Abramoff....Again???
With all of the McCloskey is a Jew Hater crap coming from the Pombo campaign, here are a couple of additional considerations that one should be willing to use to hex the trolls.
It seems very timely that Newsweek is able to connect the dots, just when Pombo is raising his big rucus. Why is it that the Abramoff name keeps coming up with everything that sounds like a scam. Is this really the same Jack Abramoff who funnelled so much money from his clients to Richard Pombo and his RichPAC? Sure looks like it.
Just think, here is a great deal as explained by Michael Isikoff in Newsweek.
The pitch from superlobbyist Jack Abramoff was hard to resist: a good way to get access on Capitol Hill, he told his clients a few years ago, was to contribute to a worthy charity he and his wife had just started up. The charity, called the Capital Athletic Foundation, was supposed to provide sports programs and teach "leadership skills" to city youth. Donating to it also had a side benefit, Abramoff told his clients: it was a favored cause of Rep. Tom DeLay.
This is only a sidebar note, but blogger does not give me a side bar to note it on. The Capital Athletic Foundation is the Abramoff connection to John Doolittle. Doolittle's wife was a fund raiser here. Now, she is just relaxing with her 15% from Doolittle's campaign contributions. (Get that, Annette, your husband is a piker. Up your ante to 15% also.)
Well, now back to the Doolittle story.
But now, NEWSWEEK has learned, investigators probing Abramoff's finances have found some of the money meant for inner-city kids went instead to fight the Palestinian intifada. More than $140,000 of foundation funds were actually sent to the Israeli West Bank where they were used by a Jewish settler to mobilize against the Palestinian uprising. Among the expenditures: purchases of camouflage suits, sniper scopes, night-vision binoculars, a thermal imager and other material described in foundation records as "security" equipment.
As Babaloo said, why would you believe anything that Pombo says. I think that I need Rocky to explain this, though maybe Bill Moyers anticipated it all a couple of years ago in his OpEd piece, The Delusional is no Longer Marginal. But then, we know that with Pombo supporters like the Tracy Press.
Tags:
posted by Wes @ 7:30 AM
29 Comments:
ohhh Dude, like, I know what you mean. When im hiding from the black helicopters I can like, identify with this! I’ve been there man! One time I contributed to the girl scouts, well I borrowed the money but that’s a different story, to buy those precious cookies. Like I thought, you know man you got to eat anyway, why not fill your belly and up your Karma too. So I get back to my Moms house and decided since she let me live there for 45 years I would share 1 cookie with her. She was so ungrateful and wanted more. So, like Christmas was only a few months away so I let her have the whole box. I was bummed out though so I went back to the little beefy girl in the uniform and told her my mom ate them all and I wanted my money back. JESUS you would have thought I like fondled her or something. She started screaming for help and these Girl Scout groupie’s starting chasing me..... What were we talking about again?
Hold on, let me go back and look...
OH YEA! ha. Sorry, sometimes I just lose my place.
Point being that when you give to charity you need to get a receipt or the next thing you know you’ll lose your cookies and money will be flowing into military camps to buy totally bogus shit!
Well, should we have one standard for the Abramoff's of the world and another for McCloskey, not that doesn't have a higher personal standard anyway?
McCloskey is right! It is a jewish conspiracy...Pombo, Abramoff, Doolittle and the protocols of the elders of zion are in cahoots fighting the infitada. I'll betcha DiFi's in on it too. We know who runs things.
Yo Delta.
Rocky here. Adrian had me doin udder stuff today and only like now wuz Rocky able to come in and be part of duh circle. Dis blot is addictive, ain't it?
You wanna know what Rocky tink? Rocky tink dat dere's a combination of tings goin on here dat all of youse guys are confusticating. Mixin apples wit oranges, or maybe apples wit limes, or maybe we could keep it generic and just say apples wit Citrus Pete, as my friend Mr .02 like to call duh one Rocky call duh Fightin Repuglican. He's a good man fer a Repug, dis guy is, and duh best friggin boxer we got and dat includes Barbara.
Foist of all, people is confusticating being a Buttwipe wit talkin to a Buttwipe. Rocky talk to ButtaWipeO all duh time on dis here blot, but dat don't mean Rocky is a friggin Buttwipe. You know what I mean? So just cuz duh Fightin Repug talks to Hologram deniers, don't mean dat he believes dat Holograms don't exist.
And clearly youse all see dat its been Rocky's choice to engage ButtaWipeO in a open honest conservation hopin to educate dis imperfect moron, and even sumtimes Gibby Boy, and is dat duh right ting to do or duh wrong ting?
Now duh way Rocky sees it, duh answer depend on duh outcome. If ButtaWipeO puts duh Pampers on and gets duh California Noises to clean up his act, den it will have been time well-spent and I tink you all would agree wit Rocky dat dis would make dis blot a more civilianized place. And you'd all be slappin Rocky on duh back sayin good job, yer friggin brilliant, and maybe I get anudder trophy fer duh mantle which I would put right next to duh one Rocky got when he TKOed Apollo Creed in duh 12th round.
