The Actual Bork Lesson

The Republican Party (Lindsey Graham in particular) would like you to believe that the Democratic Party is responsible for the attacks upon Ketanji Brown Jackson in the Senate Judiciary Committee because of how Democrats treated poor ol' Robert Bork in the 1980s. Predictably, mainstream media- even supposedly liberal CNN and MSNBC- have done little to push back on this myth. Fortunately, we now have John Heilemann imposing reality (at 24:41 of the video below) when on Friday evening's Real Time with Bill Maher he explained

This is the thing. This is the thing about the lessons of the Bork experience, Like, if you go back and watch the Bork hearing, you'll find it was like a constitutional law seminar. I mean, you had Larry Tribe down from Harvard and you had Ted Kennedy and you had at that time Joe Biden, who was leading that charge. they were dissecting Robert Bork's constitutional views and trying to say if this became a prevailing view of the Constitution, America would go backwards.

It was substantive. It definitely had an ideological edge. But it was substantive- not what we see now. And I think you have people who say, well, it's become a partisan circus because of Bork. That's not what happened because of Bork.

What happened because of Bork was people decided they couldn't ever- justices*- one good thing about Bork was that he always said what he was for and what he was against and that's why he lost- because he told the truth, that he was retrograde, he did want to take America back in time,

Now you have justices who are coached, do not say anything. And so in a constant- where justice is like if I speak my mind I could get voted down, they- alright, it's all performance for them. It becomes Kabuki.

That's the unfortunate legacy of Bork is that we now have substance-less hearings in a time when a televised hearing could be a great lesson.

Heilemann then started talking about Merrick Garland, but you get the point. There was never any interest on either side in anything substantive. Democratic senators and Mrs. Jackson were confident that without any flubs or gaffes, the Judge would end up being approved in the Senate, with or without a tie-breaking vote from the Vice President.

Republicans also understood approval was virtually assured unless they could get a juicy soundbite from Jackson. They knew they could not get that by boring down on issues with the relentless questioning, which a witness on the jury stand might face.

At 6:53 of the video below, Republican senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee can be seen asking the nominee 'can you provide a definition for the word 'woman'"? Jackson replied "I can't" and when asked again stated "not in this context. I'm not a biologist."

That should bring to mind the stock answer given by Republicans when a few years ago they were asked whether climate change is real. "I'm not a scientist" they would often respond, to the justified derision of everyone unafraid to acknowledge the obvious.

Thomas' refusal to get nailed down as to whether there is a difference between men and women is analogous to the refusal of another post-Bork Supreme Court nominee to answer another simple question.   As reported at the time of his Judiciary Committee hearing, Clarence Thomas "told Mr. Leahy that he had never debated the Roe decision with any acquaintance, did not remember discussing it as a law student and had no present position at all on it."

The controversial C.T. was clearly lying (by a long shot, not his most famous lie) and because of- not despite- his deception, he was confirmed.

That less is lost on no one, as Heilemann was saying. Nonetheless, Judge Jackson inadvertently offered  to Senator Blackburn an opening upon stating "I am not a biologist." Were Blackburn intent on exposing a nominee she already had made up her mind to vote against, she would have noted that physical scientists (i.e., biologists)  generally agree with Blackburn's view of a biological distinction. It is social scientists, dreaded by many conservatives such as Blackburn, who question the traditional, dichotomous view of men and women.

But the Tennessean didn't go there, instead remarking

The fact that you can't give me a straight answer about something as fundamental as what a woman is  underscores the dangers of the kind of progressive education that we are hearing about. Just last week an entire generation of young girls watched as our taxpayer-funded institutions permitted a biological male to compete and beat a biological woman in the NCAA's swimming championships. What message do you think this sends to girls who aspire to compete and win in sports at the highest levels?

But Jackson had given "a straight answer" (or a gay one, whatever) and a potentially revealing one by throwing the question back to biologists, which gave Blackburn a chance to nail her down. However, making a point about gender in sports and berating the public school systems "("taxpayer-funded institutions") was a higher priority.

Dissecting Ketanji Brown Jackson's constitutional views was of little interest to Blackburn or any of her colleagues, even to Ted Cruz, who has argued in front of the US Supreme Court. Since Bork, every nominee is coached to avoid answering questions and in this case, the opposition changes the subject even when the nominee slips up and says something interesting.

 

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I'm Not A Surgeon But I'll Repair Your Heart Valve

It's fair, and good, to invite on to the Sunday morning news shows individuals from all ends of the political spectrum. However, the journalists- or television personalities- moderating a discussion must have both a working knowledge of the topic they will be discussing a willingness to challenge blatant falsehoods.

Instead, when Meet the Press host Chuck Todd asked (at 39:07 of the first video below) about the Fourth National Climate Assessment, the work of 300 scientists and 13 federal agencies which the Trump Administration and its allies are undermining, he ignored obvious disinformation. Doris Keans Goodwin remarked, blandly though constructively, "if you can't look past yourself and the greater good and not the future, it's not leadership." Only slightly more controversially, Elise Jordan noted that the California fires "would, you hope, start to wake up Republican politicians."   

However Danielle Pletka of the AmericanEnterprise Institute, a right-wing think tank funded primarily by dark money, claimed

The problem for many is that they perceive this as an agenda that is much more about corporate and much more about law and much more about the kind of governance that America has and much less about climate. So from the standpoint of those who have doubts about this, and I don't think we can have any doubts that there is climate change, whether it's anthropogenic, I don't know, I'm not a scientist. I look at this as a citizen and I see it so I understand it. On the other hand, we need to also recognize that we just had two of the coldest years, the biggest drop in global temperatures that we've had since the 1980s, the biggest in the last 100 years. We don't talk about that because it's not part of the agenda....

We don't talk about it because it's not true.  Pletka's claim that "we just had two of the coldest years... since the 1980s" is a Trump-sized lie. In January NASA reported

Earth’s global surface temperatures in 2017 ranked as the second warmest since 1880, according to an analysis by NASA.

Continuing the planet's long-term warming trend, globally averaged temperatures in 2017 were 1.62 degrees Fahrenheit (0.90 degrees Celsius) warmer than the 1951 to 1980 mean, according to scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York. That is second only to global temperatures in 2016.

In a separate, independent analysis, scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) concluded that 2017 was the third-warmest year in their record. The minor difference in rankings is due to the different methods used by the two agencies to analyze global temperatures, although over the long-term the agencies’ records remain in strong agreement. Both analyses show that the five warmest years on record all have taken place since 2010.

