While the teaching of Darwin’s theory of evolution still raises the blood pressure of USA Tea Bag Party Republicans/GOP, climate warming is now the monster of the moment. “Science is bunk” most Tea Baggers brag; and 74% of the GOP in the US Senate concur (http://blog.thenewstribune.com/letters/2011/04/11/gop-is-against-using-science-to-solve-problems/ and http://www.alternet.org/story/150340/ and http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/10/10/how-did-an-entire-political-party-decide-to-reject-climate-change-science/ on the economics of climate change and geopolitics, see: http://www.nationaljournal.com/columns/political-connections/for-energy-the-price-is-not-right-20110317?mrefid=site_search). When the nonpartisan National Academy of Sciences last reviewed the data this spring, it concluded: “A strong, credible body of scientific evidence shows that climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for a broad range of human and natural systems.” Immediately global warming deniers came out from under their rocks and barked “there is nothing wrong with the planet, there is no climate change” and others cited an old record that detailed “climate change” 450 years ago, with the most ignorant member of the US Senate (John Inhoff (R-OK) and Charles Grassley (R-IA) being among the first to denounce the report. (http://www.nationaljournal.com/columns/political-connections/gop-gives-climate-science-a-cold-shoulder-20101009?mrefid=site_search notes that both Angela Merkle, Chancellor of Germany and French President Nicolas Sarkozy endorsed the report, as did nearly every civilized nation on the planet, which caused great stress to the Tea Baggers and their leaders.) The GOP’s attack on science has polarized the US Congress more than any other issue since its beginning in 1776 (http://www.nationaljournal.com/2010voteratings).
The new evangelical evil creature is global warming and those who offend their god by claiming that there is a climate change that will lead to the ultimate destruction of the world. This cannot be true, fundamentalists fume as they trot out the tired Babylonian tale of horsemen riding out of the heavens carrying weapons of mass destruction to purify the planet so that only the chosen few can live in an idyllic place: a new Gan Eden–a worldly garden of delights over which, as preached at C Street in Washington, DC, the saviour–a superior businessman–will reign for 1000 years. It is the new evil whose time is to be fulfilled and appear on a blood soaked land that is but a few years in coming with a revitalized messiah, which, rightfully does mean warrior, absorbs more millions of dollars from the nefarious Koch Brothers of Kansas who will buy their places in heaven and sit on either side of the imperial king once crucified.
These new GOP Tea Bag senators, like the whore-patronizing John Vitter of Louisiana, adulterer John Ensign of Nevada (who just recently resigned his Senate seat after being investigated by the US Senate for sex with the wife of an aide during a campaign), or the pathological pedantic predatory
US Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) at Winterset IA speaking on health care 2009
prevaricater of the truth Charles Grassley of Iowa who tartly tattled falsely that Obama would pull the plug on grandma hooked to a life support system as he told a group of 200 at Winterset, Iowa, in 2009 (http://blogs.ajc.com/jay-bookman-blog/2009/08/12/iowas-grassley-feeds-the-false-euthanasia-meme/?cxntfid=blogs_jay_bookman_blog). The proposed legislation would compensate medical providers who counsel older patients regarding “end-of-life” decisions. The information provided during the nonmandatory sessions would include informing patients of their right to establish a living will or a medical directive, to resist or to seek life-sustaining medical treatment, etc. Grassley’s continuous and increasing hypocrisy has a long historical past. Although Grassley opposes the hypothetical notion of the government intervening in a decision to remove life support, when presented with an actual case involving this issue, Grassley’s actions did not match the “anti-government” rhetoric he is spewing today. The case surrounded the life of Terry Schiavo.
Although Schiavo’s husband had engaged in litigation for nearly a decade in Florida to reject life-sustaining medical treatment on her behalf, Congress nevertheless decided to pass a law to extend the case even longer. The hospice had already removed the feeding and hydration apparatus from Schiavo, but Congress still intervened.
