I got into an argument on a discussion board with a GOP partisan who said he was cool with torturing the folks in GITMO because they had wasted their lives terrorizing Americans. Then, in a breathtaking non-sequitur, he compared the terrorists' nihilistic squandering of potential to the tragedy of abortion, where the unborn (nonborn? preborn?) never get to realize their potential.

Well . . . . whatever your views on abortion and this gentleman's rather strange argument, I have to say that I am astonished at the continuing support the pro-life faction gives the Bush admin and the GOP in general. The GOP has now controlled the presidency, both houses of the legislature and the supreme court for the last 5 years, yet abortion is still legal. If I were pro-life and had half a brain, I'd start to wonder why I was still letting myself be played for a sucker.

Recently, that jerk James Inhofe (R, Dickweed), in an editorial in USAToday, cited an MIT atmosphere physicist, one Richard Lindzen, to the effect that, in re global warming, "A fairer view of the science will show that there is still a vast amount of uncertainty — far more than advocates of Kyoto would like to acknowledge."

Gosh, an MIT guy and everything. I guess Inhofe has really taken us to the woodshed. But, wait! Could it be that Lindzen is just another cheap whore selling his ass to the oil companies? Yes, indeed! As reported in Harper's, Lindzen

charges oil and coal interests $2,500 a day for his consulting services; his 1991 trip to testify before a Senate committee was paid for by Western Fuels, and a speech he wrote, entitled 'Global Warming: the Origin and Nature of Alleged Scientific Consensus,' was underwritten by OPEC.

Moreover, climate scientist James Annan has a great story about getting Lindzen to put his OWN money where his mouth is on climate change. Lindzen, in Reason magazine (I feel safer already), had claimed to be willing to bet that global temps would actually go down over the next two decades. Annan tried to get him to actually make the bet, but Lindzen would only do it if Annan gave him FIFTY TO ONE odds in Lindzen's favor. In other words, on a 1 dollar bet, Lindzen gets $50 if he wins, while Annan gets $1 if he wins. Lindzen tried to weasel out of it, saying that he was misquoted in the Reason article, but Annan says:

can we expect to see a correction, and headlines in the sceptic press along the lines of "Richard Lindzen thinks there is at least a 2% chance of global cooling"? I'd probably take bets against that happening, too - and 50:1 odds against it seems reasonable in this case!