Butt if ButtaWipeO wanna stay a Buttwipe, I can here all of youse sayin Rocky why did you bodder talkin wit a moron like ButtaWipeO, you must be really friggin dum or sumtin like dat. You know what I mean? Woo woo woo.
So duh fact dat duh Fightin Repug went to talk wit dese guys don't bodder Rocky at all, cuz youse all judgin him years later on account of duh fact dat he didn't convinnie all of dem to his point of view. But from what Mr VPO sed elsewhere on dis blot, maybe he did have sum effect on sum of dem as at least offishally dis group ain't sayin no more dat Holograms don't exist. In dis polarized dis functional world, Rocky tink dats progress. Maybe if he'd gone down dere more den once duh Fightin Repug coulda toined 'em all into bagel chefs fer all I know.
Now Rocky ain't got no anti-semantic bone in his body but duh simple fact is dat sum of dose Isreal leaders really ain't real in contrast wit what dey claimin and have committed the same kinds of killins and mass moiders dat Yessir Errorfat did and dis country not only talked wit 'em, but dey bin givin duh royal treatment in duh friggin Rose Garden fer Chrissake. I mean Abrahams sake. Dis country long have a double standard in duh Middle East, ain't no doubt about dat. So duh Fightin Repugs right about dat at least.
Butt you know, duh Fightin Repug gave duh money back he got from dis Mizra-ble guy, as you pointed out, the udder Repugs did not. ButtaPombO ain't yet gived up duh money he got from duh Jack-off team, and dey all been indicted. So anyway, I tink dis is all just makin a big deal out of nuttin, but you know nuttin is in duh eye of duh beholder. If you wanna hate duh Fightin Repug, now you got grounds to express yer outrage. If you wanna hate my guy McNerney, you can say he smeared Filson in a hit piece. And of course, we gotta lotta Filson haters on dis blot fer duh simple crime he committed dat he's got sum guys in DC - sum good ones like George Miller - throwin sum vasool his way. None of dis crap should really matter, if youse ask Rocky, but its all most of youse guys ever wanna argue about. No wonder dey call dis ting a blot.
Fer example, Gibby Boy conclude from what's been sed dat duh Fightin Repug is a Hologram denier and dat means he's callin me a buttwipe. Guilty by ass-sociation, if you know what I mean. Heh heh. Yo Gibby - I hope you ain't no frigging lawyer! Rocky tink you needs to take a Vallium and chill out - you can almost see duh spit flyin out of yer mouth as you rant and rage.
Babaloo judgin duh Fightin Repug by duh outcome - you is tryin to get yer quarter back on Monday mornin.
Rocky know dis: Dere can never be no friggin peace in dis woild unless people let byproducts be byproducts and sit down and talk to each udder even if you gotta talk about 'em over a hotdog made wit duh same byproducts. New Rocky Poll: McNerney, Fightin Repug, Thomas, Filson, Beano. ButtaPombO no longer even make duh list.
Bottom line: duh Fightin Repug stuff don't matter so no change dere, but Filson move up one on account of duh fact Rickey sed sumtin intelligent fer duh foist time ever dis week and Rocky wanna encourage good behavior.
Rocky out.
Yo Mr. Chicken Shit.
Rocky here. I told you yesterday to go back to the friggin udder blot you emerged from. We alreddy got a Buttwipe over here and we don't need no more.
Rocky out.
you realize how stupid you dickheADS sound? god I wish more people read this Berkley shit.
Republican Spy...Rocky said buttout! We like splitting hairs over whether the holocaust actually happened, the links between Abramoff and Pombo and the Jewish conspiracy (and for proof, who's heading the Republican Party...Mehlman!!!!)and flapping our jaws about why Israel doesn't turn French and just wave a white flag, like all of us would do if trouble presented itself. Ya see, Israel's paranoid...nobody's out to get them...they just need to get more 2nd testamentified...you know, love your enemies. We leave out the obvious....and hate your friends and family. So stay away. We like to stew in our own peculiar juices.
Wow. Just checking in here. Rocky may have already said this, don't know, but I am having trouble reading Rocky's syntax so I generally skip it.
Abramoff and Lapin are don't care if they have to suck up to the UberTheocratic Christians. It is all part of the Frottage these groups rely on to magnify and broadcast their respective delusions.
Calling people "anti-Semetic" here, in this example is the same thing as calling people who question dominionists who plan to eastablish a Christian Nation "anti-Christian."
It is a tactic designed to play on our monumental religious tolerance and make us afraid to comment.
It makes people look the other way because they cannot abide the suggestion of being called a bigot.
Don't fall for it. Fake "War on Christians", fake "Anti-Semetic" comments...red herrings.
