Iain Murray

Short version: My BFF Iain Murray wrote the best analysis I’ve seen about exactly why last week’s revelation of suspicious global warming documents is so incriminating to the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in the UK.

Iain (I call him Iain because last year he linked to me — twice!) relentlessly uses the scientists’ own words to incriminate them, with each passage carefully linked to a specific damning document in the treasure trove.

If you think global warming is probably “settled science,” but you’re willing to read one article to give skeptics a chance to change your mind,  read this remarkable indictment, published all the way last Tuesday, while the pixels of the original leak were still quivering.

Long version (back-story): Yesterday, before I posted “Hide the Decline”: Global Warmists Got Some ‘Splainin’ to Do, I spent a great deal of time trying to find the seminal articles that first piqued my interest in the topic that is becoming known as Climategate — incriminating emails and programmers’ notes revealing the apparent falsification of global warming data.

This happens to me a lot, I need to find a better system for doing research.  I see something that interests me slightly, then I move on and forget about it — I don’t think I know enough about the subject to even consider blogging about it.  Then I stumble upon links showing that the blogosphere is ramping up to focus on the topic, and I start to get more interested.  Then I do more research, and start to think maybe I do have something to say on the matter.  This plays out over a period of a few days, while I go on about my complicated life.

By the time I’m interested enough to blog, I can’t find the documents that first got me interested.  Then I find something, but I’m not sure it’s the right post.  This time, however, I found something that clarified the matter for me.

I must have skimmed Iain’s article without noticing his byline, because his name would have jumped out at me.  Near the bottom of his second page is this passage:

So what does this all mean? It does not mean that there is no warming trend or that mankind has not been responsible for at least some of the warming. To claim that as result of these documents is clearly a step too far.

The boldface is the clinching factor.  I used that Briticism in my previous post without knowing why I chose the words.  Iain Murray, unlike your humble scribe, is actually a Brit by birth.

This post was first published a year ago today.  It is dedicated to the men and women of the United States armed forces, and to every firefighter who has ever run into a burning building — 343 of them in particular.

The name of this blog comes from something that English statesman Edmund Burke apparently did not actually say, so I’ve felt free to modernize the language:

“All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.”

Regardless of who said it first, that sentence is the purest possible distillation of my worldview, and today is a powerful annual reminder of why I regard it as an enduring truth.

The events of 9/11 were the legacy of more than two decades of doing nothing, or next to nothing, in response to attacks from fascists in Islamic guise.

Militant Islamists declared war on America in November 1979 by taking hostages at the U.S. embassy in Tehran. This was followed by 1983 attacks on the U.S. embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut; the Pan Am 103 bombing over Lockerbie in 1988; the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993; the Khobar Towers bombing in 1996; the simultaneous 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania; and the attack on the U.S.S. Cole in 2000; along with smaller atrocities too numerous to list.

Only after 9/11 did America, led by a President who despite his substantial flaws was resolute enough to call evil by its name, finally mount a sustained response and take the battle to the enemy. And no, Saddam was not behind the 9/11 attacks — but liberating Iraq and planting a (still-fragile) democracy in the heart of the Islamic Middle East is an essential part of the broader war.

All of this is why, despite profound disagreements with the Republican Party on social issues, despite voting for Bill Clinton three times (including 2000), I can no longer vote for Democrats for President. Not until the party has a standard-bearer who understands the cost of meekness in the face of fascism, and who is prepared to stay on the offensive against people for whom “death to America” is not a metaphor.

You can’t currently use certain internal links on my blog successfully, because of a hacker.  Any blog using a non-current version of WordPress software is vulnerable to this hacker.  See http://wordpress.org/support/topic/307660?replies=1 for more info.

There should be a special place in hell reserved for computer hackers…

Update: This now appears to be fixed — a mere 8 hours later!  (I did take a couple of fairly long breaks.)

I market my blog as the musings of “a red-state voter in a deep blue state.”  It’s a catchy line, and it lends itself to a jazzy 125×125 logo — created by the Web Goddess, naturally. But sometimes I’ve wondered if New Jersey really is as “deep blue” as, say, Massachusetts or Vermont.  (I’m sure as heck in a deep blue town.)

