Aloha Politics

The Hoax by Senator Bernie Saunders

I support Gina McCarthy to be the next Environmental Protection Agency administrator. When her Senate confirmation hearing was held on Thursday, the debate among senators on the Environment and Public Works Committee wasn’t really about her qualifications. It was about global warming. It was about whether or not we are going to listen to the leading scientists of this country who tell us we’re facing a planetary crisis.

It was clear at the hearing that Senator John Barrasso, from coal-producing Wyoming, does not want the EPA to address the global warming crisis. What he wants is for us to continue doing as little as possible as we see extreme weather disturbances: super storms, floods and heat waves all over the world.

It was clear at the hearing that Senator Jim Inhofe, from oil-producing Oklahoma, does not want the EPA to curb climate change. What Senator Inhofe has written and talked about is his belief that global warming is one of the major hoaxes ever perpetrated on the American people. He blames Al Gore, the United Nations, and the Hollywood elite. He didn’t dispute that at the hearing. In fact, when I asked him about it, his conspiracy theory thickened. “I would add to that list MoveOn.org, George Soros, Michael Moore, and a few others,” he said.

So that is the issue. Do we agree with Senator Inhofe that global warming is a “hoax” and that we do not want the EPA, the Department of Energy or any other agency of the federal government to address that issue? Or do we agree with the overwhelming majority of scientists who tell us that that we must act boldly and aggressively to protect the future of this planet?

That’s the real issue at stake in this debate and that’s the reason I’m supporting Gina McCarthy. That is why I want the EPA to be vigorous in protecting our children and future generations from the horrendous crisis that we face from global warming. That is why I have introduced legislation to tax carbon and methane greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming.

According to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, 2012 was the warmest year ever recorded for the continental United States. More than 24,000 new record highs were set in the U.S. alone. It was the hottest year in recorded history in New York; Washington, DC; Louisville, Kentucky; even my home city of Burlington, Vt., and other cities across the country.

Last year’s drought – affecting two-thirds of the United States – was the worst in half a century, contributing to extraordinary wildfires burning more than 9 million acres of land, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

Heat waves and droughts are not limited to the U.S. Australia, for instance, experienced a four-month heat wave with severe wildfires, record temperatures, and torrential rains and floods causing $2.4 billion in damages, according to The New York Times.
Global warming is also resulting in extreme weather disturbances of all kinds. NOAA’s Climate Extremes Index tracks extreme temperatures, drought, precipitation and tropical storms. It reported that 2012 set yet another distressing record for the most extreme climate conditions recorded.

Ronald Prinn, director of MIT’s Center for Global Change Science, concluded that what we have heard recently from scientists is that their earlier projections regarding global warming were wrong. That in fact they underestimated the problem and that the conditions that they were worried about will likely be worse than what they had originally thought. “There is significantly more risk than we previously estimated … [which] increases the urgency for significant policy action.”

Global warming is real. It is not a hoax. It is a planetary crisis but one that we have the knowledge and technology to address.
Purloined in it’s entirety from here: The ‘Hoax’ where you can read more of Mr. Saunders writing.

La Repubblica: Pope Resigned After Inquiry Discovered Gay Vatican Network

And finally, New Rule: Someone has to tell America’s gun nuts to stop wetting their Army surplus pants about losing the Second Amendment. It’s not your Second Amendment rights that are under attack; it’s all the other ones.

It used to be that law enforcement couldn’t search you without probable cause, but now we’re becoming a quasi-police state where one minute you’re home quietly reading 50 Shades of Grey, and suddenly there’s a SWAT team in your living room waving guns. And you’re going, “No, no, Katt Williams lives next door!”

Now, last month, while no one was taking anyone’s guns from anybody, the Senate voted overwhelmingly to reauthorize a program where they can collect data on any American citizen and hold onto it forever. They can look at your e-mails, your texts, your Skypes, and not a peep out the crowd that’s always bitching about what the framers intended. In fact, the answer from almost everyone seems to be, “Oh what the hell, the airport screeners have already seen my ass anyway.”

The Facebook generation, especially, doesn’t seem to care that Big Brother knows everything about you — what books you read, what movies you watch, your Match.com account, your other Match.com account when you’re feeling a little freaky and wanna meet the sort of woman your regular Match.com account wouldn’t approve of.

Call me old school, but I don’t want the feds Googling what I’m Googling. It’s bad enough when Netflix pries into my private life. “You watched The Walking Dead and Zombieland. You might also like this interview with John McCain.”

(audience laughter)

I don’t want the government doing that! “You downloaded this article favoring the legalization of marijuana. You might also like being incarcerated.”

You know, they always say these programs are just to catch terrorists. The next thing you know, they’re using them to shut down the pot dispensaries. And that place was right on my way home! Now I gotta go to Valley Village!

Doesn’t anyone care that this is the new normal? I guess not, because gun nuts don’t care, and neither do liberals. When Bush did warrantless wiretapping, oh, he was wiping his ass with the Constitution. But when Obama does it, oh well, whatever helps Jessica Chastain find bin Laden, we’re good with that.

(smattering of audience applause)

Yeah, both parties compete mightily to appear to be the greater champion of our freedoms, but the only thing that still has bipartisan support in Washington is not giving a shit about privacy.

And when you talk to the NRA types, as I like to do down at my local moose lodge, they actually believe that what protects their rights isn’t laws, or courts, it’s that they have a gun. They think that’s what keeps the government from going too far. Without guns, Obama would become an emperor and force everyone to gay marry, but he can’t because a guy in Kentucky named Skeeter has a .22.

