Currently viewing the tag: "Zombies"
Here come the Jihad Watch readers
Greetings, zombies! Terry Glavin writes so elegantly and compellingly, it is seems almost a shame to disagree with him. Unfortunately, expressing something beautifully does not make it so.
“Middle East myths drop like dominos,” by Terry Glavin in the National Post, February 28 (thanks to Gilles):
[...] Along with the now lifeless Edward Said there are also the undead. Consider Robert Spencer, whose biography reads a little like Edward Said’s, in its way. Like Said was, Spencer is a scholar, a widely published author, and an American of Middle Eastern Christian extraction with legions of fans. Like Said, Spencer is widely regarded in his circles, as was Edward Said in his own, as an authority on the imaginary frontiers that cleave the world between “west” and “east.” The Czar Gaddafi insists that the Libyan protests are the result of Al Qaida putting hallucinogens in everybody’s Nescafe. Not to be outdone:
They may be pro-democracy insofar as they want the will of the people to be heard, but given their worldview, their frame of reference, and their core assumptions about the world, if that popular will is heard, it will likely result in huge victories for the Muslim Brotherhood and similar pro-Sharia groups.
- Robert Spencer, on Libya’s revolutionary democrats, 2011.In light of everything we are witnessing from Casablanca to Isfahan, the miserable and allegedly “progressive” viewpoint taken by Edward Said’s followers is matched by and coupled with Spencer’s lurid “conservative” cynicism in a symbiotic death grip, each parasitic upon the other, both offering nothing but the ravings of demented Americans. Everything is being swept away – it is 1989, it is 1917, it is 1848, as you like. As it is with Edward Said’s followers, Spencer’s fan base now betrays itself as an assortment of specimens from the Upper Cretaceous period of the Mesozoic era. They are yesterday’s men. They are zombies.
It is not just to the price of oil that the rebellions are proving so terribly inconvenient. All the evidence, from Tunisia, Libya, Bahrain, Egypt and Iran, shows that democracy, freedom, work, wages and a “normal” life are exactly what the people are demanding. The people are not clamouring for the immolation of the Jews anymore than they are hollering for the appointment of Norman Finkelstein as the defence minister.
They aren’t? Really? Demonstrators interviewed in Egypt during the uprising against Mubarak said that they hated him because “he is supporting Israel. Israel is our enemy…If people are free in Egypt…they gonna destroy Israel.” Video here. Also, attackers in Tahrir Square shouted “Jew! Jew!” during their brutal sexual assault of “60 Minutes” reporter Lara Logan. These open-minded secular democratic protesters also drew Stars of David on photos of Mubarak, thereby demonstrating their considered rejection of Islamic antisemitism.
In Egypt, the April 6 Movement that started it all is root and branch a movement of trade unionists, secularists, and young intellectuals, all committed democrats. The Muslim Brotherhood was completely marginalized by it. The Ikhwan failed utterly in its attempts to hijack the uprising and now the aging Brethren sit in their solitary chairs with the rest of the Egyptian establishment, studying ways to mollify the revolt.
And yet Sheikh Qaradawi, godfather of the “marginalized” Brotherhood, recently made a triumphant appearance in Tahrir Square to a massive crowd, while secular liberal Wael Ghonim was barred from the stage. So which group is really marginalized?
In Libya, the February 17 movement has been consistent in its intentions for a secular democracy. The Libyans who have been pleading for our help have heard only cynical incoherence and self-gratifying expressions of outrage, but even so, even the Libyan imams have pleaded for the February 17 demands and continue to assert their faithfulness to the same secular cause.
Yeah, they “continue to assert their faithfulness to the same secular cause” in between drawing Stars of David on images of Gaddafi, chanting “no god but Allah,” and establishing an Islamic Emirate.
In Tunisia last week, 15,000 demonstrators gathered to condemn the Islamists who mobbed a synagogue and murdered a Polish Catholic priest in an obscene attempt to hijack the Tunisian uprising. The pro-democracy banners in Tunis read: “Nous sommes tous Musalmans, nous sommes tous Chretiens, nous sommes tous Juifs.” On it goes like this, in Morocco, across Iran, and in little Bahrain….
