Bernie emails:

Jeff,

Election days come and go, but the struggle for economic, social, racial and environmental justice continues. Together, we built something special and unprecedented through our presidential campaign. Now, we are going to take the next steps for our political revolution.

We are building a new organization called Our Revolution. Our goal will be the same as in our campaign: we must work to transform American society by making our political and economic systems work for all of us, not just the 1 percent.

Can you make a contribution to Our Revolution so that we can continue our critical work to take back our country from the billionaire class?

If you’ve saved payment info with ActBlue Express, your donation will go through immediately:

EXPRESS DONATE: $100
EXPRESS DONATE: $200
EXPRESS DONATE: $350
EXPRESS DONATE: $500
EXPRESS DONATE: $1000
OR, DONATE ANOTHER AMOUNT

What the fuck happened to $27?

On the very first day of our campaign, I wrote to my supporters and said,

This campaign is not about Bernie Sanders. It’s about a grassroots movement of Americans standing up and saying: Enough is enough. This country and our government belong to all of us, not just a handful of billionaires.

That is as true today as it was then. That is why Our Revolution will focus on three distinct areas of work:

1. Revitalizing American democracy by bringing millions of working people and young people into the political system.

2. Empowering the next generation of progressive leaders by inspiring, recruiting and supporting progressive candidates across the entire spectrum of government – from school board to the U.S. Senate.

3. Doing what the corporate media does not do: elevating political consciousness by educating the public about the most pressing issues confronting our nation and the bold solutions needed to address them.

Together we can revitalize our democracy, empower new progressive leaders, and educate the public about the critical issues facing our country. To get started, I need your help, Jeff. Will you join me?

Add a contribution to Our Revolution and be one of the first to join this next phase of our movement.

We have a lot to do together, Jeff, and I’m glad you’re with me.

In solidarity,
Bernie Sanders

Sorry, Bernie, the affair is over. The quicker you realize that, the better life will be for all involved. I believed in you, but when push came to shove, you were pragmatic. That’s not bad, just not acceptable for me. Jill Stein is getting my money in the future.

(As a side note, I deleted/changed as much of my information as I could on ActBlue since I won’t have a need to contribute to other than people running at local levels that I know and trust.)

Derf writes:

I have to say, walking sauntering up on that stage to finally have one of those little statues handed to me, after 35 years as a comics pro, a grizzled warhorse of 56 years, is on my short list of career highlights. My acceptance speech, told with hand-lettered cue cards, frankly, brought the house down. I prepared this a couple weeks ago after a flash of inspiration. The ceremony is a long and tedious affair and there’s lots of butthurt and grumbling. I decided to embrace the love of comics—which is what it’s all about, right?—to counter all that. It was the correct move, judging from the reaction. The rest of the evening, both colleagues and fans alike were congratulating me more for that speech than for the Eisner! “Dude, you set the bar for all future “Best Lettering” acceptance speeches!” Matt Groening told me.

[Updated @ 1600, see below…]

[Update @ 1600: Scott Adams writes:

Clinton’s side (which is my side too, for my personal safety) has made you fear the imaginary monster under the bed so you’ll ignore the thief going through your drawers. That’s weapons-grade persuasion.

Of course, Wiley understands that monsters under the bed are non-partisan employees.

To hell with the lesser of two evils and casting votes based on fear, how about voting for the greater good?

There is a 90 percent chance that I will vote for Jill Stein in November. As for the other 10 percent, I may still choose to write in Bernie, but that looks less likely every day.

I did vote for Jill Stein in 2012 (just like I voted for Ralph Nader in 1996) so I know more than a little about her and what she stands for. Last week I posted the video of Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party candidate for president, on Larry Wilmore’s show and I first learned on The Nightly Show of Bernie’s serious consideration of running for President on 8 April 2015. (Bernie officially declared a few weeks later.) Wilmore is off this week, but I’m really hoping that when he comes back on 8 August that Jill Stein is on the lineup for the week.

