Please do me a favor and look out the window a sec. I’ll wait.
OK, what color was the sky?
The difference is that it’s easy enough to find votes where the more conservative of the two parties voted heavily against safety regulations, while the more liberal of the two parties voted heavily for it.
While the “liberals want to break into our homes and steal our guns away”…
It sure is. Yes, there are SOME liberals out there who’d probably like to do that, you’ve got to go well to the left of anyone electable to a Congressional seat.
Rush is obviously an idiot. Now that the transcript of his stupidity has been posted, we can all marvel at how uninformed he is and depends on his listeners to be. Here’s the part that disgusted me:
[QUOTE=Rush Limbaugh]
There’s natural seepage into oceans all over the world from the ocean floor of oil – and the ocean’s pretty tough, it just eats it up. Dr. Spencer looked into this. You know the seepage from the floor of the Gulf is exactly 5,000 barrels a day, throughout the whole Gulf of Mexico now. It doesn’t seep out all in one giant blob like this thing has, but the bottom line here is: Even places that have been devastated by oil slicks like… What was that place up in Alaska where the guy was drunk, ran a boat aground? (interruption) Prince William Sound. They were wiping off the rocks with Dawn dishwater detergent and paper towels and so forth. The place is pristine now.
[/QUOTE]
My bolding. Never mind that he perpetuates the incorrect idea that a drunken sailor ran the Valdez aground (conveniently leaving out Exxon’s culpability for leaving necessary navigational equipment unrepaired and unused), he claims that Prince William Sound is now pristine!
It’s not. Although NOAA concludes that the ecosystem has made a significant recovery, the impact of the spill and resulting cleanup can still be measured:
[QUOTE=NOAA]
Although the Sound has proved to be surprisingly resilient, impacts from the spill remain:
Deeply penetrated oil continues to visibly leach from a few beaches, as on Smith Island.
In some areas, intertidal animals, such as mussels, are still contaminated by oil, affecting not only the mussels but any animals (including people) that eat them.
Some rocky sites that were stripped of heavy plant cover by high-pressure, hot-water cleaning remain mostly bare rock.
Rich clam beds that suffered high mortalities from oil and extensive beach cleaning have not recolonized to their previous levels.
While these are isolated examples, they provide a basis for gaging the overall recovery of oiled areas. Prince William Sound has made a remarkable recovery from a severe injury, but it remains an ecosystem in transition.
[/QUOTE]
Of course, it stands to reason that as not all spills are the same is breadth and depth (this one represents many more millions of gallons of oil than Valdez and is a different type), likewise, not all ecosystems are the same. Further, the Gulf ecosystem is so much more significant than the PWS in terms of human dependence on it for fisheries, the impact on us is much more significant. Rush couldn’t possibly care about all those hard-working fisherman whose livelihoods are at risk, it would seem.
I’ve got a couple things to say. One, Monkey with a Gun is wrong in that Rush isn’t responsible for conservatives being ridiculed. Stupid non-solutions are responsible for conservatives being ridiculed.
Two, Tom Tomorrow is correct in that conservatives are anti-regulation. Ask Bohner, he’ll tell you.
“Well, I read about that online… oh, just a web site I read… it’s noth… well, since you must know… it’s The Straight Dope, and a post… well, yeah, I do like their forum… why are you looking at me… what’s going on… oh, that. Yes. Yes, it IS the forum where the guy drew Rush Limbaugh getting sexually assaulted by a dolphin. But… guys? Guys? Wait up…”
Christ. Did you read the OP? You just strawmaned me! Read it again, you posted a mis-characterization.
You morons. Put your partisanship down and think.
But I forget my story. So the only one who can get George’s semi tame racoon out of the pen and into the woodshop tube to get Bob the tailess cat out is Susan, George’s Vet-Tech sister. Susan sleeps around a lot, though, so she was busy. I don’t mean “she sleeps around” as in a slut - she’s a narcoleptic. I was bowling with her once and she fell asleep in the middle of the seventh frame. I didn’t have sex with her though on account of the bowling shoes.
I’ll be forgiving, but if you test me I’ll go right back to the wood shop story.
Don’t be such an idiot that your own viewpoint blinds you to political bias. Use critical thinking. You will just end up like the Tea Party idiots that think Fox News is the biblical word of God. A Modern World is a political strip that is carried only, and I mean only in the most liberal alternative papers. To argue that it is unbiased is absurd.
Strawman. Nobody argued that it was unbiased. We have argued that it is not an unfunny mirror image of Mallard Filmore that relies on strawmanning conservative positions to support the artist’s message.
A bias does not automatically mean a dishonest approach to arguing one’s position. And the hyperbole associated with political satire does not necessarily rise to the level of a strawman.
Okay stupid, reread what we’re talking about. You said that Rush created a situation where conservative ideas are ridiculed. I said that it isn’t Rush, conservative ideas are ridiculed because they are not based in reality and do not actually get things done.
Conservative Ideas:
Abstinence only education: Stupid, doesn’t work.
Cutting the deficit in time of huge recession: Stupid, doesn’t work.
Allowing purchasing of Health Insurance across states lines: Stupid, creates race to the bottom.
Teaching Creationism: Stupid, makes American children unable to compete globally.
These, and other ideas aren’t ridiculed because Rush says them. They are ridiculed because only a stupid person would champion them.
Also, shrieking Straw-Man at everything doesn’t create the impression that you know how to debate. It makes you look like a fucking idiot.
So I finally got George’s narcoleptic sister Susan back to the shop to wrangle the three legged semi tame racoon into the tube to flush Bob the tailless cat out. But what I neglected to mention is that we were growing a bunch of tomatoes out back and maybe using too much fertilizer. When we get back to the shop, Susan gets in the tube with the three legged cat and then this D and R guy (Department of Natural Resources) shows up to bitch about our plant care. The cat’s screaming, the three legged racoon’s screaming, Susan is screaming at the D and R guy from inside the tube, and I’m laughing. Susan, being a narcoleptic, falls asleep just as Homeland Security shows up. They taze the D and R guy on account of all the nitrates that are out back.
Hope they spell my name right on the plaque…