Whoa man..i had an epiphany. It's all clear...Doolittle is a mormon. The mormons believe Jesus Christ came across the atlantic borne by the Native Americans. There's a painting in the Temple in Salt Lake City. Notice the Salt...George Miller has dedicated his life to fighting a type of salt...selenium...from entering the water supply, even though its naturally occurring. Remember this. The Lost Tribe is hooked up to Mehlman, the lost protocols of the elders of zion, the Institute for Historical Revisionism (or whatever group it is that mccloskey belongs to) and the Palestinian constitution, which mentions the LPEZ. This corresponds to Pombo's portuguese roots...portuguese conquistadors enslaved colonies in part to secure salt supplies. American Samoa is in the Pacific, along with Saipan, and much of AS is mormon. Along comes Abramoff, with links to Saipan, Pombo, Abramoff and the Israel conspiracy. It takes someone like McCloskey...with his intuitively inquisitive mind...to form the synaptic resonance tempered by long discussions with IHR and Yassir Arafat to put it all together. I am glad to be a part of the disclosure of this edifice which may ultimately transport us to a higher level of consciousness. Cool. Out.
All sarcastic Pombo-supporter comments aside, you all really have to consider for a second what you’re saying. McCloskey didn’t only speak to the Institute for Historical Review, he praised their work. He didn’t only discuss the issues, he called it the “so-called Holocaust.” I don’t care what he thinks in his heart. Serving in congress should be a privilege—one strike and you’re out. Obviously that’s not the case, but we should all acknowledge that associating with these types is inexcusable. On a previous thread, there was an actual discussion concerning the relative trustworthiness of the Institute for Historical Review and the Southern Poverty Law Center. I mean, come on. I have enough familiarity with the work of the SPLC that no research was necessary—they are a vital organization whose work rooting out and exposing the hate-mongers in this country has been invaluable. It took me five minutes visiting the IHR website to find numerous repugnant viewpoints and insinuations. Take a look before embarrassing yourself further—you can check out articles from their journals. Sure, too often people are accused of bigotry because they disagree on an issue. That comes from the right when Middle East policy is discussed and from the left when affirmative action is the issue. However, bigots do exist. Don’t legitimize them.
Daddio, that is some freaky times. Talking bout bong hits and jews from Berkeley...whoa.
Its about savin the world from the corporate enslavers who want to take our bikes away to ride on bad vibe machines.
I hope the Girl Scout groupie stops chasin me too.
I find any Holocaust deniers crazy, like the people who say the moon landing never took place, then follow Buzz Aldrin around and harass him (for those historically challenged people here, Aldrin was the second man on the moon).
Crazy, and maybe even a little dangerous.
There seems to be a disease in this country of angry far right-wingers, almost always white males, who find some whacked out cause or government conspiracy and then build a whole cottage industry around it. The "Holocaust as a Jewish conspiracy" is one. I mentioned the "moon landing never happened" one. The Kennedy shooting. There are many others.
Here is another one: "the US gov't, which has been taken over by liberal enviros, is out to steal your land and destroy your life". This grew during the 1980s, when some ranchers ran into conflicts with government officials over environmental protection, then the Sagebrush Rebellion (encouraged by Reagan) started, then the "Wise Use" groups with people like Ron Arnold and Chuck Cushman go going, and then we had Pombo elected, who now carries this "cause" forward.
A feeling of paranoia and being a victim is what all these have in common -- "they" are out to get "us", they are hiding the facts, they have an agenda to eliminate us. And other such like paranoid rantings.
Then the tall tales start making the rounds about how some poor farmer had his whole livelihood taken away because of running over some rat, or that an elderberry bush caused a flood that killed people, or a gnatcatcher caused the US Marines to go to war untrained. Pombo loves to tell these tales.
Someone with good sociology and psychology skills could probably build a whole pattern of behavior of groups run by paranoid far right white males. They are like cults, where facts don't matter, only blind adherence to ideology.
In most cases, they are pretty harmless. But we have talked on this blog about two that can be dangerous. One is the Holocaust deniers and their rantings. Another is the "property rights" advocates who see the world as a place to exploit and destroy.
In regards to the Holocaust deniers, I don't know why McCloskey would give a talk to a group like IHR, but it was a mistake, and he did distance himself from them. He was never in the group or active in anything they did.
Pombo however is riding high on the support of the equally deluded "property right" nutcases. Rather than distance himself from them, he is one of the leading and most powerful proponents of this dangerous and destructive ideology. He even wrote a whole book on it, that miserable polemic "This Land is Our Land [to exploit and destroy without regard to the consequences]".
My point is that to elect anyone beholden to an extreme ideology is a mistake. Pombo was powerless for most of his Congressional career. Then he became committee chair and now can act out his delusions. And our environmental laws, our national parks, our forests, our oceans, and our health will suffer from Pombo's effort to impose his distorted ideology on us.
