What Is Wrong With The ORP? Or ORGOP. Who can keep up?
His Facebook ad last fall
The Oregon Republican Party has successfully transitioned from being the party of Mark Hatfield to a carnival freak sideshow.
A Missed Introduction To Oregon’s Extreme New Republican Chairman
mediamatters.orgIt’s hard to do justice to the extreme views of the new chairman for Oregon’s Republican party. But reports on Art Robinson often didn’t even come close, merely mentioning that he is a “skeptic of human-caused global warming,” while leaving out the chairman’s anti-scientific statements on evolution, AIDS, and nuclear waste.
Robinson is best known for organizing a petition rejecting climate change that claims to have 31,072 American scientist signatories, with “scientist” defined as anyone who claims to have a bachelor’s degree in various fields including computer science, statistics, and metallurgy. Robinson, who is a chemist but has not done any scientific research into climate change, has acknowledged that fake names such as the Spice Girl’s Geri Halliwell made it onto the list. The petition says little to rebut the consensus of the vast majority of scientists, as it does not state what percentage of people responded to the survey. Robinson told the conspiracy website WND.com in 2002 that “”[t]here is absolutely not a shred of evidence that humans are causing any change in the climate by generating CO2.”
The Associated Press characterized all this by simply stating that Robinson is “a chemist and outspoken skeptic of human-caused global warming,” echoing The Oregonian, Oregon’s largest newspaper.
Furthermore, at no point during Robinson’s candidacy for GOP chairman did the two largest Oregon papers (The Oregonian and The Eugene Register-Guard)* mention that Robinson has made several other claims that run counter to scientific research …
I am VERY familiar with the comatose Oregon news press. (Trust me on this one.)
Oregon has a long tradition of famously independent, moderate-to-liberal Republicans. Art Robinson represents a completwe repudiation of that tradition, and a repudiation of Republicanism per se: he’s a fake climate scientist, home schooling fanatic, hard-core religious fanatic and in the pocket of the Koch Brothers.
His crappy candidate’s website
He’s also a long-time contributor to World Nut Daily (published from Joe Farah’s survivalist compound outside of Grant’s Pass*) and holds lunatic positions on any number of crazy topics. To elect Robinson in Oregon would be tantamount to the Texas GOP electing, say, Jesse Jackson as their Chair. I’m not being hyperbolic about carnival freak sideshow.
He ran his son in the 2012 DEMOCRATIC primary as a “Democrat”
evidently to game the election and force the incumbent to
spend cash. His creepy son then RAN Robinson’s GOP campaign
in the general election. This is unethical, but not illegal from “Mr. Moral.”
I scanned this from the Matt Robinson for Congress mailer sent me.
[* Before he was a “climate expert” and “home schooling” guru, Robinson was a “Civil Defense Expert.” (He’s expert on a lot of stuff not contained in his discipline. Of course, he repudiates scientific expertise when it comes to climate change.]
CIVIL-DEFENSE EXPERT ON KEYES
Art Robinson to discuss crucial need for citizen protection
WorldNetDaily
Published: 02/13/2002 at 7:57 PMArt Robinson, Ph.D., who has spent the last two decades sounding the alarm about the need for civil-defense measures to protect U.S. citizens, will be a special guest tonight on Alan Keyes MSNBC cable program, “Alan Keyes is Making Sense.”
Robinson was a contributor to the January issue of WorldNetDaily’s offline magazine, Whistlblower [sic], entitled, “America Defenseless.”
A physical chemist and founder and director of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, Robinson is one of America’s foremost experts – and whistleblowers – in the area of civil defense. His piece in Whistleblower explains how the U.S. government has neglected the development of civil defense for the public. Robinson’s organization is now one of the only sources of civil defense literature in the U.S.
“Alan Keyes is Making Sense” airs Mondays through Thursdays on MSNBC at 10 p.m. Eastern, 7 p.m. Pacific.
I covered him at length in
6 OCTOBER 2012 · 6:44 PM
Art Robinson Goes Full Ayn Monty
Art Robinson in Corvallis, Oregon
The Facebook sidebar ad reads: “Who Is John Galt?” It takes you to this [emphasis is in original]:
Who is John Galt?
A message from liberty candidate Art Robinson.
In her 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand explored the inherent conflict between the “men of the mind” – those who invent, build, and create the things that permit human beings to rise above the status of mere animal-like hunter gatherers with lives that are brutish and short – and Rudyard Kipling’s “Gods of the Market Place,” those who play upon the weaknesses of human nature to tempt men into a path of subservience to the state that leads to slavery for the men of the mind and for all mankind.
Ayn Rand’s men of the mind are a handful of heroic figures whose genius transforms technology and industry, and their enemies are condensed also to a few figures, epitomized by an allegorical Washington lobbyist – Wesley Mouch.*
[* Note, I just noted in my upcoming ebook “Ayn Nation Under God” the intentional resemblance between “Mouch” and “mooch.”]
In Atlas Shrugged, the men of the mind go on strike. One by one they disappear, as cryptic signs appear that ask “Who is John Galt?” Galt, an especially talented man of the mind, is the leader of their revolt. Each man of the mind must decide whether he will continue to work for a world controlled by Wesley Mouch – and thereby provide technology for his enemies – or rebel and join John Galt.
We are now 50 years beyond Atlas Shrugged. No longer just an allegorical novel,the dilemma posed for the men of the mind is here, now, in real life. Congress is corrupt; Congress has largely discarded the U.S. Constitution; and the 300,000 laws and regulations that Congress has created in the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations are the chains that Congress and the lobbyists have prepared for the men of the mind and for all Americans. What is the response?
