There's A Connection Between Climate And Climate Change... Beyond Eric Cantor's Cynism

Billy Long (R-MO) don't need no freakin' makeup

Eric Cantor and the House GOP have made a cruel and political connection between global warming and the tornado that devastated Joplin, Missouri, that state's most Republican heartland. Cantor flat-out refused to agree to emergency aid for the victims of the devastating storm unless he could ram through the House a bill that would, literally, increase global warming. Watch Missouri Congressman Russ Carnahan on MSNBC reacting to Cantor's moral turpitude:



Meanwhile, respected environmentalist Bill McKibben, drew a very different kind of connection between the disaster in Joplin and global warming-- and he did it on the editorial pages of the Washington Post. Starting out with a sense of almost resigned irony, McKibben reminds his readers that the ruling elite-- i.e., Big Oil-- does not want, will not tolerate, any connections being made beyond the Cantor connections. "It is vitally important not to make connections," he writes. "When you see pictures of rubble like this week’s shots from Joplin, Mo., you should not wonder: Is this somehow related to the tornado outbreak three weeks ago in Tuscaloosa, Ala., or the enormous outbreak a couple of weeks before that (which, together, comprised the most active April for tornadoes in U.S. history). No, that doesn’t mean a thing."

It is far better to think of these as isolated, unpredictable, discrete events. It is not advisable to try to connect them in your mind with, say, the fires burning across Texas-- fires that have burned more of America at this point this year than any wildfires have in previous years. Texas, and adjoining parts of Oklahoma and New Mexico, are drier than they’ve ever been-- the drought is worse than that of the Dust Bowl. But do not wonder if they’re somehow connected.

If you did wonder, you see, you would also have to wonder about whether this year’s record snowfalls and rainfalls across the Midwest-- resulting in record flooding along the Mississippi-- could somehow be related. And then you might find your thoughts wandering to, oh, global warming, and to the fact that climatologists have been predicting for years that as we flood the atmosphere with carbon we will also start both drying and flooding the planet, since warm air holds more water vapor than cold air.

It’s far smarter to repeat to yourself the comforting mantra that no single weather event can ever be directly tied to climate change. There have been tornadoes before, and floods-- that’s the important thing. Just be careful to make sure you don’t let yourself wonder why all these record-breaking events are happening in such proximity-- that is, why there have been unprecedented megafloods in Australia, New Zealand and Pakistan in the past year. Why it’s just now that the Arctic has melted for the first time in thousands of years. No, better to focus on the immediate casualties, watch the videotape from the store cameras as the shelves are blown over. Look at the news anchorman standing in his waders in the rising river as the water approaches his chest.

Because if you asked yourself what it meant that the Amazon has just come through its second hundred-year drought in the past five years, or that the pine forests across the western part of this continent have been obliterated by a beetle in the past decade — well, you might have to ask other questions. Such as: Should President Obama really just have opened a huge swath of Wyoming to new coal mining? Should Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sign a permit this summer allowing a huge new pipeline to carry oil from the tar sands of Alberta? You might also have to ask yourself: Do we have a bigger problem than $4-a-gallon gasoline?

Better to join with the U.S. House of Representatives, which voted 240 to 184 this spring to defeat a resolution saying simply that “climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for public health and welfare.” Propose your own physics; ignore physics altogether. Just don’t start asking yourself whether there might be some relation among last year’s failed grain harvest from the Russian heat wave, and Queensland’s failed grain harvest from its record flood, and France’s and Germany’s current drought-related crop failures, and the death of the winter wheat crop in Texas, and the inability of Midwestern farmers to get corn planted in their sodden fields. Surely the record food prices are just freak outliers, not signs of anything systemic.

It’s very important to stay calm. If you got upset about any of this, you might forget how important it is not to disrupt the record profits of our fossil fuel companies. If worst ever did come to worst, it’s reassuring to remember what the U.S. Chamber of Commerce told the Environmental Protection Agency in a recent filing: that there’s no need to worry because “populations can acclimatize to warmer climates via a range of behavioral, physiological, and technological adaptations.” I’m pretty sure that’s what residents are telling themselves in Joplin today.

Billy Long, the right-wing imbecile who represents Joplin voted to deny climate change. In fact, except for Dave Reichert who represents an aggressively pro-environmental suburban Seattle district, every single House Republican voted to deny climate change. And so did the 3 sleaziest conservative Democrats-- Dan Boren (Blue Dog-OK), Colin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN), and Nick Rahall (WV)-- each of whom regularly solicits bribes from the very corporations who would be most impacted by serious clean energy policies. If Americans want a future for their children and grandchildren-- here on earth-- they'll do whatever they can to defeat Boren, Peterson, Rahall and every single Republican. That simple.

Republican Clown Shows Endangering American Families

This is what the GOP is using to wreck Michigan

Most normal people look at the Republican presidential primary lineup and recoil in horror-- or just shrug it off as a freak show or circus act.

With Gingrich in the race, Republican voters will now be faced with a terrible, Sophie’s Choice-choice: they can either go the safe/uncontroversial route and pick a Tim Pawlenty or a human advertorial like Mitt Romney, or else they can gamble on a candidate with the “charisma” and “wow factor” to match up with Barack Obama.

The only problem with the latter strategy is that that the leading “charisma” candidate is Gingrich, a relentless mirror-gazer and attention-seeker with a wandering pee-pee and a talent for pseudo-intellectualism. Gingrich, hilariously, is the right’s idea of a “thinker,” which is to say he’s a pompous mispronouncer and Thesaurus-raider who lards up same-old/same-old right-wing rhetoric with quotations from obscure academic texts and inane historical references, so that friendly pundits can later describe the resultant utterances as “fresh new ideas.”