Just as none of us would ever elect a Holocaust denier, Pombo should also be soundly rejected due to "blind adherence to a dangerous and extreme ideology".
"the US gov't, which has been taken over by liberal enviros, is out to steal your land and destroy your life". Well, here's some quotes.
John Muir, the founder of the Sierra Club, thought that "Man is always and everywhere a blight on the landscape"
A PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) official said "I do not believe that a human being has a right to life; I would rather see experiments done on our children than on animals"
Paul Watson, the founder of Greenpeace, had the "impression that instead of going out to shoot birds, [he] should go out and shoot the kids who shoot birds"
Maurice Strong, the head of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janiero, asked, "Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about"
The right to have children should be a marketable commodity, bought and traded by individuals but absolutely limited by the state. - Kenneth Boulding, originator of the "Spaceship Earth" concept (as quoted by William Tucker in Progress and Privilege, 1982)
We have wished, we ecofreaks, for a disaster or for a social change to come and bomb us into Stone Age, where we might live like Indians in our valley, with our localism, our appropriate technology, our gardens, our homemade religion -- guilt-free at last! -- Stewart Brand (writing in the Whole Earth Catalogue
Free Enterprise really means rich people get richer. They have the freedom to exploit and psychologically rape their fellow human beings in the process . . . Capitalism is destroying the earth. -- Helen Caldicott, Union of Concerned Scientists
We must make this an insecure and inhospitable place for capitalists and their projects . . . We must reclaim the roads and plowed land, halt dam construction, tear down existing dams, free shackled rivers and return to wilderness millions of tens of millions of acres of presently settled land. -- David Foreman, Earth First!
Everything we have developed over the last 100 years should be destroyed. -- Pentti Linkola
If you ask me, it'd be a little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy because of what we would do with it. We ought to be looking for energy sources that are adequate for our needs, but that won't give us the excesses of concentrated energy with which we could do mischief to the earth or to each other. -- Amory Lovins in The Mother Earth - Plowboy Interview, Nov/Dec 1977, p. 22
The only real good technology is no technology at all. Technology is taxation without representation, imposed by our elitist species (man) upon the rest of the natural world -- John Shuttleworth
What we've got to do in energy conservation is try to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, to have approached global warming as if it is real means energy conservation, so we will be doing the right thing anyway in terms of economic policy and environmental policy. -- Timothy Wirth, former U.S. Senator (D-Colorado)
I suspect that eradicating small pox was wrong. It played an important part in balancing ecosystems. -- John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal
Human beings, as a species, have no more value than slugs. -- John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal
The extinction of the human species may not only be inevitable but a good thing....This is not to say that the rise of human civilization is insignificant, but there is no way of showing that it will be much help to the world in the long run. -- Economist editorial
We advocate biodiversity for biodiversity’s sake. It may take our extinction to set things straight -- David Foreman, Earth First!
Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on earth, social and environmental. -- Dave Forman, Founder of Earth First!
If radical environmentalists were to invent a disease to bring human populations back to sanity, it would probably be something like AIDS -- Earth First! Newsletter
Human happiness, and certainly human fecundity, is not as important as a wild and healthy planets...Some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along. -- David Graber, biologist, National Park Service
The collective needs of non-human species must take precedence over the needs and desires of humans. -- Dr. Reed F. Noss, The Wildlands Project
If I were reincarnated, I would wish to be returned to Earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels. -- Prince Phillip, World Wildlife Fund
Cannibalism is a "radical but realistic solution to the problem of overpopulation." -- Lyall Watson, The Financial Times, 15 July 1995
We, in the green movement, aspire to a cultural model in which killing a forest will be considered more contemptible and more criminal than the sale of 6-year-old children to Asian brothels. -- Carl Amery
Every time you turn on an electric light, you are making another brainless baby -- Helen Caldicott, Union of Concerned Scientists
To feed a starving child is to exacerbate the world population problem -- Lamont Cole
If there is going to be electricity, I would like it to be decentralized, small, solar-powered -- Gar Smith -- editor of the Earth Island Institute's online magazine The Edge
The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another United States: We can't let other countries have the same number of cars, the amount of industrialization, we have in the U.S. We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are. And it is important to the rest of the world to make sure that they don't suffer economically by virtue of our stopping them. -- Michael Oppenheimer, Environmental Defense Fund
The continued rapid cooling of the earth since WWII is in accord with the increase in global air pollution associated with industrialization, mechanization, urbanization and exploding population. -- Reid Bryson, "Global Ecology; Readings towards a rational strategy for Man", (1971)
The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines. Hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. Population control is the only answer -- Paul Ehrlich - The Population Bomb (1968)
I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000 -- Paul Ehrlich in (1969)
In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish. -- Paul Ehrlich, Earth Day (1970)
Before 1985, mankind will enter a genuine age of scarcity . . . in which the accessible supplies of many key minerals will be facing depletion -- Paul Ehrlich in (1976)
This [cooling] trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century -- Peter Gwynne, Newsweek 1976
There are ominous signs that the earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production - with serious political implications for just about every nation on earth. The drop in food production could begin quite soon... The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologist are hard-pressed to keep up with it. -- Newsweek, April 28, (1975)
This cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. If it continues and no strong action is taken, it will cause world famine, world chaos and world war, and this could all come about before the year 2000. -- Lowell Ponte "The Cooling", 1976
If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder by the year 2000...This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age. -- Kenneth E.F. Watt on air pollution and global cooling, Earth Day (1970)
Uhhh....let's see...conspiracy freaks? Go back and read Tom Knudson's "Environment Inc" series from 2001.
