multiple "Premier" and "Elite" leagues

[perspective]

I don't understand your question. Are you asking me if its "convenient" for leftist academia to hold young scientists' careers in its collective hands? I'm sure its convenient for leftist academia. Less convenient for dispassionate scholars. But I don't think that's where you were headed...

As far as "saying anything whatsoever" I don't really know because I haven't said "anything whatsoever". I've only said what I've said.

The third question is a reasonable one. I've already sent one to college and I'm well aware of the pitfalls. I have another to go and I've learned some things in the meantime. Suffice it to say its not enough to just send them to the most "elite" school they can get into. They have to be armed and ready for what they will experience there. High school does not sufficiently prepare them for the culture of today's academy even if it manages to prepare them for the work.

Those are my answers. I'll let others judge whether they make me sound like I have 10 (or even 9) feet of arrogance up my rear end. It only feels like maybe 8 feet at most but sometimes you need friends to let you know what's really up there.

And let's talk about your very selective intellectual criticism. You're invested in deconstructing any reasonable concerns about global warming -- for you just a myth invested in for personal gain -- and yet you can read page after page here and let stand commentary stating that Obama's intentions are entirely consistent, indeed likely motivated by, transforming into Communist Russia and Nazi Germany (assuming you didn't author those posts yourself). If you're only going to play one side aren't you violating the very principle you suggest you are championing? Canada, England and Scandinavian countries have national healthcare. When was the last time you heard any of those countries accused of attempting to become Nazi Germany?

[Unregistered]

And to think I clicked on this thread thinking I would read something about premier / elite leagues... Give it a rest guys!

[Unregistered]

Definitely 10 feet...or 12.

What I was getting at is whether you think any conservatives out there hold the careers of others in their hands and/or any less likely (of course think way more likely) to put limits around what one may think, say, and write? All of these evils that you allege seem to only exist within and be promoted by liberal-minded thinkers. Surely since you are endowed with such brilliance you are open to the possibility that you are wrong and that conservatives are wrong....and that if conservative thinking had simply reigned supreme and gone unchallenged for the last 75 years the world and this country would be in a far different place. The difficulty we face now, even in 2014, in getting people to see prejudices and believe that certain things have and have not happened gives some indication of how much more difficult it would have been without extremely aggressive and persistent liberal-minded initiatives. We all can throw up links and articles. Let's talk about Harvey Milk and Selma and a murder of a gay college student in good 'ol free-thinking Wyoming. Let's stop any initiatives for alternative forms of energy. Let's clone and multiply the Duck Dynasties and Palins and Hannitys and Becks and Limbaughs. Let's turn everything around and assume henceforth that the less educated are more educated, that the most backward, clinging to the past and wishing for bygone times where everyone is fit and even quarantined into a neat little box kind of thinking is the new avant-garde, groundbreaking thinking. Let's try to be as dumb as we possibly can be and then call ourselves smart.

This is a sprawling and not exactly coherent reply. The subject that I was specifically responding to was the laughable idea of "consensus" about climate science in academic circles. A description of what the world would look like if conservatives had dominated an even larger portion of the historical debate on... everything... was not my intent.

I'm sure there are many non-liberal forces at work in the world that hold other people's careers in their hands. But hey aren't academic scientists - that's for sure. Maybe there are accountants who feel constrained from speaking their mind on gay marriage or the war on islamofascism. I don't give a damn and, as far as I can imagine, it wouldn't 'affect their work product one way or the other.

Harvey Milk (murder)? Selma (government oppression)? Matthew Shepard (murder)? These represent conservative or libertarian ideals? OK, Perspective, if you are THAT committed to making liberals the heroes in this story I guess that's where you need to go. But if you are going to engage in THAT level of delusion I can't follow you down there. I don't know what 1+1 equals or how many sides triangles have in that universe?

I don't watch any network television so your references to DD, SP, SH, GB and RL don't have a lot of purchase with me. If you want to argue about something that one of them has said on their show you will need to find someone else. If you want to talk about something written by Friedman, Hayek, Mises, Sowell, Williams, Bastiat, Hanson, Kozinski, Thomas, Scalia, Posner, Krauthammer, Steyn, Will, Murray, Lomborg, etc. then I may be able to oblige you.