And yet also in Tunisia, demonstrators swarmed outside a synagogue, chanting a genocidal Islamic battle cry, and jihadists recently murdered a Catholic priest. Evidently not quite tous are Chretiens or Juifs.
Look, I would love to be proven wrong here, and Terry Glavin proved correct. I’d love to see genuine secular democracy blossom all over the Middle East. But Glavin cannot, unfortunately, point to any organized secular democratic movements of any significance in any of the countries in question, while in all of them, Islamic supremacist pro-Sharia groups are sizable, organized, and energetic.
I can’t see how this will end well, but maybe I will be pleasantly surprised, and retire back to my undead coffin in peace.
Kaffir Kanuck weighs in on this here.
Of course, the narrative is now that it was Obama giving another speech via TOTUS that caused Mubarak to resign, but, Science Blogs thinks differently
The Egyptian dictator, Hosni Mubarak, has resigned, finally relenting to weeks of massive protests. Is he the latest casualty of climate change?
This is a provacative question, but I believe one worth discussing. Obviously, there are always many factors in a people’s uprising, the precise balance of which will always be subjective and varied from protestor to protestor. But that doesn’t mean said factors can not be isolated and examined each on their own.
Like any extreme hot weather event, it is not possible to attribute this directly to a change in global climate, but like said weather event it is possible to identify contributing global factors, increases in probabilities, consistency with expectations. Political unrest is in fact an expectation of a rapidly changing climate, at least according to the US pentagon, and the chain of circumstances is not implausible or hard to follow. Erratic local climates lead to difficulties in food production, global or otherwise, which drive up the cost of living, which causes unrest in populations. When these populations are already restless due to poor economic conditions and inadequate human rights, this can trigger violent and non-violent popular uprisings.
See? It’s so easy! It was all the fault of globull warming. So much so that the author, coby (is that like Beyonce or Madonna?), actually has to tell us “This is not a laughable notion in the least, it is a very legitimate topic for conversation.” If you have to tell us it’s not a laughing matter, it pretty much is.
And our “rapidly changing climate” has decimated Mexico’s maize crops, and the globull warming induced cold has destroyed approximately 16% of the harvest. Could “climate change” cause a revolution in North Korea next? The globull warming cold has them worried about food security. And on a different note
U.S. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (MO-9) today reintroduced legislation that would save taxpayers millions of dollars by prohibiting the United States from contributing to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an organization fraught with waste and engaged in dubious science.
Furthermore, the GOP spending bill would cut the EPA funding for “climate change” programs, and prohibit spending on the same.
Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.
Our last Republican to hold statewide office was Governor Pete Wilson who left the office in 1999. I’m not counting the last, failed action-star who just left the office and was about as Republican as Nancy Pelosi. Schwarzenegger supported both Cap and Trade, and Obamacare. The Republican brand has died in California. Many folks have been doing the post mortem. In the last election cycle, despite the Republican resurgence throughout the country, not a blip of hope was on the screen here.
How bad was it during the last election cycle? When the electorate chooses Barbara “general, call me senator” Boxer over a former HP chief Carly Fiorina, it’s bad. They chose an anti-death penalty Attorney General, Kamala Harris who even refused to apply a death penalty to cop killers. California chose Ms. Harris over Steve Cooley, a republican who was a successful DA from Los Angeles. Additionally, Ms. Harris had the lowest conviction rate of any big city district attorney.No Republican won any constitutional office in the state in 2010. It was a wipeout.
“There’s been a broad repudiation of traditional conservative Republicans in California,” said Tony Quinn, a former GOP analyst and co-editor of the California Target Book, which tracks state politics. “There are almost no areas in the state that can be considered safely Republican anymore.”
To add insult to injury, since 2004 GOP registration shrank by 317,000 at the same time Democrats picked up 563,000. That’s a whopping democrat advantage of over three quarters of a million voters.
Where’s our leadership? Here’s where -attending mock funerals for the party. There was one recently held for the GOP where Duf Sundheim, a former state GOP chair declared, “Republicans, as a brand, are dead.” Can we please resolve now not to elect GOP chairmen named; Duf, or Biff or Buff or any other caricature names of the idle white and rich?
Ok, we get it. It’s now time for our wake up call. We need to shift gears and get this beat up truck down the track. I haven’t heard much in the way of new or inspiring ideas from any of the state GOP party apparatchik.