I see you have a copy of the US Chamber of Commerce's "Little Green Book", a bunch of hand-picked quotes taken out of context. The Chamber is the largest business federation in the US and had a definite agenda in both what quotes they chose and how they trimmed them. That book has been repudiated by both environmentalists and business leaders as a sophmoric attempt to tar the environmental movement.
Here is a radio program on this, so you can get some perspective.
But thanks for posting the quotes, because it just proves my point. Every one of these paranoid movements has its own highly skewed version of reality, whose primary purpose is to confirm the group's ideology, regardless of the actual facts. As I said:
A feeling of paranoia and being a victim is what all these [movements] have in common -- "they" are out to get "us", they are hiding the facts, they have an agenda to eliminate us. And other such like paranoid rantings. Then the tall tales start making the rounds
I think when you live in the world Pombo does, everything is black and white. He and his followers have to believe those who oppose them are bad and evil. It is part of the paranoia -- they have to be 100% right and good, and the other side 100% wrong and bad.
That is why he always has to perpetuate all these bogus stories about the ESA. For his ideology to work, the truth must be twisted to fit. Facts cannot intrude, as it may force him to consider that perhaps things are not so black and white after all. That maybe he is wrong. No, instead of changing his view to match reality, he instead twists reality to match his extreme ideology.
He needs these lies, just like his movement needs these quotes, taken out of context and distorted, to fit the paranoia of followers of the ideology.
Mr. 2% of a buck again (and I will post a very brief post)
Enough already.
Please stop this.
I'm begging all of you.
Don't make me reach through your monitor and cut off your keyboard cable.
$.02 out.
Anonymous 2 cents -- where did you get all those pictures of Pombo's campaign crew?
VPO..
"A sophomoric attempt to tar the environmental movement"....by using their own words. Goebbels suggested if one told the Big Lie enough, people would believe it. The desensitizing nature of non-empirical information on the minds of thinking humans...repeated long enough...turns gray matter into slush. So when one uses quotations from leading environmental figures...straight from their own mouths or writings, it is rejected by the conditioned mind of the lemming. And as a matter of fact, only some of those were from the Chamber of Commerce book, which unless you can prove otherwise, correctly cites the authors of those insipid and wrong comments. I guess what this means is that your view on life is one which values hope over experience....like the person who has been married 10 times. The maddening facts about lemming liberals is their proclivity to..without thought..reject empirical data in favor of some cooked up facts of their own. How long can Paul Ehrlich be wrong? How many times? In your heart you want him to be right....so he is. Decision making with the heart, rather than the mind, is suicidal in a world where organization of human activities can lead to good...or even more often (just look around the world) bad consequences.
Yo ButtHole.
Rocky here. Duh real question is how much longer do we hafta put up wit a fat friggin corrupt pig wit cheeks so stuft wit Jack-off's money dat he can't even speak so he hafta let pricks like Wayne Johnson do his lying fer him.
Rocky out.
Rocky...facts matter, as does discourse. The most painful thing with which to come to grips is that one's beliefs are predicated upon lies. Rude awakening. But all part of growing up.
Anonymous -- the quotes you chose are not the voice of the environmental movement. They are quotes taken out of context with the sole intention of embarrassing the movement as a whole. Very few people, including strong environmentalists, would agree with any of these statements.
If you seriously think that quotes like this define the environmental movement, you are more paranoid than I thought. Wouldn't it ever occur to you that many books and articles have been written over many years on environmentalism, and that would give a much better, truer account of what the goals and intentions are? Why would anyone take these skewed quotes and accept them as the definitive statement?
In any movement, there are extreme elements. Also, people get frustrated and state things in stark terms. That does not mean anyone else agrees with them. In fact, most environmentalists resoundly reject statements like humans are a virus, a forest is worth more than a child, humans must return to more primitive lifestyle, etc., etc. Also, Paul Ehrlich was discredited decades ago. His predictions in The Population Bomb and others were way off. No one takes him seriously anymore. Why would you even say that I want him to be right? I think he is as off the wall as you probably do.
