Cuccinelli, a Republican, is now running for Virginia Governor against Clinton crony Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat. As the Tuesday election approaches, Cuccinelli "fights off stench of doom", according to Politico.
Cuccinelli is a Tea Party favorite, and denying global warming is now mandatory dogma for any politician expecting to get Tea Party support.
I just finished reading Max Blumenthal's 2009 book, Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party. Blumenthal chronicles the rise of the Christian right wing in the Republican party. Although the Tea Party doesn't appear in the book, and is not even mentioned in the index, the Tea Party is a re-packaging of Republican grass-roots activists, who regrouped after the 2008 defeat (too late for inclusion in the Blumenthal book). It was a master stroke of propaganda to have Republican grassroots activists pose as some kind of grass roots revolutionaries. Blumenthal's book is brimming with insights. He documents that a typical Christian right-wing leader often had one favorite issue, which would vary from one personality to another. For example, Jerry Falwell's original pet issue was racial integration: he was against it. When public schools were desegregated, Falwell proclaimed that segregation was ordained in the Bible, and he and others set up a parallel system of all-white private schools. Only later did Falwell champion other issues (guns, abortion, gay rights, creationism).
But the Tea Party was something the Kochs and their tobacco partners had been trying to foster since the 1980s. See TEA Party: Tobacco Everywhere Always for a quick intro, but do read the great investigation by Fallin, Grana and Glantz in the (free) paper at BMJ Tobacco Control cited there.
ReplyDelete"Smokers' rights" organizations weren't working, and by 1990, it was suggested they really needed a social movement, modeled after the Boston Tea Party, with costumes, even.
I suspect most Tea Party folks have no idea how much the movement has been fostered by $ from Kochs, tobacco, organized through CSE, AFP and FreedomWorks.
Cuccinelli has been hobbled by poor financial support from wealthy Virginia Republicans - and at least one has cited his position on climate change as the reason.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.samefacts.com/2013/11/republican-party/the-republican-establishment-returns-to-life-in-virginia/
McAuliffe is not a natural vote-winner like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama, but having twice the financial war-chest as Cuccinelli must be of some help.
Toby
When will it dawn on John that deprecating the civil rights of smokers and subjecting them to the denial of public accomodation on a scale rivaling the Jim Crow laws may elicit some spontaneous response?
ReplyDeleteThe structural parallels between the anti-smoking movement and the focused activism Blumenthal describes are cautionary.
Groundling politics is boring and the stuff of old men. Eunice wishes you to go back to making wild exaggerations about global warming that she can smack down.
ReplyDelete"When will it dawn on John that deprecating the civil rights of smokers and subjecting them to the denial of public accomodation on a scale rivaling the Jim Crow laws may elicit some spontaneous response?"
ReplyDeleteISTM that a smoker can sit in a non-smoking restaurant as long as they refrain from smoking while in the restaurant.
While - correct me if I'm wrong - a black person had a very hard time becoming white for a period of time, and therefore being able to circumvent Jim Crow ...
It also seems to me that smoking is not a matter of genetics ...
smack down
ReplyDeleteI eagerly await your supportive links to some guy on the internet.
When will it dawn on Russell that there are many ex-smokers who managed to kick the habit as they came out the other side of near fatal cardiac events and having quit are thankful for the restrictions on public smoking which can otherwise have an immediate effect on the ex-smokers well being.
ReplyDeleteI am one such, and had to quit going to veterans meetings because of the thick atmosphere before the legislation kicked in.
Freedom, to do anything, comes with responsibilities. That part of the equation is easy to forget.
lol.
ReplyDeleteMight as well read The National Enquirer about the real lives of stars in Hollywood.
1
See fn196, p.37 of PDF @ Fakery 2 and read pp.37-41.
ReplyDelete"denial of public accomodation on a scale rivaling the Jim Crow laws"???
ReplyDeleteThis is one of the flat out stupidest comments I've ever read here.
Get a grip Russell. All smokers need to do to gain access to the building and to the service there in is to refrain from smoking while inside it.
It's offensive to equate that with denial of entry or service based on the color of one's skin.
Are smokers really such horrible people that they demand the 'right' to inflict carcinogenic crap on other people? Or is this just more Tobacco Industry bullshit?
ReplyDeleteRegards, Millicent
Jim's state of denial eviidently extends to public transportation as well.
ReplyDeleteProhibitionist seem to take sadistic delight in transcending the Jim Crow laws at least provided seats at back of the bus. There ids no pretense of equal accomodation forsmokers, who are denied such copacetic means of coexistence as smoking flights, buses, train cars, and even the shelter of building entrances. What would ensue if the nation's hypocondriacs demanded a similarly draconian schene to reduce paranoid fears of second hand aids?
When the Roman courts wanted a citizen dead they had merely to isssue a nefarious decree making it criminal to give him food drink fire and shelter within a week's travel of the city.
