Cross-posted at Checklist Toward Zero Carbon.

Mr. Seitz's obituary was notable to me not for his role as a denier per se but his work for big tobacco and reminded me yet again of tobacco's role in the whole "denial industry". And why John Tierney isn't really a serious journalist, or perhaps he just thinks we're all a bit slow.

More on flip.

This diary was suggested by two recent pieces on abrupt climate change: Joseph Romm's piece on Salon.com (The cold truth about climate change), and a paper in the journal Risk Analysis which was seized upon by columnist John Tierney in a column for the New York Times: "Global Warming Paradox"?  I discuss these articles in order to suggest that there is a general state of denial as regards the social and economic causes of abrupt climate change, thus to suggest that therein lies the discovery of social and economic solutions.

(crossposted at Docudharma)

Why Wal-Mart? There's a lot of different ways you can answer that question. You can talk about the negative impact they have on their workers. You can talk about the terrible effects they have on the community or the nation.

But maybe this is the best way to understand:

You're talking about a company with the economic power of Standard Oil and the values of Big Tobacco.

-- Chris Kofinis, Wake-Up Wal-Mart.
video source from Change to Win

I was invited to attend a screening of the movie sponsored by the Newbury Democratic Town Committee with special guest speaker Gov. Mike Dukakis at Newbury Elementary School in Newbury, MA. Congressman John Tierney (D-MA) was also in attendance and spoke briefly.

Follow me below the fold for all the video, a bit about the movie and what citizens all over this country are doing to take their communities back from a company with the values of Big Tobacco.

In McJoan's post about a month ago in which she discussed the 70 members of Congress who signed a letter to Bush informing him that they would no longer be voting him any money for war which did not come with a provision to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq, I expressed my disappointment that my own Congressman, John Tierney of MA-6, did not add his signature to the letter.

I just received an email from him out of the blue, informing me that he has now signed his name to the letter. Follow me below the fold...

For far too long, incumbents and prolific fundraisers have held an overwhelming advantage in any election. Grassroots candidates usually don't stand much of a chance, as they don't get to use the trappings of office to spread their messages for free, and they usually don't have the money to wage a viable campaign. Money is playing an increasingly important role in politics today.

The Combined Campaign Headquarters of All The Bury-s opened this week in downtown. We all came out on a beautiful fall day to greet Diane Patrick, "Mrs. Deval". She came up to our regional campaign post to rally the troops. We have a lot of work ahead of us and "this election doesn't end until Nov 7th at 8:01 PM."

We have a lot of work to do in Massachusetts for two very simple reasons. First, we want to have a Governor Deval, of course. Second, we need to get out the kind of vote that is necessary for the people in Massachusetts to show the we repudiate the kind of "cesspool of politics" that the Kerry Healey campaign has dragged the entire state into in the last weeks.

But first, the video of Diane Patrick an engaging, beautiful and intelligent lady. She'd make a fine First Lady of Massachusetts.

In today's New York Times, opinion columnist John Tierney has a column (sub.req.) , "The Kids are All Right", in which he argues that when it comes to global warming

...we need to balance uncertain future benefits against certain costs today.

A young writer for our daily paper debunks NY Times columnist John Tierney's theories on congressional pages. It's well-written, engaging and personal.

Click for the link:
http://www.masslive.com/...

John Tierney's NY Times columns have almost always been a waste of space -- until this morning. Tierney calls out the Republican crack up, and (by implication) shows Democrats how to put together an unbeatable political coalition.

Tierney begins by discussing "fusionism" -- joining traditional ("values") conservatives with libertarian ("leave me alone") voters. Then he points out the screamingly obvious -- Republicans have utterly abandoned the libertarians, "spending like Democrats" (that canard again), expanding the Federal government, and pandering to the "traditional" conservatives with the most intrusive expansion of federal powers in history.

What are the implications? Huge. Follow me...

John Tierney still has a long way to go in my book to redeem himself. He is still an asshole, but he now appears to be an asshole that finally gets it.

In his column today (sorry behind the TimesSelect wall), he destroys the myth of the "South Park Republican", because there never was such a thing. If anything it was always "South Park Conservatives" and as all of us at DailyKos now agree on is that Republican does not equal Conservative. Now, Tierney understands that and makes the predicition that the hopes the GOP put on these South Park types to keep them in the majority is gone.

