Bullshit // Current TV

Arms Dealer Obama Will Win by Default

Barack Obama will be re-elected not as a vindication of his policies but because the Republicans are incapable of providing a reasonable challenge to his flawed performance. On the central issue of our time—reining in the greed of the multinational corporations, led by the financial sector and the defense industry—a Republican presidential victor, with the possible exception of the now-sidelined Ron Paul, would do far less to challenge the kleptocracy of corporate-dominated governance.

As compared to front-runner Mitt Romney, who wants to derail even Obama’s tepid efforts at regulating Wall Street, and who seeks ever more wasteful increases in military spending, the incumbent president appears relatively enlightened, but that is cold comfort.

Not only has Obama been a savior of the banking conglomerates that so generously financed his campaign, but he also has proved to be equally as solicitous of the needs of the military-industrial complex. He entered his re-election year by signing a $662 billion defense authorization bill that strips away some of our most fundamental liberties and keeps military spending at Cold War levels, and by approving a $60 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia.

Those two actions represent an obvious contradiction, since the attack on American soil that kept defense spending so high in the post-9/11 decade was carried out by 15 Saudis and four other men directed by Osama bin Laden, a wealthy Saudi primarily using funding from his native land. Now Saudi Arabia is to be protected as a holdout against the democratic impulse of the Arab Spring because it is our ally against Iran, a nation that had nothing to do with 9/11. Saudi Arabia, it should be recalled, was one of only three nations, along with the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan, to recognize the Taliban government that harbored bin Laden before 9/11.

This is the same Saudi monarchy that rushed its forces into Bahrain last March to crush a popular uprising. But that doesn’t trouble the Obama administration; for two years it has been aggressively pushing the Saudi arms deal, which includes $30 billion in fighter jets built by Boeing. Forget human rights or the other good stuff Democrats love to prattle on about. As White House spokesman Josh Earnest put it: “This agreement reinforces the strong and enduring relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia and demonstrates the U.S. commitment to a strong Saudi defense capability as a key component to regional security.”

The rationale for the first big arms deal with the tyrannical Saudi monarchy since 1992 is that a better-armed Sunni theocracy is needed to counter the threat from the Shiite theocracy in Iran. Once again the U.S. is stoking religious-based fratricide, just as we did in Iraq. Only this time, we are on the side of Saudi Sunnis oppressing Shiites both at home and in neighboring Bahrain. That oppression—along with a U.S. invasion that replaced Tehran’s sworn enemy in Sunni-led Baghdad with a Shiite leadership that had long been nurtured by Iran’s ayatollahs—is what enhances the regional influence of Iran.

If Iran ever does pose a regional military threat because of its nuclear program or any other reason, real or concocted, it will be NATO forces that will take out the threat, not the Saudis, who will still be polishing their latest-model F-15s as icons of a weird conception of modernism.

The real reason for this deal is that it is the only sort of jobs program that Democrats are capable of pushing through an obstructive Congress. The administration boasts that the arms package will result in 50,000 jobs in 44 states, underscoring the warning from Dwight Eisenhower, the last progressive Republican president, about the power of a military-industrial complex that has tentacles in every congressional district. As Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, an Armed Services Committee member who championed this sale, put it: “The F-15 is a world-class aircraft built by hardworking folks right here in St. Louis. I am thrilled for all of the skilled men and women on the F-15 line that this important, big order that I have stood side-by-side with them in working to secure is finally happening.”

A Democrat running for re-election, McCaskill added, “These are important jobs in our community. I will continue advocating for sales of Boeing products wherever appropriate.” Being a good Democrat, she doesn’t reference Boeing’s profits, which are increasingly dependent upon arming the rest of the world.

That’s the win-win of government-generated profits and jobs on which the Democrats are counting to defeat the Republicans, both through campaign contributions from the more rational among the wealthy and the votes of ordinary people who, despite being seriously hurt in this economy, have nowhere else to turn.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/arms_dealer_obama_will_win_by_default_20120105/Barack Obama will be re-elected not as a vindication of his policies but because the... more

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Ron Paul suggests he wouldn't have aided UK against Nazi Germany

Texas Rep. Ron Paul bashed neoconservatives Monday and said that he wouldn’t use taxpayer money to aid an ally even if it was in mortal danger.*

Paul made the comment while taking questions from the press after he unveiled his economic plan to a raucous crowd of supporters at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. Part of Paul’s economic proposal calls for an end to foreign aid. In light of that, The Daily Caller asked Paul whether he would support aid to an ally that was in “mortal danger,” such as when America provided aid through Lend-Lease to Great Britain (and other countries) to fight Nazi Germany, starting before American entry into World War II.