[perspective]

This is a sprawling and not exactly coherent reply. The subject that I was specifically responding to was the laughable idea of "consensus" about climate science in academic circles. A description of what the world would look like if conservatives had dominated an even larger portion of the historical debate on... everything... was not my intent.

I'm sure there are many non-liberal forces at work in the world that hold other people's careers in their hands. But hey aren't academic scientists - that's for sure. Maybe there are accountants who feel constrained from speaking their mind on gay marriage or the war on islamofascism. I don't give a damn and, as far as I can imagine, it wouldn't 'affect their work product one way or the other.

Harvey Milk (murder)? Selma (government oppression)? Matthew Shepard (murder)? These represent conservative or libertarian ideals? OK, Perspective, if you are THAT committed to making liberals the heroes in this story I guess that's where you need to go. But if you are going to engage in THAT level of delusion I can't follow you down there. I don't know what 1+1 equals or how many sides triangles have in that universe?

I don't watch any network television so your references to DD, SP, SH, GB and RL don't have a lot of purchase with me. If you want to argue about something that one of them has said on their show you will need to find someone else. If you want to talk about something written by Friedman, Hayek, Mises, Sowell, Williams, Bastiat, Hanson, Kozinski, Thomas, Scalia, Posner, Krauthammer, Steyn, Will, Murray, Lomborg, etc. then I may be able to oblige you.

Haha....you really are a pompous jack***. This clearly isn't your first rodeo on the site or in this thread. Given how you are dutifully keeping track of every post and responding in kind then I believe we can assume you have at least scanned all of the posts in this thread since the turn that occurred with the infamous 70K cardiologist.

You didn't respond the the query about why you have failed to contest the most outlandish claims from the conservative side....clearly more outlandish that any liberal has expressed...and so outlandish that most must just be numbed that some of these things have been written. I didn't say whether you had authored them. That doesn't matter really. You have READ them, and you have let them go, in between your pontificating about global warming and other matters apparently dear to you of which you are a critic, but, barring a display of credentials we haven't seen, certainly no expert although you are very keen on posing as one.

Last I knew, we've had no shortage of conservatives clinging to the other side of the debate on the "science" of climate change, although perhaps you're saying the conservative fictionalists (needing to believe in creationism or their rights to pillage the earth as they see fit) are not academics, or at least in any formal sense.

I don't need the liberals to be the heroes. Just people telling the truth would be enough. Acknowledging that at each step of revolutionary progress and positive social change that progress had to fight through the sort of denial, defensiveness, religiosity and delusion that characterizes the musing of yourself and others here. That decades went by impacting tens of millions of people before barriers were broken through and freedoms won, and that even up to today many are still having to fight against what a big minority of folks in this country still cling to.

Thankfully, I don't have to go as deep as you pretend to go or quote Foucault, Deleuze, Guatarri, Kristeva, Lyotard, et al in making my point. We don't need to go beyond the proclamation (repeated over and over) that Obama is attempting to (and succeeding at) turning the country into Nazi Germany. For you not to comment on that degree of a lie, on that degree of ugly carelessness and thoughtlessness....tells us everything we need to know about you and the real depth and character of your thinking.

[Unregistered]

Like his mentor BTDT a few years back, Perspective has officially jumped the shark.

[Unregistered]

Haha....you really are a pompous jack***. This clearly isn't your first rodeo on the site or in this thread. Given how you are dutifully keeping track of every post and responding in kind then I believe we can assume you have at least scanned all of the posts in this thread since the turn that occurred with the infamous 70K cardiologist.

Name calling?

