Who's the daddy of the country?

The Myron Ebell Climate is back in business, and sputtering its coffee at the latest drivel produced by the Conservative Party selected Daniel Hannan MEP.

This fool makes his mark by describing Myron Ebell as an "exceptionally clever and thoughtful man", and the CEI as an "outstandingly meritorious outfit".

This follows him saying: "I’ve just spent three days in Washington meeting the various conservative think-tanks and institutions: Heritage, Young America’s Foundation, the extraordinary Nordquist Wednesday meeting - plus a detour to the Fox studios in New York."

Good dear lord.

He also calls Newt Gingrich "one of the greatest living politicians in the US."

Oh, and he can't help heaping praise on the economic miracle of Iceland which is based on the "enteprise of its people" ...as well as their uncanny ability to bank lots of fools' money and lose it all it one go.

No, I don't think Iceland's economic shell game is going to "bounce back soon enough", Dan. It'll take at least a generation for lessons to be unlearned that depositing money in cowboy banks run by a "sturdy free-standing citizenry" with no obvious collateral or insurance is not a sound idea. Not least because such fools now have no money left to gamble in such an unregulated and uninsured banking system, even if they wanted to.

Hannan's misunderstanding of finance is matched by his selective misunderstanding of climate change, illustrated when he exclaimed that if the Met Office "can't accurately forecast the weather two months in advance, why should we let them speak with such sacerdotal authority about what the temperature will be a century from now?"

Not even Myron Ebell is cataclysmically dumb enough to say something like that.

Instead, the Myron Ebell "taut and provocative" email that Hannan was getting so overawed argued that John Adams (2nd US president) was the true Jeffersonian (whatever that means; Thomas Jefferson was the 3rd US president), because:

...Jefferson may have said that that government is best which governs least, but he never had a useful thought about how to keep limits on government except to recommend revolution in every generation. Which is of course disastrous. But he was a very silly man - a true, because superficial and calculating, product of the Enlightenment...

Jefferson was the inventor of faux egalitarianism, which was a way of keeping the enlightened patrician (and slave-owning) class in power based on the rationale that they were protecting the interests of common folk...

Unlike Jefferson, Adams was obsessed with how to keep elites in check by dividing power and balancing power against power...

He was the deepest thinker of the Revolution and also the most important political figure (as distinguished from leader) - he made the strategy that led to independence, he led the public campaign for independence, and was the leading proponent for independence in the Continental Congress both rhetorically and behind the scenes...

...I have gone on about this because I think the past informs the present most usefully if we get our story straight.

And it's a past that existed before the development of psychopathic corporate entities that oversee the fossil fuel industry and that do not care about the threats to the survival of the species.

Opinions back then about politics or science may or may not be relevant today. It has no bearing on the intelligence of the people in question.

Of course, you could always go back to the father of the nation and 1st US president, George Washington, ("a poor general but a great leader" -- Ebell) and his farewell address of 1792:

[T]he apprehension of danger... urge[s] me, on an occasion like the present, to offer... some sentiments which are the result of much reflection [and] of no inconsiderable observation...

In contemplating the causes which may disturb our Union, it occurs as matter of serious concern that any ground should [be] furnished for characterizing [political] parties by Geographical discriminations... One of the expedients of [political parties] to acquire influence, within particular districts, is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other districts...

All obstructions to the execution of the Laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are... of fatal tendency [to the Union]. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels, and modified by mutual interests.

However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp for themselves the reins of government; destroying afterwards the very engines, which have lifted them to unjust dominion...

I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the state, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of [political parties], generally.

This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty...

[A political party] serves always to distract the Public Councils, and enfeeble the Public Administration. It agitates the Community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another...

He's talking about you, Myron Ebell, and your wretched Republican Party and its ability to corrupt and ruin the nation.

Oh, and he says you also need taxes, you effing idiots:

As a very important source of strength and security, cherish public credit... [It is essential] that towards the payment of debts there must be Revenue; that to have Revenue there must be taxes; that no taxes can be devised, which are not more or less inconvenient and unpleasant...

So, put the two together (the inevitable inconvenience and unpleasantness of taxes, and cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men who use the vehicle of political parties), and you get the state of the nation today.

It's a shame it has to take the rest of the world's ecosystem down with it.