Republican Stupidity

Any idea how this is going to be spun? Me neither:

Philip A. Cooney, the White House staff member who repeatedly revised government scientific reports on global warming, will go to work for ExxonMobil in the fall, the oil company said today.

Mr. Cooney resigned on Friday as chief of staff to President Bush’s environmental policy council, two days after documents obtained by The New York Times showed that he had edited the reports in ways that cast doubt on the link between greenhouse-gas emissions and rising temperatures.

A former lawyer and lobbyist with the American Petroleum Institute, the main lobbying group for the oil industry, Mr. Cooney has no scientific training.

The White House, which said Friday that there was no connection between last week’s disclosure and Mr. Cooney’s resignation, repeated today that Mr. Cooney’s actions were part of the normal review process for documents on environmental issues involving many government agencies.

“Phil Cooney did a great job,” said Dana Perino, a deputy White House spokeswoman, “and we appreciate his public service and the work that he did, and we wish him well in the private sector.”

An Exxon spokesman, Tom Cirigliano, declined to describe Mr. Cooney’s new job. Associates of Mr. Cooney said he planned to move to Dallas. Mr. Cooney did not return e-mail or phone messages.ExxonMobil has long financed advertising and lobbying efforts that question whether human-caused warming poses sufficiently serious risks to justify curbing carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas emitted by smokestacks and tailpipes.

I understand that he was an oil industry lawyer before he went to the Administration, so it makes sense he would work for the oil industry afterwards, but Jeebus.

AppearancesPost + Comments (9)

Have you ever seen a little kid play hide-and-go-seek?

Children don’t have a very good perspective on themselves and their relationship to the rest of the world, so they can do and say some pretty funny things. For example, they might ‘hide’ themselves behind a telephone pole, or a tree, and believe that because their eyes are blocked and they can’t see anything, no one else can see them. The rest of us, however, see their shoulders, arms, and legs, and know exactly what is going on.

Via Dan Drezner, I am beginning to think this is what is going on with the current administration and Congress:

Administration officials say the improved fiscal picture suggests the president is on track to deliver more quickly on a campaign promise to cut the annual deficit in half as a share of the total U.S. economy, to 2.3% of gross domestic product. (By comparison, last year’s $412 billion deficit was 3.6% of GDP.) Private analysts don’t put much stock in that promise, however; even if Mr. Bush claims victory, the nation still faces long-term deficit problems. Overall federal spending is increasing, including for war costs. More broadly, spiraling health-care costs for Medicare and Medicaid programs, including a prescription-drug benefit for seniors starting next year and a wave of baby-boomer retirements after 2008, will drive federal deficits to unsustainable sizes….

“With the president’s focus on spending discipline, we are seeing positive signs for the American economy, and for the federal government’s balance sheet,” Budget Director Joshua Bolten said in a statement.

I see you there behind the tree, Mr. Bolten.

Dan thinks this was bad spin:

…Bolten’s comment was so absurd that I was tempted to bang the computer and yell “Spin better!!”

Finding out that the annual budget deficit is 20% smaller than previously should be manna from heaven for the administration. And there’s an excellent line for the explanation — the administration’s policies have fostered faster-than expected economic growth which has increased tax revenues. So if I were working for the administration, I’d say, “With the president’s focus on growing the economy, we’re seeing an improved balance sheet for the government.” That’s spin in the best sense — accentuating your positive attibutes.

What I wouldn’t mention is “the president’s focus on spending discipline,” which brings up two unformortable facts: a) this administration has no spending discipline; and b) combine that with a Congress that loves to spend as well and you’ve got widening deficits for some time.

The words “president’s focus on spending discipline” should never be uttered by anyone associated with this administration, even if the deficit isn’t half as bad as it was projected. This isn’t a matter of bad spin. Ask any lawyer- you can’t ‘spin away’ a dead body. This is about an utter inability to set realistic spending priorities and follow them.

Fiscal Conservatives, Part 894746Post + Comments (3)

The President’s nominees deserve an up or down vote, and we must vote on them for the sake of the Constitution. Otherwise, we are destroying the Republic and violating the principles our forefathers laid out for us. Except in this case:

While Republican senators insist on prompt votes for every judicial nominee, Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) has placed a “hold” on President Bush’s nomination of Julie Finley as ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Mrs. Finley is well qualified. Like many ambassadorial appointees, she has been a major Republican fundraiser, but she has also been a strong and active advocate in Washington for the expansion of NATO, the integration of Turkey into the European Union and the spread of democracy to countries of the former Soviet Union. These are issues that would be central in her new post — and issues that Mr. Brownback also has highlighted. Nevertheless, Mr. Brownback, a possible presidential candidate in 2008, as of last night was employing a parliamentary maneuver to block any Senate vote — on the grounds that Mrs. Finley is pro-choice on abortion.

The move may please Republican anti abortion activists, who have launched a campaign against Mrs. Finley, demanding that the president withdraw her nomination. But the hold is repugnant, on both procedural and substantive grounds. If a filibuster is at best a controversial way of deciding policy, allowing a single senator to have effective say over whether to hold a vote on a particular presidential appointment would seem completely unacceptable.