Theoretically, a reversal may be taking place in 2018. Theoretically, but not actually, because as earlier this month NOAA found

October 2018 also marks the 42nd consecutive October and the 406th consecutive month with temperatures, at least nominally, above the 20th century average....

The year-to-date temperature across global land and ocean surfaces was 1.39 degrees above the 20th century average of 57.4 degrees Fahrenheit- the fourth highest for January-October in the 139-year record. The years 2014-2018 comprise the five warmest January-October periods on record, with 2016 the warmest such period at 1.76 degrees Fahrenheit above average.

Todd undoubtedly knew that Pletka was pulling thing(s) out of her posterior. The problem could be mitigated by more transparency than simply introducing such people as "Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute." Admittedly, that could prove awkward, unwieldy, or vulnerable to inaccuracy or bias.  

In the short term, in the matter of climate change, Dan Rather has the best recommendation:

When someone starts an argument with "I'm not a scientist, but..." maybe we should stop listening to them weighing in on science. And maybe news shows should stop asking these pundits to talk about something they’re not qualified to talk about.

— Dan Rather (@DanRather) November 26, 2018

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Those Very Bad People In The News Media Strike Again

On Friday, a co-host on Fox News' "The Five" complained "You could see this coming. CNN didn’t wait long to bring up climate change in its Hurricane Harvey coverage.”

There is one likely explanation: because the storm has been more severe because of climate change. Hockey stick  climatologist Michael Mann explains the

simple thermodynamic relationship known as the Clausius-Clapeyron equation that tells us there is a roughly 3% increase in average atmospheric moisture content for each 0.5C of warming. Sea surface temperatures in the area where Harvey intensified were 0.5-1C warmer than current-day average temperatures, which translates to 1-1.5C warmer than “average” temperatures a few decades ago. That means 3-5% more moisture in the atmosphere.

That large amount of moisture creates the potential for much greater rainfalls and greater flooding. The combination of coastal flooding and heavy rainfall is responsible for the devastating flooding that Houston is experiencing.

Environmental Defensee Fund Senior Climate Scientist Scott Weaver pointed out

in the span of just five months, the United States logged no fewer than four deadly 1,000-year floods in states as widespread as Texas, West Virginia, Maryland and Louisiana – following a 1,000-year-flood that ravaged South Carolina last October.

He notes this is a long-term ttrend (map below from National Climate Assessment, 1958-2012) in that

observations over the last 60 years indicate that over the United States, the amount of water falling in heavy rain events has increased substantially, and an astonishing 71 percent over portions of the mid-Atlantic and northeastern U.S.

Note, moreover, that he wrote "In other words, if there were two storms with an identical structure over Boston, Massachusetts – one in 1955 and one in 2016 – the one in 2016 would, on average, produce 71 percent more rainfall."

"In 2016," Weaver maintains- because his explanation has not come on the heels of Harvey but nearly twelve months ago.

"They have been fake news for a long time. They've been covering me in a very, very dishonest way," President Trump whined in Poland.  And now, the network has the temerity to put tropical storm Harvey in context. If Trump and Fox News don't keep their eye on them, there is no telling what those reprehensible CNN people will do next:









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Leading The USA Astray

Soon after President Trump's ill-advised decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord, the request from Daily Kos came in to "take action today and tell Congress: It's time to put America first and take the climate crisis seriously before it's too late." Two days later, I was implored by DK to "Sign the petition to your state & city government. Fight climate change by agreeing to join the Paris climate agreement."

Then we were informed that as supporters of  the agreement, the governors of California, New York, and Washington had rapidly formed the United States Climate Alliance, which is to be "a forum to sustain and strengthen existing climate programs, promote the sharing of information and best practices, and implement new programs to reduce carbon emissions from all sectors of the economy.”

This is a good thing, not unlike if the GOP congress were to propose raising the minimum wage to $7.50 per hour, no strings attached (fat chance, that).  Hopefully, it will prove to be only a start, even if it indirectly helps pull Donald Trump's fat out of the fire (on this one issue) and smacks a little of states' rights.






Though doing more good than harm, it's not the primary problem with Trump's move.  Michael Grunwald explains

Similarly, it’s important not to exaggerate the substantive impact of Trump’s decision to bail on Paris, which will officially remove the United States from the agreement in late 2020 at the earliest. It’s a signal that the U.S. government no longer cares about the climate, but that’s been abundantly clear ever since Trump won the election and appointed an energetic fossil-fuel advocate named Scott Pruitt to run the Environmental Protection Agency. Leaving Paris won’t reverse the rapid decline of coal or the boom of cleaner energy in America, because the economics of coal have fallen apart while the cost of wind and solar have plummeted, and it won’t stop that same trend in China, India and the rest of the world. By the same token, if Trump had announced he was staying in the Paris deal, that wouldn’t have meant that Trump was abandoning his efforts to gut Obama’s climate regulations (like the Clean Power Plan for the electricity sector) and other climate policies (like those fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks). Really, it would have been pretty weird for Trump to remain in the deal while trying to undermine everything the U.S. was doing to live up to its commitments.

Meanwhile, the earth is still warming, the polar ice caps are still melting, and the seas are still rising, heedless of the inspiring words committed to paper in Paris, and just as heedless of a noisy American politician’s decision to reject them. Trump may believe climate change is a hoax manufactured in China, and congressional Republicans may continue to oppose any action to address it, but that won’t make the physical realities of climate-driven droughts, floods, pandemics and refugee migrations any less brutal. It’s reminiscent of the old riddle: If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a horse have? Four, because a tail is not a leg. Trump can call global warming a hoax, but 2014 was nevertheless the hottest year on record, until it was displaced by 2015, which was overtaken by 2016. That tail is not a leg.

The major issue is one of leadership. Trump wants to lead his base, or maybe the United States, but not beyond.  A trio of  Washington Post reporters notes that while there will be relatively miminimal concrete impact of Trump's rejection of the climate pact

it matters more that he’s announcing to the nations of the world that he intends to ignore an issue they consider vital to the planet. He is creating an intentional leadership vacuum, dispensing with the long-standing notion of the United States as the indispensable nation—just as he did when he withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal in Asia, with his tepid commitments to NATO on his trip to Europe, and with his proposal for drastic budget cuts in foreign aid and international diplomacy. He is making it clear that America First means the problems of the world are not America’s problems. He’s opening the door for China and Europe to take over the role of global leaders on climate change, and maybe the world’s other major problems.

If he needed a nudge, though, one came from France over the weekend. Macron was quoted in a French journal talking about his white-knuckled handshake with Trump at their first meeting in Brussels, where the newly elected French president gripped Trump’s hand tightly and would not let go for six long seconds in a show of alpha-male fortitude.

