Every major newspaper in Texas endorsed Bill White for governor, over incumbent Republican Rick Perry. For the rest of us, Robert Earl Keen’s endorsement should be reason enough, no?
Robert Earl Keen, in this publicity photo standing on a Texas highway, endorsed Bill White for Governor of Texas -- no doubt to keep the Texas road going on forever.
GO VOTE!
Release from Bill White’s campaign:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Bill White bands together with Robert Earl Keen
White, Keen ask students to vote for Bill White
DENTON — On Friday, Bill White and Robert Earl Keen, legendary Texan singer and songwriter, will roll into Denton, Nacogdoches, College Station and San Marcos for special early vote concerts. The concerts are free and open to the public on a first come basis.
“College students have a huge stake in the governor’s race,” Garry Jones, Students for Bill White Director, said. “For many of us, Rick Perry is the only governor that we’ve ever known, and we don’t like what we’ve seen. College tuition rates have jumped by 93 percent under Perry’s reign, and we understand that our teachers are being forced to teach us how to take multiple choice tests and not prepare us for college or careers.”
“Texas students are lucky that we have a candidate who will put our needs first,” continued Jones. “Someone who will be more concerned with fighting for our future here in Texas than battling the federal government to raise a national profile. That candidate is Bill White!”
Robert Earl Keen is one of Texas A&M’s most famous graduates. Last weekend, the Bryan-College Station Eagle, endorsed Bill White. The editorial board wrote:
“[W]hy any loyal Aggie would vote for Rick Perry is beyond us . . . Ten years of Rick Perry as governor are more than enough. It is time for a change and Bill White is that change. He is a strong fiscal conservative who proved as mayor of Houston that it is possible to do more with less. We’ve had the less. Now it is time for the more.”
Early voting started Oct. 18 and continues through Friday, Oct. 29. To find a polling location near you, visit http://www.billwhitefortexas.com/ev/
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In fact the GOP’s deficit-detonating tax-cut proposals make the Democrats with their spending look like pikers. The stimulus bill, remember, cost $787 billion. The tax-cut bill that Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell unveiled last week—a combination of making permanent the Bush tax cuts and throwing in a host of other tax credits—has a price tag of around $3.9 trillion. For those keeping score at home, the self-styled party of fiscal responsibility wants to blow a hole in the budget nearly five times larger than the alleged profligacy they have spent the last year or more condemning.
Who is listening to the facts anymore?
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They claim to be constitutionalists, and they claim to want to uphold the U.S. Constitution. But here’s an excerpt from Federalist #30, in which Alexander Hamilton explains why it is necessary for a federal government to tax, and sometimes to tax heavily.
Alexander Hamilton: "Money is, with propriety, considered as the vital principle of the body politic; as that which sustains its life and motion, and enables it to perform its most essential functions."
This is the U.S. Constitution and the “Founding Fathers” the Tea Partiers hope you will never see, and this is the Constitution and Founders they work hard to hide (some highlights added):
IT HAS been already observed that the federal government ought to possess the power of providing for the support of the national forces; in which proposition was intended to be included the expense of raising troops, of building and equipping fleets, and all other expenses in any wise connected with military arrangements and operations. But these are not the only objects to which the jurisdiction of the Union, in respect to revenue, must necessarily be empowered to extend. It must embrace a provision for the support of the national civil list; for the payment of the national debts contracted, or that may be contracted; and, in general, for all those matters which will call for disbursements out of the national treasury. The conclusion is, that there must be interwoven, in the frame of the government, a general power of taxation, in one shape or another.
Money is, with propriety, considered as the vital principle of the body politic; as that which sustains its life and motion, and enables it to perform its most essential functions. A complete power, therefore, to procure a regular and adequate supply of it, as far as the resources of the community will permit, may be regarded as an indispensable ingredient in every constitution. From a deficiency in this particular, one of two evils must ensue; either the people must be subjected to continual plunder, as a substitute for a more eligible mode of supplying the public wants, or the government must sink into a fatal atrophy, and, in a short course of time, perish.
In the Ottoman or Turkish empire, the sovereign, though in other respects absolute master of the lives and fortunes of his subjects, has no right to impose a new tax. The consequence is that he permits the bashaws or governors of provinces to pillage the people without mercy; and, in turn, squeezes out of them the sums of which he stands in need, to satisfy his own exigencies and those of the state. In America, from a like cause, the government of the Union has gradually dwindled into a state of decay, approaching nearly to annihilation. Who can doubt, that the happiness of the people in both countries would be promoted by competent authorities in the proper hands, to provide the revenues which the necessities of the public might require?
