Closing the deal

These are the last days of the campaign to send Crazy Dana back to the funny farm. However, we must not lose site of the fact that the California Fascist Republican Party has been very good at getting out the vote before any October Surprises can change the course of the election.

Be that as it may, we really need to make sure that voters in the 46th have a chance to hear Wendy Dormal. This principled activist for human rights has had a long history of dealing with Crazy Dana. She reminds us now of just what she thinks of this 5 Star General in Abramoff's Army.

I have had a personal battle with this congressman, at times one-on-one. However, my distain for the congressman is a result of his actions in suppressing justice for the foreign contract workers of the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI). In 1995 I naively believed that human rights was a bipartisan issue that could not refuted. Jack Abramoff, Congressman Rohrabacher, and their fellow conspirators proved that, in fact, they could make human rights a partisan issue and hurt a great many innocent people in the process.

If anyone that you know is sitting on the fence, just get them to read this. If they don't have a computer, use the one at the public library to show them, and then leave it on that page when you walk away. Someone else will see it too.

Compare the lack of integrity shown here with the calm, intelligent and principles statement of Debbie Cook as she closed her case in their only debate.

Rohrabacher in Emergency Mode

Well, it must be an emergency when they have to bring in Jon Voight to headline a fundraiser. Now we know that Voight is one of those spreading the word that Obama will usher in a new Socialist regime. Now, when Dana needs Deliverance from Voight, he has to know that he is in the middle of something new... a contested race.

I found out about this when I noted it being hyped around Republican circles by Ron Nehring. Now Nehring and Dana have a lot in common, especially their friendships with Jack Abramonff.

Now, if Obama is expected to answer question about William Ayers who was politically active when Obama was 8 years old, why aren't Nehring and Rohrabacher being asked to explain just how much they have changed since playing footsie with Jack. Fair is Fair.

Dana's sense of strategy seems to be getting tone deaf.

Total Buzz at the OC Register had an entry about Dana and Sarah Palin. I find it worth quoting.

“We remember all the negative things they said about somebody else,” Rohrabacher said to the crowd at the Palin rally in Carson. “His name was Ronald Reagan. I can guarantee that the same way Ronald Reagan saved America in 1982, Sarah Palin and John McCain will save America when they get to the White House.”

I think that it is time for Dana to go have his hearing checked. Sarah Palin is to Ronald Reagan as high school garage band is to the Rolling Stones.

In fact, if Dana is lining up to join in this game of trivial pursuit, then he is compounding his problem. While Reagan may be a hero, every single person who watched the interview with Gibson or Couric and saw her performance in the debate with Biden must know by now just what she lacks. Here is a link to what serious media in the UK said about her. The piece is headlined "Flirting Her Way to Victory".

Sarah Palin's farcical debate performance lowered the standards for both female candidates and US political discourse.

That was the kind part...

Evidently, Palin's pre-debate handlers judged her incapable of speaking on a fairly wide range of subjects, and so instructed to her to simply disregard questions that did not invite memorised talking points or cutesy filibustering. They probably told her to play up her spunky average-ness, which she did to the point of shtick - and dishonesty.

Dana, you have to show us better judgment than this. Or, if your ear is really that tone deaf, then I would guess the the Libertarian Troubadour sang off key as well.

Maybe Palin can win over all the Joe Sixpacks who will tell their wives to stay at home, keep their mouths shut and let him do the voting for the family. That is not the way to run a campaign when your opponent is an articulate woman with more experience in field of energy than Palin. You know, I have another idea. Why don't you have Palin come down and debated Debbie Cook on Energy Policy. That should be good for a few laughs.

Up to his old tricks

One of Dana Rohrbacher's favorite tricks is to say or do something so outrageous that totally undercuts any rational discussion of issues in this election. In fact, some of them seem to be designed to prevent Debbie Cook from getting any press mention at all.

I noted this before when everyone was talking about the rising prices of oil, Dana makes a big stink about a science fiction scenario of the world being hit by an asteroid. I keep wondering if he got a campaign contribution from Bruce Willis for this.

The most recent is his dragging up Sirhan Sirhan again. This was best reported by the Pasadena Weekly. but liberal bloggers have had a field day with it.

How dumb to you think we all are, Dana?

The OC Register ran a story on the assignation of Robert F. Kennedy and never mentioned your name. You probably never go over that, did you.

Now, you say you want to get Sirhan Sirhan to explain himself to help bring closure to the Kennedy's. That is another exceedingly callous way of trying to get Democrats to vote for you. I have news for you, Dana. They are not that dumb or they would be Republicans.

As Cook appears to be doing better and better, what additional attention getting trick do you have up your sleeve?

How can you tell when Dana is lying?

His lips are moving.

I can think of no better example than the speech that he gave recently on the floor of the House, the one that gathered national attention to him since he once again brought up dinosaur flatulence. If you want to read it, he is so proud that he has posted it on his House of Representative Web Site.

What you find there is a mixture of a small amount of fact, a lot of conjecture and a huge pile of horse manure. Let's take a good look at his technique. Consider this paragraph.

In a September, 2005, article from Discovery Magazine, Dr. William Gray, now an emeritus professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University and a former president of the American Meteorological Association, was asked if funding problems that he was experiencing and has been experiencing could be traced to his skepticism of man-made global warming. His response: ``I had NOAA money for 30 years, and then when the Clinton administration came in and Gore started directing some of the environmental stuff, I was cut off. I couldn't get any money from NOAA. They turned down 13 straight proposals from me.'' This man is one of the most prominent hurricane experts in the world, cut off during the Clinton-Gore administration because he had been skeptical of global warming.

First, he references an article in DiscoverY Magazine. Now, if you check things out, Discovery Magazine is for Kids. We all know that the triplets are far ahead of their dad, so maybe he was reading one of their subscriptions.

