Tag Archives: republican

Deregulation and the Financial Crisis

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Let me start off by saying that a couple of months ago, Rush Limbaugh said he was “dreaming” of a race riot. He was running his “Operation Chaos” platform to get Hillary elected in hopes that it would anger the blacks, cause them to riot and kill a bunch of people, and hopefully that would cause Obama to lose the election. Republicans have always said “Trust the free market” and now the “free market” has grabbed the country by the throat and demanded $700 billion or watch the country disintegrate. What would we do if a bunch of minorities took over the country and demanded that kind of money? We’d probably send in the riot troops. But these hijackers are rich, and rich people can never be blamed for anything, so they’re trying to convince people like you that, like all problems, it was all caused by Clinton and the blacks and the Mexicans.

Conservatives have been backstabbed by their friends on Wall Street and are being forced to eat their own heart or watch civilization crumble. People like Bill O’Reilly can do it, beacause they aren’t hard-core ideologues. But everyone else on Fox News and the radio are against it because that would mean they’d have to admit that you can’t run a country on an ideology of “regulation is always bad” and “government spending is always bad.” The problem is, they don’t have any plan. They just say do nothing, “let Wall Street burn”, and that’s stupid. Conservatives have made their entire careers out of convincing us that prosperity on Wall Street equals prosperity at home (which of course is not true) and now they want you to believe there’s absolutely no connection at all, and the death of Wall Street won’t carry significant aftershocks to Main Street. This is absolutely delusional. Not only will it have devastating effects on other Americans, it’s going to have devastating effects *on the entire world*. To pretend there is no problem (like Republicans have been doing for the past 3 months!!!) and do nothing would probably be the most childish, irresponsible thing the American congress has done in 100 years. At this point, doing anything, even passing a fake bill that did very little, would be helpful in trying to regain foreign confidence in the market, which is absolutely mandatory in order to stop the world economy from going down the drain.

Rush Limbaugh, like the rest of the conservatives, is now acting like Bush and his guys are actually Democrats and its McCain (who course they all hate) who are going to come in and fix things. The idea seems to be that Bush wasn’t right-wing enough (!) and that McCain will be better than him because he’s…. more left-wing on a few minor issues? So what Rush is saying is that the Democrats were for the “Paulson Plan.” Of course, neither side wanted the “Paulson Plan” of making Paulson Supreme Emperor of Unprecedented Powers. The plan that the House Republicans killed was a different plan that called for putting up about half the money. I would rather see a plan that involved putting liquidity into the market without the government purchasing the toxic loans.

Now let’s go to the task of dismissing these lies about the CRA and ACORN:

“– The Community Reinvestment Act caused financial institutions to lend to people who weren’t credit worthy. This is crap. The CRA was signed into law in 1977 — over 20 years before the current crisis. The second problem with this theory is the CRA only applies to banks and thrifts. Most of the mortgage lending during the last boom came from — mortgage lenders who aren’t regulated by CRA.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hale-stewart/whos-to-blame-for-the-mes_b_130044.html

Here’s an article named “ACORN Issue Fueling Bailout Opposition”:

“The draft bill includes a left-wing giveaway that would force taxpayers to bankroll a slush fund for a discredited ally of the Democratic Party,” reads one leadership alert. “At issue is ACORN, an organization fraught with controversy for, among other scandals, its fraudulent voter registration activities on behalf of Democratic candidates. Rather than returning any profits made in the long-term from the economic rescue package, Democrats want to first reward their radical allies at ACORN for their (often illegal) help in getting Democrats elected to office.”

In the end, how much of the bailout’s potential profits are earmarked for ACORN? “None. Absolutely none. All funds would go to state and local governments,” said Steven Adamske, spokesman for Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), the chairman of the Financial Services Committee and a lead negotiator.”

One of the prinicipal causes in my opinion is that we’ve become corporate socialists. This Administration wants to “capitalize” all the profits of Big Business so that the money stays a the top and “socialize” the risks and losses, so that the middle class picks up the bill for the rich’s mistakes as well. This has caused a liquidity crisis in the middle class which has helped cause all the foreclosures:

“While the average American continues to suffer due to oligarchical policies of the Bush White House that has resulted in steady erosion of worker earnings; higher unemployment; more expensive medical care; higher gas and food prices – the reckless and fiscally irresponsible elitist continue to be bailed out. This White House exerts a free trade policy that advocates that market forces should rule. This was their rational for the absence of homeowner assistance in the housing crisis. Yet when these market forces are exercised against a favored company the White House steps in and again socializes the risk – placing it squarely on the back of the suffering taxpayer……

All of the above sounds quite dire, but most world experts believe our system is even worse! Many believe that the Tier III write-offs required is greater than $2 trillion dollars versus the $1 trillion dollar bandied by the government and Wall Street firms. If this number is valid and given that we have only written down about $350 billion, then we have a much deeper crisis than anyone envisioned. Last year the estimate to rid American companies of the toxic assets was $100 billion. By late spring this year the number had grown to $500 billion; and, now even the conservative estimates are $1 trillion dollars. However, if international experts are right then it is double that figure.

