They Decide

“Gee,” Rupert said, “wish we hadda thought of that first. We can’t use someone else’s idea.”

…a synapse too far…

Nice turn of phrase, but I think it’s more about FNC not wanting its audience to make the connection between energy independence and national security…as it’s one of those truths that run counter to the right-wing conventional wisdom.

I’ve seen that ad — running as an ad, not as part of a news segment — several times on MSNBC. So they’re getting it out there, even if not on Fox News.

Benen’s rundown of the other progressive and centrist ads that Faux News has refused to broadcast is amazing.
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I particularly like the excuse they gave for not running the last Vote Vets ad — their feeble-minded audience would find it “too confusing.”
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Yes, it would be confusing if pesky facts ever made their way onto the Republican Outrage Machine.

The right, and Fox, hate vets. They like the military in the abstract, but up close and personal, with our own opinions? Not so much.
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How else do you explain Fox paying both Geraldo Rivera and Bob Novak?
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Fox, yes to torture, yes to random invasions, yes to stupid tough guy talk, yes to blind support/opposition based on party regardless of success, no to fully funding after-costs of war, like increased VA expenses, pro big industrial pricey weapons.
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Every one of those is a position that’s pretty much against soldiers. I think it’s really underreported just how much nearly all of the veterans groups founded by current war vets lean progressive on a lot of issues. While most of the groups founded in the wake of Vietnam went the other direction. I still go out with several buddies every year and celebrate Rumsfeld Day (the anniversary of his firing).
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I think the political lesson here is: if you screw up a war, the military will turn against your party for the next forty years. I fully admit I could be wrong, but I think this is a lesson chickenhawk republicans are going to learn soon as their party and military culture continue to diverge in core values.

“The right, and Fox, hate vets. They like the military in the abstract, but up close and personal, with our own opinions? Not so much.”

Airhead, most vets, such as myself, and current members of the military are right of center. We know that it is the left that, in the words of Bill Clinton, “loathe the military.”

“I think the political lesson here is: if you screw up a war, the military will turn against your party for the next forty years.”

Obama is screwing up Afghanistan, but the military wasn’t with him to begin with.

What to expect from Fox. The network that runs segment after segment complaining that all the other media outlets that are not Fox, fail to cover all the stories that make, democrats, liberals and progressives look bad that they either make up themselves or pick up from some other makerupper.

Way to respect a fellow veteran, tiger.

Actually, I was in the 2/124th INF, we were attached to 3rd and 4th ID at various points throughout all of ’03 and early ’04. Paul Reickhoff, founder of IAVA, wrote a book about our unit called “Chasing Ghosts”. It’s available on Amazon. I liked “airhead” though. Reminds me of the old Adam Sandler Steve Buschemi Brendan Fraser movie.

“Obama is screwing up Afghanistan, but the military wasn’t with him to begin with.”
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Speak for yourself. No need to slander loyal members of our military by projecting your treason on them.

The right wing is obsessed with macho images and refuses to admit the role of better energy in keeping our country safe.

The Nazis did the same thing with their art focused on muscular male blond haired blue eyed men digging ditches and shooting guns.

At the end of the day, nothing could be better for a real man than peacetime to be able to earn a living and return home to his wife and children, but, Fox is far too right wing to see it that way.

I, myself, like to see images of female bodies, not male ones.

Call me a wimp when I am a civilian in bed with a woman using an energy efficient air conditioner instead of getting my testicles blown off by an IED if you like. I don’t care.

“But that seems to be a synapse too far for the Fox audience…”
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It’s a P-R-O-P-A-G-A-N-D-A outlet. You think they have any respect for the intelligence of their audience? Two words: Sean Hannity

This already happened with another Vote Vets ad a couple months ago.
Why are people in the press acting like this is somehow illuminating now?
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0510/Fox_refuses_climate_ad.html?showall#
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As a consulting geologist (energy), I travel quite a lot. Conversations I have with people driving shuttles, sitting at the airport bar, etc. naturally get into discussions about oil and gas.
I love getting a right winger going off about how much they love their oil, and I can pivot so easily to pointing out how the U.S. has very limited supplies of oil and gas remaining, no matter what they hear from their dubious news sources. I then point out that their love of oil and their refusal to support policies that could wean us off what is essentially terrorist oil means they support terrorism.
Leave ‘em stuttering every time.

Couple questions for anyone who can answer them.

