The conservatives are not conservatives, they are authoritarians. Motivated by fear, they need their leaders, their hierarchy, their order. They need to know that the world will not change, and they will always be protected. Any challenge to the authorities they have put their trust into is an existential threat. And who’s more powerful than the oil companies? Who does more to make their way of life possible? (Well, government actually, but we can’t admit to that!)

I’m not sure what motivates the “let’s not call conservatives conservatives” argument.  Is there some soft, cuddly conservative that is getting insulted with the conflation?  Authoritarian, conservative—-it really all means the same thing, does it not?  By definition, conservatives fear change.

‘Authoritarian’ puts the emphasis more on their love of powerful things than their fear of change. ‘Conservative’ falsely suggests that these good Christian, family, hardworking values existed in the past, in some Utopia (variously the founding fathers, the 1950s or Ronald Reagan), and they have to be conserved, or, we have to get back to them.
In fact conservatives do plenty to change things - for example, abortion wasn’t illegal when America was founded. Calling them conservatives is buying into their own false presentation of themselves.
(it’s also using a word that everyone else will understand, so I personally do use it - but I think the arguments against it are valid)

I think all that assumes an audience that has had no relationship to the culture in the past 40 years.  I’m fond of assuming people learn language through context, and not by reading the dictionary and then emerging, blinking, into the light.

Theoretically, there could be such a thing as a sane conservative, who seeks pragmatically to manage change, rather than opposing all change.  There may have been two or three such people in the last 300 years.

This is yet another one of those episodes that separates the completely reality-free “conservatives” from those who still have a few shreds of sanity. The oil patch has long been rabidly republican based on the rich white gentlemen’s agreement that the campaign dollars would keep flowing in, the risky-but-better-than-nothing jobs would keep on being available, and the environmental disaster would run in slow motion. Now that the chips are down and BP/Halliburton/Transocean have showed everyone what you get for being loyal to corporate greedheads, it’s only the dead-enders like Derbyshire who can simply start up another psychotic break and blame everything on other people.

What surprises me—although it shouldn’t—is how many wingnuts have come to believe their own bullshit so strong that they can’t see how this makes them look. If they’d been even a little bit smart they could have jumped on the “BP is a rogue foreign company but the resto f the industry is great” line.

In the context of the bp conversation, conservative definitely implies conservation.  Conservation in turn implies a protection, a stewardship if you will, of the world we were brought into.  These are confusing implications.  I prefer authoritarian because it is not quite so confusing, and has the added benefit of actually describing their positions accurately.

#2

I’m not sure what motivates the “let’s not call conservatives conservatives” argument.  Is there some soft, cuddly conservative that is getting insulted with the conflation?  Authoritarian, conservative—-it really all means the same thing, does it not?  By definition, conservatives fear change.

I’d go even further, it is damned important that liberals/rationals start explicity attacking CONSERVATIVES for the complete authoritarian clusterfuck that their movement has been for thirty years. Actually it is past time. Conservatives respect power and pain. If liberals can’t cause conservatives pain, they will never regain a basic level of respect for liberals and they will continue to get more and more nihilistic, delusional and cracked. We need to lose our fear of attacking conservatism, and use the word in big bold letters whenever we talk about the crazy-ass bullshit they try to put over.

There’s only one way that defending BP is going to work out for them, and that’s if BP fucking fixes the problem.  Which they probably can’t.  But it’s crazy to think that even if we took every last dime BP has down to the pennies in employee’s couches, that taxpayers still won’t end up paying a lot for damage control, and of course the long-term recovery of the Gulf region.  There’s plenty of shit for everyone, and it’s not unreasonable to expect BP to take their share.

To give them their due, Republican (and ConservaDem) politicians stay bought when they sell themselves to the highest bidder.  Given their vastly bloated profits over the past 30 years or so, the oil companies are generally the highest bidder.

In regard to the term “conservative”, what conservatives seek to conserve, both today and in the past, is elite privilege and power.  As John Kenneth Galbraith put it, conservatism seeks to give moral cover to greed.

Btw - it’s worth drilling down through the wingnuttia and commentry to the original post on the spill possibly getting much much worse</a>.

Yeah, they’re authoritarian but that is the conservative personality.  It’s very important to call them what they are; conservatives.  I suffered through eight years of a literally maniacal administration and every republican in my orbit both online and off, defended and supported them to the death.  Now I come to find out that “well george w bush isn’t a REAL conservative”.

Bullshit!

I’m not sure what motivates the “let’s not call conservatives conservatives” argument.  Is there some soft, cuddly conservative that is getting insulted with the conflation?

I’m not trying to save the word “conservative” at all, but trying to get at root causes. Growing up in the South, I was always a bit puzzled as to how the coalition between the religious right and the business conservatives worked, given how divergent many of their interests were, until it dawned on that what linked them was fear as a primary motivation. (Not that I would claim this was an original thought.) The more I look, the more I see the authoritarian impulse at the root of all that is evil. I tend to harp on about it - some of my friends are no doubt tired of hearing about it.

I see the bigot, and I see a coward, terrified of the outside world. I see the impulse to greed and power, the need to amass uncountable wealth, I see cowards, people afraid, ultimately , of death.

Yeah I do tend to natter on about this. Not trying to save the word conservative but rather to paint conservatives as the yellow-bellied cowards the really are.

The difference between Theron and conservatives is that conservatives took a perfectly good word—“liberal”—and decided it would be un to turn it into a slur, while Theron wants to “save” conservatism’s positive connotations and try to convince others that there is a more negative word, “authoritarian”, that describes them. Kind of ironic that it is Theron who defers to the authority of language while the conservatives are the ones willing to harness/change/debase language for their own purposes.

There is nothing “unconservative” about the conservative movement. Conservative is as conservative does: they hate liberals, rejoice in what they think makes them suffer, have blind worship towards big business like the oil companies, and mindlessly followed gw bush off a cliff.

There is nothing “unconservative” about the conservative movement. Conservative is as conservative does:

Even more importantly, there is no difference between modern conservatism, save in minor details, and what conservatism has always been.  The traits Theron describes are and always have been the hallmarks of conservatism, which, as I said above, seeks only to conserve elite power and privilege.

@AnglScarlett: It doesn’t matter what W was—if you advocated for his election and voted for him twice, whatever he is, that’s what you are.

of course it’s a “natural” disaster, much like the atom bombs dropped on japan were “natural” (nothing man-made there), the johnstown flood was a “natural” disaster (forget those pesky, poorly designed and constructed dams, dammit), chernobyl & three-mile island were “natural” disasters. by that logic, there is no such thing as a “man-made” disaster.

i love republicans, they live in such an orwellian bizzaro world.

