Oh, brother. This guy has no understanding of climate science… much like most people who deny the reality of it.
Climate change denial has become a litmus test for modern Republicans, but Rick Santorum, in his fondness for melding faith and government, has become one of the precious few to cite the Bible as evidence that the science-accepting crowd has it all wrong — and apparently the first to bring that thinking to the presidential stage.“We were put on this Earth as creatures of God to have dominion over the Earth, to use it wisely and steward it wisely, but for our benefit not for the Earth’s benefit,” Santorum told a Colorado crowd earlier this month.He went on to call climate change “an absolute travesty of scientific research that was motivated by those who, in my opinion, saw this as an opportunity to create a panic and a crisis for government to be able to step in and even more greatly control your life.”
Let me break this down a little:
We were put on this Earth as creatures of God to have dominion over the Earth
No, we weren’t. We evolved on Earth, just like every other living thing here. We are not special biologically, no god had anything to do with it, and there’s no evidence that one exists or had any hand in our development. There’s CERTAINLY no evidence that any god put us here to “have dominion,” and the idea that one did is part of the reason we’re so destructive.
He went on to call climate change “an absolute travesty of scientific research that was motivated by those who, in my opinion, saw this as an opportunity to create a panic and a crisis for government to be able to step in and even more greatly control your life.”
This conspiracy theory still blows my mind. Who, exactly, in the government has power to create such a conspiracy, convince 99% of scientists in the field to agree to it, and what do all of those people gain from that government control? It’s not like there’s one person who gets to run the whole government, some kind of king or something, so I still don’t understand what these supposed conspirators (and there would be, by the way, thousands of them all over the world) have to gain.
And the former Pennsylvania senator doubled down Monday, declaring that, “Unlike the Earth, we’re intelligent, and we can actually manage things.”
That’s rich. What, exactly, have we succeeded in managing better than the natural processes on this planet that have seemed to keep things going for billions of years? We’re overpopulated, many of us are sick with curable diseases, many others are starving or homeless or being raped and beaten and killed on a daily basis, often in the name of Rick Santorum’s god.
But lest you believe Santorum’s thinking is hitherto unseen in the GOP. Rep. John Shimkus, in a 2009 congressional hearing, cited the Book of Genesis as evidence that climate change is a hoax, pointing out that God promised Noah that he won’t destroy the Earth because of man’s wickedness.
Laughable, until you realize some of these people are serious. If you do have to be serious about this in a response, I suppose it would be too simple to point out that climate change won’t “destroy the earth,” or you could argue that climate change wouldn’t be a god destroying anything due to “man’s wickedness,” but man doing the destruction himself. Their god supposedly promised not to destroy the earth to punish us, but he never said he’d prevent us from doing so ourselves.
via Santorum Takes Climate Change Denial To A Biblical Level | TPM2012.
Can we assume that if this is happening in the UK, it either already is or soon will happen in the US? Maybe since 2001?
Phone and email records to be stored in new spy plan – Telegraph.
Landline and mobile phone companies and broadband providers will be ordered to store the data for a year and make it available to the security services under the scheme.
The databases would not record the contents of calls, texts or emails but the numbers or email addresses of who they are sent and received by.
For the first time, the security services will have widespread access to information about who has been communicating with each other on social networking sites such as Facebook.
Direct messages between subscribers to websites such as Twitter would also be stored, as well as communications between players in online video games.
The Home Office is understood to have begun negotiations with internet companies in the last two months over the plan, which could be officially announced as early as May.
Evan gives us the rundown:
Very neatly, and on three separate fronts, conservatives in America turned the clock back to the 1950s with their rhetoric about women’s rights Thursday, according to women in politics on both sides of the aisle. This could be a big problem for the GOP when the calendar reaches November.
Foster Friess, the billionaire backer of Rick Santorum’s campaign, became an instant celebrity when he went on Andrea Mitchell’s MSNBC show and said, “Back in my day, they used Bayer aspirin for contraceptives. The gals put it between their knees and it wasn’t that costly.”
So there you have it: modern women being told by Republicans that they’re not qualified to talk about their own sexual health, are dressed like “whores” and probably need birth control because they’re so slutty. And this is just in one day.
via How The GOP Went Back To The 1950s In Just One Day | TPM2012.
Woo! 7 down…
Washingtons Gov. Chris Gregoire is signing a gay marriage bill into law at a ceremony right now, meaning same-sex couples will likely be able to get married there beginning June 7. Watch her speaking here. “Were here to make history,” she said at a signing event. Washington will now be the 7th state to have legalized gay marriage. Passage has been pretty smooth since the bill was introduced this month, but it has also yielded some emotional rallying moments for the gay community, such as this speech which went viral, of State Rep. Maureen Walsh describing her emotional decision to vote in favor of the bill.
via Washingtons Governor Signs Gay Marriage Into Law – Yahoo! News.