Next, you talk about "lemming liberals". I am not even a liberal. I don't agree with many of their things, such as "gay marriage". I think that is ridiculous (and please all you liberals, we can discuss that someplace else, not on this thread, since I am debating Anon on environmentalism here). Also, I think social welfare has produced a class with a serious "entitlement syndrome". Etc. Again, this is not the place to discuss these things, but I wanted to make the point that "liberal" and "environmentalist" are not synonymous. In fact, I probably have more in common with the Teddy Roosevelt Republicans than modern day "liberals".
So please untie "liberal" and "environmental" in this discussion.
You say The maddening facts about lemming liberals is their proclivity to..without thought..reject empirical data in favor of some cooked up facts of their own.
I already rejected your classification of "lemming liberal", but I find your statement about "cooked up facts" funny when the quotes you present are out of context and in fact, a dishonest "cooked up" portrayal.
If you want to discuss empirical facts, show me some.
VPO..
I do not understand how factual quotes from the mouths/and or pens of some of the most quoted environmental leaders in our nation are somehow "out of context." Disagree with them, please, but do not attempt to disregard them as irrelevant...they obviously inform the debate of some of the leaders of the group. Ehrlich and his wife still teach at Stanford...they appear on television all the time, write profusely and have a large following. Amory Lovins is still pushing his phony energy alchemy at the Rocky Mountain Institute and bilking millions from well meaning people with lots of money to throw around. The list goes on and on. As for Teddy Roosevelt, a large part of historical revisionism surrounds this icon of what some suggest represents a "conservation-minded republican." Teddy, along with his Forest Service Chief, established the national forest system not to preclude the harvest of timber, but rather, to ensure that it would continue indefinitely, to meet man's needs. Prior to its establishment, the land disposal laws were allowing the equivalent of homesteading of forested lands, which meant that after the first harvest, the high quality forested lands were being transformed into agricultural production for purposes other than trees. The forests were not wilderness no-cut zones...quite the opposite. Under today's interpretation of the laws, the forests are becoming tantamount to national parks or wilderness areas, with hands off. The amount of forest land in the US is increasing, as is disease, fire prone underbrush and insect infestation. And yet less of the timber that Teddy and Gifford Pinchot set aside for future generations is being harvested than ever before from those national forests. Teddy Roosevelt believed in management...of land resources, of animals through hunting, of stewardship. Not "do not touch." Never in the history of the United States has more land been set aside never to be touched either by law or by edict of court.
I submit that your research is incomplete...that it represents a surface investigation of the principles behind what motivated Teddy Roosevelt and that the organizational dynamics of the groups who pervert his memory and his works are such that they cannot but claim constant crisis and continue to get the contributions that only spring from crying "wolf" all the time. Oldest trick in the book...."Send money or the puppy gets strangled." I'm surpised someone as articulate as you falls for it.
You hold on to these quotes for dear life. They were compiled by the largest pro-business organization in the U.S. for the express purpose of embarrassing the environmental movement. It is fundamentally a dishonest approach.
I am not saying everything expressed there is not true, but that these quotes, without context, and without elaboration, cannot be taken as any sort of representation of the thinking of modern environmentalism.
It is like someone who is opposed to organized religion digging through the Bible and pulling out selective quotes that reinforce his position, while ignoring the whole canon and history of the Christian doctrine. It is a deceitful way to do things.
I took this further today and contacted the US Chamber of Commerce and asked for the sources of the quotes. They obligingly faxed me over the sources. Many of the quotes come from a list compiled by www.off-road.com, as well as www.aynrand.org -- that is, organizations that along with the Chamber have reasons to skew the quotes to mock and embarrass environmentalists.
If these quotes so obsess you, let's look closer at them. I tried to find any place where John Muir said what you claimed, but could not. The only references I found were those referencing each other -- as you say, perhaps a Big Lie that gets repeated over and over until everyone thinks it is truth. The only solution is for you to find the actual passage from Muir where he says this. I tried, but could not. From the radio program I linked to above, it seems this quote came when Muir was talking in frustration about California's mismanagement of Yosemite before it was turned over to the federal government and became a National Park instead of state park. Muir was all for people enjoying and appreciating nature's grand works, not for locking them up. But you must remember that he lost the fight to flood Hetchy Hetch -- from all accounts, a valley as magnificent as Yosemite Valley. After that disappointment and lost, I can see that he might have said something like that. But again, I could not find any passage where he actually said it, and I challenge you to find it, since you are the one who posted it.
I could run through many of the quotes in similar fashion, but here are a few highlights:
Paul Watson -- a courageous man, but treated as a renegade in the environmental movement.
Dave Foreman and other Earth Firsters -- long recognized as extremists not supported by mainstream enviro groups.
Paul Ehrlich -- yes, he still teaches at Stanford (I think), but that is called "tenure". Everyone recognizes his alarmism in The Population Bomb as way off the mark.
