Some musings on global warming and other things.

As happens from time to time, I recently went through some arguments over the validity of climate change science. The anti's just got a new weapon in their arsenal - a series of stolen emails between scientists that seemed to show that the eggheads were yakking it up over the fakery they were getting away with. Oh, the gloating of the climate change deniers was thick enough to cut.

The scientists themselves, besides being livid over private emails being spread about publicly, tried to explain that some of the phrases that appeared to be admitting to fraud was just the language of scientists being misunderstood.

We on the left did our usual thing - tried to reason with the unreasonable and show them that science doesn't stand still to bring the deniers into the light.

Won't happen - this isn't about science, it's about ideology namely the 'MUST PROTECT MASTER" variety and that doesn't allow for nuance. If you allow the possibility of man-created global climate change then you can't defend your 'betters' profits because then it becomes a matter of personal survival instead of an ideology that says the more money you have means that you are more good than those with less. Fortunately, this ideology is in decline - out of power, discredited and rejected by a majority of Americans.

'Greed is good', if not dead, is very sick and very much alone. That's all they've got left too - this isn't disagreement this who is basically right and wrong, bad or good. They have become their own club, their own fringe and they can't make arguments for their positions. In order for them to be good, they have to make us and everyone else bad. Doesn't matter what gender you are, the color of your skin, whether you speak with an accent, what you call yourself or even if you're in the same party they are - if you don't know the secret handshake, you're evil.

OK, so what. I'm old enough to remember when people who espoused ideas like that were considered nuts and crackpots to be laughed at for their seeing communists every place they looked.

Short version: Who cares what they believe about climate change or science. All they can do is rant and foam at the mouth - the American voters took away their ability to do anything about it. Make no mistake about this - they are angry over one thing and that's it.

Forget Global Warming, Sarah Palin, forget Gore, Michael Moore, ACORN, Soros, the ACLU, forget even Obama - one way or the other they are all means to dress up that sore loser-ism and anger over the loss of power they think they have entitlement to so to make it more acceptable to themselves if no one else.

Let me be clear here - I don't paint all conservatives with this brush or want them all to go away either. Genuine conservatives are as necessary as genuine liberals to America as no plane flies with one wing. Genuine conservatives slow down the admitted over-exuberance of liberals for change just as liberals speed up conservatives when they take their natural tendency to slow things down too far and make it too slow.

What we're dealing with now are not genuine conservatives. These are people in the South still angry they lost. These are whites who feel threatened and confused because the status they got simply because of the color of their skin is vanishing. The few people of color they get tend to be people rejected by their own communities, desperate to be accepted in something and seeking revenge on those like themselves who didn't take them in. These are rural people angry at city people because urban is considered hip and rural isn't. Things are changing and they don't want them to. Basically, they want the world to stay put or return to how they think things should be and the world is rotating and evolving despite them.

Will we get past this and back to a more stable and deliberative way of doing things? I really don't know. I see the Republicans in the same position we McGovernites were in the early '70s. We had taken over the party, certain in our righteousness and goodness, and did our best to push the moderates out of the Democratic Party. We did all that and got our asses handed to us when voting time came around. One difference between then and now though - that run probably would have lasted longer if we'd had the financial backing not to mention a slew of talk shows and our own cable channel to cheer us on like the right does today.

Historians say this isn't really all that new - the extremists of one side or the other coming into prominence that is. They say something like it happens pretty much at the start of every decade and it really gets going at the turn of the century. Those are big, scary events for a lot of people and we are just now about to finish the first decade since the triple whammy - change of the decade, change of the century, and change of the millennium. Throw into that mix something that's never really happened in this country since the Civil War - a major attack on an American city with the even worse insecurity that followed the fact that the attack didn't come from another recognizable country, but a shadowy group of international terrorists - and it's extremist Disneyland.

The thing that sustains me and gives me hope is that the extremists aren't anywhere as large a segment of the country that they think they are. Sure, they get more press but there's also more press and pseudo-press to give them that attention. On top of that, we have the greatest platform for corner soapbox speechifying that's ever existed in the history of man. Of all of the inventions that science fiction writers foresaw for the future, this one they missed completely. It's Hyde Park cubed. It's also noisy, crowded and anyone and everyone gets their say.

