While all eyes were on the Republican National Convention in Tampa and Hurricane Isaac on the Gulf Coast, the White House was quietly jacking up the price of automobiles and putting future drivers at risk.
Yes, the same cast of fable-tellers who falsely accused GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney of murdering a steelworker’s cancer-stricken wife is now directly imposing a draconian environmental regulation that will cost untold American lives.
It’s almost too easy when even the OMIGOD-What-Will-Chris-Christie-Do-Or-Say-Next Philadelphia Inquirer provides the rebuttal, but they do here…
…for an estimated 500,000 people, the mandate that automakers achieve an average fleet fuel economy of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025 also means they’ll be driving to new jobs.
Many of those jobs will be generated by Detroit, as automakers invest $300 billion in tooling up to build better vehicles, but independent experts predict that other industries will also add jobs as a result of the fuel standards.
Beyond that, the benefits to the environment will be seen in reduced smog. And the nation should become more secure by being less dependent on foreign oil.
Given those gains, it’s unfortunate that partisan politics still have Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in an ideological box on this issue. Romney campaign officials this week called the new fuel standards “extreme,” due to the added cost of producing cleaner cars.
In fact, the mileage standards have earned support from automakers and environmentalists alike. President Obama smartly united the groups by sticking to an aggressive mileage goal while at the same time assuring General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, and automakers that the policy would get a sensible, mid-course review.
Maybe the only thing extreme about the process was its success.
(Media Matters has more on this here.)
Oh, and one more thing – Joe Soptic lost his health insurance when his company was taken over by Romney and Bain Capital and he was booted. After that, his wife lost her job due to a shoulder injury (losing her insurance), and she was diagnosed with cancer afterwards. So yes, there is no direct cause-and-effect relationship between Soptic losing his insurance and his wife dying from lack of coverage.
But can we all agree that Soptic losing his insurance certainly didn’t help his wife’s battle with cancer? (If you want to read more about this, click here…and yes, Glenn Kessler of the so-called “respectable” corporate media really is that big of a dick – and with typical Malkin understatement, she alleges that Obama is saying that Romney killed Soptic’s wife, when of course nobody is saying that, nor, to my knowledge, has anyone on the Obama side ever said that.)
Gohmert drew on an observation of former U.S. Navy Admiral Mike Mullen that “our biggest national security threat is our overspending. But there are other national security threats. We’ve had thousands killed and the media’s not talking about it. We need to talk about it.”
“There have been thousands killed since this president took over — thousands of our military,” Gohmert added. “They beat up on [George W.] Bush every day another soldier was killed. They were out there showing coffins and things. But not with this president.”
“This president has put in place rules of engagement, that certainly were put there under his command, that are getting our people killed.”
Gohmert went on to observe Obama’s public promise to withdraw from Afghanistan in 2014. The president, he concluded, has “left these guys out there with rules of engagement that don’t allow them to adequately defend themselves.”
The Texas Republican calls those rules of engagement “politically correct stuff.”
For the record, this tells us that the Afghanistan rules of engagement were put in place by former Gen. (and head of U.S. forces there) Stanley McChrystal and were modified by incoming Gen. David Petraeus after McChrystal left (and how sad is it for Gohmert that it was so easy to refute him that Fox did it?)
Yes, people, water is wet, sky is blue, and Louie Gohmert is still the stupidest life form in the entire galaxy (more evidence is here).
Also, though this is a bit tangential (but it does have to do with foreign policy), I’ve withheld comment until now on the story of the Navy SEAL who basically outed himself as one of the members of the team that killed Osama bin Laden when he wrote a book about it (and by the way, I don’t care if bin Laden was unarmed when he was shot). And I hadn’t planned to say anything until I read this defense of Fix Noise for publishing his name from “Z on TV” himself, David Zurawik.
Soooo…Fox “did nothing wrong” even though Zurawik admits that he has a “low regard” for the network? And Zurawik thinks Penguin Group, the book publisher, is just “a big commercial publishing house that exists first and foremost to make money”? And I suppose the Fox TV network is a non-for-profit enterprise, then? And Zurawik quite rightly doesn’t trust Fox, to the point where he waited for corroboration on the SEAL’s name from the AP – that’s fine, but doesn’t “Z” realize that Fox let the genie out of the proverbial bottle, not the AP, and it would have been awfully difficult for the AP to try and put the brakes on that story? And Zurawik also says that “anyone who writes such a book has no reasonable expectation of privacy”?
Gee, under that logic, then “All The President’s Men” by Woodward and Bernstein (of course) should never have seen the light of day, since Mark Felt (who outed himself as Deep Throat before he died) should have had “no reasonable expectation of privacy”?
As noted here, the SEAL who went public with his identity (his pseudonym is “Mark Owen”) so he could get a book published blaming Obama has subsequently put his life in danger for it. And that is unfortunate.
Yes, he served his country, and he deserves our thanks. But am I the only one who thinks that going public like that was a pretty damn stupid thing to do, if for no other reason than because people who don’t like us can now use that information to try and go after his family, friends, and other service members who once served with him?
