I know the camera loves her. Why shouldn't it? She's bright eyed, perky, has a winsome smile, and lovely bone structure. But someone needs to tell her the cute-as-a-button routine loses its charm if you keep pulling stuff out of your ass.
Seriously. How much damage does she have to do to her credibility before someone yanks her nomination? At the rate she's going, it won't be long before she's an embarrassment to the president.
I updated the title so some of the comments might like non sequitors. That's my fault for starting off with an obvious question :)
I can dismiss her ignorance during the Bush Administration. Chalk that up to "playing blonde" for the team. I'm not even going to bust her chops for making the bizarre claim there were no terrorist attacks during the Bush administration [1]. I'm feeling generous. I'll just pretend little miss wordsmith mispoke. Besides, we've got bigger fish to fry.
I find it hard to believe we're approaching a major conference on climate change and she is either dumb enough or brazen enough to lie about George Bush's leadership position on climate change. Adding insult to injury she tries to shine that turd by citing references any monkey with a keyboard could check. Crediting Bush for Copenhagen is bad enough. Going overboard like this is lunacy:
I remember on June of 2001 in the Rose Garden, President Bush said "We know that there is global warming...climate change, and we know that it is largely caused by humans."[2]
Oh Dana, you do have a way with words. I couldn't have characterized your recollection on Bush's statement better myself:
I think some people think this is untethered to reality, that it is going off the rails.
I'm not saying Dana's train of thought went off the rails. I'm saying her train of thought went off the rails, crashed through the containment walls of common sense, plunged headlong off the cliffs of insanity and did back flips of denial all the way down!
What really gets my goat is how lazy corporate propagandists have become. If you are going to lie, leave yourself some wiggle room. Sure it sounds good to spice up the lie with a date, place and person. But there's this thing called "fact checking" that inevitably comes back to bite you. I suppose Dana figured she would get away with it because the old White House web site's press releases are all gone. Silly rabbit, that doesn't mean they are lost. Someone should tell her we have more than one branch of government, and they keep records.
Ironically, Donald Rumsfeld had an iron-clad rule about Politics, Congress and the Press:
Arguments of convenience lack integrity
and inevitably trip you up in the end.
-- Donald Rumsfeld, from Rumsfeld's Rules, ca. 1980[3]
That brings us to Tonight's Word
Global Warming:
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release June 11, 2001
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT ON GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE
The Rose Garden
11:10 A.M. EDT
The President: First, we know the surface temperature of the earth is warming. It has risen by .6 degrees Celsius over the past 100 years.
(.6 degrees Celsius...that ain't nothing, hell it ain't even in a scale I recognize so how important is it, really?)
There was a warming trend from the 1890s to the 1940s.
(1890? That's like the Bay of Pigs... way before my time ...who cares.)
Cooling from the 1940s to the 1970s. And then sharply rising temperatures from the 1970s to today.
(What goes up must come down, what's the problemo?)
There is a natural greenhouse effect that contributes to warming.
(Natural... that's a good thing)
Greenhouse gases trap heat, and thus warm the earth because they prevent a significant proportion of infrared radiation from escaping into space.
(I pronounced "infrared" properly because it's natural radiation, not like that nukuliar stuff.)
Concentration of greenhouse gases, especially CO2, have increased substantially since the beginning of the industrial revolution.
(This has been going on since the dawn of time people, chill out!)
And the National Academy of Sciences indicate that the increase is due in large part to human activity.
(Indicate? That's the best you've got? I got an indicator right here. Pull my finger... )
Yet, the Academy's report tells us that we do not know how much effect natural fluctuations in climate may have had on warming. We do not know how much our climate could, or will change in the future. We do not know how fast change will occur, or even how some of our actions could impact it.
(Naive egghead liberals ... they can't tell you what I don't know. But not me. I'm a straight shooter. Right from the hip.)
For example, our useful efforts to reduce sulfur emissions may have actually increased warming, because sulfate particles reflect sunlight, bouncing it back into space.
(Who cares about acid rain? That's only a problem if you have gills. I'm an American.)
And, finally, no one can say with any certainty what constitutes a dangerous level of warming, and therefore what level must be avoided.
(If you think I couldn't care less about all this crap, I'd say "you're getting warm.")
Call me crazy, but anyone who suggests it was a mistake to reduce sulfer emissions - a major contributor to acid rain - really shouldn't be applauded for their strong advocacy of the position that human activity is contributing to serious climate change. Especially when they never said such a thing.
Getting anything done in Copenhagen is going to be hard enough without watching paid propagandists muddy the water with bullshit. This is why I'm scratching my head over Obama's appointment of Perino, a recently hired PR flack for Burson-Marsteller, [4] to the Broadcasting Board of Governors[5].
I can see Burson-Marsteller's motivation here. We all know how the revolving door works in The Village. Obama's motivation is less obvious to me. If Obama's people want to hire a completely discredited partisan flack to help oversee all government sponsored, non-military international broadcasting outlets, such as Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, and Alhurra, fine. All I ask is could they at least pick a propagandist who isn't so damned stupid? It's painful to watch.