The environment doesn’t need protection, it needs to learn some Hayekian humility:
After 16 years of trying to marry their party’s support for drilling and climate change denial with environmental protection, Republicans for Environmental Protection is dropping the word “Republican” from its name.
The group’s new name, ConservAmerica, is designed to “explain the connection between conservatism and conservation” and underscore the group’s ethic of stewardship.
eemom
oh GOD.
My heart needs protection, and so do IIIIIIIIII…..
Can’t believe Neil frikkin Young of all people did that sickening sap.
DougJ, Head of Infidelity
@eemom:
I’ve had that song semi-stuck in my head for much of my life.
Comrade Dread
You know if we just sold it all off to the highest bidder, the environment would be preserved because no one would ever think of clear cutting forests or strip mining or fracking because they wouldn’t want to ruin their property.
Just think you go visit the Walt Disney Yellowstone Campgrounds or Mt. Rushmore brought to you by American Airlines or the Goldman Sachs Capitol Building.
Huh, well, actually, that last one is already pretty accurate. Damn you reality for screwing up my satire!!!!
eemom
@DougJ, Head of Infidelity:
hmmm…….that would explain a lot. : )
eemom
“My head needs relating not solituuuuuuude”
Has there ever BEEN a stupider lyric?
Schlemizel
Well this is a good thing because we all know that Republicans are not conservatives. The conservatives that keep electing Republicans keep telling us that those guys they elected and who passed the bills doing the things conservatives say they want are not really conservatives or else the stupid shit they pass would have worked.
It all makes sense.
jl
Ok, this is more stuff on this damn blog that goes right over my head. I can’t figure it out. They took what has become a bad word out of their name, and…. so? What are they now?
Are they still a partisan Republican group? Or are they now a nonpartisan conservative conservation group?
And then there is this from the link in the link:
‘ Yet, to hear Jenkins speak, the party hasn’t changed all that much. He blames talk radio and “the left” for mischaracterizing his party.
“Someone needs to be standing up there and saying, ‘Hold it, this is not what conservatism is about,'” he said. “It’s always been really about conservation and stewardship and that’s been sort of the glue that holds all the other tenets of conservatism together. So we wanted to be making that point.” ‘
Seems like some reality based details, like a Republican party that has gone insane, are omitted from his list of problems.
Since this guy is either too thick to understand, or too dishonest to admit, that his party is the main problem, that is not a good sign for this group. I will assume the group will become a con job front of some kind for whoever comes by with lots of dough, so thanks for the heads up.
Schlemizel
@eemom:
“Yummy Yummy Yummy I got love in my tummy”
and I feel like throwing up
Zifnab
My dad was a big Republican supporter back in the 80s, but he was a huge bleeding heart environmentalist, too. I suppose I should be happy that he never got to see what his party turned into after ’94. :-p
I think people forget how many yellow-dog Republicans exist out there. They like free markets. They believe in the virtue of private ownership and business. But they still support common-sense rules and reforms, including those that are about environmental protection.
Frankly, the Democratic Party isn’t so green or so free of sell-outs and goof-ups (looks sideways at Anthony Weiner angrily) that these people have a huge incentive to jump ship and switch parties.
So where do you go? You want to be a conservative and the Democrats are “liberal” (whatever the hell that means anymore). But you can’t stand the fruit-loops in the GOP.
wrb
rea
@Schlemizel: Well, but they’re not conservatives. They’re radical authoritarians and oligarchists.
mai naem
@eemom: ‘It’s my heart needs relaxing not solitude’
not that that makes more sense
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@mai naem: Damn, I was just gonna say “needs relating” makes it the most seventies lyric this side of “I come so together where you are”
Downpuppy
Meanwhile, by way of Charlie, AZ Central reports that Arizona is about to pass a bill forbidding cities to accept federal money for sustainability projects.
Mark S.
