#375: Leighton Steward & Corbin Robertson

Leighton Steward and Corbin Robertson are the creators of the particularly dim global warming denialist organizations CO₂ is Green and Plants Need CO₂. Their goal is to lobby against the classification of carbon dioxide as a pollutant; since it is a vital chemical for plant life, more of it can only be a good thing (since ... Steward and Robertson are plants?), and any reduction of carbon dioxide in the ecosystem can only be harmful. You don’t need to be particularly scientifically savvy to see the factual shortcomings of the strategy.

CO₂ is Green has as its explicit aim to “educate” the public on the dangers of reduced carbon emissions, using adverts in several media. You can read more about the astoundingly stupid claims (targeted, it seems, at the Dunning-Kruger lowest quartile segment) they make here. They are also discussed here.

Leighton Steward (a short bio is available here) is the retired vice chairman of Burlington Resources oil and gas company; coal baron Corbin J, Robertson Jr. is the chief executive of Natural Resource Partners, a coal resourcing corporation (and is a frighteningly powerful guy – see for instance this). It does seem to be the case that Steward, at least, honestly thinks his arguments have merit, and he has produced some abysmally dumb ones. Steward nevertheless made it onto Inhofe’s list of “scientists” who allegedly reject antropogenic global warming.

Diagnosis: One would think they were dishonest, despite their ignorance, but at least Steward seems rather to be completely and abysmally ignorant and deluded. They are nevertheless dangerous, but there has to be a critical mass for the audience of this kind of silliness one hopes.

#374: Richard Sternberg

Richard Sternberg was an editor for the journal Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington (affiliated with the Smithsonian Institute). In 2004 he approved for publication an article by Stephen Meyer: “Intelligent Design: The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories”. Afterwards Sternberg came under fire for bypassing the normal peer-review process for the journal – understandably enough, since that was what he explicitly did to be able to contribute to the promotion of creationism by giving it a publication in a respectable journal. Equally understandably, the Council of the Biological Society of Washington issued a press release pointing this out (as well as the obvious fact that the paper was garbage).

No prize for guessing Sternberg’s reaction: “help, I am persecuted by the Darwinists for my religion” (yes, he even filed a religious discrimination complaint). He claimed that he received disparaging comments from colleagues at the Smithsonian (probably true, one hopes), was targeted to have his job removed and (a lie), had his keys taken away and lost his office (such twisting of facts that it must be considered a blatant lie). The full, accurate story is here. Sternberg also consistently pointed out that he was not an Intelligent Design advocate, which is – of course – also a lie.

His story subsequently made it to Expelled, which of course did not bother to fact-check it (come one: if they had been concerned with fact-checking there would never have been a movie). Neither did Indiana Congressman Mark Souder and his degenerate buddy Rick Santorum; follow-up here; also here. The Discovery Institute, no fans of facts themselves, often cites the Souder report as evidence that Sternberg specifically, and design proponents in general, are victims of persecution, and they have made some feeble attempts to defend Sternberg (West here; Luskin here). Oh, and of course WorldNetDaily threw their two cents into the debate with all the predictable garbled ignorance.

See more, similar cases of “academic freedom” here. Sternberg himself was after the incidents put on wingnut welfare, and is currently associated with the Discotute’s Biologic Institute.

Diagnosis: Paranoid, demonstrably dishonest conspiracy theorist and general nutjob. Like Guillermo Gonzalez, he is hardly dangerous himself, but the propaganda machinery at the Discovery Institute is doing its best to present his story in a manner that generates some real harm.

#373: Ben Stein

A.k.a. BS

Ben Stein, former speechwriter for Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, used to be famous for his role as the teacher (decidedly out of character) in Ferris Bueller's Day Off and for being a particularly dim neo-conservative, despite degrees in economics and law, from Columbia and Yale, respectively. He is currently most famous for starring in the denialist pseudo-documentary Expelled (also here), for writing a weekly column in the New York Times (he was eventually booted for violating their ethics policy), and for being a less than classy rape apologist. His track record with respect to predicting economic developments is sufficiently out of touch with reality (who would’ve guessed) to originate the term “Ben Steinery”.

