To be skeptical of climate models and credulous about things like carbon-eating trees and cloudmaking machinery and hoses that shoot sulfur into the sky is to replace a faith in science with a belief in science fiction. This is the turn that “SuperFreakonomics” takes, even as its authors repeatedly extoll their hard-headedness. All of which goes to show that, while some forms of horseshit are no longer a problem, others will always be with us.
Archives for 2009
Fear of a Beck planet
K-thug summarizes why no one should be rooting for FreedomWorks/Club For Growth/Beck/Palin in the Republican civil war:
And if Tea Party Republicans do win big next year, what has already happened in California could happen at the national level. In California, the G.O.P. has essentially shrunk down to a rump party with no interest in actually governing — but that rump remains big enough to prevent anyone else from dealing with the state’s fiscal crisis. If this happens to America as a whole, as it all too easily could, the country could become effectively ungovernable in the midst of an ongoing economic disaster.
The point is that the takeover of the Republican Party by the irrational right is no laughing matter. Something unprecedented is happening here — and it’s very bad for America.
To be clear, the Beck/Palin wing is ascendant right now and everyone should admit that. But, as amusing as it was, the Republican debacle in NY-23 should frighten everyone.
Open Thread
Jeroen, Below the waterline.
toujoursdan, Senegal.
Email me a link to your one or two favorite pics on a photo site like Flickr (do not send the image itself please) and I will put up favorites in open threads. Send a short caption if you want one.
These Aren’t the References You’re Looking For
So I see that several wingnut blogs are now comparing the scene Saturday night in the House after the vote, when the Democrats were cheering Pelosi, to this scene:
This is funny for all the usual reasons, but doubly so because some of us can remember past week. If you will remember, when this movie came out, the same species of wingnut was literally FREAKING out about the Star Wars film being anti-Bush. Here is deep thinker and nepotism beneficiary J-Pod:
The whole confusion is reminiscent of the last Matrix movie, which is all about a noble truce between our heroes and the computers that have been using all of humanity as batteries. So that a few people could survive to have orgies in the underground city of Zion, billions of people had to remain in the Matrix. Inadvertently, both Lucas and the Wachowski brothers (who wrote and directed the Matrix movies) reveal with their brainless anti-Bushism the essential cowardly vapidity of pacifism.
Morans.
At any rate, we really need to undertake a project like the lexicon- we can call it Wingnut Movie References, and we can chronicle all their idiotic references to movies. I remember a couple of weeks ago someone at Red State was comparing something to Obi Wan being struck down, and I know these guys are fond of 300 and LOTR references.
These Aren’t the References You’re Looking ForPost + Comments (161)
It’s The End Of The World As We Know It
Reviewing Republican behavior during the Health Care Reform debate on Saturday, you would think an militant band of spoiled toddlers with Tourette’s had occupied the right half of the House. Or howler monkeys. If it was not the most embarrassing display of bad behavior in recent government history, it is only because of everything else Republicans did lately. When lying didn’t work (they want to euthanize granny!) they tried hyperbole (health insurance reform is LITERALLY THE SAME THING AS STALIN TIMES THE HOLOCAUST!). Then they tried lying again. Then lying plus hyperbole, stamping their feet and shouting.
Normally the side that doesn’t have the law on its side, and doesn’t have the facts either, recognizes that you just lose twice if you throw your credibility and reputation into a losing fight. This fight was clearly different for Republicans, and you know what? They’re right. If the GOP had not pushed the Overton Window way to the right compared with where we started when Single Payer was still on the table (ish), Democratic moderates would have no problem supporting the watered down “moderate” compromise that the House finally passed yesterday. The bills would have steamrolled both houses of Congress with decent support from swing-district Republicans if the party had not made it a hill to die on with an emphasis on die.
Bill Kristol had it right in 1994. If Democrats effectively fix health care then Republicans are screwed. Any health care reform that does not suck even worse would effectively be written in stone as soon as it passed. Realigning their issue set to stay relevant could be quite awkward since Democrats already claimed most of the issues that Americans don’t hate. To stay alive Republicans would need to tack somewhere less crazy, but that would motivate Michelle Bachmann’s twenty-some percent of crazy people to go third party. Those two factors would effectively doom Republicans to share a shrinking back bench with the conservative fruitcake party and their pet schmuck Joe Lieberman.
So yeah, Republicans pulled out all the stops on this one. If they can find another stop before the Senate vote they’ll pull that one too. Pretty much the only institutional incentive not pushing them towards brinksmanship at this point is that desiccated raisin occupying space where most people would have a conscience.
An Apple Is Exactly The Same Thing As A Truck Full of Oranges
The second most annoying thing about Andrew Sullivan’s latest back-patting exercise is how casually he repaints his part in the right’s psychotic 2003 wargasm as if he was just sensibly skeptical of leftwing extremists. Look, Sullivan has already admitted that he went way too far with the Saddam-lover, weak on terror Christopher Hitchens crap. Everyone but Dan Riehl knows that Sullivan bought wholeheartedly into something truly dangerous during those years. The war propaganda campaign did worse than wreck America’s economy and kill more Americans than 9/11. If Republicans did their job just a bit better, maybe not flushed their brand with Katrina and Shiavo and the Social Security embarrassment, America would be a different place.
Do we have accountability for torture yet? Did Obama rescind any Presidential powers? The last time I checked Glennzilla the government was still making inane appeals to the State Secrets clause. As much as it seems like we stepped a long way from the Bush years, too many reforms barely scratch the first layer of TV makeup. Let’s say the next guy decides that America does torture. What will stop him? A guilty conscience? We are too close to the edge to forget the sickness of Bush’s first term.
That said, I can get why Sullivan does not want to pick the wound daily, even if it leaves useful context unspoken. It galls me a lot more that he implies that ANSWER and Code Pink somehow equal Republican party leaders from Boehner and McConnell all the way down to Assistant Deputy Director of OMFGHITLER. I mean, jesus, I can’t believe that I forgot all the times that Harry Reid got on his knees to beg Code Pink to forgive him over some innocuous remark. The two phenomena are obviously exactly the fucking same.
An Apple Is Exactly The Same Thing As A Truck Full of OrangesPost + Comments (133)
Andrew Sullivan, American Conservative
Mr. Sullivan decries the falling standards of modern Catholicism:
In Onaiyekan, you have a classic Benedict/JP II Archbishop: dumb as a post, sheltered from the actual debate in the West, incapable of argument, and pathetic as a spokesman. The problem with the theoconservative take-over in the Catholic priesthood is not so much its extremism as its mediocrity. And it is mediocre because it has been trained not to thin[k], not to argue, and not to engage the modern world. It has been trained solely for obedience.
As a Victorian reviewer once said of Shakespeare’s Anthony & Cleopatra: Soooo unlike the home life of our own dear Queen!