Here are some positive ideas:
Focus on economic issues.
Face reality. As much as they’re important to many of us, social issues are a loser in California. Although the GOP won on the defense of marriage initiative; they just barely won. It’s not a winner issue for the GOP particularly if they want to attract new and younger voters going forward. That’s just the facts.
We need to focus in on putting statewide ballot propositions before the voters that are sponsored by Republicans working in coalitions and improve the GOP brand. Ideas that show we are the leaders.
Seven simple propositions the GOP should run with:
1) Reigning in pensions. Pensions are out of control and are killing us. We need to have a state ballot initiative that forces our government pensions to be just like those in private companies. We have to have a way to make sure that the employee contributions are both larger and the state share smaller. Also that the state obligation is funded properly each year so that no public debt is accrued even in an economic downturn.
2) Repeal collective bargaining for public employees. We may not win, but we’ll certainly get big public support. There’s just 12% union membership nationally, but 17.5% in California, thanks to unionized civil servants. Most people struggling today with both unemployment and underemployment and job uncertainty don’t want to pay for golden parachutes to these coddled state workers. You know the wind is at our back when the New York Times agrees with you.
3) Pay go. A constitutional amendment that there will be no new spending bills without a way to pay for them in the bill. That should slow things down, as any new taxes requires a vote of the people in California. The new amendment should also take into consideration bills that have cost of living increases; that too must be calculated into the funding requirement.
4) No increase in debt. Establish a debt ceiling, over which we can not sell more bonds. Our budget is increasing each year, while our income is declining. We then sell more and more bonds to balance the budget. We should not be able to sell more bonds each year, we should be focusing on decreasing the debt and expenses. A constitutional amendment would solve that problem.
5) Protect our voter passed propositions. Give legal standing to proposition proponents. We need to amend our constitution to make clear that ballot sponsors have legal standing to defend the propositions that the voters pass when the Attorney General (AG) won’t (ie. Defense of Marriage prop). Previously, Governor Gray Davis refused to defend another voter passed initiative that said we won’t give benefits to illegal aliens. Yes, that passed in California in 1994. It was Proposition 187, a federal judge struck it down and both our AG and governor would not appeal it. That’s outrageous and should be grounds for contempt or removal from office. They were both sworn to uphold our constitution, but failed to do so.
6) Impeach the AG and Governor. We need a constitutional amendment that removes the AG and governor whenever they fail to vigorously defend a citizen passed proposition! That’s basic.
7) No social benefits for illegal aliens. Unbelievably, an identical measure passed in California in 1994 despite the wailing of the liberal media. A federal judge later struck it down on tenuous grounds, but it was never appealed. Gov Gray Davis prevented its appeal.
A new proposition should be fashioned to pass constitutional muster. Most Californians would again pass limits on social service benefits to illegals. With the state economy in a free fall, most Californians don’t want to pay the billions in social benefits for illegal aliens. Sixty-five percent of all births in L.A. General hospital are already to illegal aliens.
Passionately promoting statewide ballot propositions that have broad public appeal, while simultaneously building coalitions, is the only wave that republicans will ever ride to get back into office. Unfortunately, just having pro-business, intelligent and tele-genetic candidates is apparently not enough. We’ve been there, tried that. We need fresh ideas and the horsepower to follow through with them.
(Eugene Volokh)
Just got a copy of this new book from Prof. Dan Drezner (yes, it’s real). An image, and an excerpt (some paragraph breaks added):
Some realists would go further, arguing that, in the end, human-zombie alliances of convenience would be just as likely to emerge as human-human alliances. As previously noted, many zombies in the canon start out possessing strategic intelligence, making them more than capable of recognizing the virtues of tactical agreements with some humans.
Some zombie studies scholars might object at this point, arguing that flesh-eating ghouls can neither talk nor develop strategic thought. Even if they did not, though, realists would point to Romero’s zombies for empirical support. Even in Night of the Living Dead, Romero’s ghouls demonstrated the capacity for using tools.