Then today I saw this from fellow New Jersey blogger TigerHawk:  “Forty-nine states have elected a Republican to state-wide office since New Jersey last did.”  So by that metric, at least, it’s the bluest state in the nation.

The irony of my self-identification is that in the current governor’s race, I’m almost certainly going to vote for the Democrat — who probably is going to lose.  Which would make me a red-state voter turning blue in a blue state turning red.

I went looking for more info on New Jersey’s red/blue divide and found this from PolitickerNJ:

The last time a Republican statewide candidate won New Jersey was in 1997 [Christie Whitman's re-election].  Since then, 49 other states have elected a Republican to a statewide office. But also consider this: the last time New Jersey re-elected a Democratic governor was 32 years ago [Brendan Byrne's re-election].

One of those two streaks will end this year. As of this week, Republican Chris Christie leads Democrat Jon Corzine by a wide margin, 53-41 percent.

My slogan and party affiliation incline me toward Christie, and I’m impressed by his law enforcement record as the state’s U.S. Attorney.  Earlier this year, a friend who follows my blog suggested I get involved in the Christie campaign, and I looked into that. The deal-breaker was his strong stands against abortion rights and against marriage equality for same-sex couples.  (I was on the other side of those issues from McCain as well, but in a presidential election, national security trumps all else in my mind.)

On marriage equality especially, the choice in New Jersey is stark.  Corzine supports “full marriage equality and is committed to signing marriage equality legislation in 2009.”  Christie says on his website:

If a bill legalizing same sex marriage came to my desk as Governor, I would veto it. If the law were changed by judicial fiat, I would be in favor of a constitutional amendment on the ballot so that voters, not judges, would decide this important social question.

Sorry, no sale.  Maplewood, my home for 10 years, has a high concentration of gay residents.  My gay friends, neighbors and fellow parishioners deserve the same marriage rights that the Web Goddess and I enjoy.

Christie hammers Corzine for raising taxes, and says he’ll cut them.  Fair enough… but I don’t see Corzine as a spendthrift.  From Corzine’s website:

Governor Corzine reshaped and resized state government. He eliminated and consolidated departments, sold state cars, tore up gas cards and closed office buildings. He reduced the state workforce by 7,000 employees and achieved additional savings by increasing the retirement age from 55 to 62, capping pensions, and asking state workers to contribute for the first time toward the cost of their health care. This year, he even negotiated a 7.5 percent wage cut for public employees.

Because Jon Corzine made the right choices, he is the only New Jersey governor in over six decades to reduce the size of state government. The budget that he signed into law on June 29th is $1.8 billion smaller than the first budget he signed in 2006.

Sounds good to me.  Besides, I kinda like the guy.  Maybe it’s the beard.

The economy is sending mixed signals — which at least is an improvement over just a few months ago.  Newsweek reports today that “the Fed has become both more optimistic and more pessimistic,” with GNP expected to recover slightly more quickly than previously expected, even while unemployment creeps slightly higher.  The term “jobless recovery” is being attributed to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, although the term actually was floated by a Senate Republican in a private discussion, and Bernanke responded only that “it could be.”

The bottom line is, whatever you have left in your retirement fund may start growing again, but if you’re looking for a job you’re still hosed.

The irony, of course, is that job creation depends on business confidence, which depends on economic growth, which in the long run depends on… higher employment levels.

So for all you business owners looking to implement plans you’ve had on hold, if you’re still understandably wary of taking on new headcount, I have a solution:  Hire an independent consultant on a contract basis.

Contracting with a consultant is a much smaller commitment than hiring an employee, and your dollars will go further.  An independent consultant will know that he or she has to hit the ground running, so you can get a faster payoff on your project.

Huge consulting firms often use a senior partner to convince you to sign a contract, then assign twenty-somethings to do the actual work.  But with an independent consultant, the person you seal the deal with will be doing the actual work.  So don’t be put off by the fact that the independent consultant may be a little older — a greybeard, so to speak. You’re not buying all those years of experience, you’re just renting them.

This message is brought to you as a public service by KirkPetersen.net LLC.

(Disclosure: Photo is a composite — NOT created by the Web Goddess, who has actual Photoshop skills)

It must have been embedded in the recesses of my memory, because something just made me check the archives.  It was one year ago today that I made my first substantive post on this blog.  (The first of a handful of frivolous posts was more than five years ago.)

