This Week in News: Volume 2
Each Sunday, the Patriot will provide a look at some of the news issues that you should know about. We know it is tough for college students to keep up-to-date on current events. The Patriot’s Sunday News Beat is your answer to that. Enjoy!
What’s in the news this week? Here at Lehigh, there isn’t much. There was a bird storm, followed by a snowstorm. Our bookstore manager allegedly ripped up several Brown and White’s due to an editorial he didn’t like, leading the Brown and White to claim that free speech was ‘stifled’. Given that their policy toward online comments – to never publish comments with links to outside sources – this editorial should be a good source of laughter for those who enjoy outright hypocrisy.
Looking to the bigger picture, here are the biggest stories and the best articles from the week.
Liberal Condescension
Gerard Alexander, a professor of politics at the University of Virginia, wrote a great piece in the Washington Post on the history of liberal condescension in politics, and how it has been much more extreme than condescension coming from the right. It is quite enjoyable if you are open-minded, regardless of political affiliation.
Climate Change Collapsing
Those silly “Climatologists” are at it again. More and more manipulations of data and misinformation are being discovered each day, and more and more news organizations around the world are covering the collapse. Most notably, India has decided to create it’s own agency to monitor climate change, since they feel that they cannot trust the IPCC. Additionally, the British head of the IPCC from 1997 – 2002 publically stated that the U.N. IPCC is on the verge of losing its credibility. Other instances of manipulation have been brought to light: baseless claims that climate change will destroy 50% of the Amazon, and manipulation of reports on water-stressed populations. With IPCC claims actually being scrutinized as they should have, it is quite likely that more inaccuracies and falsifications will appear over the coming weeks.
Healthcare: Pass / Fail Edition
In America’s most famous three-ring circus, Washington D.C., Democrats continue to be flummoxed by the complexities of passing a healthcare bill that is opposed by a majority of the public during an election year. America’s angriest woman and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi still says that the bill will be passed, but on the same day President Obama admitted that Healthcare Reform may not pass. Given the lack of newsworthy progress on the bill, it seems that President Obama’s outlook may be more likely.
Palin Speaks, People Cry
Liberals and Conservatives can unite in a fest of both laughter, and tears due to Sarah Palin’s latest reappearance.
For those who want to cry, or laugh, at Palin’s lack of logic and reason, Joan Walsh of Slate has an article for that.
For those who want to cry, or laugh, at Palin’s lack of vocabulary and sentence structure, there’s no better place to find that than from Fox News, where you can read, or try to read, the transcript of her interview with Chris Wallace.
The interview starts with a simple question and a butchered response, and it was all downhill from there:
WALLACE: How do you see yourself as a member of the Tea Party movement or a member of the Republican Party?
PALIN: Oh, I think the two are and should be even more so merging because the Tea Party movement is quite reflective of what the GOP, the planks in the platform are supposed to be about. Limited government and more freedom, more respect for equality. That’s what the Tea Party movement is about, so I think that the two are much entwined and I’m happy about that.
Additionally, her exchange at the end of the interview regarding her intentions for 2012 is particularly scary, due to both her many grammatical errors, and her bizarre reasoning.
That’s all we’ve got. Until next time, have a good week!
The key point of Palin’s answer is true: conservatives want the GOP to embrace the Tea Party Movement as what the TPM (LOL, the acronym means something else to O’Reilly fans) represents is conservative ideology: limited government, low taxes, low spending.
The GOP really needs to keep the Reagan Era alive. It barely survived the last six months of Bush.
Now, she quite obviously needs to shut up and get a speaking coach. I mean, she has the money to do so.