Chronicle editorial page.

This column was a typical, hysterical knee jerk reaction. Mr. Ryan criticizes Senators for voting for a bill they haven't read. Yet, Mr. Ryan hasn't read it either. How can he be so against it, if he doesn't know what's in it either.

He begins the column off by crying about the debt. Just a month ago he wrote a column suggesting we should have a moratorium on all income taxes. His credibility on this point, therefore, is nil.

Then he whines about how Bill Nelson got a special deal. Well, if Georgia's stupid republican senators would have thought of it, they could have sat on the fence too, and gotten a special deal for Georgia. But no, they had to stick with the republican party line--they want to see Obama fail.

Mr. Ryan tells an outright lie when he states cap and trade will lead to "job killing." Likely, there will be little loss of jobs because old, industrial positions will be almost equally replaced with green jobs according to www.factcheck.org.

Mr. Ryan states, "The federal government is now being run by people with alarmingly scant private sector experience..."

Under Bush, we had the government being run by people with lots of private sector experience. How did that work out?

For his final lie he states, "Remarkably, polls show most Americans doen't even want this reform."On the front page of his own paper in this same addition it says, "Overall, 82% (of Americans) say an overhaul of the nation's health care system is important for recharging the economy,according to an averageof monthly polls conducted since April by the nonpartisan Robert Woods Foundation."

Once again, Mr. Ryan fails to read his own newspaper.

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More evidence that conservatives have a serious problem with math and science comes from Kathleen Parker's column that appeared in the December 20th edition of the Augusta Chronicle. The article was entitled "Merely mortal: Health-care fight teaching Obama a powerful lesson."

In this editorial Ms. Parker states, "that (according to a Rasmussen poll) only 28 % of the nation's voters strongly approve of Obama's performance, while 42% strongly disapprove. Overall, 44% 'somewhat approve' of the president's performance."

28 + 42 + 44 = 114

Ms. Parker doesn't understand percentages. That's greater than 100.

What a dumb-dumb.

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There've been too many stupid letters published on Mr. Ryan's editorial page over the last week for me to comment on them all but I can't resist this one. John Gasko of Martinez wrote an ugly bigoted letter critical of Islam. Mr. Ryan shouldn't run stuff like this, but he's bigoted too so he probably agrees with it. Mr. Gasko doesn't say what religion he is, but I assume he's Christian. He wrote, "My religion does not advocate killing people as I do. Does his (referring to a muslim)?

I found this quote from the Christian new testament. Luke 19: 27 says, "But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me."

So Mr. Gasko's wrong. His religion does say anyone who doesn't believe as he does should be killed.

Michael Ryan's Mindless Opposition to New EPA Regulations

Here are some images that show the extent of global warming. The top picture is of Barrow, Alaska. The one on the left is from July 2006; the one on the right is from July 2007. The Bush administration classified this picture because it gave such obvious evidence of global warming. The Obama administration declassified it, and it's now part of the public domain. The bottom images are from NASA's earth observatory. Note that during the summer of 2008, the arctic ice cap almost completely melted and is much smaller than it was in the summer of 1999.

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Re: "Scary, suffocating regulation," from the December 10th edition of the Augusta Chronicle editorial page.

Mr. Ryan mindlessly claims that the constitution forbids the government from regulating pollution, yet he cites no part of this document nor any court case that supports his argument. To put it bluntly, he is full of shit once more. If he was correct, there would be no Clean Air Act, no Clean Water Act, and no Environmental Protection Agency. For good measure, Mr. Ryan throws in the Declaration of Independence as another document that somehow outlaws government regulation of pollution. How ridiculous. The Declaration of Independence merely states the U.S. declaration of independence from England and has nothing to do with the rule of law.

Mr. Ryan is mindlessly closing his eyes, shutting down his brain, and pronouncing loyalty to the constitution and the Declaration of Independence. This is an incredibly weak rhetorical method of avoiding debate about a subject he's completely ignorant of.

He calls the EPA's move to regulate greenhouse gases as a "weapon to be used to advance what amounts to a socialist agenda..." There's that word again. Socialist. This is a clear example of more mindless namecalling.

He quotes an anonymous Obama administration source who stated that the move would be used to as a "gun against the head of Congress to exact global warming legislation favorable to the administration's left wing point of view." This is nonsense. There is no political point of view in science. Scientists urge that steps be taken to reduce global warming. This isn't based on political philosophy...it's based on what the science says.

And as usual, Mr. Ryan naively thinks that industry can solve the problem of global warming with "ingenuity, innovation, and entrepreneurship..." As if industry would ever voluntarily reduce pollution. What hogwash. If it wasn't for government regulations strictly enforced, our planet would be uninhabitable from pollution created by unchecked greedy businessmen.