What does it mean to Americans? It means that the Bush Legacy will include a debt of well over $2,000,000 per household in this country and a wealth curve that is skewed greatly. Per the Federal Reserve Board’s Survey of Consumer Finances the top 5% owns over 59% of all U.S. wealth; the lowest 20% own zero; and, the middle own the balance of 41%. This is the most skewed wealth distribution curve we have experienced since 1929. The trend since 1929 has been a normalized curve that was shaped more along a standard bell curve, which means we maintained a strong middle-class. What has the Bush Administration economic policies really accomplished? It has managed to destroy the class of citizens that has made this country great and left us a new economic system, the American Socialized Capitalism that protects the wealthy.”

http://theamericanscene.com/2008/09/29/bluff-called

From Justin Fox, regarding House Republicans’ plan:

>…that of the House Republican Study Committee, seems to be a joke. It calls for a two-year suspension of the capital gains tax to “encourag[e] corporations to sell unwanted assets.” But the toxic mortgage securities clogging up bank balance sheets are worth less now than when they were acquired. Meaning that no capital gains tax would be owed on them anyway. If you repealed the tax, banks would have even less incentive to sell them because they wouldn’t be able use the losses to offset capital gains elsewhere. Seriously, where do these people come up with this stuff?

And here’s a FactCheck.Org article titled: “Who Caused the Economic Crisis? MoveOn.org blames McCain advisers. He blames Obama and Democrats in Congress. Both are wrong.” Notice that it’s MoveOn.org and McCain, *not Obama* who is doing the lying here. At the bottom of the article it says:

So who is to blame? There’s plenty of blame to go around, and it doesn’t fasten only on one party or even mainly on what Washington did or didn’t do. As The Economist magazine noted recently, the problem is one of “layered irresponsibility … with hard-working homeowners and billionaire villains each playing a role.” Here’s a partial list of those alleged to be at fault:

* The Federal Reserve, which slashed interest rates after the dot-com bubble burst, making credit cheap.

* Home buyers, who took advantage of easy credit to bid up the prices of homes excessively.

* Congress, which continues to support a mortgage tax deduction that gives consumers a tax incentive to buy more expensive houses.

* Real estate agents, most of whom work for the sellers rather than the buyers and who earned higher commissions from selling more expensive homes.

* The Clinton administration, which pushed for less stringent credit and downpayment requirements for working- and middle-class families.

* Mortgage brokers, who offered less-credit-worthy home buyers subprime, adjustable rate loans with low initial payments, but exploding interest rates.

* Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who in 2004, near the peak of the housing bubble, encouraged Americans to take out adjustable rate mortgages.

* Wall Street firms, who paid too little attention to the quality of the risky loans that they bundled into Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS), and issued bonds using those securities as collateral.

* The Bush administration, which failed to provide needed government oversight of the increasingly dicey mortgage-backed securities market.

* An obscure accounting rule called mark-to-market, which can have the paradoxical result of making assets be worth less on paper than they are in reality during times of panic.

* Collective delusion, or a belief on the part of all parties that home prices would keep rising forever, no matter how high or how fast they had already gone up.

The U.S. economy is enormously complicated. Screwing it up takes a great deal of cooperation. Claiming that a single piece of legislation was responsible for (or could have averted) is just political grandstanding. We have no advice to offer on how best to solve the financial crisis. But these sorts of partisan caricatures can only make the task more difficult.

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/who_caused_the_economic_crisis.html

Regarding the crisis, McCain accused Obama of “phoning it in”. Looks like this was true:

>Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, a supporter of the bill, made calls to members of the Congressional Black Caucus, who publicly credited him with changing their minds.

>Rep. Elijah Cummings and Donna Edwards, both Maryland Democrats, were among them. They said Obama had pledged if he wins the White House that he would help homeowners facing foreclosure on their mortgages. He also pledged to support changes in the bankruptcy law to make it less burdensome on consumers.

>”It’s not too often you get the future president telling you that his priority matches your priority,” said Cummings.

>Obama’s rival, Sen. John McCain, who announced a brief suspension in his campaign more than a week ago to try and help solve the financial crisis, made calls to Republicans. His impact was not immediately clear.

>Republican Rep. Sue Myrick of North Carolina, who said she was switching her vote to favor the measure, said of McCain: “They told me he was going to call me. He didn’t.”

>Looking ahead to election day, she added, “I may lose this race over this vote, but that’s OK with me. This is the right vote for the country.”