#15

The difference between Theron and conservatives is that conservatives took a perfectly good word—“liberal”—and decided it would be un to turn it into a slur, while Theron wants to “save” conservatism’s positive connotations and try to convince others that there is a more negative word, “authoritarian”, that describes them.

THIS.

Part of the reason conservatives can use “politically correct” against liberals is that to most of the public, liberal look too nice, seem too ready to pretend that assholes aren’t really assholes. I suggest that liberals stop this type of behavior. Stop being “politically correct” about conservatives. The conservatives are the authoritarians. The two words mean the same thing. We know it, they know it, and everyone else knows it too. Stop playing their game, stop buying the pretense that there is some kind of ideal conservatism which conservatives have fallen from. Conservatives are the same people they have always been.

In the context of the bp conversation, conservative definitely implies conservation.  Conservation in turn implies a protection, a stewardship if you will, of the world we were brought into.

Again, I only buy this argument when we’re talking about an imaginary audience that has little to no exposure to the culture that this discussion is happening in.

The problem with using the word “authoritarian” is that implies that this is an entirely separate group from conservatives, when there’s no reason to believe that.  It will cause more confusion than not.  Using the commonly accepted parlance should always be the default, except in those cases (like “pro-life”) when the term is straight up propaganda that causes more confusion than not.

When the meaning of “liberal” was changed to connote evil, there was a whole right-wing gas bag movement behind it. For large swaths of Americans, conservative means “wholesome”. In theory it would be great to get conservative to connote the depraved immorality of the conservative movement, but I just don’t think there is a powerful enough liberal noise machine to seperate mom and apple pie from conservative.

I just don’t think there is a powerful enough liberal noise machine

What freaking liberal noise machine?  All we really have is a bunch of blogs (which nobody but the converted reads), a couple of newspaper columnists, and Rachel and sort of Keith.

The difference between Theron and conservatives is that conservatives took a perfectly good word—“liberal”—and decided it would be un to turn it into a slur, while Theron wants to “save” conservatism’s positive connotations and try to convince others that there is a more negative word, “authoritarian”, that describes them. Kind of ironic that it is Theron who defers to the authority of language while the conservatives are the ones willing to harness/change/debase language for their own purposes.

You must have missed the post I made just above yours. I didn’t mean to say anything about language, and I sure as heck am not in the business of defending some fantastical Utopian concept of conservatism. I was thinking about core motivations, not language. It’s true that I tend to think that ideally Confucius was right - “First we must tend to the rectification of names.” It’s hard to to get rid of the bandit who is terrorizing everyone if you keep calling him “Your Royal Highness.” Less important than the words used though is the brand associated with the word used. If every time a politician is described as “tough on crime” people think “petrified fearmonger who hides under his bed and hopes other are doing the same” then we win.

John Derbyshire really is a pro at packing a whole lot of stupid into a few short words.

I think progressives should start making it a point to call it “the AUTHORITARIAN Right” rather than “conservative Right”, because if there’s one thing I’ve found out it’s that most Americans resent “authority”.  Presented that way, it’s both more _accurate_ and a PR coup.

I think progressives should start making it a point to call it “the AUTHORITARIAN Right” rather than “conservative Right”

How about just calling them the “the AUTHORITARIAN Wrong”?  If we really must play these silly games of pretending that there is or ever was any other kind of conservative, how about “Authoritarian Conservatives.”  It really is important to link the two terms in the minds of the public.

I work in the headquarters of a giant oil company with IT executives and I work directly with people in “corporate departments” (you know, HR, Tax, Legal, etc). Earlier this month, I read the monthly letter from our CEO with interest because it was regarding the gulf oil spill. The thing that stood out to me was that our company has no illusions that this incident could not have been prevented.

After the incident on April 20, all offshore facilities did an impromptu safety review of all their equipment and procedures. We maintain safety and quality standards not just to the regulation’s request, but above and beyond that - as a rule. My company respects that it is in a dangerous business and has built a huge, [and yes, often annoying, but that is the nature of corporations] safety culture. “Do it safely or not at all” and “there is always time to do it right” are our top two company mantras. (yes, the company has done this in response to past problems, in order to make sure they never happen again)

This culture pervades the company, from refineries in America to oil fields in Angola - and that is just where I’ve personally seen it. I had a co-worker that did a project in Kuwait and reported on how the facilities in there, which had just been acquired via merger, were under a lot of fire to improve operational safety (I don’t remember the details). In the annual sessions where determining raises and promotions for employees, a willfully bad attitude about safety can get anyone held back, no matter how well they perform.

The records have shown that BP went for the inexpensive option over the safe one and cut safety corners everywhere. That would go against every management imperative at my company, straight up to the top. To us, the BP oil spill could have been prevented had they followed safety rules like ours.

Now, that isn’t to say there aren’t excesses - I will often call the safety culture “psychotic” - and it is, at the core, a giant CYA exercise for the company. But, it keeps operations running smoothly and prevents me from getting injured. I could tell you more, but I dislike typing on my beau’s laptop, plus I’m not in an ergonomic position, as any one of my co-workers would not hesitate to point out.

Tuesday, the LGBT network at work is presenting something on LGBT people in the work place, as part of LGBT month. I’ve already had 2 gay bosses. My current boss isn’t a giant billboard for LGBT issues, but she mentions her wife by name just as often as the straight managers mention their spouses and we all go about our business without incident.

The long and short of my comment is that wingnuts would blow a gasket where I work and they would not be tolerated at the headquarters of my oil company. I know there are wingnuts there, to some extent, but they don’t influence the culture because the company knows that their behavior is bad for the bottom line. My goal/hope is to keep it that way.

I see the oil industry has taken its PR offensive deep into enemy territory.  Some of us grew up in the oil fields and around oil companies and so know better

Look, this is similar to the re-branding of liberal into progressive.  I prefer the term progressive precisely because liberal has become a dirty word.  Plus, it is too easy to confuse liberal with libertarian.

Again, I only buy this argument when we’re talking about an imaginary audience that has little to no exposure to the culture that this discussion is happening in.

People associate words easily and freely.  It is part of how brains work.  Calling them authoritarian is an attempt to divest the associations made with conservative.  This all happens in the ‘real’ world.  Claiming using another word is going to confuse people is a bit unfair since ‘conservative’ as a word is already really confusing.  Using ‘authoritarian’ more accurately describes the party.

Additionally, I would like to add using both approaches, calling them the authortarians they are, rather than conservatives they are not, while having others denigrate the name conservative, attaching all the ugly results conservatives have had on public policy to the word conservative, is a great two pronged attack on the popular framing.

