The problem with oratory skills

Noam Chomsky doesn't put any value in polished oratory skills, a point he made clear in an interview he gave Nigel Farndale at Telegraph.co.uk:

I am no Barack Obama,’ he says to me now. ‘I don’t have any oratory skills. But I would not use them if I had. I don’t like to listen to it. Even people I admire, like Martin Luther King, just turn me off. I don’t think it is the way to reach people. If you are giving a graduate course you don’t try to impress the students with oratory, you try to challenge them, get them to question you.’
What does Chomsky think of Obama?
I take it he didn’t buy into Obama’s message of hope and change. ‘Elections in the United States are expensive extravaganzas run by the public relations industry. The PR people looked at the polls and picked slogans accordingly. ‘Did you know Obama won the best campaign of the advertising industry in 2008? It was politicians being marketed as a product, like toothpaste. What does that have to do with democracy? If you read his statement you find yourself asking what was the hope? What was the change? These were empty words.’

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Climategate scientists vindicated

Another inquiry has determined that the "Climategate" scientists' "rigor and honesty as scientists are not in doubt." Not that this will slow down attacks on inconvenient science. Perhaps the biggest lesson illustrated is that when you show know-nothings that they are wrong, it has no effect on their opinions. For an equally good example, read about the "Lenski Affair," where the scientists had conducted 20 years of rigorous experiments that clearly demonstrated evolution of E. coli in the lab. Evidence just isn't good enough for zealots.

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When does Afghanistan officially qualify as a “quagmire”?

We've now been in Afghanistan longer than we were in Vietnam, with a similar amount of progress. American casualties are again on the rise, along with the power of the Taliban. The new general in charge, General Petraeus, assures us that he will continue to try to minimize civilian casualties, so long as that doesn't interfere too much with his plans to bomb the hell out of the country. Our rules to protect civilians were a bit too "bureaucratic" for his liking--not that they actually worked, in any case. The now-infamous Rolling Stone profile of General McChrystal has this to say:

In the first four months of this year, NATO forces killed some 90 civilians, up 76 percent[!] from the same period in 2009 – a record that has created tremendous resentment among the very population that COIN theory is intent on winning over. In February, a Special Forces night raid ended in the deaths of two pregnant Afghan women and allegations of a cover-up, and in April, protests erupted in Kandahar after U.S. forces accidentally shot up a bus, killing five Afghans. "We've shot an amazing number of people," McChrystal recently conceded.
The Rolling Stone piece mysteriously left out the next part of McChrystal's statement. Here's the full quotation (emphasis mine):
“We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat.”

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Another neologism needed

I'm looking for a single word to capture this attitude, perhaps an entirely new word:

I really appreciate that you’re doing important task for me without any compensation. I don’t know anyone else capable of doing it at all, and it’s miraculous that you are doing it at all, and doing it this quickly, but could you please do even faster? And could you do it more often? But thank you so very much!
Bald Machiavellian compliments, just enough compliments and pleasantries to keep the volunteer going . . .

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