Sunday, December 27, 2015

Stupid Is As Climate Change Stupid Does
Bernie Sanders brings the stupid to Meet The Press

Bernie Sanders and Jim Inhofe on Climate Change

Presidential wannabee Bernie Sanders was on Meet the Press with guest host Andrea Mitchell. He said something stupid about climate change. It was a "Jim Inhofe" level of stupid. But, since he said it with the usual "#FeelTheBern" Sanders passion and sincerity, the content was apparently missed by Andrea Mitchell, the mainstream media, and others who don't pay attention to the actual meaning of the words he uses.  We'll get back to what he said shortly.  First, a digression:

Some of you may remember all the way back to last February. There was an unseasonable cold spell and snowstorm in Washington D.C. Noted global warming skeptic and United States Senator Jim Inhofe delighted in tossing a snowball in the Senate chambers to demonstrate a point about the D.C. temporary anomalous local climate change - AKA - "weather."


What he said was this:
“I ask the chair, you know what this is? ... It’s a snowball, and that’s just from outside here, so it’s very, very cold out, very unseasonable." - Senator Jim Inhofe 2/26/2015
His performance was loudly and  legitimately mocked across mainstream media in general, and the liberal punditocracy in particular. Typical of the coverage was Time Magazine:
“Look, it’s easy to take shots at Inhofe, which is why everyone is doing it today—here and here and here and here just for starters. But the implications are real. Either he really doesn’t understand that weather isn’t climate, that long-term trends are different from short-term bumps, that what happens at your house or in your town really, truly isn’t what’s happening everywhere else on the planet, or he does know and he’s pretending he doesn’t. Either way, it’s hard to argue that he’s the man you’d want as the Senate’s leading voice on climate policy."
All perfectly fair. Inhofe's stunt confused weather with climate and was of no relevance whatsoever to the point he was apparently trying to make.

Now let's get back to Meet The Press for 12/27/2015 (around the 3:13 mark):


Andrea Mitchell, like all good mainstream journalists, was trying to keep Bernie focused on THE ONLY ISSUE THAT MATTERS - Donald Trump's latest incoherent blather:
ANDREA MITCHELL: "Well, while you're trying to, as you point out, focus on the real issues, there have been charges of sexism back and forth between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton..."
Bernie was having nothing of it, but insisted on getting back to the important issues, like climate change. What he said was this:
SEN BERNIE SANDERS: "Andrea, what we have got to do is ask the hard questions... Why is it that we're not effectively addressing the fact that climate change is absolutely real. I am in Burlington, Vermont right now. Nobody can recall a Christmas Eve the likes of which we have seen where the temperature was 65°."
So funny. Andrea Mitchell or somebody resembling a reporter might have noticed that when Bernie Sanders was making a point about what he feels is one of the "far more important issues" for the America people, he was actually offering the exact, precise, semantically identical and laughably stupid "proof" in support of his argument as did Senator Jim Inhofe.  He is confusing weather with climate, and his local anomalous weather experience with global changes. Just like Inhofe in February.

But Andrea Mitchell did not notice, and neither did anyone else. Recall that Time and Jon Stewart and others attacked the media for failing to adequately denounce Inhofe's stunt and questioning whether he was fit as the Chairman  of  the Senate Environment and Public Works committee:


And yet, despite utilizing the exact same fallacious illustration to support his argument on "the most important issue facing the American people",  I've yet to hear anyone question whether Senator Bernie Sanders is fit to be President of the United States.

Now I might expect this kind of idiocy to go unnoticed if it came out of the mouth of a celebrity - say Bette Midler:

But Bette Midler is an entertainer who's uninformed opinion is meaningless in this context, and Bernie Sanders is running for President. Yet, for reason I don't understand, no one seems to be covering or noticing Senator Bernie Sander's equally idiotic comments at all.

Perhaps he is different in some way from Senator Jim Inhofe. I'm not sure what that difference would be, unless... only Conservative Republicans are called out by the media for making completely asinine idiotic statements on Climate Change.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

Feel the Global Warming Burn, Bernie. 

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