He is, as already mentioned, a notable opponent of science: “When we just saw [Myers] talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed … that was horrifying beyond words, and that’s where science — in my opinion, this is just an opinion — that’s where science leads you […] Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.”

The comment sheds some light on his promotion of Intelligent Design Creationism, and his claim that real science is being kept out of universities because of an anti-God conspiracy among biologists. His critical thinking skills, in light of Expelled, are documented here.

Diagnosis: Unable to get absolutely anything right, Stein is a good example of how far sheer incompetency and fail can take you in the US. Total hack.

#372: Mathew Staver

Since Amitakh Stanford, who makes Gene Ray look sane, is Australian (sample article here) we’ll do another American bigot instead.

Matt Staver is a founding member and Chairman of Liberty Counsel since 1989, and dean of Jerry Falwell’s legendary Liberty University School of Law since 2006. As a lawyer he primarily defends “value” cases (that is, he tries to get his bigotry with a tinge of theocracy endorsed as law), which he does with zeal, rage, and a notable lack of critical thinking skills (his most magnificently delusional argument ever may still be his argument for the claim that occasionally using the word “Holiday” when you could have used “Christmas” entails that you are a communist; he has also lamented the fact that college campuses don’t allow diversity, since colleges are generally liberal. His own college is presumably assumed to be an exception (see in particular this).

In 2005 he argued before the Supreme Court – in a manner worthy of Orly Taitz – that the Massachusets high court ruling on gay marriage was unconstitutional because it violated the guarantee in the federal constitution that every state would have a republican form of government. The argument is discussed here; an equally ridiculous follow-up is discussed here. I guess these were the points that qualified him to teach in Michele Bachmann’s Constitution Course. In a similar vein, after a district court judge rejected their challenge of California’s law that prohibits therapists from practicing dangerous sexual orientation conversion therapy on minors, Liberty Counsel decided to appeal, because, in Staver’s mind, the law promotes “child endangerment” and “will destroy many lives,” maintaining that “Jerry Sandusky would welcome a law like SB 1172”. The premises from which he derived those conclusions are still undisclosed.

In short, Staver just doesn’t have a clue; combine that with Taliban-style fundamentalism, and you get the common nonsense with a substantial amount of fuming anger to go with it. (See his take on the hundredth anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic here for an example.)

To get a flavor of Staver, when the ACLU attempted to (and succeeded in) getting a school in Alabama to allow a lesbian couple to go to the prom, Staver’s response was that the case was typical of the ACLU in that “anything that is anti-moral, anti-religious liberty, and anti-freedom, you can always find them on the other side.” Overlooking the double negation mistake (the simplest rule of inference in standard natural deduction), what Staver is really saying is that ACLU is fighting against the government’s and official institutions’ right to limit the freedom of individuals. That is a strange position. But it seems to be the type of position he consistently endorses. (Discussed here.) As for the ACLU, Staver has argued that their War on Christmas is now forcing Christians into the closet.

And when irrationality and incomprehension don’t bring his point home, Staver is not above plain lying or resorting to deception: He has for instance tried to argue that schools across the country may be breaking the law by allowing students to participate in pro-homosexual events, the reason being that roughly half of the states require that if “sexuality is taught or discussed, it has to be done from an abstinence-based perspective.” (He got that argument from David Gibbs, whose name is hereby duly recorded for the Encyclopedia; indeed, Staver appears to have access to a lot of interesting facts that don’t exist for anyone else). You can see him declare that when the Southern Poverty Law Center labels anti-gay groups as “hate groups”, they are doing just what the Nazis did to the Jews (also here). But he is, according to himself, “not an alarmist”. He followed that affirmation with “but this [the 2012] election will literally determine the survival of Western civilization.”