“My handshake was not innocent,” Macron said. He likened Trump to a pair of authoritarian strongmen — Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan — and said that he was purposefully forceful because he believed his encounter with Trump was “a moment of truth.”

Hearing smack-talk from the Frenchman 31 years his junior irritated and bewildered Trump, aides said.

A few days later, Trump got his revenge. He proclaimed from the Rose Garden, “I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.”

Embracing strongmen, talking the talk of Vladimir Putin, running down a mayor of the nation's biggest ally, giving the back of the hand to NATO in Brussels, and now boldly and unabashedly undermining U.S. military policy in the Mideast, President Trump has given whole new meaning to the word "weak."

In April, 1970 President Nixon (defending a policy which would end badly) declared that failing to take aggressive action against Cambodia would demonstrate "If, when the chips are down, the world's most powerful nation, the United States of America, acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world."

Under the current President, the USA has become a pitiful giant while assisting the forces of totalitarianism, be they Russia, Saudi Arabia, or the Phillipines.   Donald Trump, Eugene Robinson observes, "is abdicating all moral power. The world has no choice but to move on."

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From North America To Europe

With remarkable prescience, Josh Lederman of the Associated Press reported a mere three days after the inauguration of our nation's 45th president

“With the election of Donald Trump, the old world of the 20th century is finally over,” German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier wrote in the Bild newspaper, reflecting a broader European lament about confused international leadership and increased disorder.

Signs already abounded when at the recent meeting in Brussels, President Trump notably failed to affirm American commitment to Article 5, which emphasizes "an atack against one Ally is considered as an attack against all Allies."  Refusing to acknowledge that the only time Article V has been invoked has been in support of the United States (after 9/11/01), the head of the world's leading economy moaned and groaned like a weak, bullied child, complaining about the size of the defense budgets of member nations.

European leaders were neither pleased nor amused. The de facto chief of NATO, Germany's Angela Merkel, received a standing ovation when a few days later she stated "This is what I experienced in the last few days. We Europeans must really take our destiny into our own hands.”







Thus with no formal declaration, Mrs. Merkel was thrust into the role as leader of the Trans-Atlantic Alliance.  Responding in part to the expected announcement by Trump on June 2 of US withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord, on June 1

According to a statement being prepared before an EU-China summit in Brussels on Thursday and Friday, the new alliance will say they are determined to “lead the energy transition” toward a low-carbon economy.

The EU’s climate commissioner, Miguel Arias Cañete, told the Guardian: “The EU and China are joining forces to forge ahead on the implementation of the Paris agreement and accelerate the global transition to clean energy.”

Cañete continued: “No one should be left behind, but the EU and China have decided to move forward. Our successful cooperation on issues like emissions trading and clean technologies are bearing fruit. Now is the time to further strengthen these ties to keep the wheels turning for ambitious global climate action.”

This neatly, albeit disturbingly, fulfills Lederman's speculation on January 23 that

President Donald Trump’s pursuit of an “America first” foreign policy is raising questions about who, if anyone, will fill the void if the U.S. relinquishes its traditional global leadership role. China and Russia are among the aspirants for greater economic and military influence, while an ambivalent Germany could emerge as the West’s moral compass.

Given that mainland China and even Russia are typically not considered part of the "west," Germany has become much more than even a moral compass, an irony no one could even imagine 72 years ago.

It takes no imagination, however, to interpret the whine of Environmental Protection Administrator Scott Pruitt during the Administration's news conference of June 2 when he complained (at 1:40 of video)

The world applauded- the world applauded when we joined Paris. And you know why? I think they applauded because they knew it was going to put this country at an economic disadvantage. And the reason European leaders- going back to the question earlier- is I think they want us to stay in, is that they know it'll shackle our economy that we're leading the world in respect to our CO2 production.







Pruitt- who is said to be one of the two opponents of the pact in the Administration- clearly summarized a prime motive for Trump's action.  The President name-checked cities in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan (what- no Wisconsin?) but was also eager to give the middle finger to the rest of the world,  It was only more convenient that it was the Paris Agreement, and the French have a reputation among a lot of Trump voters for those things they find most offensive in the modern world.

Additionally, Pruitt expresses that sense of grievance that runs through so much of Trump's statements and tweets. Whether he and the President really are silly enough to believe that the world's nations joined the Agreement to harm the USA, to "put this country at an economic disadvantage," is less important than its reinforcement as a theme in this presidency.  Similarly, in Brussels, Trump moaned "this is not fair." Whatever he complains at any time of of being "not fair"  is less important than assuaging a sense of grievance..

President Trump, Michael Grunwald notes, is "creating an international leadership vacuum" and "opening the door for China and Europe to take over the role of global leaders on climate change, and maybe the world’s other major problems."

The cooperation between the EU and China on global warming may presage leadership of Beijing on other major problems. But the interests of the free world cannot be met by China,which is not a free country, and which recognizes only its own interests, a view of nation reflected in Trump's "America First" mantra.

The torch of leadership, once alleged to be passed to a new generation, now must pass to a group dedicated to common interests, and to its leader.  "We Europeans must really take our fate into our own hands," Angela Merkel maintains.  The two world wars of the last century notwithstanding, that torch now resides not in Washington, but in Berlin.






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Not Cooling, And Experts Knew It

Controversy has erupted over the hiring by The New York Times of Bret Stephens as one of its op-ed columnists. The conservative Stephens had been deputy editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal and the choice of climate change as his opening column, in which he expressed skepticism of skeptics of climate change skeptics, only exacerbated the discontent.

Stephens now is posing as open-minded and objective. There was a time, however, when he stated

Well, in the 1970s we were supposed to believe in global cooling. In the 1980s it was the nuclear winter. In the 1990s it was mad cow disease. Global warming was the flavor of the decade. I can't wait to see what the next scare's going to be.

Similarly,  I read this morning a Newsweek article from the 1970s talking about global cooling. And it said the science is clear, it is overwhelming, we are in a major cooling period and it’s going to cause enormous problems worldwide. … Now, the data proved to be not backing up that theory. So then all the advocates of global cooling suddenly shifted to global warming.

As Fact Check revealed, the author of the article later asserted he "must admit mea culpa" because "in retrospect, I was over-enthusiastic in parts of my Newsweek article."

However, the notion that scientists generally or climate scientists specifically believed as late as the 1970s that global warming was the wave of the future is the myth that will not die.

