Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

We’re not going back!

Second rate reporter says what?

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Don’t expect peaches from an apple tree.

After roe, women are no longer free.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

We still have time to mess this up!

Let there be snark.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

Take your GOP plan out of the witness protection program.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

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61Comments

  6. 6.

    The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik

    He’s a silly Yurpean, though, that alone makes anything he says suspect. They’re in on the green fascism, don’t you know.

  9. 9.

    Elizabelle

    They’re right, John.

    It’s Wagner.

    Here’s an editorial by Dr. Wolfgang Wagner, Editor-in-Chief of Remote Sensing...

    PS: Doesn’t Remote Sensing sound like an emo poetry mag?

  10. 10.

    Hill Dweller

    Just like the Acorn, ‘climate-gate’ and Black Panther/Justice Dept. scandals, the media, who breathlessly covered the initial claims because wingers were pushing it, will completely ignore reality.

  11. 11.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    Ya know I think I might be getting more and more into this whole Jeebus/Gawd thing. Good Hair Perry has had prayers for rain and TS Lee appears to be DELIBERATELY bypassing Texas, I mean to the extent that the rain stops at the border.

    http://www.weather.com/maps/news/atlstorm13/truvu8_large.html

    How much more information do you need to figure out that The Baby Jeebus’s Daddy hates the fuck out of Rick Perry.

  12. 12.

    MikeJ

    @Hill Dweller:

    who breathlessly covered the initial claims because wingers were pushing it

    So who’s out there pushing this? The people who should be are all busy shooting at our side.

  13. 13.

    Trentrunner

    Did I miss the post where Cole made the usual “butthurt Obama-haters bully-pulpit-confidence-fairies” accusation at those who deign to criticize Obama for abandoning the EPA clean air fight?

    I didn’t think so.

    Because it’s not defensible.

  15. 15.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Trentrunner: Yep, let’s just primary him and get it over with. Who is your uncompromised and pure candidate who never made a deal with a group of senators from his own party? Introduce this paragon, please.

  16. 16.

    Too Many Jimpersons (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)

    Come on, the guy’s name is Wolfgang. He’s almost sure to be a commie with a name like that, so we can’t trust him.

    Seriously, though, we need better science teaching in America. We have a political party that has dedicated itself to trashing science, and, while science can’t answer every question, we need it to understand the world we live in, and to use this world to make our lives better without doing any harm to it. What middle and high school students need to learn is less how a cell works, or the periodic table–though those are important, too–but mostly they need to learn, 1, What science is; 2, What science isn’t, and 3, How to thell one from the other. If there were enough people in this country who understood those three things, we wouldn’t have to worry about creationists or climate change deniers. People would already know that they’re full of shit.

  17. 17.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Trentrunner: It’s defensible: mining/manufacturing state Democrats have been imploring him to do it for a long time. (The discussion has been scattered around various threads, or I’d point you to some of the flare-ups.) Just because it’s defensible doesn’t mean that it’s the right move, of course.

  19. 19.

    Violet

    @Litlebritdifrnt:
    Yeah, it’s really is crazy. The rain stops right at the Sabine river and won’t cross into Texas.

    Hey, I was wondering if you were planning on watching the Rugby World Cup? Any line on how to see it? I hate watching sports online, but so far universalsports.com seems to be the only way to watch it online. Unless you want to shell out $25-$35/match for PPV, which is just ridiculous. I don’t know why they aren’t offering a package deal for the entire RWC. Any thoughts?

  20. 20.

    Too Many Jimpersons (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)

    @Litlebritdifrnt:

    Damn, that’s funny.

    Perry, though, is not. He’s dangerous. He has a good racket going, I’ll give him that, but that’s about all I can say for him. It’s inspired, though, really. He can point to any problem, any at all, and rather than trying to get people committed to doing something about it–you know, being responsible (conservatives only like to talk about being responsible; they never want to be responsible)–he just has everybody pray that God will take care of their problem for them. If the problem goes away on its own, he can take credit for being a great leader who rallied his constituents to pray hard enough to overcome their hurdle; if it doesn’t, or even if it gets worse, he can blame some small, rather helpless group for pissing God off, and his constituents can take it out on them. He wins either way! The rest of us, well, not so much…

    You know, for a party that accuses liberals of wanting the government to be our mommy and fix everything for us, these guys sure do like to ask God to solve every last little thing that goes wrong for them. I’m amazed these people have enough sense to get up and go buy more beer when they’ve emptied the last can; I’d have thought they’d just sit there and pray really hard for God to make a beer truck drive up with free samples…

  23. 23.

    Katie5

    For someone who knows a lot about and even publishes in this field, I’m shocked that this got by the reviewers. OTOH, I rarely review papers anymore, not even for top tier journals, because there isn’t enough brownie points in it for me. That makes me an uncolleagial colleague but the pressures of the job mean that I can’t spend the considerable time needed to do a good job. Which also means that for a new, and open access journal to boot, the editors may have reach a bit far into the barrel to even find three reviewers.

  25. 25.

