An ongoing series….
The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Mark Potok details the rise in militia, patriot, and extremist groups last year. The factor that he misses in this video however is not the rise of these groups, but rather their wider acceptance. Mainstream center right and even right-right politicians of years past would never have spoken at a convention co-sponsored by groups like the Oathkeepers and John Birch Society as this year’s CPAC event was.
There’s also no doubt that some of the leadership of the Republican Party is definitely pandering to these paranoid fools.
These radical right nutballs and dirtbags have always been out there, and Mark even mentions some of the outcomes of the past paranoia uprisings in the video, but they’ve never been accepted by the mainstream right like they have this past year. It’s highly disturbing that fear, paranoia, and angst have replaced leadership, direction, and principle on the right. It’s why I refuse to call myelf a conservative anymore because if Oathkeepers, the John Birch Society and what I saw at CPAC this year are what it means to be conservative, then I don’t want any part of it.
References for those who might not understand some of the Kookspiracy theories and groups mentioned in the video
New World Order Conspiracy Theory
The Turner Diaries (a book cited and read by many militia leaders and supremacist terrorists like Tim McVeigh)
You should also note that the 9/11 truthers are right in step with this kookspiracy surge, and that there are many crossovers such as Phillip Berg and others.
Lastly, here’s an example of one of the leech pundits, (also a truther) who makes his living feeding this paranoia. Lately you’ve seen him linked by mainstream right news sites like Drudge. His predecessor in the survivalist ’80’s was Howard Ruff — indeed you have to wonder why some of the new paranoia pundits haven’t been sued for plagiarism by the old school doom-criers, since most of the new doomsters are merely retreading old trash.
Bottom line: You have a lot more to worry about from Right wing Whackos like Oath Keepers or this “Operation Exodus” guy forming a police state or militia in your area than you do from President Obama and Fema camps. If the idea of un-elected and unappointed senile old farts with fifty cals thinking they are the law doesn’t bother you then I don’t know what will.
A new video from Peter Sinclair who outlines some of the very basic and elementary facts and proofs of man made global warming, and how they are supported.
I’ve known about man made global warming since the 1980’s, when I used to point it out as a good reason for increasing production of nuclear energy to the biomass and other alternative energy proponents in alt.sci.energy while arguing pro nuclear energy. It wasn’t a very convincing argument back then, and even while making it I thought we had a couple of centuries to get there. I would argue by saying that nuclear was inevitable because in a couple of centuries it was the only reasonable source and we would have to use it eventually anyway — why not start now? Not many bought it.
They weren’t buying it back then since at that point the left was highly populist and anti science. They would chant things like “Split wood, not Atoms!” and “The only physics I know is Ex-Lax” at university speeches when real scientists would try to point out that nuclear energy production wasn’t as dangerous as it was portrayed to be in “The China Syndrome”. That was a loosing battle back then when I watched Amory Lovins and crew shut down Rancho Seco as a large wave of anti-science and unreason swept over the left.
Democrat Bill Proxmire was attacking NASA and other science institutions at every opportunity, new wave cults were taking over the left, and even some secular humanists whom I highly respected were falling sway to anti-science forces for politically expedient reasons around nuclear non proliferation. Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov were not as supportive of increased nuclear energy production as they could have been, and joined with the left on that due to Reagan’s missile defense program among other things. Those were depressing times.
So here we are – thirty years later. We got the worst of outcomes from the left going populist and the right giving up for fiscal reasons – it was cheaper to burn coal. Meanwhile the Nuclear proliferation Djinn was out of the bottle even back then – Pakistan and India now have nuclear weapons, as does North Korea. Iran is on fast pace to get them as well. We also use more of the dirtiest source of power, coal, than ever before.
