In an exclusive interview on ABC’s “This Week,” presidential candidate Jon Huntsman said “there’s a serious problem” with comments made by Texas Gov. Rick Perry in New Hampshire last week calling man-made global warming “a scientific theory that has not been proven and from my perspective is more and more being put into question” while claiming scientists have “manipulated data” on the issue. Here is what Huntsman said:
“The minute that the Republican Party becomes the party — the anti-science party, we have a huge problem,” Huntsman told ABC News Senior White House correspondent Jake Tapper. “We lose a whole lot of people who would otherwise allow us to win the election in 2012.”
“When we take a position that isn’t willing to embrace evolution, when we take a position that basically runs counter to what 98 of 100 climate scientists have said … about what is causing climate change and man’s contribution to it, I think we find ourselves on the wrong side of science, and, therefore, in a losing position,” Huntsman added.
It might be too late. The Republican Party has rejected science for quite some time. Who can forget a George W. Bush aide that once derided Americans who lived in the “reality based community” in the New York Times magazine?
Jon Huntsman and Fred Karger may be the only two sane Republicans running for President of the United States. Unfortunately, it seems GOP primary voters prefer candidates that belong in padded cells. Nevertheless, it was encouraging to hear a Republican finally stand up to the medieval views that pass for reality in the Republican Party. Why won’t more mainstream Republicans stand up, speak out, and take their hijacked party back from extremists?
If there is no place for people like Huntsman and Karger in the GOP, then there is really no room for the Republican Party in American politics. We are flirting with economic, moral, financial and social disaster if one of our two parties rejects science in favor of superstition.
Hopefully, Huntsman’s comments will gain traction for his campaign. But don’t hold your breath because the GOP is now dominated by people who think Sarah Palin is worldly and believe that Michelle Bachmann is wise.
I know there are few pundits who agree with me when I say that Sarah Palin will likely get the GOP nomination for President of the United States. It is clear that the GOP electorate wants a Sarah Palin type for the nomination and no one plays the part of Sarah Palin better than Sarah Palin (except for Tina Fey, and I’m guessing she is a Democrat).
Michele Bachmann is a dizzy pretender and can’t even answer basic questions about her stance on LGBT issues. Rick Perry is too much like Bush and wrongly believes that the most conservative parts of Texas represent the nation as a whole. Plus, Perry’s biggest strength — job creation — is really his biggest weakness. He portrays himself as the King of Jobs, but he’s really just the creator of jobs at Burger King. Many of the jobs he “created” are at fast food joints and the workers have no health insurance. Promoting drive-thru jobs as a way to end the recession will play like a drive-by shooting on his campaign. The other jobs created in Texas are in the oil industry. Unless oil is discovered in the other states, Perry’s job creation record is irrelevant. Perry’s first trip to New Hampshire was a dud, as thinking New England Republicans were surprised to hear that he thinks global warming is a hoax. Maybe Perry is unaware of the drought in Texas. Wait, he is keenly aware of it and tried to pray the drought away.
Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Herman Cain etc. are all washed up clowns that I could probably beat if I entered the contest.
I think Sarah Palin is waiting for Rick Perry to fizzle out — much like Fred Thompson. Once this happens in the next few weeks, Palin will triumphantly enter the race and suck all the air out of the room. Her pizazz will allow her to raise all the money she needs on the Internet — and render Bachmann second fiddle. The GOP nomination will come down to Palin vs. Romney and the only way Romney wins is to go for an evangelical VP like Perry or Bachmann. However, in picking one of these nuts, he will lose the general election.
As you may recall, Santorum has compared same-sex marriage to sex with dogs, has said that it’s “common sense” to keep gays from marrying and adopting children, wants to reinstate the ban on gays in the military, and has said that gays shouldn’t have the “privilege of government benefits” offered to heterosexual couples, yet Santorum claims he’s not a homophobe.
Can you imagine the debates at this point? I can hardly wait, especially if the Emptiest Bumpit stops gallavanting around the country in a bus yammering about Paul Revere blowing trumpets for the British and actually throws in. Popcorn!
“Now that Daniels is out, I predict that Sarah Palin will soon announce she is running for president. She must be somewhere in the tundra looking at the shabby crop of contenders and think: “I can beat them.” Of course, she’s correct and if she chose to run, I’m fairly certain that she would get the nomination. Surely, Palin would get off to a fast start in the conservative Iowa caucuses and her chances are quite good in South Carolina.”
Sarah Palin is fortifying her small staff of advisers, buying a house in Arizona — where associates have said she could base a national campaign — and reviving her schedule of public appearances. The moves are the most concrete signals yet that Ms. Palin, the former governor of Alaska, is seriously weighing a Republican presidential bid.
Seems like the crystal ball is still working. However, I was wrong about the tundra, with Palin moving to the desert. While not being able to see Russia may hinder her foreign policy expertise, she will no doubt soon be an expert on Mexico simply by crossing the border and ordering a margarita.
Truth Wins Out Confronts Divisive, Homophobic Event By Setting the Record Straight with Hard-Hitting Harvard Crimson Ad; Saturday Protest of Conference
BURLINGTON, Vt. – One week after spearheading a successful petition drive that led to Apple removing an anti-gay iPhone app, Truth Wins Out has turned its attention to confronting a bitterly divisive and homophobic conference at Harvard University. On April 1-2, the Harvard Extension Service and Learning Society will be hosting the “Social Transformation Conference,” featuring religious extremists who are falsely billed as “leading voices for the faith-based social transformation culture.”
