Gimme a break

I wanted to shut up for a while and see what quiet felt like but damn, there is such sick folly afoot.

The NY Times, you don't need me to tell you, has a mixed record on getting their facts straight but when they report congressional testimony of several recent Surgeons General to the effect that the Bush league routinely pressured them to water down any health policy or reported findings that didn't look good for Rethuglican supporters, I assume that the Surgeons General have not garbled their facts. It is a fresh provocation to see old lies and disservices to the republic laid out afresh like the corpses of so many dead truths unearthed.


As Seen on the Internets: turning over a rock so that you won't have to...

I was still coming down from a bit of a high I had over the great turnout for Live Earth/Party for the Planet last weekend, when this horrid pile of lies crashed me jarringly back to the realities of the fight for our planet. I don't know if I should have done them the favor of a link but rather than go there, just see a few of their headlines:

Origins of Environmental Religions
Jay Lehr, Ph.D. - July 12, 2007
Conventional religions have been under attack for some years from liberals who have drifted into secular humanism and away from any devout belief in God. ...

Global Warming Scapegoat
James M. Taylor - July 09, 2007
Regarding “Officials discuss health, climate change” (July 2), it is amazing how global warming is becoming this generation’s version of UFOs; anything that a cursory analysis doesn’t immediately explain must be a UFO… or global warming....

And there is much more merde where that came from...they get some ignorant liar to write a crank letter to the WaPo and then publish it in their little web page of bought and paid lies as if it were news that bore repeating. Who is this "Heartland Institute"? Pretty much the spewers of specious conclusions that only bush league supporters could swallow. Herbert J Walberg, from the Hoover institute, heads their board of directors. He managed to get in a career in academic psychology before he found it more appealing to denounce school desegregation and argue that total free market treatment would leave no child with a behind. Joseph L Bast, frequent contributor of articles and co-author with Walberg did not even earn his stupidity: he is blatantly a paid liar who just repeats the lies of others.

How very Bush League of them: a PhD adviser to the department of education with his name all over a web zine of utter rubbish denials of well established science on the environment.