Friday, August 08, 2003

The American Ayatollahs Take Control What is the single most important difference between Western Democracies and theocratic states?  It is the core belief in science as independently valid, and separate from religious beliefs, and the inalienable rights of individuals.   We have a U.S. President who has more in common with the religious ayatollahs than with the long tradition of Western democratic scientific inquiry.   Al Gore touched on this yesterday, claiming Bush only accepts as facts and ideas those that support his preconceived positions.   Here is a new report from Congress that says the same thing.  It documents the systematic attempt to shape federal science agencies with a moralist, religious ideology.   Combine with this with Bush's goal of denying those he calls terrorists any of the thousand year old rights of habeas corpus and public trials, we have our first American ayatollah.   11:50:51 AM   comment []    Al Gore gave a great speech today Here is an excerpt from Al Gore's speech today  (Aug 7)  "..a couple of weeks ago, the White House ordered its own EPA to strip important scientific information about the dangers of global warming out of a public report. Instead, the White House substituted information that was partly paid for by the American Petroleum Institute. This week, analysts at the Treasury Department told a reporter that they're now being routinely ordered to change their best analysis of what the consequences of the Bush tax laws are likely to be for the average person. Here is the pattern that I see: the President's mishandling of and selective use of the best evidence available on the threat posed by Iraq is pretty much the same as the way he intentionally distorted the best available evidence on climate change, and rejected the best available evidence on the threat posed to America's economy by his tax and budget proposals. In each case, the President seems to have been pursuing policies chosen in advance of the facts -- policies designed to benefit friends and supporters -- " The delivery was too soft, the words too cautious, but he expressed the basic democratic idea:  Bush is an ideological liar, who discards and distorts facts that don't fit his view of the world.  As such, he is the most dangerous leader the U.S. has had in over a hundred years. Also from Gore's speech:  The 2001 winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics, George Akerlof, went even further last week in Germany when he told Der Spiegel, "This is the worst government the US has ever had in its more than 200 years of history...This is not normal government policy." In describing the impact of the Bush policies on America's future, Akerloff added, "What we have here is a form of looting." Dean was the first to congratulate Gore on the speech.  It seemed tailor made for his issues, and on the Dean blogs, there began immediate speculation that Gore could endorse Dean before the end of the year.       12:06:51 AM   comment []

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