Using Polar Bears as a Back Door

An article at CNN reads:

“Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said late Monday the changes were needed to ensure that the Endangered Species Act would not be used as a “back door” to regulate the gases blamed for global warming. In May, the polar bear became the first species declared as threatened because of climate change. Warming temperatures are expected to melt the sea ice the bear depends on for survival.”

Yes, we wouldn’t want the sudden disappearance of polar bears making people notice that there’s no more ice at the north pole:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/08/11/bush.endangered.species.ap/index.html

There is also a lot of talk lately about a forged letter the Administration had done to link Saddam to 9/11:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93319762

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/spytalk/2008/08/suskind-to-release-cia-intervi.html

Also, the Health Dept. is drafting a rule to classify using any contraceptives as abortion:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=agclip2V0QNk&refer=home

And Christopher Hitchens finally got the last laugh on his arch-rival in debate, George Gallaway:

http://www.slate.com/id/2170981/

Bush Administration Discusses Killing Navy SEALs to Start Iranian War

This is unbelievable.

Seymour Hersh, who won a Pulitzer for exposing the Mai Lai Massacre coverup in Vietnam, recently wrote an article in the New Yorker in which he described how there was a meeting in the White House shortly after the overblown standoff with Iranian boats in early January. A former official at the meeting revealed that the subject was “how to create a casus belli between Tehran and Washington”. This was actually at the bottom of the article(!), and when Hersh was questioned about it, he mentioned that he had been told that he “really buried the lead in that story,” which is quite an understatement. When prodded for details, Hersh revealed that one of the ideas to start the war was to build four or five boats that looked like Iranian PT boats, put Navy SEALs on them with a lot of arms, and start a shootout between the “Iranian” ships and our own! The New Yorker wouldn’t let Hersh print these important facts, according to him, because the idea was ultimately rejected (as if it only would have mattered if the plan had been approved!!).

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/08/01/cheney-wanted-to-dress-up-navy-seals-as-iranians-and-shoot-at-them-to-get-his-war-with-iran/

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/07/080707fa_fact_hersh?currentPage=all

Global Warming or Climate Change?

I’ve heard it been said that “Global Warming” was changed to “Climate Change” because liberals wanted to prepare to keep up the Global Warming scare even after temperatures start getting colder. But the funny thing is, the reason the Bush Administration started using the term “Climate Change” was because Frank Luntz advised them to:

“Luntz advises use of the term “climate change” rather than “global warming,” which he says is more frightening.”

http://www.desmogblog.com/bushs-chief-climate-spinmaster-tells-harper-how-its-done

“In a 2002 memo to President George W. Bush titled “The Environment: A Cleaner, Safer, Healthier America”, obtained by the Environmental Working Group, Luntz wrote: “The scientific debate is closing [against us] but not yet closed. There is still a window of opportunity to challenge the science…Voters believe that there is no consensus about global warming within the scientific community. Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate, and defer to scientists and other experts in the field.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Luntz

Another email from 2004 says: “From the heated debate on global warming to the hot air on forests; from the muddled talk on our nation’s waters to the convolution on air pollution, we are fighting a battle of fact against fiction on the environment – Republicans can’t stress enough that extremists are screaming “Doomsday!” when the environment is actually seeing a new and better day.'”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2004/apr/04/usnews.theobserver

So, even though Luntz knew the science was “closing” in on them in 2002, he continued to suggest that Republicans act as if the global warming position was “extremist” in 2004. Yet, he seems to have become an “exteremist” himself in 2006:

Luntz: “It’s now 2006. I think most people would conclude that there is global warming taking place and that the behavior of humans are (sic) affecting the climate.”

BBC: “But the administration has continued taking your advice. They’re still questioning the science.”

Luntz: “That’s up to the administration. I’m not the administration. What they want to do is their business. It has nothing to do with what I write. It has nothing to do with what I believe.”

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/06/frank_luntz_acc.php

“Although Luntz later tried to distance himself from the Bush administration policy, it was his idea to discredit the idea of global warming science to keep the issue from influencing voters in the 2000 and 2004 U.S. presidential elections. Luntz has since said that he is not responsible for what the administration has done since that time. Though he now believes humans have contributed to global warming, he maintains that the science was in fact incomplete, and his recommendation sound, at the time he made it.[5]”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Luntz

Rush Limbaugh Criticizes Katrina Victims

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/17/rush-limbaugh-attacks-black-katrina-victims-and-praises-whites-as-the-floods-hit/

You know, I still can’t wrap my head around how conservatives latch onto 9/11 that it’s the end-all-be-all of human events and yet have the cujones to make light of similar devastations. Even after the massive fuckups with Iraq, conservatives are still gunning to attack Iran and Syria, but when a storm causes a similar amount of damage and loss of human life, Bush didn’t even change his schedule! The deputy director of the LSU Hurricane Center wasn’t even informed that the levees were breached once the White House found out about it!

http://www.salon.com/books/excerpt/2008/06/06/rove_katrina/index.html

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/9523

O’Reilly calls for Catholic Church to sanction priest for defending Wright

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5909

I think this is something like the 3rd week the “liberal media” has been bashing Obama over Rev. Wright’s “God Damn America” sound bytes. This isn’t surprising for those who have noticed how the mainstream media has consistantly jumped to the side of the underdog. First they loved up to Obama because he was the “new guy”, then they jumped over to Hillary when he started to win, and have continued to switch partners as the polls swing back and forth so as to drag the Democratic primary out as long as humanly possible. It’s not like they didn’t have this stuff on Wright from the very beginning.

