Ron Johnson gets His own Memeorandum Thread over "Sunspots" Comment

It's kind of a sign of internet virality (no matter how thin the thread actually is).

Here's a helpful video detailing why Johnson is wrong on the sunspots theory:

Now the BP Stock Thing is an Issue

Even though I initially defended Ron Johnson's ownership of BP stock a few weeks ago, this is going to create enormous headaches for him:

MADISON, Wis. -- Wisconsin candidate for Senate Ron Johnson says he hasn't decided whether to sell his BP stock, two weeks after he told reporters he would get rid of it.

Financial disclosure forms show the Oshkosh manufacturer owns between $116,000 and $315,000 in BP stock. On July 9, Johnson's campaign said he would be moving his investments into a blind trust.

But following a campaign rally just days later, the Republican told reporters he planned to sell the BP PLC stock to help finance his campaign against Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold.

Johnson on Monday says he will probably sell the stock to help finance his campaign, but he hasn't made a decision yet.

If you say you're going to do something, you kind of have to go ahead and do it.

To be honest, in the back of my mind I was expecting this move: hedge and/or delay until the issue blows over. When RJ first floated the idea of selling the stock was worth about half of what it was when Johnson entered the race. That would mean he would have gotten a haircut that cost between $58,000-$157,500. The stock has rebounded since then -- he might just be waiting for a better time to dump it.

This probably has more to do with recouping an investment then it does to perceived ties or loyalty to BP, but, again, when you say you're going to do something, you kind of have to go ahead and do it.

[via IT]

MORE: Here's audio of RJ explaining to a reporter that he'll consider selling the stock based on "market conditions." I have no idea when the recording was made.

Ron Johnson for U.S. Senate Financial Disclosure Forms

A lot is being made about Johnson ownership of a large sum of BP stock, but, honestly, who cares? One could just as easily point out that Johnson also owns stock in the British Sky Broadcasting Group, whose primary share-holder is Rupert Murdoch ... Ergo Johnson will be a slave to the Murdoch message machine!!!

Johnson stock portfolio is actually pretty boring. Now if he owned stock in Medellin Import-Export, Inc. or International Rape and Human Trafficking, LLC -- that would raise some eyebrows, but as it stands Johnson appears to be a higher volume consumer of blue chip stocks. Until recently, BP fit that description perfectly. In fact, it looks like his ownership of stocks like BP and Exxon and some of the other energy concerns are a part of his contribution to the Belport Capital Fund.[Note: Sorry, I looked at the report again and was totally wrong about that.] (But, then again, what do I know?)

Obviously, Johnson's opponents have seized on the detail and are hammering him on it. It's important to point out here that this really has nothing to do with BP. It's not like Johnson himself spends his weekends dumping oil into the Gulf. This is merely an exercise in painting Johnson as unreasonably supportive of big business, and right now there's no more loathed big business than BP.

Apparently, Big Oil is going to be a recurring theme throughout the next few news cycles ... Here's an interesting thought for you all: if gas prices were outrageously high -- like they were two years ago when I swear I was paying $4 a gallon -- and there wasn't a spill in the Gulf would this still be an issue? I have no idea what the answer to that question is -- though I suspect the answer is "no" -- so marinate on that for a while.

Ron Johnson for U.S. Senate Financial Disclosure Report

Ron Johnson's first Egregious Flip-Flop: Drilling in the Great Lakes

I honestly don't know how much traction the "Ron Johnson owns BP stock" argument is gaining, but the Johnson campaign sure thinks enough of it to issue two oil-related press releases today, one of which proves to be Johnson's first blatant flip-flop of the campaign.

A month ago Johnson was pretty clear that if oil was discovered in the Great Lakes, drilling was going to be fair game under his watch, but today he's singing a different tune:

“The 2005 Energy Bill, which Russ Feingold voted against, outlawed drilling in the Great Lakes. I would not support any efforts to overturn the provision which outlaws drilling in the Great Lakes as Wisconsin’s next U.S. Senator. Let me repeat: I would reject any and all efforts to drill in the Great Lakes.”

You can parse the language all you want but the fact of the matter is that Johnson has done a complete turn-around on the issue. Let me repeat: a complete turn-around on the issue.

The Ron Johnson Campaign's Snippy Press Release

The Ron Johnson for Senate campaign unleashed a pissy press release following a swipe from Team Feingold following a regrettable statement at a forum with fellow GOP candidate Dave Westlake. The two candidates decided to fall in line behind BP ... while on camera ... just days after Joe Barton made an ass of himself. It's basically an attack ad waiting to be made.