The people with access can continue using conservative in an attempt to play nice, while the rest of the outliers call them by their true names.

This is definitely not an either/or situation.

I prefer the term progressive precisely because liberal has become a dirty word.

I prefer it because it is a more inclusive term and as a socialist, I am definitely not a liberal.

“as a constitutional pessimist, I’ll own to a certain grim satisfaction. The infantile optimism of post-JFK America may have met its match down there in the Gulf. Nature is not mocked.”

I’m not a Derbyshire-lover.  But he’s not suggesting here that we shouldn’t mock BP.  In fact, it’s clear that he thinks of BP as part of the “infantile optimism” of Americans who feel that technology can do anything.  What he’s saying is that “Nature (geology, natural forces etc) *will* have the last word despite the hubristic assumptions of Big Technology that whatever they do is unquestionably right”—which is exactly what is happening in the Gulf.

Actually, I’m surprised at what looks to me like a pretty clear assessment on the part of someone I have come to despise for most of his ideas.

IOW, Older, Nature Bats Last.

Dr. Psycho -

Originally read that as “Natural Labatts”.  I’m going to have to get my glasses checked or have a beer one.

<blockquote>I’m not a Derbyshire-lover.  But he’s not suggesting here that we shouldn’t mock BP.  In fact, it’s clear that he thinks of BP as part of the “infantile optimism” of Americans who feel that technology can do anything.  What he’s saying is that “Nature (geology, natural forces etc) *will* have the last word despite the hubristic assumptions of Big Technology that whatever they do is unquestionably right”—which is exactly what is happening in the Gulf. </blockqoute>

That’s exactly what is happening in the Gulf, if you pretend that Republican cynicism is “optimism”, greedy refusal to use the correct technology is faith in technology, catastrophically stupid human destruction is actually “nature”, and things that are completely wrong about what is happening in pretty much every way possible are “exactly what is happening”.

A tiny point on the sacrifice of meat.  It didn’t go to waste.  After the sacrifice, temples in the Roman Empire would cook up the meat and put it in take out containers, which they would sell to the public as they went home from work.  There was a big fight in the early church because people would show up at the potluck with “meat sacrificed to idols.”  Some people would eat it because they didn’t care, and some people would freak because it had been used to honor another god.  The temples, however, made money off of the practice.

When the meaning of “liberal” was changed to connote evil, there was a whole right-wing gas bag movement behind it. For large swaths of Americans, conservative means “wholesome”.

Sooooooo, the solution is to allow them to keep thinking in these terms and not couple the term “conservative” with actual acts of depravity?  Instead we should let people off the hook by saying, “Okay, well this evil is not REAL conservatism,” thereby allowing conservatives to distance themselves?

That strikes me as unbelievably counter-productive and weird to boot.  Something that a concern troll would come up with, honestly.

Calling them authoritarian is an attempt to divest the associations made with conservative. 

And will succeed only in making sure that people who call themselves “conservative” don’t have to answer for this.  It’s basically letting them off the hook.  It’s so obviously letting conservatives off the hook that conservatives themselves do it—-when one of them steps over the line, they cut them loose from the word “conservative”.  Why help them?

“Theoretically, there could be such a thing as a sane conservative, who seeks pragmatically to manage change, rather than opposing all change.  There may have been two or three such people in the last 300 years.”

Wow, and I have them as parents. Mind you, they have been registered as Republican but voting Democratic for quite a few election cycles, now. And my Dad is as socialist as me on several issues, like that the government should have bought the mortgages in danger of foreclosure at reduced prices and managed them themselves, fuck the banks.

@#27: DrDick : ““Authoritarian Conservatives.”

Even better at first glance, except it implies there are “non-authoritarian conservatives”. —No, “authoritarian Right” is the way to go. 

As to “silly word games”, remember, the opposition has managed to re-define “Liberal”, so they kinda won THAT game, to the nation’s detriment.  They’ve made “liberal” a straw-man standin for actual thinking, so popularizing “authoritarian Right” is even morally superior, in that it is true and accurate.

@#40: Eric_RoM -

Except that as I and Amanda have said it divorces these attributes from conservatism.  The most important thing in this regard is to “pin the tail on the elephant” and make them own the fact that conservatism is inherently and always authoritarian.

Heh. I realize that sounds a lot like Not my Nigel. But my parents are actual tree huggers, who believe Conservative and Conservationist come from the same root. For most of my adult life, Dad mostly stayed home and did the chores, picking up occasional work while Mom went out to her job as a school teacher.  Dad taught me sports. Mom taught my brother laundry and cooking (me, too, but my point is they are actively anti-sexism). They are in favor of single payer health care, food stamps, school lunches, etc. Honestly, there’s only a tiny mental block stopping them from switching parties.

I don’t know that there’s many others out there; probably most have already switched, but with their example in my life, I believe that there’s a thin gap between a mid-20th century conservative and a progressive (mostly having to do with assumptions about people’s sameness), and a huge gap between authoritarian and progressive (duh). The latter won’t transition, and are why some people get more conservative as they grow older. The former will transition, as life teaches them that different people need different solutions, and not everyone has bootstraps.

Look, this is similar to the re-branding of liberal into progressive.  I prefer the term progressive precisely because liberal has become a dirty word.  Plus, it is too easy to confuse liberal with libertarian.

I like progressive because it indicates precisely that they seek to progress social development, and implies an obvious label for those who seek to retard social development…

I’m late to the thread, so I’m not going to try to participate. I think this post misses the mark a bit, but there is a VERY compelling seed in it which I leverage in my own post.

Why I don’t think it worked? Yes, the religious right is using their God frame to excuse BP, but not because they see BP as God. It happened because everything that happens which is bad happens because we are not sufficiently pious (or something along those lines). Everything good that happens, including the yield of civil and social interactions, happen because God loves us. You can’t win if you try, only if you accept the lunacy of their world view.

But that’s a really, really good catch from John Derbyshire.

#40

As to “silly word games”, remember, the opposition has managed to re-define “Liberal”, so they kinda won THAT game, to the nation’s detriment.  They’ve made “liberal” a straw-man standin for actual thinking, so popularizing “authoritarian Right” is even morally superior, in that it is true and accurate.

Except you’re still trying to play 3D-chess. This is not 3D-Chess, this is arm wrestling. The most important thing for liberals to do now is to continually point out that all these failures our society has had lately, the economic failures 2006-now, the environmental failures such as the BP spill, the failed wars, every one of these things are Conservative Failures. CONSERVATIVE failures. To refuse to put Conservative in front of the Failure is to refuse to do your job, which is continually reminding the public that if the Conservatives get in charge again, they will fuck things up again. It is the word CONSERVATIVE that must be attacked and you can’t try to finesse it with “Authoritarian” or “Right wing conservative”.

