Ghosts Of The Before Time: April 24, 2005 -- Little Red State Fundy Turns 20 (Now With Extra Inhofe)

James Mountain Inhofe hasn't been dead long enough that you've forgotten him already, right?   

He was the neanderthal Senator from Oklahoma.  In that, he was Oklahoma's longest serving senator, because, for deeply fucked-up cultural reasons too twisty to go into here, Oklahomans like sending knuckle-draggers to Washington.  Exhibit A:  In 2023, after long COVID made it impossible for Inhofe to function, in a special election Oklahomans replaced him with Meathead Markwayne Mullin.

You may or may not know that Inhofe wrote a book entitled, "The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future", which was well received and upvote by many climate change denialist crackpots.  He passed away in July of 2024, and if you look up his gravesite in Find-a-Grave, bless their hearts, you'll find this sentence --

He served as Chair of the Armed Services Committee, and chaired the Senate Environment Committee, frequently smearing the scientific consensus on human induced climate change as a hoax and conspiracy perpetrated by leftists...

-- but in January of 2025, KGOU Oklahoma, "Your NPR Source", may have unintentionally written the most fitting obituary for the old bastard without ever once mentioning his name:

Report: Oklahoma just had its hottest year on record

A federal report shows the state was one of 17 that experienced record-breaking heat.

A report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says Earth had its hottest year yet in 2024. Oklahoma’s temperatures also exceeded previous records.

The federal weather and climate monitoring administration analyzed records going back 130 years to show how natural and human-caused climate change is altering the planet’s temperatures.

Although the federal data show last year was the state's hottest year on record, the Oklahoma Mesonet reports 2024 was tied with 2012 at 63.2 degrees Fahrenheit.

In Oklahoma, climate change is likely causing cold months to trend warmer, adding to the state’s overall temperature increase, State Climatologist Gary McManus said ahead of NOAA’s report.

“When you look specifically at Oklahoma, you look at wintertime temperatures, and the overnight temperatures are increasing,” McManus said. “That's sort of the more robust climate change signal with temperatures that we're seeing in Oklahoma.”

So what does any of this have to do with, y'know, the headline of this post?

Patience, dearie.  We're getting there.

Whether or not you know anything about Inhofe's book or the committees he served on, I will wager that, if you remember him at all, it's for the incredibly stupid "snowball stunt" he pulled on the Senate floor that was supposed to prove that climate change was a hoax made up by Leftists to seize control and yadda yadda socialism! yadda yadda One World Gummint! 

You know the drill.

The source of climate denialist stupidity like Inhofe's was and is their muleheaded unwillingness to acknowledge the difference between "weather" and "climate".

From a National Geographic "Earth Science, Meteorology" article suitable for grades 3 - 12:

Weather or Climate ... What's the Difference?

While weather refers to short-term changes in the atmosphere, climate refers to atmospheric changes over longer periods of time, usually 30 years or more.

"Weather" is why Inhofe was able to make an ass of himself showing off a snowball on the floor of the Senate.

"Climate" is why, by 2040, the Senate may have to be sandbagged or moved to higher ground to prevent record flooding due to climate change.

So, now, my Little Red State Fundy from April 24, 2005, which I have mentioned on this blog before.

As you read it, please consider the individual names of individual scumbags and grifters as "weather".  Because names and faces come and go.

On the other hand, look at the directional accuracy of this post from 20 years ago -- at the contours of future I was seeing -- as "climate".  Broadly speaking, is this what the Republican party has become?  And, if so, what does that do to the credibility of all those Never Trumpers who swear no one coulda seen this coming? 

Little Red State Fundy sez...

Whatever will we tell the children? 


One day we will have to explain to the children what happened when Thurston Howell III lost his right mind and decided that for the sake of some tax cuts to make him incrementally more comfortable, his very bestest buddies in the whole, wide world were the Ultra Right Wing Gorgons down in Jesusland.

May I suggest the following?

The Story of Little Red State Fundy

Little Red State Fundy found a grain of hate.

"Who will help me plant the hate?" she asked.

"Not I," said the Moderate Republicans.

"Not I," said the Undecideds.

"Not I," said the Libertarians.

"Then I will," said Little Red State Fundy.

So she buried the hate in the bloody ground of the Old Confederacy. After a while it grew up paranoid and ignorant and violent.

"The hate is ripe now," said Little Red State Fundy. "Who will do the mass mailings and preach bigotry from the Pulpit?"

"Not I," said the Moderate Republicans.

"Not I," said the Undecideds.

"Not I," said the Libertarians.

"Then I will," said Little Red State Fundy.

So she licked envelopes until her bill was cracked and dry and stood up into the House of God and crowed to her flocks in their millions that God Loved Them for hating and killing creatures who were not like them.

Then she asked, "Who will help me focus this hatred politically?"

"Not I," said the Moderate Republicans.

"Not I," said the Undecideds.

"Not I," said the Libertarians.

"Then I will," said Little Red State Fundy.

So she made databases and phone banks, and walked door-to-door with petitions that talked of Gods Great Hatred of Gays, and Gods Great Hatred of Judges that did not worship the Hate God in exactly the way the Little Red State Fundy told them to.

Then she carried the hate to steps of the Congress and the White House.

"Who will make a mandate from this hate?" she asked.

"Not I," said the Moderate Republicans.

"Not I," said the Undecideds.

"Not I," said the Libertarians.

"Then I will," said Little Red State Fundy.

So she got on the phone with her very good friend Karl Rove and with his help organized carpools to the polls, and get-out-the-vote drives, anti-gay marriage amendments and smear campaigns. For Jesus.

And Little Red State Fundy delivered the margin of victory and was featured in many, many magazines: without Little Red State Fundy, the Republican Party could never, ever, ever win anything.

And now everybody knew it.

Then she said, "Now who shall help me Rule the Earth."

"We will!" said Moderate Republicans, Undecideds, and Libertarians.

"I am quite sure you would," said Little Red State Fundy, "but see, now you are all my bitches."

Then she called Randall Terry and Tom DeLay and Ann Coulter and Jerry Falwell and Rush Limbaugh and James Dobson, and they and the rest of the Shining Path Republicans used what was left of the Constitution as ass-floss.
And judges were terrorized into silence.
And those deemed ungodly were beaten in the streets.
And they invaded whoever the fuck they felt like, for whatever fucking reason they chose.
And the very idea of a Free and Fair press died.

And to people who had been very clear all along that they genuinely believed in a Theocratic Nanny State and thought that precipitating Armageddon and triggering the Second Coming should be the highest calling of any worldly government, were handed over the police, courts, government, treasury and nuclear weapons stockpiles of the United States of America.

And in the end -- just as they had been warned for the past twenty years -- there was nothing whatsoever left at all for Moderate Republicans, Undecideds, and Libertarians.

End of stomach-churning visit to April 24, 2005.

I Am The Liberal Media.