Well, actually, it was Discover Magazine, but the error is so prevalent on the internet that we know no one actually fact checked his speech. If they can't get the little stuff right, how can they be trusted with big ideas.

The circumstances behind this article are well documented by Chris Mooney in his book Storm World. Gray is a skeptic about man made causes of global warming, but not about the fact that it is occurring, nor about the fact that it will make fundamental changes in life until it starts to cool again.

I’m not disputing that there has been global warming. There was a lot of global warming in the 1930s and ’40s, and then there was a slight global cooling from the middle ’40s to the early ’70s. And there has been warming since the middle ’70s, especially in the last 10 years.

Here is more of the non-story.

On April 26, 2006, RealClimate.org, which describes itself as "a commentary site on climate science by working climate scientists for the interested public and journalists," responded to a paper written by Gray by detailing "the fundamental misconceptions on the physics of climate that underlie most of Gray's pronouncements on climate change and its causes" and "the gaping flaws" in his "scientific argument." A June 11, 2006, article in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Judith A. Curry, chair of Georgia Tech's School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, said that "Gray's message that global warming is a hoax is being heard because of his media connections, but she [Curry] points out he has not published any research to back it up."

If you want more, then here it is...

Additionally, a May 28, 2006, Washington Post Magazine article by Joel Achenbach reported that Gray "concede[d] that he hasn't published the idea [his theory about recent warming trends] in any peer-reviewed journal." Achenbach also noted that Gray's rejection of climate models puts him "increasingly on the fringe" in the field of meteorology. When Achenbach "ask[ed] Gray who his intellectual soul mates are regarding global warming," Gray responded, "I have nobody really to talk to about this stuff.'"

(Source: Media Matters).

What Dana did is to take a string a "facts" and to imply a causality that does not exist. Gray makes the same argument that just because atmospheric CO2 and global temperatures move up and down together does not mean that one caused the other. The work cited above points out the errors in Gray's understanding and methodology when it comes to climate. He is nothing more than a damned good weather man, but the basic scientific understanding has gone far beyond what he knew or is willing to learn. He is left like the Pope arguing that the sun revolves around the earth, unwilling to change.

But, this is Dana's champion. I could go through the rest of Dana's talk. You can take it all apart and be left with not much but the enjoyment of discovering another charlatan. With his talent, Dana should put on a rubber nose and join Barnum & Bailey.

As long as Charles Krotch is paying for Dana to blather away, telling us to go use all the energy that Charlie can provide, then I guess that we will have to put up with Dana's blathering. Unfortunately, some people believe this sh**.

Figuring out Dana

I have long had a problem with trying to understand how Congressman Rohrabacher, ostensibly an intelligent man, could go in for such stunts as his frequently ridiculed dinosaur fart comments about global warming. I think that I finally got it.

We have all know that much of Dana's historic campaign funding has come from Libertarian leaning Energy Executive, Charles Koch. What most do not connect is the fact that the Koch family, owners of the largest privately held Corporation in America, Koch Industries. Charles Koch and his brother David are both listed (19) among the top 20 Richest Americans by Forbes Magazine. That spread their wealth around and are the source of funds for a few of the think tanks that have grown up around Washington. They contributed heavily to the start of the Cato Institute.

One of Charles Koch's more recent activities involves a new organization called Americans for Prosperity, a group that professes to be a grassroots organization but is heavily funded by Koch. Guess what, they are playing the same type of games over global warming with the latest stunt being the use of a hot air balloon to signify that global warming is just a bunch of "hot air".

Now, in case you have not heard of Koch Industries, they are a really big deal in energy production.

So, what we really have from Dana Rohrabacher is the vocalization of a puppet, with Koch pulling the strings to make sure that the word gets out. The vaunted independent streak of Crazy Dana is a sham. He is more dependent than independent, dependent on Koch for support.

When we look at the way most people have to struggle to get by, at the way that our government is pushing us into selling America to pay for an ill-advised war while we wonder how we can pay the mortgage, it is hard to see Crazy Dana as one of the common folks like us, not when he has Koch's $ Billions behind him. The only American Prosperity that Rohrabacher wants is for his buddy Charles and the hope that soem trickles down to himself.

Dana Rohrabacher vs. Shell Oil

We all know where Crazy Dana stands on the question of Global Warming. One can only ask "why?"

In an interview with Charlie Rose this week, James Hofmeister, President of Shell Oil Company, made the point that "the debate is over." If even the president of one of our largest petroleum companies can make that statement, you wonder why the likes of Sen. Inhofe(R - OK) and Dana continue to chant the mantra of denial.
What to they have to gain?

While I don't agree with all of what Hofmeister said, especially about where we need to go in the future, there are two points that become clear... especially if you listen to the entire interview. The first is that Hofmeister is not talking from his personal viewpoint. Under questioning from Charlie, he made it clear that his statements are completely in line with the positions of the Board of Royal Dutch Shell (the parent company) and it's CEO, Jeroen van der Veer.

Hofmeister went on to explain that the only thing accomplished by such denial is to delay arriving at the solutions we will ultimately be forced to accept. We will all have to pay the costs of such delay, both in terms of the implementation of new solutions and in terms of the mitigation of the effects of global warming that could, possibly, have been prevented by prompt action now.

The only thing that I can see is that Dana thinks he benefits at the polls by continuing this charade, that the voters have been sold this crap for so long that they think it smells sweet, that they are the ones who know better in the face of this "vast left wind conspiracy".

What they will find is that those like Dana and Senator Inhofe have been selling snake oil and the sickness is getting worse. Of course, when we could have stayed at home and taken an over-the-counter remedy, now, because of people like Dana who have abused their access to the media, we may need major, expensive surgery.