Meanwhile, Alice Speri, reporting in “The Two-Party System Is the Worst Case Scenario”—An Interview With the Green Party’s Jill Stein for The Intercept, writes:

As the Democratic convention in Philadelphia progressed, and hopes of a revolution on the floor quickly faded for the thousands of Bernie Sanders supporters, support for another figure began to emerge on the streets: Green Party candidate Jill Stein. By the end of the week, “Vote Jill” signs were everywhere in the city, her name often scribbled directly over old Sanders posters and T-shirts. Bernie’s revolution had taken an unexpected turn, and as more protesters and delegates called for a “Demexit,” talk of a third-party option suddenly gained ground at a major party convention. On Thursday, as Clinton prepared to accept her party’s nomination, The Intercept spoke with Stein at an improvised South Philly campaign headquarters.

Every question and response is well worth the time to read, but here are A FEW to consider.

SPERI: I have heard from you and from many of your supporters that we shouldn’t vote for the lesser evil, that we should vote for the greater good. Is the prospect of a Trump presidency equal in your view to that of a Clinton one?

STEIN: I think they both lead to the same place. The lesser evil, the Democrats, certainly have a better public relations campaign, they have better spin. The dangers are less evident, but they’re catastrophic as well. Just look at the policies under Obama on climate change.

SPERI: Come November, is there a worst-case scenario?

STEIN: No, the two-party system is the worst-case scenario. In my view, the worst horror of all is a political system that tells us we have to choose between two lethal options, and that’s what we have to fight and we shouldn’t be manipulated into thinking it’s one or the other of these villains out there, one or the other evil.

There’s a readily available solution right now: ranked-choice voting, which would take the fear out of voting and would ensure that people can vote for their values as their first choice, and their pragmatic choice, whatever that is, as their number two. That would actually enable us to move forward in a good way and bring our values back to democracy.

You cannot have a democracy in a moral vacuum. When there’s a moral vacuum, it allows the predatory political actors to swoop in and take control.

The choice must be between what is right and what is wrong. Voting out of fear is not a choice I care to make.

SPERI: One of the main criticisms of your campaign is that the “moral choice” is a privilege that those who have the most to lose out of a Trump presidency can’t afford. Poor people, people of color, immigrants, people who need a higher minimum wage, health care access, immigration reform.

STEIN: I think that’s really subject to debate. Because who is it that ushered in the agenda of globalization, of rigged trade agreements, of Wall Street deregulation? This was the Clintons. This is the core of Clintonism. That’s what’s creating the right-wing extremism.

In fact, the lesser evil inevitably leads to the greater evil in the same way that Barack Obama lost both houses of Congress. He had two years with two Democratic houses of Congress — they could have passed any law that they wanted. They could have provided health care as a human right, they could have pulled back on these wars for oil and the war against terror, and the assault on immigrants, and assault on the press and our freedom of speech and privacy. They could have done any of that. And what did they do? They bailed out Wall Street and installed Larry Summers, the architect of Wall Street deregulation. They’re not on our side.

All of that is why I didn’t vote a second time for Barack Obama. I said publicly in 2008 that unless he proved to be true to his words from the campaign I would never vote for another Democratic Party nominee. I came close this year to breaking that vow. I gave more money to Bernie’s campaign than I have given to all the candidates I have supported since George McGovern in 1972 when I was still too young to actually vote for him.

I wish I had that money today to give to Jill Stein. I will do what I can, but I won’t be able to match my previous contributions to Bernie.

That’s a pity.

The copy of the United States Constitution that Khizr Khan used to give Donald Trump a metaphorical middle finger to during what I think was the most important speech and moment at the Democratic National Convention lat week is the copy I received from former West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd and that I always carry with me.

Others choose to carry a different copy.

Naomi LaChance, reporting in Ultra-Right Annotated Edition of Pocket Constitution Tops Amazon Charts After Khizr Khan’s DNC Speech for The Intercept writes:

Following Gold Star father Khizr Khan’s powerful speech at the Democratic convention last week, sales of pocket Constitutions have skyrocketed. But the edition topping Amazon’s charts – right up there with the new Harry Potter book — comes with annotations and right-wing commentary from Glenn Beck’s favorite conspiracy theorist.