I think I've been pretty transparent in my postings on this thread. I wasn't especially interested in the $70K cardiologist subplot. I already know the punchline to that joke and if people want to argue about how much a cardiologist did make or will make or should make it doesn't really interest me. For people who do NOT know the punchline, it goes as follows: Your doctors will not be able to practice medicine in anything like the manner they had dreamed when they first applied to medical school. The government is moving in on their profession and when we hear about "reducing the high cost of healthcare" that is code for a big bite out of doctors' compensation. It will happen in many different ways and none of it will improve healthcare in the US. It will certainly bring the inequality of healthcare down because the greater misery will be shared more equally by everyone. Obamacare is the opening salvo. It ends with government control of the entire medical system. Along the way, virtually all doctors will become employees of hospitals and their pay will be reduced and converge on the mean. Realizing this, doctors who currently work 60-80 hours per week will work 40 hours per week and make no personal investment or risk. It will create the impression of a doctor shortage and it will lower the quality of doctors as well as the experience with patients. What liberals hope is that people will forget how good healthcare in America USED TO BE. Kind of like our nostalgia for the doctor who made housecalls: "Remember when we used to see that brilliant hard working doctor who owned his own practice and gave us his cell phone number? Those were the days. Sigh." The built-in advantage for liberals is that no one misses the drug or procedure that doesn't get invented due to the nationalization of the healthcare system. People who would have been saved under a free-market system but die or suffer because of the loss of that dynamism don't know what was taken from them.

All this nonsense about med school being harder to get into today. What a smoke screen. The best and brightest will continue to avoid medicine at increasing rates. The children of doctors aren't going to med school. We're going to have to open up the H1Bs and import a lot more doctors from India and elsewhere

You didn't respond the the query about why you have failed to contest the most outlandish claims from the conservative side....clearly more outlandish that any liberal has expressed...and so outlandish that most must just be numbed that some of these things have been written. I didn't say whether you had authored them. That doesn't matter really. You have READ them, and you have let them go, in between your pontificating about global warming and other matters apparently dear to you of which you are a critic, but, barring a display of credentials we haven't seen, certainly no expert although you are very keen on posing as one.

Maybe I was relying on you to do a better job countering the nut jobs, Perspective. Do I need to carry you too? I'm not responsible for what anyone writes on this site. Except myself. My highest priority responses are those for which I have substantial direct knowledge. If somebody says that the earth orbits the moon I may think they are nuts but I'm really not the best person to explain why its wrong.

Last I knew, we've had no shortage of conservatives clinging to the other side of the debate on the "science" of climate change, although perhaps you're saying the conservative fictionalists (needing to believe in creationism or their rights to pillage the earth as they see fit) are not academics, or at least in any formal sense.

I lost you.

I don't need the liberals to be the heroes. Just people telling the truth would be enough. Acknowledging that at each step of revolutionary progress and positive social change that progress had to fight through the sort of denial, defensiveness, religiosity and delusion that characterizes the musing of yourself and others here. That decades went by impacting tens of millions of people before barriers were broken through and freedoms won, and that even up to today many are still having to fight against what a big minority of folks in this country still cling to.

When I speak I speak the truth. I see from the writers you list below that THE TRUTH is not exactly solid ground for you but that's your cross to bear if you go in for that kind of sophistry (i.e. post-modern gobbeldygook). If the convoluted point here is that, historically, liberals have played important roles in our progress I won't argue the point. That doesn't mean that any particular liberal "principle" today is valid. I use quotation marks because the problem with modern liberals is that they have lost connection with principles except as they may be marshaled for stump speech. That's the problem with cobbling a coalition of identity interest groups and no firm philosophical underpinning. The only principle is to keep power. Its tactical - not intellectual. Foucault won't help you out of that ditch LOL!

Thankfully, I don't have to go as deep as you pretend to go or quote Foucault, Deleuze, Guatarri, Kristeva, Lyotard, et al in making my point. We don't need to go beyond the proclamation (repeated over and over) that Obama is attempting to (and succeeding at) turning the country into Nazi Germany. For you not to comment on that degree of a lie, on that degree of ugly carelessness and thoughtlessness....tells us everything we need to know about you and the real depth and character of your thinking.

Obama is not turning this country into nazi Germany. But if he were more competent he would be a very dangerous man, indeed.

[Unregistered]

Name calling?