Cut the crap. Attack your enemy.

“The infantile optimism of post-JFK America may have met its match down there in the Gulf. Nature is not mocked.”

This really speaks volumes about the Right’s perception of liberal values.  It makes very little sense at all—how has a bunch of oil in the ocean refuted our belief that we should work toward racial and gender equality, and do everything we can to make this planet livable for future generations, and provide some kind of safety net for people who’ve fallen on hard times or were born less privileged than others?  Good one, Nature—you really showed us!  I guess women really SHOULD be paid 70 cents on the dollar!  And we really SHOULD have fought Vietnam!

I think the thing about Nature is rooted in the Right’s stubborn belief in social darwinism.  (Forget that they don’t believe in Darwin.)  They believe that the world we lived in in the 1950’s, before liberals started “meddling with the free market”—i.e., passing civil rights legislation—was the best of all possible worlds, and that liberal attempts to try to make the world better (thus displacing white men from the top of the food chain) are unnatural and against god.  Just like a gay couple getting married—or even just having sex, which the Right claimed caused 9/11.  Or a white man who is optimistic enough to think that a non-white person or a woman can do anything a white person or a man can, respectively.

There’s also the “optimism” of our belief that we didn’t have to go to war in Vietnam or Iraq.  This was evident whenever a republican lectured us before Iraq about how Saddam was a bad man.  Or baited liberals by using the word “evil” over and over.  As if the reason we didn’t want to go to war was because we thought Saddam could be turned into a good person.

Both of the above have very tenuous connections to BP filling the Gulf of Mexico with oil.  But maybe, if you perceive this as a natural disaster, you can say that nature is slapping back at liberals in response (as 9/11 and Katrina were) to liberals’ attacks on nature via their fight for the equality of unprivileged groups.  And you can say a lot of things dying in the ocean is a slap at liberal reticence at supporting things that cause death.

Derbyshire is of course an idiot, but it’s worthwhile reading the article he linked to. If what this guy says is true, what’s going on in the Gulf is even more dire than most of us realize.

”...how has a bunch of oil in the ocean refuted our belief that we should work toward racial and gender equality, and do everything we can to make this planet livable for future generations, and provide some kind of safety net for people who’ve fallen on hard times or were born less privileged than others?  Good one, Nature—you really showed us!  I guess women really SHOULD be paid 70 cents on the dollar!  And we really SHOULD have fought Vietnam!”

It proves one thing to the fevered wingnut mind: 
Mankind must subdue the Earth or the Earth will subdue us.

If we get on the wrong side of Nature, in wingnuttia, there are only two things we can do to survive:

Pray that Jesus will come back, and that we’ve become Heaven-bound Real True Christians™ before the Earth finishes us off (for the christianists)...

Or in the most Randian, dog-eat-dog, survival-of-the-most-ruthless, rules-are-for-fools fashion, we must exploit the Earth even faster and more severely, and at the same time become completely ruthless, selfish, and self-centered bastards, and start eating other dogs as quickly as our skill allows (for the atheists)... 

Good times!...

You wanna know the scary thing? Big oil is so profitable that if you took every penny BP had it might well be sufficient to pay for the damage in the gulf. Before they screwed the pooch so violently, the company was worth roughly $200 billion. Annual profits of $15-20 billion. Annual sales of roughly $300 billion. If just the money BP pays out in dividends—leave out featherbedding, executive compensation and the rest actually went to restoring the gulf coast for the next 20 years, that would be enough.

Given that the right has redefined “academic freedom” to mean the opposite of what it useta, Perlstein’s suggestion that they’re doing the same with “natural disaster” worries the heck out of me.

With this “Natural disaster” bit—I can’t really wrap my head around some of the arguments of the conservative know-nothings.  There are several people that comment on the BP articles featured in the online version of my local newspaper with “the environment will heal itself”.  These are the same commenters that claim that global warming is a liberal hoax.  How the fuck to these people delude themselves?  Are they just in denial?  Is it just to spite liberals, as several of the threads here have suggested?  I really really would like to know.  And yes, these are conservatives.  I have yet to meet someone who holds these views describe themselves as authortarian.

There are several people that comment on the BP articles featured in the online version of my local newspaper with “the environment will heal itself”.  These are the same commenters that claim that global warming is a liberal hoax.  How the fuck to these people delude themselves?

Idea for a commercial:

Television images of Gulf spill in time-lapse satellite imagery, showing the spread over the area interspersed with pictures of pelicans choking and other tear-jerking images.

Voiceover: “Starting in May 2010, the US has been facing the worst ecological disaster in its history.  The spill from the Deepwater oil drill is destroying our coasts, our beaches, our natural world.  If this hadn’t happened, if everything had gone right…”

Television images of smokestacks belching out black, foul smoke.  Time lapse satellite imagery of air pollution from same general area, spreading faster and wider over land and sea. Intersperse with images of ecological destruction and catastrophe associated with climate change - desertification and drought, hurricanes etc.

Voiceover: “... that same oil would have been burnt and been pumped into the atmosphere. The same pollution, only spread out enough so you couldn’t see it.  But you can feel the effects, and so can the planet around you.  Climate change - it’s real.  Contact [ECO LOBBYISTS] on [PHONE] or visit [WEBSITE] now for more details.”

Amanda, I wasn’t trying to advocate anything, I was just complaining. I don’t think that the left has the means to control language the way the right does, but I really don’t think there is anything we can do about it—I dont think we can rebrand conservatives as another name either. People in the media are terrified of being accused as part of the liberal conspiracy in a way they will never fear conservative affiliation. As far as accuracy goes I have always found “sadistic dumbshits” fits the bill, but I don’t see it going mainstream.

You know what I think is a really good word to call conservatives, is assholes.

I’m a little more worried about the appeal of the “if only the liberals hadn’t stopped us from drilling on land ” in terms of immediate political effect.  Completely redefining “natural disaster” is the sort of redefinition that only occurs slowly over time.  I doubt if they could get away with this right now (hey, maybe they are hoping for a string of disasters that would give them the opportunity to just repeat “natural disaster” until it sinks in).  It would just be a little too Orwellian for even a compliant mainstream media to swallow.  On the other hand, creating “far left environmental wacko” strawmen that then allow right wing extremists to pose as centrists protecting us from the big bad environmental wackos is a game plan they have practiced for years and the mainstream media is quite comfortable with playing along with.  And they love to integrate it with phony right wing populism that depicts a struggle of blue collar folks who are worried about their jobs v. snobbish upper class environmentalists who only care about herons.  As if blue collar folks don’t always bear the brunt of screwed up environmental policies.

