And in so blowing---as in, smoke up his tookus---the
Time magazine columnist reveals the difference between the left and the right with crystal clarity.
This is Joe's vision of wingnuts on the left and the right. The lefty wingnut is a world-respected environmental leader. The righty wingnut sees Hurricane Katrina as a giant...
Well, follow me below. And, uh...better leave the kids with the butler.
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From this week's Time magazine comes this gem from Busta Joey K:
As the floodwaters rose in New Orleans last week, a group called Columbia Christians for Life announced that it had discerned God's purpose in the storm: the destruction of the five abortion clinics in the city. The proof was a radar photograph showing that the hurricane "looks like a fetus facing to the left (west) in the womb, in the early weeks of gestation." A photo of a 6-week fetus was helpfully provided for comparison.
At the other end of the political spectrum, environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was blaming the hurricane on ... Haley Barbour, the Governor of Mississippi, who played a "central role ... derailing the Kyoto Protocol" on global warming. Kennedy's larger point was defensible--global warming may well cause extreme weather patterns--but the implication that one man and one (flawed) treaty might have prevented this storm seemed a bit much.
Foolish reactions are inevitable in moments of disaster.
Let's see. The conservative example is a group of fundamentalist knuckledraggers who say Hurricane Katrina was God's revenge for legalized abortion...a group that sees A FETUS IN A SATELLITE PHOTO OF A HURRICANE.
The liberal example is an environmental expert RESPECTED AROUND THE WORLD FOR HIS EFFORTS TO PROTECT THE PLANET...who called out the conservative Governor of a hurricane-ravaged state for ignoring the all-too-real threat posed by global warming.
Let's take a look at an excerpt from Kennedy's mad rant:
In March of 2001, just two days after EPA Administrator Christie Todd Whitman's strong statement affirming Bush's CO2 promise [promising to regulate CO2 emissions,] former RNC Chief Barbour responded with an urgent memo to the White House.
[snip]
"A moment of truth is arriving," Barbour wrote, "in the form of a decision whether this Administration's policy will be to regulate and/or tax CO2 as a pollutant. The question is whether environmental policy still prevails over energy policy with Bush-Cheney, as it did with Clinton-Gore." He derided the idea of regulating CO2 as "eco-extremism," and chided them for allowing environmental concerns to "trump good energy policy, which the country has lacked for eight years."
[snip]
Well, the science is clear. This month, a study published in the journal Nature by a renowned MIT climatologist linked the increasing prevalence of destructive hurricanes to human-induced global warming.
Okay, hold that thought.
Hold it.
Hoooooold it.
Ok, quick! Click here to see Fetus Katrina!
Joe Klein blows. And I'm damn proud to be on the reality-based end of the spectrum.
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