Staver has also been caught recycling anti-gay propaganda from the fifties and passing it off as cutting-edge research. Here: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/religious-rights-spin-science is Staver and associate Matt Barber taking on the American Psychological Association for lacking competence (indeed, for being a “pseudo-scientific organization”) because its members don’t agree with Staver and Barber. Also the Bible.

A case in point: As Staver and his Liberty University School of Law associate Judith Reisman point out, the Catholic Church scandal can be blamed squarely on Alfred Kinsey because, well, his stuff sounds kinda liberal and Reisman has done some pseudoscientific rants that suggest that this conclusion is warranted since it was a presupposition for her “investigations”.

He has also weighed in on Obama’s “Super Death Panels” with staggering lack of logic and insight and a predictably rampant paranoia, which is justified because: “I would consider him [Obama] to be the biggest threat to religious liberty we've ever had because he will push the homosexual agenda,” (indeed, Staver has claimed that Obama is trying to force us all to be homosexuals), which suggests that there are some rather elementary concepts Staver never quite managed to master (see this, by the way) – besides the fact that he seems to take it as axiomatic that if the courts determine a case in a way he doesn’t like, it’s Obama’s fault. Here he is calling for a civil war (though it is the other side’s fault, of course).

In his rabid fight for/against freedom (note that “religious freedom” means freedom for Christians – Staver has explicitly denied that Islam is a religion and hence not covered by any freedom of religion measures), Staver has called for the boycott of Starbucks for their support of LGBT rights, and denounced the government’s “radical sexual anarchist agenda” (which may obscure the way in which LGBT is anti-freedom, but ok). The transgender part is apparently the worst, since recognizing transgendered people entails that adults will begin identifying as children so they “can go and use the little kiddies restroom,” and that transgendered people are similar to anorexics and bulimics, and therefore do not deserve legal rights (because ... anorexics and bulimics don't deserve legal rights?)

Needless to say he doesn’t enjoy much success in courts with these value cases. Relatedly Staver & Barber are of course among the numerous people who were praying for the Supreme Court to overturn the health care reform, which of course reveals a certain lack of understanding of how the Constitution works. But legal ignoramuses like Staver and Barber don't quite get the distinction between the Constitution and the Bible, or between the Constitution and their own knee-jerk bigotry -  even the expressed sentiment suggests that their opposition is not quite based on the perceived ineffectivity of the reformed health care but on something substantially more emotional (i.e. directionless hatred and cluelessness).

Staver also figured in the wingnut pseudo-documentary “The Dumbing Down of America”, produced by Truth in Action Ministries, which sought to unmask the sinister agenda of the ungodly institutions of public education – with rightwing luminaries such as Janet “public schools are based on a Hitlerian idea” Parshall, Dee “public schools are led by atheist, communist teachers who seek the eradication of Christianity” Wampler, Katherine Dang (of the Philomath Foundation) and Alliance Defense Fund’s  legal counsel Greg Baylor. Staver warned that public schools have created a “society that is ripe for chaos and disorder,” but Staver is associated with Liberty University, remember, so it is probably too much to expect that he would have any understanding of “education” and “learning facts”.

He is of course a staunch creationist.

There is a fine Staver resource here.

Diagnosis: Complete madman. Vile, dishonest, and apparently incompetent to boot. A perfect guy for the Law School at Liberty University.

#371: Ralph Gordon Stair

A.k.a. Brother Stair

Brother Stair is a completely crazy radio preacher and self-proclaimed prophet who has appeared on numerous frequencies, and who panders every insanity anyone has ever associatred with fundamentalist, paranoid Christianity. He is, unsurprisingly, a Young Earth Creationist and Biblical Literalist, but he also rejects modern technology (radio apparently being an exception), modern medicine and all of science. He also rejects all religious holidays and demands that men wear beards, and so on – you get the general idea. On the other hand, he does promote complete isolation from modern society and all sorts of New World Order conspiracy theories.