1. Moving fuel in a combat zone in the middle east has what to do with a climate plan in America?

2. How is having a climate plan in America going to save lives in a combat zone? Doesn’t the fuel we move there come from there? Or do we move it from here to there?

We know that it is the left that, in the words of Bill Clinton, “loathe the military.”.
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Wow, I’m impressed you have an internet connection back in the 1960s when a college-age Clinton wrote that about the left’s view of the military during the Vietnam War.
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But nice job making it sound like he was talking about “the left” fifty years later and from his perspective as president. I guess when facts aren’t on your side, you just have to make sh!t up.

I don’t think the Faux News audience has any respect for the intelligence of the audience. They get lied to over and over and over again, and yet they still come back for more.
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And again, experts have done studies about the relationship between a person’s news source and how well informed they are about actual facts in this country, and Faux News came in at the very bottom.
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http://people-press.org/report/319/public-knowledge-of-current-affairs-little-changed-by-news-and-information-revolutions

1. They’re talking about how fuel-inefficient our vehicles are. Anything with heavy armor just isn’t able to get good mileage because of the power to weight ratio. However, the non-armored vehicles could be doing a lot better. A climate plan would theoretically spur development of more fuel efficient engines, which would then help our non-armored vehicles and reduce the overall fuel consumption.
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2. Yes, we do move the fuel from here over to there. Most refining capacity is located in industrial nations like the U.S. Iran, for example, imports nearly all of its refined gasoline.
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Hope that helps to clear things up for you.

Not to mention, Bill Clinton has never spoken for “the left”.

Prove it Pafro. I’d hate to have to call you a liar.

groenhagen2

re: Bill Clinton/”loathe the military”

First, a lot of Liberal/progessives like myself don’t even begin to feel that Bill Clinton is one of us, so don’t try to pawn him off on us.

Second, and most importantly, President Clinton’s remark was made, I believe, at a time when the draft was throwing young men like himself (and, a few years later, like me) into a brutal war that served no purpose. I think the “loathing” he spoke of was as much fear of the military as anything else. The times were different – to put it mildly – and the military of that time was different, too.

And I’m ashamed to admit that being anti-military was something of a fashion back then, and the war in Viet Nam was such a tragic horror show that many members of my generation adopted that fashion. We were too tragically hip to see that the young men fighting and dying over there were doing their duty as they saw fit, and that our true animus should have been directed at the men that put them in harm’s way in the name of a misguided policy.

But we learned our lesson, and people like me (left of center) having nothing but respect and admiration for the men and women who serve. It’s why we demand that they not be sacrificed without a damned good reason.

Don’t we all feel that way?

“1. Moving fuel in a combat zone in the middle east has what to do with a climate plan in America?”
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Since the DOD is one of the largest energy users in the entire world and a monopsony (only buyer) of military hardware, it is possible that the DOD may make fuel efficiency a tertiary priority after performance and armor. I am not too sure if I want our troops in a prius tank considering that the prius acceleration is weak.
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Also, it points out the inefficiency of energy sources in civilian situations being carried long distances using fuel to bring fuel to the ones who need fuel is not optimal.
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“2. How is having a climate plan in America going to save lives in a combat zone? Doesn’t the fuel we move there come from there? Or do we move it from here to there?”
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If it weren’t for oil needs, first, we would not give a flying duck what Saudi Arabia and many of these countries want from us and, second, Al Qada and other foreign fighters are subsidized with oil money. Fill up your tank and fund an IED to blow up one of our soldiers.
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The correlation is a little indirect for both I will agree, but if we don’t need the oil, don’t buy the oil and if they don’t have money from our buying their oil to use to buy weapons against us, we can all live a little easier.
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After oil and religious holy sights of Islam, the third biggest resource of Saudi Arabia is sand. If we stop buying their oil they will have to just throw sand when facing west and hope it does some harm.

Be careful, pafro. You might get called a liar by the racist 50-year-old bass player from a Pat Benatar cover band.

7/17/2010: Newfreedomblog “Thank you for your response mr zechman, I am positive you would like to hear nothing but the truth so help me God from our lame stream media, who pick and chose what they should report and what they shouldn’t based solely on ideology or politics.”
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Bueller? Bueller?
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I hate hypocrisy more than honest ignorance.