More Lies and Ugly Bigotry from Michael Ryan

Re: "Godspeed, Mr. President," from the December 3rd edition of the Augusta Chronicle editorial page.

Here's the bigoted quote. "Radical Islam is a global cancer caused not by any policy or actions of the West, but by the insane hatred for infidels and the utter disdain for God-given life that makes radical Muslims one of history's most insidious maladies."

What about radical Christians in America? Isn't it mostly Christians in the U.S. military who have actually participated in an invasion and occupation of two muslim countries--actions that have led to the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent civilians? Christians in the U.S. army went all the way around the world, invaded, and occupied two countries that were no threat to us. The U.S. did have a reason to temporarily raid Afghanistan, but that reason has vanished, since the terrorists escaped to Pakistan. Nevertheless, American Christians are still occupying that country. He refers to radical muslim terrorists as a sickness. It's no more sick than American mainstream support for U.S. government ventures whose sole purpose is to enrich the military-industrial complex.

Everytime Mr. Ryan ties a religion to terrorism, he is revealing his ugly bigotry. Moreover, the next day, he featured yet another ugly bigoted letter, this one by J.F. Rodgers of Clearwater, S.C. who stated, "Patriotic Americans should no longer be the silent majority concerning those who want such so-called 'religious practices' to be acceptable in America."

He's referring to some reprehensible practices among a minority of muslims. But his point is ridiculous. No one is saying abuse and murder should be tolerated. The rest of his letter is just totally incoherent. For example he writes we have "plenty of oil and natural gas under our soil. We are idiots to buy from those who like our dollars but hate us. Al Gore's manmade global warming is a big lie." What do these sentences have to do with each other? If we did have plenty of gas and oil, we wouldn't be importing these fossil fuels. Then he writes, "I resent everything I buy having 'Made in China' stamped on it. If he resents it, why does he buy it? Mr. Ryan won't print my letters but features this one. Go figure.

Below this letter there was another redneck gem. Lee Herron, a sons of the confederate, condemned the defacing of a confederate monument downtown. He compares this to what if someone defaced a statue of MLK and asked why there was no outrage, why the double standard? I'll tell him why. Confederate soldiers were defending the existence of slavery and were traitors to the U.S. MLK was a hero, a real man of peace.

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Re: "Global warming, or hot air?" from the December 7th edition of the Augusta Chronicle editorial page.

Are conservatives just stupid and ignorant about every single subject under the sun?

The only scandal worth focusing on here is this: the scientists' emails were illegally hacked and stolen. Mr. Ryan doesn't even mention or point out that these emails were made available publicly by someone who BROKE THE LAW. And the scientists' privacy was violated. Just a day earlier Mr. Ryan was defending Tiger Woods's right to privacy. But he must think that scientists, whose findings he doesn't like, have no right to privacy.

Political hacks who know nothing about climate science have misinterpeted and taken out of context some things the scientists wrote in the emails to make it sound like they were fudging the data. Yet, Mr. Ryan has the chutzpah to call the scientists "disengenous." Most people would logically agree that anyone who stole private emails and misinterpeted them should be considered the disengenous ones.

Mr. Ryan called the scientists' explanation for the word trick as disengenous, but when Mr. Ryan wrote this, he clearly showed that he didn't take the time to understand what the scientists meant. In other words, Mr. Ryan is being an ignoramous. An explanation for the word trick can be found in an article from today's Augusta Chronicle on page 8C--"Penn State scientist at center of storm over hacked emails."

Here's the explanation which makes perfect sense, but is obviously too nuanced for the conservative-clogged brains of right wing media pundits.

"By trick Mr. Mann (the scientist in question) said he meant only a technique for highlighting data on a graph. ...It's just a way of showing two kinds of data together. Mr. Mann said his method of combining proxy data has withstood numerous statistical tests--lining up neatly with thermometer readings during the 150 years where they overlap."

Here's the explanation for what scientists meant by "hiding the decline." Note, they were not hiding decline in temperatures. They were referring to "a decline reflected in a certain kind of tree-ring measurement on wood density. For reasons researchers can't explain, those wood measurements track neatly with temperatures from the late 1800's to the 1960's. After that, they show temperatures going down as thermometers show the opposite."

Mr. Ryan also falsely claims the mainstream media is ignoring this story. NBC recently ran an unfair criticism of scientists based on these illegally obtained emails, and CNN plans a prominently advertised documentary (that also sounds unfair from the previews) within the next few days.

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Cal Thomas is a conservative media pundit who is always a day late and a dollar short in my opinion, if you'll excuse the tired cliche`.