(audience applause)

Except that, you know, while you guys were buying guns to protect your other guns, sittin’ up on the porch there, waitin’ for Obama’s Negro Army to come confiscate your weapons and go all Django Unchained on your ass — that’s when we lost all the stuff in the Bill of Rights, about trials and juries and warrants.

You see, the Redcoats — they never wanted your gun. They wanted your liberty. And that’s why the Founding Fathers said you could have the gun, dumbass! And now the only right we have left is the guns, and left nothing left to use the guns to protect! We’re like a strip club with a million bouncers and no strippers!

MOre: Maher: ‘It’s not your Second Amendment rights that are under attack — it’s all the other ones’

And finally, New Rule: Since President Obama seems to be having so much trouble defending his record on the economy, the next debate must be held in a mall. Any mall. It doesn’t matter. They’re all packed. There’s one not 100 yards from this studio, with dancing waters and a choo-choo train, and a shirtless gay kid out in front of Abercrombie & Fitch. The parking garage is always full, the Cheesecake Factory is working overtime, and Lady Gaga’s new perfume — with its delightful scent of blood and semen — is flying off the shelves at Nordstrom’s.

What I’m saying is, I know it’s campaign season, but can we all stop acting like the American economy is in complete shambles, where no one has a job or a place to live, and we’re all doing our laundry in the river? (wild audience applause)

Thank you. I mean, folks, I travel this country constantly, all four corners of it. And everywhere I go, I’m always standing in line for 20 minutes to buy hair gel, or batteries, or nipple moisturizer. Traffic is a bitch everywhere. Yes, there are people sleeping on the sidewalk, but that’s to buy an iPhone just like the one they already have! (audience applause)

It just doesn’t feel like Obama has ruined America. Republicans, you know, they used to talk a lot about this thing called the stock market, and how it helped not just the rich, but middle class folks, whose pensions and 401(k)’s depended on it. Well, now they never seem to mention the stock market. Perhaps, because under President Blackenstein, the Dow has doubled. Or as Republicans call it, “devastating economic news”. (audience applause)

Now, there certainly still is poverty in our country, but it’s obviously among the underclass that you don’t see — the very people that today’s Republicans couldn’t give a shit about! So I don’t understand why they’re all so upset about the economy. Except, of course, it’s their big issue. So they have to pretend that America is a rotting compost heap where people are eating cat food and wiping their ass with the pennysaver. (audience applause)

And weirdly, Obama kinda has to pretend that too. Because if he doesn’t, then he’s “out of touch”. So we all wind up living with this fictional picture of America that actually would be more appropriate for the year before Obama took office. Remember 2008? (audience applause) Yeah, I do.

That’s when Lehman Brothers collapsed, and the markets froze, and they were measuring GM for a pumpkin lot. And when you opened your bank statement, you saw the drowned Japanese girl from The Ring, and then you died.

And yes, I am saying we can keep blaming Bush for that. It’s the same as blaming rats for the Black Plague. Just because you’re sick of hearing historians say it, doesn’t mean it stopped being true. (wild audience applause)

George Bush left a flaming pile of dog shit on the White House steps, and now it’s gone, and Mitt Romney has a hell of a nerve running on the idea that “I’m going to fix the economy by restoring the policies of the party that destroyed it”.

12 million jobs. That’s what Mitt Romney promises. 12 million. A number that’s just… waaaaay up there. (reaches into ass to pull it out) Oh, there it is, wow! There it is, 12 million! (wild audience applause) Way up there! Hoo, boy, I feel better.

And about 45% of American voters hear that and say, “I like. Me want good now.”

People are disappointed in the economy? Sorry. I was disappointed in Prometheus. You don’t like the way the stewardess landed the plane after werewolves ate the flight crew? Stop electing werewolves.

That’s our show!

So, here we are in 2012, with scores of billions of dollars being spent each year on supposed homeland security and comprehensive surveillance of our population—all in the name of stopping “terrorism.”

In other words, we live in a country where, nowadays, peaceful protest against the status quo elicits both massive, institutionalized brutality and state-sponsored surveillance (see my links, above) at levels that would make even Orwell blush.

Meanwhile, a 24-year-old neuroscience graduate student may buy enough ammo online to arm virtually everyone in Seal Team Six; not to mention purchase hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars of Kevlar, all online in a period of roughly 100 days, as well, without even appearing on law enforcement’s radar.

Now we learn that his psychiatrist warned his University that she was concerned her patient might be a threat to himself and/or those around him.

$50 billion-plus dollars in state surveillance and terrorism “prevention” annual budgets later–not to mention 12 dead and 59 wounded–local law enforcement didn’t have a clue about James Holmes.

Like many throughout the blogosphere and the media over the past couple of weeks, I have fewer answers than questions, starting with: What’s wrong with this picture?
Read the whole story: Denver Post: Holmes’ Psychiatrist Warned University’s “Threat Assessment Team” In June+

By now, I’m sure you’ve heard about the Boston Globe story that confirms Romney left Bain in 2002–not 1999 as he so often lies.  This is important because it confirms that he:

1. Bankrupted even more companies
2. Sent jobs to China
3. Harvested fetuses for profit

Politico however has taken a very serious fourth approach that is quiet shocking.  FactCheck.org: Romney ‘would be guilty of a federal felony’ by claiming 1999 departure