WHAT ARE THE GOBSHITES SAYING THESE DAYS?
by Charles P. Pierce, "The Politics Blog with Charles P. Pierce," Esquire, February 17, 2014
Welcome to our weekly survey of the state of Our National Dialogue which, as you know, is what Beethover would have come up with had he composed Romance For Violins and Grubworms.
This week, a Very Special Episode of How We're Fked As A Species.
Centuries from now, when the several remaining humans are huddled around a dwindling fire and pondering how each of them will kill the others and eat their still-warm flesh, the most boring among the remnant will pose the question, "Who is to blame for all of this?"
Someone will mention the Koch Brothers. Someone else will bring up BP, and maybe our old friend, the Keystone XL pipeline will get a moan-out while the silent one in the corner sizes up the available rocks and studies the heads of his companions. If I'm not around, I hope at least one of them will summon up his last remaining breath and say, "The noodlebrained bag of useless flesh named David Gregory," before collapsing in a heap in the corner, whence he will awaken an hour later to find one of his companions sizing up his quadriceps for a light snack.
Yesterday, and I am not exaggerating a bit here, David Gregory and the Meet The Press gang presented the definitive argument not only for their mutual expulsion from the company of sentient primates, but also the single best example of why the entire elite political class of this country is one day going to be subject to a massive class-action negligence suit on the part of whatever rodents are left. Let us stipulate from the outset -- among the people who actually know what they're talking about, there is no debate about climate change. None. It is occurring. Humans are exacerbating it at an unacceptable rate and, if something isn't done, beachfront property in Indianapolis one day is going to be at a premium. Neither political party has shown itself overly willing to confront this reality, but only one of them mocks the science and slanders the scientists. Having largely ignored the primary environmental issue of the past millennium, the Dancin' Master decides to take the bull by the ass and stage a "debate" between Bill Nye, a mechanical engineer turned television science guy, and Marsha Blackburn, a congresswoman from Tennessee with a BS from Mississippi State. The rodents are going to have a helluva case, I'm thinking.
It was every bit as grim as you can imagine. (In fact, it was such a grotesque mockery of a sham of a fraud that it has completely drowned out in my memory an appearance by Willard Romney, who was invited on to explain how his Salt Lake City Olympics rocked. Which is weird because I thought Wendy Davis was the only candidate in history who ever ran on her biography.) Congresswoman Blackburn, who reminded us that she wasn't a climate scientist, as if we couldn't have figured it out by ourselves, seemed most concerned about the fact that science is hard.
REP. BLACKBURN: You're exactly right. And what you have to do. Let's say everything that Bill says is wrong is wrong. Let's just say that. Then you say what are you going to do about it? What would the policy be? And will that policy have an impact? Now, even Director McCarthy from the EPA in answering questions from Congressman Pompeo before our committee, said reaching all of the 26 U.S. goals is not going to have an impact globally. And, David, what we have to look at is the fact that you don't make good laws, sustainable laws when you're making them on hypotheses or theories or unproven sciences.
Hypothesis. Theories. Unproven sciences. While England drowns and Australia burns and California dies of thirst.
And it is not at all unkind to point out that Ms. Blackburn and her colleagues in the House have declined pretty much to make any laws at all, sustainable or otherwise.
GREGORY: All right. We are going to leave it there. This debate goes on. I thank you for your time this morning, both of you.
But, as England drowns and Australia burns and California dies of thirst, they did not "leave it there." My man Chuck Todd chimed in, wistfully wishing that those noisy environmentalists would just tone it down a bit.
TODD:...The fact of the matter, it's happening. And I wonder if there's too much-- you know, I know some environmentalists are frustrated with that portion of the debate. But maybe you steer away from it and say, it doesn't matter. We have to tackle this infrastructure problem. You got to build different higher seawalls in some places. We're going to have to figure out a different way to distribute water in California. The fact of the matter-- and the Federal government is going to have to pay for this.
GREGORY: Right.