Anyway, the Feingold gang hit back with this press release which was answered by the press release below:
Ron Johnson for U.S. Senate Press Release
It's not on the RJ.com web site.

By the way, if Team Johnson thinks this is an issue that's going to stay in the Wisconsin press, they're wrong.

Profiles in Groveling

MORE: I was looking for this earlier and found it at TPM. Barton is a rather notorious dipshit and few video exemplify this better than this one:

The best part of this incident is the incredibly smug and self-satisfied look that never leaves Barton's face. He clearly doesn't have the first fucking clue how oil evolves, thinks the the Arctic was once a desert just because there's some oil underneath it, and still dismisses a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who trying to explain plate tectonics to someone who obviously is only interested in setting what he believes is a rhetorical trap.

And now he's going to be the posterboy for the GOP's disconnect with reality.

Ron Johnson Wants to Drill for Oil in the Great Lakes

Chris Liebenthal picked up on this nugget.

It's worth noting that while the Great Lakes are just as susceptible to an environmental disaster such as the kind that is currently afflicting the Gulf, any similar spill would be countlessly more catastrophic in so far as it would happen in largest collection of Fresh Water in the world.

Ads of the Damned: Republicans for Environmental Protection, "Boot Bipartisan"

Back in April the GOP produced a slick web ad to promote a new web site. The spot was hyper-melodramatic an came with over the top imagery, but it was very well produced and used a lot of fast edits to create the sensation of a dizzying whirlwind of motion. The spot below seems to have picked up on that ad's stylishness to great effect:



NOTE: This particular version of the ad is aimed at Sen. Sherrod Brown, but REP has also produced versions targeting Sens. Feingold and Kohl.

This Summer Words Will Fly At You Very Fast!

This is another slick production in the same mold as 'Remember November.' The typography moves quickly and the graphics pop, but the the image that really ties the piece together is the boot at the very end. It's a steel-toed construction shit-kicker (recall that the first words of the script are "China is kicking our butts...") that implies more jobs and stomping out nonsense.

It's also a clever way to suggest to voters that they should give law-makers who don't follow REP's agenda the proverbial "boot."

Final Grade: B+

Ads of the Damned: National Resource Defense Council, "Change"

I don't like these kinds of ads. They're way too reliant on graphics and stock film footage. The audience has to wait until the very end to discover what kind of action is trying to be elicited from the spot. The photography is grainy and foe some reason one of the boxes during the split screen shots is always triple exposed. This is a hot mess that was obviously produced on the cheap.

Final Grade: F

Listen to Christopher Monckton get Bitchslapped

An actual scientist goes through noted climate change fraud Christopher Monckton's song and dance and find it severely wanting.

It's a bloody brilliant presentation.

[via Deltoid]

The Gulf Oil Leak

Agreed.

UW-O College Republicans Bringing a Global Warming Denier to Campus for a Chat

From the NW:

The Oshkosh College Republicans and Young America's Foundation are bringing Christopher Horner, a nationally known environment and global warming author and speaker, to the UWO campus to offer an alternative examination of what people and the government are doing to protect the earth and what kind of impact it has, said Ethan Hollenberger, a UWO sophomore who is a member of the College Republicans.

"Christopher Horner isn't denying global warming or saying going green is bad. We brought him in to look at policy and if it is enacted how it will affect us," Hollenberger, 19, said. "We want people who disagree to be there. Part of being on a university campus is to learn the other side."

Except Horner is a denier. He wrote a book called Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists use Threats, Fraud and Deception to Keep You Misinformed, which seems fairly self-explanatory to me. He's a "fellow" at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a notorious front group for big oil and tobacco interests that poses as a libertarian "think tank." He's not even a trained scientist, but a lawyer whose job has been to argue against scientists.

Horner is also something of an amateur astronomer:

"[The planet Pluto, which is warming up despite moving away from the sun], is a reminder that no matter where you are climate happens... There will be inevitably and likely imminent claims [by environmentalists] that mankind is also causing Plutonian global warming."

Like the orbits of Earth and Pluto are remotely comperable...

Here's Horner on the Daily Show, where he plugs his comedy book that makes fun of people who are silly enough to believe that humans actually impact their natural surroundings.

Dirty Hippies!

