According to Ronan Mullin, George W Bush is a clean-living, born again Christian who opposes abortion. Opponents of Mr. Bush like Howard Dean and General Wesley Clarke are loons and weirdoes. Al Gore is a pathetic whining figure who slobbers over his wife and wears too much make-up.
All this invective comes from a journalist who constantly lectures the media for its unbalanced and intolerant analysis, especially when reporting on the Catholic Church. Could it be that this attack on Mr. Bushs opponents is related to the fact that Mr. Mullin and George Jnr. occupy the same position on the political/religious spectrum the Christian Right?
To add some balance to the debate, here is a very brief analysis of George W Bush. Before he was born again, Mr. Bush was a cocaine-snorting, drunk driving lout who took advantage of his daddys influence to avoid serving in Vietnam. Instead he safely served his country in the Texas Air National Guard. Not exactly an all-American hero.
Since coming to power, in very dodgy circumstances, George Jnr. has rejected the Kyoto Protocol that is so vital to the future of the global environment. He has broken long standing ballistic missile treaties with Russia and adopted a first strike military foreign policy. Vast tracts of previously protected regions in Alaska have been handed over to his oil- drilling buddies. On the basis of a lie concerning Weapons of Mass Destruction Mr. Bush is responsible for many thousands of deaths in Iraq.
However, the most bizarre aspect of the born again Mr. Bush is his crusading zeal in defending the rights of the unborn while at the same time enthusiastically signing death warrants for dozens of his fellow citizens. With 152 executions to his name Mr. Bush holds the gruesome record as the most killing governor in the history of the US. Incredibly, Mr. Mullin defends this grisly record by claiming that Mr. Bush is “not always consistent with Christianity proper”.
The overall point seems to be, that so long as Mr.Bush supports extreme right wing Christian ideals all his other bizarre ideas and actions are fine, even if a little improper. Ill leave it to you to decide who the weirdos are.
Bush sucks big time, but maybe Chirac sucks even more…
George Jnr. has rejected the Kyoto Protocol that is so vital to the future of the global environment
Not so. Clinton rejected it as did a consensus of both houses. Putin has also rejected it. The Kyoto protocol is not “vital to the future of the global environment” but a cobbled together system to keep emissions at certain levels on the (huge) assumptions that
a) global warming is occurring, and is caused by industrial activity
b) its effects will be more harmful than the effects of the Kyoto Protocol on the global economy, industrial activity and particularly the development of “developing countries”
It is further slanted against environmentally-friendly, “clean” developed countries like the US (yes, turns out it’s “not the biggest polluter”) in favour of developing countries with lamentable levels of environmental degradation: just look at the big brown cloud that covers most of south asia.
Kyoto can never work, the least that can be said is that the US is at least honest in this. It is being pilloried for not signing up to something it had never agreed to sign up for. How many countries are Kyoto-compliant? Ireland isn’t.
Clinton signed it, but it was later rejected by Congress was it not?
Strange how global warming is a massive assumption, I would have thought it was a well researched and well documented theory, with evidence to boot, backed by the majority of the scientific community.
Actually Gavin it’s not. How can it be “documented”? What is the “evidence”? We only have data for, at most, the last two hundred years. That is a tiny period of time in which to observe global temperature change.
It is a hypothesis and there is a further hypothesis as to the cause of this “phenomenon”. Neither hypothesis is provable never mind proven. There are a number of contra-indicators for the theory, for example: It is clear that it used to be a lot warmer, Greenland wasn’t named in error, it used to actually be green. It may be the case that the Earth is warming but it is equally plausible that there are just fluctuations in temperature.
The fact that a large number of scientists reach a consensus on a given unproven hypothesis doesn’t make the hypothesis true. Back in the 1970s, far from global warming, there was a consensus that a new ice age loomed!
In any case you shouldn’t be too confident about the level of support for the global warming hypothesis among scientists. John at Irish Eagle pointed to this petition:
http://www.oism.org/pproject/
which states
“Research data on climate change do not show that human use of hydrocarbons is harmful. To the contrary, there is good evidence that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is environmentally helpful. ”
and is signed by 17,000 scientists
Clinton sent his ambassador to “symbolically” sign the treaty knowing that it was a non-starter because, among other things, none of the “developing” nations apart from Kazahkstan and Argentina would agree to cut their own emissions.