I think I've been pretty transparent in my postings on this thread. I wasn't especially interested in the $70K cardiologist subplot. I already know the punchline to that joke and if people want to argue about how much a cardiologist did make or will make or should make it doesn't really interest me. For people who do NOT know the punchline, it goes as follows: Your doctors will not be able to practice medicine in anything like the manner they had dreamed when they first applied to medical school. The government is moving in on their profession and when we hear about "reducing the high cost of healthcare" that is code for a big bite out of doctors' compensation. It will happen in many different ways and none of it will improve healthcare in the US. It will certainly bring the inequality of healthcare down because the greater misery will be shared more equally by everyone. Obamacare is the opening salvo. It ends with government control of the entire medical system. Along the way, virtually all doctors will become employees of hospitals and their pay will be reduced and converge on the mean. Realizing this, doctors who currently work 60-80 hours per week will work 40 hours per week and make no personal investment or risk. It will create the impression of a doctor shortage and it will lower the quality of doctors as well as the experience with patients. What liberals hope is that people will forget how good healthcare in America USED TO BE. Kind of like our nostalgia for the doctor who made housecalls: "Remember when we used to see that brilliant hard working doctor who owned his own practice and gave us his cell phone number? Those were the days. Sigh." The built-in advantage for liberals is that no one misses the drug or procedure that doesn't get invented due to the nationalization of the healthcare system. People who would have been saved under a free-market system but die or suffer because of the loss of that dynamism don't know what was taken from them.

All this nonsense about med school being harder to get into today. What a smoke screen. The best and brightest will continue to avoid medicine at increasing rates. The children of doctors aren't going to med school. We're going to have to open up the H1Bs and import a lot more doctors from India and elsewhere



Maybe I was relying on you to do a better job countering the nut jobs, Perspective. Do I need to carry you too? I'm not responsible for what anyone writes on this site. Except myself. My highest priority responses are those for which I have substantial direct knowledge. If somebody says that the earth orbits the moon I may think they are nuts but I'm really not the best person to explain why its wrong.




I lost you.



When I speak I speak the truth. I see from the writers you list below that THE TRUTH is not exactly solid ground for you but that's your cross to bear if you go in for that kind of sophistry (i.e. post-modern gobbeldygook). If the convoluted point here is that, historically, liberals have played important roles in our progress I won't argue the point. That doesn't mean that any particular liberal "principle" today is valid. I use quotation marks because the problem with modern liberals is that they have lost connection with principles except as they may be marshaled for stump speech. That's the problem with cobbling a coalition of identity interest groups and no firm philosophical underpinning. The only principle is to keep power. Its tactical - not intellectual. Foucault won't help you out of that ditch LOL!



Obama is not turning this country into nazi Germany. But if he were more competent he would be a very dangerous man, indeed.

Obama is a great president!!!!! Unlike George the idiot!! Get a life! You suck so STFU nobody wants to listen to your BS. You are PATHETIC!!!!!!!!

[Unregistered]

Obama is a great president!!!!! Unlike George the idiot!! Get a life! You suck so STFU nobody wants to listen to your BS. You are PATHETIC!!!!!!!!

Actually, the guy is pretty awesome, do you even understand what he is writing? He's at least putting perspective over his knee and doesn't have to stoop to perspective's name calling tantrum to do it. Keep it up!!!

[perspective]

Name calling?

I think I've been pretty transparent in my postings on this thread. I wasn't especially interested in the $70K cardiologist subplot. I already know the punchline to that joke and if people want to argue about how much a cardiologist did make or will make or should make it doesn't really interest me. For people who do NOT know the punchline, it goes as follows: Your doctors will not be able to practice medicine in anything like the manner they had dreamed when they first applied to medical school. The government is moving in on their profession and when we hear about "reducing the high cost of healthcare" that is code for a big bite out of doctors' compensation. It will happen in many different ways and none of it will improve healthcare in the US. It will certainly bring the inequality of healthcare down because the greater misery will be shared more equally by everyone. Obamacare is the opening salvo. It ends with government control of the entire medical system. Along the way, virtually all doctors will become employees of hospitals and their pay will be reduced and converge on the mean. Realizing this, doctors who currently work 60-80 hours per week will work 40 hours per week and make no personal investment or risk. It will create the impression of a doctor shortage and it will lower the quality of doctors as well as the experience with patients. What liberals hope is that people will forget how good healthcare in America USED TO BE. Kind of like our nostalgia for the doctor who made housecalls: "Remember when we used to see that brilliant hard working doctor who owned his own practice and gave us his cell phone number? Those were the days. Sigh." The built-in advantage for liberals is that no one misses the drug or procedure that doesn't get invented due to the nationalization of the healthcare system. People who would have been saved under a free-market system but die or suffer because of the loss of that dynamism don't know what was taken from them.

