It’s often been said that Republicans are pro-life, but only before you are born or when you want to die.  With the help of 35 Dems and 1 Prog, the ‘Death With Dignity’ bill was shot down yesterday in the VT Statehouse, but from what we’ve heard, this debate is not over.

The brain parasite that afflicts the editorial board of the Caledonia-Record was in full swing again a few days ago, this time over Al Gore’s global warming testimony before Congress. Gore bashing is sooo year 2000, no? And to further illustrate how out of touch with reality these people are, they refer to the discredited ‘Great Global Warming Swindle’ movie that you can read about here on GMD. Seriously, these peoples’ level of reasoning and discourse hasn’t really progressed past the fourth grade level.

Funny takes on Bush’s middle-finger press conference the other day, from Norbizness here and the Rude Pundit with “Bush Gets Pissy”.

Six people arrested  and released at the Welch sit-in yesterday. Welch actually talked to the protesters via speaker phone.

And finally, America’s sleaziest politician (without the name ‘Bush’), Tom DeLay, has a new book out, a typical conservative whinefest about poor Tom’s persecution, because you all just know how rich, white, conservative Christian males have it so hard in this country, right? Anyways, Tom might want to actually read his own book before plugging it on TV. He can’t even seem to get his facts straight about what ‘he’ wrote:

Happy Thursday, everybody. Let’s see if Al “Speedy” Gonzales makes it to Friday.

Right now I’m writing a paper in one of my classes on ‘The Authoritarian Personality’. You know of them quite well – easily submit to authority, fearful and suspicious of the ‘other’, etc.  Many conservatives most defnitely fall into this category. The study of the authoritarian personality first broke ground with ‘The Authoritarian Personality’, a Berkeley study by Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswick, Levinson and Sanford, in 1950, while the dark shadow of fascism and the Holocaust was still fresh on peoples’ minds. It’s a pretty dated book if you read it today, but there’s a lot of truth to be found in it.

Fast forward to the mid-90’s. University of Manitoba’s Bob Altemeyer writes ‘The Authoritarian Specter’, a more modern and exhaustive statistical analysis, with the concept of the ‘Right Wing Authoritarian’ scale (RWA) introduced, a gauge of how strongly one fits into that concept. John Dean referred to it often in his recent ‘Conservatives Without Conscience’ book in reference to the Bush administration and its sheeplike supporters.

Anyways, Bob Altemeyer has recently released a great, free e-book called ‘The Authoritarians’ that you can download and read, which distills the major themes into a more brief, concise volume. It’s a great read, and I encourage you to download it here, and get a better perspective into the minds of what we’re up against. Take the RWA test yourself, and see how you score.

I’m one of those people who’s participated in quite a few marches in my lifetime, and with the exception of one that landed me in jail, I always leave them with an empty feeling, that although there was a ‘support group/community’ feeling to be gained from it, the reality is that the people in power could really care less about us marching in the streets. And half of the time, many on the left have a bit of a focus problem, in that instead of staying on task with a single-minded objective, we get the Free Palestine/Mumia/The Whales/Go Vegan/insert-liberal-cause here crowd, and it dilutes the message. So I’ve resolved not to do it anymore. Sure, I’m jaded. I’m not saying you shouldn’t continue to do it, it’s just not for me anymore.

One complaint we’ve heard is that Iraq protesters don’t really go far enough. Some people have singled out the people who vigil in front of the Federal Building in Montpelier every week. Although I thoroughly respect the people who do it, and would never say they shouldn’t, I am inclined to agree with the critics in terms of its lack of any real effectiveness.

It’s a much different world than it was thirty years ago. The idea of civil disobedience, of really laying one’s body on the line, sometimes at the risk of bodily harm was something that, up until recently, has had a rich tradition in the United States, and you don’t have to go back to Henry Thoreau to see it. Just go back 30 or 40 years.