What is this boon to the airing of the opinions of man and woman kind? If you're reading this right now, you're on it. The internet. The web. It's a great resource if used properly, and can send a lie around the world faster than and well before the truth can even get it's shoes made, let alone on and tied. It's also highly segmented and customizable - set it up right for yourself and you never have to see a contrary word to your opinions, ever. That's also a very difficult way to be able to win converts to your point of view regardless of what that is. Most of us aren't only preaching to the choir, we're preaching to hundreds if not thousands of them.

So, what's to become of us with all this? Well, let's bring things down to earth here. The person writing this and the people reading it are also a minority. We're politics junkies. Geeks. Wonks. Freaks. Tell people you did what I did last Saturday night - listening and watching CSPAN on a Saturday night, excited over a procedural vote in the Senate and commenting on it as it went along on Twitter or a blog - and watch them smile and back away from you, slowly. Politics is our sports, primaries are our playoffs and general elections are our Super Bowls. We battle over arcane policy differences and people the general public are oblivious to. And oh my, the things we call each other would have us at dawn holding dueling pistols and ready to shoot the other down back when the country was getting started.

What's the bottom line here? We've gone through tougher times and more real division in our history than we are doing now.

We'll be just fine.

To the Teabaggers with love from Bartcop

You didn't get mad...

You didn't get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President.

You didn't get mad when VP Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate energy Policy.

You didn't get mad when a covert CIA Operative was revealed.

You didn't get mad when the Patriot Act was passed.

You didn't get mad when we illegally invaded Iraq looking for WMD'S that didn't exist.

You didn't get mad when we spent over 600 Billion dollars(and counting) on Iraq War.

You didn't get mad when over 10 billion dollars just disappeared in Iraq.

You didn't get mad when Bush was illegally wiretapping us at home and work.

You didn't get mad when Bush borrowed money to give to the oil companies.

You didn't get mad when we didn't catch Bin Laden.

You didn't get mad when you saw the horrible Conditions at Walter Reed.

You didn't get mad when we let New Orleans drown.

You didn't get mad when Bush got 4,500 soldiers killed.

You didn't get mad when the deficit hit the trillion dollar mark.

You finally got mad when---- The government decided that people in
America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick.

Illegal wars, lies, corruption, torture, giving your tax dollars to super-rich, are all OK with you? But helping other Americans is the last straw?

Seven presidents have tried to pass a Health Care Plan of some sort and have failed. None have had the "hate filled" opposition of this president.

THE WORLD IS WATCHING AMERICA.

http://www.bartcop.com

The 2009 Elections

Well, here we are after the great Tea Party "referendums" on President Obama.

Or not.

It looked to me to be a push. There were things for the Republicans to celebrate and there were things for Democrats too. What it never was, according to various state exit polling, was a vote up or down on Mr. Obama. Even where Republicans won, exit polling showed that Mr. Obama was little to no influence on the voters.

Let's take a look at the results, shall we?

In Virginia, it looks more and more like the Democrat - Creigh Deeds - screwed the pooch big time when he decided to run against, then with, the President. He ran ads against health care reform, cap and trade...very Republican Lite stuff sure to excite the Democrats in VA to vote for him. *cough* Then when that approach wasn't working out he called out for Obama for help, too late. He went down hard and took several state Democrats down ticket with him.

In New Jersey, Governor Jon Corzine looked to be having him some Gray Davis-itis. (Gray Davis was the Democratic governor of California who was recalled with now-Gov. Schwarzenegger replacing him). What is Davis-itis, you ask? Well, what helped along the Davis recall in CA was the fact that the guy wasn't very well liked, even among Democrats. Word is that Corzine wasn't very well liked in New Jersey either and Democrats weren't real enthused about giving him another term. Both had reputations of being kind of nasty folks to be around and in Corzine's case, add in the factor of a independent candidate appealing to those unenthused Democrats and down he went too. The good news out of this is that he didn't take many with him - Democrats were able to hold on to their majorities in the state legislature.

Add the historical factor that both states have a habit of making their Governor a member of the opposing party to the President, and you have a HUGE WIN FOR THE REPUBLICAN RIGHT!!