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/10/03/national/main4497551.shtml

Putting Politics Ahead of Country

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Ok, so McCain “suspended his campaign”, consisting of moving his appearance on David Letterman to a piece with Katie Couric. (McCain insiders say they are looking for another way to suspend the campaign; William Kristol has also called for a second suspension.) The rest of his campaign continued attacking Obama and McCain very slowly made it back to Washington to “lead” on the crisis even though he admitted he had not read the 3-page report on the crisis even after several days. Before he got there, we heard word that they discussions were going good, but soon after McCain got there, House Republicans rebelled. We know that Obama talked during the meeting and McCain didn’t. House Republicans tried to force Democrats to accept the elimination of the capital gains tax (which of course has nothing to do with the crisis) or watch the economy go into a downward spiral, which is pretty much like the cops joining the rioters they’re supposed to bring down and adding in their own demands. So the deal failed. The Dow fell about 780 points and the S&P dropped 8% (as a side note, we all know Phil “America are whiners” Gramm, but McCain’s other economist is Kevin Hassett, who wrote DOW 36,000 right before the Dot Com bubble burst). Now Republicans are blaming the failed vote on Nancy Pelosi giving a speech in which she said the problem was due to a failed economic philosophy of “anything goes” and McCain is blaming Obama and the Democrats for “putting politics ahead of country.”

Noah Millman writes:

> There are lots and lots of reasons not to like this bill. But most of those reasons are Democratic talking points. The GOP alternative proposal was borderline illiterate.

> I’m writing this in haste, without a lot of reflection. But the whole way this has played out has been something of a watershed moment for me. There is only one party in Congress that thinks we are in a financial crisis, only one party in Congress with a functioning leadership.

http://theamericanscene.com/2008/09/29/bluff-called

Megan McArdle writes:

> A journalist friend who spends way more time on politics than I do suggests that if the Democrats cave and include a capital gains tax, it will probably pass–but puts the odds of the Democrats caving at slim to none, since they can now blame any resulting crash on the Republicans.

> I didn’t think it was possible to be more disgusted with politicians than I usually am, but I find it impossible to express the seething contempt that I feel at this kind of opportunism. I don’t mind when they screw with the normal operation of the economy for venal personal gain. But risking a recession in order to get a cut in the capital gains tax? Letting it tank because you can always blame it on the Republicans?

http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/09/so_what_happens_now.php

From Justin Fox, regarding House Republicans’ plan:

>…that of the House Republican Study Committee, seems to be a joke. It calls for a two-year suspension of the capital gains tax to “encourag[e] corporations to sell unwanted assets.” But the toxic mortgage securities clogging up bank balance sheets are worth less now than when they were acquired. Meaning that no capital gains tax would be owed on them anyway. If you repealed the tax, banks would have even less incentive to sell them because they wouldn’t be able use the losses to offset capital gains elsewhere. Seriously, where do these people come up with this stuff?

Bail Out Graph

The Lies of Palin

“Palin could not have asked her girls for permission to accept McCain’s veep offer if she also says she accepted the offer unblinkingly and right away. Palin did fire a police chief even as she insisted to a reporter she hadn’t. She did violate the confidential medical records of Mike Wooten. She hasn’t met with any trade missions from Russia. She does not have any gay friends that anyone can find. She did not oppose the Bridge to Nowhere. She did not sell that plane on eBay. Her Teleprompter did not fail in her convention speech. Alaska’s state scientists did not conclude that polar bears were in no danger. She did deny publicly that humans had anything to do with climate change.

“Alaska does not provide “nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy,” as she claimed. The gas pipeline she touts as her major “mission accomplished” has not broken ground and may never do so. She did not take a pay-cut as mayor of Wasilla. And on and on. Anyone with Google can check all of these out. Including reporters.”

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/09/the-odd-lies–5.html

Libertarianism vs. Neo-Conservatism

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I’ve heard a couple of people I know on the right describe their beliefs as “Libertarian”, but the policies they support seem to me to be a lot closer to Neo-Conservatism. There is a big gulf between Ron Paul and John McCain, so I decided to make a chart, so people know the difference:

· Libertarians are uber-doves. Neo-Cons are uber-hawks.
· Libertarians fear our government. Neo-Cons fear foreign governments.
· Libertarians are for isolationism. Neo-Cons are for expanding the empire.
· Libertarians believe we should not have entered the Second World War. Neo-Cons blame the Left for losing the Vietnam War.
· Libertarians are for getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Neo-Cons are for going into Iran and Georgia.
· Libertarians are obsessed with civil liberties. Neo-Cons are obsessed with demonizing Communism, despite the fact that their intellectual father, Irving Kristol, was a former Trotskyist.
· Libertarians inherited their tolerance for sexual taboos from Robert Heinlein and the hippie movement. Neo-Cons are 60s reactionaries who believe homosexuality and pornography brought down the Roman Empire.
· Libertarians are for ending the war on drugs. Neo-Cons believe the border patrol should shoot Mexican drug smugglers on sight while protecting inflated drug prices so that it can be used to fund an illegal war in Nicaragua or support Afghani poppy-growers.
· Libertarians are against sending foreign aid to Israel, along with every other country. Neo-Cons are for destroying any probable future threat to Israel.
· Libertarians are for completely opening the borders. Neo-Cons are for building a giant wall along the border and financing a mass relocation of illegal aliens.
· Libertarians believe it should be legal to burn the flag. Neo-Cons believe it’s un-American to not wear a flag pin made in China.
· Libertarians follow the Austrian school of economics based on Carl Menger’s Prinicples of Economics. Neo-Cons follow Supply Side economics based on a line graph Arthur Laffer scribbled on a napkin for Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.
· Libertarians believe in balancing the budget and want to go back to the gold standard, which would entail a massive gold buying program that would cause the value of the dollar to fall and the price of gold to rise, amounting to a massive transfer of wealth from the United States to those who own gold. Neo-Cons believe tax cuts increase government capital and spend more than Libertarians or Liberals on military budgets.
· Libertarians are hard-line economic Darwinists who would allow the banks to fail despite the financial consequences. Neo-Cons are corporate socialists who want to bail out all of Wall Street but allow the lax regulation that helped cause it to continue unabated.

