Steve Benen wrote: "Barnes published a column with obvious nonsense ..."

No, Barnes published a column with obvious deliberate lies.

Barnes is not "confused". Barnes is a liar.

Eventually the cacophony of stupidity will simply become an isolated echo chamber.

Until then, we all suffer.

What can any of us do to demand more of people like Freddy Barnes? He is a bought and paid for shill for the corporate media. He does their bidding and he does it well.

Al Gore hysterical? Is he joking? He must be talking about some other Gore. Actually Gore and Obama are a lot alike in their calm, deliberative demeanors. Only Obama truly has an oratorical gift.

On Morning Joe, Joe actually asked why people are saying this recession is different than previous ones. Do scarborough or Barnes read newspapers? It's amazing how little these so-called pundits understand about what we're facing economicaally. They're nothing more than ostriches; they also probably believe that no matter what happens their cushy lives are protected. So why should they bother to have opinions based on facts and research, they get paid just the same.

Fred Barnes has to be in the lead in the race to be the nation's worst political columnist.

Compared to Bloody Bill Kristol? Fat chance.

The more public support his bill loses, the more Obama embraces fear-mongering.

Don't forget that for the past eight years, more the public disagreed with Bush's policies, the more Bush became a man of principle by not admitting he was wrong.

Wow, the Right must really hate Al Gore. Last night on MSNBC I heard someone dissing Paul Krugman. He has a Nobel Prize, but how hard could it be to get one, because Al Gore also has one of those things.

Must be a new attack against the elitists. Reminds me of the first scene in "True Lies" where Arnold smashes together the heads of two dobermans. These guys envision themselves as Arnold, superior because they can take out the enemy by playing one against the other (in their own mind, of course).

Barnes is a leading member of the "should-be-unemployed-and-living-under-a-bridge-club" but alas, he remains a SERIOUS, Beltway pundit. The mind reels.

Pass this on to Fred (from an AP article available to newspapers today):

"Experts said some birds aren't bothering to fly as far south in the winter... The purple finch, for example, has been spending its winters more than 400 miles farther north than it used to. According to a study being released by the Audubon Society, more than half of 305 birds species in North America are spending the winter about 35 miles farther north than they did 40 years ago... Over the 40 years covered by the study, the average January temperature in the U.S. climbed by about 5 degrees Fahrenheit."

Say, Fred: ever heard about the canary in the coal mine? Guess not.

we don't call 'em pundidiots for nothing.

Listening to many of these know-nothing bozos makes me think of the following scene:

The world's top doctors are standing around America, the patient. They all agree that we have a potentially terminal cancer and that aggressive, immediate treatment must be taken. Barnes is standing there arguing that it's just a cold and will get better on its own.

These people are ignorant fools who are proud of their ability to reject facts and reality. They are poisoning our dicourse and only serve to make America sicker.

Shorter Barnes: "I'm lying through my teeth, but I'm not going to help you prove it to the world!"

Note to Barnes: You do that quite nicely all by youself....

Barnesy clearly pulled this right out of his well-chapped sphincter.

I wonder why the geniuses who are so quick to pounce on every snowstorm as proof that there is no global warming have been so vewwy, vewwy quiet about the wildfires devastating Australia? These aren't just a one-time event, but the culmination of years of devastating drought. Australians have been adjusting for some years now to the painful realization that their country may never again have the climate that it once did -- while bracing for the likelihood of absorbing waves of refugees when some small Pacific island nations like Nauru vanish under the rising waters.

Zoe, righties call Gore "hysterical" because it's part of their narrative. He's a crazy, wild-eyed fanatic and serial liar. Hey, he said he discovered Love Canal, right? Never mind that two high school kids debunked that one by checking the actual tape of his remarks; the Very Serious Pundits don't take kindly to having bratty little upstarts mess up their story line. Who you gonna believe, Maureen Dowd and her clique of in-kids, or your own lyin' eyes?

Al Gore hysterical? Is he joking? He must be talking about some other Gore. Actually Gore and Obama are a lot alike in their calm, deliberative demeanors. Only Obama truly has an oratorical gift.

Gore can get it going if he really wants to. I fondly remember his May, 2004 speech to MoveOn, the one about Abu Ghraib etc. Of course, pundits played the "hysterical" card then too (not to mention the "off his meds" card). I guess they get nervous when someone shows that he actually believes in something.

A very recent study showed that 97% of [i]actual[/i] climate scientists, the ones who [i]actually[/i] study the [i]actual[/i] data, think that man contributes to warming.

I know this isn't equal to global warming being a fact, and it's always healthy to be skeptical of fear-mongering. But it certainly repudiates the notion that the "case is falling apart." It seems the people actually studying the case disagree.

I realize that anecdotal evidence doesn't really count for much in something like this, but I haven't really noticed much of a cooling trend lately up here in Winnipeg. Where it's raining. In the second week of February. There's also been some fairly large and erratic temperature swings over the past 5 or 6 weeks after an exceptionally cold December and January.

But hey, to the right wing, a hot summer means it's just summer and a cold winter means global climate change is completely debunked.

