When the uber-crunchy Grist calls the left-leaning MSNBC folks a bunch of jerks, it's reason enough for me to pause (the frenemy of my frenemy is my BFF... or something). The Grist writer who spotlighted this -- what I would call, pleasantly surprising moment of intellectual acuity from a few of the MSNBC crowd -- asserts that "everyone on Morning Joe is a jerk." But, to my amazement, Joe Scarborough and a couple cohorts aren't just pretty darn astute on this one; they're kind of hilarious, to boot (starting just after the three-minute mark/emphasis mine):
Brzezinski: But, it's smart of him to address it [gas prices], as he has been, saying that he wants to take 'all-of-the-above,' and apply it to dealing with the issue. At least he's on-message, no?
Scarborough: He's on-message with 'all-of-the-above,' but if, but I think Republicans have a great counter, which is: 'Oh, really? You're for more domestic consumption? Why aren't we drilling here? Why are we getting in the way of going after the natural gas reserves that we have? Why didn't you do Keystone pipeline?' Steve [Rattner] said, that oil's going to get into the world market anyway, and we'll eventually drive prices down. But, he's [President Obama's] right now being held back by his environmental base, and it puts him in a very difficult position. Because, there aren't a lot of sources of energy that environmentalists like. Other than, getting granola, and grinding it up, and hoping that sparks will come off the granola and create fusion.
Steven Rattner: That's not fair, There's also solar and wind. Don't forget solar and wind…
Mort Zuckerman: That's insignificant in terms of the context of this problem.
Jon Meacham: The shredded tote bags might help. Composted.
Brzezinski: What is he talking about?
Scarborough: He's talking about a movement out-of-touch with the realities of working-class Americans. That's what he's talking about.
Environmentalists, by and large, live in a world of their own. A very smug, ill-thought-out world in which driving your electric car, wearing your hemp clothes, staring daggers at people who don't put their soda bottles in the recycling bin, and perhaps even accepting subsidies from the federal government to put solar panels on your roof, are somehow the recipe for a sustainable and prosperous national future. They are blithely negligent of the facts: their cellphones/computers/electric cars are powered by coal, the promise of solar and wind is relatively pathetic, the accepted wisdom of recycling is founded on myth, global warming is increasingly dubious and politicized, that Obama's green "investments" are helping to push the country toward bankruptcy... I could go on. We have the opportunity to create innumberable jobs and help dredge ourselves out of this economic slump, if we'd only let ourselves actually compete in the global energy market, and when energy prices are high, poorer Americans are the first to suffer.
But even worse than that, environmentalists actually have the gall to want to deny certain types of energy development and technologies to less developed (a.k.a., more miserable) parts of the world, thinking that the people living the 'simple life' are somehow 'better off,' on a local level and for the welfare of the planet in general. No -- wealthier societies are healthier societies.
This video is one of my all-time favorites, and though it's of a somewhat different environmental capacity than gas prices in America, it very aptly demonstrates just how willfully ignorant and lacking in critical thinking the greenie-attitude really is. Enjoy (warning: some crass language):
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