The Pilot: pushing far-left talking points, telling half of the story, and mocking the few readers it has left

You have to just LOVE Yankees who move down here and chastise us for not being more like the morally and fiscally-bankrupt blue states they fled.

Steve Bouser, The Pilot’s minister of propaganda overseeing the paper’s op-ed pages, is a textbook example of just such antics.  His page ran for months with leftist talking points about the proposed  marriage amendment to the state constitution — warning of a return to Jim Crow and the approach of the apocalypse if it passed.  It took months of THIS site — and a few others — beating on Steve and The Pilot before they printed the actual text of the amendment.  (They got it in ONCE on the web site, as an after-thought, a week before the vote.)  Well, Steve’s antics worked so well that the amendment passed with more than 60 percent support — even in The Pilot’s home base of Moore County.

Now, in another of his famous unsigned leftist screeds, Steve suggests that our legislature reverse course because some unwatchable hacks on Comedy Central are making fun of us:

John Edwards. Amendment One. The preacher who wants to put gays in concentration camps. Academic scandal at Chapel Hill. Hasn’t North Carolina already suffered enough black eyes lately?

Um, Steve:  Your paper’s owners literally helped give our state the illustrious John Edwards.  (I think they owe ALL of us an apology.) You and your comrades made that preacher — from a church no one outside of that town has ever heard of — an international celebrity, and then moan about how he gave North Carolina a black eye.   It’s actually funny to hear you bemoan the discovery of  joke, do-nothing courses at UNC Chapel-Hill.  (After all, YOU are on the JOURNALISM faculty there.  It must hit a little too close to home. )  Read On:

Apparently not. Now our state is holding itself up to yet more ridicule and outrage from the rest of the country by contemplating a new rule decreeing that the future rise in sea level is not going to be what the experts (damn those scientists!) say it’s going to be, but rather what we want it to be. Or what it used to be. Or something like that.

Not since King Canute attempted to stand athwart the inflowing tide and command it to come no farther has something seemed quite so silly and unscientific and potentially futile as the bill approved the other day by a committee of the state Senate – and apparently to be voted on by the whole Senate tomorrow. It was so silly, in fact, to prompt TV comic Stephen Colbert to have a field day with it.

Oh, no.  Stephen Colbert – who has almost as many viewers as those late-night test patterns — is making fun of US.  The State of North Carolina MUST completely reverse course in order to keep the learned Mr. Colbert happy.   Read On:

Never Mind the Experts

Like the folks at Comedy Central?  Read on:

It all started when a panel of scientists warned that the North Carolina coast should begin preparing for an increasingly rapid rise in sea level later in this century.

Following up on this, a panel of the Coastal Resources Commission said that we could probably expect a rise of at least one meter (39 inches) by 2100. Professor Rob Jackson of Duke’s Center on Global Change warned that “the rates of sea-level rise are accelerating … because of increasing temperatures and thermal expansion of ocean water, and because of ice melting.”

So, we’re supposed to punish a bunch of property owners because of what some left-leaning academics THINK MIGHT happen in 88 years?  (Didn’t the Mayans predict the end of the world in 2012?  Well, it still could happen.  The marriage amendment passed.) 

Even if the sea level DOES rise 39 inches in 88 years, would that honestly threaten any of those beachfront dwellings on stilts?   Besides, predicting something 88 years in the future is SO brave.  You’re not going to be around for us to mock when you turn out to be wrong.  It’s actually like those politicians who claim that they will balance the budget in 40 or 50 years.  They won’t be around to jump on if it doesn’t happen.  The problem gets pushed off on another generation. 

The reaction of development forces and others in Raleigh has been reminiscent of the joke about the guy who got so tired of reading about the bad health effects of drinking that he gave up reading. In other words, if the experts are predicting things you don’t want to hear – why, just order them to start predicting something else that you’re more comfortable with.

Kinda like what you and your comrades in “journalism” do, isn’t it Steve? Read On:

Change Our Symbol?

