underlankers ([info]underlankers) wrote in [info]talk_politics,
2011-03-01 16:14:00
One topic that keeps recurring in the United States is the idea that the government should teach in public schools a narrowly defined religious--political viewpoint that blends together the worst traits of Ayn Rand's Objectivism with the ideas of 19th Century and later Protestant Fundamentalism. In a characteristically US fashion it blends a skullduggery-ridden practice and ideological end with an obnoxious favoring of malarkey over reality.

One interesting aspect of this has been that particularly under the last administration there has been a much-publicized and well-decried attempt to censor climatology to suit political agendas:

http://go.ucsusa.org/RSI_list/index.php

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/03/17/60minutes/main1415985.shtml

Too, due to the similarly religious-mammonistic correlation so often seen in US politics, the Bush Administration decided that some biological experiments just ain't worth it:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2006/jul/20/genetics.usnews

And everyone saw this, and declared it deplorable and a sign that under George W. Bush the USA was sliding slowly and inexorably to the day when the legions in khaki pants and white shirts would be marching and shouting "Freedom!" at the top of their lungs to the Dear Leader from Connecticut the lying carpetbagger-er Texas.

Yet science and honest reporting of scientific realities of key importance have been toyed with under the new guy, too:

http://www.naturalnews.com/029130_Gulf_of_Mexico_censorship.html

http://www1.wsws.org/articles/2010/jul2010/pers-j06.shtml

http://lecanadian.com/2010/06/15/gulf-oil-spill-censorship-film-maker-reports-obama-administration-threatens-camera-people-and-reporters-with-arrests/

http://readmylipsticknetwork.blogspot.com/2010/07/obama-admin-censoring-oil-spill.html

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/Eco/bp-oil-spill-national-significance-obama-administration/story?id=10509844

http://sadhillnews.com/tag/oil-spill-cleanup


Yet outside of a narrow domestic set of news-gatherers and quite a few foreign ones, the outrage over the Obama Administration's politicization of both science and the degree to which the BP Spill still directly affects people in the United States has been quite muted, even on FOX, where Wisconsin union strikers are secretly agents of El-Baradei, avatar of Nyarlathotep. This has interested me on several levels, just as the selective amnesia about three bombing raids over the No-Fly Zones in the 1990s does. However this one is much more personal, and where the worst cases of climate change and its effects put them off for a century or so, this is affecting people in the USA right the Hell now.

So my question is a simple, sincere one: Why is it that George Bush vetoing stem cell research and monkeying with climatology was a threat to all we hold dear but the Obama Administration's very BP-friendly policies here on the Gulf are not? In my view, the answer as always is that "evil is only something the other guys do" but I'm curious as to how other people see this.
Tags: environment, gwb, science, stem cell

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  • 60 comments

[info]eracerhead

March 1 2011, 22:27:06 UTC 1 year ago

You really believe that denying the entire science of climatology and keeping people 65 feet from toxic cleanup areas are equivalent?

Then you must also believe a coronary is equivalent to a stubbed toe because they are both medical conditions.

[info]underlankers

March 1 2011, 22:38:29 UTC 1 year ago

Not merely keeping people away, turning a blind eye to the corporations actually imprisoning people without so much as a fig leaf as to why.

[info]eracerhead

March 1 2011, 23:39:13 UTC 1 year ago

Where does it say that BP locked people up in prison?

[info]underlankers

1 year ago

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[info]eracerhead

1 year ago

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[info]underlankers

1 year ago

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[info]telemann

March 1 2011, 22:29:55 UTC 1 year ago Edited:  March 1 2011, 22:30:33 UTC

but the Obama Administration's very BP-friendly policies here on the Gulf are not?

Cue the chorus blaming Obama when gasoline prices hit 5.00 a gallon in a few weeks; but not not a peep at manipulation of the commodities market by investment banks such as Goldman-Sachs (apparently they had a large role in the oil price spikes in 2008).

[info]underlankers

March 1 2011, 22:38:00 UTC 1 year ago

Natchurly.

[info]rasilio

March 1 2011, 22:56:38 UTC 1 year ago

Given the extent to which Goldman Sachs owns Obama they are pretty much one in the same.

[info]telemann

March 1 2011, 22:59:10 UTC 1 year ago

Hurr

[info]anfalicious

March 2 2011, 08:52:32 UTC 1 year ago

Durr

[info]telemann

1 year ago

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[info]abomvubuso

March 2 2011, 11:19:03 UTC 1 year ago

Well...

