Tag Archives: Jim Inhofe

Donald Trump

McCain ‘partially to blame’ for WH flag mess? Uh, huh

U.S. Sen. James Inhofe says the late Sen. John McCain is “partially to blame” for the White House messing up the protocol of lowering flags to honor the Arizona Republican who died over the weekend.

Partially to blame? Well, let’s explore that briefly.

The White House staff had difficulty deciding when to lower the flags to honor the late senator. But, according to Inhofe, McCain could be crusty, a bit mean and rude. He spoke angrily to and about Donald J. Trump. Thus, the blame for the White House protocol SNAFU falls partially on the senator.

“We are dealing with a hero when we deal with Senator McCain,” Inhofe said. “He wasn’t always the most lovable person to be around, but he was a fighter and never shied away from a good fight.”

What crap!

Everyone in Washington knows about Sen. McCain’s occasional temper bursts. Yes, he could be harsh. However, Donald Trump started this feud with that hideous, ridiculous and ghastly statement that McCain was a Vietnam War hero “only because he was captured. I like people who aren’t captured, OK?”

It went downhill from there.

I don’t accept the notion that Sen. McCain is “partially to blame,” or even to blame just a tiny bit for the president’s lack of class and dignity. Trump has disrespected McCain at every turn ever since the “only because he was captured” idiocy during the 2016 presidential campaign.

John McCain served this country in myriad ways that are totally foreign to Donald Trump’s life prior to his becoming a politician.

I am one American who stands foursquare behind the fallen senator.

environmental news

Christie on climate change: It’s real

What gives with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie? Doesn’t he want to be the Republican nominee for president in 2016?

He’s traipsing through New Hampshire saying some things that are sure to fire up the GOP base against a potential Christie presidential candidacy.

He’s saying, well, that climate change cannot be denied and, what’s more, that human beings are a contributing factor to the world’s changing climate.

http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/241495-chris-christie-global-warming-is-real

The planet is heating up, Christie says, and we need to get busy trying to minimize the impact that human activity has on this phenomenon.

Look, his own state was hammered in October 2012 by Superstorm/Hurricane Sandy, which weather experts said was such an anomaly that they blamed climate change on that event when it happened. It wiped out coastal communities in New York and New Jersey.

Christie has changed his tune on climate change. He once opposed regional efforts to cut greenhouse gases. Then he vowed to eliminate coal-fired power plants from his state.

Yes, this climate change issue has sparked vigorous debate. Those who deny it’s happening — including influential U.S. senators, such as Republican Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma — push back by saying that science hasn’t  yet concluded that human beings are a factor in climate change … if it’s actually occurring.

Others, though, say science is on their side, that temperatures are rising, ice caps are melting, weather patterns are changing and that human beings play a significant role — through deforestation and carbon emissions — in creating those changes.

Now we can welcome a potential leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.

Thanks, Gov. Christie, for changing your mind.

 

environmental news

Snowball stirs climate change debate

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U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Jim Inhofe’s snowball stunt has done something quite useful.

It has sparked another round of debate over whether Earth’s climate is changing.

The Oklahoma Republican sought to debunk the climate change theorists when he brought the snowball to the Senate floor this week. It’s really cold in Washington, D.C., the chairman said. So the snowball is a symbol of what he believes, which is that climate change is a load of crap.

http://time.com/3725994/inhofe-snowball-climate/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+time%2Fscienceandhealth+%28TIME%3A+Top+Science+Stories%29&utm_content=Google+UK

Actually, it’s not.

As the brief essay attached to this post notes, although the D.C. temperature was quite cold, that very day it was swelteringly hot in Opa Loca, Fla. — 87 degrees hot, as a matter of fact.

Does the temperature in Opa Loca on one day mean that Earth’s climate is changing? Not any more than the snowball in D.C. disproves it.

But the debate is a good one.

Science has produced mountains of evidence to suggest that the planet is getting warmer. Yet we keep hearing deniers suggest that the planet is getting colder. The polar ice caps are melting. No, wait! They’re getting larger.

The climate is changing because of human activity, scientists have concluded. Others say the climate change is part of an epochal cycle.

Here’s a notion worth considering. What if we actually did reduce carbon emissions significantly by requiring industrial plant managers to do a better job of controlling what they’re spewing into the atmosphere? How about if Third World governments cracked down on those who are obliterating forests and reducing the level of oxygen being pumped into the atmosphere to counteract the carbon dioxide that contributes to the carbon levels? What if we did all we could do to make the air cleaner with less carbon?

Wouldn’t that sustain the planet longer? Wouldn’t all that work slow the deterioration of our resources, if not reverse it?