I led with a snarky prediction that presidential candidate Barack Obama “some day could become an important senator.”  That turned out to be wrong — he went straight from first-term senator to president.  But other than that I think the first post holds up reasonably well.

I would be honored if you read the whole thing, but since most people don’t click links, I’ll paste the concluding paragraph here:

So I still prefer McCain as commander-in-chief, but I take comfort in the overwhelming evidence that Obama is a politician. Politicians know how to maneuver around unwise campaign promises, and how to avoid being held hostage by their political base.

My friend Lori Widmer is a seasoned writer and blogger, and a tireless advocate of better pay for pixel-stained wretches everywhere.  Five days a week she offers brief, cogent (and well-written!) advice to writers and would-be writers on her blog, Words on the Page.  She has an active commenting community of fellow writers who chime in on a daily basis with encouragement, ideas and horror stories.

Lori has declared that today is “Writers Worth Day,” a day for all of us in the writing “industry” to take a stand against the cheesy job boards and websites that offer, for example, payment of $5 for a well-researched, original blog post of 300 words or more.  “Our careers depend on your turning down bad deals because each time you accept a lousy offer, you validate the existence of people who don’t value writing skills,” she declares, and I say, hear hear!

I quibble a bit with her references to a writing “industry.” I think writing actually is broader and more fundamental than an industry.  Writing is a close cousin to knowledge, and while people speak of “knowledge workers,” I don’t think there’s really a “knowledge industry” — despite 618,000 Google hits for the term.  It seems like an “industry” should be more narrowly defined, and have at least some barriers to entry.

But I certainly agree with her that capable writers should be taken seriously — especially by themselves.  We do add value.  Speaking of which…

Mad props to Michael Gerson, who in today’s Washington Post brilliantly articulates the concept I was struggling to develop in my recent post, “Don’t Blame Me for Rush Limbaugh, I Won’t Blame You for Michael Moore.”  (Disclosure: Gerson did not actually consult with me, and may not have realized he was writing this on my behalf.)

The practice of civility is important to democracy. In his book, Civility: Manners, Morals and the Etiquette of Democracy, Stephen L. Carter defines civility as “the sum of the many sacrifices we are called to make for the sake of living together. . . . We should make sacrifices for others not simply because doing so makes social life easier (although it does), but as a signal of respect for our fellow citizens, marking them as full equals, both before the law and before God.”

Respect makes cooperation for the common good possible. Civility acts like grease in the democratic machine; disdain is sand thrown into the gears. But civility is also a direct reflection of our belief in human equality. Even people we vehemently disagree with on the largest issues possess a democratic value equal to our own. Carter argues that this recognition does not preclude “passionate disagreement,” but it does require “civil listening” — and I’d guess it forbids hoping for the death of political opponents.

Read the whole thing.

There’s an old platitude, “I may not agree with what you say, but I would defend to the death your right to say it.”  That rings slightly false — although I would verbally defend your right to disagree with me, if there’s a realistic prospect of death, you’re probably on your own. But surely all of us would be better off if more people treated opposing ideas with some level of respect.

Parts of the rightosphere are in high dudgeon about the fact that President Obama, at the annual White House Correspondents Association yuck-fest dinner, laughed at “jokes” told by “comedian” Wanda Sykes about wanting Rush Limbaugh to die of kidney failure.  (Here’s a 78-second video.)

There have been days of arguments at “the Id of Conservatism” –  the Corner, NRO’s group blog — about whether Limbaugh brought it on himself.  And about whether Limbaugh is good or bad for conservatism, about whether or not he’s popular (polls say no, ratings say yes), and about whether he’s ever changed anybody’s mind about anything.

At Best of the Web Today, James Taranto says:

In Obama’s wide grin as Sykes was telling her joke, we saw the smug look of a man who enjoys seeing his critics dehumanized. The president of the United States should be better than this.

The conservative whom other conservatives love to hate, Kathleen Parker, thinks the whole thing is overblown, and sarcastically suggests that we’re “on the verge of appointing a Special Commission on Acceptable Humor.” She says:

Lost in the frenzy is the more important matter of our thin-skinned intolerance and our reflexive lurch to take offense. We might remind ourselves that it’s always the fanatics who can’t take a joke.