I suspose one can never underestimate the stupidity and viciousness of the right, but my best guess is that over the long haul they will try to play the centrist pose, call a moratorium on offshore drilling environmental extremism, and try to position themselves as the defender of the working man in the oil industry.

I looks to me like everyday foot-soldier conservatives have been successfully brainwashed by the Authorities they revere, mostly by the mundane use of constant repetition combined with triggering the basic, powerful emotions of fear, rage and hate.
 
By now they religiously believe that *whatever* these (mysterious) Authorities tell them thru Avitars like Beck, Limbagh, etc; no matter how factually Impossible, is God’s own truth, AND anyone who denys this truth, even though they have voluminous evidence, is not only wrong, but EVIL, evil in a religious sense.  (not surprising so many are Christian fundies)

As a side-effect of this Belief in Authority, they fanatically insist that ALL authorities are inerrant and CAN NEVER be criticized or Held To Account.  One example is their support of the “Pope” despite his clear, contemptible, cowardly coverup of horrible crimes against CHILDREN.  “Leave the Pope (a Hitler youth at that!) alone!”  “Leave THE CHURCH (even tho it isn’t their church!) Alooone!”

Even though it is sickeningly Obvious that BP and the men who are running it were almost entirely at fault in the Gulf Disaster, AND that BPs dealing with the results is equally criminal; the conservatives have been so strongly indoctrinated into the Worship of Authority, they are going mad (madder) trying to rationalize it.  They are accustomed to the cognitive dissonance of making the lies they hear and read everyday somehow more believable than what “their lying eyes” tell them, but this cruel and violent attack upon Them (or people like them) is very hard to defend.

Even so, they ARE trying hard: changing the subject from the culpability of BP to the undoubted suffering They Themselves WILL be forced to endure when BP is punished. 

And, to top off their rationalization of rage: it is EVIL LIBERALS who will be behind the lawsuits.  Obama’s ‘making’ BP create a 20 Billion Escrow account is just another act of an Evil Being out to Destroy Real Americans.  No wonder they are foaming-at-the-mouth enraged all the time; and so easy to rouse into violence.

I’m not sure John Derbyshire is one of the real “faithful” -he just works for them. But it isn’t too hard for a fairly bright person to excuse the culpable and blame the innocent, and after all, that is his JOB.

  “I’m as horrified as anyone by this ... — if the guy has got it right, and I’ve understood him correctly [sowing doubt as to veracity of facts]. At the same time ... I’ll own to a certain grim satisfaction. The infantile optimism of post-JFK America may have met its match down there in the Gulf. Nature is not mocked….”

...and so he blames the ULTIMATE Liberal: JFK, and admits pleasure in blaming Liberals.  What is our crime? OPTIMISM. Typical Repug lie, accuse the enemy of what you’ve done.  For its the conservatives who’ve been “Optimistic” about the possible problems resulting from raping the planet; and it is LIBERALS who have been screaming DIRE Warnings for decades.  Its a perfect example of Conservative Brainwashing In Action.

Having read all the comments now, the common theme of Superstition vs. Rationalism really POPS out at one.

Conservatives “believe”:  screw facts, evidence, even the marvelous results of scientific advances.  in their brains, having BELIEF and FAITH is far more important in how one reasons or acts than anything Scientific Method can ever do or show us.

Its crazy.

I prefer “progressive” over “liberal” because the two words mean different things.  I don’t think that “liberal” has a bad connotation outside of people who are already hard-core conservative, but it’s still not precise enough.  Case in point: Bill Maher.  He’s certainly liberal but he’s certainly not progressive, nor is he a feminist ally.  The problem isn’t that some words have become slurs; it’s that reality is more complex than simply liberal vs. conservative.

Now back on topic.  There’s a guy at my work who is the ES&H;manager, and he’s also a climate change denier and oil company worshiper.  Yes that’s right, the man in charge of making sure our processes don’t harm the environment is a climate change denier.  Thank deity-of-choice that he’s retiring at the end of this month.  I recently overheard him talking about alternative energy (because it’s impossible to NOT hear him when he’s ranting down the hallway, even if I close my office door).  Hey guys, did you know that sometimes the sun sets or is covered by clouds?  Did you know that wind doesn’t blow consistently 24/7?  Well, according to this guy, that means that we can never use solar or wind power ever.  It’s all-or-nothing, and because neither of those power sources could provide 100% of the energy for our entire country forever, that means we can never use it at all.  It’s not like we could actually use several different types of energy (even though we do that already).  Nevermind that oil will eventually run out, because in this guy’s mind anything that is solar-powered will just shut off completely as soon as the sun goes down.  It’s not like we could ever store energy anyway.  So this is an example of what we’re dealing with.  This guy is desperately grasping for any tiny reason to oppose alternative energy, and this is what he has come up with.  He’s scraping the bottom of the barrel, but this ridiculous barrel seems to just keep giving and giving and I’m sure we’ll see plenty more ridiculous excuses as conservatives are dragged kicking and screaming into a world that uses sustainable energy.

You know, the British government is never going to allow BP to pay its profits all into fixing the mess they made.  There public pension funds are largely based on them.

My congressman just sent out one of his biweekly email polls.  Usually I’m in the 10% or so of respondents who think that he should maybe think about not being a complete asshole on whatever issue is at hand, red as this district is.  This time around, 90% of respondents were of the opinion that BP needs to foot the entire bill for this mess.  Of course, Florida stands to be completely and directly hosed by the submarine doom engine they fired up, so I don’t know how reliably self-interest is going to inoculate wingnuts in non-Gulf Coast states against the exculpatory bullshit being peddled by the conservative noise machine, but it’s at least somewhat encouraging.

”...and so he blames the ULTIMATE Liberal: JFK, and admits pleasure in blaming Liberals.”

He said “post-JFK”.  Conservatives have claimed JFK since Reagan was convinced that JFK cut taxes and the economy boomed.  He’s their guy (they think), and since he died so soon, there isn’t strong evidence to prove much.

No, the real, “Ultimate Liberal”, and a name Republicans will never try to claim, is Lyndon Baines Johnson, who they correctly hold responsible for passing Civil Rights legislation, Medicare, welfare — which most of us see as Good Things — plus not winning the Vietnam War.

They wanted Johnson to spend money only on guns and not butter, not guns and butter...