Chairman Inhofe can deny the existence of climate change. But a cold day in D.C. doesn’t prove his point.

I am not going to buy into the notion that doing nothing about any of this is good for the only planet we have.

 

national news

Look at global picture, Sen. Inhofe

It was just a matter of time before someone would do this.

U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., brought a snowball to the Senate floor Thursday to prove, by golly, that climate change is a hoax.

http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/234026-sen-inhofe-throws-snowball-to-disprove-climate-change

Inhofe chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and he also is one of the Senate’s leading deniers on climate change/global warming. He just will not tolerate the notion that climate change might be caused by carbon emissions thrown into the air by manmade sources — you know, coal-fired power plants, oil refineries, petrochemical plants, deforestation, motor vehicle exhaust … those kinds of things.

So he pulled a snowball out of a bag and noted how “unseasonable” the temperature is outside the Senate chamber, meaning it’s really cold out there.

I just want to remind the senator that conditions outdoors at any particular time doesn’t prove a single thing about this issue. He knows that, of course, but he refuses to look at the big picture when it might go against whatever point he seeks to make.

My friends on the right keep insisting that climate change is a concoction brewed by leftist influences out to destroy American industry. Scientific data, though, suggest that the planet’s climate is changing. It’s getting warmer. The only debating point left is over whether it’s manmade or part of some ecological cycle that Earth experiences every few million years.

Whatever, Chairman Inhofe should cease playing silly snowball games.

Yes, it’s cold in the Texas Tundra, too, Sen. Inhofe. It’s snowing as I write these words. The temperature is in the low teens.

Is it prudent to use current weather conditions to pass judgment on what science has been tracking over many years? It’s wiser to look at the really big picture.

 

 

military news, national news

'Easy' confirmation ahead?

When a Republican curmudgeon like Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma says he would vote for a Democratic nominee for defense secretary, then you might expect the next nominee to have a relatively clear path toward confirmation.

Today, President Obama is going to nominate former deputy defense secretary Ashton Carter to run the Pentagon; he would replace outgoing Secretary Chuck Hagel. He’s been highly decorated and has been confirmed already by the Senate for his one-time post.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/05/politics/obama-ash-carter-defense-secretary/index.html

Carter is a well-known expert on weapons and their procurement. He knows the ropes inside the world’s largest office building and it appears he’s got support from at least one Republican senator who’ll get a chance to vote on his confirmation. Will there be more?

GOP lawmakers have been making a lot of noise lately about blocking Obama appointments as payback for his executive action on immigration. They’ve been careful to exclude national security posts from that petulant game.

Let’s hope they’re faithful to their pledge.

If there was a federal agency that needs leadership and cohesion in this troubled time, one would expect it to the be the Department of Defense.

Do not dilly-dally on this one, senators.

 

 

environmental news, International news, political news

Shocking! GOP opposes U.S.-China climate deal

Does it surprise anyone at all that congressional Republicans would be highly critical of a deal struck this week between the United States and China to cut carbon gases over the next couple of decades?

I didn’t think so.

U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, the incoming chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, wasted little time in calling the pact a “non-binding charade.”

http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/223823-inhofe-us-china-climate-pact-a-non-binding-charade

And the deal is … ?

President Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao agreed the nations should cut carbon emissions by as much as 30 percent by 2030. Inhofe — one of the Senate’s premier climate change deniers — said China will continue to build coal-fired power plants and has “no known reserves” of natural gas on which to rely.

He calls the deal a fraud.

Inhofe also says the results of the mid-term elections repudiated the president’s policy agenda on such issues as climate change and that, by golly, he’s going to roll those policies back once he becomes chairman of the Senate environment panel.

I’ll add as an aside that there’s a certain irony in handing over the chairmanship of a key congressional environmental committee to someone who keeps dismissing the notion that Earth’s climate is changing and that there just might be a human cause to much of the warming that’s occurring — the current bitter cold snap that’s gripped much of the nation notwithstanding.

Obama said this in announcing the agreement in Beijing: “As the world’s two largest economies, energy consumers and emitters of greenhouse gases, we have a special responsibility to lead the global effort against climate change.”

And we have this, then, from House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy: “The president appears to be undeterred by the American people’s clear repudiation of his policies of more regulations and higher energy costs.”

Higher energy costs? McCarthy needs to ponder the ongoing trend in fossil fuel prices. They’ve gone down, Mr. Majority Leader.

I get that China doesn’t engender a lot of trust among many Americans. Count me as one who is skeptical of Beijing’s commitment to do what it promises to do.

At least we’ve got them on the record to cut carbon gases. Let’s hold them to that pledge.