Here’s a picture of incoming House member Rep. Billy Long (R-MO) who is taking over Roy Blunt’s old seat.
(PoliticMo Photo/Blake James)
That seems about right, although to be the perfect poster-boy for the Class of 2010 he really should be yelling. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that Mr. Long doesn’t believe in global warming or man-caused climate change. Check that. It’s not hard to confirm.
3) To what extent are you worried about climate change and how do you think Congress should respond to the issue?
There’s always changing and nobody really knows if it has anything to do with man or not. The science I’ve [seen] says it does not. What I do know is that I wouldn’t pass any kind of energy tax that’s going to wreck our economy and cause job losses. We’ve got nearly 10 percent unemployment, and passing a bill like that is something that will cause more job loss and more jobs to be shipped overseas. Farmers in particular I think 61 percent of their overall cost is related to energy in one way or the other whether it’s gas, diesel, fertilizer, electric. I’m not going to stand for something like cap and trade.
The dude really does have it all, as Fired Up Missouri is amply documenting. I particularly love his bitching about taking a pay-cut and ethics requirements. I’m sure he’ll be a real winner on the Transportation and Homeland Security committees. At least we’ll know that fuel efficiency standards won’t be improving any time soon.
It really is remarkable to realize that it is no longer possible for a Republican office seeker to admit that humans might be screwing up the climate in ways that will be inhospitable to our current dwelling patterns or even our lives. And it really is a recent development. McCain and Palin campaigned on a Cap and Trade policy. Romney, Pawlenty, Gingrich, and Huckabee have all acknowledged climate change as a problem requiring some government action in recent years.
How do they plan on dealing with that history?
“They’re in an odd place,” Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, told POLITICO. “They better have an explanation, an excuse or a mea culpa for why this won’t happen again.”
I liked Steve Benen’s reaction:
Yes, in Republican circles in 2011, those who don’t reject the scientific consensus on the climate crisis will be rejected out of hand. Those who’ve been even somewhat reasonable on the issue in recent years should expect to grovel shamelessly — a trait that’s always attractive in presidential candidates.
Nietzsche once had something to say about ugliness and criminality.
“The anthropologists among the criminologists tell us that the typical criminal is ugly: monstrum in fronte, monstrum in animo.”
I don’t know if today’s scientists would agree, but I believe a deranged soul does often manifest itself visually in someone’s face. I don’t know why anyone would want to be a public servant so badly that they would deny climate change to get the money and approval they need to get elected. But I know that anyone who would do that (and any party that would do that) is monstrous.
Those freshmen who don’t already look like Billy Long may find they look a little more like him with each passing year. Selling your soul to the devil exacts that kind of price.
I see he shares a common Republican malady: fellatiophobia:
They’re condemning 50%, at minimum, of the species on this planet to die. Our own is going to have one hell of a time. They think the deficit sucks? Just wait until the climate refugees arrive.
Oh, stop worrying:
Oh, and terrorism? Lol, we haven’t seen anything yet.
While I do appreciate the humor value of this post, I’d prefer to leave judging people by their looks to the right wing jackoffs. It’s petty.
There are plenty of examples of conservatives just as crazy as this dude who aren’t repulsive, just as I am sure there must, somewhere, be a liberal who isn’t mind blowingly attractive.
to me, it’s all one big pile of repulsive. It’s not about one-guy. But if you want a poster-boy for what Republicans represent, I provided you one. Monster in soul manifesting itself.
David Byrne had something to say about this phenomenon.
what’s the term “looksism”?
It’s unfortunately common in popular media, starting with kids media: the evil villan is ugly, the good hero is beautiful/handsome. It’s been a trope for millenia, but once you notice that your buttons are being pushed, it galls.
But as for our new GOP OverLards, you should just see the portraits they keep in the attic!
?
I honestly can’t tell if you insulted people who are overweight with this post.
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Mel Hancock and Billy Long or Shrek and Donkey
Vote Smart Political Courage Test
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."you’re finally where I wish the MSM was….acknowledging that the GOP are basically soulless parasites.
Hay, is that title some kind of elitist fancy-pants Latin?
The carbon tax is a distraction. Cap-and-trade is a distraction. They are sops to please neoliberal (in the economic sense) centrists, a rapidly vanishing breed themselves.
The key defense against greenhouse gas pollution in the US are the EPA regulations which will be in place for big point-source polluters by 2013 unless the GOP pursuades enough Democrats to gut them. The other part of the strategy depends on all those alternative energy companies picking up their tax cuts and starting to develop energy generation utilities nationwide. Permitting can be on a fast path to get that done. In thirty years we will have the same subsidy problems with them that we do now with big oil, but for now they’re the best strategy. Also expect to see some fast-tracking of third- and fourth-generation nuclear technology. Which means that silliness like Progress Energy’s plan to move the working Three Mile Island reactor to the Sherron Harris plant near Raleigh must be stopped in favor of newer, safer, cheaper technology. The nonproliferation issue is now a separate issue altogether; we no longer live in the political and geopolitical climate of the 1970s. The key battle will be denial of utilities the ability to pass construction-work-in-progress charges on to customers as a surcharge.
