Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 02/11/2010 3:55:11 AM PST by Kaslin
What's behind the Tea Party protests, low approval ratings for Congress, distrust of the media and unease with experts in the Obama administration?
In short, a growing anger at the sermonizing and condescension by many of America's elites.
We see this specifically, for example, in the debate over global warming, which a year ago was accepted as gospel.
The high profile of prestigious scientists, former public officials like Al Gore and Van Jones, and the Obama administration all made impending cap-and-trade legislation seem likely. Skeptics were derided as "deniers" and virtual know-nothings.
But then the assertion of manmade climate change met a perfect storm.
First, several high academic priests of global warming were discredited. Leaked e-mails at East Anglia University in the United Kingdom revealed doctored evidence, personal vendettas and cover-ups among scientists.
More recently, the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change admitted it had relied on faulty information, leading it to make inflated claims on impending manmade warming disasters involving Himalayan glaciers.
These exposes dovetailed with a series of unconnected events that further undermined the climate-change diktat.
Many of the most prominent green advocates either seemed hypocritical or downright crazy. Al Gore, for example, has earned much of his new fortune from his supposedly disinterested public service to the green cause, and yet habitually leaves a carbon footprint like few others on the planet.
The president's own "green jobs" official, Van Jones, it was revealed, had signed a "truther" petition stating that the U.S. government had planned 9/11. His credibility shot, Jones had to resign.
Then there was the uncooperative weather itself. Environmental grandees jetted into frigid Copenhagen to discuss planet warming. Meanwhile, back in the U.S., portions of a very cold East Coast have been blanketed with unprecedented snowfall levels -- at a time when the public is supposed to be concerned that temperatures are unseasonably warming.
Other conventional wisdom from supposed experts has also been questioned. Take the model of the European Union.
After the September 2008 American financial panic, European diplomats and intellectuals lectured Americans on the evils of unfettered capitalism and the superiority of their statist model. The strong euro and steady expansion of the EU had convinced many that their soft socialism was the only way of the future.
But European prosperity was, in fact, heavily subsidized by decades of free protection by the U.S. military. Meanwhile, aristocratic bureaucrats in Brussels were increasingly not accountable to their skeptical continental constituents -- and seemed terrified of popular referenda from member states on the EU constitution.
And now? Several EU nations like Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal face financial implosions -- brought on by unsustainable government spending, out-of-control pensions and endemic tax cheating. The euro is falling fast. Bondholders of European debt are jittery. Now, northwestern countries like Germany and France -- despite their own budget problems -- may have to bailout Greece.
Yet, in 2009, the American binge of massive spending and borrowing, expansion of government, and new proposed taxes followed the model of the supposedly superior European system. But for all the massive new debt, unemployment here remains high and the economy still sluggish.
The Obama administration came into office also convinced of another theory popular among many intellectuals, lawyers and members of the media -- that the so-called "war on terror" had degenerated into a Bush administration overreaction to 9/11. Obama's anti-terrorism czar, John Brennan, lambasted the past anti-terrorism nomenclature and the methods of the very administration he used to work for.
President Obama promised to close Guantanamo Bay. Rendition, military tribunals and Predator drone attacks at one time or another were caricatured as unnecessary or counterproductive. Even the name "war on terror" was dropped for kindler, gentler euphemisms.
"Outreach" and "reset" with the Islamic world became instead the talking points. Highly educated experts had to explain to those of us who are less sophisticated that the real dangers were Guantanamo Bay and the waterboarding of a few terrorist detainees rather than the need to detain and interrogate actual terrorists.
And now? After the mass murdering at Fort Hood, the Christmas Day bombing plot, the popular outrage over offering a civilian trial in New York to the architect of 9/11, and the snubbing of American outreach by a soon-to-be-nuclear Iran, there's less reason than ever to accept a therapeutic approach to dealing with radical Islamic terrorism.
There is an unfocused but growing anger in the country -- and it should come as no surprise. Nobody likes to be lectured by those claiming superior wisdom but often lacking common sense about everything from out-of-control spending and predicting the weather to dealing with enemies who are trying to kill us all.
Isn’t there one sane government in the world to prosecute these global warming hucksters that took grants based on false data?
I like elitist’s theories because it gives Glenn Beck a reason to mock Joe Klein with a smoking jacket and pipe. Priceless.
It’s gorebull warming I tell you!
Don’t trust the evidence of your puny senses!
Listen to me! Meee! MEEEEE!
The grants are pennies compared to what the carbon traders stand to make off data they wanted the scientists to produce.
The grants are pennies compared to what the carbon traders stand to make off data they wanted the scientists to produce.
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True that. I’m not sure false information intended to move markets would be as easy to prosecute as a grant though. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it prosecuted . . . and it’s done in financial markets often. Hard to prove. In the USA the prosecutors want a stock market case handed to them on a golden platter before they step into the chaos of that arena . . . otherwise they leave it up to the civil regulators who only really have power over people whose licenses to do business are in jeopardy.
The only people we have to blame is ourselves. We the people elected these evil scoundrels now the nation is paying the price. Sometimes the electorate is lazy and does stupid things. It will be alright if we recognize the folly of our way and change course accordingly.
I think I would be looking at grant money paid by corporations like GE who stands to make enormous sums of money off of climate change.
I do agree that squeezing the scientists is where we need to start.
Excellent piece, as usual.
vdh bump
“There is an unfocused but growing anger in the country — and it should come as no surprise. Nobody likes to be lectured by those claiming superior wisdom but often lacking common sense about everything from out-of-control spending and predicting the weather to dealing with enemies who are trying to kill us all.”
Bingo.
bump & a VDH ping
VDH once again succinctly skewers 0bama, Gore and all the elitist Libs.
And he has a great butt!
I’ll trust you on that aspect of his ahem, talents.
hmmm.when will the purchasers of “carbon credits” sue the SEC/commodities exchanges for fraud?
Ping !
Let me know if you want in or out. Links:
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bump
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