Well, anyways, thankfully, some people haven’t forgotten. Enter the Occupation Project. The O.P. is a coalition of several anti-war organizations such as Veterans for Peace, United for Peace and Justice, CODE PINK, and many others, whose objective is :

“a campaign of sustained nonviolent civil disobedience aimed at ending the U.S. war in and occupation of Iraq. The campaign will begin the first week of February 2007 with occupations at the offices of Representatives and Senators who refuse to pledge to vote against additional war funding.”

And to those of you who are hungering for a more direct, somewhat confrontational activism, the Occupation Project has targeted Peter Welch’s office, this Wednesday, March 21st. They’ll be meeting at at the Peace and Justice Center in Burlington at noon, where they will then proceed to Peter Welch’s office. Anyone of our readers that attend, please post a diary with your experiences, if you feel so inclined.

Note: I realize I’m going to catch some hell for this from some people. My posting this is simply because there are people that think Welch hasn’t gone far enough, and would be interested in this. I personally think Welch has done okay on the war, but could definitely be more visible and strong, so spare me the tongue-lashing. It’s definitely VT political news, and therefore appropriate.

(crossposted at five before chaos)

Now, I’m not trying to be a jerk or aggressive here because I really like her personally, but Charity’s blog, She’s Right, has been the gift that keeps on giving lately. I read about her announcement about an S. Fred Singer, PhD, who is giving a talk at UVM on March 28th at 7 pm in the Ira Allen Chapel, called, “500-Year Natural Cycle or Disaster Of Our Own Doing? – A look at the science and politics of global warming”. So considering the source and the coded wording, my bullshit detector started beeping, so it was time to dig around.

See, Dr. Singer’s got quite the career of being a p.r. hack for big, harmful corporations. He first rose to prominence as a a flack for big tobacco:

Singer has been accused of conflicts of interest, most notably involving financial ties to oil and tobacco companies. In 1993 APCO, a public relations firm, sent a memo to Philip Morris to vice-president Ellen Merlo stating: “As you know, we have been working with Dr. Fred Singer and Dr. Dwight Lee, who have authored articles on junk science and indoor air quality (IAQ) respectively …”

The 1994 AdTI report was part of an attack on EPA regulation of environmental tobacco smoke funded by the Tobacco Institute. Singer was also involved with the International Center for a Scientific Ecology, a group that was considered important in Philip Morris’ plans to create a group in Europe similar to The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC). Singer is also a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute, another recipient of Philip Morris and ExxonMobil funds.

A nonsmoker himself, Singer serves on the Science Advisory Board of the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH). The ACSH strongly opposes smoking but otherwise tends to support industry positions on health issues, for example downplaying risks associated with dioxin, asbestos, and other carcinogenic materials.

This guy’s a bad dude. But there’s more. His foundations and work have been funded by hard-right ideologue Richard Mellon Scaife, and also by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s organization. He has played a pivotal role in the above mentioned TASSC, whose main purpose was to spread the idea of environmental science as being ‘junk science’.  He was also in the employ of the Tobacco Institute’s ‘Whitecoats Project’, their effort to discredit the environmental risks of tobacco smoke with the use of scientists. Although it’s a lengthy read, there’s a huge study of this here, if you’re more interested. It’s amazing, the depth and breadth that these people went to do this.

So, that’ s just tobacco. Singer’s been at the forefront of global warming denial, not surprising, considering just about everything the man has done on the subject has been funded (here, here, and here) in one way or another by the big polluting and petrochemical companies.