The point of me commenting like this isn’t to add to the chorus of people proclaiming quite rightly that Ryan is a liar. Here’s what I’m wondering about; Ryan tells everyone who will listen that he’s a Roman Catholic.
Well, aside from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (who also quite rightly have said that what Ryan espouses has nothing to do with their faith and the faith that Ryan claims to practice, or words to that effect, here), where is the voice of the head of the archdiocese of Ryan’s congressional district?
Well, apparently Tom Gallagher of the National Catholic Reporter was wondering the same thing; the following is an excerpt from here (dated last May)…
I looked up Rep. Ryan’s congressional district in Wisconsin and to determine whether it was within the Milwaukee archdiocese’s jurisdiction or within the jurisdiction of the Madison diocese. I emailed the Offices of Communication for both dioceses and asked for a clarification.
I wanted to see whether Archbishop Jerome Listecki of Milwaukee or Bishop Robert Morlino of Madison have publicly reached out to Rep. Ryan to discuss his “moral failure” of a federal budget proposal and his acute misunderstanding of Catholic social teaching.
What I found was both interesting and distressing.
…
Instead of hearing back from (Julie) Wolf (communications director for the Milwaukee archdiocese), I heard from Jerry Topczewski, who it turns out is a seasoned public relations executive and chief of staff for Archbishop Listecki. He offered this response:
“Archbishop Listecki has not made any public statements that I am aware of regarding the budget proposal nor, to my knowledge, has he spoken to Congressman Ryan regarding the budget proposal. Although a portion of Congressman Ryan’s congressional district overlaps the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, Congressman Ryan lives in the Diocese of Madison. Recently, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, president of the USCCB, made some comments regarding the budget proposal in a response to a reporter’s question. You may want to review his comments.”
I followed up with this email question:
Is it accurate to conclude then that Archbishop Listecki plans no formal engagement with Rep. Ryan with respect to the Congressman’s “understanding” of Catholic social teaching and Rep. Ryan’s budget proposal?
Mr. Topczewski: “No.”
My next follow-up email question:
So going forward, will Archbishop Listecki publicly engage Rep. Ryan about his ‘understanding’ of Catholic social teaching and its application to the federal budget?
Mr. Topczewski: “I haven’t asked him.”
My next email question:
Will you kindly present my questions to Archbishop Listecki and ask him to respond to the questions?
Mr. Topczewski: “It is Confirmation season, so the Archbishop’s schedule is very busy. If I get the chance to ask him, I will let you know.”
I asked if I could have responses by this past Friday so I could file this story, but I have not heard back. If Mr. Topczewski responds to these questions, I will be sure to give him and Archbishop Listecki plenty of space.
Gallagher’s story also tells us that Morlino’s office said “This is an issue where the Congressman [Ryan] speaks well for himself. He is very aware of the demands of lay mission in the Church and he is free to carry that mission out as he does. There is no need for us, nor are we in a position, to enter into this discussion.”
Oh, and did I point out that Archbishop Listecki referred to the church as a “corporation” here (as an astute commenter noted, if Listecki really believed that, then why does the church still have tax-exempt status…Update: The corporation comment probably same from the same mindset as this)?
So basically, on the issue of Paul Ryan’s thorough and complete misunderstanding of Church teaching on the economy, the Catholic Church hierarchy (in Ryan’s district in this case) did what it does best…
Heckuva job.
Update 9/1/12: Say Amen, somebody (here).
“He has moved on with his life,” (Jeb) Bush said. “I send him emails once every two weeks to say, ‘all I meet are people that love you,’ which is true. I am not making that up. In this hall people were saying, ‘I worked for your brother, history will prove him right on a lot of things.’ There’s a lot of goodwill for George W. Bush, but he also knows that he needs to stay out of the way. Back to this idea that you blame W. for everything: the common cold, breakout bacne (sic?), rain; so I think he smartly has taken a step back and let the Romney-Ryan ticket take the attention that they deserve.”
Oh, and did you know that Jeb also said, in essence, that President Obama needs a “spanking” here? What a professional comment to direct at the head of state.
And I’m so happy that Dubya has “moved on.” Aren’t you?
I wonder if the families and friends of the victims of his completely and totally unnecessary war in Iraq have “moved on” too?
I mean, it’s not like Dubya couldn’t ask them and find out. All he has to do is search this list for some names. He could use that as a starting point and then do what he does best, which is to turn over a tiresome chore (in this case, tracking down the people to ask) to somebody else.
Actually, I could help him out with that. Dubya is supposedly living in a Dallas suburb now. Well, according to this list, Peter Burks, Simon Cox, Brian Grant, and Jeffrey Green all came from Dallas. He could pick up the phone, call some people and he wouldn’t even have to dial out of his area code. And it’s not like he doesn’t have the spare time on his hands these days.
But of course, he’ll do nothing of the sort. And that’s because the Republicans don’t want the reality of real people experiencing real problems to penetrate their bubble of unreality, where, as Bill Maher famously said, “the only thing that gets in is Fox News and the only things to come out are misspelled signs and babies.”
With that in mind, I have a question: how can we expect a party of unreality to know how to govern on the national level in the world of reality?
That should be a question all of us ask in the voting booth this November.
Posted by doomsy 
The Liberal Doomsayer 