Although the Senate voted by unanimous consent, Grassley expressed his views at the time: “I support the effort to protect Terri Schiavo. It’s the first case of its kind, a chance to choose life over death. I [not the individual involved, but the government] gave the option to life. . . .” But Grassley did not support “life.” Instead, he supported governmental intrusion into one of the most delicate situations we face in our lives. Today, he supposedly abhors the very action that he proudly endorsed in the recent past. (http://iowaindependent.com/18456/grassley-government-shouldnt-decide-when-to-pull-the-plug-on-grandma; the acceleration and continuity of Grassley’s lies–now thundered by his grandson–have been documented at http://dissentingjustice.blogspot.com/2009/08/todays-shameless-hypocrite-award-winner.html which kindly and graciously refers to the Iowa senator as a hypocrite), have turned into a present day William Jennings Bryant of Nebraska to thunder that the Christian Bible is literally true and cannot be questioned nor disproven. Grassley is also a biblical literalist and a member of the C Street Family that invokes a warrior messiah, stating that all decisions have to be those that follow his Jesus: “Now, the best thing to do if you want people to think about end of life number one — Jesus Christ is a place to start. It ought to be done within the family and considered an [sic] religious and ethical issue not something politicians decide.” Gloating that a literal interpretation of the Bible trumps scientific knowledge they win praise and rake in millions of dollars as their twisted knowledge resonates with large masses of the growing illiterate population of the USA where 7000 high school students drop out of school every day, many being minorities who are openly attacked, spit upon and raped regardless of gender or handicap. The Jesus of these hate mongers is the drunkard of the bible (Luke 7:33-34: εληλυθεν γαρ ιωαννης ο βαπτιστης μητε αρτον εσθιων μητε οινον πινων και λεγετε δαιμονιον εχει 34εληλυθεν ο υιος του ανθρωπου εσθιων και πινων και λεγετε ιδου ανθρωπος φαγος και οινοποτης τελωνων φιλος και αμαρτωλων) who came not to bring peace but the sword (Matthew 10:34: μη νομισητε οτι ηλθον βαλειν ειρηνην επι την γην ουκ ηλθον βαλειν ειρηνην αλλα μαχαιραν) of violence, bloodshed, slaughter and pain. The Jesus of the Tea Bag Party (GOP) frequently quote Luke 12:49-53 where Jesus curses that he will bring a firestorm of pain upon the earth and divide families, separating parents from children as he will never “cast” [allow] “peace on the [planet] earth”: 49πυρ ηλθον βαλειν εις την γην και τι θελω ει ηδη ανηφθη 50βαπτισμα δε εχω βαπτισθηναι και πως συνεχομαι εως ου τελεσθη 51δοκειτε οτι ειρηνην παρεγενομην δουναι εν τη γη ουχι λεγω υμιν αλλ η διαμερισμον 52εσονται γαρ απο του νυν πεντε εν οικω ενι διαμεμερισμενοι τρεις επι δυσιν και δυο επι τρισιν 53διαμερισθησεται πατηρ εφ υιω και υιος επι πατρι μητηρ επι θυγατρι και θυγατηρ επι μητρι πενθερα επι την νυμφην αυτης και νυμφη επι την πενθεραν αυτης. (Much of Jesus’ message of hate is directly plagiarized from Micah 7:6 כי בן מנבל אב בת קמ באמה כלה בחמתה איבי אישׁ אנשׁי ביתו׃
Ignoring the George W. Bush Administration findings supported and endorsed by the National Academy of Sciences and every scientific group, the “new Republicans” who coasted in on an anti-intellectual platform chortled by two of the most ignorant women in the USA: Sarah Palin (R-AK) and Michelle Bachman (R-MN) have lifted their tea cups high to cry out against science, following the leathery lead of Oklahoma’s GOP Tea Bagger James Inhofe called global warming “The greatest hoax ever perpetuated on the American people,” (http://inhofe.senate.gov/pressreleases/climateupdate.htm) and that fossil fuels do not produce greenhouse gases that are warming the planet to disastrous levels–but that the earth is going through a natural change. Inhofe, an intellectual lightweight, used as his
Dr. Michael Crichton
authority Dr. Michael Crichton (died 2008 and was best known for his science fiction movies, such as Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain, Congo, Travels, Sphere, Rising Sun, Disclosure, The Lost World, Airframe, Timeline, Prey, State of Fear, Next) whose book State of Fear rose to be the third best seller in the USA; but, who also in an address to the California Institute of Technology, blamed “aliens” from outer space for global warming (http://www.crichton-official.com/speeches/speeches_quote04.html; Crichton won the Petroleum Institute of America’s (a biased organization that plows money into the election coffers of those against limiting greenhouse gasses) award for journalism which the Library of Congress and all other knowledgeable agencies classify the book as science fiction: http://catalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?v3=6&ti=1,6&SEQ=20110427080928&Search%5FArg=State%20of%20fear&Search%5FCode=TKEY%5E%2A&CNT=100&type=quick&PID=R9jZkiboU3F0bhhTaj-irPhGZ2t&SID=1). George W. Bush read State of Fear as a scientific novel: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/19/national/19warming.html?ex=1298005200&en=a7ab8a51ec6cf4df&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss yet the GOP Tea Baggers claim it to be fact. Most scientists reject the writings of Crichton; for example: meteorologist Jeffrey Masters‘ review of State of Fear:
Flawed or misleading presentations of global warming science exist in the book, including those on Arctic sea ice thinning, correction of land-based temperature measurements for the urban heat island effect, and satellite vs. ground-based measurements of Earth’s warming. I will spare the reader additional details. On the positive side, Crichton does emphasize the little-appreciated fact that while most of the world has been warming the past few decades, most of Antarctica has seen a cooling trend. The Antarctic ice sheet is actually expected to increase in mass over the next 100 years due to increased precipitation, according to the IPCC.” (Masters, Jeffery M.. “Review of Michael Crichton’s State of Fear“. Weather Underground. http://www.wunderground.com/education/stateoffear.asp).