Stair runs a cult in South Carolina and maintains stern control over his followers (they can allegedly engage in sexual activities only with his permission). The fact that he rejects medical interventions for his followers has – it seems – led to several infant deaths in his community.

To get an idea of where he comes from: Stair claims that every other Christian preacher (except William Branham) is a false prophet, since they didn’t manage to prophesize Hurricane Katrina and 9/11, which he claims to have done (predictably, no Stair prediction of either event can be dated to prior to said events). He did, however, get some attention when he predicted a nuclear war in 1988, and for his millennial predictions (God would come down with judgment at the start of the third millennium: “If the Lord God Almighty does not make a major move before the year 2000,” said Stair, “I'll tell God to go to Hell.” He didn’t do that).

Stair has, predictably, been arrested for (and plead guilty to) assault, battery and fondling of underage members of his community. But that, of course, comes with the job.

Diagnosis: Batshit insane. His base of followers is small, but Stair is a real threat to them and it is not entirely unlikely that he is already morally responsible for several deaths.

#370: Kim Stagliano

A.k.a. Stagmom

One of the things we try to achieve here is to keep track of the movers and shakers in the anti-vaxx movement, since these are demonstrably among the most dangerous loons out there. Kim Stagliano is another such. She is one of the most ardent bloggers at the denialist organization Age of Autism, and she even writes for the execrable pile of fecal waste, the Huffington Post. In her contributions she makes some feeble attempts at humor, but it is mostly a long row of standard fallacies (confusing correlation and causation, the fallacy of the perfect solution, non-sequiturs, strawmen, the Big Pharma gambit, selective use of evidence, double standards of evidence, blame the victim, moving goal posts, anecdotal evidence, appeals to emotion, and appeals to conspiracies, to mention a few of the more frequent ones).

She has also made appearances as a staunch defender of Andy Wakefield after the latter was unmasked as a fraud.

Furthermore, Stagliano is famous for what amounts to a remarkable lack of self-awareness. One of Stagliano’s schticks is the “censorship of vaccine critics” by the media. Of course, Stagliano confuses censorship and criticism (the fact that everyone with actual competence completely disagree with her is not “censorship” even if Stagliano demands to call it so). The irony is that she herself deletes all dissenting comments on her blogposts: “we have made a conscious decision to moderate the site so that it does not become a cesspool of dissent.” Her persecution complex is well-developed, however.

And of course she is enthusiastically peddling untested chemicals and woo for autistic children, which seems to be more or less part of the job description for anti-vaxx bloggers.

Diagnosis: Ignorant, ardent loon who are on the verge of taking the anti-vaxx movement well into TimeCube territory. The fact that she is unable to avoid a fallacy in every other sentence she writes should not be taken to indicate that she is anything less than extremely dangerous.

#369: Fritz Springmeier

A.k.a. Victor Earl Schoof (original name)

Whale.to stalwart Fritz Artz Springmeier carries the dubious honor of being one of the most hysterically insane loons in our entire Encyclopedia. He is a well-known conspiracy theorist and religious right wing activist. That combo spawns some interesting ideas, such as the notion that satanic forces are behind a move toward world domination by various families and organizations. And he is associated with the violent extremist group the Army of God, which we have encountered before) – he has even been convicted of armed bank robbery in support of the group, and for planting a bomb in an adult video store (a perfect opportunity for his fans, including Ken Adachi, to see a conspiracy here). There are shades of a budding David Koresh in Springmeier, in other words.

Springmeier has written and self-published a number of books based on the ideology of the ultra-right-wing group the Christian Patriot Association (which was shut down in 2002 after convictions for tax fraud and tax evasion). Springmeier has vigorously defended the veracity of Project Monarch, allegedly a CIA mind control project, with most of his defense being based on the testimony of the legendary Cathy O’Brien in his book “Deeper insights into the Illuminati Formula”. According to whale “[t]he book was coauthored with former Illuminati programmer Cisco Wheeler”. You can find Springmeier & Wheeler’s rantings online here. Wheeler’s credentials remain unverified.