“Let me ask you: have you even read the United States Constitution? I will gladly lend you my copy,” Khan said last week in Philadelphia, pulling his edition out of his pocket. “In this document, look for the words ‘liberty’ and ‘equal protection of law’.”

But the version that Amazon is touting as a best-seller is not the one Khan held up. And readers looking for those words in the edition there will be misled. It’s published by the National Center for Constitutional Studies, a fringe Mormon group focused on teaching a fundamentalist interpretation of the founding documents.

The Washington Post, Forbes, the Associated Press, the Wall Street Journal, and PBS NewsHour have all noted the extraordinary popularity the NCCS version is enjoying on Amazon—but all failed to note the edition’s unusual features.

Unusual features? Like what?

The book’s notes and annotations are by W. Cleon Skousen, a rabidly anti-Communist ideologue who took to rewriting history to support his ultra-right, Bible-based theories.

Skousen’s edition interprets the Constitution as evidence that the United States is subject to a Christian God’s ruling. It emphasizes that the federal government should not interfere in people’s lives.

The book was lauded by Ammon Bundy, who led the armed occupation of an Oregon wildlife refuge this winter: “That’s where I get most of my information from. What we’re trying to do is teach the true principles of the proper form of government,” he told The Los Angeles Times.

Skousen was a former FBI agent and briefly the police chief of Salt Lake City — until the mayor fired him, saying he was “a master of half truths” and ran the police department “like a gestapo.” Following his death in 2006, he became a darling of the Tea Party.

Florida state officials distributed as many as 80,000 copies of the NCCS pocket Constitution in 2013 until the Tampa Bay Times noted its religious messages.

“There’s conservative, there’s right-wing and there’s off the charts,” Sean Wilentz, a Princeton University history professor, told the newspaper. “Cleon Skousen was off the charts.” Wilentz described Skousen and his allies as “paranoid theocrats.”

If you’re going to read a copy of our Constitution, and everyone should, then this is the free—use coupon code POCKETRIGHTS—copy to get.

Tristan Rader at the Cuyahoga County Progressive Caucus emails:

Great news! The Cuyahoga County Progressive Caucus will be partnering with Senator Nina Truner to continue to build the movement here in Northeast, Ohio! Also, Senator Turner will be following Bernie Sanders’ lead and sticking with the Democratic party to begin to change the party from within.

First and foremost, we would love to invite you to a special event with Senator Nina Truner on September 7th, at the Highland Park Golf Course. Space is limited so please RSVP soon!

[I RSVP’d this morning, JH]

More Events:

On Tuesday, August 16th at the Southeast Branch of the Cuyahoga County Library we will be meeting to have a discussion about what movement looks like at your community level. More info and RSVP HERE!

On Tuesday, August 23rd at a location on the southwest of Cuyahoga (location TBA) we will be doing the same thing… having a discussion about what movement looks like at your community level. More info and RSVP HERE!

[I RSVP’d this morning, JH]

Tristan Rader
Cuyahoga County Progressive Caucus

CCPC on Twitter and Facebook

This Dad…

(Oh, and the dog? Perfection.)

Well, maybe.

Brendon Marotta, drilling down in Can Movies Change Your Testosterone Level? writes:

One of the most established aspects of testosterone is that winning raises your testosterone and losing lowers it.

The interesting thing is that it doesn’t even have to be you that loses. Testosterone changes during vicarious experiences of winning and losing. So if your “team” loses, you may experience that loss as if it was your own. Observe the language of most sports fans: “we lost that game.” This vicarious experience also extends to characters you identify with—including those in movies and media.

So, since I couldn’t care less about professional sports in general and professional sports in Cleveland in particular, does that mean I’m immune?

The Paris Review: “The Art Of Fiction No. 7” with Joyce Cary:

INTERVIEWER: Could you tell us something about your working methods?

CARY: Well—I write the big scenes first, that is, the scenes that carry the meaning of the book, the emotional experience. The first scene in Prisoner of Grace was that one at the railway station, when Nimmo stops his wife from running away by purely moral pressure. That is, she became the prisoner of grace. When I have the big scenes sketched I have to devise a plot into which they’ll fit. Of course often they don’t quite fit. Sometimes I have to throw them out. But they have defined my meaning, given form to the book. Lastly I work over the whole surface.

