Posted on 12/17/2009 10:53:45 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
As if she didn't have enough adversaries, Sarah Palin has decided to mix it up with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Ostensibly, the issue was global warming. Actually, it's about the future face of the Republican Party -- whose it will be, and the ideology that person brings to the table.
The exchange of criticisms between the ex-governor of Alaska and the current California governor was provoked by comments Schwarzenegger made about Palin at the international summit on climate change in Copenhagen – a conference Palin not only avoided, but called on President Obama to boycott. With that, the gauntlet was thrown for the long-distance jousting between two of the GOP's most prominent knights.
It all began when the former body builder and action movie hero was asked by the Financial Times of London, as he was about to board a jet from Los Angeles to Copenhagen, about a recent op-ed penned by Palin in The Washington Post in which she took aim at sketchy tactics used by British scientists to squelch the views of global warming skeptics.
Those tactics came to light in a series of leaked e-mails, which Palin characterized in her op-ed as "Climate-gate." Palin noted that from her perspective in Alaska, she had been one of the first governors to take global warming seriously, and had created a sub-cabinet position to make recommendations on how to deal with it. She then added, somewhat incongruously, that because of the scandal with the British scientists, Obama ought to shun the Copenhagen conference. And she included this money quote – the one that launched a thousand rebuttals: "But while we recognize the occurrence of these natural, cyclical environmental trends, we can't say with assurance that man's activities cause weather changes. We can say, however, that any potential benefits of proposed emissions reduction policies are far outweighed by their economic costs."
This assertion didn't strike Schwarzenegger, who has initiated a sweeping array of measures in California to lower carbon emissions, as very well thought out. "You have to ask: what was she trying to accomplish?" the Governator told the FT. "Is she really interested in this subject or is she interested in her career and in winning the nomination? You have to take all these things with a grain of salt."
Sour grapes, perhaps, as the foreign-born Schwarzenegger is prohibited by the Constitution from seeking the presidency himself. In any event, it's not the kind of critique that the petite but fiercely competitive woman nicknamed "Sarah Barracuda" in high school very often takes lying down – or standing up, for that matter.
On her Facebook page Tuesday night, Palin accused Schwarzenegger of doing a bit of grandstanding himself. "While I and all Alaskans witness the impacts of changes in weather patterns firsthand, I have repeatedly said that we can't primarily blame man's activities for those changes," she wrote. "And while I did look for practical responses to those changes, what I didn't do was hamstring Alaska's job creators with burdensome regulations so that I could act 'greener than thou' when talking to reporters."
Facebook is proving an effective turret from which Palin can fire salvos at her attackers. Last week she gave as good as she got with former Vice President Al Gore, who had hurled the liberals' worst insult at her: He called Palin a climate change "denier" – you know, like a Holocaust denier. "The deniers are persisting in an era of unreality," Gore told Andrea Mitchell of NBC News. "The entire North Polar ice cap is disappearing before our eyes. What do they think is happening? It's a principle in physics. It's like gravity, it exists."
To which Palin responded on Facebook: "Perhaps he's right. Climate change is like gravity – a naturally occurring phenomenon that existed long before, and will exist long after, any governmental attempts to affect it." She added that Gore was "wrong" in calling her a "denier," noting that she has not questioned the existence of climate change – just whether the phenomenon can be primarily blamed on human beings. And then she saw his "denier" gambit, and raised him, characterizing the former vice president as a kind of Nobel Prize-winning Chicken Little going around terrifying gullible adults and small children with "doomsday scenarios."
In one sense these exchanges show that when it comes to the rational practice of politics, the Judgment Day is already at hand. If ever there was an issue that ought to unite all of mankind, the credible theory that massive pollution is causing the temperature on Mother Earth to rise is that issue. Alas, in Copenhagen, it pits the developed world against the undeveloped world, democracies against dictatorships, the haves against the have-nots.
Here in the United States it pits elites against populists, libertarians against regulators, environmentalists against business, Democrats against Republicans, and finally – in the instance of Palin and Schwarzenegger – conservative Republicans against liberal Republicans. In the short run, the loser of that final confrontation might be a weakened and divided Grand Old Party. In the long run, it could be all of us.