[info]telemann

1 year ago

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[info]abomvubuso

1 year ago

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[info]telemann

1 year ago

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[info]badlydrawnjeff

March 1 2011, 23:20:02 UTC 1 year ago

The gas prices are up because of Obama's oil buddies, right? He's just enriching his friends or something?

[info]telemann

March 1 2011, 23:26:48 UTC 1 year ago

He's got oil buddies?

[info]badlydrawnjeff

1 year ago

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[info]telemann

1 year ago

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[info]badlydrawnjeff

1 year ago

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[info]telemann

1 year ago

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[info]badlydrawnjeff

1 year ago

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[info]telemann

1 year ago

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[info]badlydrawnjeff

1 year ago

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[info]telemann

1 year ago

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[info]badlydrawnjeff

1 year ago

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[info]squidb0i

1 year ago

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[info]mijopo

March 1 2011, 22:31:17 UTC 1 year ago

Dude, why not just write a clear post without yet another tortured convoluted half-baked comparison. I'll bet there's a clear simple point or real question here hiding under all the inflated rhetoric and link dumps but I can't be arsed to try to figure it out, frankly.

[info]meus_ovatio

March 1 2011, 22:34:05 UTC 1 year ago

I can't even begin to read the first half of his sentences...

[info]underlankers

March 1 2011, 22:37:50 UTC 1 year ago

Frankly you're one to talk given half the comments to your posts are "explain your thoughts, O Wise One, that we may understand what the fuck you're talking about."

[info]mijopo

March 1 2011, 22:40:56 UTC 1 year ago

Well, takes one to know one, I guess, eh?

[info]underlankers

1 year ago

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[info]russj

March 1 2011, 22:46:05 UTC 1 year ago

Follow the money

It is inevitable that when government provides the funding, the product becomes politicized.
  • Education
  • Science
  • Medicine
  • News
  • Arts
  • Television
  • Radio

These people know that they have to please the people who sign their paychecks.

This is the best reason to privatize the above things and not to let government do them.

[info]underlankers

March 1 2011, 22:55:41 UTC 1 year ago

I disagree:

Privatized education is not capable of working at the entire level that it is required to, certainly not for the general population.

[info]rasilio

March 1 2011, 23:22:19 UTC 1 year ago

Re: I disagree:

And your proof (or even evidence) for such an assertion?

Because right now it just sounds like an opinion to me.

[info]underlankers

1 year ago

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[info]ddstory

March 1 2011, 23:53:27 UTC 1 year ago

Re: Follow the money

And that would somehow guarantee that these spheres wouldn't get politicized, how?

[info]underlankers

March 1 2011, 23:55:02 UTC 1 year ago

Re: Follow the money

My guess is like most Republicans he believes sincerely that non-state bureaucracies are more responsive than state bureaucracies.

[info]ddstory

1 year ago

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[info]underlankers

1 year ago

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[info]ddstory

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[info]underlankers

1 year ago

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[info]ddstory

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[info]underlankers

1 year ago

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[info]ddstory

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[info]underlankers

1 year ago

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[info]ddstory

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[info]underlankers

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[info]ddstory

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[info]underlankers

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[info]ddstory

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[info]squidb0i

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[info]underlankers

1 year ago

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[info]squidb0i

March 2 2011, 06:10:08 UTC 1 year ago

Re: Follow the money

"It is inevitable that when government provides the funding, the product becomes politicized."

Horse shit. This presupposes that there is some continuous ideological agenda permeating all gov't funded activities.

[info]l555l

March 2 2011, 01:40:50 UTC 1 year ago

BP fucked up, but the company has to be held together for the government to sue them properly in a few years.

[info]underlankers

March 2 2011, 01:44:30 UTC 1 year ago

Actually I thought the party of true Americans and sticking up for the Little Guy apologized to the corporation ruining our shores?

[info]l555l

March 2 2011, 01:53:22 UTC 1 year ago

One would hope not. The US needs to sue them for the cleanup/long term damage costs.

And of course, the undead corpses of 1000's of sea-bed creatures need to rise up in some sci-fi type movie scenario as revenge for what happened.

[info]panookah

March 2 2011, 05:40:46 UTC 1 year ago

"evil is only something the other guys do"

Of course. Why would anyone do something that they themselves think is evil? Everyone is guided by good intentions. Or at least most of us are.
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