In today's Augusta Chronicle editorial page he also wrote a column about Global Warming entitled "The flathead society? The debate is far from over on global warming."

His sole source is Leonard Weinstein, an engineer, not a climate scientist. Mr. Thomas quotes liberally from a blog posting by Dr. Weinstein. Dr. Weinstein, of course, debunks anthropogenic global warming with misleading arguments and blatant lies. He claims the short term trend in temperatures is down, defying scientists predictions. This is bullshit. According to an AP article, also on page 8C of today's Augusta Chronicle, 5 of the past 10 years, have been the hottest in recorded history. Dr. Weinstein makes many false claims but the easiest to debunk is his claim that the arctic ice cap is cooling rather than warming.

NASA takes pictures of the arctic all the time. They clearly show that the ice is melting. I'll upload these images on this blog tomorrow.

Michael Ryan should Stick with Plagiarism

Re: "Right Idea, wrong deadline," from the December 1st edition of the Augusta Chronicle editorial page.

I forgot to bring this up yesterday.

Mr. Ryan finally came up with a fresh idea, I think, unless he stole it from Austin Rhodes who I haven't been monitoring lately. He thinks the Olin Corporation should be allowed to continue poisoning our water indefinitely.

Mr. Ryan wrote, "It occurs to us--why not concentrate on when the plant operators commit to a conversion, rather than when they complete it."

This statement clearly shows that Mr. Ryan is a naive idiot. Olin corporation could commit to a conversion, then never complete it. Without a definite date, an order to clean up their act would have no teeth at all.

So Mr. Ryan finally came up with an original idea, but he should've stuck with plagiarizing other people's lies, because this one reveals his incredible naivete`.

In my opinion the plant should be shut down immediately and the company executives imprisoned for poisoning Georgia's water with mercury. If these were foreign Arabs adding poison to our water, Mr. Ryan would be all for hunting them down and jailing them. But apparently, it's ok, for American businessmen to terrorize us as long as they're making a buck.

Michael Ryan parrots America's Mentally Ill Attitude Toward Sex

Re: "Society in the Sewer," from the November 27th editorial page of the Augusta Chronicle.

The U.S. leads the industrial world in teenage and out of wedlock pregnancies. Yet, Mr. Ryan laments the inability of some prudes in Iowa to keep a sex education magazine for teenagers from being displayed prominently in the local library. The parents wanted the magazine hidden from sight. How absurd? The whole point of subscribing to a sex education magazine for teenagers is for teenagers to read it and learn, not for it to be hidden away, where it would serve no purpose.

Americans have always had a mentally ill attitude toward sex. Too many Americans think sex is something dirty that shouldn't be discussed in public. The reason we have high rates of teenage pregnancies is because of the conservative philosophy that opposes sex education.

Oh and btw, Mr. Ryan must be too lazy to get the remote and change the television channel. He described Adam Lambert's raunchy performance at the American Music Awards in more graphic detail than I wanted to read about. Hey, Mr. Ryan, there are 500 channels on tv now days. Nobody is forcing you to watch this stuff.

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On November 25th Mr. Ryan featured a disgusting bigoted letter written by Lawrence Smith who equated the Muslim religion with terrorism. No Mr. Smith, the U.S. is not at war with a religion. Mr. Ryan should be ashamed for printing this bigoted garbage, let alone featuring it.

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Re: "A disaster--of out own making," from the November 28th edition of the Augusta Chronicle editorial page.

Once again, Mr. Ryan writes of his concerns with the expanding federal deficit. He's running out of subject matter because this has been the topic of one of his editorials at least once a week since Obama's taken office. I don't remember him ever writing one about this topic when Bush was president.

His editorial is laughable and has no credibility because of a column he wrote the week before suggesting there should be a moratorium on income taxes which would lead to an even bigger deficit.

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Re; "Afghan push: Is it in time?" from the November 30th edition of the Augusta Chronicle editorial page.

Here's more unfounded criticism of the president. He writes, "it's hard to argue that the Afghan war effort and the goal of destroying the terrorist platform from which to launch attacks on America hasn't been dealt a severe blow by the indecision of the White House."

First of all, the U.S. has already destroyed the terrorist platform in Afghanistan. According to news reports, there are fewer than 100 Al Qaida left in that country. Second, it's no longer a war, it's an occupation--and an unnecessary one in my opinion. Third, Mr. Ryan provides no evidence for his belief that the delay in Obama's decision has hurt American efforts there.

Mr. Ryan writes that it's hard to argue the delay hasn't hurt, yet he provides not a single fact to support his argument. His criticism is just baseless political bashing completely without ties to reality.