But aside from that, he can’t even get the science right. Contrary to the evidence, he claims that the glaciers are advancing (not retreating as they have been since about 1850). And the one article he used as a source for that information was found not to even exist, by journalist George Monbiot. Needless to say, if you read even some of what I’ve pointed you too, it’s obvious where this man’s interests really lie. His rhetoric is typical right-wing bullshit that could have come from Townhall.com or FoxNews. Also, from the above Exxon Secrets site you can get a taste… tell me if you haven’t heard this all before, such as the ‘Global Warming is Good For You ‘ argument…

Or the ‘Al Gore’s Nefarious Liberal Agenda’ conspiracy (and he trusts the judgment of Bush if that tells you anything)…

“The irony is that there is no convincing evidence that the global climate is actually warming…Mr Gore and company are stirring the pot, trying to create public anxiety in order to impose a form of energy rationing on the economy – like the recently defeated Senate bill of McCain-Lieberman, which would have forced a cap on emissions, equivalent to an energy tax. President George W. Bush has termed such a policy ‘fatally flawed’.”
Source: “Climate concern is just a tax ruse,” Financial Times 11/26/03

So his little propaganda speech may be interesting, no? Now, why do I keep bringing this up? Because one of the typical whines from the right-wingers on global warming is that we’re not ‘allowing a debate’, similar to the argument Intelligent Design advocates make (when in actuality, there is no ‘debate’ in the scientific community – there’s an overwhelming consensus in regards to ID not being science). But here’s my point- Why is it that it seems like every single person that they present either has major ties and funding to the polluting industries, presents faulty/incorrect data, or both? Why is that?

Well, apparently, there’s a whole ‘industry of denial’ built up around debunking global warming. In last year’s ‘Heat’, by George Monbiot, he meticulously connects the dots and lays it all out, beginning with this:

ExxonMobil is the world’s most profitable corporation. Its sales now amount to more than $1bn a day. It makes most of this money from oil, and has more to lose than any other company from efforts to tackle climate change. To safeguard its profits, ExxonMobil needs to sow doubt about whether serious action needs to be taken on climate change. But there are difficulties: it must confront a scientific consensus as strong as that which maintains that smoking causes lung cancer or that HIV causes Aids. So what’s its strategy?

And part of that strategy?

On the whole, they use selection, not invention. They will find one contradictory study – such as the discovery of tropospheric cooling, which, in a garbled form, has been used by Peter Hitchens in the Mail on Sunday – and promote it relentlessly. They will continue to do so long after it has been disproved by further work. So, for example, John Christy, the author of the troposphere paper, admitted in August 2005 that his figures were incorrect, yet his initial findings are still being circulated and championed by many of these groups, as a quick internet search will show you.

He also mentions that bogus Oregon Petition that Vermont’s own blowhard corporate apologist, John McLaughry, has cited as a credible source. As one who holds science as one of humanity’s best accomplishments and ways of finding the truth, believe me, I really do want a scientist to come forward with a compelling argument. But it seems impossible to find one that isn’t tainted in one way or another. And it bears repeating: when reality has such a tendency to contradict much of one’s worldview, sometimes the only way to deal with it is to make up an alternate one. And that seems to be what many (but most definitely not all) conservatives are doing.

If you’re interested more on what organizations are funded by the industry, have a look at ‘Global Warming Skeptics: A Primer’.

UPDATE:  Whoa, it seems there actually might be some truth to the ‘Al Gore global warming conspiracy’.

(crossposted at five before chaos)

It’s got to be hard to be a conservative, especially nowadays. It seems like the only way they can get out of bed in the morning is to exist in some alternate reality… you know, the one where ‘they attack us because they hate our freedoms’, ‘the Founding Fathers wanted this to be a Christian nation’, ‘intelligent design is real science’, ‘supporting the troops means keeping them in Iraq’,’George W. Bush is a fine Christian man of integrity’, ‘if we would just let the markets decide, everything would be fine’, and the latest doozie, courtesy of Charity at ‘She’s Right’, ‘global warming is not caused by humans’.

Apparently, there was a documentary on the BBC’s Channel recently, called ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’, which basically says that the overwhelming scientific evidence supporting man-made global warming is a lie. Turns out, it’s yet another right wing propaganda hit-piece that plays loose with the facts. Like most classic propaganda targeting right-wingers, it even plays to their sense of perpetual victimhood, driving home the point that ‘you are being told lies.’