And that's basically Horner's shtick: he does no primary scientific research and argues against global warming like a lawyer who is arguing for a client in court. In this case his clients are energy concerns who have a vested interest in sowing doubt with science so as to prevent possible future government action in the form of regulation.

Engagement!

This is a rather refreshing image to see:

Striding down the hallway, with the Chinese protocol officer sputtering protests behind them, America's two best-known politicians barged into the meeting room. There they found Wen conferring secretly with the leaders of Brazil, India, and South Africa; behind the scenes, Beijing had been trying to block all efforts to impose standards for measuring, reporting, and verifying progress on carbon reduction. Smiling and shaking hands, Obama and Clinton worked the room together, as they had each done so many times before as contending politicians. Then the president sat down and started negotiating, with Clinton sliding position papers to him as needed. When the Chinese finally caved, both Obama and Clinton knew that it wasn't just because they had crashed the meeting. Two days before, the secretary of state had flown in to Copenhagen by surprise to deliver a sweetener to help win over developing countries. In essence, it was a global bribe: $100 billion a year from rich nations by 2020 to help poorer countries cope with climate controls. It was political hardball, Hillary style, and it had helped to isolate Beijing. Now Obama was closing the deal Clinton had set up.

The article goes on to cast the Copenhagen meeting in a brighter light than it perhaps deserves, but it's good to a little behind the scenes exercise in soft power after so long.

[via D]

Probably the Best and Most Succinct Piece on Climate Change You'll Read in a While

From that noted commie rag that calls itself The Economist.

Monday Night Link Orgy

• "Die Hard" and the Architecture of Close Quarters Combat

• Why are so many Climate Change skeptics TV weathermen? [via ND]

• The NFL's final word on the Aaron Rodger's facemask grab

• Sarah Palin and the Jews (with addendum and really strange, um, defense (explanation?) of the phenomenon)

• Eric Rohmer, RIP

• The Vatican did not care for "Avatar"

• More evidence that the Pyramids were built by freemen, not slaves

• Paul Samuelson and the academic origins of the current financial crisis

Widgerson Still Thinks Galileo Was Persecuted by other Scientists

He wasn't. He was persecuted by the church.

In fact, Galileo was building off of the ideas of contemporary scientists.

Lame

Perhaps you've seen this stupid cartoon being passed around by climate change deniers:

It's very amusing, and not because it's a profound comment on the nature of certainty in the scientific process, but because it's science and historical perspective thereof is so far off that it makes the cartoonist look foolish.

First, the "Flat earth" theory of the world was almost exclusively a result of Biblical interpretation, not science. The ancient Greeks provided the world with ample evidence of the spherical Earth. It wasn't until the middle ages that "flat Earth" notions started to pop up. When they did, they entered the cultural consciousness not by science, but through theology.

The geocentric universe theory is far more complicated, but it's acceptance has it's roots in the epistemology of Aristotle. The notions grounding it are far more what we would consider "scientific" today, but did not develop using the epistemological breakthroughs advanced by Copernicus and Galileo. The philosophical differences between the ancient Greeks and the Renaissance astronomers couldn't be more different, and the details why explain almost perfectly the differences between climate change deniers and those that accept the science. (Unfortunately, this would take forever to explain.)

"Heavier bodies fall faster than light ones." Here Ramirez is just wrong. Speed is a function of distance and time and a bowling ball will cover the same distance "faster," as Rameriz says, than a feather when dropped from the same height. The breakthrough that Galileo made was the law of uniform acceleration, not speed. Why is that important? It's the first step taken to arriving at a theory of gravity.

"The atom is the smallest particle in the universe." Again, this demonstrates a complete ignorance of the history of the atom. In 1897 J.J. Thompson discovered the electron, an atomic element, but still posited a "plum pudding" atomic model. The model that is currently taught to school children didn't develop until 1911.

The last two panels are obviously the cartoon's punchline. I know it's just a comic aside, but if very jest must carry an element of truth in it to be funny, then this cartoon fails on just about every level. Laughing at the this comic demonstrates a total ignorance of the history of science would be like reading a book the explained how the Germans won World War I and blindly accepting it.

Of course, given how good climate change deniers are at ignoring science, one shouldn't be at all surprised that they have an equally poor ability to examine history.

Pope Benedict XVI: Climate Change Hoaxer

Well we can't all be perfect -- oh, wait ...

"'His name is Inhofe,' a German journalist told a Japanese reporter, 'but I don’t know if it’s one or two f’s.'"

Very amusing.

30 Years of Climate Change Articles

From the New Yorker [via DF]