Don't Turn Around ~ The Commissar's In Town

"Join the Red Cavalry"

Historic Poster

Y’all know by now that Demon Princess is fascinated by the assumptions underlying political discourse & public policy debate since the Neocons came to power, & the theme of today’s DP rant seems to be shaping up to be “political correctness” ~ you know, that old stalwart of a rallying cry that every instapundit from Newt Gingrich to the obnoxious Bill O’Reilly to the punk-rock- bad attitude-dude-who- found-God-& dress-suits radio host Glenn Beck ~ all have seized upon the term “political correctness” & twisted it such that they’ve made it safe for white guys to be racist, sexist, & everything-elsest again (anyone want to mock the disabled, like George does—go ahead!)

They’ve made it something of a point of pride & badge of Neocon honor to openly & “boldly” disdain “political correctness," is my point.

Don’t be fooled. It’s a shell game. While deriding “political correctness” as something cooked up by liberals with agendas, they haven’t eradicated it, they’ve just been busy remaking it into something more palatable to corporate white guys’ agendas, guys like themselves, in case you hadn’t noticed. (Newt, Bill, & Glenn, keep shouting, badgering & bullying ~ you guys are doing important work for the Neocon cause by providing a focus for the most vitriolic of the haters).

In the meantime, the White House will be busy undermining the legal underpinnings of democracy & also, hastening the capture & enslavement of government agencies to Neocon ideology.

It’s no secret that Bush has been stacking every level of government with “right” thinkers for as long as he’s been in office (including government agencies), but now he’s taken an extra step, by signing a declaration that, for each agency, a blatantly political gatekeeper be assigned to oversee all information in & information out to ensure Neocon “right think” & ideology control.

Alas, Demon Princess only wishes she were making it up. (New York Times article, title bar.)

TPM Muckraker’s excellent commentary:

“The dark reign of experts and regulatory officials is over! That's right, each agency (like, for instance, the Environmental Protection Agency and Occupational Safety and Health Administration) will now have a politically appointed babysitter to make sure that regulations aren't too onerous for corporations. In fact, the directive ensures that regulation is the absolute last resort: 'in deciding whether to issue regulations, federal agencies must identify 'the specific market failure' or problem that justifies government intervention."

"Business groups welcomed the executive order," the Times notes, in a terrific understatement.”

A commenter adds: ”Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone." -- John Maynard Keynes

“I'm not sure why they didn't think of this sooner. I mean, Cheney's secret energy policy task force -- when was that, 2000? 2001?”

Does the Bible mention global warming? So don’t be fooled into letting those pesky scientists think for themselves!

I repeat, this is nothing very new in BushWorld.™ I’m sure, if you think back on it, you’ll realize how very new it’s not.

For instance, this:

“Federal scientists have been pressured by the White House to play down global warming, advocacy groups testified Tuesday at the Democrats' first investigative hearing since taking control of Congress.

“The hearing focused on allegations that White House officials for years have micromanaged the government's climate programs and has closely controlled what scientists have been allowed to tell the public.

"It appears there may have been an orchestrated campaign to mislead the public about climate change," said Rep. Henry Waxman (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif. Waxman is chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee and a critic of the Bush administration's environmental policies, including its views on climate.

“The survey and separate interviews with scientists ‘has brought to light numerous ways in which U.S. federal climate science has been filtered, suppressed and manipulated in the last five years,’ Francesca Grifo, a senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told the committee.
…
“Drew Shindell, a climate scientist with NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said that climate scientists frequently have been dissuaded from talking to the media about their research, though NASA's restrictions have been eased.

"Prior to the change, interview requests of climate scientists frequently were ‘routed through the White House' and then turned away or delayed, said Shindell. He described how a news release on his study forecasting a significant warming in Antarctica was ‘repeatedly delayed, altered and watered down’ at the insistence of the White House.

"Some Republican members of the committee questioned whether science and politics ever can be kept separate.

"’I am no climate-change denier,' said Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia, the top Republican on the committee, but he questioned whether ‘the issue of politicizing science has itself become politicized. 'The mere convergence of politics and science does not itself denote interference," said Davis."
...

"Waxman and Davis agreed the administration had not been forthcoming in providing documents to the committee that would shed additional light on allegations of political interference in climate science.

“’We know that the White House possesses documents that contain evidence of an attempt by senior administration officials to mislead the public by injecting doubt into the science of global warming and minimize the potential danger,' said Waxman, adding that he is ‘not trying to obtain state secrets.’

“At Boxer's Senate hearing, her predecessor as chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, Sen. James Inhofe (news, bio, voting record), R-Okla., had his own view of the science.

"'There is ‘no convincing scientific evidence’ that human activity is causing global warming, declared Inhofe, who once called global warming a hoax. ‘We all know the Weather Channel would like to have people afraid all the time.’

"'I'll put you down as skeptical,' replied Boxer."

Well, that certainly outs the Weather Channel!

We know now that everybody at the Weather Channel is a bunch of fear-mongers & defeatists, & probably liberals to boot.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070131/ap_on_go_co/congress_climate;