I understand that the now infamous "Right Wing Noise Machine" will attempt to belittle and reframe in a negative context any attempt by any serious statesman to confront the nation's problems that Bush has ignored.  After all, this is what they do.  They've done it to their own, and they've done it to Democrats, they've impugned the character of foreign leaders and challenged the integrity of honest journalists.  What I fail to understand is why the New York Times feels compelled to act as a sounding board for their pre-packaged, focus group tested, attack campaigns.  John Tierney's piece (behind a subscription wall) is nothing but mean-spirited and dismissive nonsense.   He attacks Gore for supposedly "ignoring" a small policy detail - nuclear power.

Gore shows obligatory pictures of windmills and other alternative sources of energy.  But he ignores nuclear power plants.

Tierney, what can I say.  You're a liar.  The only thing being ignored here is by you and it's Gore's true position on global warming.  In Gore's own words.

The discussions about the professors in American universities are getting a little bit silly—at least on the part of the Don Quixotes on the right who see dragons where there are only everyday academic windmills. In the New York Times (subscription required) of March 4, John Tierney’s feverish imagination leads him to describe the ouster of Lawrence Summers as president of Harvard as a “coup d’etat.”

Summers resigned—and without a gun to his head. Furthermore, Harvard, like all of our educational institutions, is made up of a number of constituencies, all with power—all of whom retain their power at Harvard, even with Summers gone. No more are faculty able to stage a coup than they are able to produce brigades of lock-step Marxists (as David Horowitz imagines).

Most of you can't see it, but conservative New York Times columnist John Tierney's latest contains a serious misquote from one of the infamous White House press conferences following Cheney's hunting accident.

Subtitle: What's good for the sheep, is good for the propa-ganda.

Feith-based Phallic phantasy phrame from GI Joe: The Movie:

As diaried elsewhere by Eternal Hope, there's more to the paid propaganda plants than meets the eye. Jonathan Alter gets it absolutely right today in Newsweek. But there is also "less" to the story. Credit to Firedoglake for noticing an unattributed line straight out of the lyrics of an 80's cartoon ("GI Joe") in one of these pieces.

MORE BELOW

The constant pounding at academia by the David Horowitz's and John Tierney's is growing: another left-wing professor has been denied tenure, allegedly because of his open left-wing beliefs.  This time it is Alan Temes, an assistant professor of health and physical education at Indiana University of Pennsylvania (a school in the system I also teach for).  Among other things, Temes had posted (and updated) the death counts of US soldiers in Iraq.  

This isn't an isolated case.  Last spring, Yale decided not to renew anthropologist David Graeber's contract, possibly because of his anarchist leanings.

It's 2am, I can't sleep, and I just read John Tierney's Op-Ed in The New York Times titled "And Your Point Is?".  Now I REALLY can't sleep!!  I know I shouldn't be shocked by these Bushapologists any more, but has this guy been lost in a cave some where?  I know that that sounds naive, but aren't these people supposed to be intelligent?

His general take is no different than the usual repub talking points on the Fitzgerald leak investigation (what?  It's no big deal...really) but something about it just really rubbed me the wrong way.

For example, take his first two and his last two paragraphs (below the fold)

Funny, I wrote a diary having to do with vouchers last night, and today, VOILA!! John Tierney has an editorial about them. Please follow me down the road to insanity...as I am not even certain what the heck he is proposing, as it seems it would hurt the "red" states more than the "blue" states.

John Tierney has a lesson for Dems - we need to get with the program like Howard Stern did by removing himself from the regulated airwaves, by removing our kids from schools if we don't like the intelligent design idea and paying for this education using vouchers.  Or the fundies can remove their kids to private schools so they can learn intelligent design and become even less enlightened than they are (and I know - my son went to a Christian school for 3 years, and fought every day in Bible and Science that the earth was not 5000 years old and that a dinosaur was not found with a man's bone in its stomach. But I digress.)

Todays NYTimes brings us another brilliant observation from their house lunatic (no, not Judy!), John Tierney. Follow me below to find out how he makes the title equation work: