When Talking Points Collide! Howard Dean Sez Republicans "Don't Believe In Science"

Using this week's record snowfall as a backdrop, a few Republican Congressmen took the time to poke fun at the Patron Saint of Global Warming Climate Change, Al Gore.

Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) tweeted "It’s going to keep snowing in DC until Al Gore cries 'uncle' " on Tuesday and Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) and his family built an igloo Wednesday and invited Al Gore to make himself at home in the structure.

Howard Dean, who's greatest success to date has been convincing the rest of the nation that the far left batshit insane moveon.org left was 'mainstream', was quick to retaliate in an ABC interview.

“One of the most disturbing things about the Republican Party over the last couple of decades is that just they don’t believe in science any more. And that is not an approach that is likely to generate any kind of creative thinking,” Dean said.
“People who use snowstorms as an example of why global warming doesn’t exist don’t understand the science and they don’t care.”

This same tired and hackneyed talking point has also been an item in the laundry list of certain husky, pony-tailed bloggers during their melodramatic flounce from the right (of which they were never a part of) and who have taken to preaching the gospel of Global Warming Climate Change while attempting to re-write history over the last six or seven years. It's almost as deliciously ironic as the Pro Life 'Anti Choice' label doled out by the left in this country.

Yet curiously, this assertion by Dean runs in direct contradiction to a relatively common talking point Democrats and others that I distinctly remember surfacing in the 2004 and 2008 elections regarding Republicans and the right in general. You see, apparently those of us to the right of...say.....Nicaragua's Danny Ortega ...are mindless, bloodthirsty warmongers, ready to pick a fight with such paragons of transparent, flawless democracy like Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, Saddam Hussein, Robert Mugabe, Bashar al-Assad, Kim Il Jong, the Taliban or tHugo Chavez, despite the objections of such selfless and completely unbiased institutions like the United Nations.

This apparently means that as mindless, reactionary hawks, the American Right and Republicans are perpetually beholden to that dreaded military-industrial complex in order to have a properly functioning military.

Off the top of my head, I can think of items such as satellite-based communications and surveillance, night-vision optics, laser-guided munitions, unmanned drones, reactive armor or wireless communications required to make the attack dogs of the vast rightwing conspiracy United States Military function more effectively.

So how exactly would the process of developing these systems for use by the military come about? Santeria? Voodoo? Strategic sprinkling of Holy Water? A note tucked into the Wailing Wall? Or wait.....maybe it's science! And of course, after enough years of development, this technology makes its way to the civilian sector, into the marketplace and onto your dashboard ready to give you directions to the nearest grocery store or call ahead to your weekly GOP/Dominionist flat-earth meetings to let them know you're running late.

Or maybe Howie's worried about increasing skepticism about Global Warming Climate Change since, even as an apparent work of fiction, it seemed to be a bestseller for the Democrats and the 'mainstream' votes from moveon.org and Code Pink his party has been courting.

Republicans- and most Americans- would be wise not to believe in a 'science' that cherry-picked it's findings in order to draw a conclusion that was predetermined. Most free people throughout the world would never dream of allowing unaccountable governmental or international bureaucrats dictating to them through fiat what sort of food they should eat, what type of light bulb they must buy and what sort of vehicle they are required to drive. The second that happens, they cease to be a free people. But if these same scientists, politicians and bureaucrats come off as altruistic, well-meaning officials who have told us they're here to save the earth for future generations....well, how could one argue that without looking like some sort of callous ogre? Add in a hysterical, almost apocalyptic urgency and these officials are clearly the proverbial Paul Reveres making the frantic run to warn us all of our own self-inflicted Armageddon. And if you disagree with them, question their findings or wonder out loud if that F-350 you use to haul heavy equipment and firewood around are really melting the Himalayan glaciers, then you are not only anti-science, you are a denier and a puppet who's strings are being pulled by ExxonMobil and other nefarious corporations.

If this is the sort of 'science' Mr. Dean insists my tiny little right-wing pea brain is supposed to be against, so be it.