As far as Amory Lovins, I don't find what he says radical or offensive. It makes sense to use energy sources in ways that don't cause destruction.
As far as Dr. Lyall Watson, he is not even an environmentalist, but an sociologist/anthropologist. His cannibalism quote has nothing to do with environmentalism, but is instead his view on his experiences with primitive tribes. Again, this quote has entered the echo chamber as somehow it represents environmentalism.
Pentti Likola is a Finnish "eco-fascist" with lots of crazy ideas, in no way representative of any mainstream environmentalism.
And the list goes on like this -- quoting only most extreme people, taking the quotes out of context of the larger article or discussion they were having, selectively editing them. That is not environmentalism, that is some crazy "out of the mainstream" people talking, and even then, the quotes are selected and displayed in a way for maximum rhetorical effect.
So let's put the quotes to rest and write them off as a sorry attempt to embarrass and scorn the environmental movement.
But that said, you do have a point about the marketing of alarmism as a way to raise funds for the environmental movement. "They want to drill in ANWR and harm the caribou!! Send us money!" "They want to drill in your backyard!! Send us money!"
I know all about that, and understand what you are saying. But the funny thing is, Pombo and his "Wise Use" people do the same thing. "They want to steal your land!! Vote for me!" "They want to make you drive a smaller car!! Send me a contribution!"
The enviros need Pombo and Pombo needs the enviros. They feed off each other, each portraying the other as the bogeyman to further their agendas.
The difference is the motivation -- the enviros are working for the preservation of species, the protection of whales, the conservation of old-growth forests, with 1000-year-old trees.
Pombo, on the other hand, is working for corporate interests that seek to exploit and destroy the environment for maximum short-term profit.
Between the two, there has to be a more reasonable balance. However, I believe Pombo is too committed to his ideology and the delusions of his base to stay in the powerful position he is in. His actions since being Chairman have shown an enormous irresponsibility to the trusts given him, a blind allegiance to his extreme ideology, and slavish devotion to corporate interests.
And you can quote me on that.
Yo Mr VPO.
Rocky here. Now you is doin as good a job jabbin wit yer left hook at dis friggin moron as duh Fightin Repug did against ButtaPombO.
Rocky ain't as ineffectual as you and babaloo is, who's also sockin one of duh udder ones wit her right. You go babaloo! POW!
Youse guys make Rocky proud to be a Dem wit a brain, rather den one of duh BBB (ButtaPombO's Butthole Brigade).
Rocky out.
VPO..
"the enviros are working for the preservation of species, the protection of whales, the conservation of old-growth forests, with 1000-year-old trees."
Really. Or are they just using these symbols to pursue their command-and-control policies under the guise? It's really about control, isn't it? Obviously, their morally self-righteous view of what ought to happen gets a leg up when the GOV steps in and enforces it. Nice work if you can get it. Sort of like relgious intolerance of other views of what makes the world ticks. I like Michael Crichton's observation that environmentalism has become relgion for urban atheists. Complete with puritan undertones..."sacrifice something...deny one's self pleasures...ride a bike." The roots are quite clear, the vernacular familiar.."pristine...trees like cathedrals..untouched by man." Sounds like religion to me. Meanwhile, land lays fallow, driving up housing costs for working class stiffs and their families. The myth is perpetuated. So's....as Rocky might stutter...if we can use the iron hand of the leviathan to impose our will...our vision...of what the world should be like while hiding behind whales and animals and other critters, that works too. It's a scam. A great scam, but a scam, nonetheless. It's a great scam for old hippies with no socialist dreams left to pursue since it was tossed on the ashheap of history...animals sell better than the good intentions of collectivists.
are they just using these symbols to pursue their command-and-control policies under the guise?
What kind of nonsense is that? When the IWC agrees to ban commercial whaling, or Canada stops the baby seal hunt, or when a wilderness area is set aside, these are not "symbols", but real actions that save those animals or forests from death and destruction.
Despite the paranoid rantings of the far right, environmentalists do not have an agenda to "take your land" or "steal your rights". It is not about "command and control" and having the "federal gov't jackbooting on your freedom". That is just crazy, deluded, and paranoid talk -- "symbols" in your terminology that serve to raise money and support for the "enviros and liberals are out to get us" type groups.
We are talking here about a continent that had an abundance of wildlife - 60 million bison, 2 billion Passenger Pigeons, Great Auks, Labrador Ducks. The last three are now extinct, and the bison are severely diminished, along with Whooping Cranes, Condors, Ivory-billed Woodpeckers, and many other species. Many whale species are barely at survival level, even after almost 20 years of a whaling ban. 95% of the redwood forests have been cut down. Global warming is becoming more and more of a threat.
Oh, sorry, am I being too "alarmist" for you? I hate to tell you, but these are real, "empirical" facts that are easy to verify. When something is in danger of being lost, when the ecosystem is being destroyed, that is a time to take real action that protects these treasures.