But Republican voters don't see it that way. Aside from the sizable contingent of Republicans just angry at the world and unhappy about everything, Republicans take their candidates seriously and don't understand why everyone else is scoffing, laughing... or vomiting.

How do I know Republican voters are happy with their candidates? They keep voting for them. They even vote for them when-- which is always-- these people advance policies and agendas that are direct threats to their own well-being. In the big Democratic victory in NY-26 last night, Republican voters still went overwhelmingly for the cookie cutter kill-Medicare Jane Corwin. It was Democrats and independents that defeated her-- and only in a 47-43% tally. Leave multimillionaires and billionaires aside for a moment, because, well, they're actually well-served, at least in a short-term horizon, by the Republican agenda of greed and selfishness. But what about the middle class voters whose education system is being dismantled or whose social safety net is in shreds? Or what about people, for example, who live along the Mississippi River?

Or the folks who were just slammed by a catastrophic mega-tornado in Missouri? Republican House Leader Eric Cantor's immediate response to the scores of deaths and the destruction in Joplin was to announce that he would take advantage of the crisis of these people by holding federal aid hostage to more deranged right-wing ideological demands. His response, akin to former House Speaker Denny Hastert's declaration that the U.S. should let New Orleans disappear after Katrina, is downright un-American. I wonder if Congressman Billy Long, the right-wing slob who represents Jasper County, Missouri, would agree. He's no friend of FEMA or of federal assistance to emergency victims... like his own constituents in Joplin.

In a stunningly heartless move, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) put strings on emergency relief for the victims of the killer Joplin tornado, saying that other government services would have to be cut to offset aid spending. Yesterday afternoon, the House Appropriations committee passed an amendment by Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-AL) to add $1 billion in funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) disaster relief fund, offset by funding reductions from the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program at the Department of Energy. Instead of cutting oil subsidies to pay for the costs of our nation’s increasing climate disasters, the GOP is actually working to increase our dependence on fossil fuels. On MSNBC’s Ed Show, Rep. Russ Carnahan (D-MO) called the decision “just plain wrong” ... When you talk about cutting clean energy programs versus cutting subsidies for big oil, let’s have that debate here in Washington. But not on the backs of the people of Joplin."

The vast majority of congressmembers from districts touching the Mississippi are Republicans. Their constituents are in big trouble. And big predictable trouble. But how are their Republican elected officials responding? With hackneyed ideology and prayers, but not with federal aid. Steve Pearce, Spencer Baucus and Randy Neugebauer, corporate shills representing backwaters in New Mexico, Alabama and Texas, sent around a petition that everyone pray for the victims. Is that what these three clowns and their colleagues were elected to do? The three of them voted for this year's continuing resolution, which included significant cuts to funding for the federal response to weather, climate and natural disasters-- like the tornados that ravaged Alabama, the fires that have destroyed so many people's lives in Texas and now the disaster along the Mississippi.

For example, funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency's state and local programs was slashed $783.3 million below FY 2010 levels. The FEMA Pre-Disaster Mitigation Grant Program lost $35 million. The part of FEMA's budget for emergency food and shelter was cut $100 million, and Assistance to Firefighter Grants lost $510 million.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration lost $454.3 million in the House's continuing resolution. In March, the agency warned that insufficient funds budgeted for its next generation of polar orbiting satellites could potentially weaken the accuracy of its weather forecasting, especially pertaining to severe events such as blizzards and hurricanes.

The National Weather Service, which is part of NOAA, lost $126 million from FY 2010 levels in the House bill.

"This is the congressional equivalent of having a mortgage lender take your house and then tell all his friends how bad he feels for you," said a Democratic operative who used to work in Congress. "The fact that these guys have no sense of irony or shame is just revolting."

This is Law-of-the-Jungle Republicanism. It's what they believe in; it's what the Ryan budget that all but four of them voted for enshrines. It's what Scott Walker is doing to Wisconsin, what Rick Snyder is doing to Michigan, what Rick Scott is doing to Florida, what Jon Kasich is doing to Ohio. And it's dangerous to the well-being of this country. Hopefully Americans are waking up, and what happened when similar fascist parties in Europe pulled the same strategies in Europe in the '20s and '30s won't happen here.

Remember the House vote on Ryan's plan? Only 4 GOP members voted against Ryan's plan. Now the GOP wants to pretend that vote didn't happen as it isn't testing well in the polls. Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) backed away slightly from the House-approved budget proposal drafted by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) that would turn Medicare into a voucher program over ten years.

"I'm for it," Boehner told ABC's Topline. "It's our idea. Right? It's Paul's idea. Other people have other ideas. I'm not wedded to one single idea, but I think it's '" we have a plan."

The GOP has no respect for the intelligence of their red state voters. That they could just try to slip this by the proles who vote for them exemplifies their contempt for their constituents.

The GOP has historically given their top 1% cronies huge tax cuts. Without revenue what happens to the federal government? It runs into the red. Reagan dreamed of "starving the beast" and this reverie has always remained with GOP politicians. Everyone knew that the deficits would increase enormously if the nation was at war and the war wasn't paid for by increases in taxes. It took a boob like W to do this not only once, but twice and also jack up the debt with Homeland Security expenses and a new prescription drug benefit for Medicare recipients.

Reagan's dream became the bottom 99%'s nightmare.

...The Democrats have reality on their side. At town hall meetings US citizens are clearly stating they want the US the social-welfare program benefits that they had spent their life contributing to.

It was a deal the citizens had scrimped and sacrificed for. They expect the Republicans to hold up their end of the deal.