The author of the fact check analysis, Gary Levitan noted

scientists had not yet determined the relative impacts of two factors on climate: greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, and aerosols, such as those that are spewed out by volcanic eruptions and burning of forests. Some papers in the early part of the decade predicted that increasing aerosol emissions could lower temperatures enough to trigger an ice age, but these conclusions were disputed. By the late 1970s, research had established that the warming associated with greenhouse gases was dominant over the cooling effect of aerosols.

As author and professional skeptic Brian Dunning points out, "during the 1970s, nations worldwide took drastic steps to reduce acid rain and sulfate emissions." Even as they did, there

was a 2008 study in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society titled The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus. It was a survey of climate articles published between 1965 and 1979 in the scientific literature, rather than of those published in the mass media. The authors found that 10% of the articles did indeed predict cooling, 28% found the data insufficient to make a prediction either way, and 62% predicted global warming. In other words, 90% of climate articles in scientific journals in the 1970s did not conclude the Earth was cooling. 

The process by which millions of Americans came to believe that 1970s experts had predicted global warming characterizes the conservative means of formulating political opinions.. Although scientists roundly rejected the idea of cooling, the popular media was full of it (figuratively and literally).   Newsweek, Time, and an episode of Leonard Nimoy's "In Search Of" series were among the mass media outlets which promoted the theory that the earth was cooling. In a choice between scientific opinion and pop culture, the right will first choose the popular media, and  there will be no second choice. They will go for what they've "heard" every time.







A similar problem exists in the Abortion Hysteria Industry, in which a lot of people continue to insist that women die during abortions or that women develop breast cancer or suffer mental health problems as a result of the procedure. It's a special and particular problem among climate change denialists, but is a hurdle for the left across-the-board in asserting the need for change.






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Believing What We Want To Believe

Commence laughter. Right Wing Watch has found

On his most recent “Prophetic Perspectives on Current Events” program, televangelist Rick Joyner declared that President-elect Donald Trump is a “tough as nails” leader who is also deeply compassionate and religious …. not unlike the disciples whom Jesus chose....

Joyner insisted that Trump is also "one of the most honest people I've met" and that he possesses a "remarkable fear of the Lord."

When someone believes that Donald Trump is an honest man deeply influenced by the Holy Spirit, he'll believe anything. And so

Joyner said that he met with Trump once before the election and discussed Trump’s plans to address illegal immigration. During the discussion, Joyner claimed, he “saw the tears well up” in Trump’s eyes at the thought that his plan to deport millions of undocumented immigrants could split up families.

“He was about to bust out crying,” Joyner claimed. “He said, ‘We can’t do that, we can’t hurt the families, we’ve got to fix that.'”







Don't laugh too hard, though, for such naivete may deeply affect not only (willfully) ignorant televangelists, but also the media and global politicians. Representing the latter category we have Pakistan's Press Information Department issuing this statement:

Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif called President-elect USA Donald Trump and felicitated him on his victory. President Trump said Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif you have a very good reputation. You are a terrific guy. You are doing amazing work which is visible in every way. I am looking forward to see you soon. As I am talking to you Prime Minister, I feel I am talking to a person I have known for long. Your country is amazing with tremendous opportunities. Pakistanis are one of the most intelligent people. I am ready and willing to play any role that you want me to play to address and find solutions to the outstanding problems. It will be an honor and I will personally do it. Feel free to call me any time even before 20th January that is before I assume my office.

On being invited to visit Pakistan by the Prime Minister, Mr. Trump said that he would love to come to a fantastic country, fantastic place of fantastic people. Please convey to the Pakistani people that they are amazing and all Pakistanis I have known are exceptional people, said Mr. Donald Trump.

Laugh all you want at what seems to have been dictated by Trump himself but.... no, laugh all you want.  However, note that the Pakistani Prime Minister appears to have been impressed by Trump, who probably was "buttering Sharif up without giving much thought to the sensitivities involved in a very tense geopolitical conflict or how his words might be interpreted."

It may be unsurprising that the likes of Muhammad Nawaz Sharif and Rick Joyner can be so easily fooled. So, too, however, The New York Times, whose reporters and editors two weeks after the election interviewed the President-elect. Trump said he had an "open mind" about climate change, then stated "I know we have, they say they have science on one side but then they also have those horrible emails that were sent between the scientists. Where was that, in Geneva or wherever five years ago? Terrible."

Asked whether "human activity is or isn't connected," Trump replied "It also depends on how much it’s going to cost our companies. You have to understand, our companies are noncompetitive right now."  "A lot of smart people disagree with you" about climate change," he told Tom Friedman. "We've always had storms," he assured Arthur Sulzberger, to whom he maintained "You know the hottest day ever was in 1890-something, 98."

Then the Times wrote its story and in the first paragraph argued Trump was "pledging to have an open mind about climate change." No. really.

During the primary and presidential campaigns, Donald Trump craved adulation as he spoke to huge, adoring crowds. However, he craves acceptance also, and will structure his remarks to accomodate the preferences of whomever he's talking to. In the age of social media, we were assured, politicians and others could not say anything without considering its impact upon a larger audience. Trump has shattered that notion.

The President-elect effortlessly soothes his immediate audience, contradicting himself promptly and often,allowing reasonable people to hold out hope that he is moderating. A United States President, we need to believe, could not possibly be as bellicose, bigoted, and ill-informed as Donald Trump appears  to be. But he can.

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The Great Pretender

The question which must be asked of Rush Limbaugh is one which has been begging to be asked for decades: Do you really think your audience is as stupid as you appear to believe?

On Tuesday, Limbaugh contended 

But now it's ISIS!  Now, why change?  Why do this?  I mean, climate change and the Democrat Party are inseparable.  And the Democrats are making it the number-one issue. There are reasons -- absurd, of course, 'cause there isn't any evidence that it's happening.  

Although its meterologists are loathe to emphasize it, The Weather Channel evidently would disagree because

May 2016 was the warmest May on record for the globe, making it the 13th consecutive warmest month on record.

NOAA's global State of the Climate report released Thursday found May's temperature over the Earth's surface was 0.87 degrees Celsius above the 20th century average. This beat out the previous record warm May set just last year by 0.02 degrees Celsius.

The 13-month streak, which dates back to May 2015, is the longest stretch of months in a row that a global temperature record has been set, according to NOAA's dataset which goes back to 1880.

NOAA reports "The May temperature across global land and ocean surfaces was 1.57°F above the 20th century average of 58.6°F. This was the highest for May in the 1880–2016 record, surpassing the previous record set in 2015 by 0.04°F."

