oneampfuse

Rush Limbaugh, twice-divorced drug-addict conservative hero and welfare claimant, talks a lot of crap. Doubtless, he's not even finished with the lovingly Christian insinuation that the Clintons are mass murderers, muttering about 'Fort Marcy Park' to the gathering rage of his not at all confused listeners (see numbers 71 and 72). But what Rush Limbaugh talks the most crap about is science.

Rush's essential tactic is to find two 'scientific' statements that appear to contradict one other (or can be misrepresented to), and thus prove it's all a load of hooey. Creationists do this to argue that 'evolution' is 'just a theory with its own problems' and therefore no more valid than the 'theory' of creation. Primarily, Rush does it to show that human activity is not causing climate change (although 'science' in general, particularly as mediated by hacks, is always a ripe target).

Consider this summary of Rush's 'opinion' on the environment, [from his own website 19/9/ 2003]:

"Here's this hurricane stirring up the ocean hundreds and hundreds of miles away. We are fools if we think that what we do as humans effects climate,weather and everything else".

Today he has excelled himself. He has found an article from Newsweek which says
the world is getting colder. Crazy scientists! They spend most of their time drawing attention to their wacko anti-capitalist cause by claiming that the world is getting warmer! It's like watching Laurel & Hardy.

The newsweek article is from 1975.

In 2004, Laurel & Hardy seemed to have got their act together. If you are in any doubt, read Naomi Oreskes at Science magazine.

Relevant quotes:

"Policy-makers and the media, particularly in the United States, frequently assert that climate science is highly uncertain... ..Such statements suggest that there might be substantive disagreement in the scientific community about the reality of anthropogenic climate change. This is not the case."

"In its most recent assessment, IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) states unequivocally that the consensus of scientific opinion is that Earth's climate is being affected by human activities: "Human activities ... are modifying the concentration of atmospheric constituents ... that absorb or scatter radiant energy. ... [M]ost of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations".. ..
IPCC is not alone in its conclusions. In recent years, all major scientific bodies in the United States whose members' expertise bears directly on the matter have issued similar statements."

So Rush is wrong. Big surprise. Not by accident, however, but deliberately and maliciously: He had to go out of his way to reach these conclusions; via a 30-year-old magazine article. And this is not over minor issue. He's not misremembered a batting average.

And Rush isn't finished. There's more liberal evil to fight. Rush digs deep, going lower than anyone has gone before in search of liberal evil. On a day when 40,000 people have died, most of them children, Rush proclaims:

"Human Beings Cannot, Do Not Cause Tsunamis"

Do you think he's found a parchment claiming otherwise, or a medieval chapbook?

I hate those liberal soothsayers! HATE them! HATE THEM!

In this festive season, be thankful that Pat is still defending us from those awful liberals! Now this is staunch:

"Now Macy's has stopped using the phrase "Merry Christmas" in all store
advertising, replacing it with what Macy's calls the more inclusive "Season's
Greetings" and "Happy Holidays." But how is it "inclusive" to exclude the
Christians' greeting? Is that not anti-Christian?

.. Who is trying to kill Christmas? It needs to be said. What we are
witnessing here are hate crimes against Christianity."

What the Ape finds particularly disgraceful is liberals filling up kids with this god-hating [and/or non-denominational] muck. Like George Bush.

What the Jesus H Christ is he on?! "The Holidays are a wonderful and exciting time at the White House." It's the birth of baby Jesus that's exciting to me, you fucker.

I hate liberals. HATE them! HATE THEM!

The basic tactic of the GOP and their cheerleaders is the 'liberal' strawman. A person/ 'liberal' somewhere (in Germany maybe) is supposed to have said or done something a little kooky and ordinary/ decent/ god-fearing/ heterosexual/ bipedal Americans are under threat in a manner that is as serious as it is mysterious. In general, the liberals you've really got to watch out for are 'scientists', and the ones who respond to surveys.

As a rather 'liberal' monkey, the Ape does of course spend every spare moment trying to replace the word 'Christmas' with almost anything at all. But, as the RNC made clear in one of my favorite moments of 2004, only when he's finished banning the bible.

Merry Christmas!

"My grief at his passing is only matched by my delight at his death" - Jack Straw, according to satirical TV show Dead Ringers .

A few days ago "Dimebag" Darrell, guitarist for Damageplan and Pantera was murdered onstage by a gunman who killed three others before being shot himself. Very shocking news and certainly no occasion for frivolity, but I can't help feeling that the luminaries of the metal community that MTV quotes do not quite hit the right note. What does our reader think?

"I'm speechless...This is totally unreal. Dimebag is a fucking legend and this is total bullshit."
(former Rob Zombie/ Ozzy Osbourne bassist Rob Blasko Nicholson)

"This is insane and this is beyond travesty."
(Killswitch Engage frontman and former Damageplan tour partner Howard Jones)

"If this is allowed to happen, what the hell? What does that say?"
(Slipknot singer Corey Taylor)

- OTTO

"Already armed with 1,149,000 signatures and with thousands more pouring in from Holland since the murder of the film-maker Theo van Gogh, the group claims that most states want some reference to Christianity but were blocked by France." (Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, '1m Christians sign EU religion plea', The Daily Telegraph, 25 November 2004; p. 19)

Oh right.

The assumptions of this article, which was linked by Drudge when it appeared, are absolutely stunning:

1) That the fight against 'terra' is a religious one; i.e., not only a battle between freedom-luvin' liberal democracies and those who want to destroy them through, or benefit from, mass murder, BUT RATHER a battle between Christianity and Islam.

Very useful point of view that is. Helpful AND accurate.

Except I don't remember the Christians standing alongside the secularists when the Islamists threatened Salman Rushdie. On the contrary, they tut-tutted that a pointy-headed atheist could be permitted to insult one of the 'great religions' and suggested that their precious blasphemy law should be extended to cover other religions too.

2004 update!! Christian Democrat Dutch Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner has responded to the Theo van Gogh murder & subsequent tension with the same great idea! (Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 'Blasphemy law revival upsets the Dutch elite', The Daily Telegraph, 18 November 2004; p. 19) More firm application of the Dutch blasphemy law (which his grandfather wrote) will solve it! He said that the law would curb "hateful comments" about religion.

Because that's obviously the problem here. When you consider violent crime in depth, you usually find that it was the victim's fault. Bet the Dutch are glad that they've got a guy like him to hold the tiller.

2) That one of the world's most solidly Catholic countries, France, is fighting determinedly for the other side.
There is an undercurrent of thought here that you may not be aware of. It is very widely held amongst the American right that France (the country with the headscarf ban, remember) is supposedly leading the Islamification of Europe as it 'falls to the darkness', as Gandalf might say.

As though the people of BENELUX, Germany and the UK are clamouring for reinstatement of the medieval fantasia of Christendom--or, if they're not, presumably it is because they've already 'fallen'.

Ahem. An average of 1.16m people attend church each week in the UK, and if increasing that diminishing percentage is a good way of responding to the threat of Islamist violence, then I'm a haddock.

I've tried to find some source for the idea that France is standing alone against the tide of Christian feeling, but I can't find anything about the issue at all. Tell me if I'm wrong. The four countries that supported the inclusion of reference to Europe's Christian heritage in the constitution were Poland, Spain, Malta and Ireland.

The lesson of all this is as follows: If you can't get a gratuitous swipe at France in your article, then Conservative commentary is not for you. But if you can, and it's really stark, the mighty Drudge will honour you.