Springmeier’s earlier “The Watchtower & the Masons” argued (by garbled insanity) that there was a strong relationship between Jehovah's Witnesses and Freemasonry (and hence conspiracy). His writings on the Illuminati are focused on the 13 families (“bloodlines”) that purportedly run the whole thing. Oh, and they are Satan worshippers who engage in mind control, for instance electric shocks, to make “porn slaves”. Indeed, they control the government: “George Bush’s double was promiscuous, while George Bush is a pedophile. His double was living in France after Bush was no longer President. By the use of doubles, (or one of the synthetics or organic robotoids) the elite are able to sneak away and perform satanic rituals.” Furthermore: “On important points, Bill [Clinton – this is a rant about his speeches] will move his left hand, to help imbed certain commands to his viewers. He will also use some subtle hand signals/codes to trigger mind-controlled slaves too. He will ask during his talks for people to imagine or visualize what he wants for them. Again this is manipulation directed at the right brain.” And they have agents everywhere, including Simon Wiesenthal (“One of the men who betrayed the human race and helped with the cloning […] a US intelligence [… who] seriously hunted Nazis that were not on the CIA’s payroll or CIA associated groups”] and Jim Morrison (“The Doors Singer, [who] used the occult code name Lizard King and The Exterminating Angel, […] was involved with mind control”). Satanism is rampant: “There are some locations, for instance, two entire towns in southern Utah […], which are entirely programmed multiples [… and] caught up in secret satanic rituals [and] also have occult mind-control programming along with those rituals. […] This is in fact, where the entire world is headed very rapidly.” [The punctuation is Springmeier’s]

Among the arsenal of mind controlling techniques deployed by the government are acupuncture and osteopathy (I suppose getting scientists to write it off as inert woo is part if the agenda). Springmeier is also a believer in phrenology and iridology, though he is pretty scared by it: “By looking at the skull and head, the skin, the body tone, the eyes, and other areas, the practitioners of Structure/Function can accurately tell a person’s personality”. Furthermore “[t]here is no doubt that Chinese martial arts are being used to mug people in order to alter their thinking.”

But then, Springmeier’s ventures into neurology contain some idiosyncracies: “[…] the human brain is actually 7 brains. The 4th or mid brain that lies between the upper 3 brains and the lower three and functions as a crossroads, joins with the optic thalamus, which forms the floor of the 3rd ventricle. The ceiling of the 4th brain is the floor of the 3rd ventricle. The 3rd ventricle and the Cave of Brahma make up the 5th brain. The 5th brain is connected to the cerebral hemispheres of the Cerebrum and is critical to creating concepts and storing abstract concepts. It feeds on ideas, and reflects. (Marijuana activates this brain)”.

He also takes anti-elitism to a whole other level: “It is an attitude of elitism that allowed the Pharisees to crucify Christ, the Nazis to kill Jews, and Moslems to kill Hindus, etc. […]” Elitist values are instilled in us in schools, in the military and so on. Springmeier, however, takes the process to be rather literal (physical): “The memories of our bodies are buried within the cells of our bodies […] Cellular level body memories are way beyond the grasp of the consciousness. Buried into a deep unconscious repression are the body memories of the social values (elitism).” Oh, and don’t watch TV: “The all pervasive Television, which has been so common place in the lives of Americans, is used a great deal to manipulate trauma-based mind-controlled slaves.”

You can read John S. Torrel’s not entirely coherent defense of/attack on Springmeier here (including the argument that the CIA is infiltrating church communities – all killing sprees related to religion, for instance, are performed by CIA-controlled mind slaves, and the purpose is to put freedom-loving Taliban fundies in a bad light, because fundamentalist Christianity is otherwise a threat to the Satanism of the CIA). Springmeier also has other detractors. In the words of one Marion Knox “I think he's a double-agent working for the other side [the Illuminati]”.

Diagnosis: Potentially another David Koresh/Jim Jones in the making? Not very influential but slightly scary nonetheless.