Truth Wins Out will place a full-page ad (See Below) in The Harvard Crimson on Thursday, March 31, to educate the campus and the local community on the extreme ideas espoused by conference speakers who belong to the “Seven Mountains Movement.” The intolerant idea behind this radical plan is to “reclaim” and “hold dominion” over seven key spheres of society: education, arts, family, media, business, government, and religion. Truth Wins Out’s Executive Director, Wayne Besen, will be in Boston and available for media interviews for the duration of the conference, as well as TWO researcher, Bruce Wilson.
TWO will also co-sponsor a Join the Impact Massachusetts protest against this conference: 12 Noon, Saturday April 2, at the Northwest Science Building (52 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA). There may also be a student protest on Friday evening, further details, TBA.
“This is a divisive conference that demonizes and dehumanizes entire groups of people,” said Truth Wins Out’s Executive Director Wayne Besen. “It promotes religion-based bigotry in the guise of improving society. While these zealots have a right to speak, Harvard University has a moral and ethical responsibility to ensure it provides an appropriate forum where these dangerous views are vigorously challenged. To this end, Harvard failed. As a result, the university is aiding and abetting the dissemination of hateful, exclusionary, totalitarian views that are anathema to Harvard’s values of inclusion, pluralism, fairness, robust intellectual debate, and diversity.”
Once example of “red meat” rhetoric comes from conference speaker Lance Wallnau who said during an October 2010 webcast:
“You’ve got Islam invading the United States. So you’ve got your homosexual activity, your abortion activity here, Islam coming in, you’ve got a financial collapse — all of this, to those of us who are Christians, is an apocalyptic confirmation that when you remove God from public discourse, when you don’t line up your thinking with kingdom principles, you inevitably hit an iceberg like the Titanic and you go down”
“These religious supremacists may attempt to tone down their radical views at Harvard in a deceptive effort to appear mainstream,” said TWO researcher Bruce Wilson, who has done extensive research for Truth Wins Out on the Seven Mountains Movement. “However, even a cursory glance at their rhetoric shows that they are dangerous demagogues and utopian extremists who dream of taking over America. We will shine a spotlight on this fringe movement to make it more difficult for them to use the prestige of Harvard University to legitimize their outlandish views and whitewash their radical agenda.”
TWO believes exposing this movement is important because prominent politicians, such as Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, and Sarah Palin, have courted it. The university’s ostensible stamp of approval will make it easier for these theocrats to appear respectable and create powerful political alliances at the expense of America’s future.
Truth Wins Out is a non-profit organization that fights anti-LGBT religious extremism and the “ex-gay” myth. TWO specializes in turning information into action by organizing, advocating and fighting for LGBT equality.
I’ve only seen the Glee program once, because I am a bad gay and my card is going to be revoked, but Kathy Griffin guest-starred last night, playing a Sarah Palin/Christine O’Donnell anti-gay teabaggerista, or whatever the correct term is. Enjoy!
Oh, and also some boys kissed, on the Glee program last night.
Today the Supreme Court handed down an almost unanimous decision upholding the free speech rights of the Westboro Baptist Church:
The First Amendment protects hateful protests at military funerals, the Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday in an 8-to-1 decision.
“Speech is powerful,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority. “It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and — as it did here — inflict great pain.”
But under the First Amendment, he went on, “we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker.” Instead, the national commitment to free speech, he said, requires protection of “even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate.”
It sucks, but protecting freedom of speech means protecting grotesque speech, too.
Anyway, here is the funny part. Jack Stuef at Wonkette found Sarah Palin’s reaction to the ruling, on Twitter, which is one of the places where the Quitter works:
Uh, Sarah?
Log out of Facebook, sign out of Twitter, get up off your hind end and find a public square. There’s probably one close to where you used to work, before you quit because A. it was too hard and B. reality teevee was calling. Stand there and say “God” a bunch. Insert some word salad, dangling participles and dropped ‘G’s around it. Oh, look, you CAN do it!
Funny, though, that she seems to have a problem with this ruling which was supported by John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, the other Antonin Scalia and everybody else save for Sam Alito.
“I have always believed that marriage is between one man and one woman. Like the majority of Americans, I support the Defense of Marriage Act and find it appalling that the Obama administration decided not to defend this federal law which was enacted with broad bipartisan support and signed into law by a Democrat president. It’s appalling, but not surprising that the President has flip-flopped on yet another issue from his stated position as a candidate to a seemingly opposite position once he was elected.”
The Quitter is, of course, wrong.
Obama stated his opposition to DOMA on the campaign trail, repeatedly. One would imagine that Sarah Palin would know this, since she ran on the opposing ticket. But then again, we’ve come to understand that Palin’s not too concerned with the word “reality,” unless it is directly followed by the word “show.”
What’s awesome about the crop of yahoos who have taken over the Republican Party is that as we get further into the 2012 campaign, the infighting is going to be absolutely hilarious.
The other day, Rick Santorum suggested that Sarah Palin couldn’t go to CPAC because she’s too busy being a mommy, and also because she’d rather be doing things that involve her making money [rawr!], and now Sarah Palin has replied, and for once, she used words in the correct order!
I know there are few pundits who agree with me when I say that Sarah Palin will likely get the GOP nomination for President of the United States. It is clear that the GOP electorate wants a Sarah Palin type for the nomination and no one plays the part of Sarah Palin better than Sarah Palin (except for Tina Fey, and I’m guessing she is a Democrat).
Word salad and factual problems; it’s another day in Sarah Palin’s life!
