We all know by now that the next coffee spit-take as a result of some conservative saying something fantastically stupid is just around the corner right?
Whether it's Ted Stevens saying the "Internet is like a series of tubes". Virgil Goode proclaiming that jihadists want our money to read "In Muhammad we trust" instead of Allah which is simply the Arabic translation for "God". We've had George "Macaca-man" Allen and then Rush Limbaugh who thought it was a good idea to mimic and accuse a man suffering and surviving parkinsons of exaggerating his symptoms for politics.
But now I think I've heard it all.Before I get into what has currently caught my fancy - let me give you one little blast from the past. Candidate George W. Bush in 2000 commenting on criticizing the readiness of our troops.
To point out that our military has been overextended, taken for granted and neglected, that’s no criticism of the military. That is criticism of a president and vice president and their record of neglect.
Wow, Bush actually spoke the truth once upon a time. Takes you're breath away doesn't it?
Anyway, back to modern day.
In the midst of a post Gore-Oscar "debate" on Global Warming from Hannity and colmes this week, Right-Wing Attack Harpy Ann Coulter let drop a non-stop string of what may some of the dumbest things I've ever heard anyone say. Anywhere. And that's saying something.
First she proclaims that those who support energy conservation have no energy policy, despite the fact that one of the persons she was debating with is Darryl Hannah whose been off the grid for the past thirteen years thanks to solar panels installed in her home.
From Media Matters
COULTER: To say that we can spend less or that we can use candles is not an energy policy.
DARYL HANNAH (actress): Nobody has mentioned candles but you, Ann, I'm afraid.
Um Ann, yes - using less energy actually Is an energy policy. Hello - McFly?
To Coulter the idea of using more efficient light bulbs, more effience air conditioners and refrigerators and insulating your home is just madness, we can't do that! You Lib-ruls are making to so we have to live by candle light! Bastards.
Yeah, ok, and I suppose we have to use a horse and buggy to go down to feed store for fresh groceries everyday too, huh?
But wait, it gets worse.
She then went on to claim that energy conservation and restricting carbon emissions is somehow dangerous to the survival the human race (as if cataclysmic changes in our weather and climate won't be?)
COULTER: It's anti-human. They want all of America to look like Amagansett [New York], where they -- the beautiful, rich people -- live in their homes, and there are a few maids. Well-tempered maids will come in and take care of them, bicycling to work. But they want to destroy the middle class of America.
And, I might add, I know they hate the middle class of America, but it would also wipe out their little friends in Chad and Darfur, who need energy to eat, to live, to have -- to go to the bathroom indoors in winter. It has nothing to do with Priuses or candle power. The energy is what allows humans to live.
People need energy to go to the batchroom indoors during the winters in Africa???? Did you guys follow her round that bend?
Energy is what allow us to live? And here I was thinking it had something to do with proteins, amino acids and fracking oxygen!
Repeatedly during the broadcast she proclaimed, backed by Hannity of course, that solar panels don't work, wind power doesn't work, bio-diesel doesn't work, hybrids don't work and that the only real solution to the problem of producing clean power is - wait for it - more Nuclear Power Plants. Which of course, according to Ann, have all been blocked by Liberals. It's not like that little Three Mile Island problem, and the inability to safely store spent fuel rods - Not to mention Chernobyl - has had anything to do with it, eh?
Right.
Hannity, whose been on an Anti-Gore Jihad for years now complaining that Gore's is a hypocrit because his household energy bill is 12 Times the national average (even those both Gore and his wife have home offices which increase his consumption as well as the fact that his electric bills are higher because he pays extra for Green Energy Only) decided to jump and and proclaim that Gore's Book "Earth in the Balance" included the completely wacky suggestion that we could do away with the combustion engine in 25 years.
God, whatta maroon.
However, if you look at my Diary here on the rise and subsequent fall (after a hefty push from the auto industry) of the Electric Car in California, it's clear that it was and is completely possible to replace most commuter vehicles with fully electric cars well within Gore's deadline.
Contrary the Coulter's claims that retooling our industrial base away from carbon fuels would somehow "destroy humanity", the truth is that if we don't act - and do so very quickly - the impact of Global Warming may very soon cause the Amazonian rain forest, which is currently the largest source of oxygen on the planet, to begin to wither an die from a devastating draught which has lasted for the last two years.
To me people like Hannity and Coulter are like those who deny the Holocaust. They're completely deluded, but don't mistake that delusion for a lack of intelligence - only that they have an deep emotional/ideological investment in maintaining the status quo just as it is. They don't want change, particularly if they're receiving checks from Exxon-Mobil as many Global Warming opponents at the Hyper-Conservative American Enterprise Institute have.
But even the Bush Adminstration has admitted that Global Warming is causing Polar Bears to starve and drown because of the melting of the polar ice shelf and have marked them as an endangered species.
If only Coulter-giest and her ilk were similarly endangered.
Vyan
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