May 2016 (NASA temperature map, above via the U.K.'s Independent) was not the warmest month on record, merely the warmest month. Still, it was no anomaly given that it

tied with June 2015 and August 2015 as the 12th highest monthly temperature departure among all months (1,637) on record. Overall, 13 of the 15 highest monthly temperature departures in the record have all occurred since February 2015, with February 1998 and January 2007 among the 15 highest monthly temperature departures.

Rush doesn't understand- or pretends not to understand- distinguishing between climate and weather when he remarks

See, here we have this little heatwave out in the Southwest the past three or four days. "See?  See? It's never been hotter!" I'll bet you if you go look into historical temperatures, you'll find days at this time of year since records have been kept where temperatures were as high, maybe even higher, than what they've been.  

It was 117 degrees in Phoenix on Sunday and Monday and until July 7, the high temperature is expected to be below 110 degrees only on June 30.  Limbaugh won't tell his audience that because his argument is based on the idea that weather and climate are synonymous, that 117 degrees on June 19 in Arizona would mean the earth is warming and snow on January 15 in International Falls means it is cooling.

Surely he couldn't be that ignorant. But he informs his audience that young individuals, a tiny portion of his audience, are. He continues

But to young people who don't have that historical perspective, "Oh, my God, it's never been this hot! Oh, my God, climate change! Oh, my God, global warming! Oh, my God, we're frying! Oh, my God, we're broiling! Oh, my God, it's over! Oh, my God, the climate change people are right.

And they're not. 

That's clever use of the straw man tactic.  His audience has been trained to believe that weather is climate and that there is no warming. Hence, without specifying the abnormally high temperatures occurring- which would be of out-sized importance to the audience he consistently misleads- he ascribes lack of historical perspective to young people.  It would be a cheap shot were it accurate.

It's ironic because historical perspective would demonstrate that climate change is real, and extraordinary.   2016 is expected to be (by far) the warmest year on record, as 2015 was prior to that. And 2014 prior to that. Further

Of the hottest years on record, 15 out of 17 have come since 2000. By contrast, more than a century has gone by since the planet had a record cold year (1911). In addition, this marks 39 years in a row with above average global temperatures and 372 months in a row with global temperatures above average. 

That's all coincidence, as it is when Rush Limbaugh continues to deceive and cheat listeners who deserve far better.










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If Donald Trump Lied Better, He Would Be Carly Fiorina

Politico's Glenn Thrush writes that Politifact "has rated 50 of Trump’s recent statements flagged by staff or readers and found that around three-quarters are either partly false, false or 'pants on fire' lies. None of them were rated completely 'true.'"  He considers especially damning three falsehoods about Trump's own biography, as well as one about policy.

The Art of the Deal is among the best-selling business books of all time, but not the best-selling as Trump claims.  Further, he's not worth $10 billion but perhaps as little as $4 billion and is not of Swedish descent as he says he is, but rather of German background.  And as almost everyone realizes, immigrants are coming to the USA of their own accord rather than because the Mexican government has been sending them.

Donald Trump will never pass a lie-detector test, and his boasts about himself themselves may eventually become stuff of legend.  However, there is one major Republican candidate whose dishonesty rivals that of the front-runner. Dave Roberts of Vox recently reported on an interview by Katie Couric of Carly Fiorina (video below) which addressed the issue of climate change.





Fiorina made several statements inconsistent with objective reality. She claimed California "destroys lives and livelihoods with environmental regulations," though as Roberts notes

between 1993 and 2013, thanks to energy efficiency, the average residential electricity bill in California declined, on an inflation-adjusted basis, by 4 percent, even as bills rose elsewhere in the country. Between 1990 and 2012, the state cut per-capita carbon emissions by 25 percent even as its GDP increased by 37 percent. Its total carbon emissions are declining, even as its economy continues to grow.

Oh, and California created more jobs than any other state in the nation last year, with the fifth-highest GDP growth rate. And its budget is balanced.

Fiorina argued also "China could care less" if the USA tries to reduce carbon. It turns out that China could care less. It could care far less because

China clearly cares what the US does; it would not have made the promises it did in its climate pact with the US if Obama had not made policy gestures of good faith. It's true that China, like any country, acts primarily in its own interests, not based on what America does. But that's precisely why it's investing more in clean energy than any other country in the world ($89.5 billion to the US's $51.8 billion in 2014), even as it puts increasingly tight restrictions on coal, leading its coal consumption to decline for the first time in years. It cares very much about reducing its crippling air pollution and dominating 21st-century growth industries.

Roberts observed Fiorina contending both "coal provides half the energy in this nation still" and "to say we're basically going to outlaw coal, which is what this administration has done." However, Roberts has found, coal provides only 20% of the total primary energy consumed in the nation. Under the Clean Power Plan, it's expected to provide 27% of the country's electricity n 2030, which is a far cry from being "outlawed."

Fiorina maintains also "Solar is great, but solar takes huge amounts of water" but Roberts recognizes

No, it doesn't.

All of the distributed rooftop solar in the US and 84 percent of utility-scale solar projects use solar photovoltaic (PV) panels, which require no water at all save what's needed to keep their surfaces clean.

Roberts details five other statements about climate change, each of them grossly misleading or flat-out lies, made by the candidate.

You get the idea. But you already suspected Fiorina was a serial liar when her claim of a "fully formed fetus on the table, it’s heart beating, it’s legs kicking while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain" was revealed as a hoax.  Chris Ostendorf points out

Fiorina may have been referring to was an anti-abortion documentary called Human Capital, which does include footage of a moving fetus. However, that scene was not filmed at Planned Parenthood. The documentary also includes an interview with a former procurement technician—a biomedical research company employee who obtains fetal tissue—who claims that she was once commanded to extract brain tissue from an aborted fetus.

It’s impossible to prove whether the technician was telling the truth about her experiences, but the real problem is that Human Capital does not actually contain any footage like the moment Fiorina described.

No problem there, however. The Washington Post explains

Other campaigns have climbed down from similar claims about the videos. Fiorina and her allies have done no such thing. Three days after the debate, CARLY for America – the PAC that legally has to keep its distance from Fiorina’s actual campaign – put together a video that spliced the candidate’s answer with different clips. The viewer, hearing about the controversy but unaware of the original videos, might think that Fiorina nailed it.







Somewhat chastened, most candidates would apologize, attempt a clarification, or ignore the myth their candidate tried to create.  Instead, here there is, in the words of Dahlia Lithwick, "no walk-back, no clarification, just a persistent insistence that a video that doesn’t exist and can’t even be manufactured in the underground labs of political deception is really out there...."

Then there is the series of claims about foreign policy Fiorina made in the last debate when she bragged

What I would do, immediately, is begin rebuilding the Sixth Fleet, I would begin rebuilding the missile defense program in Poland, I would conduct regular, aggressive military exercises in the Baltic states. I’d probably send a few thousand more troops into Germany...