Rep. Billy Long is irrelevant to this strategy. And Senate Democratic unity on EPA regulations is crucial.
Millions of dollars in oil money to media and campaigns dictate what GOP representatives and some spineless Democrats say with regard to global climate change. Their lie will be found out the easy way or the hard way, and no piece of geography will be spared if it’s the hard way. Desertification of the plains and increased incidences of tornados might be in the future for Rep. Long’s district. Pete King is likely to see sea-level rising and, if the Gulf Stream is impaired, bitterly cold winters. Darrell Issa will see more frequent wildfires. And US diplomacy will see increased pressure from large island nations like Japan, Indonesia, Greece, Denmark, Iceland, and even possibly the UK (once they start feeling the effects). And then there’s Hawaii. And the American Virgin Islands.
And when Florida, Louisiana, and Texas Republicans start seeing the consequences, …it’ll be the Democrats fault for not acting when they had power.
I’m not much into physiognomy as an indication of character although the CEO of Exxon-Mobil does challenge that commitment. Sources of financial support are much more instructive. And Republican voters have some strange tastes in who they want to represent them.
Science is under assault because people have been told for a generation that their failure to learn science and math is why they don’t have good jobs, and they feel that they are not that smart although their Junior or Susie might be. And they resent the educational meritocracy that looks down on them culturally as well as economically. And having the numbers in economically depressed areas they strike back politically; it’s the only tool at hand. A great contrast from 100 years ago when science and technology were seen by these same types of folks as that which would rescue them from poverty. Areas that have waited for a hundred years and not been rescued have now given up on science and technology. And in the absence of anything else have retreated into the institutions that they have known best and in which are most of their friends — churches.
It’s the suburban know-nothings like Bachmann voters and the Republicans in the suburban ring around large cities like Atlanta and Indianapolis and Chicago who are the most troubling because of their willingness to go along with this same nonsense. When an IT professional tells you they don’t believe in evolution or human-caused global climate change, that’s what makes you worry. In the first case it’s a matter of science and technology not delivering economic prosperity to an area. In the second it’s a flat-out failure of a university or college to educate.
I have one question and one general comment. The question is, What is EPA’s authority to regulate the coal-powered plants that were grandfathered in when the Clean Air Act was originally passed? Aren’t those plants exempt by law from Clean Air Act provisions, and isn’t that a huge obstacle is regulating carbon emissions?
The comment is that the EPA regulations are going to be enacted without much fanfare and be buried in tomes of bureaucratese. They aren’t going to get that much attention. If there are House hearings on the scandal of Climategate, that can get a lot of media coverage. This is important because the impression that other countries will get is that the US is doing little to check greenhouse gas emissions, and in fact is promoting skepticism over climate science.
In order for climate change policies to be effective, they must not only be effective at reducing carbon emissions, but they must also be high profile. This is because the United States has to take global leadership on this issue. Ultimately, positive US efforts are meaningless if US reductions in greenhouse gases are dwarfed by Indian and Chinese increases in emissions. If the Obama administration had made passing a Cap and Trade bill the same sort of priority as a health insurance bill, the Asian nations might have started to listen to us. If the EPA promulgates some regulation, the tree just falls in the forest.
The question about grandfathered plants is interesting. I think that when these plants make major modifications they come under the regulations; so there are fewer of them now than thirty years ago. The regulation regime is not perfect but it is all we have (aside from some breakout technology) in the face of the current insanity.
Yes the regulations will be buried in bureaucratese unless Republicans start to make a big issue of it and folks begin looking at the actual provisions — both unlikely.
The Asian nation are going their own way and will probably outrace us in real reductions of greenhouse gases. Both China and India see dealing with global climate change as a foreign policy issue relative to island nations and the developing countries. And both are moving aggressively to catch up with the commercialization of green technology as an export item. They will not wait for us. We have reached the end of attempts at international agreements for a while; it’s now every country for itself. So China and India will be financing and selling green technology to Africa and the rest of Asia on favorable terms in order to build credibility for support of these nations on other issues. Europe will be going gangbusters at dealing with its situation internally as a strategy to pull out of recession. The Latin American countries that don’t currently have their own programs will be courted by Europe, China, and India as export markets.
It’s the world’s second biggest polluter pretty much alone that will be limping along with only a regulatory regime to contribute to the global effort–unless the private green technology companies go like gangbusters.
The US has seriously abdicated leadership in this, and it will cost us diplomatically in other areas. And it will harm the competitiveness of US industry as well. Most of the greenhouse gas solutions will come with improvements in operational efficiency of plants. But those will be ignored in the US because of the investment horizon of US companies.
Thanks. I’ll have to ponder this a while. In some ways, it is making me a little less depressed.