† In each of his subsequent films, the undead grew more cognitively complex.The zombie characters of Bub in Day of the Dead and Big Daddy in Land of the Dead were painted with a more sympathetic brush than most of the human characters. Both Bub and Big Daddy learned how to use firearms. Bub was able to speak, perform simple tasks, and engage in impulse control—that is, to refrain from eating a human he liked. Big Daddy and his undead cohort developed a hierarchical authority structure with the ability to engage in tactical and strategic learning. In doing so they overran a well-fortified human redoubt and killed its most powerful leader. It would take only the mildest of cognitive leaps to envision a zombie-articulated defense of these actions at the United Nations.
By the end of Land of the Dead the lead zombie character and the lead human character acknowledge a tacit bargain to leave each other alone. This is perfectly consistent with the realist paradigm. For zombies to survive and thrive, they must avoid losing their brains — like humans, they also must adapt to the rigors of anarchy in world politics. While some emerging zombie governments might pursue radical anti-human policies at first, the anarchical system would eventually discipline a moderation of views.
In a world of sophisticated zombies, alliances between human states and zombie states are possible. Indeed, any government that tried to develop a grand coalition targeting the undead would immediately trigger the security dilemma. Realpolitik states could exploit any move toward an idealistic global war on zombies by creating temporary alliances of convenience with emerging ghoul governments.
A more passive strategy would be to encourage what John Mearsheimer labels “bait and bleed” and “bloodletting” strategies. In these instances, realist states would try to foment conflict between anti-zombie states and the ghouls themselves, profiting at the relative losses incurred by both sides.
Realists would advocate noninterference in how zombie states treated their own living and undead populations.
* In the end, realists would conclude that there would be little intrinsic difference between human states and zombie states. Human beings have an innate lust for power in the realist paradigm; zombies have an innate lust for human flesh. Both are scarce resources.Regardless of individual traits, domestic institutions, or variations in the desire for living flesh, human and zombie actors alike are subject to the same powerful constraint of anarchy. Both sets of actors would engage in strategic opportunism to advance their interests in anarchy. The fundamental character of world politics would therefore remain unchanged. In the end, realists would caution human governments against expending significant amounts of blood and treasure to engage in far-flung anti-zombie adventures — particularly blood.
—–
† The very first zombie we see in Night of the Living Dead uses a rock to break into Barbara’s car.
* Some realists would no doubt warn against the power of a “human lobby” to blind governments from their national interests.
In the mail: Theories of International Politics and Zombies by Daniel W. Drezner.
“Daniel Drezner’s groundbreaking book answers the question that other international relations scholars have been too scared to ask. Addressing timely issues with analytical bite, Drezner looks at how well-known theories from international relations might be applied to a war with zombies. Exploring the plots of popular zombie films, songs, and books, Theories of International Relations and Zombies predicts realistic scenarios for the political stage in the face of a zombie threat and considers how valid — or how rotten-such scenarios might be.”
Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire
The NYT/Climate Wire reported yesterday that House Science chair Ralph Hall wants to investigate “doubts about the quality of the climate science”:
Hall said his vice chairman, Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), an outspoken climate skeptic who served as ranking member on the recently disbanded Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, will take the lead on the issue.
Of course, Hall is not aware of multiple vindications of climate science since “The first rule of vindicating climate scientists is you do not talk about vindicating climate scientists.”
While Hall himself is not an outright denier of basic climate science, Sensenbrenner (R-WI) is. Here’s some background on the Wisconsin Republican, starting with an interview by conservative radio show host Jay Weber:
Asked his “personal stance on man-made global warming,” Sensenbrenner replies
I think that the science is inconclusive on this. What I do say very emphatically with these massive increases in utility costs through the cap and tax scheme, we shouldn’t be doing this as long as the science is inconclusive.
For the record, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences concluded its recent review of climate science, saying it is a “settled fact” that “the Earth system is warming and that much of this warming is very likely due to human activities.”
As an aside, DesmogBlog notes that Weber “starts by once again falsely attributing to MIT the many times debunked estimate of cap and trade costing $ 3100 per family” and that this interview “is another fine example of the wit and wisdom of the flat earth wing of the Republican party.”
Sensenbrenner continues:
What the science says is that temperatures peaked out globally in 1998. So we’ve gone for 10 plus years where the temperatures have gone down.