    Trainrunner

    The Clean-Air capitulation is NOT defensible. It’s not defensible as policy, morally, and politically–it’s fuckin’ Republican framing, e.g., “Regulations are job-killers.”

    Think not? Have a look at Mitch McConnell’s slimy comment, that “it’s a good start,” and “Obama just saved more jobs than any speech he could give next week.”

    And I’m not even going into how this damages the air. That we need. TO LIVE.

    Fuck, people. This isn’t rocket science. But you can’t justify this, no-way, no-how.

  27. 27.

    Calouste

    @Too Many Jimpersons (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.):

    It kind of ties in with what Bachmann(?) said about the Rennaissance being wrong because it gave humans primacy over God. The government are humans and not God and so are not right. Although I’m pretty sure that there is something in the Bible about humans being appointed by God to be the caretaker of the Earth, and that there is nothing in it about sitting on your arse all day and waiting for God to sort everything out.

    Which brings a question going back to a discussion here a few days ago about how evangelicals see God as their personal concierge. Where in the Bible does God actually help someone out without strings attached? All I can remember is things like Job, the Jews being led out of Egypt but having to wander in the desert for 40 years and even then Mozes would die before entering the promised land, etc.

  28. 28.

    Roger Moore

    @Katie5:

    For someone who knows a lot about and even publishes in this field, I’m shocked that this got by the reviewers.

    As I understand it, the problem is that they somehow chose only reviewers who are sympathetic to AGW denialism. Even if you don’t think it was a fix- I know that in my field authors are generally solicited for lists of possible reviewers they believe are qualified to review their work- they presumably weren’t adequately skeptical. Also, and very important, this was published in a field that’s associated with climate science, rather than in a climate journal. That probably made it easier to find a list of deniers and made any reviewer- and the editor- less likely to know how the issue had already been hashed out in climate research journals.

  29. 29.

    MikeBoyScout

    I’ll tell you how it’s done!
    Global warming? I’ll tell you what! You just wait.
    It is not going to get warmer over coming months, but cooler.
    Not later than the middle of October, it won’t be 100 degrees Fahrenheit in Texas.
    See? It is getting cooler.

    Global warming. pfft.

    Now, if you want to talk about impending catastrophe, how about that inflation thing? Any minute now inflation is going to explode and we’ll all be living in Athens.

  30. 30.

    aisce

    @ flipyrwhig

    It’s defensible: mining/manufacturing state Democrats have been imploring him to do it for a long time.

    by that philosophy, everything is defensible. because there will always be somebody powerful in washington lobbying against any conceivable decision made.

    just saying.

  31. 31.

    suzanne

    @Trentrunner:

    Because it’s not defensible.

    Was someone defending it? I seem to have missed that.

    On the original topic, I get that it’s awesome and integrous to resign when you fuck up that badly. The bummer, though, is that leaves assholes running the show.

  35. 35.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Corner Stone: I think the most positive view of it you are going to see around here, aside from that of Ozone/Nick who I tend to discount, is that it was a necessary evil.

    Edited slightly.

  36. 36.

    suzanne

    @Corner Stone: I personally think it really fucking sucked. I have long been disappointed by Obama’s environmental record. I never again want to hear the term “clean coal” out of his mouth. That’s like saying “delicious dogshit”.

    But my other choice is gonna be Goodhair the Executioner.

  37. 37.

    aisce

    i don’t see what the big deal is. if you accept that the democratic party intends to keep coal mining companies and coal-powered utilities within its sphere of political, financial, and industrial influence, then you have to accept that sometimes that means they will sell out to them.

    when has an administration ever not sold out to the occasional polluter, in the interest of “keeping the peace” or “worrying about jobs” or crass senatorial horsetrading? this administration is not the first. they are, however, empirically the best at resisting this tawdry game so far.

    not every day is gonna be a big winner.

  41. 41.

    Chyron HR

    @Trentrunner:

    Did I miss the post where […]
    __
    I didn’t think so.

    Remember, if the Obotomized Obots aren’t saying anything you disagree with, you can just complain about the things you imagined them hypothetically saying!

  42. 42.

    scav

    @Litlebritdifrnt (et. al. that followed): Well, at least I’ll be in good company for finding it side-hurtingly apt and hilarious.
    ETA: because it is a guilty, if extreme, pleasure.

  44. 44.

    handy

    @MikeJ:

    Seriously? Obama not using rightwing framing in justifying his decision is a pony? I sure hope to hell for Obama’s sake it’s a “jobs creator,” then, because dude is gonna need it to be.

  45. 45.

    Katie5

    @Roger Moore: Can you point me to the piece that suggests the reviewers were anthropogenic climate change deniers? I haven’t seen that. What I’ve seen suggests that the reviewers were not up to the task of assessing the quality of the surface temperature comparisons.

    It’s ominous if deniers have worked their way so deeply into the academic food chain. I guess I do have to do my part and start reviewing those papers again.