The documentary was directed by self-proclaimed ‘living Marxist’ (whatever the hell that is) Martin Durkin, who also directed a BBC series in 1997 called ‘Against Nature’, which dismisses environmentalists as anti-progress, and believe that sustainable development practices are a ‘conspiracy against people’. So his ideology should be quite apparent.

The UK Independent did an investigation of the ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’, and found that it: 

“was based on graphs that were distorted, mislabelled or just plain wrong. The graphs were nevertheless used to attack the credibility and honesty of climate scientists.

A graph central to the programme’s thesis, purporting to show variations in global temperatures over the past century, claimed to show that global warming was not linked with industrial emissions of carbon dioxide. Yet the graph was not what it seemed.

Other graphs used out-of-date information or data that was shown some years ago to be wrong. Yet the programme makers claimed the graphs demonstrated that orthodox climate science was a conspiratorial “lie” foisted on the public.”

But, that’s just the tip of the rapidly melting iceberg. One of the central figures in the program was MIT oceanographer Carl Wunsch, has come out strongly about how his views were edited and presented so as to give a misleading account of his actual views. He discusses it in a piece here, ‘I Should Have Never Trusted Channel 4’ and also in a letter to the producer:

Fundamentally, I am the one who was swindled—please read the email below that was sent to me (and re-sent by you). Based upon this email and subsequent telephone conversations, and discussions with the Director, Martin Durkin, I thought I was being asked to appear in a film that would discuss in a balanced way the complicated elements of understanding of climate change—in the best traditions of British television. Is there any indication in the email evident to an outsider that the product would be so tendentious, so unbalanced?

I spent hours in the interview describing many of the problems of understanding the ocean in climate change, and the ways in which some of the more dramatic elements get exaggerated in the media relative to more realistic, potentially truly catastrophic issues, such as the implications of the oncoming sea level rise. As I made clear, both in the preliminary discussions, and in the interview itself, I believe that global warming is a very serious threat that needs equally serious discussion and no one seeing this film could possibly deduce that.

An example where my own discussion was grossly distorted by context: I am shown explaining that a warming ocean could expel more carbon dioxide than it absorbs — thus exacerbating the greenhouse gas buildup in the atmosphere and hence worrisome. It was used in the film, through its context, to imply that CO2 is all natural, coming from the ocean, and that therefore the human element is irrelevant. This use of my remarks, which are literally what I said, comes close to fraud.

My appearance in the “Global Warming Swindle” is deeply embarrasing, and my professional reputation has been damaged. I was duped—an uncomfortable position in which to be.

Aside from the misrepresentation of Wunsch and the almost constant use of bad data, there’s a host of other faulty data in the show. Medialens has an exhaustive analysis of the mind-numbingly false and misrepresented data in the film, too much to list here, but a few nuggets just to give you an idea:

The film repeatedly gave the impression that mainstream science argues  that CO2 is the sole driver of rising temperatures in the  Earth’s climate system. But this is not the case. Climate scientists are  well aware that solar activity plays a role, though a minor one at present,  as do long-term periodic changes in the Earth’s orbit, known as Milankovitch  cycles. (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/  wiki/Milankovitch_cycles)

The point is that there is a vast body of evidence that very strongly supports  the hypothesis that greenhouse gas emissions, of which CO2 is the most important,  are primarily responsible for recent global  warming. The 4th and most recent scientific assessment of the Intergovernmental  Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes: 

  “Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures  since the mid-20th century is very likely [.i.e. probability greater than  90%] due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.”  (‘Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis,’ Summary for Policymakers,  IPCC, February 2007, page 10; www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf) 

 
We then come to one of the film’s most misleading arguments. Antarctic  ice cores show that rises in levels of CO2 have lagged 800 years behind  temperature rises at specific times in the geological past. This, argued  Durkin, +proves+ that CO2 cannot be responsible for global warming – instead  global warming is responsible for increasing levels of CO2. But this was  a huge howler.

