Representative Barton, You Are an Ass

I feel like writing about the torture memos, but it's all out there. Just read it. People need to be held accountable for torturing in our names.

On a somewhat lighter note, there was a Congressional hearing today on a new climate change bill. Al Gore spoke, representing science. And several Republicans spoke, representing middle school.

Representative Barton of, you-guessed-it, Texas, said, "I'll stipulate that CO2 concentration is rising...It's at 380 parts per million, and will reach 500 parts per million in 50-100 years. I'll stipulate that. But how do we know if it's human-produced CO2?" You dumbass. As the population grows and more nations are industrialized, of course we're producing more CO2. So, he thought he found a new anti-climate change angle, but actually chose the stupidest logic imaginable.

Then Michelle Plastic-Woman Bachman was up. Check the archives of this blog for her previous craziness. She's the craziest member of congress of my lifetime. She blows Cynthia McKinney away. In a statement that sounds like she just found out about chemistry on her way to the house floor, she said:

"Carbon dioxide, Mister Speaker, is a natural byproduct of nature. Carbon dioxide is natural. It occurs in Earth. It is a part of the regular lifecycle of Earth. In fact, life on planet Earth can't even exist without carbon dioxide. So necessary is it to human life, to animal life, to plant life, to the oceans, to the vegetation that's on the Earth, to the, to the fowl that -- that flies in the air, we need to have carbon dioxide as part of the fundamental lifecycle of Earth."

There's really nothing to say about that. She thinks that people who care about protecting the environment think that CO2 is an alien toxin, but it's "necessary... to the fowl that -- that flies in the air..."

What a moron.

This happened a few days ago, but I forgot about it. In response to the DHS report of right-wing militant extremists, Pat Robertson said the author's "sexual orientation... is in question."  In a time when he could have condemned the extremism that is real, and dissassociated himself from it, Pat Robertson pretty much said, "Who wrote that? A faggot?"