When Ayn Rand wrote her novel, the great flywheel of human progress powered by a century of American freedom seemed unstoppable. Yet, the statist chains that would be used to slow that flywheel and enslave Americans had already been forged and were beginning to have a noticeable effect. Rand had surely noticed them.
What would be the source of power to slow that flywheel and enslave the American people? Ayn Rand knew the answer – lobbyist Leslie Mouch and the U.S. Capitol building. The chains were formed by corruption of the U.S. Congress.
In all of recorded human history, only one nation has been built for and by the men of the mind – the Constitutional Republic of the United States. And that nation is being destroyed by their enemies.
What will they do? First, they continue to work. Many have moved their efforts abroad, where here and there they find temporary niches of greater freedom, even under totalitarian regimes.
Most have remained in the United States. Some of these – especially those in dynamic new industries such as microelectronics, which have developed so rapidly that statist repression has not yet caught up with them – are still relatively free. Those in older industries – such as medicine and energy – find their best efforts suppressed, but they are still able to make minor progress.
While our current men and women of the mind do understand that their freedom to work is under assault by government, which is now entirely in control of the likes of Wesley Mouch, they have made a mistake. They have tried to hire their own lobbyists and politicians, whom they hope will correct this problem. This has not worked. In Atlas Shrugged, the central hero Hank Rearden makes the same error. He actually hires Wesley Mouch.
There is only one way out of this dilemma. The men of the mind themselves must become the U.S. Congress, restore the Republic, and then keep that Republic secure and functioning. There is precedent for this. During its first 100 years, our Congress was composed mostly of citizen volunteers, who served short terms and then returned to their own work.
“We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.” ~Ayn Rand
There is only one way out of this dilemma. The men of the mind themselves must become the U.S. Congress, restore the Republic, and then keep that Republic secure and functioning.
In Defense of Our Constitution,
Art Robinson.
and so on and so forth.
You’d think that they’d know to either italicize or CAPITALIZE book titles. But I guess Robinson’s home-schooling schemes don’t cover that.
I’ve covered Art at length elsewhere (“The Switch Family Robinson” 22 April 2012, “Because ‘Cudgel For Growth’ Wouldn’t Sound as Warm and Fuzzy” 14 December 2010; “Peter DeFazio and the Daughters of Mercer” 22 October 2010, “Where Are All The Crusading Newspaper Editors?” 29 September 2010. etc. etc.) and there’s no need to go further here.
The “Atlas Shrugs movie II” drops on Friday, even though Part I was an epic fail, and even though the Randian Supergeniuses kept writing about what a “smash hit!” it was. See “If The Invisible Hand of the Market Bitch-Slapped You and You Didn’t Want to Hear It, Would It Make a Sound?” from 25 April 2011.
Of course, this may seem NORMAL to you.
Formerly fiction; now a guidebook to
find Art Robinson’s house in Cave Junction, Oregon.
In which case, I would suggest that you stop reading this and take a few minutes to do the rounds on your ward.
You might remember Art from his phony “scientists against believing in global warming, none of whom were climate scientists. From our friends over at DeSmog Blog [emphasis added]:
Credentials
- Ph.D., Chemistry, University of California at San Diego. [1]
Background
Art Robinson is the founder of a group called the “Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine” (OISM), which markets, among other things, a home-schooling kit for “parents concerned about socialism in the public schools” and books on how to survive nuclear war.[2]
Robinson is best known for organizing the Oregon Petition that disputes the scientific evidence for man-made global warming.
In 2010, Robinson was the Republican candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Oregon’s 4th congressional district.
Robinson appears on Senator James Inhofe’s list of “prominent scientists” who dispute the existence of man-made global warming. In a debunking of the list, Robinson was found to beone of 70 so-called “scientists” who have no background in climate science.
Robinson has described environmentalists as “warmed over college radicals who have found a way to make radicalism pay” who “don’t have much for brains.” …
And so forth.
I have saved this observation until now: last month, when I was at the Lane County State Fair, I checked in on the Lane County Republican booth, and there was something there that disturbed me, and ought to disturb any thoughtful political observer: prominently displayed at the corner of the wraparound end booth was a blown up and laminated poster of “The World’s Shortest Political Quiz.”
This is the general outline. The quiz has been a Libertarian
recruiting tool nearly since the Founding of the Libertarian
Party on December 11, 1972 in Westminster, Colorado.
Why should this be disturbing?
Well, because it’s a Libertarian Party trope and has nothing whatsoever to do with the “Republican Party” as formerly understood.
The new GOP (since Ray-Gun)
It would be like the GOP handing out little “Quotations from Chairman Mao” booklets, although the phony “short quiz” is probably more in keeping with whatever racist, elitist and cruel philosophy the Republicans are pushing this week.
Art Robinson is yet another example that the former “Party of Lincoln” is as dead as civil rights in Russia. Lip service is paid to both, of course, but, like Art Robinson, it’s just a transparent, ham-handed fraud.
The Oregon Republican tradition is dead. Long live the loonies.
(And to my Oregon Republican friends: I empathize with your shame, assuming that you can still FEEL shame.)
Not merely crazy, but outright and in-your-face frauds!
From Matt’s “Democratic” mailer sent to me and my neighbors
The Oregon GOP has, literally, “gone Galt.” And the Oregon newspapers fiddle while Rome burns.
That’s my state. How’s yours?
Courage.
=================
A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog His Vorpal Sword. This is cross-posted from his blog.
A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog, His Vorpal Sword (no spaces) dot com.