Barring a major volcano, of course
The UK’s Met Office (originally the Meteorological Office), which is part of its Ministry of Defence, predicted yesterday on its website:
Bill O’Reilly Slams Law & Order Drama Series For Describing Him As A ‘Cancer That Spreads Hate’
Last night, Bill O’Reilly characterized the producer of NBC’s Law & Order crime drama, Dick Wolf, as a “far left guy” for approving a piece of dialogue that described O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh as a “cancer spreading ignorant and hate” that has convinced people that immigrants are the problem. O’Reilly called Wolf a “coward” and a “liar,” claiming that he has “consistently supported poor people who want a better life.” O’Reilly added:
Dick Wolf, the Executive Producer of Law & Order, is a despicable human being — despicable for distorting and exploiting this very complicated issue. Enough is enough with these network pinheads who shove propaganda down our throats under the guise of entertainment. No one on the Factor has been allowed to demonize any human being, and it’s partially because of this program that the border fence has finally been put up.
Watch it:
Ironically, O’Reilly attacks a fictional drama series with the same criticisms that many have reasonably brought against his news reporting. Not long ago, O’Reilly was proclaiming that immigration needs to be capped because the “far left” wants to “bring in millions of foreign nationals” to “break down the white, Christian, male power structure.” O’Reilly also got into a screaming match with fellow Fox News anchor Geraldo Rivera, who suggested he was purposely reporting a “drunk driving story” as an “illegal alien story” and “obscuring a tragedy to make a cheap political point” that flares anti-immigrant animosity.
Rivera isn’t the only person who thinks so. Former head of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Rep. Joe Baca (D-CA), stated that O’Reilly’s language is “divisive and inflammatory, and often misleading” and “only creates fear, hatred and negative stereotyping of immigrants.” Media Matters has written that O’Reilly, along with Lou Dobbs and Glenn Beck, serve a “steady diet of fear, anger, and resentment on the topic of illegal immigration.” O’Reilly is specifically described as frequently isolating crimes committed by undocumented immigrants and reporting them as if they were representative of the undocumented population as a whole and a “matter of national urgency.”
The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund recently warned that “shrill anti-immigration reform commentaries” and the villification of immigrants in the public media has led to a rise in violent hate crimes against immigrants and those perceived as immigrants.
HT: Media Matters
Copenhagen, Day Five: Negotiations Move Slowly Forward
The Wonk Room is reporting and tweeting on the scene from Copenhagen during the United Nations Climate Change Conference.
Blame Canada
The mayor of Toronto, Canada, David Miller, accepted the top two Fossil of the Day awards from the International Climate Action Network on behalf of Canada. The climate organizations and Miller criticized Canada’s conservative government for its weak targets and obstructionist approach to the international negotiations. “I’m embarrassed as a Canadian,” Miller said.
Baby Steps For A Post-Kyoto Framework
Bernanke-Bashing Goes Mainstream
Paul Krugman picks up the Bernanke-bashing torch and does it skillfully. This is obviously a drum I’ve been beating for a while, most recently in The Daily Beast.
Something I would note is that some kind of legislative action with regard to the long-term deficit would be helpful in making the case here. The best argument I can see on the merits for monetary policy caution is fear that in the context of high projected long-term deficits there may be some kind of crisis of confidence tipping point lurking around the corner. If I were on the FOMC that would strike me as an unduly speculative reason to inflict massive unnecessary suffering on millions of unemployed and underemployed people. But it’s not an irrational consideration. In an ideal world you would see three-fold motion toward a bigger short-term deficit, a more aggressive monetary policy stance, and credible long-term deficit-reduction measures.
Beck Denies He Has Inspired Any Violence: ‘Where Is The Evidence? … Show It To Me’
The plot of this week’s Law & Order SVU revolved around a killer who was inspired by a fictional right-wing talk show host to kill children of immigrants. Defending his client’s actions, the killer’s attorney says the man is “just a symptom” of the “cancer spreading ignorance and hate” that is “Garrison [the fictional host], Limbaugh, Beck, O’Reilly.”