What Durkin’s film failed to explain was that the 800-year lag happened  at the end of ice ages which occur about every 100,000 years. (See: www.realclimate.org/index.php/  archives/2004/12/co2-in-ice-cores)

I can’t help but wonder if some American conservatives are so against the global warming thing just simply due to the fact that Al Gore has played such an important role in increasing its awareness. If right-wingnut Sam Brownback was extolling its dangers, I can’t help but to think they wouldn’t be so skeptical. I’m surprised John McLaughry hasn’t referred to this film, considering his fetish-like obsession with discredited facts and such. But when reality has such a tendency to contradict much of one’s worldview, sometimes the only way to deal with it is to make up an alternate one.

It’s going to take a lot more than one shabby piece of factually-challenged propaganda to turn the tide of an overwhelming consensus of the world’s scientists (with the exception of those on the payroll of Big Oil, of course), and there’s also that major report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I guess what you believe depends on whether your biases or your capacity for critical thinking skills are the stronger cognitive impulses in your worldview. And, no, just to cut some of you off, I’m not saying we shouldn’t debate these things. And I’m not saying people don’t have a right to their opinions, or even the right to spread misleading propaganda. But it would be much more helpful if the global-warming deniers would actually do their homework before coming to the table.

“Facts are stupid things.” – Ronald Reagan, 1988 Republican National Convention

What is it with these DLC types? Fun certainly isn’t in their vocabulary, is it? The Hill is reporting that:

Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), the Democratic Caucus chairman, has told new Democratic members of Congress to steer clear of Stephen Colbert, or at least his satirical Comedy Central program, “The Colbert Report.”

“He said don’t do it … it’s a risk and it’s probably safer not to do it,” said Rep. Steve Cohen. But the freshman lawmaker from Tennessee taped a segment that last week was featured in the 32nd installment of the “Better Know a District” series. Colbert asked Cohen whether he was a black woman. He isn’t.

Eyes (but thankfully, not heads) roll in Emanuel’s office when other freshmen stumble, such as the time Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) got into a debate about the merits of throwing kittens into a wood-chipper, or when Rep. Zack Space (D-Ohio) explained that he is not his predecessor, convicted felon Bob Ney (R).

The freshmen respect Emanuel, but they don’t always follow his orders. On the other hand, avoiding the kind of publicity that only “The Colbert Report” can confer on a lawmaker may be the only advice from Emanuel that freshman Democrats are ignoring.

Emmanuel’s advice, like many other times, seems to be the opposite of what should be done, which I suspect is another requirement of being in the DLC. Play it safe and go nowhere seems to be the mantra. It’s what helped keep the Dems in the political wilderness for 12 years.

Think Progress is reporting that Sen. Leahy will get Karl Rove to testify in Congress regarding the attorney purge, whether he is willing or not:

“Frankly, I don’t care whether [White House Counsel Fred Fielding] says he’s going to allow people or not. We’ll subpoena the people we want,” Leahy said. “If they want to defy the subpoena, then you get into a stonewall situation I suspect they don’t want to have.” Asked whether he’ll subpoena Rove, Leahy answered, “Yes. He can appear voluntarily if he wants. If he doesn’t, I will subpoena him.“

Rove has been like a cat with nine lives in his ability to stay out of trouble in the Bush Administration, much of which he had a direct hand in. Hopefully, he’s used up his last one.

UPDATE: Republicans have blocked Rove’s subpoena. Gotta protect Bush at all costs. Remember, party loyalty trumps loyalty to the Constitution with these people. From Americablog:

Today, at the Senate Judiciary Committee markup, authorization for subpoenas was approved for several Department of Justice officials: Mike Elston, Kyle Sampson, Monica Goodling, Bill Mercer, Mike Battle. Republican members of the committee blocked the authorization for subpoenas for White House officials, namely Harriet Miers, Karl Rove, and William Kelly.

Another Vermonter has won Buzzflash’s ‘Wings of Justice’ award. This time it’s Dan DeWalt:

“Dan DeWalt, a citizen activist from Newfane, VT,” a BuzzFlash reader writes, “spearheaded the movement in Vermont and New England for holding the Bush Administration accountable through impeachment.”