The market does work when it comes to protecting the environment. If you don’t like big corporations polluting, just buy those corporations and make them stop polluting.
gbear
@eemom: Well, you could pick almost any set of lyrics from his ‘Fork In The Road’ album. Neil isn’t really one to self-edit.
Keith G
I wish them luck. I suspect we will see this happen with more groups as less spastic conservatives try to assert themselves.
jl
@Zifnab: I think you go with the best bet for change. Here is the decision algorithm I use:
Problem: I want to change things for the better. Go Dem or GOP?
Do I have a googlegazillion dollars to buy influence?
Yes: GOP
No: Dem
There you go.
Now, buying influence is an important part of the Democratic party, no question. But it is not the sole principle, the prime directive, the necessary and sufficient condition for all and everything. So, sadly, a bad choice, but the best choice under current circumstances.
Back when I was a youngin’ in CA, and there were still a few old school moderate conservative progressive GOPers in CA, I think maybe a third of my votes in first couple of election cycles were to GOP candidates.
Times have changed, and now I feel it is my civic duty and moral obligation to do everything I can to completely destroy and erase and make not the current GOP.
We can deal with the many problems of the Democrats later.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
Earlier this morning I realized that they’ve been moving away from Red as their branding color. Romney, Santorum, Gingrich– all their signs have dark blue backgrounds with white lettering that I used to associate with Democrats.
__
Also, too– the Republican running for the House seat for my district neglects to mention his party affiliation anywhere on his website (at least last time I saw it).
redshirt
Arizona has become impressive in their craziness! One thing after another after another.
Does Obama take AZ this year? Maybe!
jl
@Keith G: That was my first reaction too, but if link through all the way to the original story, it looks like the organization will still ID with the GOP, but just taking the name out. The spokesman is emitting what can only be described as fantasy and BS when he says the groups image problems are caused by ‘talk radio’ and ‘the left’.
So, my conclusion is that they are taking ‘Republican’ out of the name to fool people, and it should be considered a dishonest con job front group from now on. At least, until the spokespeople start saying things that are not absurd.
Raven
It’s only rock and roll but I like it like it yes I do.
MattF
@Zifnab: I meet lots of people who say they would be Republicans, if only. However, ‘conservative’ craziness is not a new phenomenon, and people who are still holding their breath for the moment when Republicans get reasonable are kidding themselves, and not breathing very much.
Comrade Dread
@Downpuppy:
There’s your Republican party, folks. Bravely standing astride the progress of history demanding more pollution and waste of energy because… I don’t know, UN blue helmets and secret FEMA camps and shit.
Wonder what those jackasses tunes will be once this happens:
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Downpuppy:
Ah yes, the Where the fuck did all the Hohokam go? Act of 2012. God knows, nobody in AZ needs to worry about *cough*globalwarming*cough* and sustainability. Those crops will just water themselves and suburban spigots across the land will be overflowing with the liquid bounty of God’s love.
The Other Chuck
@Comrade Dread:
What in the world leads you to think that they’ll change anything they say in the slightest?
RedKitten
Unfortunately, the only concern that many conservatives have for the environment, is a worry that their favourite hunting spot might get ruined. Everything else? Fuck it — let’s drill, baby!
jl
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: And all the abandoned suburbs will not be a good tourist attraction. Not nearly as picturesque as the cliff dwellings. Future tourist boards have a real challenge lying ahead.
Gotta be some angle to disintegrating stucco and asphalt, and dead grass, to bring in the money, but what that would be stumps me right now.
Comrade Dread
@The Other Chuck: Well, unless they’d like to try and steal more water from the Colorado and risk getting into a major fight with 7 other states, I’d think they’re only alternative would be to ask for Federal dollars to do something to alleviate their water shortage.
ornery_curmudgeon
Conservatism actually died at the outset of WWII … it is the shame of America that we allowed its resurrection here on free soil. Now the zombie walks again.
The truth is out there, yes, but the lie makes money. I would urge folks to please stop trying to make conservatism ‘work’ in the modern world.