Personally, I think she should just tell Sen. Brownback that she is pro-choice because of religious convictions. After all, when someone says they have firm religious beliefs, we all have to just back off and go along with whatever they believe in or be tarred as anti-religous, right?

I really hope that the Democrats nominate some Wiccans or Buddhists when they next win the Presidency. That will be just too much damned fun.

And, for the pure sake of intellectual honesty- I have no problem with Brownback placing a hold on this woman. I think they should be able to do things like this, and we should go back to the blue slip rule and the other tools we had used for years in regards to judicial nominations.

So Much for Internal ConsistencyPost + Comments (11)

Via Sullivan, I see that if Rick Perry has his way, therewill no longer be only steers and queers in Texas– It will be just steers and bigots:

In a ceremony filled with religious references, Gov. Rick Perry signed a bill at a church school gymnasium Sunday that imposes more limits on late-term abortions and requires minor girls to get written parental consent for abortions.

“And it has been a tragedy of unspeakable consequences that for decades activist courts denied many Texas parents their right to be involved in one of the most important decisions their young daughter could ever make — whether to end the life that was growing inside her,” Perry told a crowd of about 1,000 people gathered at the Calvary Christian Academy. “For too long, a blind eye has been turned to the rights of our most vulnerable human beings — that’s the unborn in our society.”

During the 1 1/2-hour program, Perry also signed a resolution to amend the Texas Constitution by banning same-sex marriages.

“Texans have made a decision about marriage and if there is some other state that has a more lenient view than Texas then maybe that’s a better place for them to live,” Perry said.

However, that signature was only ceremonial, since voters must approve the same-sex ban in November.

“A nurturing home with a loving mother and loving father is the best way to guide our children down the proper path,” said Perry, who was joined by several legislators. He also thanked the “pro-life” and “pro-family” organizations.

Unless they stray from the proper path and engage in the demon vices of gay love. Then you cast them aside and make em move to Arkansas.

Really, though. It’s about the sanctity of marriage. That’s why the Texas governor is telling homosexuals to just leave. Bigots, the whole lot of them.

Texas to Fags- Get OutPost + Comments (68)

Sometimes I wake up and read the papers and just want to scream:

A White House official who once led the oil industry’s fight against limits on greenhouse gases has repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that play down links between such emissions and global warming, according to internal documents.
In handwritten notes on drafts of several reports issued in 2002 and 2003, the official, Philip A. Cooney, removed or adjusted descriptions of climate research that government scientists and their supervisors, including some senior Bush administration officials, had already approved. In many cases, the changes appeared in the final reports.

The dozens of changes, while sometimes as subtle as the insertion of the phrase “significant and fundamental” before the word “uncertainties,” tend to produce an air of doubt about findings that most climate experts say are robust.

Mr. Cooney is chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the office that helps devise and promote administration policies on environmental issues.

Before going to the White House in 2001, he was the “climate team leader” and a lobbyist at the American Petroleum Institute, the largest trade group representing the interests of the oil industry. A lawyer with a bachelor’s degree in economics, he has no scientific training.

Do they think this is a school project, and all they have to do is fool the teacher and climate change won’t be an issue? I don’t want junk science or unfounded claims going forward, either, but it is becoming pretty clear to me that faith-based governance simply means that anything you don’t like or anything that might require a change in your policy position should be ignored or labeled ‘junk science.’

*** Update ***

Apparently, lots of bad news finds itself *edited*..

Good Thing The Adults Are In ChargePost + Comments (25)

More bad reviews:

Americans have learned to expect little from Congress, and by that standard the 109th version, controlled by Republicans, has met expectations. On the other hand, anyone who hoped that the GOP would make something of its historic governing opportunity is bound to be disappointed so far.

Five months in, Congress can point to the following achievements: a bankruptcy bill 10 years in the making, and a class-action reform watered down essentially to a jurisdictional change to federal from state courts. That’s about it. Among the 2004 campaign promises that aren’t close to being fulfilled are making the Bush tax cuts permanent, reforming Social Security and expanding the market for private health care. Instead of any of those big three, Congress next seems poised to pass a subsidy-laden energy bill and a highway bill with some 4,000 earmarks for individual Members. For this we elected Republicans?

The Democratic/media explanation for this performance is that Republicans are “overreaching” and trying to “govern from the right.” We should be so lucky. The fact is that they are governing from nowhere at all. Far from pushing their agenda, they seem cowed by their opposition into playing it safe and attempting too little.

Is anyone, other than MBNA and the credit card hucksters, happy with this Congress?

Rumblings From the RightPost + Comments (22)

This is just stupid:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger traveled to a quiet San Jose neighborhood Thursday, and — dogged by protesters — filled a pothole dug by city crews just a few hours before, as part of an attempt to dramatize his efforts to increase money for transportation projects.

The choreographed press opportunity — at least the governor’s fourth recent event involving transportation issues — seemed aimed as much at thwarting the demonstrators who have followed Schwarzenegger for weeks as grabbing new attention for his proposal.

I don’t get out to California much, but am I to believe they don’t have pre-existing potholes that could be used in photo ops? No wonder everyone wants to live there- we have potholes that can eat your damned car.

(via Sploid)

I Don’t Get ItPost + Comments (15)