Then I clicked on the web, and there was this stunningly stupid comment from Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) arguing against the cap and trade bill to reduce carbon emissions. Get this -- he says that we don't need to worry about CO2. It's harmless.
I'm creating it as I talk to you. It's in your Coca-Cola. your Dr. Pepper and your Perrier water. It's necessary for human life. It's odorless, colorless, tasteless, doesn't cause cancer, doesn't cause asthma. There's nobody that's ever been admitted to a hospital because of CO2 poisoning.But what we're worried about here is not CO2 poisoning human beings. We're concerned about what the large industrial emissions do to the atmosphere, trapping heat and contributing to global warming that is already changing the geography as well as the climate of our planet.
It just shows that any idiot with a fixed idea can find some partisan group to feed him talking points, in this case he quoted the Heritage Foundation.
Would it be antithetical to our democratic processes to require people running for Congress to at least have normal intelligence and to pass a test of critical thinking? To protect the public, we require tests for all kinds of professions. Why not a test for competency to be in Congress?
Be as ideologically partisan as you want -- just don't be stupid.
Ralph
PS: And besides this being a stupid argument, it's also very wrong. It's true our bodies make CO2 and we breathe it out; when we are unable to breathe adequately, CO2 accumulates in our bodies and does in fact have very bad effects.
Barney Frank's point was that the federal government paid out millions of dollars to ACORN during the Bush administration to support their housing project. So why didn't she complain then about federal money going to ACORN?
ReplyDeleteMichele kept saying the government shouldn't be paying money to outside groups. Barney said, I agree. We have government agencies to do this, like HUD. But the Republicans keep insisting that we contract out to the private sector rather than expanding government programs.
Michele says, I agree, we shouldn't be paying out money to groups like this.
Excuse me, Michele, please explain the difference between ACORN working to get housing for poor people and churches running rehab programs under the bush faith-based initiatives. I assume you support the latter?
Of course, the real, but unstated, difference here is that Michele was objecting to the ACORN voter-registration drives and Barney was smartly focusing his rebuttal on the ACORN housing projects.
ReplyDeleteThe Republican objection to ACORN was catalyzed during the last election cycle because they were registering large numbers of mostly Democratic voters. And unfortunately some of the ACORN workers did falsify some of the voter records. But, it should be added, these were low-level workers who were being paid a fee for each registration, so some of them simply padded their records to collect more fees.
It was not a case of fraud by policy. Can our side also use the "bad apple" defense? But it gave the Repubican argument about voter-fraud some ammunition and gave ACORN a black mark.