Is what Rick Perry said about Bernanke any worse than usual for Rick Perry?
Rick Perry Reuters/Bryan Snyder
The Texas governor and sudden 2012 front-runner inspires media outrage by acting like he always acts
By Alex Pareene Tuesday, Aug 16, 2011 13:15 ET
Yesterday, Texas governor and sudden Republican presidential front-runner Rick Perry said that if Ben Bernanke tried any of that money-printing stuff in Texas, he'd be strung up [ http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/08/16/perry_treason_bernanke/index.html ]. "If this guy prints more money between now and the election," Perry told some Iowans, "I don’t know what y'all would do to him in Iowa, but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas." (Iowa's last execution was in 1963, so Iowa would probably not kill him.)
Among many Americans, especially wealthy rich white political pundits who live in gated communities in Maryland, it is considered "folksy" and charming to explicitly remind people of and seemingly endorse America's ugly history of lynch mobs doling out "frontier justice," but even among those who see nothing wrong with whitewashed nostalgia for gruesome, lawless vigilantism, Perry's comments were thought to have gone a bit too far. (Accusing the Republican-appointed chairman of the Federal Reserve of "treason" was a "serious unforced error," according to John Podhoretz [ http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/08/15/perry-bernanke-treason-2/ ].) New York Times Washington correspondent Binyamin Appelbaum summed up one strand of establishment response to the comments by calling Perry's remarks "horrifying [ https://twitter.com/#!/BCAppelbaum/status/103294313353576448 ]."
Rick Perry saying something that combines poorly understood far-right political beliefs and an economically illiterate attack on D.C. elites with a folksy threat of violence is a feature, not a bug. "Joking" about Texas' imaginary right to secede before broaching the subject more seriously at a Tea Party rally? Did that in '09 [ http://www.texastribune.org/texas-politics/2012-presidential-election/more-perry-remarks-about-secession-come-light/ ]! I realize no one read his dumb book -- "Everything Is Unconstitutional: The Story of My Recent Conversion to Fringe Beliefs That I Clearly Don't Entirely Understand" -- but didn't anyone read a summary [ http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/08/15/295427/295427/ ]?
Now that Rick Perry is an "official" candidate, as of a few days ago, is he seriously supposed to stop being an irresponsible far-right numbskull? And turn himself immediately into a responsible elder statesman?
Also keep in mind that Rick Perry executed an innocent man and if that didn't disqualify him from being taken seriously as a presidential candidate I'm not sure how jokingly threatening to do so to another guy would.
The CWM effect: What climate change's biggest sceptics have in common
Graham Readfearn .. August 18, 2011 - 1:25PM .. Comments 27
Conservative white men ... (from top left) Cardinal George Pell, Andrew Bolt, Alan Jones and Christopher Monckton.
When it comes to climate change, most people have heard of the greenhouse effect, but what about the “conservative white male” effect?
A US-based study has found that white men with politically conservative views are far more likely than the rest of the population to doubt the science of human-caused climate change.
And the "conservative white male effect” has been linked to Australia, with one prominent researcher citing the existence of a successful, politically engaged and outspoken coterie operating in high-profile positions that attract wide media coverage.
In the US researchers' paper published in the journal Global Environmental Change, Dr Aaron McCright and Dr Riley Dunlap analysed data from 10 annual US opinion polls on environmental issues.
They found 58 per cent of conservative white males - or CWMs for short - thought recent global temperature rises were not caused mainly from human activities, such as burning fossil fuels. This compared with 31 per cent of other adults.
Some 29 per cent of CWMs thought the effects of global warming would “never happen” compared with only seven per cent of other adults.
The paper, titled Cool dudes: The denial of climate change among conservative white males in the United States, .. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095937801100104X .. found CWMs who claimed they understood the global warming issue “very well” were even more convinced that global warming wasn’t happening.
The researchers concluded that “organised climate change denial” had spread from US conservative think-tanks to other nations, including New Zealand and Australia.
They wrote: “Throughought these Anglo countries organised denial seems to be dominated by politically conservative white males, and this suggests that a similar conservative white male effect might be emerging in the general publics of these nations with regard to climate change denial.”
Professor Joseph Reser, a Research Fellow with Griffith University’s Climate Change Response Program in Queensland, agreed broadly with the findings, but said his own research and other comparable studies from the US and Europe suggested the proportion of true climate change sceptics was much smaller.
“If you look at this group of conservative white males, less than 30% are characterised as denialists - they are not a majority even within this grouping," Professer Reser said.
"But these CWMs tend to stand out and do well in many social, work, and political organisations; they align themselves with those sharing similar views; and they are also more likely to be outspoken in their views and politically engaged, and to work and operate in sectors where their views get aired more.”
He said the fact conservatives were unduly confident about their own views on climate change “also makes them less open to differing views or able to accept that they might be wrong”.
Dr Kelly Fielding, a senior researcher at the University of Queensland’s Institute for Social Science Research, said political affiliation was strongly linked to climate change beliefs.
Only 38 per cent of Liberal-National politicians thought humans were causing global warming, compared to 89 per cent from Labor.
“We’ve shown results that are consistent with the US results,’’ she said. “Political ordination is the strongest predictor for what people believe about climate change.”
But she added that political conservatism wasn’t linked to climate scepticism everywhere, pointing to Germany and the UK as examples.
Dr Reser led a national survey last year .. http://www.nccarf.edu.au/public_risk_perceptions .. of more than 3000 Australians which found 90 per cent of respondents accepted humans were “playing a causal role” in climate change. Less than six per cent could really be classified as strong disbelievers, he said. There was also a distinct gender divide, with more women willing to accept the scientific evidence.
“I don’t accept - nor does the evidence support - that there’s a high level of denial in Australia or North America,’’ he said. “It’s something of a cultivated urban myth - and a substantial misreading of where the public is at. There has been a small but strident group of climate sceptic lobbyists pushing that argument for a long time.”
Criticising the current political debate around climate change, Dr Reser added: "What’s happening with the Coalition and their prominent spokespersons is that they are playing on public concerns and worries about not only the profound threat of climate change, but multiple and interacting social, political, and environmental issues, both national and global.
“People in turn want to hear that things are not as bad as they appear to be. This might be an effective political strategy, but it is also a rather crass exploitation of very genuine public concerns for the sake of political point scoring – rather than seriously acknowledging or addressing these genuine concerns - or indeed the core challenges of climate change.
“This cynical political rhetoric is really unfortunate, it undermines well-founded public belief, scientific credibility, and political will, and it is part of the reason that this urban myth exists.”
.. heh, for sure Perry was/is/will be in denial of certain "hotties", .. http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=66189083 .. so guess it makes sense that he wouldn't agree with the science around global warming. The link is the last one in yours to which i am replying.
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