We could rebuild the Sixth Fleet. I will. We haven’t. We could rebuild the missile defense program. We haven’t. I will.

Chis Hayes, however, pointed out

Start with her first statement there, what I would do immediately is begin rebuilding the sixth fleet. As Stars and Stripes notes, Fiorina`s meaning wasn`t immediately clear. The sixth fleet is less a collection of ships than a command structure for operating American warships, moreover the fleet is one of the few growing military commands in Europe.

Fiorina then said she would begin rebuilding the missile defense program in Poland. But while one missile defense program there was scuttled, Poland is actually leading Eastern European missile defense efforts and plans to install a new system in 2018. Fiorina then vowed to conduct regular aggressive military exercises in the Baltic states, which would be fine, although you might not think that`s a good idea, but that is already happening as you can see from these images from U.S.-led military exercises in where else, the Baltics, that took place in June. Finally, Fiorina said she`d probably send a few more thousand troops into Germany. There are currently more than 44,000 troops in Germany. So it`s hard to see how a few thousand would make that much of a difference.

Glenn Thrush shouldn't be bewildered or aghast that Donald Trump has misled voters about his personal background, given that the candidate whose popularity has risen most of late

plays fast and loose with highly misleading metrics, changing the goal posts by manipulating peer comparisons. Fiorina brags that she doubled revenues—but she cut value in half. She talks about doubling employment at HP when all she did was combine the employment of two huge firms—and then lay off 30,000 employees. She presents her story as rags to riches saga, from secretary to CEO, when in fact she is the daughter of a Duke University Law School dean and a federal Appeals Court judge. She just worked for a few months as a receptionist after dropping out of UCLA law school.

Carly Fiorina sets out to mislead listeners more than her rivals, although falsehoods are standard practice for this crew. She does, moreover, make false statements with an unrivaled sense of certainty. Because she probably knows better, her style style resembles less what the late nutritionist Carlton Fredericks referred to as "opinionated ignorance" than the approach of Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas.  His veneer of righteous outrage won him a pass from the Senate Judiciary Committee, its chairperson Joe Biden, and from the US Senate. He got a seat on the US Supreme Court and so far, her scam has gotten Carly Fiorina a pass from most of the mainstream media.






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Climate Fantasy

It really isn't fair. It isn't fair to criticize Illinois' Mark Kirk, who is more sensible than many of the others- oh, say 54- Republicans in the U.S. Senate.

But when last week, in an interview with a trade publication in the context of Keystone XL, Kirk date state

We had the previous warming period, which was called the global optimum, and the best way to talk about that is when Leif Erickson went west from his home, he discovered a landmass that he called Greenland, because it was," Kirk said after a Senate Republicans' lunch to discuss legislation to build the Keystone Pipeline. "And that was called the global optimum, because the planet was much warmer. By calling Greenland 'green land,' we know that the climate has been changing pretty regularly within recorded memory.

It would appear this large land mass and country was given its name by early Scandinavian settlers, including Erik the Red (not a Communist, nor a Republican), who figured that name would attract additional settlers. It was  understandably a tough sell because 

Greenland is famous for its massive glaciers, but the region was relatively free of ice until about 2.7 million years ago, according to a new study. Before then, the Northern Hemisphere had been mostly ice-free for more than 500 million years, the researchers said.

The Greenland ice sheet began building after plate tectonics and the Earth's shifting tilt reshaped the region, the researchers found. The team narrowed the cause down to three factors: plate tectonics that lifted the region, creating soaring snow-capped mountain peaks; a northward drift from plate tectonics; and a shift in the Earth's axis that caused Greenland to move farther north, away from the sun's warmth.  

"Our work was motivated by the question of why extensive glaciations of Greenland started only during the past few million years," the researchers wrote in the study.

Alright, then. Greenland was really green 2.7 million years ago, which would be slightly unsettling to the young earth creationists vying with the Big Money Boyz for  control of the G.O.P.  But 2,697,886 B.C. was a really long time ago.

Still, it was inaccurate for the Environmental Defense Fund in a statement to charge "A forward-thinking environmental moderate back when he served in the House, Kirk's record has badly deteriorated in the Senate.... And this week, he sounded like Rush Limbaugh." At least Kirk did not contend, as Limbaugh did last July, "the models are the only thing we've that says there's global warming. There is no data. There is no empirical data. There's zilch, zero, nada. It's all based on model forecasts for 2100, for 2050, for 2075. This is one of the greatest hoaxes ever pulled on people."

The eleven warmest years in the last 134 years have occurred since 1997 (graph below from UK's Met Office via Think Progress). This past year marked the 38th consecutive year that the annual global land and water temperature has been above average. Darn that lack of empirical data.

The GOP is planning a major assault on the rights (via Social Security) of the elderly, of women (via reproductive rights), and on the environment, via the effort through Keystone XL to keep supplies up in Communist China.  Your mileage may vary, but Mark Kirk is easily one of the best, most reasonable 3 or 4 members of the Republican caucus in the U.S. Senate.  That is not a good sign.

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Ignorance Is Bliss, Or At Least Convenient

In May, House Majority Leader John Boehner was asked by  a reporter "Are there steps you would support to take action against climate change, and do you think it's a problem?" Boehner stated "Listen, I'm not qualified to debate the science over climate change" before he explained that we shouldn't do anything about it.

Queried the same month about climate change, fraudster Rick Scott, en route to being re-elected governor of Florida, said "I'm not a scientist." Twice.  On her way in October to being elected to the U.S. Senate, ultra-right winger Jodi Ernst of Iowa maintained “I don’t know the science behind climate change. I can’t say one way or another what is the direct impact, whether it’s man-made or not."

Asked at an interview on October 2 about climate change, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell responded "We can debate this forever.   George Will had a column in the last year or so pointing out that in the 70s, we were concerned the ice age was coming. I'm not a scientist. I'm interested in protecting Kentucky's economy." The same month, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal at a breakfast organized by the Christian Science Monitor was asked by Howard Fineman about climate change and responded "I’d leave it to the scientists to decide how much, what it means, and what the consequences are…. Let the scientists debate and figure that out."

You might notice a pattern here.  While a few concede the existence of climate change (but generally claiming ignorance of its cause) and some deny it, Boehner, Scott, McConnell, and Jindal are among those Republicans who have gotten the memo and now skirt the issue of global warming by denying they are scientists.