Ummm....not so much. Governor's races are state races, not national ones. Definitely local issues rule with them. About the only time that a Governor's race makes any difference nationally is when someone new is elected Governor of California (because of the state's size and economic clout - well, pre-GOP that is - they are usually "mentioned" as a possible Presidential candidate in the future).

Republican wins to be sure, but about Obama? No.

OK, let's look at a couple of races that could have had something to do with the current President.

There were two special elections to fill seats formerly held by Republicans, one in New York and one in California. The New York one got the most attention - mainly because the news media could cover it with little travel time, it had been a GOP district since the 1800s, and the candidate who got the most out-of-state money (95% of his campaign war chest came from outside of New York) and endorsements was not the Republican. The candidate the tea party-ers and luminaries such as Sarah Palin and Dick Armey was pushing so hard was a member of the New York Conservative Party.

I'm not all that familiar with New York politics, but I do recall that the chance of a member of one of the NY minor parties winning an election was not unheard of. In 1970, William F. Buckley's brother James was elected to the US Senate on the Conservative Party ticket and served one term (brother Bill tried unsuccessfully to be elected to the Senate too as well as Mayor of New York). However, James Buckley did not get national Republicans to help out his campaign.

The Conservative Party candidate for the House in upper New York state's district 23 was going to be where the tea party, birther and hard right of the conservative movement was going to show both President Obama and the leadership of the GOP a thing or two. Make no mistake, their candidate was definitely one of them too. The actual Republican in the race had seen her support dwindle away so she withdrew her candidacy. The Hitler=Obama sign waving, "socialism" in the health care bill opposing far right was going to show their strength with this one.

Then a funny thing happened. The Democrat won. This hadn't happened in that district since the days of the cotton gin.

This election was supposed to show the nation that the tea party movement wasn't just some angry-at-something wingnuts getting together to vent over losing in 2008. It was supposed to show that the demonstrators were a REAL MOVEMENT, reflecting the secret majority just waiting to toss out that Socialist Fascist non-white Commie in the White House right out the door after being magically fooled into voting for him last year. THIS WAS THE WAKE-UP CALL!!

Oops. Guess not.

Out in California, another traditional Republican district went (D) as well. That race certainly didn't have as much drama to it, but it flipped nonetheless.

Oops again, teabaggers.

So, to recap:

The Republican right won in two Governor's races that have little to no impact nationally.

The Democrats won the two races for House seats that gives them an even bigger majority in Congress.

And Barack Obama is still President of the United States with a majority of Americans giving him thumbs up on most of the job he's been doing.

Bottom line: Not a great night for anybody, but definitely a bad night for the teabaggers.

I can live with that.

Stepping on my last nerve

I have just about had it.

Up to here.

You might guess what I've had it with, but here's a little backstory if you haven't yet:

In 2000, George W. Bush was elected President. By the Supreme Court. 5-4. If you are a rightwinger reading this, don't bother giving me the old song and dance. This and This tell the tale. OK, we who voted for the actual winner that year should have been doing an Iran and hitting the streets demanding that the person we elected President be sworn in.

Didn't happen. OK.

Still not on my last nerve yet.

I'd always wondered why, given all of the elections for President in our history, it was so important that George W. Bush become President no matter what you had to do to put in the fix. It struck me as very strange. Then I found out why. 9/11 happened. We were attacked and even diehards like me were giving the new guy in the White House a chance. Now, don't put me in with the "Bush did 9/11" crowd - give me a second to make my point. We had the country as united as it ever is when faced with an external threat - even those outside of the US who were supposed to be against us were horrified at that act of mass murder and offered their sympathies and condolences. We were all pretty stirred by W's speech to Congress too, as well as when he stood in the rubble of the World Trade Center and promised that the ones who did this would be hearing from us soon.

I'm going to stop rehashing history here. We all know what happened next with Iraq and the lies told to us to get us to support going there. Bush's presidency survived a strong challenge for a second term then it all went to shit.

We could hardly wait to replace the Bumbler and Liar in Chief.

We did with an intelligent, eloquent man from Illinois and made history. Our first black President! My God, I never thought it would happen in my lifetime and was in tears on election night both in relief of finally getting rid of Dubya and the Neocons and in sadness that my late wife hadn't lived long enough to see it with me.