Here’s a quick list of priorities for the four political positions:
Liberal: Save lives (capital punishment, etc.), help the poor, save money, defeat evil
Conservative: Save lives (pro-life, etc.), save money, defeat evil, help the poor
Libertarian: Save money, save lives, help the poor, defeat evil
Neo-Conservative: Defeat evil, save lives, help the poor, save money

“[Conservatism] is so influenced by business culture and by business modes of thinking that it lacks any political imagination, which has always been, I have to say, a property of the Left…. What’s the point of being the greatest, most powerful nation in the world and not having an imperial role? It’s unheard of in human history. The most powerful nation always had an imperial role…. [Previous empires were not] capitalist democracies with a strong emphasis on economic growth and economic prosperity…. It’s too bad, I think it would be natural for the United States… to play a far more dominant role in world affairs. Not what we’re doing now but to command and to give orders as to what is to be done. People need that. There are many parts of the world—Africa in particular—where an authority willing to use troops can make a very good difference, a healthy difference…. [But with public discussion dominated by accountants] there’s the Republican Party tying itself into knots. Over what? Prescriptions for elderly people? Who gives a damn? I think it’s disgusting that… presidential politics of the most important country in the world should revolve around prescriptions for elderly people. Future historians will find this very hard to believe. It’s not Athens. It’s not Rome. It’s not anything.” -Irving Kristol, Father of Neo-Conservatism and William Kristol

“The hard part of the supply-side tax cut is dropping the top rate from 70 to 50 percent—the rest of it is a secondary matter. The original argument was that the top bracket was too high, and that’s having the most devastating effect on the economy. Then, the general argument was that, in order to make this palatable as a political matter, you had to bring down all the brackets. But, I mean, Kemp-Roth was always a Trojan horse to bring down the top rate.” -David Stockman, Ronald Reagan’s budget director

“None of us really understands what’s going on with all these numbers…” -David Stockman

“Do you realize the greed that came to the forefront? The hogs were really feeding. The greed level, the level of opportunism, just got out of control. [The Administration’s] basic strategy was to match or exceed the Democrats, and we did.” -David Stockman

“Mr. David Stockman has said that supply-side economics was merely a cover for the trickle-down approach to economic policy—what an older and less elegant generation called the horse-and-sparrow theory: If you feed the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows.” -John Kenneth Galbraith, economist

“The extreme promises of supply-side economics did not materialize. President Reagan argued that because of the effect depicted in the Laffer curve, the government could maintain expenditures, cut tax rates, and balance the budget. This was not the case. Government revenues fell sharply from levels that would have been realized without the tax cuts.” – Karl Case & Ray Fair, Principles of Economics (2007), p. 695

“You know, Paul, Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter. We won the mid-term elections, this is our due.” -Dick Cheney

“It is also a fact that our tax cuts have fueled robust economic growth and record revenues.” -George W. Bush

“You are smart people. You know that the tax cuts have not fueled record revenues. You know what it takes to establish causality. You know that the first order effect of cutting taxes is to lower tax revenues. We all agree that the ultimate reduction in tax revenues can be less than this first order effect, because lower tax rates encourage greater economic activity and thus expand the tax base. No thoughtful person believes that this possible offset more than compensated for the first effect for these tax cuts. Not a single one.” -Andrew Samwick, Chief Economist on Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers from 2003-2004

Recent Interview With McCain on 60 Minutes:

Pelley: “In 1999 you were one of the senators who helped pass deregulation of Wall Street. Do you regret that now?”

McCain: “No, I think the deregulation was probably helpful to the growth of our economy.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/22/opinion/22krugman.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Global Warming Links

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Climate Change Fight “Can’t Wait”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6096084.stm

Climate Change is Not a Consensus of Opinion
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/02/27/global_warming_deniers/

Antarctic Ice Shows Earth Carbon Dioxide at an 800,000-Year High
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5314592.stm

How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic
http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2008/07/how_to_talk_to_a_sceptic.php

List of Scientific Organizations That Accept Man-Made Global Warming
http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2006/02/there-is-no-consensus.php

Climate Change: A Guide for the Perplexed
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/dn11462

Climate Change Questions Answered
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/302176_whatabout02.html

Climate Change FAQs
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Climate_change_FAQs
http://www.brighton73.freeserve.co.uk/gw/globalwarmingfaq.htm

Climate Change Timeline
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Climate_Change_Timeline