They may even have noticed another pattern, though few Republicans will acknowledge it.   Meteorologist Eric Holthaus reports that we of the planet recently have experienced the warmest April on record, the warmest May on record, the warmest June on record, and the warmest September on record. Not surprisingly, then, April to September was the warmest six-month  period  and November, 2013-October, 2014 the warmest twelve-month period on record.  Moreover, these trends occurred in the absence of an El Nino, whose arrival tends to result in record-setting warmth because it warms the Pacific Ocean, the world's largest ocean (image below, from NASA, of October climate anomaly vs. 1951-1986).

Six months ago, Holthaus noted human beings "started burning fossil fuels in large quantities about 250 years ago." Yet, there has "been more greenhouse gas emissions in the last 40 years than over the previous 200" years..    That's a pattern even more disturbing than grown men and women putting their hands over their ears, closing their eyes and minds, and doing whatever they have to to pretend they aren't marching to the tune of the fossil fuel industry.

The possibilities are endless. Pressed on their view of agricultural subsidies for the genetically modified crops of corn and soy, Republicans can say "I'm not a farmer."  On cutting taxes for the wealthy, they can claim "I'm not an economist."  On requiring businesses to provide health care coverage that covers the cost of contraceptives for employees, GOP politicians can maintain "I'm not a doctor."  And on the great issues of war and peace, they can admit "I'm not a general," a claim that would have the added benefit of suggesting only effete liberals believe in civilian control of the military.

Without their input, it would be one small step for ignorance, one giant leap for effective government.



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Hot Air

Weather Channel co-founder John Coleman, forced out at the network soon after it hit the air, was interviewed  (video below) Tuesday evening by Megyn Kelly of GOP TV.  Coleman is a long time climate change denier and his appearance gave Rush Limbaugh an opportunity to push his denialism when the latter remarked

One of my all-time favorite TV weather people is John Coleman.  John Coleman founded the Weather Channel.  John Coleman was the best weatherman Good Morning America has ever had.  I remember when I first heard of John Coleman, it was a winter in which Chicago had a week's worth or 10 days' worth of blizzards, and this would have been back in the seventies.  John Coleman didn't go home, and by day five he looked like he was asleep on that show doing the weather.  It was a yeoman job. 

They cut away to Chicago when it was time to do the weather.  He was entertaining. He was credible.

He may have been very entertaining and apparently worked hard three or four decades ago, but Coleman was not then- nor has he ever been- a meteorologist, much less a climate scientist.  When Kelly asked him about carbon dioxide, he contended

Well, there are 9,000 PhDs and 31 scientists who have signed a petition saying it is not a significant greenhouse gas.  Oh, it's a teeny, itsy-bitsy greenhouse gas. But it's not in any way significant, and we are sure of it.  It's not like something I made up or just thought of.  I've studied and studied and studied.

Media Matters swiftly debunked both this claim and Coleman himself, explaining

Moreover, Coleman's experience in weather forecasting does not make him an expert in climate science -- there is an immense difference between a scientist and a weather forecaster. For starters, they use different models and ask different questions: climate scientists observe and predict long-term trends over entire ecosystems, while meteorologists focus on weekly, daily, and hourly changes in the weather. MIT climate scientist Kerry Emanuel previously compared asking a meteorologist's opinion on the state of climate science to "asking a country doctor to comment on the latest developments in biomedical research." Disregarding the fact that Coleman never received a formal education in meteorology -- his degree was in journalism -- his experience predicting the weather does not make him a credible source to debunk the vast majority of scientific literature on climate change.

Coleman also claimed that "9,000 Ph.D.'s and 31 [thousand] scientists" agree with his position on climate change, referring to the widely discredited Oregon Petition Project. Its signatories are mostly engineers with master's degrees, and it once included the names of fictitious characters and a member of the Spice Girls.

Coleman thanked Fox News for giving him a platform (in contrast to "the media" he berated), and in fact, Fox News has frequently turned to Coleman to deny the scientific consensus on global warming.

For years, Coleman has been connected to the Heartland Institute, which has been funded by fossil-fuel interests, and its promotion of climate change denial. Coleman was featured at a Heartland Institute climate conference in July of this year. Previously, he hosted four paid associates of Heartland to deny climate change on the San Diego station where he worked as weathercaster for 20 years (he has since retired). As Coleman told Kelly, the Heartland Institute has been promoting his letter urging UCLA's Hammer Museum to "provide balance" to a debate it recently hosted on climate change. In the letter, Coleman wrote, "It is important to have those who attend know that there is no climate crisis."

Along with the claim that innumerable (though one number or another is invariably cited in order to appear more credible) scientists believe global warming is a hoax, conservatives love to claim the ice sheet in the Antarctic or, in the case of Coleman, in the Antarctic and the Arctic is diminishing. Coleman maintained

Well, I would like to announce tonight to people who are friends of Algore's that, whoops! He got that one wrong.  The Antarctic ice cap is at an all-time record high in both coverage and thickness, and the Arctic ice cap at the North Pole is at the highest it has been in several years.  It's in its so-called normal range since we got satellite observations that could measure it.  So not only is the ice not melting, more polar bears are alive and happy today than we've had in a hundred years! Life is good, Miss Kelly. I gotta tell you, life is good.











It was a nice touch- "satellite observations" and "in its so-called normal range."  If one didn't know who this guy Coleman is, or that his forum was Fox News, he might be half as credible as Limbaugh thinks he is.  However, summarizing a study from earlier this year in the journal The Cryosphere, The Guardian reports

German researchers have established the height of the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps with greater precision than ever before. The new maps they have produced show that the ice is melting at an unprecedented rate. 

The maps, produced with a satellite-mounted instrument, have elevation accuracies to within a few metres. Since Greenland’s ice cap is more than 2,000 metres thick on average, and the Antarctic bedrock supports 61% of the planet’s fresh water, this means that scientists can make more accurate assessments of annual melting.

Dr Veit Helm and other glaciologists at the Alfred Wegener Institute’s Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, Germany, report in the journal The Cryosphere that, between them, the two ice sheets are now losing ice at the unprecedented rate of 500 cubic kilometres a year.

Further, September

also marked the highest departure from average for any month since records began in 1880, breaking the previous record of 0.65°C (1.17°F) set just one month earlier in August. This is the third time in 2014 this all-time monthly high temperature record has been broken. Record warmth was observed in parts of every major ocean basin, particularly notable in the northeastern and equatorial Pacific Ocean. 

And in a startling coincidence, August (temperature anomalies in degrees of Celsius, map below from NASA) and September were the 354th and 355th consecutive months in which the average global land and sea temperature was higher than the 20th century average for those months. Self-proclaimed expert John Coleman is right about one thing, though: life is good for ideological extremists like Limbaugh and himself who shoot their mouths off with little accountability.