That statement in its many guises is, of course, the winner of the The 2010 Climate B.S.* of the Year Award. In fact, it’s the hottest decade on record and NASA noted last year, The 12-month running mean global temperature has reached a new record in 2010: “We conclude that global temperature continued to rise rapidly in the past decade” and “there has been no reduction in the global warming trend of 0.15-0.20°C/decade that began in the late 1970s.” See also “Yes, global warming has continued since 1998” and “Comparing all the temperature records.”
I personally believe that the solar flares are more responsible for climatic cycles than anything that human beings do and our lunar, our rovers on Mars have indicated that there has been a slight warming in the atmosphere of Mars and that certainly was not caused by the internal combustion engine.
Sad, really. The number of people who believe that solar flares are the primary driver of “climatic cycles” ain’t large. At least he could have said “the sun” and joined a larger group of widely debunked deniers. Skeptical Science explains at length that “while there is no credible science indicating that the sun is causing the observed increase in global temperature, it’s the known physical properties of greenhouse gasses that provide us with the only real and measurable explanation of global warming”:
A change in the forcing by the sun simply isn’t a big player in driving recent warming. As a major 2009 study found (see Another long-debunked denier talking point is debunked again: Changes in the Sun are not causing global warming):
According to this analysis, solar forcing contributed negligible long-term warming in the past 25 years and 10% of the warming in the past 100 years.
And a major 2007 study concluded:
Here we show that over the past 20 years, all the trends in the Sun that could have had an influence on the Earth’s climate have been in the opposite direction to that required to explain the observed rise in global mean temperatures.
As for the standard Martian talking point of the deniers, Skeptical Science has a long post on the science, which it summarizes thusly, “Martian climate is primarily driven by dust and albedo and there is little empirical evidence that Mars is showing long term warming.”
But there’s more to Sensenbrenner than his staggering lack of understanding of climate science. As Climate Science Watch explained in a December 2009 piece, “Sensenbrenner IPCC witch-hunt: Attempt to blacklist climate scientists must be rejected.”
I will end by reposting that piece, which, coupled with Sensenbrenner denial of basic science, makes him a climate zombie unfit to lead any investigation into climate science.
Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin), ranking Republican on the House global warming committee, has sent a letter to Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, calling for scientists whose names appear in the e-mails stolen from the U.K. Climatic Research Unit to be blacklisted from participating as contributors or reviewers of the forthcoming IPCC Fifth Assessment Report.
Sensenbrenner is engaged in an outrageous McCarthyist jihad against the climate science community, making it abundantly clear that this controversy is not really about stolen e-mails, which have been misused and misinterpreted. Rather it is part of an aggressive campaign by the global warming denial machine to bully and intimidate the science community. Sensenbrenner shows no real interest in meaningful dialogue, nor in an honest examination of climate science findings. Denialists are throwing up a smokescreen of propaganda in an attempt to legitimize their refusal to come to grips with scientific evidence on global climatic disruption and its implications. This is a power play.
Climate Science Watch calls on the IPCC to rebuff this attack. We call on the Obama Administration and in particular the President’s science adviser John Holdren to fully support the U.S. climate science community in this matter. We call on Sensenbrenner’s colleagues in Congress to chastise him for this censorious anti-scientist behavior. And we call on members of the science community to understand what the denial machine is up to and not allow themselves to be divided by innuendo about and attacks on scientists who have been singled out as immediate targets of a larger predatory attack on the community as a whole. Seeking an IPCC purge is just the next step. This attack, using guilt-by-association and demagogy, will go as far as it can to delegitimize the entire climate science and assessment enterprise if it is not exposed and thwarted. (See below for the Sensenbrenner letter and press release.)
Letter from Rep. James Sensenbrenner to IPCC Chair Rajendra K. Pachauri
http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/ file-uploads/ 12072009_IPCC_Pachauri_Letter.pdf
(also linked from Sensenbrenner press release on committee Web site)See our December 8 posts ( http://www.climatesciencewatch.org):
Rep. Sensenbrenner projects ‘fascism’ and ‘fraud’ onto scientists, is rebutted at hearingFBI investigating death threats against two scientists whose emails were stolen in CRU hacking
Press release posted on the Republican Minority Web site of the House Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming:
December 8, 2009
Sensenbrenner Urges IPCC to Exclude Climategate Scientists‘It is possible that they succeeded in undermining the entire process’
Washington, D.C.– Climate researchers who authored thousands of e-mails and documents that show an effort to mislead and suppress opposing research should not be allowed to continue work on the latest report of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rep. Sensenbrenner said in a letter to IPCC Chair Dr. Rajendra Pachauri.