The present Confederation, feeble as it is intended to repose in the United States, an unlimited power of providing for the pecuniary wants of the Union. But proceeding upon an erroneous principle, it has been done in such a manner as entirely to have frustrated the intention. Congress, by the articles which compose that compact (as has already been stated), are authorized to ascertain and call for any sums of money necessary, in their judgment, to the service of the United States; and their requisitions, if conformable to the rule of apportionment, are in every constitutional sense obligatory upon the States. These have no right to question the propriety of the demand; no discretion beyond that of devising the ways and means of furnishing the sums demanded. But though this be strictly and truly the case; though the assumption of such a right would be an infringement of the articles of Union; though it may seldom or never have been avowedly claimed, yet in practice it has been constantly exercised, and would continue to be so, as long as the revenues of the Confederacy should remain dependent on the intermediate agency of its members. What the consequences of this system have been, is within the knowledge of every man the least conversant in our public affairs, and has been amply unfolded in different parts of these inquiries. It is this which has chiefly contributed to reduce us to a situation, which affords ample cause both of mortification to ourselves, and of triumph to our enemies.
What remedy can there be for this situation, but in a change of the system which has produced it in a change of the fallacious and delusive system of quotas and requisitions? What substitute can there be imagined for this ignis fatuus in finance, but that of permitting the national government to raise its own revenues by the ordinary methods of taxation authorized in every well-ordered constitution of civil government? Ingenious men may declaim with plausibility on any subject; but no human ingenuity can point out any other expedient to rescue us from the inconveniences and embarrassments naturally resulting from defective supplies of the public treasury.
Cup o’ Joel got there earlier (worth a read): “And get this: Hamilton was arguing that the power to tax was a central reason — maybe the central reason — the Constitution needed to be passed. And not just any power to tax: Unlimited power to tax.”
IT HAS been already observed that the federal government ought to possess the power of providing for the support of the national forces; in which proposition was intended to be included the expense of raising troops, of building and equipping fleets, and all other expenses in any wise connected with military arrangements and operations. But these are not the only objects to which the jurisdiction of the Union, in respect to revenue, must necessarily be empowered to extend. It must embrace a provision for the support of the national civil list; for the payment of the national debts contracted, or that may be contracted; and, in general, for all those matters which will call for disbursements out of the national treasury. The conclusion is, that there must be interwoven, in the frame of the government, a general power of taxation, in one shape or another.Money is, with propriety, considered as the vital principle of the body politic; as that which sustains its life and motion, and enables it to perform its most essential functions. A complete power, therefore, to procure a regular and adequate supply of it, as far as the resources of the community will permit, may be regarded as an indispensable ingredient in every constitution. From a deficiency in this particular, one of two evils must ensue; either the people must be subjected to continual plunder, as a substitute for a more eligible mode of supplying the public wants, or the government must sink into a fatal atrophy, and, in a short course of time, perish.
In the Ottoman or Turkish empire, the sovereign, though in other respects absolute master of the lives and fortunes of his subjects, has no right to impose a new tax. The consequence is that he permits the bashaws or governors of provinces to pillage the people without mercy; and, in turn, squeezes out of them the sums of which he stands in need, to satisfy his own exigencies and those of the state. In America, from a like cause, the government of the Union has gradually dwindled into a state of decay, approaching nearly to annihilation. Who can doubt, that the happiness of the people in both countries would be promoted by competent authorities in the proper hands, to provide the revenues which the necessities of the public might require?
The present Confederation, feeble as it is intended to repose in the United States, an unlimited power of providing for the pecuniary wants of the Union. But proceeding upon an erroneous principle, it has been done in such a manner as entirely to have frustrated the intention. Congress, by the articles which compose that compact (as has already been stated), are authorized to ascertain and call for any sums of money necessary, in their judgment, to the service of the United States; and their requisitions, if conformable to the rule of apportionment, are in every constitutional sense obligatory upon the States. These have no right to question the propriety of the demand; no discretion beyond that of devising the ways and means of furnishing the sums demanded. But though this be strictly and truly the case; though the assumption of such a right would be an infringement of the articles of Union; though it may seldom or never have been avowedly claimed, yet in practice it has been constantly exercised, and would continue to be so, as long as the revenues of the Confederacy should remain dependent on the intermediate agency of its members. What the consequences of this system have been, is within the knowledge of every man the least conversant in our public affairs, and has been amply unfolded in different parts of these inquiries. It is this which has chiefly contributed to reduce us to a situation, which affords ample cause both of mortification to ourselves, and of triumph to our enemies.
