Dave Michaels, The Dallas Morning News

June 1, 2008

Dave Michaels
The Dallas Morning News
508 Young Street
Dallas, Texas 75202

RE: If it’s gone too far is there room on your ark? Mine’s filled. Besides, I have a pen with two captive adults manatees Molly is just coming into estrus and Marko, the Alpha male, is a perpetual paragon of priaprism. I feed him oysters laden with Vigara. Barry White is crooning in the basckgound. White wine, cigarettes, whatever. A premise denying take on your story on Congressman Joe Barton [R-Texas] in today’s Dallas Morning News that I read this morning on a visit to my Texas ladies.

Mr. Michaels,

Every morning, before I go to the other side of my docks, lest I disturb some manatee foreplay – the sound of a whirling propeller seems to get his attention while 8 day old lettuce hitting her in her ample ass seems to get hers – I read a few lines of “The Population Bomb” by Paul Ehrlich, Ph.D. You may remember him as a one time stand up comic wannabee on the Johnny Carson Show around 1970 The guy was no Don Rickles but he stood in there and gave it his best shot. He’d come out in front of a national TV audience and say, “Did you hear the one about we’re all going to starve to death in 2000? Of course, we may freeze to death first. Either way, don’t buy any green bananas and max out those credit cards.. Who’s going to sue you? The joint will look like Neptune or Saturn in a few years times.”
He didn’t make it as a stand up comic but, Thank God, he had his Ph.D. to fall back on. If he didn’t he be in “Dirty Jobs” as a Dirty Job or he’d be bait in one of those Alaska crab pots. He’d last for years as a crab siren because there is no end to educated dopey bastards who couldn’t find their ass using both hands in a phone booth filled with mirrors. His big shtick was “Global Cooling” causing “Global Starving”.
Would it be within the bounds of what passes for the Scientific Method today for me to say that Global Warming saved the world from the peril of Global Cooling? Perhaps it was the decline of the Leisure Suit and the return of Billy Carter to his studies on Red Man tobacco, Mozart, and the kid on the porch of Deliverance; perhaps not. Either way I have a closet filed with down jackets that are yours for the asking,
In the mid ‘70s, “while in disfavor with fortune and men’s eyes”, I amused my children by letting them squirt Right Guard out the bathroom window. The object of the game was to deplete the ozone layer. I told them there was a monster called “stupidity” that lived there. He was clever though. He got everybody to say he was smart. He then got other people to say that if you said he wasn’t smart you were stupid. Later on the champion of this, the poster boy for the frisson moment of discovering every day that his thumbs are apposable, became the Vice President of the United States. The name on his license says Alfred Arnold Gore, Jr. We know and love the old galloot and mountebank extraordinaire as Alpha Gump. The Secret Service called him “Cementhead”.
I read a lot.
I read a lot because supposedly smart people write a lot. They do that because most people can’t think. They feel. Confusing thoughts with feelings is a sure way to lose your birthright.
I try to say in a gentle and convincing manner, “Hey Dummy! What you are saying is so dumb it makes my hair hurt. You’re making my finger nails curl backwards. What you are saying is so dumb that you should be tied to the flag pole by city hall so tha told men with no teeth can come and piss on you. Old ladies whose pants don’t fit would come and beat you with sticks. I am working on a new methodology consistent with the lessons learned at Camp Gitmo and Abu Ghraib.
Maybe we could have copies of “Silent Spring” set ablaze and the first WOG who pees on it to put it out gets to sniff at an infidel virgin while he is alive.
Worse than the out and out lie is the quarter truth.
It begins by saying that on Monday morning all limes are green, round, and bitter. It ends by saying that if we haven’t banned hydrocarbons, switched to tofu, and raised taxes by Thursday noon we will all perish.
It is quite true that on Monday morning all limes were bitter. The rest is constructed by people who wait impatiently out where there is no regular bus service. Alas, these people, these ohmadahns, these “Trousered Apes”, now own all the ink.
Thankfully, in a language that gave us Shakespeare, Keats, Lincoln, Eliot, MacArthur, and Wolfe there is a word in that language, a word that is unique in that it cannot be qualified.
That word is bullshit.
You slip a toxic nugget into your news story on Congressman Barton on Page D4 of the Dallas Morning News.. You say
“1997 – The U.S signs the Kyoto Protocol, a climate control treaty
that restricts greenhouse gases for some continents.”

[Here’s a layman’s thought. I’ll write slowly, #1 Greenhouse gases are bad. #2 –CO2 is a greenhouse gas. #3 –Every time we exhale we expel CO2, a dangerous greenhouse gas. #4 – Why don’t we all hold our breaths for an hour each day? #5 - That’s a plan we can get all behind, don’t you think?]
For a treaty to have the force of law it must be submitted to the Senate for its “advice and consent”. Should 2/3rds of the members present, presuming there is a quorum, vote in the Affirmative it becomes the law of the land.
Forgive me if I thought you had working knowledge of the Constitution. Silly me.
There are two things worthy of note with regards to the Kyoto Accords.
#1 -When the Treaty was being negotiated the United States Senate voted 95 to 0, that is to say that in a Democratic majority Senate not one member of either Party voted for any Provision of the Treaty.
#2 – Whatever History’s final verdict on the life and times of President Clinton [W, not H] repeated inclusion in later additions of “Profiles in Courage” will not be high on the list of pluses. He did not submit the Treaty for the Senate’s Advice and consent.
If Global Warming is now a moral issue the President was obligated to submit it.
T.E. Lawrence said, “Not much can be gained form a sure win. There is much to be gained form a sure defeat.” For a man so concerned with his legacy that perjury was a trifle it could have been a bully pulpit moment.
The above, failure to submit the treaty, is a material fact that you chose to omit. Should you have been writing a prospectus you would be liable for charges of fraud.
Alas, the rules that apply to the real world, the world where gravity still has a say, don’t apply in the world of pseudo science.
In a world governed by shoulda, coulda, woulda, in a world where “it’s a great idea so it must be true”, in a world where correlation is causation, in a world where Lysenko was never given a fair shot, in a world where the Luddites weren’t all wrong, it is a given that those who do not bend their knew to the Gods of Delusion are evil.
I can tell you from 5 years of empirical observation and recordings that the water in the Intracoastal in Fort Lauderdale, Florida is not rising. Maybe the icebergs are melting. Maybe the polar bears are drowning. Maybe it’s going to be tough sailing for those poor baby seals for a while - the fewer the polar bears to eat them the more Canadians with poleaxes to…to… poleax them Maybe the water going to the Seychelles. Maybe it’s going to Tonga. Maybe the “surge” is subverting it. Maybe it went to Myanamar. Maybe the Falklands will become the Atlantis of the South.
Wherever it’s going it’s not going up my dock. Molly and Marko are free to cavort. Manatee suffrage is on the horizon. Who knows what they’ll do?
Quarter truths will become the coin of the realm.
Molly and Marko will contact their cousins the armadillos to turn Congressman Barton out of office.
Should that happen will the voice of the turtle will be heard once again in the land?
“Modest proposals” will become the law of the land.
Meanwhile, sitting quietly on the hill, notebooks in hand, pens fully inked, “The Gods of the Copybook Ledgers”, will be ready to take notes.