Conservatives bring disaster, however fluffy that bunny seems at the beginning.
MattF
@jl: I’ve flown over Phoenix several times (on my way to Tucson, thank FSM), and you can’t miss all the golf courses. Future selling point will be world’s biggest sand traps, I guess.
wrb
@jl:
The west has a tradition of turning ghost towns into cash cows.
Instead of shoot-outs they can stage legendary suburban dramas.
Roger Moore
@Comrade Dread:
Make one small change and it’s been absolutely true for quite a while.
Forum Transmitted Disease
When you only have to print six new sets of business cards, it’s not that big a deal.
Keith G
@MattF: You do raise an enduringly interesting question: When will the GOP nominate their Bill Clinton? When will they find the leader who make their current extreme less relevant?
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Maybe Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, Kansas, etc can pass the same laws.
wrb
What skill
Reince Priebus says the GOP war on women is like a war on caterpillars.
So they creep and crawl and are hairy and when you kill some, more and more keep coming and coming from everywhere…but when you squish a woman are her guts green?
jl
@wrb: thanks for link. Ol’ Reince was just as foul when discussing the economy. Losing it nasty like that on two issues in the same interview is a nice thing to see. Hope they keep it up.
Soon, they will want Steele back, at least he could handle an interview. Sure, he had his gaffes, but they were cute cuddly little Biden gaffes. Steele did not decompensate ugly in front of the whole country.
So, women are bugs, and people feeling better about the economy is just a Democratic political snow job?
I like the new GOP style. Looks like they want to lose ugly.
burnspbesq
@eemom:
You’re just jealous because you never had hair halfway down your butt like Nicolette Larson.
A great voice, gone way too soon.
DFH no.6
@redshirt:
Nah. I’ve lived here over thirty years now, and there’s no fucking way Obama takes AZ.
The AZ legislature is quite representative of the people who vote here.
I’m still going to the Obama campaign kickoff shindig this evening in downtown Phoenix at The Crescent, with Mayor Stanton and a bunch of other AZ Dem politicos (wish someone other than Jimmy Eat World was providing the entertainment, but I’ll stick around after the campaign thing to catch excellent local indie band Factories).
Maybe I’ll end up over in New Mexico for a couple weeks this fall canvassing like I did in ’08.
DFH no.6
@Comrade Dread:
The Colorado River does not supply most of Phoenix’s water. The majority of the water here is from the Salt River Project, which dams up snowmelt off AZ’s White Mountains. Roughly a third comes via the CAP (Central Arizona Project) which brings water from the Colorado River.
But the point’s taken.
Anthropogenic climate change (primarily warming) is actually happening, and that likely does not bode well for the U.S. mountain west.
But the same probable decrease in snowfall that could dry up Lake Mead (and cause a similar dry up of the reservoirs east of Phoenix) will also hit the Sierra Nevada. And the much larger population area of southern California will be in just as bad a shape as Phoenix for water, if not worse.
Hawes
I’m not sure this is entirely fair. These are the last dozen or so Republicans from the Teddy Roosevelt era. They are sad and deluded, but they do seem to care somewhat about the environment. Maybe not in a Bill McKibben way, but in their own way.
If anything this would be like the Log Cabin Republicans renaming themselves the Log Cabin Conservatives.
If anything they are pointing out how far beyond conservatism the Republican party has gone.
Origuy
They’ll blame it on the liberals with their silly germ theory of disease who wash their hands too often.
wrb
@jl:
If The Real Mitt looks like a caterpillar
is The Real Mitt a woman?
If you place The Real Mitt on a table and hit it with a hammer will
the guts be green?
Comrade Dread
@DFH no.6: Difference being, I don’t think California will sit idly by saying “Nope” to Federal aid dollars for things like desalinization plants or other solutions.
Jamie
In other news, the Komen Foundation renamed themselves the “Boobies Good, Don’t Touch” foundation.
jl
@wrb:
Let me get this straight, you are saying Romney has guts?