Fox News personalities Glenn Beck and O’Reilly were outraged and quickly fired back. O’Reilly called the comments “simply defamatory and outrageous,” and condemned Law & Order creator Dick Wolf as “a coward,” “a liar,” and a “despicable human being” who is trying to push a “progressive point of view.” For his part, Beck asked “where is the evidence for inciting any violence? Show it to me.” Watch it:
Sadly, there is some evidence to support the notion that Beck, Hannity, and O’Reilly have served as the inspiration for individuals disposed to act out with violence. In July 2008, a Tennessee man went on a “shotgun rampage” in a Unitarian church “during a childrens’ production of ‘Annie,’” killing two and injuring six. Police found a letter, explaining his attack was motivated by “a hatred of liberalism and Democratic leaders.” They also found three books in his home:
[Police] seized three books from Adkisson’s home, including “The O’Reilly Factor,” by television commentator Bill O’Reilly; “Liberalism is a Mental Disorder,” by radio personality Michael Savage; and “Let Freedom Ring,” by political pundit Sean Hannity.
Richard Poplawski, who killed three police officers in April in Pittsburgh, may have been partially inspired by Beck. Poplawski “bought into…conspiracy theories hook, line and sinker” and was motivated by a belief that President Obama would “outlaw guns.” Beck and other right-wing pundits pushed the false notion that Obama would ban firearms, leading to a spike in gun sales after his election. Poplawski watched Beck and even posted a clip of Beck and Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) discussing FEMA camps — a common subject of right-wing conspiracy theories — to a white supremacist web site.
In May, abortion doctor George Tiller was murdered in the foyer of his church. Prior to this incident, O’Reilly regularly singled out Tiller on his show — there are nearly 1,800 abortion providers in the country — referring to him repeatedly as “Tiller the Baby Killer” and saying that he “executes babies.” Tiller’s name appeared in 29 episodes of “The Factor” between 2005 and Tiller’s death. As Salon’s Gabriel Winant wrote in May, “there’s no other person who bears as much responsibility for the characterization of Tiller as a savage on the loose,” as O’Reilly. Legal and psychological experts event suggested that Scott Roeder — Tiller’s accused killer — might be able to use “the O’Reilly defense” in court. “The deluge of ‘Tiller is a Nazi, mass murderer, baby killer’ verbiage by Mr. O’Reilly surely can drive one into a state of what we in the legal profession call ‘righteous assassination,’” legal expert Jonathan Turley told Huffington Post’s Scott Young.
While Beck and O’Reilly are not directly responsible for any of these incidents, their hate-filled rhetoric has indeed been shown to incite angry or unbalanced listeners.
Update
Andrea Nill highlights the anti-immigration rhetoric of Bill O’Reilly.
“Vince Vince” Wants Sanctions on Iran
There’s a group called The Israel Project which put together a petition urging congress to impose stiff sanctions on Iran. Only problem is their petition is full of fake names. For example, they’re listing over 220 different people named “Vince Vince” some of whom live in states like MN or AZ but others have listed XX or AA. There’s also Porn Sex Video from London, N.Y. and the like.
Spencer Ackerman’s got the scoop on this and also got the not-very-honest-sounding response from The Israel Project’s founder and president, Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi.
Copenhagen, Day Five: Negotiations Move Slowly Forward
The Wonk Room is reporting and tweeting on the scene from Copenhagen during the United Nations Climate Change Conference.
Blame Canada
The mayor of Toronto, Canada, David Miller, accepted the top two Fossil of the Day awards from the International Climate Action Network on behalf of Canada. The climate organizations and Miller criticized Canada’s conservative government for its weak targets and obstructionist approach to the international negotiations. “I’m embarrassed as a Canadian,” Miller said.
Baby Steps For A Post-Kyoto Framework
The first official draft text for a post-Kyoto international agreement has been released, from the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-Term Cooperative Action (AWG-LCA). There is another group working on an extension of the Kyoto Protocol, but the “LCA” track is the one which has the participation of the United States. The LCA draft “states that emissions should be halved worldwide by 2050 compared to 1990 levels, but it also suggests 80 percent and 95 percent reductions by that year as possible alternative options.”
Halving emissions by 2050 is estimated by scientists to have roughly a 70 percent chance of limiting global warming to two degrees C above pre-industrial levels. An 80 percent cut would increase the likelihood of staying below the two-degree threshold to 85 percent. However, small island nations and many African nations believe the science shows that warming needs to be limited to 1.5 ° C to ensure their survival.
The draft text is replete with brackets enclosing unresolved language, from emissions and warming targets to financing and adaptation.
Stern Said, He Said
Chinese Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei “lashed out today at U.S. climate negotiator Todd Stern,” calling “extremely irresponsible” his recent pronouncement that no American climate change funding would go to China. “I think he lacks common sense when he made such a comment vis-à-vis China. He either lacks common sense or is extremely irresponsible.”
At a later briefing, Stern said his comments about the public funding issue and China were “a bit unfortunate.”