Peter Doran, author of a review of Crichton’s argument on global warming issued a rejoinder in the January 2002, issue of Nature that reported the finding referred to above that some areas of Antarctica had cooled between 1986 and 2000. Doran wrote in an opinion piece in the July 27, 2006, The New York Times, in which he stated “Our results have been misused as ‘evidence’ against global warming by Michael Crichton in his novel State of Fear.” (Doran, Peter (July 27, 2006). “Cold, Hard Facts” in The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/27/opinion/27doran.html.) It will cost the Koch Brothers tens of millions of dollars to find scientists willing to be bought to refute this, but universities and scientists who are desperate for money are easily found and their price for purgatorial pandering can be had for folding capital (see: http://www.miller-mccune.com/science-environment/the-doubt-makers-4542/). A 2004 analysis by Naomi Oreskes, a professor at the University of California, San Diego, found that of more than 900 global climate-change papers published between 1993 and 2003, not a single paper disagreed with the big picture: The climate is indeed changing, and humans are largely to blame. The Koch Brothers were not to be outdone, and spent millions to find people to object to Oreskes’ findings. The Koch Brothers were not successful, as a 2006 ABC News poll reported that although 85 percent of those surveyed believe global warming is “probably” happening, more than 60 percent think scientists are still arguing about the extent of it and what, if anything could be done. These scientists are cautious, as was Copernicus and Galileo–worried about their jobs and income, not about the veracity of scientific fact. Thus, when Inhofe called a recent U.S. Geological Survey report on the future of polar bears “a classic case of reality versus unproven computer models,” they’re focusing on — and thereby distorting — the inevitable uncertainty involved when science attempts to predict the future, scientists especially in Oklahoma who are paid by the State Legislature that is controlled by Inhofe backers, demur and suggest that there is no absolute proof. In Oklahoma, scientists can be bought cheap–even if they have academic tenure.
The GOP Tea Baggers are heralded as “reasonable men” by the most ignorant House of Representatives that has ever poured a blinding plight on intelligence in the USA, with 53 percent of GOP in the House decrying all scientific research and published findings that the USA (the only major nation to reject signing on to the Kyoto Accord) making the government of the USA a joke to the educated world. This is not just the case with the US Congress but with State Legislatures, especially those of Oklahoma, Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, Indiana, New Jersey, and Florida, where winning re-election is far more important than standing up for truth and the protection of this fragile planet. Annette Sweeney, from the 44th Legislative District (Hardin County, Iowa) is always quick to remind people that she, a farmer and onetime teacher (who uses street English more frequently than she uses academic/correct English although her official biography reads: She attended Concordia College LCMS at Seward, NE, graduating with a BA in English Speech/Drama with a minor in Coaching. Annette began teaching middle school english [sic; proper English requires an initial capital on the of any language; ref.: http://wakish.info/the-use-of-capitals-in-the-english-language/ and my book, Ide, Arthur Frederick (2008). Business English: From Grammar to Writing. Dallas: Monument ] in Peoria, IL) and publisher (“employs three local women in a database mailing and publishing business that creates advertising, sales brochures and catalogs for purebred breeding cattle producers” see: http://www.iowahouserepublicans.com/members/annette-sweeney/biography and served as a voluntary adviser on the Hubbard-Radcliffe and South Hardin [County] vocational Ag advisory boards; I attended the Hubbard-Radcliffe Board of Education meeting in 2005, as I live in Radcliffe, and never knew her but discover the paucity of learning in the county where I volunteered my services [I earned an BA (State College of Iowa) and MA (University of Northern Iowa, formerly SCI) before going out-of-state for postgraduate degrees and earning my ultimate doctorate at Carnegie-Mellon Univeristy. ISTC (Iowa State Teachers Collge that became State College of Iowa and then University of Northern Iowa did not have a doctoral program) was among the finest schools I attended but education has dramatically declined since the 1980s; in 2008 I offered to teach at wht was the Boys Reformatory in Eldora, but was told I was overqualified which may explain why the South Hardin (Radcliffe) Signal-Review was the only paper in Iowa to publish a short account of my writing when my 500th book was published eventhough my publishers are worldwide], is but one vote and must “represent the [agribusiness] interests” that elected her.