In response, Barnes said only that he knew where he had found it, but would not tell us, apparently as a matter of principle. "I'm not going to do your research for you," he eventually said, before hurriedly ending the call.

That had to be as much fun for Roth as it is when we bust our wingnut trolls in the same way and they skitter out of here like roaches.

That had to be as much fun for Roth as it is when we bust our wingnut trolls in the same way and they skitter out of here like roaches.

And like our trolls, Barnes will soon be back, prattling shamelessly as if he still had some credibility.

As long as there's one deep-in-debt or corruptible hack who is willing to say global warming is a myth for the right price, the right will always gleefully crow along. On a good day, when their emaciated dying consciences manage to peek through the depths of their souls where they're buried, you'll get an occasional "well, I guess the jury's still out, then."

As T-Rex pointed out, they seem to ignore what's going on in the rest of the world, like, oh, Australia. There's some shocking (but cute) pix of koalas desperately drinking from cyclists' water bottles, out of people's swimming pools, etc. Scientists predict they could go extinct in the next century because of the climate change.

And then there was that 8 mile ice floe in Lake Erie, stranding 100s of ice fishermen. let's ignore that happening in February...

We had some cold weather last week, but today's high is forecast at 68°. In February.

None of which means anything to large-scale weather assessment.

Barnes is like most shameless liars - if you catch him lying he'll pull some sort of aggressive maneuver ("I won't do your research for you") to avoid dealing with his being caught out.

Barnes is a born again nutcase -- they don't need no stinkin' evidence

"Calendar year 2008 was the coolest year since 2000, according to the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) analysis of worldwide temperature measurements, but it was still in the top ten warmest years since the start of record-keeping in 1880."-NASA

"In 2008,Eastern Europe, Russia, the Arctic, and the Antarctic Peninsula were exceptionally warm (1.5 to 3.5 degrees Celsius above average). The temperature in the United States in 2008 was not much different than the 1951-1980 mean, which makes 2008 cooler than all of the previous years this decade"-NASA

I've been telling you folks and everyone else for years how Barnes just makes stuff up and calls his fantasies "well-known facts" that "everyone knows." If people would just listen to me how much better the world would be.

Barnes goes on TV and invents nonexistent poll results, nonexistent public opinion, nonexistent scentific documentation, nonexistent democratic stances, etc., etc., etc.

Why does this imbecile have a job?

Fred Barnes can also turn invisible if he wants to. He just doesn't want to.

Here's one actual Climate Scientist who says that the Political Consensus (not the Scientific Consensus) is falling apart. He distinguishes between the two. It's an interesting read:

The Collapse of Climate Policy and the Sustainability of Climate Science

If only people like Barnes had applied the same degree of skepticism to Saddam's WMD that they do to global warming.

As I read the complete hogwash which regularly spews from the mouths of 'members of the DC political establishment,' I have two thoughts:

1) Nice work if you can get it.

2) How can I get work like this? The only other way to get paid for being so frequently wrong is to work as a meteorologist.

-Z

There's an editorial cartoonist in Tampa named Wayne Stayskal who does the same global warming jokes over and over:

1) It's the dead of winter, snow piled high, and a global warming believer is wearing summer clothes outside, because, get it, he's such a fanatic that he can't even see that it's cold!

2) Former global warming supporters are burning their Al Gore books to stay warm, etc.

The basic idea is always the same -- any winter weather disproves global warming entirely. I suppose Wayne will only become a believer when it never snows anywhere ever. Of course, by that time Tampa will be underwater...

February is the new March.

Barnes will, however, continue to be a member in good standing of the D.C. media political establishment. Nothing he could say or write could ever change that.

Wrong. If he one day declared he has seen the light, that Gore has been correct all along, he'd be out of the club within a few weeks.

The right-wing obsession with Al Gore has nothing to do with climate change.

It has to do with the fact that Al Gore defeated George W. Bush and was the legitimately elected president of the United States of America in the 2000 election, in spite of the massive and monstrous voter disenfranchisement conspiracy perpetrated by Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris, which prevented tens of thousands of eligible Democratic voters in Florida from voting by falsely identifying them as "felons" and purging them from the voter rolls.

In spite of that massive fraud, Al Gore won Florida anyway, after which a group of corrupt, partisan Republican hacks on the US Supreme Court brazenly violated their oaths of office, and intervened to prevent all the Florida ballots from being counted, thereby stealing the election and installing Bush in the White House in a bloodless coup.

Al Gore is a constant reminder that Bush was never, ever, the legitimately elected President of the USA -- he was merely a career white-collar crook who lied, cheated and stole his way into power.

That's why right-wingers hate Al Gore with such fervor.

We all need to do the call-ins and say that Fred Barnes takes money from ExxonMobil to spew their lies. And if challenged, tell the questioner "look it up yourself, I'm not going to do your research for you."

And as someone else said, the real question is why does Barnes even have a job? Someone with connections should get an interview with his boss and ask them if they think Barnes deserves his slot even though he lies blatantly and then runs away rather than admit he's wrong.