And DeWalt lit a grassfire. His patriotic call for holding Bush and Cheney to be impeached was passed by 37 towns in Vermont on March 8.

“The founders wanted impeachment in the hands of the people,” said DeWalt, who has lived in southern Vermont for 30 years. “They knew there might come a time when the executive branch, the Congress, and even the press, fail us. And that’s the circumstance we find ourselves in today.”

An article from a Vermont paper noted, “Whatever you might think of Vermont’s impeachment drive, you’ve got to agree it makes more sense to impeach a president for making war, than making whoopee.”

Yes, indeed, and for that, Dan DeWalt merits being named the winner of this week’s BuzzFlash Wings of Justice Award.

Well deserved, Dan. Thanks, and a collective tip of the hat to you for elevating the idea of impeachment a bit higher.

Yesterday in the Statehouse, the members of the VT delegation were all present to listen to Vermont farmers’ concerns about the state of the industry and the impact of federal policy on it. The federal Farm Bill is up for reauthorization, and the current one expires on Sept. 30th. The bill addresses farming, logging, conservation, nutrition programs and rural development.

As the Times Argus reports, a major concern of the farmers is the need for a more regional approach:

“I urge the (U.S. Department of Agriculture) to establish a national dairy policy which supports the regional production of milk,” said Mark Magnant, who runs a Fairfield dairy farm with his wife, three brothers and parents.

He and other farmers said they’re held captive by existing farm policy. The price they’re paid for their milk is controlled by that policy but the costs they’re forced to pay for feed, energy and other supplies is beyond their control.

“I would much rather extract the dollars needed to cover our cost of production from the marketplace versus through a government program,” Magnant said.

Another concern stated was that the current federal policies favor large agribusiness interests and their huge farms over those of the small family farm. From the Burlington Free Press:

Vermont’s farmers might be of one mind on federal dairy policy, but they are up against much larger dairy concerns in places like Texas, Arizona and New Mexico that run by a different set of economics than the state’s family-owned farms.

“The opposition to helping family-based dairy is going to be strong,” Sanders said noting that the Bush administration and large dairy processors are against regional programs.

Other concerns included the need for rural broadband, a simplification of the federal grant process, better forest and land conservation measures, and incentives for farmers to develop and promote renewable energy projects.

Here’s your handy-dandy Tuesday linkdump…

The details of the latest Defense supplemental bill are starting to come out… some good, some not so good. Evidently the ‘Blue-dog Democrats’ (aka Repub-lite) have struck a provision from the bill that required President Bush to get congressional approval before attacking Iran. And you can get more details on the bill over here at TPM Cafe.

Bush-enabler Sen. Susan Collins(R-ME) is going to have quite a challenge on her hands in ’08. due to the emergence of the netroots in Maine, something that wasn’t present last time she ran. Americablog has the details.

What is it with the Caledonian-Record? Apparently, there’s no problem with generosity in this country, and get this, John Edwards is a ‘far left liberal’.

Also from the C.R., Sen. Vince Illuzi clears the way for bringing Wal-Mart to Derby.

Gay-bashing… it’s as American as apple pie. First up, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Peter Pace said that he thinks “homosexual acts are immoral.” Interestingly enough, he’s silent of the immorality of that little war he’s helping to run. Also, Truthdig has a great piece on intolerance, the Christian Right, and their concern over the ‘decline of male prowess in America’, with When They Came for the Homosexuals… UPDATE: General Pace “expresses regret” over his comments.

Remember that sinking feeling you got when Michael Dukkakis (or John Kerry) was the Dem nominee? Time to sit back and gloat a bit. Now it’s finally the Republicans’ turn. The NYT has more on that.

In labor news, why the “Employee Free Choice Act” that will be voted on in the Senate soon is important.

And finally, as compensation for having me read the Caledonian Record to give you this linkdump, I point you homeward for “Yet another reason to love VT.”

Happy Tuesday!