“Prove it Pafro. I’d hate to have to call you a liar.”
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2/3rds,
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Since I do credit you with being, as far as I can tell, brutally honest about who you are, I will ask you what you want Parfo to prove?
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Do you want a link to another source as I have heard many times before saying the same thing, calculus problems, hand written tables?
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For the most part the fact that since the late 1960s we have been oil importers for the simple fact that there is, relative to world supply and relative to US demand, very little oil left here.
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If it was here, why would we have ever imported?
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Why was the gas shortage of the Nixon and Carter administration such a huge crisis causing stagflation (inflation, usually the result of a roaring economy and stagnation or, actually, recession to be more specific) if there were enough places left to drill domestically for short money?
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Countries never import a raw material which is in abundance domestically.

Kevin,
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I am giving 2/3rds credit.
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Let’s face it, he is not embellishing anything just as I am not.
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Like him, I could make up some really cool sounding stuff about myself, but don’t.
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He may be racist, but, he is almost definitely not lying about himself.

Fox must be opposed to methods for propelling objects forward. If they existed at the time I guess they would have been furious with the new methods for putting rockets into outer space. However, the fact that the soldiers identify themselves as progressive, something else that has nothing to do with new ways to cause objects to move forward, is likely what they are opposed to. The mere fact that a liberal soldier exists is contrary to two of their pet theories, that liberals hate soldiers just as much as they hate America.

The right is almost totally bereft of logic at this point. They even manage to politicize technology, probably without knowing anything about it.

What technology?

When I was a sophomore in college I did some Summertime work for PIRG.
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One of my coworkers was in the ROTC.
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I was surprised, but, he told me that I shouldn’t be.
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Why would a willingness to go into combat mean that you would like or consider it acceptable to do preventable harm to the planet?
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There is no reasonable correlation between being military or pro-military and being anti-environmental at all.
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“President-elect Barack Obama helped close the gap among military voters, winning 44 percent of veterans as opposed to John F. Kerry’s 41 percent in 2004.”
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http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1108/15455.html
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There are liberals in the Army and among veterans, even if fewer than among the civilian population.

“What technology?”
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Solar energy, wind energy, tidal energy, flex fuel vehicles and hybrid electric vehicles.

lol! groenhagen vs. sean: which side HATES THE MILITARY AND VETS???
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the fact that we can end up with questions like that should put everyone on guard against extreme rhetorical elevation and demonization.

Before they settled for a half-ass stimulus effort I was expecting one or two trans-formative, green themed mega-projects, focused on new energy, like a cross nation electricity and hydrogen distribution network, as part of the recovery plan. The soldiers are aware of the need to transform the energy infrastructure because they are on the front lines of the old technology.

Basically the only reason we are interested at all in what goes on in the Middle East is to control oil. It was that way in 1944, it was that way in 1955, it was that way in 2001 (when bin Laden caused us to cut and run from our Saudi military bases), and it is that way today.
Fwiw, the hottest onshore play in the next ten years is going to be the Frontier and Niobrara plays of Wyoming and Colorado. Similar to the Bakken Shale of N.D. and some people think it will be bigger.
Look at how the Bakken affected U.S. oil production (fig 17 in this article):
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5928
We aren’t drilling our way to dependence off terrorist oil.

right, because right wingers oppose some specific energy legislation because of “how much they love their oil”. i’m sure you can find people this dumb, but a geologist getting off by arguing about oil with them? this is like taking a victory lap after racing a quadriplegic.
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get over yourself

I would rather give Michelle Malkin my address so she could look through my garbage and give my wife death threats than give you tea tantrums any proof that reveals who I am.

here’s one answer for the both of them:
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its a TV ad! you’re supposed to ignore them! they are all meant for people who never think about politics, or at least not analytically. they are designed strictly to shape the general sentiments toward a person or issue

Hey swiss cheese, your movements leaders are this dumb:
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200901280026
Beck has car idled outside of studio during show to “do our part for global warming”

Hey swisscheese, your movements leaders are this dumb:
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200901280026
Beck has car idled outside of studio during show to “do our part for global warming”

And I’m sure MSNBC only ever speaks the truth… In fact, didn’t NBC and CBS refuse to run an add opposing the building of that mosque at Ground Zero? Of course, I’m sure you liberal types fully feel that this refusal was fully justified. All I can say is the Kool-Aid runs dry this November, guys. Perhaps then we can start to reverse the damage that people like you have caused.

6.6: “Thee fact that we can end up with questions like that should put everyone on guard against extreme rhetorical elevation and demonization.”

The last 3,000 years of history would suggest people shall need a much greater teacher than episodes such as this to divert themselves from their own nature, unfortunately.
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New sicence, new tech, new languages, new possibilities …. same old people.