Yes, Rev. Wright and Louis Farrakhan are both crazy. But they really aren’t as racist and hate-filled as everyone would have you believe. Obviously the part about government infecting the population with AIDS and Syphallis is nothing but a crazy conspiracy theory, but it’s hardly unthinkable. North Carolina secretly sterilized 65,000 people between 1929 and 1974. His statements on “God Damn America” were issued against the violence that America spreads, whch is something Martin Luther King Jr. pointed out as well, saying that America was the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world today” and that “America was founded on genocide, and a nation that is founded on genocide is destructive.”

Farrakhan has blamed the Jews of Hollywood for making movies that depict black people as “less than human.” He’s said every American Jew is also a dual citizen of Israel, and in some cases, like that of Liberman, this is true. He’s called Hezbollah “freedom fighters”, which of course is nonsense, but it is true that they are a product of Israel’s injustice towards the Palestinian people. He’s said that rich Jewish bankers helped finance Hitler, which is partially true; many Jewish bankers did help finance both sides during the World Wars. And he’s said that for having such a small number of people, the Jews have a large influence over American and European politics, which is true.

A lot of it is skeevy, but really pretty low on the radar in terms of being “out-and-out” anti-semitic. Both of them deny being anti-white or anti-semitic, but then so did Mel Gibson. Like Apocalypto, there are hateful insinuations cloaked in historical interpretations, but I feel like I’ve heard so much worse, which brings me to Rev. John Hagee.

Hagee said that American and Israel need to ally up to bomb Iran to fulfill “God’s Plan”, which pretty much makes him admittedly anti-arab and anti-islamic. He considers Harry Potter to be contemporary witchcraft. Hurricane Katrina was an act of God meant to punish New Orleans for “a level of sin that’s offensive to God,” namely homosexuality, but also Bush’s pressuring Israel to give up some of its illegal settlements in the “tit for tat” exchange. He even erroneously said that the hurricane hit on the same day as a Gay Pride Parade, which in fact was scheduled a week later (plus the primarily gay neighborhoods such as the French Qurater were spared). He’s blamed Hitler’s anti-semitism on Catholicism without any consideration to the anti-semitic Protestant culture of Martin Luther (something very common; my sister’s history teacher Coach Ourso from Mandeville High teaches the same). He’s also written a book called Beginning of the End about how giving the Golan Heights to the Palestinians is “signing a deal with the Anti-Christ” that will bring about the Apocalypse. On a Praise-A-Thon broadcast in 1993, he said that “poverty is caused by sin and disobeying the Word of God.”

Unlike Farrakhan and Wright, Hagee is one of the highest-paid television evangelists in the world, making over a million dollars in 2001 alone. Hagee has claimed that McCain has sought out his vote, and after his endorsement, McCain said more than once that he was “very proud to have Pastor Hageeā€™s support.” This, however, is not the story the media is interested in, because it doesn’t fit into the Hillary vs. Obama fight that they have been trying to frame for months now.

Lou Dubose writes in the Huffing Post:

“John McCain needed an evangelical to embrace and send a message to the Christian right that he will do their bidding, even if he’s not quite one of them. He settled on San Antonio End-Timer John Hagee.

Hagee’s bizarre theology would be harmless enough (perhaps) if confined to his multimillion-dollar temple. But John Hagee has a constituency that extends beyond his congregation. He used that constituency to build a foreign-policy advocacy organization–Christians United for Israel (CUFI)–that is now pressing for a pre-emptive war with Iran. CUFI brought 4,500 End Times activists to Washington for its July 2006 inaugural event, followed by a day of lobbying on the Hill.

Hagee was straightforward in announcing his agenda: “The United States must join Israel in a pre-emptive military strike against Iran to fulfill God’s plan for both Israel and the West,” he said.

John McCain has been pressed to renounce Hagee. He cannot. Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader, whose unsolicited “endorsement” created a problem for Sen. Barack Obama, can preach religious hate. But he works on the fringe of American religion and politics and is an unlikely guest at anyone’s White House. The influence of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright–Obama’s longtime pastor who is cut from a different cloth than Farrakhan–doesn’t extend beyond the African-American community in Chicago.

The Republican Party, on the other hand, is deeply invested in John Hagee and his followers.”