Posted on 10/17/2004 2:00:50 AM PDT by Liz
Two years ago, celebrity environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made himself a laughingstock from one end of Iowa to the other when he flew into that state to proclaim that large-scale hog farms are more of a threat to America than Osama bin Laden and his terrorists.
.....Des Moines Register editorial called his comments "idiotic" and "ridiculous."
But the wayward scion learned nothing from that episode. His volume knob still stuck at 10, Kennedy has now delivered himself of a whole book about the "Crimes Against Nature" (always crimes, never the result of mere differences of opinion) by which today's high officials are leading us "back to the Dark Ages" on environmental policy.
His villains, a long list, include the "sleazy scoundrels" of the Bush regime, business execs with "reptilian hearts," "crooked scientists" whose research fails to confirm his own notions and sinister policy experts who dabble in "the occult art of cost-benefit analysis."
There's a rich market for Bush-bashing books these days, but Kennedy's jackhammer style leaves one yearning for Michael Moore's suavity, Molly Ivins' balance and Paul Krugman's lightness of touch. If you find it novel and illuminating to compare today's highly placed Texans with Hitler and Mussolini, then RFK Jr.'s your man.
For those with even a passing interest in public policy, the book affords the fun of a pratfall on every page, most of them occasioned by Kennedy's epic self-righteousness and astounding disregard for conventional accuracy.
Thus we learn that air pollution is a cause of Down's Syndrome, that "study after study" shows small family farmers to be "far more efficient" than battery raisers of chicken, eggs and pork and that "automakers already have the technology" to make SUVs and minivans get the mileage of passenger cars, but don't do it because, well, because they're mean.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
And more: It seems there are "seven media giants that own or control virtually all of the United States' 2,000 TV stations, 11,000 radio stations and 11,000 newspapers and magazines," working hand in glove with the Bush White House (you know how CBS and the Times are always doing that). And did you know that the Bush people are secretly plotting to eliminate all federal environmental regulation within a year? Many of the "rollbacks" Kennedy cites, however, turn out to be refusals to expand the law, a rather different thing.
As for trade-offs at a time of $50/barrel oil between warm homes and optimal caribou habitat, between underground coal mining (better for the landscape) and surface mining (kills a lot fewer miners) Kennedy's usual practice is simply to ignore them. This helps in sustaining outrage, but does it really equip his readers to argue well for their cause? In a revealing turn of phrase, Kennedy complains his adversaries are allowed "to pretend that there is a genuine debate."
The man's lack of ironic self-awareness is a marvel. In his media-criticism chapter, he has the nerve to blast the press for its absorption with celebrity culture. Yet this book, like Kennedy's entire career, is nothing if not an artifact of that culture. It would never have been acquired by a major publisher, or sent out in quantity to bookstores or reviewed in this newspaper today, if its author's name were Robert F. Snicklethwaite, Jr.
Walter Olson is a Manhattan Institute senior fellow and the author of "The Rule of Lawyers." He edits Overlawyered.com.
It's hard to take a Leftist seriously when he champions gay marriage and then shrieks that Bush & crew are guilty of "crimes against nature"...
I don't know how to say it any more gently, but FVCK the KENNEDYS!
Grampa Joe was a criminal (bootlegger), who used these ill-gotten gains to finance his personal dreams of his children's upward social mobility. The rest of the family lives off of the investments from his (illegal) earnings and none of them has been worth a bucket of warm spit.
Who appointed these sorry-@ssed people as "American Royalty" anyway?
The lefy is mentally unbalanced and seriously disturbed---- they can't even see the biggest crime against nature---legal abortion. When did this Kennedy enviro creep ever speak out against p/b abortion?
JFK's "Camelot" administration is supposedly where they derive their royal status. And being the inheritors of a martyred president's legacy makes all of the Kennedy's America's resident "victims."
More like America's resident pile of bullsqueeze, to me.
Since when did America vote for "victims"?
If they were then their prices would be lower and they would be kicking the competitions butt. doofus.
and that "automakers already have the technology" to make SUVs and minivans get the mileage of passenger cars, but don't do it because, well, because they're mean.
The way to do it is to make them out of aluminum foil, they would be dangerous and the lawsuits would put them out of business. Thats why they don't do it.
Victimization is a leftie's basic belief by which they blame and find others responsible for their own personal failures, then expect taxpayers, deep pocketed individuals, or the courts to bail them out. It feels good to be in the throes of "victimization" and either A) causing victims, B) concocting victims, C) playing victim, D) commiserating over victims, or E) creating another class of victims to bleed over.
It's a royal liberal's duty to treat the working class in the manner of raising mushrooms, that is to say, keep them in the dark and feed them lots of horse manure.
Uh huh. Sickening, ain't it?
And don't forget how Joe bought John the Presidency, and how John sent lil' brother after the guys who put them there, which cost them both their lives.
Maybe for the Katrina Vanden Huevels of the world they're American Royalty.
But I've never had any use for em', and I never will.
Most disgusting is they way the libs are always touting their "tolerance and (gag) compassion." So phony.
Joseph Kennedy and the Jews
Arriving at London in early 1938, newly-appointed U.S. Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy took up quickly with another transplanted American. Viscountess Nancy Witcher Langhorne Astor assured Kennedy early in their friendship that he should not be put off by her pronounced and proud anti-Catholicism.
"I'm glad you are smart enough not to take my [views] personally," she wrote. Astor pointed out that she had a number of Roman Catholic friends - G.K. Chesterton among them - with whom she shared, if nothing else, a profound hatred for the Jewish race. Joe Kennedy, in turn, had always detested Jews generally, although he claimed several as friends individually. Indeed, Kennedy seems to have tolerated the occasional Jew in the same way Astor tolerated the occasional Catholic.
Oh yeah; they're tolerant - to anyone that swallows their line hook, line, and sinker. Compassionate? Riiight!
I didn't know this either, but it really comes as no surprise. Besides, the Kennedys are only Catholic when it is convenient.
T and C is a scam by which the libs establish their bona fides as humanitarians----the defenders of the downtrodden.
They then proceed to rob, rape and pillage everything in sight.
Think "Clinton"...............See what I mean?
Exactly. If Condi Rice had grown up on their side of the tracks. they'd still have her blaming 'the man',patting her on the head,and giving her the 'someday you'll be a somebody - thanks only to us' routine.
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