Ah, there's that word. Finally. Oops on me.

I think a lot us were a bit too full of hope that election night. We never saw Obama as a "Messiah" like the far right liked to pretend, but we also didn't see him first as a black man. The tears in Obama supporters wasn't us seeing him as the Second Coming, it was joy that we didn't have to deal with daily scandals and outrages presided over by a semi-literate party hearty "good ol' boy" from Tex-onnecticut. The tears during the inauguration was because not only did we get a very good man elected, we showed the world that we'd moved beyond racism and hate.

Or, we thought we had. Our mistake.

First mistake: we thought that the over the top rhetoric from the fringes of the right really didn't run the GOP. OK, yeah we poked and teased them over it but we didn't really didn't think that the regular Rpublican party was personified by Rush Limbaugh and Mann Coulter. Saying that was just to get the goat of the people who had rubbed our noses in Bushit for 8 years. Then out came the crazies, blaming the new President for all the bad things the previous one actually did and more without his being in office even a year yet. We said to ourselves, "Oh crap, we were really right about the Republicans?"

Getting close to that last nerve now.

Mistake #2: believing that we'd finally staked that old monster Racism in the heart and it was gone for good. OK, for a far right party these aren't necessarily racist. Tea Parties. Obama as Hitler....well, OK, not that one so much - let's be honest with ourselves here, we did do it to Bush first. Whatever the right considered "bad" they said Obama was one of them. Shouting matches at town halls over health care reform (that was a strange one).

OK, that could all be put down to partisan overzealousness as much as anything else.

However....

Postcards of the White House with watermellons on the front lawn.

Photoshopping Obama into a stereotypical African witch doctor, complete
with a bone through his nose.

Buttons saying, "If Obama wins will we still call it the White
House?"

Bumperstickers saying, "Do we really need a black man begging for CHANGE in
the White House?"

"Obama Bucks" with pictures of watermellons and fried chicken along the
edges.

A stuffed monkey in a suit with "Obama '08" on its lapel.

Try Googling "Racist Obama images" and see what pops up - the above is just a small list of examples.

If that ain't flat-out racism, I don't know what is.

Closer to that last nerve...not quite there yet......

The kicker to all of this? The racists aren't even trying to hide it anymore. Oh, they'll do their usual shuffle to avoid being called what they are. You know, if you talk about race issues at all you must be a racist...especially if you aren't white. Say some anti-Obama people are racists then start screaming "You called us ALL racists!!" The usual male bovine excrement.

However, it's not just that. The people who send this stuff out will stand there before God and a TV camera and not only not deny they sent it, they claim they didn't realize it was offensive.

What? WHAT?!!

Do you all think that when Obama was elected the heat was off and you could let that racist freak flag fly?!!!

Were you all hatched yesterday and have no clue what is racist and what isn't after all this country has gone through because of it?!!

ARE YOU SHITTING ME?!!!!

NOW we hit that last nerve!

Alrighty then. That's how you want to play it, eh righties?

Fine.

You are total ignorant assholes. I have no interest in what you think or what you say. I will no longer argue with you over what's true and what's not. I don't care what you believe in or don't. I'm not your friend and you are no friend to my country. I will not debate you. I will barely acknowledge your existence. I will not indulge in a shouting match with you. I don't care what Rush or Glenn or Sean or FOX told you to think today. You are a danger to the Republic. You are traitors to the real America. You are just enough to rate a derisive laugh.

The only thing that interests me about you is seeing to it that your empty head is beat down so far that your ass is a planter in China. I can't defeat you enough. Kick you when you're down? I'll be running a steam roller over you.

You want a war? Bring it on.

Wouldn't it be fin-ah to hate on Mr. Obama in the mooooorning?

Ah those teabaggers, what a bunch huh? Here we are a few days after their Two (Three? Four?) Hour Hate on the President in Washington D.C. and I am still laughing.

And what's not to laugh at? Here they are, complaining mightily that they aren't tools of insurance company lobbbyist front groups like Dick Armey's "Freedomworks" and just look at the DC podium. Full of signs from Freedomworks. Featured speakers from, you guessed it, Freedomworks. My sides are splitting here.

