John Boehner Playing Stupid and Lying
Regardless of how much affection one has, or wants to have, for their fellow citizens, it is affection tempered with disbelief that fundamentally decent people are so mentally challenged to the point of being downright stupid. A point that often arises during semi-academic discussions about the dearth of intelligence in the American population is “thank dog politicians aren’t cognitively deficient like the people they have to govern.” However, politicians on the right, specifically Republican politicians, thrive on the seemingly increasing stupidity of many Americans and they have learned exactly how to address their ignorant base; make incredibly stupid remarks and lie profusely.
Now, regarding the role that anthropogenic climate change plays in the historically vicious drought plaguing the Western and Southwestern United States, Speaker of the House John A. Boehner demurs to Koch ideology and claims “I’m not a scientist.” Fair enough. But not only is Boehner not a scientist, as a decades-long educator it is safe to say Boehner either never finished the third grade, or he is a filthy liar. What Boehner is acutely aware of is that if he really wants to connect with a particularly stupid segment of the population all he has to do is make a remark that only a four year old feral child would begin to believe is true.
This week Boehner took a page out of another House Republican’s (Jeff Denham (CA)) campaign lies, and categorically stated that President Barack Obama, the Environmental Protection Agency, and California environmentalists are responsible for California’s historic drought. Boehner, or Denham for that matter, have not yet blamed the President, EPA, or California environmentalists for the same drought plaguing Nevada, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Texas, Oregon and other West and Southwestern states because the Koch brothers are only targeting California’s environmental regulations; environmental regulations that have no impact on the amount of rain or snow falling out of the sky. For the record, any American with a brain bigger than a molecule understands that a “drought is a prolonged period of abnormally low atmospheric precipitation and the shortage of water resulting from this.” For the cognitively challenged, atmospheric precipitation is two of those big words for rain or snow; something Barack Obama, the E.P.A., or California environmentalists have no control over.
According to real scientists, California’s worst drought in over 1,200 years is not caused by environmentalists, or Californians struggling to save what little water the state has left. No, real actual scientists have explained for the duration of the drought that the only impact man has on the drought is burning fossil fuels that cause anthropogenic climate change. In fact, climate change is solely responsible for the “lack of atmospheric precipitation” and the record high temperatures are exacerbating the drought as well as “tripled the chances of the current weather pattern (no rain/snow = drought) continuing indefinitely; according to the National Science Foundation.
Apparently, what incited Boehner to act stupider than his base and feign outrage is that Californians are being urged not to maintain their water-intensive green lawns during the historically epic drought. On his Facebook page Boehner posted: “If ever there was a phrase that perfectly encapsulates liberal environmentalists’ backwards priorities and regressive ideology of restriction and scarcity, it is the one now displayed on a government sign in Arcadia, California: “It’s ‘green’ to go brown.” Boehner then provides a link boasting about what “the Koch Congress is doing to end President Obama’s man-made water shortage in the West.” To beat a dead horse, California’s, and the entire Western and Southwestern United States’, water shortage is because there is no precipitation falling from the sky caused by man-made global warming.
Republicans in the House just passed a typically meaningless Koch bill that blames the Administration’s environmental policies for causing California’s historic drought, and specifically lambasted California’s policies conserve water and protect crucial rivers and endangered fish species. The environmental policies have been in effect for decades, including during times of severe flooding and higher-than-normal rain and snow fall. Republicans have regularly attacked the state’s environmental policies during periods of record precipitation, so their so-called concern is not about California’s drought, or Nevada, Texas, Oklahoma, or Oregon’s drought; they want the state’s environmental policies abolished for the Koch brothers.
Republicans claim that if California dams up every river in the state, regardless there has been no rain or snowfall for four years, California would be flush with water and the drought would end. However, the state’s substantial number of current dams, reservoirs, and lakes are bone dry because there has been four straight years of inadequate precipitation (snow-pack) in the mountains to melt in the spring, runoff downhill and fill the reservoirs, lakes, and dams that have rivers dried up.
As an aside, if Boehner had taken the time to talk to real “water scientists,” what intelligent Americans call environmental hydrologists, he would be aware that stopping rivers from flowing, even in a normal or higher-than-average wet season, allows salt-laden sea water to flow upstream into California’s prime agricultural land that would mean game over for the agriculture industry, permanently. In fact, even without dams, the lack of snowpack has brought normal river flows to a such a slow trickle that scientists are frantically building rock walls to hold back sea water that started going up-river and encroaching on prime agricultural land.
As noted by Joe Romm at Think Progress, “if Boehner had been Speaker during the 1930s Dust Bowl, he’d have urged Oklahomans to ignore those science-based conservation efforts pushed by FDR and just keep watering their lawns.” Neither John Boehner, nor his Koch cohorts in Congress, care about California’s severe drought and it is not surprising he would take to social media to assail California’s efforts to conserve what little water the state has left. Boehner and Republicans do, however, care about serving the Koch brothers’ crusade to abolish California’s environmental policies or they would not say incredibly stupid things like the historic, worse in 1,200 year, drought is caused by Barack Obama, the E.P.A., California environmentalists, or condemn the state’s residents’ efforts to save the precious resource as “backwards priorities and regressive ideology.”
John Boehner is, indeed, not a scientist and he is not stupid enough to seriously believe that the lack of precipitation falling on California, Nevada, Oklahoma, or any drought-stricken state is due to a President or California’s water conservation efforts. However, he is just smart enough to comprehend that with a segment of the population struggling to equal the IQ of dirt, all he has to do is blame the lack of rain and snow fall in California, Nevada, Oklahoma and likely the Sahara Desert on California environmentalists, the EPA, and the Black guy in the White House and they will believe him. No, Boehner is not nearly as stupid as he wants his supporters to believe, but he is a lying pile of human waste that does not belong in civilized society, and he had better steer clear of California civilized society.
Born in the South, raised in the Mid-West and California for a well-rounded view of America; it doesn't look good.
Former minister, lifelong musician, Mahayana Zen-Buddhist.
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