However, both the Chinese and American diplomats agreed that whatever climate financing mechanism there is, the funds should go to the least developed countries and small island nations first, because, China’s He said, “they are the most vulnerable.” “Nobody has more legitimate concerns than they do,” Stern said.
Overcapacity in China
I’m with Minxin Pei and John Judis in thinking that China overtaking the United States as the leading global power is much more of a remote scenario that people seem to realize. That said, on the list of looking Chinese problems I don’t think “the creation of industrial overcapacity relative to domestic demand (which has not risen proportionately) and foreign demand (which remains stalled by the ongoing slump)” makes a ton of sense.
Consider, for example, James Fallows’ refutation of the American public’s ignorant belief that China is now the world’s leading economic power:
You could address this point with, you know, “facts.” Almost no one in the United States is a peasant farmer. Most people in China are. Nearly everyone in America has indoor plumbing. Most people in China don’t. Japan has one-tenth as many people as China, yet its economy is larger — the second largest in the world. America’s is of course largest of all, three times larger than Japan’s and about four times larger than China’s. Name 20 large American corporations that do business worldwide. Without trying, you can probably name 50. Try to name even 10 from China. Name the most recent winner of a Nobel prize in science from a Chinese university or research institution. (Hint: this is a trick question.)
But visual aids may somehow convey messages that “facts” don’t get across. Toward that end, it’s worth checking out a much-circulated recent post on the ChinaSmack blog — a site that translates popular Chinese posts into English. It’s about practical living circumstances in a Beijing elite university district. Here’s a sample photo:
Under these circumstances of widespread impoverished, what could “overproduction” really mean as anything other than a transitional problem? In the United States, most people already have a lot of consumer goods so you can imagine some kind of situation in which consumers are “sated” and just don’t want more cars or iPods or plasma TVs at the rate we’re capable of producing them, at least until someone invents some cool new kins of stuff. But Chinese people do not have a lot of consumer goods. They don’t even have indoor plumbing! For a while now, China has been producing way more stuff than Chinese people consume because people in the developed world, with our high incomes and access to credit, have been able to outbid super-poor Chinese people for the world’s supply of iPods and plasma TVs and flush toilets and dorm room furniture. But insofar as China is able to build more stuff than developed world people want to buy, there are like a billion Chinese people who could use it.
Rise When the Rooster Crows
By Rachael
Ahoy people – the good folks over at The Morning News have announced the long list for the 2010 Tournament of the Books. Take a look – anything missing? Any predictions? Seems like a couple big names are absent (Tyler, Byatt, etc.) and plenty of younger writers are in play. The final 16 will be announced in January.
Energy and Global Warming News for December 11th: China continues to race ahead of U.S. to invest in clean energy reports Washington Times; Home weatherization primed for expansion
What’s perhaps most interesting about this story is that it is from the conservative Washington Times:
China continues to race ahead of U.S. to invest in clean energy
Regardless of the outcome of this month’s climate talks in Copenhagen, China is sprinting ahead in an effort to develop renewable energy sources – especially solar and wind power – to ease its reliance on carbon-rich coal.
China’s need to sustain strong economic growth means its reliance on fossil fuels will continue to grow, as will its position as the world’s biggest emitter of carbon, analysts say. But it is also investing heavily in windmills, solar panels and hydroelectric power, having doubled its wind generating capacity every year since 2005.
China is already the world’s leading manufacturer of solar panels, Dinghuan Shi, chairman of the government’s China Renewable Energy Society, said at an energy conference in Beijing earlier this month.
Julian Wong, senior policy analyst at the Center for American Progress, said solar power looks especially promising.
“It hasnt even been a full year since the [Chinese] government made domestic solar deployment a priority. We have seen how government support of wind helped it take off. It could be the same for solar,” Mr. Wong said.
China’s rapid industrial development in the past three decades has been fueled by coal, which supplies 76 percent of China’s electric-generating needs.
“For China to keep its rapid economic growth going, the only economic option is to burn more coal; renewable energy simply cannot compete,” said Tristan Edmondson, founding partner at Mint Research, a Beijing-based consultancy.
Mr. Edmondson estimates that China will use 2.17 trillion [kg] tons of coal a year by 2020, up from 650 billion [kg] tons in 2000.
By then, Chinese planners are counting on non-fossil fuels to provide 15 percent to 17 percent of its electricity, up from about 8 percent today.
China’s new energy development plan, drafted by the National Energy Administration, is expected to be announced shortly after the U.N. climate change conference in Copenhagen concludes next week.
Home weatherization: One of America’s few industries primed for expansion
