This essay lays out the similarities between the tobacco industry's campaign to discredit scientific studies showing links between smoking and cancer with the pollution industry's campaign today to discredit scientific studies showing links between human actions and global warming.
Here is a key quote: "...the industry understood that the public is in no position to distinguish good science from bad. Create doubt, uncertainty, and confusion. Throw mud at the anti-smoking research under the assumption that some of it is bound to stick. And buy time, lots of it, in the bargain". The title of Michaels' book comes from a 1969 memo from a tobacco company executive: "Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the minds of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy". Hill and Knowlton, on behalf of the tobacco industry, had founded the "Manufactured Doubt" industry."
Five years ago I made a list of my favorite Christmas music and it hasn't changed much since then. Today, I might add Burl Ives: The Christmas Collection as well as the trio of classical classics - Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite; Handel's Messiah and Bach's Christmas Oratorio.
Lately, I've seen a number of lists of favorite Christmas movies popping up on the Web and so I thought I would take a crack at my own. First off, I will seperate out the animated TV specials into their own list rather than clumping them together with the feature films like everyone else. So, here first is my list of the 10 best animated TV Christmas specials.
1. Charlie Brown Christmas 2. How the Grinch Stole Christmas 3. Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer 4. Santa Claus is Coming to Town 5. Frosty the Snowman 6. The Little Drummer Boy 7. Twas the Night Before Christmas 8. The Year Without a Santa Claus 9. Prep and Landing 10. Mr. Magoo's A Christmas Carol
And now my list of favorite Christmas movies - feature length films:
1. It's a Wonderful Life 2. Miracle on 34th Street 3. White Christmas 4. A Christmas Carol 5. Christmas in Connecticut 6. The Polar Express 7. A Christmas Story 8. The Santa Clause 9. A Nightmare Before Christmas 10. Christmas Vacation
For me, a Christmas movie has to be mostly about Christmas in some way and not just be a film about something else that just happens to include scenes during Christmas. So movies like Die Hard, Gremlins and Trading Places, while good movies, don't qualify as true Christmas movies in my book.
I would have preferred to hear Obama announce the immediate withdrawal of all troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. But I understand why he is moving forward with a "surge" in Afghanistan and, as Steve Benen notes, he told us this is what he was going to do during his presidential campaign. Military realists generally win out on foreign policy and military issues such as this which is why things don't change that much from one administration to the next. I'm sure Obama is counting on the surge in Afghanistan to provide a level of stability to that country that has been lacking to this point and will then allow us to withdraw with our heads held high. If it works (and health care reform passes) Obama will be unbeatable for reelection in 2012.
The idea that some hacked email accounts at some university in Great Britain have exposed a grand conspiracy among scientists around the globe to manufacture an elaborate hoax about global warming is completely ludicrous. People that are buying into this nonsense are those who don’t care about the science behind climate change and have already made up their minds based in large part on what they have heard from Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Faux News. Fortunately, Media Matters for America has done us all a great favor by going through all of the sundry claims and allegations being made by wingnuts in relation to the emails and knocking them down one by one. Not that it will make any difference to brainwashed dittoheads and tea party radicals.
As near as I can tell, ClimateGate is almost entirely a tempest in a teacup.... So on a substantive level, there’s really very little to this. Certainly nothing that changes the actual science of climate change even a little. The earth is still warming and disaster is still highly likely if we sit around and do nothing.
1. Support for fascists, both in America (see: Pat Buchanan, Robert Stacy McCain, etc.) and in Europe (see: Vlaams Belang, BNP, SIOE, Pat Buchanan, etc.)
2. Support for bigotry, hatred, and white supremacism (see: Pat Buchanan, Ann Coulter, Robert Stacy McCain, Lew Rockwell, etc.)
3. Support for throwing women back into the Dark Ages, and general religious fanaticism (see: Operation Rescue, anti-abortion groups, James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Tony Perkins, the entire religious right, etc.)
4. Support for anti-science bad craziness (see: creationism, climate change denialism, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, James Inhofe, etc.)
5. Support for homophobic bigotry (see: Sarah Palin, Dobson, the entire religious right, etc.)
6. Support for anti-government lunacy (see: tea parties, militias, Fox News, Glenn Beck, etc.)
7. Support for conspiracy theories and hate speech (see: Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Birthers, creationists, climate deniers, etc.)
8. A right-wing blogosphere that is almost universally dominated by raging hate speech (see: Hot Air, Free Republic, Ace of Spades, etc.)
9. Anti-Islamic bigotry that goes far beyond simply criticizing radical Islam, into support for fascism, violence, and genocide (see: Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, etc.)
10. Hatred for President Obama that goes far beyond simply criticizing his policies, into racism, hate speech, and bizarre conspiracy theories (see: witch doctor pictures, tea parties, Birthers, Michelle Malkin, Fox News, World Net Daily, Newsmax, and every other right wing source)
And much, much more. The American right wing has gone off the rails, into the bushes, and off the cliff.
I won’t be going over the cliff with them.
Maybe there's hope for other people who went all looney tunes after 9/11.
