http://conservativeactionalerts.com/blog_post/show/1222Having spent the last month and a half outside the United States, I returned home late last week wondering what had changed in the land of the free. Where to go to find out? Though this will sound counter-intuitive to most readers, my first stop was
www.whitehouse.gov.
No change there, I thought, unless you count Rahm Emanuel's departure as a significant event, which I don't. One has the eerie sense that time has been standing still for the Obama White House. If the sun has risen or set at any time over the past 45 days, the Obama White House seems not to have noticed. It is locked away in its own little dream world, undisturbed by anything that is happening in the real world. So what if a clear majority of Americans have come to the conclusion that the government is choking off a recovery through too much spending and too much regulation and intervention? So what if this government has become a walking advertisement for the fact that big and quasi-socialist government doesn't work and never will?
The same obliviousness -- the same obtuseness -- seems to extend across the length and breadth of so-called Ruling Class, a category that includes Hollywood, Silicon Valley and academia -- plus anyone else who is foolish enough (and sufficiently detached from economic reality) to go along with President Obama in the some of the more laughable expressions of "progressive" ideology.
Exhibit A here has to be the preposterous belief in solar energy as a cure-all for the nation's problems. George Orwell once said that some things were so stupid that only an intellectual could believe them. Apart from the intellectuals (and some of the super rich and super famous in Hollywood and Santa Clara County), is there anyone in this country who seriously believes that solar energy is going to provide hundreds of thousands of new jobs for Americans over the next few years? Still more, is there anyone who seriously believes that it is going to cause the waters to recede, the planet to heal and -- get this! -- Team USA to surge ahead of India and China in science, math, and long-term economic growth?
President Obama believes in all that stuff, or says that he does. And increasingly he is preaching only to the already converted -- feeling no need to connect with others who can only roll their eyes in disbelief.
... from his latest weekly address:
For decades, we've talked about the importance of ending our dependence on foreign oil and pursuing new kinds of energy, like wind and solar power. But for just as long, progress has been prevented at every turn by special interests and their allies in Washington.
So year after year, our dependence on foreign oil grew. Families have been held hostage to spikes in oil prices. Good manufacturing jobs have gone overseas. And we've seen companies produce new energy technologies and high-skilled jobs not in America, but in countries like China, India and Germany.
Let's pause here for few comments to examine the veracity of what is being asserted. Who are these countries "like" China, India and Germany? Are they, in fact, China, India and Germany? Then why not say so? But where is the proof that those countries -- or any others -- have produced large numbers of highly-skilled jobs in wind or solar power? Is there a single reputable study to show that these countries -- or any others -- are leap-frogging the U.S. in critical technologies through a concentration on wind and solar power?
To back up a little further, I don't get the connection between higher oil prices and "good manufacturing jobs" going overseas? Could you please explain, Mr. President? And what is this business about "special interests and their allies in Washington" which have supposedly impeded progress in wind and solar power? Can the president cite a single instance of Big Oil or other businesses doing anything to quash wind or solar power (other than complain about excessive subsidies)?
Topic: An Isolated President Sings to the Choir (Read 591 times)