Quick Arizona Update

Yesterday, I mentioned Anthony Miller, GOP district chairman for the 20th Legislative district in Arizona. He quit his post after receiving threats from teabaggers within his own party. And, as it turns out, he was not the only one to leave:

Miller, the first and only African-American to hold the party's precinct chairmanship, said he had been called "McCain's boy," and that, during a speech, a member of the audience made the symbol of a gun with his hand and pointed it at him. "I wasn't going to resign but decided to quit after what happened Saturday," Miller said. "I love the Republican Party but I don't want to take a bullet for anyone."

Miller is not alone. The newly-elected Dist. 20 Republican secretary, Sophia Johnson, first vice chairman Roger Dickinson, and former district spokesman Jeff Kolb, also quit.

"This singular focus on 'getting' Anthony [Miller] was one of the main reasons I chose to resign," Kolb said in an e-mail to another party activist.

Clearly, it isn't just "the Left" that's worried about eliminationist rhetoric.

Rage, Rage Against The Drying Of The (Tea)Bag!

The Democrats extend their lead in the generic congressional polls, and another Republican standard bearer proves to be nutty.

The Curious Mr. Robinson

In the last day or so, there has been much ink spilled in the U.S. media over one Rand Paul. Son of Ron Paul, Rand is now GOP candidate for the state of Kentucky's open Senate seat in the upcoming mid-term elections, having ousted the "establishment" candidate in this week's Republican Primaries. On the very heels of his victory, however, Mr. Paul suddenly found himself on the wrong end of some tough questions about whether private businesses should be allowed to discriminate against blacks.

Hey presto, he went from a rising star within the "tea party" movement, and therefore within the GOP, to a ball & chain in less than 48 hours.

Now, presumably, the MSM will go looking for other unexploded bombs in the GOP's "tea party" insurgency.

Which brings us to Arthur Robinson, winner of the Republican Congressional Nomination in Oregon District 4. Arthur Robinson is a climate change skeptic. In fact, he is one of the people behind The Oregon Petition , a petition opposing the Kyoto Protocol and similar efforts to mitigate climate change. I've written about Mr. Robinson, his petition, and the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, which Mr. Robinson founded back in 1980, here.

As part of his work at the Institute, Mr. Robinson has, since 1993, served as editor of the Access To Energy newsletter. Happily, the institute has archived this publication back to 1973. Lets troll through some of the back issues, and see what we find, shall we?

Given the recent BP spill off Louisiana, I thought it would be interesting to learn Mr. Robinson's views on off-shore drilling. These were not hard to discover:

As for oil spills in the open and deep ocean, they amount to far less than natural seeps and river runoff, and any unbiased oceanographer will confirm that they are a boon to marine life, inflicting damage mainly on the oil and shipping companies. For crude oil is a natural, organic, biodegradable product of the earth's ancient plant and animal life, and it is this type of hydrocarbon that marine life in the open and deep ocean is starved for.

In fact, in the same edition of the newsletter Mr. Robinson argues that the "mostly barren" oceans are just crying out for any kind of human waste, nuclear waste included. He gives this article the jaunty title: OCEAN DUMPING? YES!

There are several pieces in older versions of the newsletter decrying "reprehensible" attacks on Aids=HIV Denialist Peter Duesberg . In fact, Robinson has sponsored a Duesberg lecture through the DDP (Doctors for Disaster Preparedness), a group affiliated with the Oregon Institute. These articles tend to suggest that Mr. Robinson himself thinks aids is caused by homosexuality itself rather than the HIV virus. Here's a brief note of his regarding "The Longevity of Homosexuals Before and After the AIDS Epidemic":

Cameron, et al report research results showing that the median age at death for homosexual men dying of AIDS is 39 years and that for homosexual men who do not die of AIDS is 42. By comparison, the value for heterosexual married men is 75. This is evidence in support of the hypothesis that AIDS may be little more than a general classification of deaths resulting from exposure to homosexual behavior.

And the aids denialism gets a bit more explicit here, in which Robinson discusses the AIDS epidemic's role in government attempts at "social engineering".

In addition to editing Access To Energy, Robinson is an energetic promoter of home-schooling, and has written extensively on the topic here. Some of his ideas are quite unique. For example, he prefers home-schoolers be taught geography , history, and government largely from books which were written in the 1950's and earlier, before it became popular to teach overt racism under the rubric of "multiculturalism."

This is just a sample from Mr. Robinson's extensive writings on the Oregon Institute website and elsewhere. I've barely touched on his AGW skepticism, or the many, many articles he's written on Hormesis (which is the the idea that a little bit of radiation is actually good for you).

Hopefully, though, it is enough to give a taste of the man's philosophy

American Teabaggers Running Out Of The Tea Of Fury?

RealClearPolitics maintains a poll of polls for such things as the POTUS' approval ratings, Congressional job approval and, above, the Generic Congressional Vote. Bottom-line: for the first time in 2010 the Dems are ahead. Albeit slightly, and albeit generic congressional polls tend to underestimate (it is said) GOP support. But a far better result than Republicans up 3.2%, which was the story a month ago. I'd guess on this basis that the GOP makes gains in both houses this November, but manages to capture control of neither.

Marc Morano Wields the Whip!

While Senator Inhofe just wants to jail climate scientists, Marc Morano prefers a rougher style of justice:

"I seriously believe we should kick them while they're down," [Morano] said. "They deserve to be publicly flogged."

This comes very close to advocating violence against climate scientists. Its getting close to Delingpole territory. Given that Morano's followers tend to lie at the "tea-bagger" end of the political spectrum, the possibility of violent acts against scientists being committed is not outside the realm of possibility.

2 Vots FR Eech TBagg

h/t

How Many Teabags?

From a blog post entitled "Tea party photo shows huge crowd — at different event":

There’s another problem with the photograph: It doesn’t include the National Museum of the American Indian, a building located at the corner of Fourth Street and Independence Avenue that opened on Sept. 14, 2004. (Looking at the photograph, the building should be in the upper right hand corner of the National Mall, next to the Air and Space Museum.) That means the picture was taken before the museum opened exactly five years ago. So clearly the photo doesn’t show the “tea party” crowd from the Sept. 12 protest.

Also worth noting are the cranes in front of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. According to Randall Kremer, the museum’s director of public affairs, “The last time cranes were in front was in the 1990s when the IMAX theater was being built.”

It appears that the photo was actually taken in 1997 at a rally for Promise Keepers, a group for Christian men. According to the group’s Web site, nearly 1 million people attended the event. Photos of the Oct. 4, 1997, event that were posted on various Web sites in 2003, 2008 and earlier this year show either the same picture or a similar photo that has identical tents and what appear to be TV screens in the same locations.

On a perhaps related note, Obama's ratings are back to their July levels and the Dems are up nearly 4% in the generic congressional:

PS. Yeah I had doubts about the numbers. I even wondered about the photos. Is there any kind of photo matching site out there that you can run a photo through and it will tell you if it matches/resembles one already on the Net? I've heard rumours of such a thing...

How Many Teabags

...does it take to march on Washington?

2,000,000
estimated... at 1.5 million, but that was unlikely
300,000 expected
...in excess of 75,000
50,000 attendees at about 10 a.m.
...approximately 60,000 to 70,000 people flooded Pennsylvania Ave
...25000 to 50000 demonstrators are expected to gather*

(*)Note that this last figure is based on organizers expectations as of September 9th. The idea that they would underestimate their own people by even a factor of five or ten is pretty unlikely.

And 50,000 to 75,000 is what U2 would play at a typical concert.