Nevermind that oil will eventually run out, because in this guy’s mind anything that is solar-powered will just shut off completely as soon as the sun goes down.  It’s not like we could ever store energy anyway.  So this is an example of what we’re dealing with.

Actually, anything that is solar powered will shut off immediately when the sun goes down, and operate under reduced power.  Anything wind powered will shut down when the wind dies.  The energy from wind power decreases exponentially with reduced wind speed. 

not like we could ever store energy anyway.

Nope.  Not in those amounts, not with current technology.  The problem with renewables IS energy storage.  You might be thinking it’s possible to build one giant bank of Duracells to store a portion of the solar energy when the sun is shining, and release it when it isn’t.  Not possible. 

All renewables have to be backed up by conventional technology.  This means that for every megawatt of Solar/Wind power, you need a megawatt of natural gas generation that can come on and take its’ place.  (Nuclear and coal can’t ramp up quickly enough)  Add to that the fact that 30-40% of wind turbines are down for maintenance at any given time and the energy losses from rectification, and you get energy that costs 3-4 times that from a conventional sources. 

I was at an energy industry conference recently.  The natural gas lobbyist types there believed Wind/Solar cannot be more than 20% of an energy mix.  The hippies from the environment ministry believed it can be as high as 40%, but they couldn’t tell me how they’d back up the power generated when I asked them.  Either way, split the difference, and you can’t have more than 30% of the grid powered by wind or solar.

Hey Peter, here’s a radical idea.  What if, now stay with me on this, we use solar power in addition to other types of energy?

not with current technology.

And since we don’t currently have that technology, we should just throw up our hands in defeat, give up the idea completely, and forget about even trying to, you know, develop the technology.  If we don’t have the technology at this very instant, then we should never pursue it.  I’m sure that makes sense somehow in wingnut land.

#62

Either way, split the difference, and you can’t have more than 30% of the grid powered by wind or solar.

That ain’t the point. The point is that, if the guy catgirl was describing saw that solar was going to go up by .01%, he’d protest that with an attitude of fear. Guys like him see this a religious thing, not a problem to be approached rationally.

“Either way, split the difference, and you can’t have more than 30% of the grid powered by wind or solar.”

...well, hell, it ain’t even worth it then, is it?  We might as well just keep using oil and natural gas until they run out and we’re shivering in the dark. 

‘Cause if there’s anything worse than not having a single one-size-fits-all solution that will solve all of our energy problems in one fell swoop I certainly can’t think of it…

Hey Peter, here’s a radical idea.  What if, now stay with me on this, we use solar power in addition to other types of energy?

Sure, read the rest of my post.  You can have wind/solar be up to 30% of your energy generating capacity.

And since we don’t currently have that technology, we should just throw up our hands in defeat, give up the idea completely, and forget about even trying to, you know, develop the technology.  If we don’t have the technology at this very instant, then we should never pursue it.  I’m sure that makes sense somehow in wingnut land.

Hey, if someone develops the tech, I’m all for it.  Some problems, however, remain unsolved, not matter the effort involved.  We could really use a working fusion reactor design right about now, but 60 years of research has gone more or less nowhere. 

well, hell, it ain’t even worth it then, is it?  We might as well just keep using oil and natural gas until they run out and we’re shivering in the dark.

Nope, go ahead, install the wind/solar if you want.  I don’t have anything against it.  Don’t pretend it can solve our problems, however.  Not even close.

What catgirl said at #63.  Bravo!

Incidentally, there’s a funny Greek myth about sacrificing to the gods;

The next stage in Prometheus’ career as benefactor of humankind came when Zeus and he were developing the ceremonial forms for animal sacrifice. The astute Prometheus devised a sure-fire way to help humans. He divided the slaughtered animal parts into two packets. In one was the ox-meat and innards wrapped up in the stomach lining. In the other packet were the ox-bones wrapped up in its own rich fat. One would go to the gods and the other to the humans making the sacrifice. Prometheus presented Zeus with a choice between the two, and Zeus took the deceptively richer appearing: the fat-encased, but inedible bones…

As a result of Prometheus’ trick, for ever after, whenever people sacrificed to the gods, they would be able to feast on the meat, so long as they burned the bones as an offering for the gods.

Odd to worship a deity who can be tricked so easily, but as Monty Python said, “It doesn’t have to make sense, it’s religion!”

I’m not sure if DrDick considers me the “PR rebranding” from the oil industry, but I’m a regular reader and commenter here on Pandagon, and my point is that typical wingnut behavior would be inappropriate EVEN IN THE OIL INDUSTRY.

The industry is not without its issues, but it would NEVER consider BP’s incident something that could not have been prevented.

So, I’m sorry that I didn’t grow up around an oil field and only happen to work for an oil company and know what the culture of ONE oil company is like. If you don’t want oil company employees being feminist, atheist pandagon readers, that’s your problem, but I don’t consider this enemy teritory. I left my comment to inform pandagon readers that wingnuts are stupid and they wouldn’t be welcome where I work. If you don’t like that, kiss my ass.

Ursula’s comment squares with my experience as well. I have a couple friends who work in the oil patch (majored in geology), and they all say that BP’s safety record is uniquely terrible. Exxon gives tons of money to global warming denialists but their own internal safety is pretty tight since the Exxon Valdez spill.

”...despite the same old tired ideas.”

...as opposed to fresh and cutting edge conservative ideas like oligarchy, survival of the richest, “I’ve got mine, screw everyone else!”, and “Look, there’s an authority figure!  Let’s worship them!”...

You know, Exxon owned the oil, but it wasn’t their tanker.

”...are always well below their conservative counterparts…try aagin tough guy.”

KnuteRockHead, did you know that 99% of all statistical memes are pulled directly from somebody’s ass?...

Knuterockne, let’s not stick to disproven talking points:

http://volokh.com/posts/1164012942.shtml:

Brooks’s somewhat misleading reporting continues when he presents the results of the model predicting the dollar amount of donations. Brooks says that in the continuous dollar model, “conservatives are slightly (but distinguishably) more generous than liberals.” (p. 192) Again, this appears to be literally true. But what the model actually shows is that liberals give significantly more money than moderates, while conservatives give significantly more than both moderates and liberals. Moderates would seem to be the ungenerous ones, not liberals.</b>

This problem of treating liberals and conservatives (who share similar levels of education) as the outliers — when moderates often are the outliers — is a common one in conservatism research, whether that research is done by liberal or conservative researchers. Here it can make liberals look as if they are at the opposite end of the spectrum in donations from conservatives, but from the data that are presented by Brooks, it’s often hard to tell whether moderates (not liberals) really are the outliers.