“Their behavior has caused grave damage to the public trust in climate science in general, and to the IPCC in particular,” Sensenbrenner wrote.
The letter asks that none of the researchers involved in the controversial e-mails be allowed to participate as contributors, reviewers, or in any other capacity in the preparation of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report. The release of these e-mails, dubbed “climategate” by some, showed a pattern where staff and associates of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the U.K. tried to prevent publication of opposition research, and in some cases, manipulate data to produce desired results. One e-mail described a “trick” to “hide the decline” in temperature data.
The letter cites an e-mail from Pennsylvania State University researcher Michael Mann that describes efforts to delegitimize a journal called “Climate Research” because it published contrarian scientific studies. “Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal,” Mann wrote.
“The authors of the e-mails understand what you apparently do not: Control of peer-reviewed literature equates to control of the IPCC’s conclusions,” Sensenbrenner wrote to Pachauri. “These bad actors therefore limited the pool of peer-reviewed studies upon which the IPCC could rely and manipulated the results of other studies upon which it did rely. It is possible that they succeeded in undermining the entire process.”
JR: It is beyond disingenuous for a Congressman whose interview above shows he never believed in the IPCC process or its conclusions or the most basic of climate science facts to claim a bunch of e-mails have “caused grave damage to the public trust in climate science in general.” It is deniers and disinformers like Sensenbrenner who have damaged the understanding of climate science by those conservatives and conservative-leaning independents who are foolish enough to listen to them.
The incoming Republican chairs of the House of Representatives plan to send the United States back to the Stone Age with respect to climate policy. All of them opposed the climate legislation supported by President Barack Obama, and now oppose limits on global warming pollution under the Clean Air Act. Several have accused climate scientists of doctoring data and suppressing dissent; the others merely claim climate policy is actually a conspiracy to destroy the American economy.
Brad Johnson has the line-up of climate zombies who will be in charge of developing all federal legislation for the next two years:
Financial Services: Spencer Bachus (AL). Bachus introduced legislation that accused climate scientists of fraud: “Whereas recent events have uncovered extensive evidence from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England (in this resolution referred to as the ‘CRU’) which involved many researchers across the globe discussing the destruction, altering, and hiding of data that did not support global warming claims.” [H.R. 954]
Ways and Means: Dave Camp (MI). “What is the science of climate change? What can it definitively tell us? Can it say who is responsible for it? Can it tell us what impact we can have on it, and if we can, what are the results, both positive and negative? From what I have read, there remains a great deal of uncertainty with regard to the scientific evidence about climate change.” [Camp, 2/25/09]
Budget: Paul Ryan (WI). “Unilateral economic restraint in the name of fighting global warming has been a tough sell in our communities, where much of the state is buried under snow.” [Racine Journal Times, 12/11/09]
Natural Resources: Doc Hastings (WA). “Over the last few weeks an international summit on climate change took place in Copenhagen, Denmark. It centered around developing a binding international climate change mandate. Unfortunately for the United States, this is likely to do much more harm than good. Instead of allowing all scientific opinions to be heard, this conference was devoid of an honest, comprehensive debate.” [Hastings, 12/18/09]
Oversight and Government Reform: Darrell Issa (CA). “One of the difficulties in examining the issue of the climate change and greenhouse gases is that there is a wide range of scientific opinion on this issue and the science community does not agree to the extent of the problem or the critical threshold of when this problem is truly catastrophic.” [Issa 9/11/09]
Judiciary: Lamar Smith (TX). “We now know that prominent scientists were so determined to advance the idea of human-made global warming that they worked together to hide contradictory temperature data. But for two weeks, none of the networks gave the scandal any coverage on their evening news programs. And when they finally did cover it, their reporting was largely slanted in favor of global warming alarmists.” [Smith, 12/8/09]
Science and Technology: Ralph Hall (TX). “There is growing concern and evidence that scientific data, from which global warming theories emerged, has been manipulated, enhanced or deleted.” [Hall]
