Rep. Doug Lamborn (R TB-CO) Batty About NREL

From the Denver Post (links mine):

Colorado congressman Doug Lamborn is one of nine House members asking that funds be yanked from programs that finance the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden.

[...] because they “have failed to live up to their supposed potential.”

I’ve never been a fan of Lamborn.  Up to this point, I haven’t been much of a critic either since he’s just another example of a privileged white male who thinks the 1650s were the best time in history.  Why waste my time on another idiot Teabagger?  But this request is batshit insane and I won’t ignore it.  Seriously, Rep. Lamborn, what the hell are you thinking?

Actually, I know what Rep. Lamborn is thinking.  He’s thinking of the miniscule campaign contributions that he’ll have to take from the dirty energy corporations to help get him re-elected.  Because $31,750 in his account is worth more to him than 5,500 highly skilled, well-paid Americans or the $714 million boost to Colorado’s economy that NREL provides (yes, he sells out Coloradans for less than a luxury vehicle. awesome.).  As a wild-eyed ideologue, those hard numbers don’t mean a thing.  Because his ideology says he needs to whore himself out to corporations on the cheap.

Rep. Lamborn would rather: wreck the stable climate our species has evolved in; keep Americans deployed across the world ensuring regions remain unstable enough to paradoxically justify their deployment; we remain enslaved to carbon-based power using a system that’s over 100 years old instead of de-centralizing and de-carbonizing.

But if you thought the above quote was lunacy, wait until you read this one:

The letter, written by California U.S. Rep. Tom McClintock, says: “We should not follow the president’s poor planning in increasing the funding for these anti-energy boondoggles.”

What in the world is an anti-energy boondoggle?  Perhaps the biggest problem with Republican Teabaggers is because they’ve never been forced to think things through clearly, they live in a world where stringing together talking points sounds good to them.  Built on top of this problem is the corporate stenographer problem: do Yesenia Robles and The Associated Press think simply parroting this insipid quote qualifies as doing their job?  Apparently so.  The Iraq and Afghanistan invasions/occupations?  No, those weren’t boondoggles.  NREL is a boondoggle according to McClintock and dutifully parroted by Robles and the AP.  The ease with which our democracy is subverted is nauseating.

[Update]: I sent the Post article to a friend.  This is part of their reply (I wish I had thought to write it):

Let’ see, where could we begin with NREL’s future impact analogy?…..how about the Internet (NSF), wireless technology (DOE), Polio vaccine (NSF-DHS).

While it’s true that NREL’s potential hasn’t been fully realized as of today, just imagine if we had listened to idiots like Rep. Lamborn in the past.  There are good reasons why 1650 wasn’t such a great time.

Weekend Randomness

First up, there was some severe weather in Colorado on Thursday and Friday. A long-lived but relatively weak tornado (EF-2, preliminary) hit south of Greeley and traveled up east of Fort Collins. One death has been blamed on the storm, which did something like $200 million of damage. Other cells also produced tornadoes, but they weren’t as damaging.

I went storm chasing both days. I didn’t get out until after the big-news tornado, which touched down at 11:30A and traveled north-northwest. Unfortunately, I didn’t see much on Thursday. On Friday I went out to the far eastern plains and even poked into Kansas a little bit. I ended up backtracking north and west into Colorado. I think if I had kept going into Kansas, I would have seen more action. Tornadoes were reported pretty consistently with those storms. Oh, and while I was out, another tornado hit near Greeley. Some luck. This storm season is setting records for number of confirmed tornado reports and deaths.

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Remember that NASA’s Phoenix Lander is scheduled to land on Mars tonight. I’m going to my local museum to watch NASA’s live feed of the event. It’s a tricky landing, so I really hope everything goes well.