Guide to Fact and Fiction About Climate Change
http://royalsociety.org/downloaddoc.asp?id=1630

Climate Change Outline of Topic
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Climate_change:_outline_of_topics

IPCC Drafting Process
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/index.htm

IPCC Summary for Policy Makers
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/docs/WG1AR4_SPM_Approved_05Feb.pdf

IPCC 2007 Reports
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/ar4-wg1.htm

IPCC Predicts Climate Change Disaster If Action Not Taken By 2012
http://climateprogress.org/2007/11/17/must-read-ipcc-synthesis-report-debate-over-delay-fatal-action-not-costly/

NASA on Global Warming
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Library/GlobalWarmingUpdate/

NASA Says Climate Change Approaching “Tipping Point”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070531073748.htm

NASA Study Finds World Warmth Edging Ancient Levels
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/environment/world_warmth.html

NASA Head Looks Back on 20 Years of Climate Change Denial
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/TwentyYearsLater_20080623.pdf

NASA Describes How Lost Arctic Ice Causes a Warming Feedback Loop
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2003/1023esuice.html

REPORT: First Identification of Model-Predicted “Fingerprint” of Tropopause Height Changes
http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/santertext.pdf

REPORT: New Detection Studies Show Anthropogenic Climate Change is Detectable
https://e-reports-ext.llnl.gov/pdf/315840.pdf

Detection and Attribution of Climate Change
http://www.research.noaa.gov/spotlite/archive/spot_ccdetect.html

Ice Cores Reveal Greenhouse Gases at an 800,000-Year-High
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080514131131.htm

Royal United Services Institute Warns Global Warming May Cause World Wars
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/04/23/eaclimate123.xml

North Pole “Melting Faster Than Ever”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/08/28/2349041.htm

North Pole Will Be Ice Free In 5 Years Instead of 60
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/aug/10/climatechange.arctic

Antarctica is Losing Ice to Oceans
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4767296.stm

Rate of Greenland Ice Melting Increased 250% Between 2004 and 2006
http://climateprogress.org/2006/11/26/the-glaciers-are-melting-and-we-are-the-cause/

Drought Has Doubled in Past 30 Years
http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2005/drought_research.shtml

Fresh Water Supplies Are Already Drying Up

Studies Warn Global Warming is Rapidly Raising Sea Levels
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/03/0323_060323_global_warming.html

2006 Was 5th Warmest Year in Century
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=17553

2004: The Year Global Warming Got Respect
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/1229_041229_climate_change_consensus.html

Climate Researchers Feeling Heat From White House
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/05/AR2006040502150.html

Former Surgeon General Discusses Republican Adversity Towards Science
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/jul2007/surg-j17.shtml

Scientists Offered Cash to Dispute Climate Study
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/feb/02/frontpagenews.climatechange

List of 400 “Climate Skeptics” Includes the Unqualified and People Who Want Off the List
http://climateprogress.org/2008/01/16/more-on-the-laughable-padded-inhofe-400/

“Republicans have shown a marked preference for politically inspired fringe theories over the findings of long-established and world-renowned scientific bodies”
http://www.motherjones.com/news/qa/2005/09/chris_mooney.html

Mar. 2006: “The partisan gap on global warming seems to be shifting, according to the poll. In 1998, 31% of Republicans and independents alike were sure that global warming was happening, compared with 39% among Democrats. Today, 46% of Democrats and 45% of independents are certain, but only 26% of Republicans feel that way, according to the poll.”
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1176967,00.html

May 2008: “Only 49% of Republican now even believe that the earth is warming!”
http://climateprogress.org/2008/05/09/the-deniers-are-winning-especially-with-the-gop/

“In the history of global climate research, the research budget in Lindzen’s native United States has been inflated twice — once during the presidency of the first President Bush and once during that of his son, George W. Bush. In both cases the injection of funding was preceded by a sentence uttered by the president: We know too little. If climate researchers wish to secure or expand their budgets, they shouldn’t be saying: We are 90 percent certain that the lion’s share of climate change is manmade. Instead, they should say: We know too little.”
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,480766,00.html

The Cruel Off-Shore Drilling Hoax
http://climateprogress.org/2008/07/10/the-cruel-offshore-drilling-hoax-part-1/

Inaction on Climate Change Will HURT Our Economy
http://climateprogress.org/2006/10/29/inaction-on-climate-change-will-hurt-our-economy/

Energy Efficiency R&D Could Return 75-to-1 on Investment
http://climateprogress.org/2008/09/08/energy-efficiency-part-5-the-highest-documented-rate-of-return-of-any-federal-program/

Mammoth Dung and Prehistoric Goo May Speed Global Warming
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSL1076886120070917?sp=true

Dirty Snow May Warm Arctic as Much as Greenhouse Gases
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/070606113327.htm

Animals Already Evolving to Keep Pace With Global Warming
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article673034.ece

Ancient Warming Caused Chain Reaction in Temperature Growth
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/12/071219-ancient-warming.html