I think she’s on to something.  I get awfully tired of having the discussion framed by flame-throwing provocateurs.  When Limbaugh famously was quoted as saying about Obama, “I hope he fails,” a liberal friend asked me how I felt about having Limbaugh speak for the Republican Party.  That’s when I spoke the words from the headline above.

What do Rush Limbaugh and Michael Moore have in common?  Well, they’re both much richer and better known than I will ever be, because they’ve each attracted vast followings.  Negativity sells.  Personal attacks work.  Would that it were otherwise.

I can’t get too exercised over Obama laughing at the idea of Limbaugh’s death.  Who among us hasn’t laughed at inappropriate jokes? And Limbaugh, coiner of “feminazis” and other evocative slurs, is an enthusiastic practitioner of the “dehumanization” tactics that Taranto criticizes.

I wish I knew where I’m going with all of this.  The post started as a vehicle for its headline and graphic, but beyond that, I’m not sure what my point is.  Maybe something about the importance of the clash of ideas in a democracy?  Sometimes when I write a blog post, the key conclusion that ties everything together emerges gradually as I think and type.  And sometimes, the only way I can think of to end a post is to drive it off a cliff.

Farewell, Blogspot

After a lot more effort than I expected, I’m pleased to unveil version 2.0 of All That Is Necessary. For those who care about such details, I’ve migrated my original Blogger blog to the WordPress platform, hosted on my personal domain, kirkpetersen.net.

(I’m .net because kirkpetersen.com, no relation, had already been snapped up by a software engineer in Seattle.  Other unrelated Kirk Petersens of note include Austin real estate agent Kirk S. Petersen — hey, that’s my initial, too! — and Kirk P. Petersen, an attorney and estate planner in Eldorado Springs, CO, who based on his Amazon book reviews clearly has more intellectual tastes in his reading than I do.  There’s also Dr. Kirk Petersen, a dentist in southern California; Kirk Petersen, a real estate appraiser in Harlan, IA, a few miles from where both my parents grew up;  and interior designer Kirk Petersen of Olympia, WA.  I wonder if he knows his techie namesake in nearby Seattle?)

And here I thought I had a distinctive name.  But I digress.

There are two main reasons for changing the blog.  First, WordPress is pretty widely acknowledged to be the best and most versatile blogging platform, far more flexible and robust than Blogger. I knew this before I started blogging, and initially tried to set up on WP, but ran into some technical problems that I couldn’t figure out how to solve.  (The company’s promise of the “famous five-minute WordPress installation” is more than just an exaggeration, it’s a falsehood.)  I decided to launch on the much simpler Blogger platform with Blogspot hosting, rather than fight my way through the technical thicket, because I wasn’t completely sure I would even enjoy blogging.  Turns out I do.

Second, I decided to integrate my blog with my marketing site, after initially being leery of doing so.  The leeriness came from the fact that I stake out some fairly pointed political views here, and I don’t want to alienate any potential clients and employers.  I finally reconciled myself to the fact that if you Google my name, the second and third results currently are my marketing site and my blogspot blog, respectively (curse you, top-ranking kirkpetersen.com techie guy!)  Since it’s not really possible to segregate my two online identities completely, I may as well get whatever benefit I can out of integrating them.

They’re not truly integrated yet, as you can see at a glance from the very different look of the marketing site.  That site was lovingly hand-coded by the Web Goddess, and it continues to serve me well.  Interestingly, even though the blog gets more than 50 times as many visitors as the marketing site, the latter ranks above the former, both in the Google search results and in Google’s mysterious PageRank rankings (blog = PR1, marketing site = PR2).

Now that I finally have this launched, maybe I can get back to writing more actual substantive blog posts.  The next phase of the integration will be to pull the marketing content into the WordPress structure, so I can more easily maintain it myself, and to unify the look-and-feel with some nice design touches by the Web Goddess.  (In the meantime, if I can help your company or organization meet your communications needs…)

Sign up for the RSS feed or email delivery if you want to make sure you never miss a post (hi Mom!).  If you signed up for RSS at the old site, it should get forwarded automatically for a couple of weeks, but I think eventually you’ll need to sign up again here.  Thanks for visiting — hope to see you back soon.

So, what do you think of the new site?  Find anything broken?