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Planty of Pro-Republicanism From the Weekend’s Corporate Media

Karen Crummy has a rural voter poll article. It’s mostly ambiguous fluff. Something she spent some time on: a majority polled said McCain shares their values. Really: values? Rural voters support unauthorized torture as a value? Rural voters don’t support health care or education benefits for our troops? That’s a value worth holding? This value argument was torn apart after the 2004 election. It’s sad that the corporate media and ideologically driven pollsters still focus so much on it. A majority of adults in the U.S. support progressive policy positions. Due in no small part to the media’s narrative, those that vote don’t know they hold the same values as progressives across the board.

There is an important note about this poll: 682 people responded. Thousands of scientists’ work worldwide don’t add up to enough proof that humans are forcing the climate system. But 44% of respondents said McCain shares their values (versus 35% for Obama) and it’s written in stone that Obama can’t win the rural vote. That’s ridiculous.

Interestingly, that’s about the only subject that McCain does better than Obama. The economy, taxes, “being on your side” (WTF?!), and bringing change. McCain edged out Obama on the Iraq war also. And somehow, everybody comes to the conclusion that Obama is the one who needs to do better with rural voters. 4-2-1 (O-M-tied) and Obama is identified as needing to do something. Riiiight. Not only does McCain have work to do with rural voters, you’ll notice the poll didn’t do urban voters. McCain is going to get killed in the cities and the corporate stenographers keep trying to distract us with “maverick” talk. The “maverick” is going to be buried under a landslide in November.

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I just knew the headline from Chuck Plunkett would include a division within Democratic ranks (I would have bet on it, but nobody would put money down on a different headline). Sure enough, “Record crowd shows signs of rift”. No actual data was provided to support that headline, it was just something Chuck obviously “felt” at a gut level or something. No mention that they ran out of Obama ballots though. Isn’t that interesting.

I’m sure we’ll see similar headlines after the Republican Convention, right? I want Chuck and the Post to tell us what magic line is enough for Democrats and enough for Republicans. What kind of a lead would a Democratic nominee have to garner so that “rift” doesn’t show up in the headline? Similarly, what kind of a lead would a Republican nominee have to achieve? What measure is indicative of a rift, exactly?

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Terence Hunt is no better. There’s no alternative viewpoint in his article that should have read, “Saudis tell Bush who’s really in charge“. At the end, we get to read about Bush throwing a tantrum. Not at the Saudis that refuse to refine more oil (they’re not operating at full capacity, for the record), but at Democrats who want to withhold a $1.4 billion arms sale to a regime that supports terrorists while they put the squeeze on our economy. Somehow, it’s Democrats’ responsibility to force energy corporations to expand refineries. That’s funny, I thought Republicans were supposed to be against government involvement in areas that corporations can handle so much more efficiently. Another Republican lie laid bare.

Udall, Coffman, the 4th Amendment & the Media

Udall told members of the White House Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health last Thursday that the way the federal government treats sick nuclear weapons workers and their families “speaks volumes about us as a society.” It’s pretty typical stuff for our current administration and Republicanism in general: workers get screwed as those in charge change the rules mid-stream. It once again boils down to: Republicans don’t believe government works. So why elect them and let them prove their ideology stinks?

By the way, what is Bob Schaffer’s (Rep. Udall’s opponent for CO’s 2008 Senate race) take on this issue?

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From Colorado Ethics Watch:

Through open records requests and other research, Colorado Ethics Watch has identified significant blocks of time on the official calendar of [Republican] Secretary of State Mike Coffman that were either used for meetings with potential funders of his congressional campaign, or are unaccounted for as private appointments and meetings. In the meantime, it is unclear whether Secretary Coffman is meeting critical goals and deadlines required of him as Colorado Secretary of State.

Coffman was elected to this office in 2006, despite the horrid performance of his Republican predecessor. It was unfortunately an under-the-radar kind of race. Coloradans, in their search for a type of bipartisanship that simply doesn’t exist with today’s Republican Party, elected Coffman in the hopes he would “balance” Gov. Bill Ritter. The balance that has been put on display: unethical Republican activities and ethical Democratic activities. You know Republicans would make this the headline-du-jour for weeks if a Democratic Secretary of State did the same thing.