  46. 46.

    scav

    @Katie5: The Guardian’s thing on the resignation has something along those lines but they seem to be citing something in the actual resignation

    But Wagner says he now accepts the subsequent criticism from other climate scientists that the peer-review process used to test the paper’s findings was flawed. “As the case presents itself now, the [peer review] editorial team unintentionally selected three reviewers who probably share some climate sceptic notions of the authors …

  47. 47.

    Roger Moore

    @Katie5:

    Can you point me to the piece that suggests the reviewers were anthropogenic climate change deniers?

    It doesn’t sound as if they’re outright deniers, but they are at least sympathetic to AGW denialism. And that’s straight from Dr. Wagner’s editorial on the issue, though he uses a more polite term than denialism:

    But, as the case presents itself now, the editorial team unintentionally selected three reviewers who probably share some climate sceptic notions of the authors.

    As I see it, this is a problem with putting full credence on the AGW implications of papers from related fields. They’re a lot more likely to be reviewed by “skeptics”, and they’re less likely to know the AGW literature and take serious existing literature into account.

  48. 48.

    Katie5

    @scav: Thanks. And thanks Roger Moore. One way to do this is for editors to look through the authors’ bibliography. If the authors cited other deniers then deniers might be chosen to critique the submission.

  49. 49.

    scav

    @Katie5: Yeah, but if that’s the only source for peer review, it’s more likely a biased sample, especially if the article doesn’t explicitly address both sides of the controversy. Ideally, you’d still want someone outside the bibliography — if nothing else, they’ve probably got less skin exposed in the actual fight. I’m afraid there’s nothing to it, you may be guilted into being a good little collegial academic again.

  50. 50.

    Roger Moore

    @Katie5:

    I wonder how much of it is that the editor in charge of this paper just wasn’t ready to deal with such a politicized field. Yes, you have to watch for people getting their friends to review their papers normally, but there’s a whole other level of problem when people may be adopting their scientific beliefs (and hence their friends) for essentially political reasons. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were an informal deniers network so people can find sympathetic reviewers, editors, etc. without it being a obvious as picking somebody from your old lab, somebody whose papers you cite a lot, etc.

  51. 51.

    James E. Powell

    A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes – Mark Twain.

    I have already heard from my right-wing friends and relatives that “NASA determined that global warming is not taking place.” Not a scientist who has worked for NASA, mind you, but NASA itself.

    That lie is enough to keep people wedded to the belief that there is no such thing as global warming for the rest of their lives.

  52. 52.

    scav

    @James E. Powell: Remind them that NASA is an ebil ebil govt agency and thus prone to lying for devious fun and infamy.

    Too bad about Dr. Wagner, beyond the resignation, he sounds like a solid academic although clearly, modelling soil moisture from satellites turned out to be a protected backwater when it came to figuring out how to handle a more, umm, fraught application of RS.

    GSD: Remote Sensing in German, can you get more hard-core techy? Hey, he published something in regards to archaeology and RS. Now I’m grumpy. Hope this fracas is a minor one for him. ETA: Nope on the archeo-RS, one of his colleagues. still grumpy, if pedantic.

  55. 55.

    dww44

    @aisce: Oh, really? Facts please. Just today I get an email from a conservative cousin with a link to an article about how similar to those of his predecessor are the policies of this President. How he’s kept most of them intact. The problem with Obama is that he incrementalizes, equivocates, and back tracks on everything, leading to the inevitable conclusion that there isn’t really anything of principle on which he’s willing to say “NO, but, Hell, No!” Also has the predictable result of deenergizing an ever increasing number of those who pounded the streets and phone banked for him in 2008.

  56. 56.

    Sloegin

    The man screwed up.
    The man fell on his sword.
    He screwed up, but regained some level of respect.

    Rare as hen’s teeth these days, that is.

  57. 57.

    John Puma

    Wagner’s spineless escape in the face of skeptic pranks, instead of confronting them, gets him the “Science Obama of the Month” award.

  58. 58.

    Samara Morgan

    And one of sully’s borg links the Brookings study.
    This is relevent to my question, can the GOP ever win another presidential election without the cities?

    What’s next to fall, Texas? The GOP had better hope not: if the GOP loses Texas, it will become a permanent minority party, incapable of winning the White House except in a rare, fluke election. Yet, three of the 22 minority-dominant metro regions — McAllen, El Paso and Houston — are in Texas.
    __
    Of course, Guardiano treats this larger trend like some sort of change in the weather or a thing that one “waits out” (“People’s voting habits can and do change based on changes in their economic status, education, political campaigns, and, significantly, life experience”) without even acknowledging the possibility that the GOP’s current “political campaigns” are effectively turning away minority voters.

  59. 59.

    Chandler W.

    For Obama it’s win/win.

    From what I understand this rule runs out in 2013.

    So for now, Obama can say he saved jobs. If reelected, and with more and better Democrats in the House and Senate, a new ozone rule goes into effect.

    If he loses, the country is screwed anyway. The Republicans will undo any progress Obama has made anywhere.

  61. 61.

    Corner Stone

    @Chandler W.:

    If reelected, and with more and better Democrats in the House and Senate, a new ozone rule goes into effect.

    This will not be happening.
    So now what?

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