Obama tries to quell birth-control furor – Carrie Budoff Brown and Glenn Thrush – POLITICO.com.
It is insane how difficult I’m finding it to just figure out exactly what the birth control mandate says. Pretty much all I can find is articles about how religious organizations are angry about it.
Great… but could you tell me what it says, exactly?
Daily Kos: Unicorn sighting: a political compromise that makes both sides happy.
After spending a week of hearing opportunistic Republicans scream about “war on religion”, President Barack Obama announced a compromise that, quite shockingly, is making everyone (except for opportunistic and hypocritical Republicans) happy!
Remember, the parties in question here were the federal government and the Catholic hospitals. And what have those Catholic hospitalssaid?
The president of the Catholic Health Association, a trade group representing Catholic hospitals that had fought against the birth control requirement, said the organization was pleased with the revised rule.
“The framework developed has responded to the issues we identified that needed to be fixed,” Sister Carol Keehan said in a statement.
Meh, I’d rather he had avoided the compromise… but oh well.
Note that the approval ratings graph creates a fish. Obama’s trying to co-opt the “Jesus Fish” from Christians and steal it for his own atheist-muslim-socialist-communist agenda!
Last month, the Obama administration announced that it was going forward with its new rule, under the Affordable Care Act, requiring health insurers to cover contraception without co-pays, as recommended by the Institute of Medicine, a move resisted by Catholic bishops and other Church leaders across the country, who have been complaining that this somehow violates their religious freedom.Today, on MSNBCs Morning Joe, Obama adviser David Axelrod said that the administration is still trying “to find a resolution that makes sense” to these Church leaders, that it wants to “resolve it in an appropriate way,” and that it wants to “work through these issues in a thoughtful way.”This, despite the fact that the administration has, for months, been working with the Catholic leaders who are outraged—outraged!—that women in this country will be receiving full, comprehensive health care through their insurers.
via Daily Kos: Obama administration needs to stand with women, not Catholic bishops, on health care.
Intensive exploitation has much reduced population numbers of this species over the last three to four centuries. Of the original three gray whale populations, one is extinct in the North Atlantic, one is critically endangered in the Western North Pacific (with as few as 130 individuals remaining), and one has recovered from very low levels in the Eastern North Pacific and was removed from the U.S. Endangered Species List in 1994.
Honorable Representatives of the state of Indiana,I am quite dismayed to learn of the passage of SB 89 which will give Indiana school boards the authority to require the teaching of various origin stories in public schools. There are several reasons I feel this is an inappropriate action for our state to take.First, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in 1987 in Edwards v. Aguillard that balanced treatment of creationism and evolution violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. Then in 2005 the U.S. District Court in Pennsylvania ruled against the inclusion of Intelligent Design in the science curriculum. As Judge Jones wrote, “To be sure, Darwins theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions. The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy.” Now it appears that the citizens of Indiana are being poorly served. If this becomes law, our citizens will have to foot the bill for the lawsuits that will certainly ensue.Second, I appreciate Indianas need to educate our citizens about the beliefs and cultures of our planets people. Our students would greatly benefit from learning about the multitude of worldviews that exist, in a philosophy or comparative religion class. Such understanding would make our citizens better prepared for international commerce and political discourse. I do not believe that SB 89 was introduced for this reason, however. The implication is that the introduction of various religious beliefs would take place in the science class room. As a biologist and science teacher, I understand the evidence for evolution is as strong as the evidence for any other theory we teach. I also understand that religious belief is based on faith, which by definition requires no evidence. I do not comprehend how exposing my students to ideas based, not on evidence, but faith could constitute good science education. When I read that this bill will allow school boards to require the teaching of “theories from multiple religions”, I interpret this to indicate that a school board may specify which religions may be taught. Two constitutes “multiple”, so if a school board so chose, they could require teachers to teach Christian and Jewish creation ideas only, which are essentially the same. This would not serve to enlighten students on the diversity of ideas, but to reinforce ideas that either they already hold or that they will find in conflict with their beliefs. In either case, it could set students at odds with each other, while not teaching any science at all.If I am misinterpreting the spirit of this bill, please change the language to indicate that this is not to be applied to science classes, and/or specify which religions views must be taught if the local school board chooses to require this. In my opinion, if this is to be done in any way consistent with spirit of the Establishment Clause, all religious views must be taught. In this case, teachers will not be able to cover the state science standards in 180 days and also teach religion.Third, the misunderstanding of the word theory in the bill is a sad indication of the ignorance of the authors. In science, the word “theory” does not mean an “idea”. A theory is an explanation for how something happens, based on a great deal of research which has been reviewed, published, tested, re-tested, accepted by most scientists in the field, and not yet disproven. No religion has a “theory” of the origins of life that meets the criteria we require to give an idea the full weight of the title “theory” in science. I would be happy to speak with any representative who would like to learn more about what the theory of evolution actually says and what evidence supports it.Sincerely,Indiana High School Science Teacher