Then there's those signs! Nasty things about sending Obama "back" to Kenya as if he ever came from there. Those "Bury Obamacare with Kennedy" ones were real classy. I sure hope the passing of one of their relatives becomes a political slogan - it'd only serve them right. Not that they'd get them, of course. And talk about all over the map! They make protest marches from the left look unified and on message!! SOCIALIST!! COMMUNIST!! NAZI!! HITLER!! OBAMA!! ACORN!! SOROS!! THE CONSTITUTION SAYS WHAT I SAY IT SAYS!!

And the favorite - DON'T HELP ME GET GOOD HEALTHCARE!!

I'd love to take them up on that one. Fortunately for them, President Obama is much nicer than I am. Then again, I'm not President so I don't have to be. I'd happily cut them loose from the good things that health care reform will do for us. Send these townhall screamer and nasty sign waver jerk-offs out in the streets to beg once their Insurance Company/Rightwing Masters take every penny they've got when they get real sick and they find out how some of their policies weren't so great after all. Hell, you don't believe in helping yourself out, great! Just don't come whining and crying to us when you find out we were right all along. Again.

But that's just me.

If that wasn't pure comedy enough, during and after the Nut-em-berg Rally they had to go and LIE ABOUT HOW MANY PEOPLE SHOWED UP!! I saw people writing that it was about 30,000 - others said 70K. OK, that's a fair to middlin' number or people to make the effort to be there and protest....whatever made-up nonsense they were protesting. I think they were mostly protesting that they lost in '06 and '08 and that Obama is black. OK. Waste of time since none of that will change because they want to loudly weep about it but still OK.

This is America and you can protest any damn thing you want to - right or wrong.

I support that.

Been there, done that even.

As they are wont to do, they had to go and blow it, claiming 1.5 MILLION people were there. Ummm...no. The said ABC NEWS said so! Ummm...no. They showed PICTURES proving it! Ummm....no. What the assembled crackpot-ic folks have yet to get is that the fastest way to become marginalized and disbelieved is to lie about something. And the number of people who show up to your event is kinda a big thing to be lying about.

Anyhoo - I'm positive this won't be the last time this happens. I do have a word of advice that I know that my friends on the orbiting Saturn far right will ignore.

You have at least 3, if not 7, more years of Obama to go.

Pace yourselves.

You'll be all worn out come 2010.

On the health care reform bill(s)

This is the response I wrote on an email group about the health care bill(s):


Well, let's see - first of all, the supposedly 1000 page bill is from the 4 different committees in the House's versions that hasn't been settled with the two committees in the Senate's versions. What will consolidate those versions is something called "mark up" - meetings of representatives of each house of Congress' committees where they decide what goes and what stays in the final bill - and that won't happen until Congress goes back into session next month. When that is done, then there will finally be an actual bill that will be voted on by Congress. Again, that hasn't happened yet so there is no final bill yet.

As for what you all have been claiming, well that would be the cherry-picked demonstrated and refuted distortions and fever dream lies put out by the health insurance companies and their Republican friends who want to see to it that are no reforms of health care at all. The people showing up at town hall meetings and screaming are the ones who get their news solely from Rush and his radio hate clones as well as Fox "News" - in other words, the willingly or otherwise misinformed minority of reactionary and plain crackpot Americans who are information resistant and thoroughly indoctrinated by rightwing talking points.

Obama is not going to force you into socialism - he's not even writing the law, Congress is doing that. There are no death panels in any of the bills. No one, elderly or not, will be encouraged to end their lives. There is no socialized or government control of medicine in any of the versions of the bill. You can keep the insurance you've got if you choose to and the bill will see to it that you're not dropped by your employer and forced into the public insurance plan to save your employer money. You will have the choice to keep that insurance even if you change jobs. You will not be dropped from your insurance when you most need it. If needed, you will be able to buy insurance and not be turned down because you were sick in the past. If you don't have the money to buy insurance you will get help to do so. No insurance company will be forced out of business and no one who makes under $250,000 a year will have their taxes raised, including small businesses. You will receive insurance coverage no matter what political party you belong to. No illegal alien will get free healthcare.

Those are the facts, folks.

The crazies' days of August

Well, I did promise to post more but this last month has caught me flatfooted and jaw dropped.