Climate Change May Have Helped Bring Down Neandertals, Mammoths, and the Maya
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/01/080103-neanderthals.html
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080331223843.htm
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/02/080229-servir-maya.html

Ten Reasons Why Climate Change May Be More Severe Than Projected
http://climateprogress.org/2006/09/25/ten-reasons-why-climate-change-may-be-more-severe-than-projected/

Standards of Proof for Global Warming
http://climateprogress.org/2008/02/11/how-do-we-really-know-humans-are-causing-global-warming/

Sunspots at 50 Year Low

Journalistic Balance as Global Warming Bias
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1978

Global Warming or Climate Change?
http://bahumuth.bitfreedom.com/global-warming-climate-change

Global Warming Disinformation Tries to Match “Lord Monckton” With Gore
http://bahumuth.bitfreedom.com/global-warming-disinformation

Washed Up Viscount Manages to Publish Crackpot Theory on Non-Peer-Reviewed Newsletter
http://bahumuth.bitfreedom.com/lord-monckton-ur-blog-dising-ur-cred

Republicans Play the Victim Card

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Just once I would like to see a Democratic President that admits he’s a Liberal.

I really don’t understand why Democrats are always forced to run as centrists, while Republicans revel in their conservatism. It’s particularly sad that in a country founded on the principals of John Locke, Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson, that both political parties eschew the name “liberal.” It’s not like it ever helps the Democratic nominee. Kerry can hunt however many ducks he wants, Republicans will still more likely vote for the duck. Obama can say there’s “no Liberal America and no Conservative America, but the United States of America” all he wants, he’s still going to be called the most liberal congressman in the country, just like Kerry was before him, since becoming the Democratic nominee automatically imbues you with that designation. That’s because unlike liberals, conservatives will never, ever vote for the opposing party no matter how insanely bad the last administration has been. It doesn’t matter that their only talking point is the economy and that the entire American financial system is falling apart at the seams. Only they, the people who have been in charge all this time, can come in and change Washington.

They are so set in their ways that conservatives actually have the gall to argue that the problem with President Bush was that he wasn’t right-wing enough! Yes, everything would be hunky dory if he just didn’t add a few more minor earmarks to the 9 trillion dollar debt! And never mind that we’ve had yet another bank fail due to under-regulation; the real problem with the economy is that we regulate too much. And if Bush had just cut taxes on the rich a little bit more, then job growth would have exploded like he promised all along. It doesn’t matter what the problem is, the answer is: cut taxes and deregulate. And if McCain and his gang of lobbyists running his platform don’t fix things, we can just say he wasn’t a conservative to begin with.

I say this after spending way too much time arguing with my conservative family over the current election while I was holed up in Dallas/Fort Worth to get away from Gustav. One of the first things my grandmother asked me is who I was voting for and after I told her, she conferred to me that she believed Obama was a “Trojan horse” Muslim. Another member of my family was convinced that Obama was not born in Hawaii, despite my assurances that that lie had long been debunked, as if the U.S. government just forgot to check. Those lies, at least, were new. Everything else I listened to was the same conservative crap that’s been played like a violin for the past 10 years: “Wah, wah, the liberal media is being mean to the Republicans”, “I saw a woman using food stamps at the grocery store 20 years ago who had a better car than me and Democrats want me to pay for it”, “America gives away too much money in foreign aid [a whopping 0.1% GDP, the least of any nation. Denmark gives 1%]”, “Obama won’t stand up to Satan-worshipping Muslims because he dressed up as one once.”, “Since we already have all the laws we need, any new legislation is superfluous, so we need do-nothing conservatives in office to keep everything the way it is”, “Global warming is a global scam for [unnationalized] Communists to take control of the world’s money supply”. Seriously, I wish these were jokes.

I guess I feel defeated from not being able to change anyone’s minds about anything. But it’s hard when conservatives are so suspicious of any source that isn’t propaganda from Fox News or Conservative radio. Their lizard-like brains are frozen in the past, unable to accept anything from the last 8 years as a basis for reasoning on this election. We could have had Stalin in office the past 2 terms and conservatives would still be complaining about the double standard for who can use the word “nigger”.

If 8 years of a Democratically-controlled White House and congress had brought forth the financial troubles we’re currently in, then I would definitely be looking at a Ron Paul ticket. I may disagree with a lot of what Ron Paul says, but I love watching him school Republicans on their own history and I have no trouble admitting that he’s smarter than any of the other Democratic or Republican candidates and that his advocates are smarter than both groups combined.

But McCain is looking good this week. Their convention was a smash success and conservatives are falling in line with the crybaby story that the liberal media is being unfair to Palin on her inexperience just because McCain has been running on nothing but the “experience” issue since the campaign started. But declaring war on the Center and calling it “Left” is what the Republicans are good at.