Politically the forces of populism that created this worst of both worlds scenario have flipped topsy-turvy – the left got a new generation of pro-science rebels and in the face of reality even old guard environmentalists like Patrick Moore who founded Greenpeace, and Stewart Brand of Whole Earth Catalog fame have converted to pro nuclear energy. Some defense oriented Democrats are even beginning to see sense in missile defenses shared with our allies and have put aside knee-jerk complaining about missile defense.
On the right, religious fundamentalists now rule the Republican roost and anti-science populism has now infested my party. So here comes my mea culpa — for political expediency and because I don’t agree with the approach of cap and trade, because I thought we had much more time, I’ve spoken out against the Anti-AGW movement.
My best attempt at convincing myself and others was back here, and as you can see from the strikeouts, and the other arguments since deflated many times, I didn’t do too great a job. You can even see me repeating denialist talking points in the comments, even though I was really trying to cut down on alarmism. Again, this was wrong.
If there were an article I could retract from my blog that would be the one. I can’t with any integrity just pull it however, I like truth best – so there it is, my guilty moment. Where I didn’t speak whole truths, where I omitted the fact that AGW is very real and measurable right now. It’s made me unhappy for a long time that I would subsume science to politics so easily, so consider this my confession and my attempt to make it right.
My stance on the issue still hasn’t changed much mind you – I think that the answer lies in high energy environmentalism. If we are to live on a clean planet then cheap and clean energy is the only reasonable means I see to getting there. I can’t support starving people to fight AGW, but I recognize we have to do something and quickly. We can’t wait another century as I had thought — we must start now.
No matter what the fellow at True Slant says you have to admire The Sandpit from the sheer amount of labor and love that went into it. Just because Bill likes the scenery chewing Snowstorm as an actor better than both Night and Day doesn’t mean that Coney Island is really better. I mean some people like William Shatner more than the whole cast of Firefly because it’s just so much easier to understand where Shatner is headed no matter what the scene calls for.
I still prefer The Sandpit but would others like it better if it had an occasional close up of someone’s tatts and some sidewalks and a rainstorm? Hard to say. Much more on how The Sandpit was made in this interview with the artist. More on Tilt shift lenses and process at Wikipedia.
The Sandpit from Sam O'Hare on Vimeo.
There are a lot of synergies at work here – “A flicker and it’s gone” is sung as we see the night lit construction scene at ground zero, and for some others there are probably strange flash backs as different scenes take them back to chapters in Grand Theft Auto IV.
Tonight’s moon – these moon photos I post are pretty large, so when you click on the thumbnail to blow it up, try ctrl and the plus key together a few times to see the real definition.
This is our pale blue dot — ours but for a moment in vast cosmic time.
In the mounting brouhaha over Marco Rubio’s personal expenses being charged to GOP credit cards Hot air has been fast to leap to the defense; after all the darling of the CPAC convention is a true fiscal conservative in the “Duke” Randall Cunningham and J.D. Hayworth mold…
See TNR for more:
Florida Republican Senate candidate Marco Rubio charged grocery bills, car repairs and a number of other personal expenses to a GOP-issued credit card during his tenure as speaker of the state’s House, according to a report in the Miami Herald.
The take on this from Charles Crist, Rubio’s opponent here
Florida Dems call for an Independent prosecutor and corruption probe after Sansom resignation.
It appears Rubio double billed the state for some flights as well.
Rubio: It might have been my staffers…. there’s some of that personal responsibility that “True Conservatives” are always harping about…
Rubio’s barber less expensive than Edwards — the definition of fiscal conservatism
Scientists believe that the strange formations of the Icepaw range that resemble a demonic lion’s face or J.D. Hayworth talking about birth certificates were actually created by a large meteor shower. In this aerial photo you can see the formations completely. Local Legend has it that the Spirit of Kasey created them as she chased the evil Squirrell god across the plains….
/ seriously this is a retouched photo of Kasey’s pawprints in ice on my patio…
Here’s a video from NASA data that details some of the factors behind AGW.
For much more information go to Nasa’s Warming World
page.
