CPAC, Cows, and the Green New Deal

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Last week a woman told me that the Green New Deal would outlaw all but electric cars. This week the nutjobs meeting at CPAC are raving that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wants to take away their hamburgers.

Sebastian Gorka: “They want to take away your hamburgers. This is what Stalin dreamt about but never achieved.”

Here is the text of the Green New Deal bill that was introduced to Congress. It doesn’t say squat about automobiles or hamburgers. Or beef, cows or even livestock. It does say that reducing gas emissions is an essential goal. This is the section that addresses gas emissions and agriculture —

(2) the goals described in subparagraphs (A) through (E) of paragraph (1) (referred to in this resolution as the “Green New Deal goals”) should be accomplished through a 10-year national mobilization (referred to in this resolution as the “Green New Deal mobilization”) that will require the following goals and projects—

(A) building resiliency against climate change-related disasters, such as extreme weather, including by leveraging funding and providing investments for community-defined projects and strategies;

(B) repairing and upgrading the infrastructure in the United States, including—

(i) by eliminating pollution and greenhouse gas emissions as much as technologically feasible;

(ii) by guaranteeing universal access to clean water;

(iii) by reducing the risks posed by climate impacts; and

(iv) by ensuring that any infrastructure bill considered by Congress addresses climate change;

(C) meeting 100 percent of the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources, including—

(i) by dramatically expanding and upgrading renewable power sources; and

(ii) by deploying new capacity;

(D) building or upgrading to energy-efficient, distributed, and “smart” power grids, and ensuring affordable access to electricity;

(E) upgrading all existing buildings in the United States and building new buildings to achieve maximum energy efficiency, water efficiency, safety, affordability, comfort, and durability, including through electrification;

(F) spurring massive growth in clean manufacturing in the United States and removing pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from manufacturing and industry as much as is technologically feasible, including by expanding renewable energy manufacturing and investing in existing manufacturing and industry;

(G) working collaboratively with farmers and ranchers in the United States to remove pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector as much as is technologically feasible, including—

(i) by supporting family farming;

(ii) by investing in sustainable farming and land use practices that increase soil health; and

(iii) by building a more sustainable food system that ensures universal access to healthy food;

(H) overhauling transportation systems in the United States to remove pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector as much as is technologically feasible, including through investment in—

(i) zero-emission vehicle infrastructure and manufacturing;

(ii) clean, affordable, and accessible public transit; and

(iii) high-speed rail;

From this, the nutjobs at CPAC have concluded that the Left is coming for their hamburgers. See also The Energy 202: How the hamburger became the GOP’s rallying cry against the Green New Deal.

CPAC

Trump gave a two-hour speech at CPAC today. I don’t know if he mentioned hamburgers. There is no transcript; I take it there was no script.

The rollicking two-hour-plus appearance at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland offered the president a brief respite from an otherwise miserable week in which his much-touted summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un ended in failure and his former personal lawyer delivered explosive testimony to Congress.

Trump, basking in the adoration of the crowd, largely glossed over the North Korea summit’s collapse, instead reviving several of his greatest hits, from rehashing the 2016 election to obsessing over the crowd size at his inauguration.

The speech amounted to a boatload of red meat for conservatives, with Trump promising he’ll protect them from undocumented immigrants, socialism and liberal Democrats he claims are dead set on bankrupting the country with proposals like the Green New Deal.

“You know I’m totally off script right now,” Trump said at the beginning of his speech. As his meandering remarks continued, it became clear that his assessment was an understatement.

See also GOP strategist stunned by reception to Trump’s ‘unhinged’ CPAC speech: The Republican Party is dead

Appearing on MSNBC with host Alex Witt, GOP strategist Rick Tyler was visibly upset at what he heard from Donald Trump during his speech at CPAC, and even more so by the enthusiastic reception the president was receiving.

“It’s interesting about CPAC,” Tyler began. “It used to be the confab of conservatives who would get together once a year but it’s not CPAC anymore — it hasn’t been since 2016. It’s now Trump-pac and should be TPAC.”

“The people there talk about being pro-tariffs, anti-justice, anti-law enforcement, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, pro-Russia, pro-autocrat,” he continued. “It’s unrecognizable what Donald Trump has done to the party and what he’s done to the conservative movement — it’s a shame.”

Asked by host Witt, “What can be done to resurrect the Republican Party as it was — or is that gone?” Tyler said the party is dead.

“Rest in peace,” he lamented. “No, it’s over. The problem is that the Republican Party has no grounding governing philosophy anymore because they’ve signed on to all these things as I just mentioned that were antithetical to the conservative movement.”

“So it’s the Trump party,” he conceded. “When Trump passes on, one way or the other, the party will no longer exist and the Republican party will have — it has no fundamental belief. You have to believe in something, and I don’t know what the Republican Party believes in or what its message is anymore.”

He could be right.