Then there’s the floodgates of lies unleashed at the Republican convention. Palin says she was against the “Bridge to Nowhere.” Actually, her administration spent tens of millions of dollars on a road to link up to the bridge, and she’s been quoted as saying that “Much of the public’s attitude toward Alaska bridges is based on inaccurate portrayals of the projects here” and that she would “not allow the spinmeisters to turn this project or any other into something that’s so negative.” But Republicans knew the “Bridge to Nowhere” would be red meat at the convention, so they just got her to flip flop. Funny how “flip-flopper” only gets attached to people who “voted for the war” (more like voted for giving the President the power to decide whether to go to war) before it was completely mishandled driven into the ground. People from Alaska were pretty upset when they found her railing against the project she had forcefully defended beforehand. (In fact, there was a 1,500-strong anti-Palin rally in Midtown Anchorage, Alaska, along with 100 counter-protesters.) But she only flip-flopped on the issue, not the money. The government allowed her to keep the $223 million in earmarks, and $73 million of it is still earmarked for the same project!

http://www.propublica.org/article/palin-administration-still-pursuing-nowhere-project-913/

http://www.reuters.com/article/vcCandidateFeed7/idUSN3125537020080901

http://www.adn.com/front/story/525510.html

When speaking about Creationism being taught along side evolution in science class, she said, “Don’t be afraid of information.” An interesting comment for someone who asked “a rhetorical question” to a public librarian regarding what she would do if ordered to ban a list of books. Although Palin claims to not remember the incident now, it’s pretty clear that the reason for it was because her church was pushing for the book “Pastor I Am Gay” to be removed from bookshelves.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=5766173&page=1

Although Palin has admitted that she has not been following the Iraq war very closely (even though her son is being sent), she nevertheless has said that not only the Iraq war was a “task that is from God” but that a $30 million natural gas pipeline in Alaska was part of “God’s will” and has asked for ministry students to pray for its completion. When defending the term “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance, she said, “If it was good enough for the founding fathers [it’s] good enough for me, and I’ll fight in defense of our Pledge of Allegiance.” Of course, the Pledge dates to the late 1800s and the term “Under God” was only inserted in the 1950s as wedge against the “godless Soviets”.

http://www.christianpost.com/article/20080905/palin-pray-u-s-plan-in-iraq-is-god-s-plan.htm

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=28559

Palin’s husband is a part of the Alaska Separatist movement which wants to secede from the United States. The party claimed that Palin herself was a member for 2 years but then retracted the claim, saying it was based on faulty information. Nevertheless, she did attend its conventions and recorded a video for them wishing them luck, saying “I share your party’s vision of upholding the constitution of our great state.” Rather ironic since the Republican party was formed on the basis that states can not secede from the union.

http://ww4report.com/node/5982

We all know what Obama’s pastor thinks now, but few know that Palin’s pastor has gone so far as to preach that critics of Bush are going to hell (no, not a joke), that Kerry is among the damned, and that the war in Iraq was a war “contending for your faith” and that Jesus “operated from that position of war mode”!!! As Jesus said, “If your enemy strikes you, turn the other cheek, and then hit him when he least expects it!”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/02/palins-church-may-have-sh_n_123205.html

Meanwhile, the McCain campaign has set new lows in producing lies about Obama. There’s the lie that Obama is for kindergarten “sex-education”, which was really optional, “age-appropriate” education on safety from sexual predators (like the difference between “good touch” and “bad touch”), which Obama did not co-sponsor and which never passed at any rate.

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/off_base_on_sex_ed.html

Then there’s the lie that Obama voted for “infanticide”, a smear specifically designed for Catholic reactionism. The vote itself would not have changed any abortion laws and was bundled with clauses that would have opened doctors up to lawsuits. As the bill itself reads: “(c) Nothing in this Section shall be construed to affirm, deny, expand, or contract any legal status or legal right applicable to any member of the species homo sapiens at any point prior to being born alive, as defined in this Section. (d) Nothing in this Section shall be construed to affect existing federal or State law regarding abortion. (e) Nothing in this Section shall be construed to alter generally accepted medical standards.” This is a deliberate attempt to shoehorn the abortion issue, worked on by Deal Hudson, one of the 80 people on McCain’s advisory board for Catholic issues, who previously resigned from the RNC for having sex with an 18-year-old student of his from Fordham University.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/08/04/the-next-smear-against-ob_n_116891.html

Here’s a list of more GOP lies, as listed at FactCheck.Org:

* [A McCain ad] says Obama “gave big oil billions in subsidies and giveaways,” citing his votes for a 2005 energy bill. But the bill slightly raised taxes on the oil industry overall.

* The ad plucked a positive blurb about Palin from an Associated Press article that, in fact, was very much a mixed review. The AP said she “brings an ethical shadow to the [Republican] ticket,” for example.

* The ad says Obama is the “most liberal” Senator. But the National Journal rated him the 16th most liberal in his first year and the 10th most liberal in his second. It rated his votes “most liberal” only in 2007, when he was busy campaigning and missed one-third of the votes on which the rating is based.

* Palin may have said “Thanks, but no thanks” on the Bridge to Nowhere, though not until Congress had pretty much killed it already. But that was a sharp turnaround from the position she took during her gubernatorial campaign, and the town where she was mayor received lots of earmarks during her tenure.