Instead of going by the best scientific consensus, the bill would concentrate the power to issue official predictions in the Coastal Commission – and then require that body to ignore predicted rises and instead base its prognostications on past trends. To us, that rather sounds like ignoring a hurricane warning for tomorrow on the grounds that the weather was nice yesterday.

One is inevitably reminded of the Church forbidding Galileo to believe – or at least teach – what his own observations were telling him: that the Earth went around the sun.

Wow.  This is just so dishonest, disingenuous and exaggerated, I don’t know where to begin.  So much of this global warming stuff was based on “research” at the University of East Anglia in the UK, which we now know to be falsified and politicized, thanks to some leaked emails.  Read on:

“If you’re going to use science when you really can’t validate it,” said Sen. David Rouzer, a Benson Republican (and development official) who pushed the new legislation, “… you’re going to be implementing policy and rules and regulations that can have a very, very negative impact on the coastal economy of the state.”

Rouzer is a development official?  Not according to the bio on his campaign web site:

David Rouzer currently owns and operates a business consulting firm providing strategic advice to businesses on a wide range of issues. He also owns and operates a distributorship marketing environmentally friendly products.

Prior to starting his own consulting and distributorship businesses, David had been involved in public policy development and implementation, public relations, and legislative strategy for more than a decade through his work in the Legislative and Executive branches of the Federal government as well as through his work for NC State University.

Read more from Steve B:  

A rise of more than three feet could threaten more than 2,000 square miles of coastland.

Seriously?  Source, please. (Please don’t give me The Sierra Club or another pack of lefties you heard about on NPR.)  Read On:

That would be very bad news indeed. The only thing we can think of that might be worse would be not to prepare for it, basing our plans instead on wishful thinking.

Instead of the seagull, perhaps our future coastal symbol should be an ostrich with its head in the sand. If there is any sand.

Now that we’re done with Steve, let’s turn to The Wilmington Star-News for a fairer take on the Rouzer legislation in the North Carolina Senate:

[…]

State Sen. David Rouzer said Wednesday that legislation to prohibit state agencies from using “worst-case scenario” projections of sea-level rise when drafting coastal development policies will be considered by the Senate Agriculture/Environment/Natural Resources Committee, which meets at 9 a.m. Thursday in Raleigh. It could be voted on by the full Senate early next week, then would have to be approved by the House, Rouzer said.

“It will go quick,” Rouzer said of the bill’s path through the General Assembly, adding that he believed there would be bipartisan support for the measure.

Rouzer said changes have been made to a previous draft of the legislation and that the new version would be released Wednesday afternoon, less than a day before the committee hearing. An earlier version of the legislation brought out strong opposition from environmental groups and others.

Rouzer, a Johnston County Republican who is running for Congress in the 7^thCongressional District, said his bill wouldn’t prevent any projections of rising sea levels from being used to develop coastal policies. But it would stop the state from using projections that aren’t based on historical trends, such as the ones made by the Coastal Resources Commission’s Science Panel on Coastal Hazards.

“It’s aimed at encouraging and reflecting data that is … historically sound,” Rouzer said.

The Science Panel’s 2010 report recommended that a sea-level rise of 39 inches, or 1 meter, be adopted as the amount of anticipated rise by the year 2100 for policy development and planning purposes. The report noted that there is consensus among scientists that the rate of rise will increase this century and beyond, at least in part because of global warming and the melting of polar ice caps.

Rouzer said other scientists dispute the projections for 1 meter of rise and that state policies shouldn’t be drafted based the “thinking of massive global warming” by one group of scientists.

“That’s no way to carry out good public policy,” he said.

State Sen. Thom Goolsby, R-New Hanover, indicated Wednesday that he would support the bill.

“I’m for using real science and historical data,” he said. “I don’t want to use politicized data.”

Rouzer also said making rules and regulations based on 1 meter of rise could lead to diminished property values, higher insurance rates and issues with development along the coast “at a time when the economy is struggling.”

[…]