INTERVIEWER: When does the process, the book, start?

CARY: Possibly years ago—in a note, a piece of dialogue. Often I don’t know the real origin. I had an odd experience lately, which gave me a glimpse of the process, something I hadn’t suspected. I was going round Manhattan—do you know it?

INTERVIEWER: Not yet.

CARY: It’s an island and I went round on a steamer with an American friend, Elizabeth Lawrence, of Harper and Brothers. And I noticed a girl sitting all by herself on the other side of the deck—a girl of about thirty, wearing a shabby skirt. She was enjoying herself. A nice expression, with a wrinkled forehead, a good many wrinkles. I said to my friend, “I could write about that girl—what do you think she is?” Elizabeth said that she might be a schoolteacher taking a holiday, and asked me why I wanted to write about her. I said I didn’t really know—I imagined her as sensitive and intelligent, and up against it. Having a hard life but making something of it, too. In such a case I often make a note. But I didn’t—and I forgot the whole episode. Then, about three weeks later, in San Francisco, I woke up one night at four—I am not so much a bad sleeper as a short sleeper—I woke up, I say, with a story in my head. I sketched the story at once—it was about an English girl in England, a purely English tale. Next day an appointment fell through and I had a whole day on my hands. I found my notes and wrote the story—that is, the chief scenes and some connecting tissue. Some days later, in a plane—ideal for writing—I began to work it over, clean it up, and I thought, Why all these wrinkles? That’s the third time they come in. And I suddenly realized that my English heroine was the girl on the Manhattan boat. Somehow she had gone down into my subconscious, and came up again with a full-sized story. And I imagine that has happened before. I notice some person because he or she exemplifies some part of my feeling about things. The Manhattan girl was a motive. And she brought up a little piece of counterpoint. But the wrinkles were the first crude impression—a note, but one that counted too much in the final writing.

INTERVIEWER: A note—

CARY: I was thinking in terms of music. My short stories are written with the same kind of economy—and no one would publish them. Some of them, now being published, are twenty years old. Because each note has to count and it must not be superfluous. A son of mine, a composer, wrote some music for the BBC lately. The orchestra was small, and the musicians’ union wouldn’t let him conduct. He heard one of the players ask the conductor what the stuff was like. The conductor, no doubt intending to warn the player, answered, “It’s good, but the trouble is that every note counts.” I suppose the editors who rejected me felt like that. They wanted a little more fluff.

My own first, unpublished, novel, Cold Silence, began to take shape with a particular scene. That scene, a gruesome murder, came to me more than a decade before I wrote the book and still today, decades later, when I think of the book, that is the scene, the note, that is burned into my mind.

Found in my electronic chapbook…

Previously…

We’re not watching the main event because we think the outcome is historic, we watched both political conventions, and we’ll keep watching the campaigns until November because we expected to see shit get blown up.

Matt Taibbi, reporting in How Trump’s Disastrous RNC Doomed the GOP for Rolling Stone, writes:

whatever their personal leanings, influential reporters mostly work in nihilistic corporations, to whom the news is a non-ideological commodity, to be sold the same way we hawk cheeseburgers or Marlboro Lights. Wars, scandals and racial conflicts sell, while poverty and inequality do not. So reporters chase one and not the other. It’s just business.

Previously, at conventions like this, pundits always played up the differences between Republicans and Democrats (abortion, religion, immigration), while ignoring the many areas of consensus (trade, military spending, surveillance, the Drug War, non-enforcement of financial crime, corporate tax holidays, etc.).

Any halfway decent boxing promoter will tell you the public must be made to believe the fighters hate each other in order to sell the fight. The fighters also must be hyped as both having a good shot to win. Otherwise, why watch?