All this nonsense about med school being harder to get into today. What a smoke screen. The best and brightest will continue to avoid medicine at increasing rates. The children of doctors aren't going to med school. We're going to have to open up the H1Bs and import a lot more doctors from India and elsewhere



Maybe I was relying on you to do a better job countering the nut jobs, Perspective. Do I need to carry you too? I'm not responsible for what anyone writes on this site. Except myself. My highest priority responses are those for which I have substantial direct knowledge. If somebody says that the earth orbits the moon I may think they are nuts but I'm really not the best person to explain why its wrong.




I lost you.



When I speak I speak the truth. I see from the writers you list below that THE TRUTH is not exactly solid ground for you but that's your cross to bear if you go in for that kind of sophistry (i.e. post-modern gobbeldygook). If the convoluted point here is that, historically, liberals have played important roles in our progress I won't argue the point. That doesn't mean that any particular liberal "principle" today is valid. I use quotation marks because the problem with modern liberals is that they have lost connection with principles except as they may be marshaled for stump speech. That's the problem with cobbling a coalition of identity interest groups and no firm philosophical underpinning. The only principle is to keep power. Its tactical - not intellectual. Foucault won't help you out of that ditch LOL!



Obama is not turning this country into nazi Germany. But if he were more competent he would be a very dangerous man, indeed.

LOL. You couldn't even do the last bit, confirming that we're not becoming Nazi Germany, without reaffirming the sentiment that started all of that...and suggesting he would be more dangerous if more competent is to attribute internal qualities and motivations to him that jive with the original and wildly irresponsible suggestion.

Where you lost me? Simple. Are there no conservative scientists arguing your side of the global warming issue? ALL academics are now liberals?

You weren't interested in the physician and healthcare issues, but then you spout on with your party line. Talk about dangerous and misinformed. There is more research going on, more biotech companies, and more drugs under development and coming to market than ever before. To paint Obama as wanting anything but the highest levels of excellence and the best and brightest tackling the biggest medical and world issues is just lying through your prejudicial teeth.

Do you also maintain that he didn't excel at Harvard and that Harvard knew he would be President 25 years later and so go ahead of the curve by making a C student the head of the law review?

And since you are really on to global warming, what's the big problem if it's not true. Someone, maybe you, suggested that all of the suggested interventions coming out of the global warming findings are things we ought to be doing anyway. So what's your investment exactly? Shouldn't we be taking care of our home just because...???

By chance, are you the "Amherst is a cesspool guy"? That would explain a lot.

And finally, as I really am curious, what advancements in human rights as far as race, gender, sexual orientation, and religion have resulted from efforts from the conservatives?

[perspective]

Actually, the guy is pretty awesome, do you even understand what he is writing? He's at least putting perspective over his knee and doesn't have to stoop to perspective's name calling tantrum to do it. Keep it up!!!

You have to be in the game to get a good butt-kicking. I'm not above getting a butt-kicking. You are entitled to your assessment. Again, as I often ask with no reply, where may we find your contributions??? BTW, I was glad to see you speaking up when the repeated name calling and slander was being slung at my and YOUR president.

[Unregistered]

Obama is a great president!!!!! Unlike George the idiot!! Get a life! You suck so STFU nobody wants to listen to your BS. You are PATHETIC!!!!!!!!

Right on the money!

1) Obama
2) Carter
3) Fillmore
4) Grant
5) Davis
6) Harding

That's my dream team.

Oh, sorry - that was a reverse sort. Anyway, you get the picture.

[perspective]

When I speak I speak the truth. I see from the writers you list below that THE TRUTH is not exactly solid ground for you but that's your cross to bear if you go in for that kind of sophistry (i.e. post-modern gobbeldygook). If the convoluted point here is that, historically, liberals have played important roles in our progress I won't argue the point. That doesn't mean that any particular liberal "principle" today is valid. I use quotation marks because the problem with modern liberals is that they have lost connection with principles except as they may be marshaled for stump speech. That's the problem with cobbling a coalition of identity interest groups and no firm philosophical underpinning. The only principle is to keep power. Its tactical - not intellectual. Foucault won't help you out of that ditch LOL!

