The Rise And Fall Of An Opportunist.

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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This Sunday Sermon was inspired by a recent post on things I love recently. Thanks for the idea Alex.

Cast your mind back to 2006, when failed presidential candidate and former Vice President Al Gore was searching for a new ’cause’.

He chose Global Warming and for a while he fooled a lot of people.

He won an Oscar for a largely unproven ‘scientifically based’ documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” that made wildly exaggerated claims about man-made climate change. With hindsight perhaps “A Convenient Lie” would have been a better title. Then he was awarded the much discredited Nobel Peace Prize  –  although just what climate has to do with peace was never properly explained, after all people do fight wars in the rain!

He went on to found an ‘activist group’ and to create a new nonpartisan global movement around climate change that he misleadingly called the ‘Climate Reality Project’ –  misleading because it had very little to do with reality.

Yes, Gore was in the ascendency and was now the world’s leading advocate of Global Warming….brrrrrr …ooops… make that Climate Change would you.

As lately as last January Gore took his old college roomy Tommy Lee Jones and a contingent of other gullible celebrities, donors and scientists on a cruise to Antarctica. Ostensibly they were there to see for themselves the effects of Global Warming, but the real purpose was probably to try to attract more publicity for Gore’s Climate Change crusade. When I say he ‘took them’ of course I meant the multi millionaire Gore was kind enough to let them pay for their trip themselves!

But last gasp publicity stunts or not, things haven’t been going so well recently for the Gore crusade. In fact if you look at the numbers, which I always like to do, you will see that the downward spiral has been a steep one.

For example, at its zenith just a few years ago Gore’s organization could spend the best part of $30 million on PR, advertising and political lobbying. It had offices in over half the US States, sometimes more than one office per state, and employed over 300 people. 

Today those 300 employees have become just 30 or so, and all its state offices have been shut. There are no more hefty advertising campaigns and no more highly paid lobbyists in Washington. Not surprisingly financial donations have also dropped, by around 80 percent. And so cold a political potato is Climate Change nowadays that in the 2012 Presidential election campaign question sessions it wasn’t even mentioned!

Now Gore is going to call it the “Alliance for Climate Protection”, probably a recognition that all the claptrap he was formerly spouting has been largely discredited  –  a bit like himself.

The climate does change, Al, there’s no doubt about that. But the only climate man changes is the political climate where you can go from hero to zero when enough people catch on to the fact that you really don’t know what you are talking about!

Cheers Al

Or should that be Cheerio???

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The Uninformed Elect The Uninformed

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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Another rant cunningly disguised as a Sunday Sermon.

Some people say we should be grateful we get told anything at all nowadays. We certainly can’t rely on our governments being honest with their people. In fact, as we have discovered recently, they would rather spy on us and gather secret dossiers on our activities. Much more reminiscent of Stalinist Russia than the Land Of The Free.

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A big part of the problem is that in what passes for ‘democracy’ in Western nations, the people are told they have the power to elect whoever they think will be the best rulers, but they are not allowed the tools to do so effectively.

People are encouraged to vote party lines, rather than think about which candidate has the greatest ability.

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The Western media compounds the problem by drip feeding information to us on a “what THEY think WE need to know basis”. In doing so they censor and simplify, and more often than not sensationalize that information to the point of it being almost useless.

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Naturally the politicians love it that way. An uninformed population makes uninformed decisions at election times, casting their votes for the candidate who has the nicest shirt or some other reason unrelated to political policy and philosophy.

That’s one of the reasons you got the government that is in power – so if you voted them in you did so without knowing all the facts – or maybe any of them! 

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Not that there was much of an alternative. And it doesn’t matter what country you happen to live in either. Politicians worldwide, like bureaucrats, seem to be cut from the same cloth.

But that’s only part of the problem.

Bad enough that uninformed people make uninformed decisions and elect the wrong people. But worse is the fact that the people they elect are equally badly informed, their lack of knowledge becoming very clear quite quickly after they are elected.

Take America for example. Not the only culprit by any means, but the biggest one because of its size and the power and influence it wields throughout the world.

We all know that the economy is in a horrendous mess, with the administration seemingly clueless as to how to get us out of it. We’ve talked about that before and no doubt will do so again.

