Republicans Playing Teabaggers For Fools

One of the supposed primary causes for the Teabaggers to exist was their stated “concern” for the national debt and national deficits.  Never mind that the Bush Regime tripled the national deficit in only 8 short years, it was only when a half-black man was President that the deficit mattered all of a sudden.  There were some noises being made in the leadup to the 2010 election that Republican Teabaggers would hold their elected officials to account if they weren’t serious about deficit reduction efforts.  Well, it turns out the Republican Teabaggers already in office are doing some mighty strange things as the 112th Congress is about to start:

Republicans’ deficit reduction platform, which may have helped catapult them into the majority, is about to run headlong into a hard reality: Many of their key policy goals will increase the deficit dramatically.

To get around this fact, they’ve included measures in their new rules package to exempt some of their biggest legislative priorities from deficit consideration. Among the exceptions, which the House is likely to consider in the 112th Congress, are the health care repeal bill (scheduled for a vote a week from Wednesday), the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts, an AMT patch, extending the estate tax, and more.

Got that, Teabaggers?  Two of your chief “concerns” are about to run headlong into each other.  If the health industry giveaway legislation is repealed, the deficit will balloon because future costs would no longer be held down.  But if Republican Teabaggers say repealing the law doesn’t count against the deficit (more fuzzy math from the same crowd that helped triple the deficit just a few years ago), what will the Teabagger base do?  Will they storm their Representatives’ offices the same way they stormed Democratic offices in the summer of 2009, demanding that their concerns be addressed?  If nothing like that happens (and I doubt it will) in 3 month’s time, it will prove that the Republican Teabagger movement really was more about race than budget.  It will also be more proof that the Teabagger “movement” really was controlled by obscenely rich special interests.  I can’t imagine the Teabagger base will respond favorably when they figure out the rest of us were pointing that out all this time not to make fun of them, but to try to convince them to look at things honestly.  They were used to elect a Republican majority and now they will be expected to sit on the sidelines and stay quiet for the next two years.

Large-budget items that are racking up trillions of dollars onto the deficit by Republicans aren’t supposed to count against the deficit?  Same old typical Republican hypocrisy.  I await the overwhelming Teabagger response.

William Daley As Obama’s Chief Of Staff? Election Lessons Fail.

If William Daley becomes President Obama’s Chief of Staff, it will be additional proof that the President did not learn the lessons that the 2010 elections quite easily provided him.  He didn’t over-reach into crazy liberal land.  He didn’t do enough to put Americans back to work.  He protected industry after industry as bills creeped along through the Senate.  And how does he respond after his party loses a historical number of House seats?  By considering a Wall Street banker because he’s reportedly worried that businesses aren’t his BFF.

News flash Mr. Obama: Wall Street won’t man phones and walk precincts for you in 2012.  Neither will Republican Teabaggers or the always befuddled Unaffiliated voters.  The Democratic base will.  Or perhaps they won’t if you choose someone like William Daley.  He’ll be in the White House looking out for corporate interests, not the Americans who don’t have jobs.

If Obama picks Daley, it will also signal that Obama feels he has to respond to the Chicago political machine and that he doesn’t feel that not responding to his base will harm his political future.

John Holdren Said What?!

President Obama’s Chief Science Advisor, John Holdren, said in an interview recently that:

I think in the new Congress, there will unquestionably be hearings on climate science — I think those hearings are going to end up being educational. I think we’ll probably move the opinions of some of the members of Congress who currently call themselves skeptics, because I think a lot of good scientists are going to come in and explain very clearly what we know and how we know it and what it means, and it’s a very persuasive case.

Seriously?

John Holdren might be the President’s Science Advisor.  He likely understands to a reasonable degree the threat that global warming poses to the U.S. and the world.  But it’s undeniably obvious with this quote that he has no idea what kind of opponents he and the President are facing.  And that’s likely the primary reason why the President botched the best opportunity in a generation to deal with global warming.  Scientists will not convince the climate zombies that were elected in 2010 that the science is sound and it’s their too-rigid belief system that is wrong.  When these hearings start, a lot of unbearable nonsense is going to be spewed and it’s not like the corporate stenographers are going to put more credit on the people’s statements whose jobs are studying the climate system.  No, the anti-science climate zombies are going to be placed on pedestals and it will be the climate scientists who will have to waste time publicly defending their work.

h/t ClimateProgress.

East Coast Crippled By Snow Again? Get. Used. To It.

Something that has been overlooked in all the discussion in the wake of the latest blizzard to hit the northeast U.S. is the likelihood that these kinds of events will become more common in the future, thanks to our refusal to do anything to mitigate global warming or pay for the services people seem to expect to receive.

It’s true that any single snowstorm cannot be directly attributed to global warming since the former is a singular weather event and the latter is a climate response, which by definition takes multiple years and preferably centuries into consideration.  It is also true, however, that the die are loaded thanks to our deadly pollution habits.  More of these storms will happen in the future until we stop polluting the climate system.

2010 is on pace to be the hottest calendar year on record for the globe.  There were far more severe weather events in 2010 than average.  Russia saw a heat wave in the summer of 2010 that surpassed anything in the area’s multi-thousand year history of being settled by man.  Pakistani floods (closely associated with the Russian heat wave) affected tens of millions of people.  Corals are dying across the globe’s oceans at rates that will take them to the brink of extinction within the near future.  And now an area the size of Texas (or France and Germany combined) is flooded in northeast Australia – the same area by the way that has suffered under a 10-year severe drought.  Those two phenomena alone are a perfect example of what climate scientists have been warning since the 1970′s: more areas will experience severe droughts, interspersed with devastating rain events that will cause flooding.

With respect to the last segment of my opening sentence: “pay for the services people seem to expect to receive”, the U.S.’s fringe right-wing movement has done a masterful job of making investing in our communities seem like a dirty act.  Good for them for conning enough Americans to buy into their snakeoil.  The effects are just starting to be seen, just as the effects of global warming are just starting to be seen.  When a majority of people vote for politicians who promise to cut taxes while making the rich even richer, what effect did you think that would really have?  Did a few extra bucks in every New Yorker’s pocket get their streets cleared from a moderate snowstorm?  You can bet the richest New Yorkers got their streets cleared quickest.

How many more times will services be cut before people finally figure out what the heck is actually going on around them?  Perhaps when the fire departments are scaled back and houses start burning down.  Perhaps when the police departments are scaled back and crime ramps up.  What happens the next time a terrorist attack happens in New York City?  Will services be cut back so far by then that the lack of response causes additional American deaths?  Will we finally have an honest discussion about community investment then?

What about global warming effects?  New York City is one of the places where planning is starting to take place to address some mitigation but also some adaptation to the coming crises.  Will Republican Teabaggers continue with a winning message?  If they do, who will pay for the more expensive of the two options: adaptation?  Not enough people want to pay for mitigation today.  Who will want to pay more for less results down the road?

Electing people like Michael Bloomberg and Chris Christie will have results that last for years.  While politics is a game people seem to like to play, global warming will eventually beat us all.  So get used to municipalities being unable and unwilling to respond to moderate weather events.  And certainly don’t start crying when they’re completely unable to respond to severe climate events.  After all, you reap what you sow.