Kyoto Protocol participation map 2009
Participation in the Kyoto Protocol, as of June 2009:
Green = Countries that have signed and ratified the treaty
Grey = Countries that have not yet decided
Blue = No intention to ratify at this stage.
As Charles Pierce wrote in Idiot America : how stupidity became a virtue in the Land of the Free (1st Anchor Books ed.; New York: Anchor Books, c2000. ) “the rise of Idiot America today represents — for profit mainly, but also, and more cynically, for political advantage and in the pursuit of power — the breakdown of a consensus that the pursuit of knowledge is a good. It also represents the ascendancy of the notion that the people whom we should trust the least are the people who best know what they’re talking about. In the new media age, everybody is a historian, or a preacher, or a scientist, or a sage. And if everyone is an expert, then nobody is, and the worst thing you can be in a society where everybody is an expert is, well, an actual expert.” (Emphasis added; see also my blog on the growth of ignorance and hatred in the USA: http://arthuride.wordpress.com/2011/04/25/usa-becoming-more-ignorant-and-hatefilled/ with the highest growth of ignorance inflicting itself within the Young Republicans club of the University of Iowa at Iowa City that has defended waterboarding with adulation of the George W. Bush Administration who authorized waterboarding (a practice that was commonly used by USA service personnel in Vietnam leading to the deaths of tens of thousands
Waterboarding in Vietnam by USA military during Operation Wheeler Wallowa 1/17, about 25 miles south of Da Nang
of “detainees” who were both military and civilians, male and female, young and old and even children) where reason is scorned, research riled against, and George Bush acclaimed a great statesman and hero even after Abu Ghraib prison and officially sanctioned torture including waterboarding by the White House, Department of Justice, and the Department of Defense as pushed by University of California at Berkeley law professor John Choon Yoo (born in South Korea in 1967,
John Choon Yoo (UC Berkeley School of Law)
he has written on the right of governments to torture civilians and “alien military” arguing that prisoner of war status under the Geneva Conventions does not apply to “enemy combatants” [it does apply] captured during the War in Afghanistan [which did not exist at the time the Conventions were signed] and held at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/torture/interviews/yoo.html) asserting executive authority to undertake waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques” regarded as torture by the current Justice Department, warrantless searches, and domestic surveillance; Stout, David (15 January 2009). “Holder tells Senators Waterboarding is Torture”. The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/16/us/politics/16holdercnd.html?scp=3&sq=Eric%20Holder%20torture&st=cse. ) claims that the Fourth Amendment of the USA Constitution does not apply at time of war (pdf of the actual memo is at http://www.aclu.org/national-security/memo-regarding-torture-and-military-interrogation-alien-unlawful-combatants-held-o; see: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/04/yoo-torture-mem/;see also: http://huasipungo.com/?tag=waterboarding].)
The use of a torture common during the Spanish Inquisition is sufficient to call for the execution of John Yoo, George W. Bush and
Waterboarding used in religious inquisitions; shown is the Spanish Inquisition
their supporters such as Congressman Steven King of Iowa who claim it but “a hazing”, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and Congressman
Abu Ghraib prison (torture Iowa Congressman Steven King considers "hazing")
Michelle Bachman of Minnesota, and lead to the wrongful deaths of hundreds (if not thousands) and scarred millions, making the USA the most hated nation on Earth, as it used the same torture methods as practiced in Roman Catholic and Protestant Inquisitions, Nazi Germany, Russia and later the Soviet Union and for centuries in Korea (Golden, Tim (December 23, 2005). “A Junior Aide had a big role in Terror Policy”. The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/23/politics/23yoo.html). All of these are war crimes, but the only person in the Bush Administration cabinet to speak out against the pathetic and heinous plots of Yoo was Secretary of State Collin Powell (Isikoff, Michael (May 17, 2004). “Memos Reveal War Crimes Warnings”. Newsweek. http://www.newsweek.com/id/105057.), and U.S. Navy general counsel Alberto Mora who unsuccessfully campaigned internally against what he saw as the “catastrophically poor legal reasoning” and dangerous extremism of Yoo’s legal opinions (Mayer, Jane (February 27, 2006). “The Memo: How an Internal Effort to Ban the Abuse and Torture of Detainees was Thwarted”. The New Yorker. http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/02/27/060227fa_fact.).
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