Energy and Commerce: Fred Upton (MI). Upton joined the head of Koch’s Americans For Prosperity to question the threat of carbon pollution. “Moreover, the principal argument for a two-year delay is that it will allow Congress time to create its own plan for regulating carbon. This presumes that carbon is a problem in need of regulation. We are not convinced.” [WSJ 12/29/10]
Appropriations: Hal Rogers (KY). “This administration is trying to shut down coal and fire all of you,” claimed Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Ky., adding that the EPA was practicing “strangulation by regulation.” [AP 9/15/10]
Armed Services: Buck McKeon (CA). “We must put a stop to the radical agenda that is rapidly making its way through Washington in the form of a Cap & Tax climate change bill, federal free-market takeovers, and government run health care systems.” [McKeon, 7/2/09]
Education and Labor: John Kline (MN). Kline attacked the House passage of the Waxman-Markey climate bill. “Created to raise federal revenue and reduce greenhouse emissions, this proposal will, in reality, drive up the price of everyday goods, strain the economy, reduce jobs, and impose a significant cost increase on every American who dares turns on a light.” [Kline, 7/10/09]
Small Business: Sam Graves (MO) and Agriculture: Frank Lucas (OK) In a joint op-ed with Doc Hastings, Lucas and Graves claimed climate legislation and carbon regulation would threaten the fabric of America. “Democrats in Congress have been arrogantly pursuing an ill-conceived cap and trade program that will slam rural families and businesses with a national energy tax. As a result, electricity prices would skyrocket, gas prices would balloon and thousands of jobs in rural America could be lost forever. In a two-pronged attack, President Obama is also instructing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to impose harmful new regulations and mandates on carbon emissions and energy consumption. This government power grab would give the EPA unprecedented authority to regulate anything that emits carbon—including semi-trucks, tractors, lawnmowers and even weed-whackers.” [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 6/3/10]
Transportation and Infrastructure: John Mica (FL). “Earlier in the 111th Congress, the House of Representatives considered H.R. 2454, the energy tax bill also reffered [sic] to as the Cap and trade bill. I voted against this energy tax bill when it was passed by the House of Representatives by only a margin of seven votes: 219 to 212. The Cap and Tax legislation would impose an energy fee on almost all forms of energy.” [Mica]
A few of the committee chairmen, like Upton, Mica and Kline, have taken the moderate position of being willing to support climate policy, so long as it doesn’t involve any regulation, tax, government spending, or mandate of any kind that would actually reduce pollution. There is support among the Republican caucus for policy to accelerate global warming through new oil and coal subsidies, however.
- Brad Johnson, in a WonkRoom cross-post
The incoming Republican chairs of the House of Representatives plan to send the United States back to the Stone Age with respect to climate policy. All of them opposed the climate legislation supported by President Barack Obama, and now oppose limits on global warming pollution under the Clean Air Act. Several have accused climate scientists of…
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Wonk Room
No contest in my book. Vampires are so gay. James Poulos compares and contrasts:
Consider the theatrical contrast between zombies and vampires. (A few people have weighed in on this subject, but not quite in the following way.) Vampire drama draws its power perversely from the depths of human hope: beyond transgressive erotic titillation, there's the semi-secret fantasy that life as a vampire can, ultimately, be successfully negotiated within the structures of normal human life. Vampires are like celebrities — gaunt, exclusive, tormented — but they're also just like us! Because, after all, they're us plus: not just alive, but too alive.
Zombies, of course, aren't too alive. They're not dead enough. And where vampire drama plays devilishly on our all-too-human hopes, zombie drama plows straight through our fears to hit us where it really hurts: at the level of human despair. Good zombie drama lowers us to the bottom of hopelessness, only to let us — when the show's over — return to the real world, in all its ordinary graces, stingingly thankful for the decencies, great and small, of nature and nature's God.
I find myself instantly hooked on "The Walking Dead", btw. I'm not the only one. And it's great that these new zombies aren't as devastatingly fast as the post-28 Days Later ones. Gives you time to bob and weave. Which gives you time for more plot.
In theory we elect political leaders who then consult with or even hire leading experts to help them make informed judgments on complex subjects affecting the health and well-being of their constituents.