What remedy can there be for this situation, but in a change of the system which has produced it in a change of the fallacious and delusive system of quotas and requisitions? What substitute can there be imagined for this ignis fatuus in finance, but that of permitting the national government to raise its own revenues by the ordinary methods of taxation authorized in every well-ordered constitution of civil government? Ingenious men may declaim with plausibility on any subject; but no human ingenuity can point out any other expedient to rescue us from the inconveniences and embarrassments naturally resulting from defective supplies of the public treasury.
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Oh, that’s right — we hate it. Big hole in the federal budget and all.
Then you should be dancing that it died Sunday night, right? Yeah, that’s right: TARP expired.
But, maybe we should be lamenting its passage, and celebrating it. It ended up costing us almost nothing but the problem of having Tea Party, ignorant ingrates involved in the campaign. It might even have turned a profit. In any case, it didn’t leave a big hole in the federal budget, and there is little doubt that it saved us from the Greater Depression.
What if, in the end, the Toxic Asset Relief Program so controversial at birth and vilified throughout its two years of life turns out to have turned a profit for the government and the taxpayer?
We — most of the news media this is — simply don’t know what to do with this news.
The suggestion that TARP did not blow a hole in the federal budget potentially blows a hole in some other presumptions as well. Economists will argue for years over the necessity of TARP, and the rest of us can argue over the bonuses investment bankers still got (and continue to get).But we won’t argue about whether the government could or should have done more to prevent the collapse of the credit markets and the mass failure of banks in 2008. Because the government did do TARP, and those other things did not happen. We did not go back to 1929 or worse. And, unlovely as it may be, TARP remains the closest thing we have to an explanation for that.
Still, the expiration of the program as Sunday turned to Monday passed largely unremarked. And insofar as the media have noticed the story of TARP’s apparently much-reduced cost, that tale has been anything but ballyhooed.
On the last business day before TARP expired, The New York Times and The Washington Post did report the much-reduced cost figures — mentioning the potential for the program to actually make money for taxpayers in the final accounting. But the Times put the story in the Business Section, and the Post played it on the Federal Page.
What other “common sense” delusions will misdirect this year’s election vote?
What thanks do we get? What thanks do we give?
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John Mashey assembled a massive document that nails down the case that bad science and politics make the complaints against scientists and the science that indicates global warming occurs, and can be attributed to greenhouse gases. It is a scandal, though it’s unlikely to be reported that way.
Mashey’s paper indicts staff work done for Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas — not that any of the voters in Barton’s district will let this major breach of ethics sway their votes, but those who want to vote against him can be gratified that they are on the moral side of the ballot.
This report offers a detailed study of the “Wegman Report”: Edward J. Wegman, David W. Scott, Yasmin H. Said, “AD HOC COMMITTEE REPORT ON THE ‘HOCKEY STICK’ GLOBAL CLIMATE RECONSTRUCTION”(2006).
It has been key prop of climate anti-science ever since. It was promoted to Congress by Representatives Joe Barton and Ed Whitfield as “independent, impartial, expert” work by a team of “eminent statisticians.” It was none of those.
A Barton staffer provided much of the source material to the Wegman team. The report itself contains numerous cases of obvious bias, as do process, testimony and follow-on actions. Of 91 pages, 35 are mostly plagiarized text, but often injected with errors, bias and changes of meaning. Its Bibliography is mostly padding, 50% of the references uncited in the text. Many references are irrelevant or dubious. The team relied heavily on a long-obsolete sketch and very likely on various uncredited sources. Much of the work was done by Said (then less than 1 year post-PhD) and by students several years pre-PhD. The (distinguished) 2nd author Scott wrote only a 3-page standard mathematical Appendix. Some commenters were surprised to be later named as serious “reviewers.” Comments were often ignored anyway. People were misused.
