Starve.Org White Noise Usenet Archive: "Re: USA 'vast oil sands reserves' myth debunked (yet again)"

The Phantom Piper <ThePhantomPiper@comcast.net> wrote:

:On Apr 19, 9:27 pm, Fred J. McCall <fjmcc...@gmail.com> wrote:
:
:> Never happened.
:

I'll just note that NONE of the following is what you claimed, which
was, "James Gaius Watt (and no, I'm not making that up either), former
_Secretary Of The Interior_ to, and appointed by, President Reagan,
believed that it was alright to sell strip-mining leases on the Grand
Canyon because Jesus would put it all right when He returned in the
Second Coming, and said so in front of the press."

In point of fact, you've cleverly elided what you originally claimed,
which to my mind makes you a deliberate liar. Let me, having now
quoted your original claim above, rebut it:

"One apocryphal quote by Watt is "After the last tree is felled,
Christ will come back"; there is no indication he actually ever said
this. Glenn Scherer, writing for Grist, erroneously placed this remark
in Watt's testimony to Congress.[10]. Journalist Bill Moyers, relying
on the Grist article, mistakenly attributed the comment to Watt. After
it was discovered that the quote was mistaken, Grist corrected their
article and Moyers promptly apologized [11]. Watt has denied both the
attribution and the associated characterizations of his policy.[12]"

You also distort the record in not noting the following, which is
directly at odds with your claim above (which you removed):

Watt periodically mentioned his Christian faith when discussing his
approach to environmental management. Speaking before Congress, he
once said, "I do not know how many future generations we can count on
before the Lord returns, whatever it is we have to manage with a skill
to leave the resources needed for future generations."[9]

:"My responsibility is to follow the Scriptures which
:call upon us to occupy the land until Jesus returns."
:(The Washington Post, May 24, 1981)
:
:"Watt periodically mentioned his Christian [sic]
:faith when discussing his approach to environmental
:management. Speaking before Congress, he once
:said,
:
:'I do not know how many future generations we can
:count on before the Lord returns, whatever it is we
:have to manage with a skill to leave the resources
:needed for future generations'."
:
:"For over two decades, Watt held the record for
:protecting the fewest species under the Endangered
:Species Act in United States history. The record was
:broken by Dirk Kempthorne, a George W. Bush appointee
:who, as of August 27, 2007, had not listed a single
:species in the 15 months since his confirmation."
:
:"Greg Wetstone, who was the chief environment
:council at the House Energy and Commerce Committee
:during the Reagan administration and later served as
:director of advocacy at the Natural Resources Defense
:Council, said Watt was one of the two most "intensely
:controversial and blatantly anti-environmental political
:appointees" in American history. (The other was Anne
:Gorsuch, head of the EPAUnited States Environmental
:Protection Agency at that time.) According to the
:environmental groups, Watt decreased funding for
:environmental programs, restructured the department
:to decrease federal regulatory power, wished to eliminate
:the Land and Water Conservation Fund (which had
:been designed to increase the size of National Wildlife
:Refuges and other protected land), eased regulations
:on oil and mining companies, and favored opening
:wilderness areas and shorelands for oil and gas leases."
:
:"Watt resisted accepting donations of private land
:to be used for conservation purposes. He suggested
:that ALL 80 MILLION ACRES (320,000 km²) OF
:UNDEVELOPED LAND IN THE UNITED STATES
:BE OPENED FOR DRILLING AND MINING by the
:year 2000."
:
:"The area leased to coal mining companies quintupled
:during his term as Secretary of the Interior. Watt proudly
:boasted that he leased "a billion acres" (4 million km²)
:of U.S. coastal waters, even though only a small portion
:of that area would ever be drilled. Watt once stated,
:"We will mine more, drill more, cut more timber."
:
:"In 1995, Watt was indicted on 25 counts of felony
:perjury and obstruction of justice by a federal grand
:jury. The indictments were due to false statements
:made to a grand jury investigating influence peddling
:at the Department of Housing and Urban Development,
:which he had lobbied in the mid to late 1980s."
:
:"During a March 1991 dinner event organized by
:the Green River Cattlemen's Association in Wyoming,
:Watt said, 'If the troubles from environmentalists
:cannot be solved in the jury box or at the ballot box,
:perhaps the cartridge box should be used.' "
:
:"In a 2001 interview, Watt applauded the Bush
:administration energy strategy and said their
:prioritization of oil drilling and coal mining above
:conservation is just what he recommended in
:the early 1980s. 'Everything Cheney's saying,
:everything the president's saying - they're saying
:exactly what we were saying 20 years ago,
:precisely... Twenty years later, it sounds like
:they've just dusted off the old work.' "
:
:Your guy...
:

Nope. REALITY is 'my guy' and Watt never said what you claimed he
said.

:> Never happened
:
:I (and millions of others) watched the spectacle
:with our own eyes: Watt was playing tennis (at,
:I believe, his ranch); Reagan had ordered him
:not to talk to the press, who were following him
:about everywhere he went. In order to comply
:with The Gipper's directive not to make things
:worse by speaking to the press, Watt merely
:walked up, smiling broadly, to the inside of the
:fence and then turned around and spread his
:arms wide, back to the cameras, at about the
:level of a horizontal cross-member of some sort
:running across the fence and stood there for a
:moment, as though crucified. His mime was not
:lost on the press, who reported it as such, with
:video in living colour, on all three major networks,
:PBS, and CNN.
:

Since he never said what you originally claimed, it was not, as you
claimed, "When he was under pressure to resign for having made the
outrageous statement, Watt mimed his own Crucifixion against the
fence-supports of his personal tennis-court for the benefit of
television cameras and reporters."

Again, you're obviously deliberately lying now. Hard to be pressured
to resign for making a statement he never made.

:Once again, you are stuffed. And, once again,
:you clearly display yourself allied with the Wrong
:Wing, defending the indefensible and unable to
:open your eyes or your mind. I post these facts
:not for your sake, since no amount of Facts will
:alter your Pea-Lizard-Brain in the slightest, but
:to reveal them (and you and your kind) to others.
:Additionally, it's fun for me to see just how many
:times you will step in it, and show yourself to be
:on the losing side of things again, and again - and
:Again! You (and Your Lot) are like some sort of
:Wind Up Toy: I merely insert the Fact Key, give
:you a twist or two, and you Spin and Spin and Spin,
:emitting some noise and a few feeble sparks but
:accomplishing precisely nothing in the process!
:It can be entertaining, but withal I prefer something
:more challenging.
:

Yeah, when you lie at the drop of a hat and the facts don't matter,
I'm pretty much fucked. And you're pretty much a waste of time.

:
:Bored Now,
:

Yeah, I am. You have the intellectual integrity of a gnat (which
presumably goes with your gnat-like intellect).

:The Phantom Piper

I think you misspelt 'The Fatman Prevaricator', above.

--
"False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the
soul with evil."
-- Socrates