I think I’ve made this argument with dozens of my right-leaning friends when they raise the specter of The Liberal Media. Sure, there are journalists out there who are liberals/progressives, but you’ve probably never read any of their work because they tend to labor in obscurity for little or no pay. Why is Taibbi able to do what he does and get (I assume) paid well for his efforts? Because what he writes doesn’t affect the sources of Rolling Stone’s money. The same can be said for billionaire-funded The Intercept.

Elections are to Americans what Gladiatorial battles were to Rome.

I’m not JD impaired, but I think there is a case to be made for We The People v. Clinton-Trump. Clinton for violation of campaign finance laws (Victory Fund) and Trump for violation of cyber security laws (encouraging Russian hacking). There’s probably a lot more there, but I’d start with those two and charge, arrest, try, convict and lock up both of them and then allow the Democratic and Republican parties to nominate new candidates for the November election.

We can fast track this—in fact both candidates would demand speedy trials because the indictments would be fatal—the model is the 2000 election where the Supreme Court of the United States declared George W. Bush the winner in a deeply flawed election in less than a month.

Now, I recognize that this would never come to trail and that the very best outcome (and one I would be perfectly fine with) would be a plea bargain where both candidates do a Michael White and retire from politics to raise alpacas.

The clock that is ticking in America is louder than any Jack Bauer ever heard.

The Paris Review: “The Art Of Fiction No. 7” with Joyce Cary:

INTERVIEWER: Aissa Saved was the first one you published?

CARY: Yes, and that was not until I was over forty. I’d written many before, but I was never satisfied with them. They raised political and religious questions I found I could not answer. I have three or four of them up there in the attic, still in manuscript.

INTERVIEWER: Was this what made you feel that you needed a “new education”?

CARY: At twenty-six I’d knocked about the world a good bit and I thought I knew the answers, but I didn’t know. I couldn’t finish the novels. The best novel I ever wrote—at least it contained some of my best stuff—there’s about a million words of it upstairs, I couldn’t finish it. I found that I was faking things all the time, dodging issues and letting my characters dodge them.

This is a problem I have found myself wrestling with, particularly in my present work which deals with The early years of Reconstruction in the United States. I know I must deal with slavery and African Americans and I feel inadequate to that task.

Writing the characters honestly and addressing the issues head on is tough and I know that if I try to fake this my novel will fail.

Found in my electronic chapbook…

Who's paying at the DNC? from The Intercept on Vimeo.

So, Bernie ran his campaign on an average of $27 and turned his back on gray/dark money and the contributions of lobbyists. In 2008, President Barack Hussein Obama banned lobbyists from funding the Democratic National Convention. Presidential wanna-be Hillary Clinton flipped that decision.

If this is what experience and ready to be president looks like, we’re fucked.

Alex Emmons, writing in In the Hillary Clinton Era, Democrats Welcome Lobbying Money Back Into the Convention for The Intercept, explains:

By quietly dropping a ban on direct donations from registered federal lobbyists and political action committees, the Democratic National Committee in February reopened the floodgates for corruption that Barack Obama had put in place in 2008.

Secret donors with major public-policy agendas were welcomed back in from the cold and showered with access and appreciation at the Democratic convention in Philadelphia.

Major donors were offered “Family and Friends” packages, including suites at the Ritz-Carlton, backstage passes, and even seats in the Clinton family box. Corporate lobbyists like Heather Podesta celebrated the change, telling Time: “My money is now good.”

What was going on inside the convention hall was also reflected outside, at costly events sponsored by the fossil fuel industry, technology companies, for-profit colleges, pharmaceutical companies, and railway companies, to name a few.

Craig Holman, an elections financing expert at Public Citizen, said that the end of the lobbyist contribution ban as well as Congress’s 2014 termination of all remaining public financing of the party conventions has served to undermine democracy. “The implications of these changes are that we have opened up access to the parties and the conventions to just the very, very wealthy,” he said.

Did you get your kiss from the DNC?

Me neither.

Ralph Nader writes:

The 2016 Democratic Convention in Philadelphia was a multi-layered, raucous display of political theater. A host of delegates loyal to Senator Bernie Sanders were inside in large numbers exclaiming “No more war” during former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta’s speech and raising all kinds of progressive, rebellious signs and banners against the Hillary crowd. Although Hillary addressed them directly in her acceptance speech, “Your cause is my cause,” those dissatisfied delegates in the hall saw her rhetoric for what it was: insincere and opportunistic.