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The corporate stenographers working at major media outlets are serving the country well, don’t you think? I sure do: In the past 30 days (from Apr 5th backwards), 65 times more Obama-bowling articles showed up on a NEXIS search than Yoo-4th Amerndment articles. What’s the significance? John Yoo, while at the U.S. Department of Justice, wrote a memo which authorized torture and presidential lawbreaking. The Bush administration has declared the Fourth Amendment to be inapplicable to “domestic military operations” within the U.S. Barack Obama went bowling.

Which story did the corporate stenographers decide to report on? The bowling story. Why? Well, according to Republicans, because the media is too liberal. It seems to me that if liberals ran the corporate media outlets, they would raise a red flag about the 4th Amendment being declared inapplicable. No, the media has been led around by right-wing extremists who want Americans to believe liberals want to take their guns away. Liars and fear-mongers: today’s Republican Party.

They Must Be Kidding

Hahahahaha!  I love when info-tainment pieces like this come out.  From Think Progress: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) cited McCain’s environmental record, claiming that it’s stronger that former Vice President Al Gore’s.  He can’t be serious.  “Climate change is the road less traveled but he’s traveled it even more than Al Gore,” Graham said. “Al Gore has talked about it and deserves great recognition but he was around here a long time and never introduced a bill.”

That’s interesting spin, Sen. Graham.  I guess he wasn’t aware that Al Gore held the first congressional hearings on climate change in the 1970′s.  Just to make sure the record is clear: that was before John McCain was first elected.

Graham and McCain want to continue to fairy tale that McCain is some kind of ‘maverick’, as the corporate stenographic press continue to faithfully report, by trying to fleece the American public into believing John McCain is some kind of environmentalist.  The double-speak on these matters is astounding.  Conservatives rail against wacked-out, commie hippies that hug trees and work to undermine the economy when discussing environmental-minded Democrats.  If McCain was interested in environmental issues, I could see the ‘maverick’ label as true.  But he doesn’t even know what his economic policies are.

Other Side of the Story

A few days ago, I wrote about the oil and gas industry threatening to take their ball home, claiming that in the discussions leading up to writing development regulations, they had been left out in the cold. I called b.s. then and now there’s another side to the story.

In fact, it might be the case that the industry decided not to show up to those discussions by their own volition.

“But in a letter to COGA, Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission Chairman Harris Sherman and Commission Acting Director David Neslin said the energy industry chose not to comment on the creation of a predraft proposal for the new rules. “

The folks in the energy industry are clever – they have practiced handling corporate stenographers for years. They are also good at trying to sway public opinion in their favor. Note all the ‘green action’ ads energy corporations are running recently. Sure, they extract fossil fuels, but they’re trying really hard to help provide renewables to market too. Sure, in the face of record profit quarter after quarter, they’re trying really hard to develop new energy resource infrastructure. Their spending on marketing dwarfs those efforts, but no one in the “media” seems to want to delve into that little detail.

More on the media: they like to run these he said, she said kind of stories as if there’s substance there when really, there isn’t. Shameful.

Let’s Get to Work

Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius giving this one.

Gov. Sebelius asks Bush repeatedly to work with Democrats to get the people’s business done. She’s framing Bush and the Republicans as opposition to getting work done. That’s smart. How far will the corporate stenographers let that message get out?

Instead of acting like the bully-deciderer, Gov. Sebelius spoke of hard working Americans facing real problems that Republicans aren’t addressing. That should resonate with most Americans. Note the update at dKos by Georgia10.

In full honesty, Gov. Sebelius appeared wooden and slightly uncomfortable to be in front of the camera.  She was soft-spoken.  I preferred Sen. Webb’s response last year.  Maybe it had more to do with the specifics of Bush’s speech and the lingering excitement over the 2006 election.

I want to point out that Democrats need to move forward with their agenda if Republicans continue to obstruct progress.  Reaching across the aisle sounds good, but Republicans have been operating under a strategy of destroying their opposition no matter the cost for years.  If Republicans don’t want to get to work, Democrats need to show they can and will.