In practice, the GOP has been taken over by the climate zombies, a condition spread by drinking tea. Even previously smart and/or blunt people abandon any reason or clarity when it comes to climate science (see McCain drinks the Kool-Aid [iced tea?] and becomes a climate conspiracy theorist and The dumbing down of Carly Fiorina).
And so it is with the former ’straight shooter’ Chris Christie, Governor of the Garden State, which would be devastated by the impact of unrestricted emissions of greenhouse gases, especially sea level rise, as Princeton scientists have explained.
HuffPost was provided with his full remarks on climate science from a Tuesday town meeting. To sum up in one word — Fuggedaboutit:
Mankind, is it responsible for global warming? Well I’ll tell you something. I have seen evidence on both sides of it. I’m skeptical — I’m skeptical. And you know, I think at the at the end of this, I think we’re going to need more science to prove something one way or the other.
But you know - cause I’ve seen arguments on both sides of it that at times - like I’ll watch something about man made global warming, and I go wow, that’s fairly convincing. And then I’ll go out and watch the other side of the argument, and I go huh, that’s fairly convincing too.
So, I go to be honest with you, I don’t know. And that’s probably one of the reasons why I became a lawyer, and not a doctor, or an engineer, or a scientist, because I can’t figure this stuff out. But I would say at this point, that has to be proven, and I’m a little skeptical about it. Thank you.
Cigarettes cause health problems? Well I’ll tell you something. I have seen evidence on both sides of it.
Like I’ll watch something about the dangers of cigarette smoking and I go, wow, you have to be suicidal to keep smoking when every doctor you’ve seen has diagnosed you with early-stage emphysema. And then I’ll go out and listen to some scientists funded by the tobacco industry, and I go huh, that’s fairly convincing too. So, to be honest with you, I’m simply incapable of actually figuring out what the overwhelming majority of scientists and leading scientific institutions say on this subject.
And that’s why I became a governor, who has to make crucial decisions that affect millions of people and most importantly our children, because I can’t figure this stuff out. I would say this point, that has to be proven, so I’m just going to keep smoking — and take “the state’s entire allocation for its global warming fund ($ 65 million) to help close” the budget deficit. Thank you.
Apparently the Democrats learned absolutely nothing from the election last week. Two more years of Obama, Reid & Pelosi, hurrah. They all go In the Crosshairs.
Following the Tea Party wave of the midterm elections, half of the Republican caucus in the U.S. Congress now questions the scientific consensus that greenhouse pollution is a civilizational threat. Analysis by the Wonk Room, with research by Daily Kos’s RL Miller, finds that 45 of 97 Republican freshmen and 85 of 166 reelected Republicans are confirmed climate zombies. There are no Republican freshmen, in the House or Senate, who admit the science is real. New members include William Marcy (MS-2) — who warns of “Global Warming Environmental Terrorists” — and Kristi Noem (SD-AL) — who voted for a resolution that “astrological” and “thermological” dynamics “effect” the weather.
The U.S. Senate, as the Wonk Room has previously described, has a monolithic Republican bloc against climate action, with incoming Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL) and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) repudiating their past support for cap-and-trade legislation. The U.S. House of Representatives now only has four Republicans who publicly admit that global warming pollution is real:
- Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL-18): “Global warming is real and man-made.”
- Rep. Judy Biggert (IL-13): “The science behind climate change is sound.”
- Rep. Jim Gerlach (PA-06): “Congressman Gerlach believes we have a responsibility as legislators and citizens to reduce our imprint on the Earth and reverse the effects of science-based climate change for both current and future generations.”
- Rep. Frank Wolf (VA-01): “I believe that global warming is real. The National Academy of Sciences has presented evidence that the Earth’s surface is warming because of human activities, including increased worldwide industrial development, over the past several decades.”
However, none of these four voted in favor of the American Clean Energy and Security Act to combat climate pollution and support a clean energy economy. All five Republicans who did support the legislation and ran for re-election won: Reps. Mary Bono Mack (CA-45), Dave Reichert (WA-8), Frank LoBiondo (NJ-2), Chris Smith (NJ-4), and Leonard Lance (NJ-7). None of them have spoken publicly about the science of climate change.
It remains to be seen whether these nine Republican climate realists will do anything to stop the impending witch hunt against climate scientists by their conspiracy-minded caucus.
