Snowball's Comments (629)

“Umm, how does drilling for more oil help stave off global warming?”

“That's an opinion piece by John Tierney, a self-avowed Libertarian (i.e. corporate stooge), not an objective journalist. He has a political ax to grind and his interpretation of the matter is debatable to say the least.”

“Thanks for the red herring. The authenticity of the e-mails is not in question here. What is in question is who hacked them, why, and how standard discourse between scientists about research is being deliberately distorted and misrepresented for ideological purposes and the financial interests of certain corporations.”

“Haha! You couldn't make this stuff up. The brainwashed Fox News hordes would be hilarious if they weren't so destructive and voted en mass.”

“Haha, I'll trust the vast body of research and scientific consensus before I'll trust a whacko conspiracy website, thank you.”

“The e-mails are already out, there's nothing to them but routine discourse and debate between scientific researchers that's being deliberately misrepresented to by ideologues and corporate flacks with financial motives.”

“Tweated data? Shrugging heads?

Thanks for confirming my suspicion that global warming deniers are from an alternate reality.”

“So that's going to motivate thousands of climate scientists all over the world to commit to a code of silence and fudge their research data? Unlikely. The more likely scenario is that big oil and coal corporations are funneling millions of dollars into right wing think tanks and astroturf organizations to discredit valid scientific research. That profit motive by far outweighs anything some lowly paid researchers at a university might ever hope to get, government grants or no.”

“These are university researchers we are talking about, not corporate flacks. They don't have to sign any confidentiality agreements. Besides, nothing about the e-mails is "sensitive." It's just being deliberately misconstrued by fanatical far right ideologues and corporate PR flacks.”

“Please, what would be the motivation for falsifying climate research data? The e-mails in question indicate no such thing, only the internal deliberations of scientists.”

“The e-mails were stolen by hackers, that's not a leak. This is nothing like Ellsberg and the Pentagon papers, get real. There's no crime, or harm done, by scientists having internal deliberations, it's what scientists do. There's nothing in any of those e-mails that even suggests that there's some kind of global conspiracy of leftist scientists to destroy capitalism by cooking the books on climate research. Your entire premise is beyond delusional.”

“Exactly.”

“Actually, many companies will fire people on trumped up causes instead of laying them off so they aren't responsible for paying unemployment benefits. I saw it happen to several people where I work and they almost did it to me but I was fortunate enough to be liked by my manager and HR who knew what upper-management was up to and their charges against me were false so they stood up for me. Others weren't so lucky.”

“Having been a life-long sufferer of major depressive disorder, I must point out that the remedies you are advocating here are all geared towards mild depression (which may not be really depression at all, but normal changes is mood) and, or, are found to be only slightly more effective than placebos. These are hardly adequate to deal with the serious condition that people who suffer from real, life debilitating depressive disorders have to contend with.

While there is nothing wrong with trying all these therapies advocated here, there may be harm done to those for whom they are ineffective, compounding their depression with feelings of guilt and futility. My fear is that articles such as this can create false hopes for those who have profound depressive disorders that may, in the long run, lead to more suicides than it prevents.

Real depression is a condition that can last for months, or even years with no respite. It destroys one's life from the inside out, alienating friends and family, causing loss of employment and other effects that have long term implications for the sufferers that make recovery a long, hard slog.

It's true many of the pharmaceuticals on the market have side effects, and it takes experimentation to find the ones that work best for an individual. But as a recourse of last resort, they shouldn't be cast aside merely because the corporate interests that produce them, are doing so for profit motives, or because they are unnatural chemicals.”

“The teabagger movement, really an astroturf campaign organized and funded by the insurance industry (a proven fact), demonized themselves by diminishing the horror that was the Holocaust, by comparing Obama to Hitler and health care reform to that terrible event.”

“Amy Siskind's entire act is a GOP scam designed to fracture the Democratic coalition with empty appeals to identity politics. Just check out the website of her astroturf organization, The New Agenda which is a right wing propaganda front that pretends to be an "organization dedicated to improving the lives of women and girls."

DAILY BEAST: Nancy Pelosi, Feminist Nightmare
by Amy Siskind
http://thenewagenda.net/2009/11/20/daily-beast-nancy-pelosi-feminist-nightmare/

Get it? Nancy Pelosi is a feminist nightmare because of the anti-abortion clause that was so unfortunately stuck in the health care bill by a handful of Conservative "Democrats" (i.e. Republicans who ran as Democrats because that's the only way they could get elected). On the other hand, Siskind holds Sarah Palin (an anti-choice extremist) up as a paragon of feminism because rational people don't think she's a very bright bulb and aren't afraid to say so. Never mind that Pelosi has always been a staunch advocate of a woman's right to choose, and Sarah Palin holds the opposite position. The double-think would make George Orwell roll in his grave.

Sarah Palin is no feminist, no more so than a Pat Buchanan.”

“It was, why do you think the teabagger who walked into the counter demonstration was carrying a billy club?”

“Hehe, thanks!”

“Why not "Vote Progressive, move the Democratic Party forwards!"”

“I fear that's the Blue Dog strategy. They don't really care if they lose and the Democrats become the minority party. They'll just move on and get higher paying jobs as corporate lobbyists once their dirty work is done.”

“Too bad it's all of us who will have to feel the pain. I guess you can live with that, I don't happen to feel the same.”

“Umm, yes, you will.”

“Gee, at least one person understands how our government is constitutionally constructed. Consider yourself fanned.”

“So, the Mathew Shepard Act making hate crimes against Gays a federal offense, and Democrats attaching a repeal of DADT to the defense bill count for nothing? I guess we could say your rallying cry would be: "Forwards, into the past!"”

“Of course, even making murder illegal doesn't prevent it from happening, but perhaps, it makes it less frequent. The Mathew Shepard Act is a great step forwards for Gay civil rights, and will ensure that people who commit violent acts against Gays, because they are Gay, get the punishment they deserve for their acts of terrorism. That effects every Gay and transgendered American. DADT and DOMA, important as they are, don't.”