19 thoughts on “CPAC, Cows, and the Green New Deal”

  1. You'd think they'd be more concerned if them libruls were after their hamburders.

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  2. The freshman congress-critter who really deserves the backing of liberals is Rep. Ilhan Omar. AOC and GND are shiny distractions.  Omar is going at the heart of our corruption. The green new deal is a fucking joke, as long as we have what we have in Israel and Saudi Arabia, let’s get real.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZEGhcekgHw

  4. First it was guns out of their cold dead hands. Then it was incandescent bulbs out of their cold dead sockets. Now it's hamburgers out of their cold dead dentures. devil

  5. CPAC is now TPAC.  All ideas the organization represents emanate from a twitter feed operated by the anti social one.  Any old school conservatives are just going to have to find a new organization.  I suspect more than a few conservatives are appalled their views were so easily discarded and mutated and their organization hijacked. 

    Save the Hamburger is their rallying cry, as they forge onward to trash and destroy the earth.  Expect that slogan to appear on recruiting posters with less than ideal results.  

    It does not take more than an open mind and a little life experience to watch even highlights of the two hour performance to suspect a deteriorating  mind with very poor reality contact delivered that disjointed rant.  Pity the poor soul with training and experience in clinical psychological pathology.  The distress of watching must be near unbearable.  

    I seriously recommend again the podcast from the Commonwealth Club featuring two eminent climate experts.  How to deal with the inevitable opposition is a topic they deal with quite well. Please give it a listen.

    https://www.commonwealthclub.org/events/archive/podcast/eighth-annual-stephen-h-schneider-award-outstanding-climate-science

  6. I maintain Trump’s real problem (vis a vis Republican Party) is that he riled up the rubes to expect action on all the nonsense the Republicans had been peddling for as long as I’ve been politically aware but never really planning to do because even they knew they were untenable and stupid ideas.

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  7. I looked up that text, hit control-F, and searched for 'hamburgers' and 'cows'. No results.

    So CPAC's ravings are pure hallucination. Now they don't even need an excuse to be trippin'.

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  8. They say the Green New Deal, something that, though broad and hardly perfect, at the very least acknowledges the urgency of climate change and proposes realistic solutions to address it, is a "joke."  To do that they have to cast it as what it is not.  Is it costly? Sure, but so was the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, that delivered zero value for the vast majority of voters, at a $2 trillion plus price tag.  So was the Iraq War that caused so many other problems the real price tag is many trillions and much more, most likely, as we're still paying for it in some form or fashion.  

    As climate change goes, the real cost is in not doing anything.  The popular and irresponsible answer, "we'll all be dead" and the unspoken part to that is we don't have to answer our children and grandchildren when they ask why "we" didn't do anything is a joke too.  But they won't be laughing; they'll be too focused on breathing.  The "joke" will be on them.

    At the same time they're "interpreting" the GND for the stupid as taking away your hamburgers (end of the world, Ma!), banning cows, air travel and cars, and taking trains to Hawaii.  And in the face of this the GND is a joke?  Really?

    Its clear what the joke is, and who it's on.  The bad part is, the punchline will be catastrophic.

  9. The RWNJs specialties are concise, simplistic, straw-man arguments.  "Coming to take your hamburgers" is to the GND as "Death Panels!!!" were to the ACA.

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  10. So how does it go from the Green New Deal to cows and hamburgers?  That is under B baby(small)I: "by eliminating pollution and greenhouse gas emissions as much as technologically feasible." (GND)

    It is no secret here in cow country that means reduction of methane gas emissions.  Well the cattle industry is well aware that cows emit  quite a bit of methane in the form of gas.  These methane emissions are cited as seven times more powerful than carbon dioxide as an environmental climate change gas.  Those cows are just farting our planet away.  

    Some astute vegans will tell you their diet is saving the planet.  Any consumption of meat requires lots of greenhouse emissions.  Feed is trucked.  Animals are trucked.  Milk and other animal products are trucked.  Most require refrigeration. The list goes on and on.  So even if you put emission controls on all the cows, eating any meat or meat related products is linked to a lot of greenhouse gas emissions.  Still if the county went total vegan, the experts say that alone is not enough.  Our chances of getting even ten percent vegans is like the camel and that biblical eye of the needle.  But vegans, I want to thank you for your service.   Any bit helps.

    Well once you get the cow thing down, the hamburger is just what yanks the faithful's strings.  It is just the bridge too far.  Sooner or later AOC and her jack booted liberals will take away the sacred hamburger.  It is an unfathomable sacrifice which no American will stand up for.  Such is the workings of the right wing mind.  Most of them would benefit, by my observations of the plus sized crowd in attendance, of a little sacrifice of that direction for health reasons.  Most have probably been told that same hamburger cutback thing by their doctors and they ignored it.   Little chance I can make a dent here. 

    Remember B small (baby) I section is not rigid.  It does say technologically possible.  No known technology can keep a hamburger out of most peoples mouths, though most will want that burger with some cheese.  

    • Strawberries are trucked. Lettuce is trucked. If mankind were to have to rely only on locally produced foods, most of the world’s cities would have to be dismantled. Indeed, lots of people would only make it through the winter if they ate meat, because there wouldn’t be enough other foods available to provide calories.

  13. CPAC & tRUMP:

    A marriage made in a madhouse!

    2+ hours of tRUMP, is must (NOT) watch TV!

    OY!!!!!

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