The Wegman Report claimed two missions: #1 evaluate statistical issues of the “hockey stick” temperature graph, and #2 assess potential peer review issues in climate science. For #1, the team might have been able to do a peer-review-grade statistical analysis, but in 91 pages managed not to do so. For #2, a credible assessment needed a senior, multidisciplinary panel, not a statistics professor and his students, demonstrably unfamiliar with the science and as a team, unqualified for that task. Instead, they made an odd excursion into “social network analysis,” a discipline in which they lacked experience, but used poorly to make baseless claims of potential wrongdoing.
In retrospect, the real missions were: #1 claim the “hockey stick” broken and #2 discredit climate science as a whole. All this was a facade for a PR campaign well-honed by Washington, DC “think tanks” and allies, underway for years.
Now, if only Mashey had some e-mails stolen from Joe Barton, we could get some traction on the issue, eh? ::wink-wink, nudge-nudge::
One may wonder what it will take to rehabilitate the skeptical side of the debate, to the point that they contribute more than mau-mauing.
Mashey’s paper makes that case that Joe Barton worked hard to pull off a great, hoaxed political smear, with a high degree of success. Who will have the backbone to do anything about it? Global cooling will proceed to the next ice age before any Republican shows backbone, I predict.
But, how long before the Fort Worth Star-Telegram or the Dallas Morning News picks up the story?
Other Texas bloggers? Anyone?
It’s not an air-tight legal brief (I could quibble with some of the legal material), but in a better world, a world where politicians actually do good politics and public servants do public service, the House Rules Committee and Ethics Committee would be reading Mashey’s piece, and asking pointed questions. U.S. attorneys in Washington, D.C., and the Northern District of Texas, would also be downloading Mashey’s piece, and puzzling it out. Journalists in Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin, Galveston and Houston in Texas, and Washington, D.C., and New York, would also be poring over the piece. KenCuccinelliin Virginia would also be paying attention to it, if he were concerned about justice.
Last November and December, in their campaign to impugn science and promote air pollution, climate change “skeptics” said that global warming is done, and that we are in a new planetary cooling phase.
“The interesting thing about it is the temperature anomaly map for June shows it was pretty much warm everywhere over land except for a few places,” said David Easterling, of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., which released the data. “That’s somewhat of an uncommon pattern to see almost all the land mass being that warm.”
Only the U.S. Pacific Northwest, northern Europe and southern China were cooler than average, according to NOAA.
As the Earth continues to heat up from rising levels of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, the planet is likely to see more record-breaking years. “As we continue to get warmer, the odds of any given year breaking the record are pretty high,” Easterling said.
Indeed, four of the five warmest years on record have come in the last decade. The reigning warmest year on record is 2005, followed by 1998, 2003, 2006 and 2009, Easterling said.
We don’t even have to see their intimate e-mails to know they fibbed to us. The thermometer on the patio has the news.
Last year, when the world’s leaders were preparing to meet in Copenhagen, harpies from the radical and crazy right insisted that global warming had ceased its advances, and the global cooling would be the norm for the near and midrange future. They promised!*
Good heavens! Do you think they were fibbing when they said the scientists were wrong, and mean? Were they fibbing when they said CO2 is not a pollutant?
How many more broken promises? (/sarcasm off)
Would Copenhagen’s result been different had this information been available a year earlier?
* Note: No, they didn’t promise, not really. Critics of taking action for a better future never promise anything solid. They only carp that whatever being done is wrong, unnecessary, and too expensive. Plus, they complain that the food is horrible to the point of being inedible, and the portions are too small.
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From the utterly delusional Christine O’Donnell [Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Delaware], said on the Bill O’Reilly show in 2007:
“They are — they are doing that here in the United States. American scientific companies are cross-breeding humans and animals and coming up with mice with fully functioning human brains.”
Which gives those hypothetical mice a sizable leg up on O’Donnell.
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U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) Africa Indoor Residual Spraying (AIRS) Project found this warehouse with 119 tons of leftover, surplus and expired DDT in Ethiopia. In total, PMI AIRS Progect found 930 tons of unused DDT in Ethiopia, in 1,600 tons of expired pesticides total. Other nations have other surplus DDT stocks. Africa never suffered a shortage of DDT.
Watch the video, and you can see God trying to stop her from talking, putting that frog in her throat.
I only respond to the first six minutes or so — you get the idea. McIlhinney leaves no falsehood untold, no crazy charge not leveled at Rachel Carson and “environmentalists.”
Here’s the film clip of McIlhinney misleading the masses:
Here is my quick and dirty response:
1. Environmentalists are not calling for a ban on coal, oil or gas. Fear talk. Why would anyone tell such a whopping lie? How do we know the film lies? Who is this “environmentalist” they fear to name?
2. Rachel Carson was right — DDT kills ecosystems. Carson said we needed to restrict the use of DDT in order to keep it viable as a pesticide. But few listened (not McIlhinney, that’s for sure). Consequently, DDT became ineffective against mosquitoes that carry malaria, scuttling the World Health Organization’s ambitious campaign to eradicate malaria. Had that not happened, and had we eradicated malaria by 1975 as planned, millions of lives could have been saved. McIlhinney is the one with blood on her hands.
3. DDT has never been banned worldwide, was never banned in Africa, and is still used in those places it still works, under a special treaty signed in 2001. McIlhinney hopes you won’t know about that treaty, and fails to mention it herself. What’s she trying to hide?
4. Carson did not say DDT was the sole culprit for the decline of birds — but by 1962, it was the sole culprit preventing their recovery. Bald eagles and brown pelicans have come off the endangered species list, populations recovering in almost lock-step with the decline of DDT in the birds’ flesh — proof that Carson was right.
5. Under U.S. law, no agency could ban a useful pesticide without mountains of evidence that the pesticide was dangerous. Four separate court proceedings looked at DDT, two before the EPA acted, and two appeals after EPA banned DDT use on crops. All four courts found DDT to be dangerous and uncontrollable in the wild. The two appeals of EPA’s labeling change were both decided on summary judgment — the science was so powerfully on Carson’s side. In May 1963 the President’s Science Advisory Council reported on their fact checking of Carson’s book — they said Carson was dead right in everything but one: Carson was too easy on DDT. That panel, with its significant population of Nobel winners, called for quick action against DDT. Why doesn’t McIlhinney give the facts here?
6. The claim that EPA’s ban influenced WHO is pure bullfeathers. WHO had to end its malaria eradication campaign, using DDT, in 1965 — the mosquitoes were immune to the stuff. EPA didn’t act until seven years later, and EPA’s jurisdiction extends only to the borders of the U.S. In fact, EPA’s “ban” left DDT to be manufactured in the U.S. for export to Africa. Can’t McIlhinney read a calendar? The “ban” in 1972 did not travel back through time to stop WHO from using DDT. (For that matter, WHO never completely stopped DDT — wherever it could work, they used it, and still do.)
7. DDT has always been available for any government in Africa to use. What that guy in the film is really saying is racist: He’s claiming Africans were too stupid to use DDT, though it was cheap and available, and though it would save their lives. Don’t listen to him. Africans are not stupid: They’d use DDT were it effective and safe. Shame on McIlhinney for entertaining such a claim.
8. Malaria did not skyrocket after DDT was banned in the U.S. Mosquitoes don’t migrate that far. There was an uptick in malaria 20 years later, when the pharmaceuticals that cure malaria in humans, ceased to be effective.
But today, malaria rates are the lowest they’ve been in recorded history, and malaria death rates are the lowest they’ve been in human history. When the U.S. banned DDT spraying on cotton in 1972, about 2 million people a year died from malaria. Today, the death toll is under 900,000. Don’t be frightened or stampeded by erroneous, large figures.
In the end, we can’t poison Africa to health, and if we could, it would be immoral to do that instead of building health care to fight diseases.
Children die because hard-hearted politicos like Ann McIlhinney frustrate the work of malaria fighters, and mislead policy makers away from solutions that would save children’s lives.
Shame on her.
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DDT doesn’t work against bedbugs, and hasn’t worked against them since the late 1950s.
Astroturf organizations, so-called “think-tanks” set up by corporate interests jumped on bedbugs as another way of attacking the 46-years dead Rachel Carson, environmentalists, scientists and government — falsely. The Heartland Institute is singled out as one group spreading false claims in favor of poison and against environmental protection.
The recent resurgence of bedbugs is more related to changes in fighting other pests than in the discontinuation of DDT against them. Had DDT been the magic answer, bedbugs should have made a resurgence in 1960 when DDT use against them was stopped, not 2010, a full half-century later.
The many screeds in favor of DDT are politically driven, not science driven.
Think about that — every claim that we need DDT to fight bedbugs is a planted, political advertisement, and not a fact-based policy argument. Each of those claims is based in a political smear, and not based on science.
The really weird part is that so many writers and bloggers spread the false claims without being paid. Selling one’s soul for money is understandable; giving one’s soul away for nothing is stupid, or evil, or both.
Newsweek reported:
DDT “devastated” bedbug populations when it was introduced in the 1940s, says Richard Cooper, technical director for Cooper Pest Solutions and a widely quoted authority on bedbug control. Mattresses were soaked in it, wallpaper came pre-treated with it. It also killed boll weevils, which fed on cotton buds and flowers (by far, the majority of DDT was applied to cotton fields), and, incidentally, it killed bald eagles and numerous other species of birds, the phenomenon that gave Carson her title. In the laboratory, DDT can cause cancer in animals; its effect on human beings has long been debated, but since it accumulates up the food chain, and stays in the body for years, the consensus among public-health experts was that it was better to act before effects showed up in the population. But long before the United States banned most uses of it in 1972, DDT had lost its effectiveness against bedbugs—which, like many fast-breeding insects, are extremely adept at evolving resistance to pesticides. “Bloggers talk about bringing back DDT,” says Bob Rosenberg, director of government affairs for the National Pest Management Association, “but we had stopped using it even before 1972.”
The Texas Board of Education announced Monday that it will order new Bibles for Texas schools that remove all references to Jesus on the grounds that his teachings are “too liberal” for the classroom. The changes will likely impact Bibles sold throughout the U.S. because Texas buys more Bibles than any other state.
The board approved the changes in a 10 to 5 party-line vote with unanimous support from Republicans. Dr. Don McLeroy, a dentist and leader of the board’s conservative faction, said the changes were approved without any input from theologians, in keeping with the board’s practice of editing schoolbooks on its own and ignoring experts.
“I know there’s folks who will say we in Texas have no business teaching religion in the classroom, well frankly a bunch of ignorant zealots like us have no business meddling with textbooks either but that’s didn’t stop us from doing so,” McLeroy said. “Here in the republic of Texas we don’t give a lick what the rest of the country thinks, unless of course we need federal money or help with stuff like hurricanes.”
Quotes from Don McLeroy are a little creepy, no? You know it’s parody — isn’t it? — and yet the quotes and tone just ring so . . . true.
It’s a parody, right? Isn’t it? This can’t be accurate, right?
The project, an online effort to create a Bible suitable for contemporary conservative sensibilities, claims Jesus’ quote is a disputed addition abetted by liberal biblical scholars, even if it appears in some form in almost every translation of the Bible.
The project’s authors argue that contemporary scholars have inserted liberal views and ahistorical passages into the Bible, turning Jesus into little more than a well-meaning social worker with a store of watered-down platitudes.
“Professors are the most liberal group of people in the world, and it’s professors who are doing the popular modern translations of the Bible,” said Andy Schlafly, founder of Conservapedia.com, the project’s online home.
Wait. That’s got to be a parody, right? No?
That’s not parody? “Andy Schlafly” really exists, and despite his appearing to be so stupid as to have to be reminded to breathe, he’s complaining about Jesus’s liberal views?
Gods forgive them For Christ’s sake, God, stop them now, for they know nothing. They know NOTHING.
You can be sure that, were Glenn Beck still alive today, he’d be out there to complain about people like Schlafly “rewriting the words of the founders.”
Tip of the old scrub brush to Kathryn, whose friend observed of Andy Schlafly, “This just goes to show you that the shit doesn’t fall very far from the bat.” The line has already been copyrighted, but feel free to use it in pursuit of enlightenment, education, and human rights.
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Can you imagine the contretemps had he announced he won’t enforce federal immigration laws, nor support their enforcement by federal officials?
Abbott is once again putting politics far, far ahead of science, no matter how it damages Texas (Texas pays premiums in home insurance already because of damage from global warming).
If it’s something in the water that generates such craziness, I hope it enters the water systems well south of Dallas.
Abbott’s opponent is a well-respected, deeply experienced, honorable attorney named Barbara Ann Radnofsky. Almost every big polluting corporation in America is supporting Abbott. You may want to consider that as you contribute to candidates this week (hurry!), and as you vote this fall.
“Obama won’t let me hunt the homeless for sport. That’s why I’m voting Tea Party”
“Obama won’t teach my kids that the Earth is flat. “
“Obama wants the government to take over Social Security.”
“Obama doesn’t realize fire departments are socialism.”