For an hypothesis to be credible, it must have credible evidence which supports it. Computer models which have been tweaked to provide the "correct" result do not count.
I guess my question is, wtf is Carl M. Cannon and what did he state in this article that we don't already know?
“This assertion didn’t strike Schwarzenegger, who has initiated a sweeping array of measures in California to lower carbon emissions, as very well thought out.”
These “sweeping array of measures” are the reason why California is bankrupt?
Ahnold is a girly man. Maybe his ol;s Maplethorpe pictures should make the rounds..
Schwarzenegger is a 90 pound weakling next to Maria.
Are you kidding? THOSE ARE THE GOALS!
I don’t know what Ah-Nuld is, but he sure ain’t a Republican.
I don’t know what Ah-Nuld is, but he sure ain’t a Republican.
Eghad. Carl M. Cannon, Washington Bureau Chief for Reader’s Digest, formerly White House correspondent for the Baltimore Sun.
He’s all for Global Warming.
That’s all we need to know about Carl M. Cannon and hsi pathetic little piece.
Sarah is anti-corruption, therefore is a target for everybody who is working to use this scam to bleed trillions from the productive sectors of the economy.
Palin to Schwarzenegger: “Hasta la vista, baby.”
When Arnold married into the Kennedy periphery family, that was the beginning of the end of his manhood but he had already lost his brain when he was born in socialist/communist Europe and all that crap rubbed off.
Good one!
Arnold isn’t in Sarah’s league, not even close. Whatever it was he thought he had to offer, he’s thrown away with failure after failure, mistake after mistake, and all because he lacked the character and intelligence necessary to be a conservative. For those libtard Republicans who thought Arnold was the way to victory, ...no thanks. That isn’t winning.
the credible theory” of AGW.
By definition a theory has be a question that can be proven or disproven. Pray tell, what data, or experiment, will prove or disprove AGW? If you can’t prove it or disprove it, it is by definition not a theory, but a belief. This is the basis of all science. Belief, the knowing of the unknowable, is what is referred to as religion. There is a vast difference between the two. Now, how do you prove or disprove AGW? Can some smart person tell me?
It's arguable that Arnold's governance even represents a step-up from Gray Davis.
Given the ENORMOUS impact on living standards, the dislocation and trauma on people living in energy producing regions, income re-distribution from the wealthy to the poor, the income distribution from the rich nations to the poorer nations, the devastation on countries that rely on carbon emmitting energy for their wealth, and on global trade, the huge effort rshaping economies, shouldn’t we be a bit more certain than simply a “credible theory”?
Are you kidding? THOSE ARE THE GOALS!
Ummm, yeah. I’d say that they probably are the goals (AGW is a socialist agenda), but they certainly are some of thee impacts.
Most of us in the US rightly focus on the science (or lack of it) at this stage, ie, data integrity, fraud, linkage of Co2 with heating etc.
But in countries where carbon trading is imminent or happening, there is far more discussion on the economic impacts.
Think about this: do you believe the science? Even if you did, and in countries that agree and are considering carbon tax or equivalent schemes, there is enormous concern on whether the truth is being told about the economic impacts. The current goals by most nations are a 15% reduction on 1990 levels by 2020. But that will make no difference to their goals on climate change. It will need to be 50%. And even that may not be enough. They are trying to ease the door open (15%), before opening the floodgates (50% plus) on targets at this stage. Because even they couldn’t fudge the economic impact of 50% reductions, even if it was implemented consistently across all nations.
The economic impacts are huge.
There was much hope for Schwarzenegger when he was elected much like Obummer. That hope has been dashed bitterly just as we are seeing that occur with Obummer. He tried to paint himself as a moderate during the campaign but he was really a far left radical extremist commie stooge and zombie sheep.
Oh, while I’m at it ...
The other impact of a C&T is BIG BIG government. Everywhere, at every level. The liberal/socialist dream!
In income redistribution, in aid packages to businesses (finacial aid or relocation/retooling etc costs), in trade, and in investing directly and supporting alternative technologies, regulations in moving away from carbon usuage in the home, buildings, cars, farms etc.
That strikes me as a little harsh, maybe. I'm more inclined to label Schwarzenegger as a notably weak-willed politician...who's really not very smart.
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