That is an extraordinary claim, requiring extraordinary evidence. What is you evidence?
I think current scientific consensus is that Romney guts are like the barnacle’s brain, once the owner has attached itself to a feeding site, unnecessary organs are reabsorbed.
In the news today, I see the Harvard man, Romney, is criticizing Obama for going to Harvard.
The Preibus, in his meltdown, was a harbinger, and they are going deranged in public. I like it. It is ugly, but best we can do given current situation.
punkdavid
Fuck all y’all haterz. Lotta Love is a great song.
Here is Neil & Crazy Horse playing it live in Chicago in 1976 (and as a bonus, you get a smashing version of “Like A Hurricane”, which was, like “Lotta Love”, unreleased at the time).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lh_yx0NYbns
Mike G
designed to “explain the connection between conservatism and conservation”
This being that conservatism hates, and seeks to destroy, conservation as a godless Islamocommie plot, all in the name of short-term greed.
punkdavid
@DFH no.6:
The AZ legislature isn’t representative of the people of Arizona AT ALL. In my personal experience (not 30, but 5 years), Arizona is about a 55-45 split in most cases, and many of the Republicans are of the libertarian bent. If I remember correctly, the registration is something like 37R-33D-30I.
The legislature is gerrymandered to within an inch of its life so as to create the most lopsidedly right-wing body possible in a moderately conservative state.
I’m not saying the AZ variety of wingnut is not off-the-charts, because he is, but in any kind of just world, the legislature would not be a lunatic through and through as it is.
Roger Moore
@Comrade Dread:
And California can solve a lot of its urban water problems by improving efficiency and taking water from extremely inefficient agricultural uses. I think Californians are a lot more likely to accept meddling government laws telling them how much lawn they’re allowed to plant and what kinds of toilets they can buy than Arizonans are.
DFH no.6
@Comrade Dread:
There really won’t be a difference. Southern California and Arizona will suffer the exact same fate on water shortage due to global warming and decreasing snowfall in the mountains.
And Arizona will take all the federal money it can get for water projects. Always has (that’s how the Salt River Project and the CAP were built).
Even the countless teabagger assholes around here know that. It’s the main thing I shut them up about regarding the federal government.
I don’t believe there will be a viable technological fix for the coming permanent drought here in the southwest (no way de-salinization can provide enough water for the current population of southern California). And the out-migration from Phoenix (and Tucson) caused by the permanent drought will pale in comparison to the hordes leaving southern California.
Neither AZ nor southern California will be able to sustain anything close to their current populations. And say goodbye to most of the fruits and vegetables out of central California, also, too.
jl
@Roger Moore: California already has lived with plenty of local water restriction regulations (AKA, city hall says sorry your lawn is expendable, buddy) in droughts, as I am sure RM knows.
And Colorado river water is just as much a CA issue as an AZ issue.
If the AZ nonsense does not get fixed, I wonder what fed and inter state legal wrangles lie ahead.
El Cid
AZ needs to mandate that the environment better just fucking get better, on its own, with no gubmit help.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@DFH no.6:
And the worst part is, the desert Southwest has a past history of episodic depopulation events, probably in response to multi-decadal droughts, long before AGW came along. We aren’t exactly breaking new ground here.
DFH no.6
@punkdavid:
I didn’t write that the AZ Legislature was representative of the people of AZ (although I think it mostly is).
I wrote that it is representative of the people who vote.
Because it is. Sure, there’s district gerrymandering, just like every state (many much worse than AZ’s, which by comparison is not that bad).
But we get a teabagging legislature because that’s who the people who bother to vote elected.
Sorta like what happened on a grander scale in the whole country in 2010.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@El Cid:
The obvious answer is to privatize rainfall. The clouds have gotten lazy mooching off the government. Back in the 19th century, rain followed the plow just like God intended. That was before all this soshulist precipitation nonsense.
wrb
@jl:
I say that we cannot know whether Romney has guts because Ann has informed us that the real Mitt has been zipped from our view. That the thing
that has been representing him lacks guts and many other human characteristics now makes perfect sense. Maybe the real Mitt will absorb it.