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It Doesn't Exist. But If It Did.

Long ago, in a galaxy far away, George F. Will saw "E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial" and wrote (in a column seemingly no longer available)

Disdain for science usually ends when the disdainer gets a toothache, or his child needs an operation. But hostility to science is the anti-intellectualism of the semi-intellectual. That is in part because science undercuts intellectual vanity:  Measured against what is unknown, the difference between what the most and least learned persons know is trivial.  E.T. is, ostensibly, an invitation to feel what we too rarely feel: wonder. One reason we rarely feel wonder is that science has made many things routine that once were exciting, even terrifying (travel, surgery). But science does more than its despiser do to nurture the wonderful human capacity for wonder.

But a lot can change in 32 years, and has since the Washington Post columnist observed "scientists pounce upon E.T." who "is rescued from the fell clutches of the scientists by a posse of kid bicyclists and boards a spaceship for home." Will found "an animus against science, which is seen as a morbid calling for callous vivisectionists and other unfeeling technocrats."

Will  has regressed dramatically in these 3+ decades.   On the May 4 edition of Fox News Sunday, Charles Krauthammer and Will quesioned the existence of climate change, the latter claiming

Now, there is, as Charles says, the policy question is how much wealth do we want to spend directly or in lost production in order to have no discernible measurable effect on the climate? People say, well, what about this report? There is a sociology of science. Scientists are not saints in white laboratory smocks. They have got interests like everybody else. If you want a tenure-track position in academia, don't question the reigning orthodoxy on climate change. If you want money from the biggest source of direct research in this country, the federal government, don't question its orthodoxy. If you want to get along with your peers, conform to peer pressure. This is what's happening.

Jonathan Chait notes

Will is arguing that climate scientists have been massively corrupted by federal funding and peer pressure. (“They have got interests like everybody else.”) He does not consider the countervailing power of opposing financial interests that might lure scientists to question of the scientific consensus, such as the lucrative funding made available in the right-wing think-tank world. He likewise discounts the possibility that scientists would find the lure of being proven eventually correct to be a powerful reputational incentive, let alone that they would actually care enough about being right to disregard social and financial pressure

Of course, of course, and of course.  Will , unlike Sean Hannity and a few others, does not toe the Repub line simply to toe the GOP line. His argument, however, has morphed into an increasingly common, two-track, line among Repubs: we shouldn't do anything about global warming even if it is occurring, which I'm not saying it is. 

But as John Oliver pointed out (video, below) Sunday night, presenting a discussion between a believer and a denier of climate change or treating the issue as if it is a debatable question borders on the absurd.  "You don't need," he remarked, "peoples' opinions on a fact. You might as well ask which number is bigger: 15 or 5? Or do owls exist?"

Charles Krauthammer, a psychiatrist, by training, ought to understand that. And George Will, who once believed in science and still is a widely read syndicated columnist, could at least acknowledge a scientific fact. That he cannot do so demonstrates how a rational person can fall.











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One Heck Of A Joke


Ken Ham, president of the Creation Museum believes the earth is cooling, or so it seems he does.  As Piers Morgan and Bill Nye discovered recently, Ham can be rather cryptic and elusive.

Not so with Pat Robertson (video below). Monday night, 29 Democratic Senators (31 from the caucus) pulled an all-nighter to make speeches on the floor highlighting the dangers of climate change. Two nights, voracious winds throughout the Washington area knocked out power to 50,000 residents and lights on the U.S. Capitol Dome went out until fixed 30 minutes later.

That provided fodder for Reverend Robertson, who commented "Do you think God has a sense of humor? "Well, I think he does. Let me tell you what happened. In the United States Capitol, Harry Reid, Barbara Boxer and the Democrats had an all night marathon advancing global warming. And they said we have to be in fear of global warming.”







The power outage did not affect the Democratic senators, but never mind. Perhaps God does have a sense of humor, given that

With Texas aflame from more than 8,000 wildfires brought on by extreme drought, a man who hopes to be the next president took pen in hand and went to work:

“Now, therefore, I, Rick Perry, Governor of Texas, under the authority vested in me by the Constitution and Statutes of the State of Texas, do hereby proclaim the three-day period from Friday, April 22, 2011, to Sunday, April 24, 2011, as Days of Prayer for Rain in the State of Texas.”

Then the governor prayed, publicly and often.  Alas, a rainless spring was followed by a rainless summer. July was the hottest month in recorded Texas history. Day after pitiless day, from Amarillo to Laredo, from Toadsuck to Twitty, folks  were greeted by a hot, white bowl overhead, triple-digit temperatures, and a slow death on the land.

In the four months since Perry’s request for divine intervention, his state has taken a dramatic turn for the worse.  Nearly all of Texas  is now in “extreme or exceptional” drought, as classified by federal meteorologists, the worst in Texas history.

Lakes have disappeared. Creeks are phantoms, the caked bottoms littered with rotting, dead fish.  Farmers cannot coax a kernel of grain from ground that looks like the skin of an aging elephant.

Timothy Egan, who wrote that in the opinion pages of The New York Times in August of 2011, is convinced there was no divine intervention in Texas in 2011 or presumably, in the District of Columbia, southern Maryland, and northern Virginia earlier this week.

But if God is laughing, as Robertson suggests, he must be really yukking it up... about January being the 9th consecutive month with the global monthly temperature among the ten highest for its respective month.  Or about 2013 being the 4th warmest year on record.  And about January having been the 347th consecutive month in which average temperatures were higher than the 20th century average.

Lots of laughs. Donald Trump, in early January, tweets "The very expensive GLOBAL WARMING bullshit has got to stop. Our planet is freezing, record low temps, and our GW scientists are stuck in ice." God responds, as Robertson might see it, with "extreme drought" in California, record-breaking rain and rampant floods throughout England, and the hottest season ever in Australia.

Robertson would have to acknowledge God is laughing at us, if anyone held his feet to the fire.  Over the course of the past two weeks, the blog at Jim Wallis' Sojourners has taken on Ukraine, immigration reform, gender rights, the environment, capital punishment, racism, and gay rights. Especially gay rights.  There has been nothing, however, challenging Pat Robertson or anyone in the Christian right who, witnessing a period of unparalleled and undeniable warmth, say that God couldn't possibly allow it.

That has to be done, and by the "faith community."  Evidently, God is not protecting us against heat, drought, or devastating storms.  Either He is up to nothing good- by our criteria- or He's leaving it up to us.  It's one or the other, and the likes of Pat Robertson don't deserve a free pass.




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