Just how justice is served by the exclusion of cigarettes from jury rooms remains a two pipe probem- there will always be someone bent on excluding someone else from the commons on gronds of sight , sound, or smell,
John :
ReplyDelete!. If grass were not commonplace, Astroturf would never have been invented.
2. Having for 13 years advocated R&D based on the distinction between making smokers healthier and anti-smoking activists happier, I rejoice at the technical success of electronic cigarettes that have put paid to the problem of toxic pyrolysis.
3. As a matter of quantitative epidemiologial commonsense, do people who operate internal combustion engines , and/or relish barbeque, have any business hectoring smokers ?
$. Of all the neopuritans I detest , Cucinelli is the least likely to maintain Virginia's slim grasp on tolerance and civil liberty. Yet however unpleasant it may be to be upwind of him , I have no right to constrain his political behavior.
Russell keeps digging his Godwin-like hole.
ReplyDeleteSmokers can sit anywhere on the bus/train/plane they like, they just have to refrain from lighting up while doing so so.
To compare this to Jim Crow segregation is morally and intellectually bankrupt.
As I am obliged to defend jim's right to go on fuming , here's what I said minus the typos:
ReplyDeleteJim's state of denial evidently extends to public transportation as well. Prohibitionists seem to take sadistic delight in transcending the Jim Crow laws, which at least provided their victims seats at back of the bus.
There is no pretense of equal accommodation for smokers. They are denied such copacetic means of coexistence as smoking flights, buses, train cars, and even the shelter of building entrances.
What would ensue if the nation's hypochondriacs demanded a similarly draconian scheme of exclusion to reduce paranoid fears of second-hand aids ?
When the Roman courts wanted a citizen dead they had merely to issue a nefarious decree making it criminal to give him food drink fire and shelter within a week's travel of the city.
Just how justice is served by the exclusion of cigarettes from jury rooms remains a two-pipe problem; there will always be someone bent on excluding someone else from the commons on grounds of sight, sound, or smell.
Eli is at liberty to insert a Maddoxian [That's enough ! --Ed. ] at this juncture.
Nah!
ReplyDeleteSpeaking for his bunnyship as former chain pipe smoker, this prohibitionist seems to take sadistic delight in being able to go to a bar or restaurant without having to send out the underwear for dry cleaning.
Recently Eli was in a place where smoking was much more prevalent, and even sitting outside in a cafe often required relocating to escape the smoke.
What's the saying Russell:) your freedom stops at Eli's nose.
Russell is too smart to be this dumb. I sorta like his sick humour, but always assumed the sickness was a rhetorical instrument. Please don't puncture my illusions Russell.
ReplyDeleteIt is curious that Eli's delicate sense of indignation and aldehydes should be so immune to his own automotive exhaust, for drivers imperfectly combust tons of fossil fuel for every pound of tobacco smokers exhale.
ReplyDeleteWere we all as censorous as we can be, to the zero tolerance limit of detection, there would be no place for organic chemists or , a propos of Eli's latest post , people with mercury fillings in their teeth in civil society.
Unless of course , an element of quantitative commonsense entered the picture- absent from the Hg post above is any mention of a natural biogeochemical flux of the element that rivals human emissions.
The idea of an odorless commons as a public health imperative encompasses the abolition of pan blackened catfish, high church incense and chestnuts roasting on a open fire along with woodstoves and fireplaces.
It is fortunate that Common Scold statutes exist to modify the behavior of prohibitionists who deliberately flock downwind to disturb smokers civilly and peacably seeking to avoid them.
'...as former chain pipe smoker...'
ReplyDeleteThat made me smile, I had a momentary vision of a hawse-pipe and monster pipe cleaners.
'as former chain pipe smoker'.
ReplyDeleteThat made me smile, I had a momentary vision of a hawse-pipe and monster pipe cleaners.
Strewth, two tries with absolutely unrecognisables in the string. Now this one look reasonable.
Contrary to the rumor inadvertently propagated above, one of Eli's sports is not sucking on the tailpipes of moving vehicles and he gave up tetra-ethyl lead in the 70s.
ReplyDeleteBest cast this chain of controversy down the hawsepipe into the lead debtor office before vaxxers sniff us out.
ReplyDeleteEli, the idea of sucking on the tailpipe of a moving vehicle reminded me of a joke:
ReplyDeleteQ: Why did the moron put his lips to the tailpipe of a city bus?
A: The moron joined a terrorist group, and he wanted to blow up a bus.
Note that this joke involves exhaling, not sucking.
Some (not Eli to be sure) would say that this joke sucks.
Oh I get it.
ReplyDeleteMoron=liberal
tailpipe=Obama
Bus=Federal Government
And they are sucking rather than blowing.
1
Anonytroll1,
ReplyDeleteIs that what passes for humor among reprehensible cretins such as yourself?
Almost as funny as someone posing as being in a cartoon up a cartoon characters backside, almost.
ReplyDelete1