By now, I'm sure you're all aware of the health care town hall shenanigans of the far right. Screaming inanities, shouting down members of Congress, carrying guns to these meetings, etc. - OK, I admit it, this is a new one on me. I know, I expected the sore loser/sour grapes Republican Party of Rural Areas and the South to take defeat badly. That the man who beat them was at least half black would make their whining even louder was a given. Bill Clinton nailed it back when he was the popular Democratic President. He was asked why the Republicans/cons hated him so. His answer was simple and devastating: "I won."

President Obama won too but at least he doesn't have to deal with an orchestrated hunt on him financed by Richard Mellon Scaife that goes back to his days in Illinois. With no sex scandal in the offing or the prospect of the Republicans taking control of Congress any time soon there won't be another phony, trumped-up impeachment circus for him to deal with either. All he has facing him is a shrinking, shrieking opposition party and the cranks, crackpots and nutters that make it up now.

However, as callers to talk shows like to say, that isn't what I wrote this about.

I'm retired, have a lot of time for emails and email groups (mostly political of course), and at least three of them are a mix of left and right. Fortunately for me, this makes it so I don't have to watch Fox Noise or listen to rightwing hate radio for even a second to get the day's line for the sheeple of the far right - all I have to do is read the posts from the righties in these groups and it's all right there, faithfully repeated for me.

Now that the "conservatives" are out of power (and even when they were in), there's always been weak defenses of the GOP when they get caught doing something bad. For years it was the "BUT...WHAT ABOUT CLINTON?!!" line which was supposed to let the Republicans off the hook by summoning up charges, real or imaginary, about the former President and extending out his flaws to the entire Democratic Party. After it became impossible to blame Clinton for everything the Republicans did, that line morphed into "BUT....THE DEMOCRATS DID IT TOO!!" - the idea being that if they found anything even remotely something similar to what they did being done before by any Democrat, anywhere it was supposed to protect them by invoking the correlary, "AND IT DIDN'T BOTHER YOU THEN!!"

The result of all that whining and crying from the right? A Democrat in the White House, Congress controlled by Democrats, more registered Democrats than Republicans, polls giving the Democratic Party around 56% approval and giving the Republican Party approval numbers in the 20s.

You'd think they'd figure out that their line didn't work and they should try something else. But, alas for them, this is not to be.

Now we have the birthers/deathers/crackpots and racists screaming their little lungs out and thinly-disguised threats of violence during this month's health care reform meetings by Representatives in their districts. This is getting pretty bad press for the Republicans and insurance companies who've urged the freaks on, told them where to go and even gave them a list of things to do once they're there. The latest Gallup poll says people are sypathetic to protestors going to the town halls and having their say (something I have no problem with either) but also say that the tactic of shouting people down at these meetings is an abuse of democracy by a good sized majority. Oh, and the President's approval number went back up to 63% in the Gallup poll too, and they say it's because of the town hall yellers.

Oh my, this isn't good for the righties at all. What to do, what to do.....

Wait, I know! Morph the old GOP defense one more time!!

Which they have, to wit: "BUT...THE LEFT DID IT TOO!!"

For this one, they're not only going for the Democrats. They're tossing in everything from the e-vil ACORN boogeyman, CODE PINK and SEIU "union thugs" to (mainly) the student radicals who protested the Vietnam War 40+ years ago to try to sell this version. There are some similarities - those student radicals were pretty rowdy back in their day. ACORN, CODE PINK, SEIU, etc.? Not so much.

As always, there is a big problem with this argument as well. Student radicals in the 60s may have been disruptive at meetings back then and did their own shouting down but they didn't do it with guns either concealed or strapped to their waists. They may have waved the North Vietnamese flag but they didn't carry little homemade signs saying death to anybody. They didn't attend a member of Congress' meet-and-greet and "drop" a gun at it. They also didn't stand 75 feet from where the President was about to enter a meeting place with a gun strapped to an ankle and a sign that referred to Jefferson's quote about the tree of liberty being fed by the blood of patriots and tyrants by saying it's time to do that again.

Do I sense another MAJOR FAIL for the latest version of the conservative pat excuse for what they are doing coming up?

I think I do.