* Palin’s accusation that Obama hasn’t authored “a single major law or even a reform” in the U.S. Senate or the Illinois Senate is simply not a fair assessment. Obama has helped push through major ethics reforms in both bodies, for example.

* The Alaska governor avoided some of McCain’s false claims about Obama’s tax program – but her attacks still failed to give the whole story.

* Giuliani distorted the time line and substance of Obama’s statements about the conflict between Russia and Georgia. In fact, there was much less difference between his statements and those of McCain than Giuliani would have had us believe.

* Giuliani also said McCain had been a fighter pilot. Actually, McCain’s plane was the A-4 Skyhawk, a small bomber. It was the only plane he trained in or flew in combat, according to McCain’s own memoir.

* Finally, Huckabee told conventioneers and TV viewers that Palin got more votes when she ran for mayor of Wasilla than Biden did running for president. Not even close. The tally: Biden, 79,754, despite withdrawing from the race after the Iowa caucuses. Palin, 909 in her 1999 race, 651 in 1996.

* Lieberman said Obama hadn’t “reached across party lines” to accomplish “anything significant,” though Obama has teamed with GOP Sens. Tom Coburn and Richard Lugar to pass laws enhancing government transparency and curtailing the proliferation of nuclear and conventional weapons.

* Thompson repeated misleading claims about Obama’s tax program, saying it would bring “one of the largest tax increases in American history.” But as increases go, Obama’s package is hardly a history-maker. It would raise taxes for families with incomes above $250,000. Most people would see a cut.

* Lieberman also accused Obama of “voting to cut off funding for our American troops on the battlefield.” But Obama’s only vote against a war-funding bill came after Bush vetoed a version of the bill Obama had supported – and McCain urged the veto.

* McCain claimed that Obama’s health care plan would “force small businesses to cut jobs” and would put “a bureaucrat … between you and your doctor.” In fact, the plan exempts small businesses, and those who have insurance now could keep the coverage they have.

* McCain attacked Obama for voting for “corporate welfare” for oil companies. In fact, the bill Obama voted for raised taxes on oil companies by $300 million over 11 years while providing $5.8 billion in subsidies for renewable energy, energy efficiency and alternative fuels.

* McCain said oil imports send “$700 billion a year to countries that don’t like us very much.” But the U.S. is on track to import a total of only $536 billion worth of oil at current prices, and close to a third of that comes from Canada, Mexico and the United Kingdom.

* He promised to increase use of “wind, tide [and] solar” energy, though his actual energy plan contains no new money for renewable energy. He has said elsewhere that renewable sources won’t produce as much as people think.

* He called for “reducing government spending and getting rid of failed programs,” but as in the past failed to cite a single program that he would eliminate or reduce.

* He said Obama would “close” markets to trade. In fact, Obama, though he once said he wanted to “renegotiate” the North American Free Trade Agreement, now says he simply wants to try to strengthen environmental and labor provisions in it.

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/factchecking_mccain.html

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/gop_convention_spin_part_ii.html

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/maverick_misleads.html

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/gop_convention_spin.html

To be fair, there’s also a much smaller list of Obama flubs which FactCheck.org describes saying, “He stuck to the facts, except when he stretched them.” They’re pretty trivial, but like most people in the mainstream media, FactCheck.org has to look for something to prove they’re even-handed. By far, the most important lie from Obama is that he could “pay for every dime” of his spending and tax cuts “by closing corporate loopholes and tax havens.” A large part of it comes from increasing taxes on the rich while cutting taxes for the middle class. Independent experts argue that BOTH PLANS are cutting too much in taxes, which will lead to big budget deficits. Obama probably planned for the middle class tax cuts to help him get more votes, not realizing that it doesn’t matter what the facts are, people will always believe Republicans when they make baseless claims that Obama will “raise taxes.”

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/factchecking_obama.html

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IN OTHER NEWS
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The Conservative National Review admonished Martin Luther King Jr. for his reception of the Nobel Peace Prize but is now divining that King would not vote for Obama.

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/08/23/national-review-believes-mlk-jr-would-not-vote-for-barack-obama/

Poll: World Wants Obama as President
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/09/09/2360240.htm?section=world

Whistleblower Alleges McCain Hid Wife’s Drug Abuse
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Whistleblower_breaks_15year_silence_to_allege_0911.html

Sex and Drug Scandal in Oil Royalty Agency Costing Taxpayer’s Billions
(This is the agency that would be expanded if ANWR was opened up)

“The alleged transgressions involve 13 former and current Interior Department employees in Denver and Washington. Their alleged improprieties include rigging contracts, working part-time as private oil consultants, and having sexual relationships with – and accepting golf and ski trips and dinners from – oil company employees, according to three reports released Wednesday by the Interior Department’s inspector general.”

“The reports portray a dysfunctional organization that has been riddled with conflicts of interest, unprofessional behavior and a free-for-all atmosphere for much of the Bush administration’s watch.”

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/10/govt-involved-in-sex-and-drugs-and-oil-and-roll/

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/09/10/national/main4436263.shtml

http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20080908/014726.html