Sometimes in the effort to save and protect these vanishing species and forests, "control" is needed. Of course it is, what would you expect? Some entity has to own and manage a National Park. Some entity decides if commercial whaling is legal in the US. For that matter, some entity decides whether I can drive 60 mph or not on the city streets. Some entity decides if I can build a 7-11 on my property or not. Some entity decides if I can fire my gun off in my backyard.
These are called "laws" and are what make a civilized society "civilized". Pombo has professed in his book that private property should be subject to absolutely no restriction, unless your actions somehow impede the right of others to do whatever they want on their property. I quote:
"My property is inviolate as long as my actions do not violate the rights of others. Notice we did not say 'violate the sensibilities of others' or 'violate the enjoyment of others,' or even 'violate the interests of American society.' This is a crucial point. Governments are justified in taking away or severely restricting property rights only if the exercise of those rights violates the rights of someone else."
What an immature and ridiculous statement! We live in a society, indeed in an "ecosystem", where clearly your actions have consequences. How can he say you don't have an obligation to use your property in ways that don't violate American interests, that is, the interests of the larger society you live in?
That sounds an awful lot like Timothy McVeigh and the terrorists, who also claim they can take actions that are against American interests due to their ideological beliefs. Not only do they claim this, they enact it, with devastating results. Am I saying Pombo condones their actions? Of course not. But he fails to see that his "libertarian", "my rights are all that matter", "I can violate American interets" approach is a direct progenitor of the kind of sociopathic behavior displayed by right-wing militia groups, terrorists, and every other similar fringe group.
In fact, I think this is one of your objections to the environmental movement. Let me explain. The quotes you posted offend you for the same reasons that Pombo's quotes offend me -- the quotes seem to portray people approving highly anti-social behavior, with ideologically driven philosophies and views that serve to justify outrageous behaviors.
I rejected your quotes as a true portrayal of the environmental movement. However, I will agree with you that there are fringe groups and people who make statements like that on both sides. I highly object to "eco-terrorists" that burn car dealerships and to the actions of PETA. This reminds me of the "pro-life" people who shoot doctors.
Pombo is not out shooting environmentalists (as much as he may want to), but his extreme ideology has pushed him to take actions that are and will produce great harm to American interests and the ecosystem we live in. I am talking about allowing the cutting of our last private stands of old-growth redwoods. I am talking about pushing for commercial whaling. I am talking about his attempts to overturn the ban on methyl bromide. His promotion of mercury as "safe". His denial of global warming. His refusal to support ANY increase in fuel efficiency standards. His seeking to weaken protections for endangered species. The continued push to drill in the Arctic while not seeking more efficient use of energy. And many other similar short-sighted and destructive legislation and policies promoted by him.
You mention Michael Critchen's assertions. He is welcome to his views, but that does not make it true. That just sounds like some clever thing to say. "Environmentalism" is not a religion, but an attempt to live in this world without destroying the very things we need to survive and prosper. There may be some "spiritual" element to it, in the sense of appreciating God's creation. God, or Nature, or the Universe, or whatever, has produced these incredible works of art -- an old-growth forest, a remote beach, whales, Yosemite Valley -- you can see it many places. So, yes, there is a spiritual connection with "God's Grand Works" that comes into play.
Somehow I don't get this same inspiration when I view a shopping mall, a strip mine, a forest cut down, a beach full of oil. Yea, some of that is needed to have the standard of living we do, that is true. The idea of living in a "pristine" world is a fantasy, as you say.
But certainly, we can find practical, real, "empricial" ways to live in better harmony. We don't need to hunt whales, let's leave them alone forever. We don't need to cut anymore redwoods, let's save them for future generations to admire and enjoy. We need more efficient energy use and we have the technology to make more efficient cars and trucks. Let's work to reduce toxic pesticide use. Let's have a national effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Etc.
These are not "command and control", but decisions we can make that will make our world a better place to live, at or near our current standard of living, and that will protect "American interests" and the environment we live in for the long run.
VPO--
I'm sorry, I fell asleep. What was it you were saying?
That's okay, you lost the debate -- get some sleep. Hopefully, you broadened your mind a bit and can see that your support of Pombo is misguided. After your nap, take a walk outside, enjoy the fresh air.
Hey: bloggers what in the world do you need, the sky to fall on you. Pombo will take Mc Nernery out like a light weight, if you don't face the fact that he has a power base of voters. I wrote about it yesterday but someone erased it. It don't matter to me, I had the proff that he took illegal money and could do nothing about it. The papers put the story out that I was a pain in the ass for pombo and that's all. Another day will come.
Another editorial by Tim Hunt that Mc Closkey could'nt take out Pombo. What is wrong with you folks, get people out to stop buying the Tri Valley Herald and the papers. These guys are buy their candidates, with your money.
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