Monday, May 05, 2008

That Enormous Sucking Sound

It's the thoroughly pulped brain tissue being steadily sucked from the skulls of American voters.

Who is a greater threat to America today? Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda or the Reverend Jeremiah Wright? If you watch American cable network news or read that country's newspapers you would have to conclude it's Wright, by a huge margin.

The country is cash-strapped, debt-ridden, with a broken military struggling to hold the fort in two bottomless foreign wars. There is no end of serious issues for American voters to be weighing carefully but, instead, someone dangles a bit of shiny tinsel in front of them and they're off and running.

Why in hell doesn't Dick Cheney simply bomb Reverend Wright into the Promised Land? Fact is, Dick knows that this guy is one of the few bright lights on the Republican presidential horizon this year.

American voters are being treated like a pack of total dummies and apparently that's just the way they like it. Hillary Clinton, multi-millionairess that she is, can run around and lambaste others as "elitist" and somehow be taken seriously. Hillary is the quintessential fat old white man only with a minor anatomical discrepancy.

John McCain is off in Geriatric Fantasyland, dreaming of wiping out the humiliation of Vietnam if only America can find some war, somewhere it can win and determined to keep bombing the hell out of somebody until he finds it. America is reeling under its financial mismanagement and yet McCain now wants to deregulate financial markets and make permanent those irresponsible tax cuts for the rich. This guy has already run straight off the pier and yet nobody's noticing because of some angry black preacher who doesn't influence a damned thing?

12 comments:

Oldschool said...

Irresponsible Tax Cuts for the Rich???

In the US today . . . the top 10% of tax payers . . . those that make the most money . . . pay almost 70% of ALL FEDERAL INCOME TAX . . . the bottom 50% pay less than 3% . . .
eg: So if Bill Gates invites 100 American tax payers to dinner . . . he buys dinner for 70 of them, 50 of them buy only 3 meals and the other 40 pick up the tab for 27 meals. Sure sounds like the rich are getting a free ride to me!!!

Your lefty talking points are soooo boring . . . few facts, same old tired retoric . . . listened to a guy the other day that had been to Iraq . . . travelled around with only an interpreter for a couple of months . . . had no problems . . . said things were getting much better.

Remember Thomas Jefferson: "The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not."

And Obamawhama's looney marxist "Liberation Theology" racist preacher kind of defines what an upstanding citizen Obam is . . . who in their wright (pun) mind could sit for 20 plus years and listen to this crap????

And the US economy . . . while they certainly have problems . . . their unemployment rates are much lower than any European socialist regeme . . . who will now have great difficulty selling into the US market with the much over-valued Euro . . .

How about the IPCC . . . GW is delayed for about 10 years . . . sooo nuts!!!!!

The Mound of Sound said...

Pre-School, if you insist on being goofy and insulting, take your drivel somewhere else. You're binned!

You listened to "some guy" the other day who said things are great in Iraq? Don't let the surge in those flag draped coffins winging their way home to America stand in the way of your nonsense, PS.

Reality plainly means nothing to you. You're very, very strange.

By the way, here's a suggestion. If you find these posts as boring as you claim, why don't you take your anecdotal drivel somewhere else? You're not needed here.

The Mound of Sound said...

Just one more thing Oldschool. No more of your silly, unsourced allegations. This isn't a place for you to pull nonsense out of your or Rush Limbaugh's backside. You claim the IPCC says global warming is "delayed" 10-years? And just what is your source of that? Put up a link to it. The top 10% pay 70% of America's income tax? Let's have your source link on that? "Some guy" who travelled through Iraq? Who, wiseguy? That's the thing with you. There's never any source to any of your claims. Someone makes this crap up, you swallow it happily and then spread it around. Sources pal or you're out of here. And, by the way, Faux News and NewsMax, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter aren't sources.

Anonymous said...

As an Expat American living in Canada, I'm always amazed and entertained to listen to Canadians tell me exactly what is wrong with America (specifically how stupid/uneducated/hegemonistic/etc we are), and how to fix it. It never, ever, ever ceases to be amusing.

From a sources standpoint for the IPCC retreat on global warming "for the time being" - they are everywhere - a quick google search would reveal them if you're not familiar with the most recent reports. Between La Nina and the Pacific inversion - we will probably see lower than "predicted" temperatures for the next several years. If this is a major pacific cooling cycle - maybe even for 20-30 years. Combine this with the Maunder minimum in susnpot and solar activity - and we might be in for a very chilly decade (or 2). But that's OK - we can manage that by changing the name from Global Warming to climate change and - presto change-o - we can still try and hawk carbon credits on those with guilty consciences.

The Mound of Sound said...

Pleased to see that you're easily amused. The La Nina situation is no secret, no surprise. Here on the coast we're more than familiar with the El Nino/La Nina whipsaw and, yes, La Nina does tend to bring cooling trends - to part of the planet - but certainly not to places like California or your home state. They get scorched and extensive droughts.

Don't blend La Nina in with AGW. All you'll get is a delightful but misleading fruit cocktail. If you need help sorting out the effects of the two, try going to realclimate.org or grist.com. You'll find all the information you need to properly inform yourself from those sites. If you're actually interested.

The Mound of Sound said...