I’m going to probably regret this, but since I don’t recognize the poster:
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Vaille, could you define, or qualify “people like you”?

Joe:
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I have to say that I’m ecstatic over the developments with the Tea Party. A ball got rolling that I had been hoping for.
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Maybe in my lifetime, we will see the end of the use of racially inflammatory speech to incite hate and anger. Conservatives don’t need it!
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As for the fact that FOX news won’t air the ad, Joe, think cold war and think propaganda. Suddenly, the true nature of FOX will become apparent to you…

Well, I’m the amateur here, pafro. No idea you were a geologist!
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2/3rdsrocks, I thnk, is tilting at windmills…

Oops. Way late for me shep.
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Seems I have real trouble scrabbling the gun out of the holster these days…

“This was a major theme, for example, with Paul E. Vallely, a Fox News analyst from 2001 to 2007. A retired Army general who had specialized in psychological warfare, Mr. Vallely co-authored a paper in 1980 that accused American news organizations of failing to defend the nation from “enemy” propaganda during Vietnam.

“We lost the war — not because we were outfought, but because we were out Psyoped,” he wrote. He urged a radically new approach to psychological operations in future wars — taking aim at not just foreign adversaries but domestic audiences, too. He called his approach “MindWar” — using network TV and radio to “strengthen our national will to victory.”

http://michaelfury.wordpress.com/2010/01/12/target-audience/

“I would rather give Michelle Malkin my address so she could look through my garbage and give my wife death threats than give you tea tantrums any proof that reveals who I am.”
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Good idea since Groenhaggen2, above, was making threats against me.
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I hadn’t seen him post in months now, but that was after a sent a complaint to the FBI. That is, most likely, why he stopped posting after he saw my name here. If he makes more threats he will, most likely, finally, face charges for harassment.
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Since he, also, uses his real name like I do, I found out that he is a real looser who has nothing left to loose but may not have the gas money to drive from Kansas to New York to shoot me.
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Parfo, I know exactly what you are thinking.
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From multiple other sources your conclusions are reasonably well known in the reality based community.

ONE word: Shannity

All I can say is the Kool-Aid runs dry this November, guys.
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Faux News is going off the air in November?
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But if that happens, who will get their braindead viewers riled up about the New Black Panther Party? Don’t you understand? There are literally one dozen members of that group, and they’ve said bad things about white people!
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Something must be done! Pants must be p!ssed in fear!

Is this what you got excited over, mr 53_3?
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http://wcbstv.com/topstories/tea.party.naacp.2.1812710.html

There is racism in every organization, Rusty.
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However, the NAACP has a 105 year history and solid roots in a history that some want to paper over, and has done far more good than harm.
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However, both you and I know that there has been a lot of racially inflammatory (Williams’ statement is the latest) statements from people in the Tea Party.
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I’m not going to recap it but the point is that I would be willing to see the use of racially inflammatory speech and hateful innuendo removed from the spectrum of political discourse.
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I have never considered the Tea Party itself racist. However, the Libertarian underpinnings of the movement are used by less than desirable elements within it to broadcast their hateful message.

Why is it that so many people are confused by the term “climate change” because it is also known as GLOBAL warming?
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It does not mean that every single day will be dramatically warmer. It means that we have a very frail ecosystem which can not handle extremely large amounts of CO2 release in, relative to the lifespan of the earth, a very, very short period of time (the past 100 years)?
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Fox: promoting misinformation and stupidity nationwide.

You’re right Kevin. It is all about the ad being produced by Vote Vets. Fox is not concerned about the content but the source.

53_3, it is why I can comment here in spurts. I am either working 13 hour days 7 days a week for a month straight or I’m working not at all.
Pew once came out with a poll of scientists and found only 6% were Republicans (4% of geoscientists). This applies even in the oil and gas industry. What a dirty little (non) secret huh?
http://people-press.org/report/?pageid=1549

The VoteVets Ad is misleading. Solar and windmills technologies all produce electricity. Foreign oil is NOT used to produce electricity but fuel our automobiles. Therefore the mentally challenged that subscribe to any hair brained group under cover of military veteran should learn to walk rather than drive.

Nam Vet

Most electricity in the US is generated by the burning of Coal, Natural Gas or petroleum derivatives.
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Also, there are plug in hybrid cars which will soon be on the market which will only run the gasoline engine after the first 90 miles or so after it runs out from the charge it had back at the house.