“I would let the banks make their own decisions, I wouldn’t prohibit them. But I wouldn’t take money from these people to give it,” he said, referring to taking tax money from the audience.

Paul went on to criticize foreign aid more generally as “taking money from poor people in this country and giving it to the rich people in those poor countries.” He also said choosing sides in conflicts abroad is often futile.

“This administration is getting involved in Uganda now!” he exclaimed. “What I am convinced of is that when you pick up foreign aid and send it to these countries, you say, ‘well, yes, you can’t be so cold and heartless, these people are starving, why can’t we just send them food and help them out.’ Well, it turns out they are always fighting!”

Asked by a member of the press to address criticism from “neoconservatives” and “foreign policy hawks” who suggest Paul is too liberal on foreign policy, Paul expressed bafflement at what he views as the changing definition of conservatism.

“We have to be careful on our definitions because there was a time when conservative meant you didn’t want to spend money,” he said. (RELATED: Paul promises to save $1 trillion in first year of his presidency)

Paul then proceeded to bash neoconservative foreign policy proposals.

“It sounds like neoconservatives want endless wars and they don’t want the Congress to make decisions,” he said. “They want the president to go to wars at will and that money has no bearing.”

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/10/17/ron-paul-suggests-he-wouldnt-have-aided-uk-against-nazi-germany-bashes-neoconservatives/#ixzz1bAiRiVIg

http://www.meredith.edu/summer-reading/roosevelt/images/411212DecofWarGerItal.jpgTexas Rep. Ron Paul bashed neoconservatives Monday and said that he wouldn’t use... more

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FOX's utter BS on climate science!

Joe Bastardi has become the go-to anti-scientist for Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News. But normally Bastardi doesn’t dress up his disinformation in this much blatant Charlie-Sheen-esque pseudoscience.

Those who watched Fox News over the weekend were treated to a brief but ambitious science lesson on “Why CO2 Can’t Cause Warming”:

Oh boy. Let’s take these one at a time.

During the segment Fox’s global warming expert, Joe Bastardi, who is employed by the WeatherBELL meteorological consulting firm, declared that the theory of human-induced climate change “contradicts what we call the 1st law of thermodynamics. Energy can be neither created nor destroyed. So to look for input of energy into the atmosphere, you have to come from a foreign source.”

It’s not clear what to conclude from this except that Fox and Bastardi are not familiar with the greenhouse effect. Climate scientists aren’t claiming that humans are creating energy. They’re saying that humans are trapping more energy by increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Duke University scientist William Chameides, who called Fox’s claims “utter nonsense,” explained via email:

It is true that global warming requires a source of heat. In this case it comes from the sun. What CO2 does is trap a larger amount of the heat from the sun, preventing it from escaping and thus driving up temperatures. To argue otherwise is to argue that the greenhouse effect does not exist. In fact the existence of the greenhouse effect was established by scientists more than a century ago. It would be impossible to explain the temperatures of Mars and Venus, as well as the Earth, without invoking this effect.

Bastardi went on to claim Le Chatelier’s Principle “says that any system in distress, physical or chemical in the atmosphere, tries to return toward normalcy. And that is why you’re seeing temperatures level off.”

In fact the notion of a system moving toward “normalcy,” or more accurately, toward a new “equilibrium,” explains why greenhouse gases do cause warming, rather than “Why CO2 Can’t Cause Warming.” By preventing infrared energy from efficiently escaping to space, increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere make it more difficult for the earth to maintain its previous energy balance, and thus its previous temperature.

Kevin Trenberth, Senior Scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, explained via email that the system “re-creates equilibrium” by heating up, since the surface and atmosphere radiate more at a higher temperature. As a result, “it reaches a new equilibrium but at a higher temperature,” he said, adding: “And of course we keep adding more CO2 so we have not reached that new state yet.”

Though it appears that Bastardi cites Le Chatelier’s Principle in a general sense and not in reference to any specific process, the principle does have implications for “the uptake of fossil fuel carbon by the ocean,” according to David Archer of the University of Chicago’s Department of Geophysical Sciences. He said, “Without Le Chatelier’s principle, the climate crisis would be much worse than it is, but even with this buffering, the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is rising and will continue to remain elevated for tens of thousands of years into the future. So to suggest that Le Chatelier’s principle is going to save us is wrong.” And the principle certainly doesn’t establish that “CO2 Can’t Cause Warming.”

And that’s not all Fox got wrong.

More at the linkJoe Bastardi has become the go-to anti-scientist for Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News.... more