My first post related to Brooks’s book concerned, not liberals, moderates, and conservatives, but those who favor income redistribution v. those who don’t. Here the answer is more consistent: those who oppose income redistribution tend to be less racist, more tolerant of unpopular groups, happier, less vengeful, and more likely to report generous charitable donations. In most years of the GSS (but not 2004), political moderates tend to be nearly as redistributionist as liberals, so it’s important not to see redistribution as a simple issue of liberals v. conservatives.

On the whole, I think that Who Really Cares is a valuable book with much sound analysis, but it appears that some of its main conclusions are based on the 2000 Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey, some of whose demographics don’t appear to match national representative samples such as the GSS and ANES. And in Brooks’s book, sometimes liberals are accused of being ungenerous when it appears that they may be more generous than political moderates. Generally, his otherwise strong analysis is weakened by focusing too little on what I have called the forgotten middle: moderates

“those who oppose income redistribution tend to be less racist, more tolerant of unpopular groups, happier, less vengeful, and more likely to report generous charitable donations.”

Not what I’d have expected, given the seeming ties between people opposing things like universal health care and food stamps and people reduced to a frothing rage that non-whites might conceivably receive a more generous portion of public resources.

PeterZoneOne:
catgirl was talking about a person who was against any use of solar or wind, so when you try to contradict her you are implying you are againt ever using it unless you say something specifically.

I’m not sure where you’re getting your numbers but here in MA, people are complaining that Cape Wind will get double the amount not 3-4 times. Since the price of both wind and solar is going down while the price of conventionals is going up, the gap continues to decrease. Water power in all its forms is also getting better and conservation is still the cheapest ‘energy source’.

One of the ways to deal with the problems with storage is to vastly improve the grid (the whole Smart Grid thing). There might still need to be backup, but the wind is always blowing somewhere (and the wind on the ocean is pretty continuous although at different levels). Also, the technology isn’t there yet for storage (this is indeed a big problem), but storage technology is getting better.

There is a big problem with energy approaching. It will be difficult to scale up renewables, nuclear has problems (both with fission and fusion), oil and gas are not a long term solution since they are finite and getting more expensive and helping to cause global warming, coal is abundant and relatively cheap but dirty. In other words, it’s not only renewables that won’t solve our energy problems. We better hope there’s some form of breakthrough.

In other words, it’s not only renewables that won’t solve our energy problems.

SPS has a lot of potential:

Collection of solar energy in space for use on Earth introduces two new problems and can alleviate an existing one. First, installation of the collection satellites, and second transmitting energy from them to the surface for use. The first requires upgrading and extension of existing solar panel technologies. Since wires extending from Earth’s surface to an orbiting satellite are neither practical nor currently possible, many SBSP designs have proposed the use of microwave beams for wireless power transmission. The collecting satellite would convert solar energy into electrical energy, powering a microwave emitter oriented toward a collector on the Earth’s surface. Dynamic solar thermal power systems on satellites are also being investigated. Since the beam can be steered, it can be directed as needed to accommodate periods of high power use in particular locations (eg, during the hottest part of the day in summer, or cold spells in winter). As well, one of the current problems of electricity use is long distance transmission from generating sites to usage sites. Because at least one type of receiving antenna, the rectenna, is relatively inexpensive, it may be possible to reduce the need for electricity transmission lines by sensible siting of receiving antennas, potentially reducing costs and grid interconnect failures, such as the blackouts of 1965 and 2003.

Some problems normally associated with terrestrial solar power collection would be entirely avoided by such a design, eg, dependence on weather conditions, contamination or corrosion, damage by wildlife or plant encroachment, etc. Other problems will likely be encountered, such as more rapid radiation damage or micrometeoroid impacts.

Simple. Plenty of right mythology is simply the inverse of strawman left beliefs. So, why is the left so keen on the environment? We’re pagan Gaia-worshippers who think that the earth is literally god, whatever humans make is inherently worse than whatever nature had put there in the first place, and that the world would be much improved if humans vanished, even more so than if we suddenly became really darned environmentally responsible.

So, flip that around. The environment is evil, and god must be whatever destroys it. Whatever humans make is inherently better than whatever nature had put there in the first place. The world would be greatly lessened if humans became more environmentally responsible.

It’s projection, not as straightforward as usual, but quite understandable.

No, the real, “Ultimate Liberal”, and a name Republicans will never try to claim, is Lyndon Baines Johnson, who they correctly hold responsible for passing Civil Rights legislation, Medicare, welfare — which most of us see as Good Things — plus not winning the Vietnam War.

Cf the “Obama should not be at a golf course, but should be personally diving down into the Gulf and sticking his big bl- thug-like cork into the hole” wingnut meme.

SPS has a lot of potential:

Collection of solar energy in space for use on Earth introduces two new problems and can alleviate an existing one. First, installation of the collection satellites, and second transmitting energy from them to the surface for use.

Oh yeah, microwave stations.  I remember those from SimCity 2000. 

Significant problems:
1. If you think the up front capital expenditure is bad for nuke plants, this would be a nightmare.  Launching objects into orbit is ridiculously expensive, and only partly because it requires so much energy.  You’d likely need to do a ridiculous megaproject like a space elevator first in order to make it viable.
2. Solar storms and meteors knock out satellites all the time; again significant advances in shielding technology would be required to keep those satellites humming.
3. Most importantly, an off-target microwave beam would boil the water in everything in its path.  Boiling alive…. I thought the point was to avoid BP/Chernobyl type FUBARs?

In other words, right now it’s science fiction, and even if it wasn’t I wouldn’t necessarily think it to be such a good idea.

Since wires extending from Earth’s surface to an orbiting satellite are neither practical nor currently possible,

Nobody ever listens to my ideas on this.

I point out that a combination of efficient grids distributing power widely, local production wherever possible, and a range of sources will go a long way to dealing with P01’s objections.  Wave and tidal energy are also examples of renewables which will be pretty steady.

But I believe currently that solar use is growing in a prety steady exponential curve, around 30% a year or so.  No doubt P01’s factors will cause that to level off, but currently it holds promise.

Ultimately, I think we will be running tight on energy, which means oil and all the things it provides.  Given that our current carrying capacity is predicated on industrialised agriculture, transportation and electricity from that source, that is probably not a good thing.  The term “reduced carrying capacity” contains so many horrors when you start picking at it.

“Who in their right mind would see welfare as a good thing?”

...anybody smart enough to realize that people who’ve fallen on hard times don’t just disappear.  And when they or their kids are starving and have no place to live and no money, they come robbing your house, live under your freeway overpasses, stand by your corners with “Will work for food” signs.

