Anti-science and global warming - the GOP's corporate rule

The Bushies understood six years ago that the best available science predicted rising CO2 emissions would lead to global warming and disruptive local climate transformations

They must have understood this, or they wouldn't have made strenuous efforts to hide the science ..

Editorial - The Science of Denial on Global Warming - Editorial - NYTimes.com:

... An internal investigation by NASA’s inspector general concluded that political appointees in the agency’s public affairs office had tried to restrict reporters’ access to its leading climate scientist, Dr. James Hansen. He has warned about climate change for 20 years and has openly criticized the administration’s refusal to tackle the issue head-on.

More broadly, the investigation said that politics played a heavy role in the office and that it had presented information about global warming “in a manner that reduced, marginalized or mischaracterized climate-change science made available to the general public.”...

... What was most noteworthy about the latter report was that it made it to the light of day. A 1990 law requires the president to give Congress every four years its best assessment of the likely effects of climate change. The last such assessment was undertaken by President Clinton and published in 2000. Mr. Bush not only missed the 2004 deadline but allowed the entire information-gathering process to wither. Only a court order handed down last August in response to a lawsuit by public interest groups forced him to deliver this month.

I do find it hard to write about this stuff. If we don't read, and write, however, we're surrendering. We don't deserve the option of surrender.

It's always the same story with the Bush GOP. They aren't rationalists. They believe what they want to believe. They silence opposing voices. They ignore laws they don't like. They know they'll get away.

If the Dems didn't hold the Senate by one vote (Senator Leiberman, basically) the Bush GOP would have gotten away with everything.

One lousy vote.

So where is this type of behavior normal? In corporations. Corporations are not democracies (shock!), they are more like feudal nations. Corporations have an obligation to obey the laws (ok, unlike the GOP), but they don't have an obligation to objective truth. If you work for Exxon, you have no right to complain if Exxon refuses to publish your Exxon-funded research on global warming. There's nothing wrong with that -- that's the nature of a business.

Governments are supposed to obey the law (unlike the Bush administration), but governments in a democracy have an obligation to give citizens the knowledge needed to make informed voting decisions.

The GOP doesn't believe this. Really, it's not in their DNA. They believe they know best, and the truth only confuses the masses. Government should be run like a corporation, and the masses should be told what they need to know.

Rule by the elite, knowledge for the elite, propaganda for the masses.

Give thanks to the public interest groups who sued to get the Bush GOP to obey the law. When I find out who they are, I'll look for a way to donate money to them. I'll post that here.

Vote Obama.