I forgot this part.

You don't speak the truth. I'll presume that you do speak what you believe. Conservatives have a hard time seeing the difference between those two things.

The only principle guiding liberals is how to keep power? Did you really write that with a straight face? And the conservatives? These last 6 years haven't been about the conservatives being unwilling to acknowledge any presidential powers and make up stuff to disagree with even when they don't disagree simply because of their own singular interest in power?

You praised yourself for not commenting on what you say you don't know. At least spare us gratuitous swipes at authors you haven't read and couldn't possibly understand. Do you reject all of Western thought, or just what strikes you as foreign because you know nothing about it? Let's leave at this....you aren't the only person on earth who has read a book.

[perspective]

Right on the money!

1) Obama
2) Carter
3) Fillmore
4) Grant
5) Davis
6) Harding

That's my dream team.

Oh, sorry - that was a reverse sort. Anyway, you get the picture.

Carter actually was a very good president. Unlucky in some ways and not well understood, and in his post-presidential life has been a man of tremendous character and statesmanship. Tremendous integrity and honesty. A great American who cares about the country as much as in the leader over the past 50 years.

[Unregistered]

I admit I'm having trouble following some of what you are saying and asking.

LOL. You couldn't even do the last bit, confirming that we're not becoming Nazi Germany, without reaffirming the sentiment that started all of that...and suggesting he would be more dangerous if more competent is to attribute internal qualities and motivations to him that jive with the original and wildly irresponsible suggestion.

Are you saying that I now I have to respond to BOTH sides of every post on this board, regardless of the author, in a way that pleases you? Why don't you just send me the right answers and I'll copy / paste in the box for you!

Obama is the same as any other would-be benevolent dictator. The US has built up more institutional barriers that prevent his reaching full flower (although I'm taken aback by how many of those institutions and traditions have been utterly trampled over with so little disapprobation by his media allies). He is a typical arrogant and entitled juvenile intellect who has risen far above his merit. Its the nature of the beast. Its not like conservatives don't have their vices, its just that the stereotypical modern liberal vice is hubris - to think one is able to plan others' lives better than they can plan them. To think the contrivances of the "expert" or the "scientist" or the great man can substitute for the incomparable power of the price system and the ingenuity and spontaneous order of many individuals concerned with their own betterment. You think Obama is a new phenomenon? Obama exists in just about every precocious adolescent, every feted faculty chair, every officious technocrat and tinhorn dictator. He's dime-a-dozen. If he was more competent at the JOB of president this country could be set on a path from which recovery would be very difficult. But the man has no record of serious adult achievement prior to winning an election at a bizarre time in American history. So why would anyone ever expect him to perform competently in such a demanding role? I honestly can't think of a reason other than pure faith or rabid partisanship (or both).

Where you lost me? Simple. Are there no conservative scientists arguing your side of the global warming issue? ALL academics are now liberals?

There are plenty of scientists arguing the other side. More than plenty when you consider that all you need is one with the right answer. By the way, those people are not called "conservative scientists" they are called "scientists". Most of them wouldn't know what "conservative" means with regard to analyzing climate data or designing models. And as far as being on "the other side," that's not how science is done. That's how politics is done. There are many "other sides" to climate science and the economics that orbits climate science. The scientist who put a hole in the famous "hockey stick" data wasn't a senator from Texas or an oil executive - he was a retired Canadian minerologist who was interested in the data being used to create the great scientific consensus on global warming. You see, he wasn't seeking tenure or an invite to the NAS. He was just curious and honest. Oh, and it also turned out that he was a bit more able of a statistician than the rock stars of the global warming cult.

How about The Skeptical Environmentalist from Denmark? There's a chilling story. Not many people would be willing to go through what Lomborg did just to prove he was right. And that's a guy who BELIEVES that global warming exists! You see "skeptical" is no longer a complimentary term in this particular area of science. You have to swallow everything in the warming catechism. Before him, it wasn't even considered appropriate to apply cost-benefit to the warming question. It had become, quite literally, a religion - and one with a jealous god.

You weren't interested in the physician and healthcare issues, but then you spout on with your party line. Talk about dangerous and misinformed. There is more research going on, more biotech companies, and more drugs under development and coming to market than ever before. To paint Obama as wanting anything but the highest levels of excellence and the best and brightest tackling the biggest medical and world issues is just lying through your prejudicial teeth.