And more.
The danger is, maybe Tea Party people are buying them, for real. It was here in Dallas I ran into the Tea Party group who complained, back to back, that the nation isn’t following the Constitution, and they hated that the government was taking the census. (Yeah, that’s right: The census is required by the Constitution.)
Why are you voting Tea Party?
Tip of the old scrub brush to Our Man in Beijing, Kenny.
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President Obama scheduled a speech to school kids for September 14. Here’s the press release:
The White House
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
August 25, 2010
President Obama to Deliver Back to School Speech September 14
WASHINGTON, D.C. – As students begin their school year, President Barack Obama will deliver his second annual Back-to-School Speech at 1:00 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, September 14 at Julia R. Masterman Laboratory and Demonstration School in Philadelphia, PA, a 2010 National Blue Ribbon School. The President’s Back-to-School Speech is an opportunity to speak directly to students across the country. Last year, President Obama encouraged students to study hard, stay in school, and take responsibility for their education.
President Obama’s Back-to-School Speech will be live streamed on WhiteHouse.gov.
For more information about watching the speech, visit www.whitehouse.gov/back-to-school . This event is by invitation only, and additional media coverage details will be released soon.
Let’s examine what we learned from the brainwashing last year: 1. A year later, subtle changes can be sensed in the youngsters whose parents so carelessly let them listen to the speech. Instead of sports and girls, boys are talking about Chairman Mao — until their parents walk in the room. Then it’s all xBox and whatever the hell kids are talking about these days, or so they’d have you think.
2. Talk radio and Fox learned a lesson from their hilarious overreaction to last year’s speech. Now, they take a deep breath and ask themselves when a new controversy comes up “Is this just Republican BS? Like that education speech, and death panels, and whatever else they throw up against the wall?” Then they run with it, of course, but still — now they sometimes take a breath beforehand.
3. The piercing intelligence of members of the Oklahoma state legislature was conclusively proven. Oklahoma State Senator Steve Russell said this: “As far as I am concerned, this is not civics education — it gives the appearance of creating a cult of personality. This is something you’d expect to see in North Korea or in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.” Has any statement in all of human history proven to be more correct? Besides “Steve Russell is a hack,” we mean.
Vivian Paige pulled together early reports and the actual court documents: A judge in Virginia quashed the subpeona issued by Virginia’s Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli to the University of Virginia, in a rather blatant attempt to silence a famous scientist working on global warming, Michael Mann.
Judge Paul M. Peatross Jr. ruled that Cuccinelli can investigate whether fraud has occurred in university grants, as the attorney general had contended, but ruled that Cuccinelli’s subpoena failed to state a “reason to believe” that Mann had committed fraud.
The ruling is a major blow for Cuccinelli, a global warming skeptic who had maintained that he was investigating whether Mann committed fraud in seeking government money for research that showed that the earth has experienced a rapid, recent warming. Mann, now at Penn State University, worked at U-Va. until 2005.
According to Peatross, the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act, under which the civil investigative demand was issued, requires that the attorney general include an “objective basis” to believe that fraud has been committed. Peatross indicates that the attorney general must state the reason so that it can be reviewed by a court, which Cuccinelli failed to do.
Peatross set the subpoena aside without prejudice, meaning Cuccinelli could give the subpoena another try by rewriting the civil demand to better explain the conduct he wishes to investigate. But the judge seemed skeptical of Cuccinelli’s underlying claim about Mann, noting that Cuccinelli’s deputy maintained in a court hearing that the nature of Mann’s fraud was described in subsequent court papers in the case.
“The Court has read with care those pages and understands the controversy regarding Dr. Mann’s work on the issue of global warming. However, it is not clear what he did was misleading, false or fraudulent in obtaining funds from the Commonwealth of Virginia,” Peatross wrote.
Also, as suggested earlier here, the judge noted that Cuccinelli’s authority did not extend to four of the five grants questioned, because they were federal grants, not state grants. (See here, too.)
Comments at Helderman’s article show the fault lines of division on global warming — purely political faultlines.
Since opponents of action against warming so frantically publicized stolen e-mails from researchers late last year, in official proceedings scientists have smacked down skeptics on almostevery issue.
Or, until that account is unsuspended by the forces supporting Donald Trump: Follow @FillmoreWhite, the account of the Millard Fillmore White House Library
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Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control.
My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it.
BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah
Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona
JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
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