Sunday, August 02, 2009

can't we impeach insane politicians who can't separate their absurd religious beliefs from their duties to this country?

Lobbyist Dick Armey’s Pollution Gospel: ‘As An Article Of Faith,’ It Is ‘Pretentious’ To Believe In Global Warming

Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX) appeared as a witness for the Republican bicameral hearing on climate change legislation yesterday on Capitol Hill. Along with a cadre of polluter CEOs and Chamber of Commerce officials, Armey played his part leveling an array of attacks on any effort to transition to a clean energy economy.

As the hearing progressed, most of the witnesses spent their time recycling months-old debunked studies. But Armey distinguished himself by invoking a religious argument to back up his smears against what he called “environmental hypochondriacs” filled with “eco-evangelical hysteria.” Armey claimed that in his world view, because God created the heavens and the Earth, it would be “quite pretentious” for people to believe God would permit global warming to even occur:

DICK ARMEY: What I’m suggesting is we have a sort of an eco-evangelical hysteria going on and it leads me to almost wonder if we are becoming a nation of environmental hypochondriacs that are willing to use the power of the state to impose enormous restrictions on the rights and the comforts of, and incomes of individuals who serve essentially a paranoia, a phobia, that has very little fact evidence in fact. Now these are observations that are popular to make because right now its almost taken as an article of faith that this crisis is real. Let me say I take it as an article of faith if the lord God almighty made the heavens and the Earth, and he made them to his satisfaction and it is quite pretentious of we little weaklings here on earth to think that, that we are going to destroy God’s creation. [...]

SEN. ORRIN HATCH: Mr. Armey it’s great to have you here. Great to see you again and we appreciate all you’ve done throughout the years and your work on Capitol Hill. Great job.


(Think Progress)
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It's so scary that politicians can use their ridiculous superstitions to argue against the health and safety of this country and the world.
Of course, they are really just helping their buddies in "Big Oil", but even the fact that they could use these "arguments" in the course of the official duties is fairly sickening...