She said she’d tax the wealthy for public necessities, but declined to mention a sales tax on Wall Street speculation that could bring in as much as $300 billion a year to support such initiatives. She opposed “unfair trade agreements,” but remarkably omitted saying she was against the TPP (the notorious pending Trans Pacific Trade Agreement backed by Obama that is receiving wide left/right opposition).

She paid lip service to a “living wage” but avoided endorsing a $15 an hour minimum wage, which would help single moms and their children—people she wants us to believe have been her enduring cause. Few people know that it took until the spring of 2014 before candidate Clinton would come out for even a $10.10 minimum wage. News reports noted that Clinton, a former member of Walmart’s board of directors and Arkansas corporate lawyer, was wrestling with how to support $10.10 per hour without alienating her Wall Street friends.

“Caring for kids” doesn’t extend to encircled Gaza’s defenseless children, hundreds of whom were killed by American-made weapons wielded by the all powerful Israeli military. Gaza is the the world’s largest open air prison and under illegal blockade. Remember, as Secretary of State, Hillary fully backed war crimes, condemned by almost all countries Continue Reading »

Why does Cleveland need a hike in its local income tax?

Answer: Decades of rare generosity to wealth. Call it Give Aways. All ways.

Cleveland has mortgaged its future.

Now it wants workers to pay the bills again.

Back in the 1950s downtown property owners, among others, got a big tax break when state law was changed to make the taxing rate on property—commercial, industrial or home—the same. Previously, homes were tax on values lower than commercial. Commercial properties—places of profit—went from being valued for tax purposes at 49 percent to 35 percent, same as one’s home. So commercial property got a never-ending 14 percent break.

I wrote about this a while back:

In that historic Ohio Supreme Court case—known as the Park Investment case—in the late 1950s, the whole system of taxing property was changed significantly. Homeowners pay the price. The change helped commercial and industrial properties to shift more of the burden of taxation from business to homeowners.

The Ohio Supreme Court ruled for (David) Swetland that property should not be taxed at different rates. Commercial and industrial properties—because they involved profit—had been paying taxes at a higher level than property used to house people. Taxes now are paid on 35 percent of the market value as set by Cuyahoga County.

The Park Investment case tipped taxes from real estate interests to the owners of homes.

The 1919 building had been an office building but converted to condos in 2009. I’m sure it is home now to some wealthy tenants since the rate advertised at that Continue Reading »

The United States Navy is poised to honor gay rights activist and the first openly gay person to be elected to public office in California, San Francisco City Supervisor Harvey Milk by naming the second ship in the John Lewis class, T-AO 206, the USNS Harvey Milk.

According to Sam LaGrone, writing for the U.S. Naval Institute:

[Secretary of the Navy Ray] Mabus has said the John Lewis-class—named after civil rights activist and congressman Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.)—would be named after civil rights leaders.

Other names in the class include former Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren [T-AO 207] whose court ruled to desegregate U.S. schools, former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy [T-AO 208], women’s right activist Lucy Stone [T-AO 209] and abolitionist and women’s rights activist Sojourner Truth [T-AO 210].

Mabus has also named ships in the past for other civil rights icons, including the Lewis and Clark-class dry cargo ships USNS Medgar Evers (T-AKE-13) and USNS Cesar Chavez (T-AKE-14).

Milk came from a Navy family and commissioned in the service in 1951. He served as a diving officer in San Diego during the Korean War on the submarine rescue ship Kittiwake until 1955. Milk was honorably discharged from the service as a lieutenant junior grade.

Some people aren’t crazy about the idea of naming Navy ships after civil rights icons, and I get that, but this is a genuine sea change and sailors know about the history of the ships they serve on and where the names come from (my own ship was the fourth to be named after Commodore William Bainbridge) and help to give honor to those names.

Every ship has a nickname as well. Mine was the Billy B. I wonder what the crew of the Harvey Milk will select?