I'm not sure what "party" subscribes to my view on the evolution of healthcare in the US. My opinion is formed by numerous conversations with several medical doctors among my friends and acquaintances (as well as my own doctor). I didn't know what they were going to say in advance but its a little hard to ignore the uniformity in their views. My own doctor, like most in private practice, had her healthcare canceled and replaced with VASTLY inferior coverage at higher cost. i do not know a doctor who would counsel their kids to pursue a medical degree.

Do you also maintain that he didn't excel at Harvard and that Harvard knew he would be President 25 years later and so go ahead of the curve by making a C student the head of the law review?

Like you, I am completely ignorant of how Obama performed at Harvard or anywhere else. The prediction that he would be president sounds a little silly but I'm having trouble distinguishing the serious from the silly on this thread. There is some reason to think that he did not make Law Review by academic merit because Harvard used affirmative action to ensure the inclusion of minorities on the Review. Obama later defended that policy. He would certainly be at liberty to dispel the libel that affirmative action unfairly directs at the meritorious by releasing his academic record but he hasn't done so. You could make an implication from that or ignore it. I can't help but wonder why a person would NOT get themselves out from under suspicion if they could. My gut tells me that transcripts from prior schools, the test scores, the courses selected, the theses written and the grades received would NOT be flattering for Obama. i suspect he's a dilettante and not extremely substantial. I don't think he'd survive a dinner party at my house with his ego fully intact. The night Romney eviscerated him I was completely unsurprised. Obviously, in retrospect, he should have ignored the pollsters' advice and finished Obama off in the next meeting.

And since you are really on to global warming, what's the big problem if it's not true. Someone, maybe you, suggested that all of the suggested interventions coming out of the global warming findings are things we ought to be doing anyway. So what's your investment exactly? Shouldn't we be taking care of our home just because...???

By chance, are you the "Amherst is a cesspool guy"? That would explain a lot.

I don't understand this question.

I think it may pertain to a very wise thing Dick Cheney once said: Conservation is a conservative value. Its a personal virtue - not a public policy. We should *NOT* be implementing most of the interventions suggested by warming advocates. We should not be substantially inhibiting growth or abiding any additional expansion of government. Internalization of externalities is very commonly accepted among economists and conservatives / libertarians. Pollution is an externality. If it can be quantified and reliably internalized across the relevant precincts then there is nothing wrong with doing so. But the models used to create climate projections are so untrustworthy and the economic implications of any warming or cooling are so difficult to gauge that its an act of outrageous arrogance to interrupt people's lives with it. They shouldn't even really have to see it on the news at night its so speculative and irrelevant. Do you know there is a model out there that estimates the cost of global warming to be $60 trillion dollars just for the methane that will be released in the Siberian Sea over the next 50 or 60 years? That's just the MARGINAL cost that we're adding to the main tab. That's $1 million per minute for something like 110 years being added to the grand total.

The big banks had really nifty models too. According to those models, Bear Stearns should be coming out with a nice dividend this quarter. Those pesky black swans! Maybe the climate gang could get their hands on the AIG model.

And finally, as I really am curious, what advancements in human rights as far as race, gender, sexual orientation, and religion have resulted from efforts from the conservatives?

You are getting tripped up on the terminology. Classical liberals are today's libertarians and (to some extent0 conservatives (depending on the stripe). What advancements in human rights are the classical liberals responsible for? Come now, Perspective. Wouldn't it save more time to list the ones that they are NOT responsible for?

[Unregistered]

Carter actually was a very good president. Unlucky in some ways and not well understood, and in his post-presidential life has been a man of tremendous character and statesmanship. Tremendous integrity and honesty. A great American who cares about the country as much as in the leader over the past 50 years.

Morally vain. Inept leader. Unrespected by friends and allies alike. Like Obama, unprepared for a big job. Won due to historical anomaly. No anomaly could give him a second term.

Perspective, is there any losing argument you WON'T get behind? Carter? Seriously? Are you the guy who buys the sad Charlie Brown Christmas tree because no one else will take it home? I'm guessing you own more than your share of stray cats...