Never Let a Tragedy Go to Waste

from Stand Firm by David Fischler

This is how uncivilized, how mindless, how swinish discourse has become in Washington: the death toll in Moore, Oklahoma was still climbing, and the rescue efforts still on-going, when Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) decided to take to the floor of the United States Senate and make some political hay. According to the Daily Caller:

“So, you may have a question for me,” Whitehouse said. “Why do you care? Why do you, Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, care if we Republicans run off the climate cliff like a bunch of proverbial lemmings and disgrace ourselves? I’ll tell you why. We’re stuck in this together. We are stuck in this together. When cyclones tear up Oklahoma and hurricanes swamp Alabama and wildfires scorch Texas, you come to us, the rest of the country, for billions of dollars to recover. And the damage that your polluters and deniers are doing doesn’t just hit Oklahoma and Alabama and Texas. It hits Rhode Island with floods and storms. It hits Oregon with acidified seas, it hits Montana with dying forests. So, like it or not, we’re in this together.”

Whitehouse went on to condemn the current Republican position on global warming, citing economic, environmental and diplomatic damages.

“You drag America with you to your fate,” he continued. “So, I want this future: I want a Republican Party that has returned to its senses and is strong and a worthy adversary in a strong America that has done right by its people and the world. That’s what I want. I don’t want this future. I don’t want a Republican Party disgraced, that let its extremists run off the cliff, and an America suffering from grave economic and environmental and diplomatic damage because we failed, because we didn’t wake up and do our duty to our people, and because we didn’t lead the world. I do not want that future. But that’s where we’re headed. So I will keep reaching out and calling out, ever hopeful that you will wake up before it is too late.”

The Senator is apparently unaware that there has been no global warming for fifteen years. More importantly, he is also apparently unaware that even scientists who are more certain that humans cause climate change than they are of their spouses’ names deny that any direct causal link can be drawn between climate change and specific weather events.

But none of that matters to Sen. Whitehouse. He doesn’t see dead children, or smashed homes, or ruined lives, or battered communities, much less scientific reality. All he sees is an opportunity to score some points with the looney left and the New York Times. It is a remarkable performance, possibly even a new low (if such a thing is possible any more) for shameless, heartless, brainless pig-ignorance by a Washington politician.