So, this morning I finally made time to reply to an opinion piece published last week in my local weekly—The North Royalton Post—by John Grom of Wadsworth. Grom repeated a flawed analysis, without proper attribution, of John Lovejoy’s attempt to discredit the well founded statistics that 97 percent of scientists who have expressed an opinion on the subject, find a human component in our current Global Warming/Climate Change crisis.

A previous commenter, Alex Fisher correctly discredited Lovejoy’s figures and I left this comment in Alex’s support (formatting is a bit wonky at The Post so I repeat my comment here with the proper formatting).

Thank you for saving me the trouble of outing the fallacy in Mr. Grom’s Steve Lovejoy’s numbers.

Plagiarism amongst conservatives seems to be fad in Northeast Ohio this month.

If Grom were one of my students I would have given his essay an F because he failed to properly attribute the source of his numbers, thus creating the impression that those numbers were, in fact, his.

Lovejoy, to your point, at least demonstrates how he cooks the numbers:

Of the 11,944 abstracts he examined, 2/3 (66.4 percent) expressed no opinion on human induced climate change, while 32.6 percent endorsed the idea that climate change was being induced by mankind. The other 1 percent either rejected the idea of human induced climate change or were uncertain about the role of mankind in climate change.

So, only 4013 abstracts expressed an opinion on the role of humans in climate change and 3,894 of the abstracts indicated that humans were responsible, thus the 97 percent support. However, if the number of abstracts supporting the idea were divided by the total number of abstracts examined, the percent of scientific papers supporting the claim of AGW falls to 33 percent. (emphasis mine, JH) This is further complicated by the fact that some of those 11,944 abstracts were by authors who published multiple abstracts on the subject. Therefore, only 33 percent of the abstracts support the theory that climate change is primarily the result of humans and whether that figure represents the percent of scientists is unknown.

John Cook clearly states that he only examined those papers which expressed an opinion. I could just as disingenuously count the “no opinion” pieces on the support side boosting the 97 percent to get, as you note in your second comment, a 99 percent-plus result.

To readers facing the flim flam of con artists attempting to cook the numbers to their benefit I commend Our nine-point guide to spotting a dodgy statistic by David Spiegelhalter, the Winton Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk at the University of Cambridge and president elect of the Royal Statistical Society.

Again, good catch, Alex.

Jeff Hess
Have Coffee Will Write

I next submitted a copy of the comment, slightly reformatted, to The Post as a letter-to-the-editor:

Good Morning

Plagiarism amongst conservatives seems to be a fad in Northeast Ohio this month.

If Mr. Grom were one of my students I would have given his essay an F because he failed to properly attribute the source of his numbers, thus creating the impression that those numbers were, in fact, his.

Those numbers came from Steve Lovejoy, published on 5 May of this year in: Scientific agreement on human induced climate change: truth, myth or still open?

Lovejoy was at least honest enough to demonstrate how he cooks John Cook’s numbers:

Of the 11,944 abstracts [John Cook] examined, 2/3 (66.4 percent) expressed no opinion on human induced climate change, while 32.6 percent endorsed the idea that climate change was being induced by mankind. The other 1 percent either rejected the idea of human induced climate change or were uncertain about the role of mankind in climate change.

So, only 4013 abstracts expressed an opinion on the role of humans in climate change and 3,894 of the abstracts indicated that humans were responsible, thus the 97 percent support. However, if the number of abstracts supporting the idea were divided by the total number of abstracts examined, the percent of scientific papers supporting the claim of AGW falls to 33 percent. (emphasis mine, JH)

Cook clearly states that he only examined those papers which expressed an opinion. I could just as disingenuously count the “no opinion” pieces on the support side boosting the 97 percent to get, as you note in your second comment, a 99 percent-plus result.

To readers facing the flim flam of con artists attempting to cook the numbers to their benefit I commend Our nine-point guide to spotting a dodgy statistic by David Spiegelhalter, the Winton Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk at the University of Cambridge and president elect of the Royal Statistical Society.

Jeff Hess
Have Coffee Will Write