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But if we were giving out grade marks for America, the ‘F’ minus with at least two exclamation marks would have to go to its understanding of foreign affairs. It’s not a case of ‘could do much better’ but more of a case of ‘couldn’t do much worse’.

Recent history is littered with foreign debacles. Vietnam, Somalia, Lebanon, Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and now North Korea, Syria, and Iran are just some of the places where America, and sometimes its allies such as Britain, have tried to interfere only to make things far worse.

To the insult of causing the needless deaths and horrific injuries to the brave souls who put themselves in harm’s way because of these political idiots, they add the bigger insult of trying to excuse their foreign ‘crusades’ by lying to their own people.

Saddam Hussein used to be a ‘friend’, even being granted the Keys to the City of Detroit because of his charitable gifts. Then a few months later they made up blatant lies about his having developed weapons of mass destruction and he became the arch demon of the Middle East. Saddam was no saint that’s for sure, he was an evil man, but he had no weapons of mass destruction and he had nothing to do with Al Quaeda or the  9/11 attack, yet the US Administration went gung-ho to invade Iraq and take him out. Result – a bigger potential threat for the future.

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All the years Col. Gadaffi was supporting terrorist attacks in Israel and Britain and Ireland he wasn’t touched, apart from the odd cruise missile sent his way more for publicity than any lasting affect it had on him or his country. Then when he became an ‘ally’ in the war against terror he was killed, leaving behind a country in a complete mess and opening the way for radical groups to take over. Result – a bigger potential threat for the future.

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You could say exactly the same thing for Egypt or Syria or almost anywhere else where noses have been stuck in where they aren’t wanted.

Far from winning friends and influencing people, it’s almost as if America’s leaders want to create enemies and store up trouble for the future. Either this is a deliberate covert policy or it is the result of chronic stupidity.

Whatever the reason, it is costing the country far too much, both in terms of lives and money. Our politicians need to be told to get a grip on things in their own country before interfering in foreign lands where they clearly do not understand the damaging consequences of their ill-advised actions.  

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Guns Don’t Kill People, People Kill People – And Some People Deserve To Be Killed

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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Strong headline? Probably so.

As I write this post I am sitting here at my desk with my laptop and a toasted bagel with a little Philadelphia cheese topped with some black olives (well, I like them) plus of course the inevitable cup of coffee.

Not for the first time, what you are about to read bears no resemblance to the post I had in my head to write when I sat down here, because as I was enjoying my breakfast the thought came into my head that James Holmes may well be enjoying his breakfast too – and that annoyed me.

For those readers who have been in a coma for the past few days, James Holmes is the piece of excrement who opened fire in a movie theater in Colorado, murdering twelve innocent people, including a six year old child, who were there to enjoy a screening of the new Batman movie.

What also annoyed me is the knowledge that for months into the future we are going to be subjected to the publicity given to this evil man as he is needlessly paraded through the courts and analyzed by newspapers and tv stations eager to gain a cheap headline or two. Demented scumbags like Holmes will relish that publicity too. It will even be an encouragement to other equally demented morons to plan more of the same.

Even now I can see forming a queue of bleeding heart liberals who never miss an opportunity for jumping on the misery of others for a bit of easy publicity for themselves. They will try to ‘understand and excuse’ and will also try to shift the focus of the debate from where it should be to gun control and other spurious issues that are not the cause of the problem.

It may be a bit of a cliché these days, but guns really don’t kill people, people kill people. I have had guns and been around guns practically all of my life. A lot of my friends are likewise. Some carry them with them all the time. And in all those years not one of us has used them to kill a six year old child, nor for any illegal purpose whatsoever.

Due process and all the safeguards built into the justice system are obviously a good thing. But they are only necessary where there is, or may be, a reasonable doubt as to the guilt or innocent of the person concerned. In cases like this Colorado tragedy there is no doubt. Holmes is guilty. He was caught with the literal smoking gun in his possession and as far as I know he has made no attempt to deny his guilt.

Like the headline of this post says, some people deserve to be killed, and Holmes is one of them. The policemen on duty that night did the country a great disservice when they chose not to end the life of this mass murderer at the scene of his crime.

I really do not care to share this planet with, or breathe the same air, as people like Holmes. I don’t want to understand him. I don’t want to have to pay for his trial or incarceration. I just don’t want him around – period.

I deserve to be able to enjoy my breakfast without thoughts of people like that in my head. So do you.