If the real Mitt is female, and Ann has been the one unzipping it, it is a lesbian.
Is America ready to elect a creep-crawly, 5″ tall, hairy lesbian with icky-sticky green guts as its President?
DFH no.6
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
You are right.
But those earlier de-population events (almost certainly due to persistent drought) were mainly about local water shortages.
We’ve found a way in modern times to get around the lack of sufficient local water resources in Phoenix and LA and so on, by building massive water projects that bring mountain snowmelt hundreds and hundreds of miles to their points of use.
To my knowledge what is beginning to happen now is unprecedented because even during those earlier “de-population due to drought” situations, it never stopped snowing in the mountains (the Sierras and White Mountains and Rockies) as it very likely will over the coming decades.
Otherwise, the Ponderosa and Sequoia forests would have disappeared, or at least been drastically reduced (as they probably will in my grandchildren’s lifetimes, if not before).
Human-caused environmental degradation is the biggest problem in the world, and global warming is making that far worse. We’ll see it here just as much as low-lying coastal areas that will be flooded.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@DFH no.6:
No need to panic. We’ll just invade Canada and steal their water. The Keystone pipeline is for amateurs. Pros talk about diverting the Columbia and Kootenay Rivers to the southwestern US.
DFH no.6
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
I tell my adult son (who grew up here and still lives in the Phoenix area) to plan to return to the ancestral home of his people (Ohio, where mine and my wife’s families are both from).
The Great Lakes area will be one of the primo places in the world to live in the coming decades and even centuries (if we make it that long).
Blows me away, more than thirty years after leaving the place, to think of Cleveland becoming a highly-desired location (the Mistake on the Lake at least has, you know, a lake, and a big-ass one to boot).
Some Loser
@DFH no.6:
Maybe the influx of people moving towards the Great Lakes will affect Michigan positively.
mainmati
@Schlemizel: That depends on what you mean by “works”. If your aim is the stimulate the criminal fraud industry then the repeal of Glaas-Steagal and the just signed JOBS bill have and will work marvelously. The JOBS legislation, in particular, is a massive invitation for gigantic frauds. The tech industry, which was the target of the JOBS Act has historically had no trouble getting investment capital from angel investors, hedge funds and other capital sources. By taking away most of the investor protections in Sarbanes-Oxley and other legislation, you now have a marvelous invitation for pump-and-dump stock frauds and other criminal schemes, which will succeed because the Goopers also have taken away SEC’s enforcement budgets. Hurray for criminal capitalism, the Goopers BFFs along with the criminal NRA.
mainmati
@Roger Moore: Southern CA and most of AZ are desert or semi-desert in their natural states. Their populations and water use levels are completely unsustainable under any scenario. Desalination is hugely energy intensive and cannot provide all the water for both cities and agriculture at current demand levels.
These places are a bit like Egypt where I have lived. It has by far the largest population and the largest agricultural production in the Middle East neither of which would be possible without the Nile. And the huge volume of the Nile River when it gets to Egypt is mainly a result of massive underdevelopment in Ethiopia where most of the volume of the Nile comes from (the Blue Nile originates there). Once Ethiopia starts damming the Blue Nile for irrigation and other water uses, it’s curtains for Egypt.
wrb
@mainmati:
Which has the better military?
PIGL
@The Other Chuck: it will be delightful to watch….like thousands of rabid small dogs in a pit just too deep to escape from. And then the water runs out. First the howling against the evil hippies…then the actual discomfort and growing snappishness…then the burning thirst and inward turning hostility…and then the ripping each other to pieces to drink the every saltier and more maddening blood.
At this point, pain-drenched schadenfreude is the only thing left to look forward to. .
I hate these people so much that the destruction of the world would be nothing to send such dogs to hell.