Sierra Club Backs Lincoln Chafee
20 April 2006 7:24 pm by Taylor Marsh
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I heard the news late yesterday. Jane over at FDL
covered it this morning.
I returned not long ago, after being out this afternoon, to find a post from Jane with more news. The Sierra Club
is attempting to defend their abysmal decision to back Lincoln Chafee and a political party
that could care less about the environment, conservation or anything remotely
related to either issue.
I live in Nevada, so I should know. Republicans believe Yucca
Mountain is a good idea. They're all for transporting nuclear waste through
the poorest parts of cities across this country in order to house them here in the Nevada desert. They don't care
if it's safe. Republicans don't care that transporting waste through the interstate
is a terrorist's bomb dream. Now, just imagine a nuclear waste spill on Bush or the Republicans' watch, with Katrina like response. The death toll would be catastrophic, the fall out, literally historic. If you think Katrina was bad, imagine the same Republican incompetence when dealing with a nuclear spill or worse.
Carl
Pope, of the Sierra Club, makes an incredible statement that I had to read
twice to believe: “We need more Republicans like Senator Chafee and
we will continue to praise those who, like him, stand up for the environment
because they know it is the right thing to do.”
Anyone that misinformed does not deserve the job he holds.
The Republican Party has blocked environmental reforms for years.
Not only that, but as Jane also states, the Republicans will not allow any oversight
whatsoever. They don't believe in science. Bush cut
over $100 million from the national parks' budget for next year. But to
top it off, according
to George W. Bush, a golf course is a wetland!
These are the people the Sierra Club under Carl Pope is backing.
Of course, I'm not a perfect specimen of environmental conservation.
For part of my husband's work life, he uses a huge truck, a diesel. Without
it, however, he couldn't have the business on which we depend. We won't apologize
for that fact. Many people have trucks and we long for the day when there's
a way to be simpatico with our politics in the vehicle he drives. Today isn't
that day.
But to be lectured by Pope that we need more Republicans like
Chafee?
I’ve seen people show up in the blogosphere before and
say stupid things but this takes the cake. Pope is either actively ignoring
the way modern politics is played by the GOP, willfully stupid, hopelessly
corrupt or all three. Someone compared him this morning to the begger who
cuts off his own fingers so people will feel sorry for him and give him more
money, and I thought that was pretty apt. Taking a moment to go over to the
Huffington Post and setting him straight on this lunacy — letting him
know he won’t be prying into your wallet as long as he’s putting
the money toward the preservation of the GOP rape-the-planet machine, and
what an insult that he thinks people are just that stupid — is a public
service, IMHO.These interest groups continue to play right in to the hands of the GOP by
giving progressive bona fides to candidates in blue states who otherwise could
not get elected, only to watch them trot off to Washington and continue to
empower the Bush Administration’s every whim. It needs to stop.
This endorsement of Chafee by Pope and the Sierra Club is the
reason I do not send money to any supposedly progressive special interest groups.
I don't trust them. Now you see why.
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The Sierra Club has disgraced itself with this endorsement. Democrats
should not give them another dime.
Nevada is beautiful this time of year. I remember my beautiful
home in Los Angeles right now, too, for it is a place that gets a jump start
on spring. Nevada is a little slower. I can't wait to take another trip through
Red Rock, a spectacular place that few see when visiting Las Vegas, but which
my husband and I frequent often. It's a piece of heaven amidst a barren, yet
spectacular, desert landscape.
Right now, Al
Gore is fighting to make global warming an international cause
on which people band together for change. In the midst of it all, the Sierra
Club backs a Republican. All I'm left to say is WOW.
The Sierra Club does not deserve our support. You simply cannot trust special interest groups to care about the causes for which progressives stand. Think twice before you give them another dime.