MR. TODD: And pay for all these things. And so I wonder if everybody should say, you know what? Let's table this debate. We know what's happening. Table that part of the debate because when you do that, then it becomes this like clubbing each other with-- with-- with political argument that takes away from what we have to do.
How, precisely, would this policy approach work? "We will spend a few billion to build state-of-the-art seawalls but we won't bother giving a reason for why we're doing it. We're going to rearrange radically the way 38 million people get their water and we'll be apolitically vague when people ask why they woke up one morning with a fking aqueduct in their backyard."
Chuck Todd is welcome to try and sell this to a Republican party that believes science makes the baby Jeebus cry, as long as he leaves his dental records with someone so his remains can be identified. While England drowns and Australia burns and California dies of thirst.
Let us move along to another environmental brigand, Pat McCrory, the Republican governor of the newly insane state of North Carolina. He had a two-fer yesterday, appearing with both The Clinton Guy Shocked By Blowjobs, and with former Hoplite embed Bob Schieffer. His appearance on ABC is worth studying because of one phrase that did not appear anywhere in the dialogue. Say the secret words and win $500. It's a common phrase, one that's heard around North Carolina's watersheds all the time.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Governor McCrory, we're all seeing those pictures out of your state this week. It looks a little clearer this morning, but how much of this is going to set you back?
GOV. PAT MCCRORY, (R) NORTH CAROLINA: It's having a big impact. The last two weeks has been extremely stunning and tough on the state. It's not as tough as the first episode of House of Cards, but it's been very tough on all of us. Our budget is already at its maximum regarding snow removal and that doesn't include our cities and small towns. We literally had six major metropolitan areas hit with a major snow storm twice now in two weeks. And it's a hit on our budget. And it's going to be a hit on the economy because people haven't been spending money for the last four or five days.
And...
MCCRORY: Well, I believe there is climate change. I'm not sure you can call it climate warming any more, especially here in the Carolinas. I think the big debate is how much of it is man-made and how much will just naturally happen, as the Earth evolves. And the question then is what do we do about it, and how much it will cost the consumer. I concentrate on cleaning the environment. I think that's where our argument should be, cleaning our air, cleaning our water and cleaning the ground. And we're at a brown fields area which we're in right now in Charlotte where we cleaned up the ground right here and cleaned up old brown fields and now we have great new development. But the whole issue of cleaning the environment I think is the issue we ought to talk about more than getting to a debate from the left and the right about climate change or global warming. It's all about cleaning our environment and have a good quality of life for not only now, but for future generations.
Holy Jesus H. Christ on a ventilator, George, COAL ASH! Ask him about the fking coal ash that Duke Energy loosed into the Dan River and then tried to whistle past the people of the state, an ongoing disaster in which McCrory himself is entangled because he used to work for Duke Energy. He's sitting right there, talking about "cleaning our environment" while his old company is fouling a river, and he's tap-dancing around what he knew, and nobody brings it up? The rodents's case is looking better and better.
And against all odds, Schieffer was even worse.
MCCRORY: I think someone took a -- chopped off the total sentence there, But I will say this, that, you know, I feel there has always been climate change. The debate is really how much of it is manmade and how much will it cost to have any impact on climate change.
My main argument is let's clean up the environment. And as a mayor and now as a governor, I'm spending my time cleaning our air, cleaning our water and cleaning the ground. And I think that's where the argument should be on both the left and the right.
And if that has an impact on climate change, good. But I think that's where the real argument should be, is doing what we can to clean up our environment. But we also have to look for cost-effective ways to do it because, as a governor, we're walking that fine line of keeping our environment clean but also continuing the economic recovery and making sure things like power are affordable for the consumer.
SCHIEFFER: All right. Well, Governor, we want to wish you and the folks down there in North Carolina the very best.
Especially the people around the Dan River who will be dining on three-headed trout for a decade. While England drowns, and Australia burns, and Califiornia dies of thirst...
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/The_Gobshites_Kill_The_Planet
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