Gods And Monkeys

US scientists arguing that climate change is real are being ruthlessly targetted by Joe Barton, chairman of the House of Representatives committee on energy and commerce, a Texan with close links to the fossil fuel industry. The Guardian has a pretty shocking report:

Mr Barton's inquiry was launched after an article in the Wall Street Journal quoted an economist and a statistician, neither of them from a climate science background, saying there were methodological flaws and data errors in the three scientists' calculations. It accused the trio of refusing to make their original material available to be cross-checked.

Mr Barton then asked for everything the scientists had ever published and all baseline data. He said the information was necessary because Congress was going to make policy decisions drawing on their work, and his committee needed to check its validity.

There followed a demand for details of everything they had done since their careers began, funding received and procedures for data disclosure.

Compare that with the lack of information provided to Democrats on John Roberts or John Bolton. You'd think that disasters like Hurricane Katrina might be a wake-up call to these fools, but they have neither intelligence nor morality.

And therein (hopefully) lies the seeds of their defeat... Atrios points to a looming conflict between right-wing Bell Curve racists and Intelligent Design creationists:

Will the racist Darwinians have the nerve to ask why the "Intelligent Designer" came up with the really, really fucked up idea that the big brained white guys like them got the tiny penises and the small brained, big dicked blacks got all the big-titted, hot assed women? Will the Discovery Institute fellows feel compelled to drop their pants to prove that the IDer in chief knew what he was doing?

I sense a monumental crack-up among the racist wingnuts. It's either god or monkeys --- with their inferior manhoods hanging (ever so slightly) in the balance.

Like we've said before, reality doesn't even seem to matter to these people, so you wonder why anyone should bother engaging them in a serious debate. Andrew Gumbel, author of Steal This Vote: Dirty Elections and the Rotten History of Democracy in America, says Bush supporters will not even concede the basic mathematics behind the 2000 Election:

It's become fashionable to say that 11 September 2001 was the day that changed everything in American politics. But I'm not sure the bigger watershed didn't come nine months earlier when the Supreme Court pulled the plug on the Florida battle and installed George W Bush in the White House.

Given the trauma and upheaval of everything that has happened since - the Iraq war, of course, but also spiralling deficits, huge tax cuts for the rich, a stark widening of the income gap between rich and poor, and on and on - it is perhaps natural for Bush supporters to dig in their heels and claim full democratic legitimacy for what the administration has wrought.

Likewise, it is natural for Bush opponents to wonder how much of it might have been avoided - how many military deaths, how much anti-American anger and resentment around the world, how many detentions, deportations and torture scandals - if the 2000 election had concluded differently.

No wonder the passions continue to rage. It is, or should be, beyond dispute that the Florida election was fought dirtily and that there is at least a case to be made that the wrong man ended up in the Oval Office. Contrary to received wisdom, the problem was not ultimately with deficient voting machines or even the respective merits and demerits of the Republican and Democratic causes. What Florida suggested - and continues to suggest - is that the very foundation of the American democratic system is corrupted and rotten. And that's a reality many Americans may not yet be ready to confront.

I guess the guts of the problem is that reality is becoming increasingly difficult for these people to face, as it is getting rapidly and dramatically worse in so many key areas with respect to their ill-conceived biases. To quote Charles Sullivan:

The trouble is that most Americans don't want to know the truth because it would make them uncomfortable. So they turn their heads the other way and allow themselves to be distracted from their civic and patriotic duties. It is easier to display the flag and plaster their cars with 'Support our troops' stickers. This mode of being requires no real effort; nor accountability.

Their government is murdering millions of innocent people all around the planet, torturing people and toppling both democratic and progressive governments; it is committing acts of terror against the world's working poor; it is plundering their homelands and stealing their wealth. How can any person of conscience remain indifferent toward these acts? How can we wave our flags and support our troops when this is what they are doing? Is this their idea of liberation? Is this their perception of Democracy? Is this the kind of nation we want to be?