Of course, an asshole like you will just tell your driver to run them over, so I guess it’s all the same to you…

1. If you think the up front capital expenditure is bad for nuke plants, this would be a nightmare.  Launching objects into orbit is ridiculously expensive, and only partly because it requires so much energy.  You’d likely need to do a ridiculous megaproject like a space elevator first in order to make it viable.

What exactly do you think the cost of a space fountain would be compared to, say, the Iraq war?  Or, perhaps more accurately, compared to the cost of colonising America?

2. Solar storms and meteors knock out satellites all the time; again significant advances in shielding technology would be required to keep those satellites humming.

Reeeeeally?  All the time, you say?  Could you put a number on that - say, seperating out those in LEO (i.e. susceptible to solar storm effects on the atmosphere and irrelevant to this discussion)?

3. Most importantly, an off-target microwave beam would boil the water in everything in its path.  Boiling alive…. I thought the point was to avoid BP/Chernobyl type FUBARs?

Except for the teeny tiny minor little fact that the microwave energy would be several orders of magnitude less than that of a microwave oven, and unlikely to be noticed by anyone who didn’t hang around the target area for hours on end.  Birds would not be falling from the sky fully cooked.  And if you have an objection to taking land and making it generally unpleasant for long-term habitation, why not put the arrays on coal mine slag piles?

I wonder, Peter, what you would be saying if, in 30 or 40 years - or 20, or 10 - China announced that while the Americans were going to Mars, it was going to build a space fountain…?

Knute RockHead, why is it that the solution to the country’s defense is to throw money (by the trillions) at the Defense Department and its contractors, but the problems behind poor schools and some people’s need for welfare are impossible (in the wingnut mind) to solve with money?

Okay, genius, what is your solution, death camps for the poor?  Do you think all these problems will disappear if we pretend they don’t exist?  Or do you figure there’s nothing we can do except buy bigger guns with which to defend ourselves against the zombie-like hoards of the poor?

(I’m thinking you should read a good selection of Dickens, and realize he was documenting reality under the guise of fiction…)

“Is the ess for stupid or sissy?”

Hey, don’t project your issues on me, asshole…

Who thinks welfare is a good idea?

Founding fathers thought including it in the preamble as one of the functions of government was rather important.

Or perhaps you’d rather just tell those who’ve lost to just eat cake.

You do know how that turned out, right?  The Bastille.

In Russia, you got the Communist Revolution.

The ONLY reason the US and Western Europe didn’t go that way is that the poor managed to get enough power through unionizing/monopoly busting/ New Deal welfarizing that they were happy enough not to riot.

In a pure libertarian fantasy world, you get Somalia.  Welfare is PROTECTION for the rich.  It creates stability that’s makes keeping their wealth cheaper than having to hire an army.

I’m with older @32 in interpreting Derbyshire’s words. We have been mocking nature, but the BP oil spewing is just a symptom of it… the general trashing of our planet so we can have our ever-increasing creature comforts. Climate change, the acidifying of the oceans, air and water pollution—you name it—have been caused by us, and especially us in the US.

What I emphatically reject is Derbyshire’s assertion that this is just a manifestation of the post-JFK era. The belief in Progress (with a capital P) has a much longer history and arose pretty much hand-in-hand with the increasing use of fossil fuels. IOW, it dates back to the 1750’s in Britain.

If anything, the real infantile optimism is to believe that infinite Progress is possible on a finite planet. The BP oil spew is a logical and inevitable outcome of that belief that an economic Nirvana of more is either possible or desireable. BP drilled that damn hole so that we could keep living with the illusion of Progress just a little while longer. The Tiber oil field BP was seeking to tap is supposed to have 6 billion barrels of oil. Sounds like a lot, right? Well, that amounts to a four month addition to the world’s supply—at current rates of consumption! As one commentator puts it, when it comes to crude oil, we are now digging for loose change in the sofa cushions. And if we open up ANWR, well, that will only add another four months to what we have! Woohoo! After the big fields in Saudi Arabia and Kazakhstan open up in the next couple of years, we have nothing. A US Army report recently warned that by 2015, there will be a 10 mbd shortfall in the supply of crude oil.

Bottom line—we are royally screwed. As the nation most dependent, in absolute terms, on imported crude oil, we are going to face a massive economic contraction, the likes of which our nation has never seen. Even as the Deepwater Horizon calamity continues to spew oil into the Gulf, in the bigger picture Mother Nature is closing the spigot.

The stick rule must be “hey he isn’t following the party line”.......the effects of welfare on minority families has been devastating

Citation please.

as was most of LBJ’s great society social engineering.

Citation please.

Its bigoted to assume minorities cannot compete without government handouts…liberals have always felt this way.

Citation please.

Yes, Sowell the thinker is such a dispassionate observer:

America has never been a conquered country, so it may be very hard for most Americans even to conceive what that can mean. After France was conquered in 1940, it was reduced to turning over some of its own innocent citizens to the Nazis to kill, just because those citizens were Jewish.

Do you think our leaders wouldn’t do that? Not even if the alternative was to see New York and Los Angeles go up in mushroom clouds? If I were Jewish, I wouldn’t bet my life on that.

What the Middle East fanatics want is not just our resources or even our lives, but our humiliation first, in whatever sadistic ways they can think of. Their lust for humiliation has already been repeatedly demonstrated in their videotaped beheadings that find such an eager market in the Middle East.

None of this can be prevented by glib talk, but only by character, courage and decisive actions—none of which Barack Obama has ever demonstrated.

Or his prophecy that Obama would go after CEO’s pay:

<blockquote> Yet, when all this blows up in our faces and the economy turns down, what is the answer? To have more economic decisions made by politicians, because they choose to say that “deregulation” is the cause of our problems.

No matter what happens, for politicians it is “heads I win and tails you lose.” If we keep listening to them and their media allies, we are all going to keep losing big. Keeping our attention focused on CEO pay - Boris’ goat - is all part of this game. We are all goats if we fall for it.<blockquote>

Yes. he’s the scholarly version of William F Buckley, no doubt about it.

The notion that decades of research into fusion technology have been worthless is not founded on any actual facts.

When fusion can be demonstrated that releases more energy than it takes to start the reaction(the break-even point) which researchers reached some 50-odd years ago, then you might have a point, Jerry.

What most people who offer some magic technical solution to our energy predicament don’t realize, is how much oil or other fossil fuels are imbedded in the process—even when we’re talking about solar and wind power, let alone fusion!
There’s the mining of the raw materials, transportation, construction and maintenance that all require diesel-powered heavy machinery.