One more thing, Tex. I don't mean to be unkind but Olberman had the results tonight of a major US poll that found 7% of your countrymen believe Obama to be Muslim. Now do you think 7% of Canadians are dumb enough to believe that or 7% of Brits or 7% of the French? I don't know whether you find that amusing. I just find it sad but totally in keeping with similar confusion we've seen in your countrymen since your fellow Texan got appointed president. I won't bother going on lest you get too amused for your own good.

Anonymous said...

Gee, I wonder what we COULD find 7% of Canadians believing in? Probably wouldn't be too difficult to find something the rest of the world thinks is ridiculous. But, as I said - it's amazing the number of smug, self righteous, uber intelligent Canadians you run into. Like ones who believe in AGW, for instance - despite the fact that observed temperatures and the AGW models don't mesh in any way, shape, form, or fashion - an inconvenient fact acknowledged by even the IPCC.

Funny that you exclude Coulter, O'reilly, Hannity et al as not being "sources", but then quote Olberman as if he's a non-partisan fount of unimpeachable information. Olberman - one of the biggest partisan hacks in a media full of partisan hacks.

I tend not to get my AGW information from site like NASA, the European space agency environ satellite data, and the like. I didn't tie AGW to La Nina - I said it and the Pacific inversion were the cause of the IPCC issuing a "delay" in their global warming predictions. Two very different things - you seem to have some difficulty with reading comprehension skills for such a "smart" Canadian.

"Appointed" president - ohh, yes, amusing indeed. It's especially amusing to see a Canadian ape all of the Democratic Underground talking points. But you go ahead and congratulate yourself for being so much smarter than the rest of us - try not to let the facts stand in the way of your self-promotion, or you won't enjoy it nearly as much.

By the way - the first poster who you rail at for not providing you links to his assertion that the upper 10% of Americans pay 70% of the taxes in almost correct. In 2006 it was 72.6%.

The Mound of Sound said...

Nice diatribe, chum. An integral part of AGW entails extreme weather and precipitation fluctuations - droughts and floods - the very things you're now seeing in your own neck of the planetary woods or in Asia or in Africa. We may have a prolonged cooling trend in this area but just how's that going in most of the rest of the world? Sorry for the inconvenient truth.

Anonymous said...

Not inconvenient at all. I know it's fashionable to blame any variability in climate on man - but the observational data just. doesn't. fit. And we're not talking about regional cooling. We're talking about global cooling. You really should read the latest IPCC reports before making the regional vs global argument.

The Mound of Sound said...

Msybe you could give me a specific reference to "the latest IPCC reports" that you rely upon. I've gone to their site and there's nothing there on this. Here's a little item, however, from Hansen:

"The past year (2007) witnessed a transition from a weak El Nino to a strong La Nina (the latter is perhaps beginning to moderate already, as the ocean waters near Peru are beginning to warm). January 2007 was the warmest January in the period of instrumental data in the GISS analysis, while, as shown in Figure 1, October 2007 was # 5 warmest, November 2007 was #8 warmest, December 2007 was #8 warmest, and January 2008 was #40 warmest. Undoubtedly, the cooling trend through the year was due to the strengthening La Nina, and the unusual coolness in January was aided by a winter weather fluctuation.

The large short-term temperature fluctuations have no bearing on the global warming matter or the impacts of global warming ... A global warming much smaller than weather fluctuations has the potential for dramatic effects, e.g., by setting in motion future large sea level change, species extinction, and various other impacts.
Cold weather does raise an interesting point, though. People who do not like cold weather, and might have welcomed the idea that Minnesota may become more like Missouri or Massachusetts like Virginia, must give up that notion, unless they wish ill for a large fraction of the planet's inhabitants, both human and other creatures. We are going to have to figure out a way to keep climate zones pretty much where they are now (winters will continue to happen, as always). It is possible that we can still do that -- just barely. But I digress -- that will be in our next paper, almost finished."

Now, before you launch into the standard, rightwing nutbar Hansen smear-job, read the truth about the guy at Grist.org.

Anonymous said...

Actually, I'm more of a libertarian than right wing - although I suppose you use that brush to tar anyone who disagrees with you, based on your erudite postings here.

Hansen's mistakes, curiously, only run in 1 direction - those supporting his belief in global warming. Too bad about that little mix-up with the 1998 data, where we find out that it wasn't the warmest year in recorded history, after-all.

Again - you denounce anyone who disagrees with you as an unreliable source, but offer grist.org as an example of non-partisan debate on climate? Please.

try here:
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/03/11/a-note-from-richard-lindzen-on-statistically-significant-warming/

or here:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7191/edsumm/e080501-12.html

Of course, the dire prediction is then made that things will really hot up after 2015, based on current "predictions". There is, of course, that slight problem that the predictions made by the climate change models have not, so far, even come close to the observational evidence. But, never let facts get in the way of a good alarmist theory, as we say.

You might also want to look at the data from Nasa's Aqua satellite - pretty interesting read there as well.

The Mound of Sound said...

Thanks for the references ET. I will take a look at them. You, I assume, have dismissed mine out of hand but no matter.

You're right in that I consider libertarians to the right, in some respects albeit not in all.

What strikes me as curious is the way the left and centre-left are now treated as virtual communists in American discourse. Your media, certainly, seems to have lost any ability to distinguish these viewpoints. They're all socialist although I suppose the act of having shared services, be they police, fire, water, sewers, street sweepers, public schools and teachers,roads, bridges and street lighting, the list goes on - are all community-based and, hence, socialistic. Be fun to see how those folks would react if they had to dispose of their toilet waste in buckets, eh?