Richard Lindzen (MIT) and Alan Carlin (EPA) point to research done recently that indicates, with empirical evidence, that the feedbacks triggered by increases in CO2 are negative (that is, they reduce any warming effect) rather then positive. All 20+ climate change model that are in use assume that the feedback is positive, even though there is no empirical reason to make this choice. (Except the empirical need to keep the grant money flowing.) Links can be found at http://convergencelaw.typepad.com/convergences/2009/12/dominant-information-climate-change.html

Since 9/11 American group mourning has become a stylized choreography in which anger at the perpetrators of our trauma is minimized and our loss, our passivity, our helplessness, and our hopelessness in the face of murderous enemies are emphasized. Glorification of passivity long pre-dates 9/11 -- remember during the Iranian hostage crisis when the response was to tie yellow ribbons around everything?

ADDENDUM: The more I consider it, the more I like the South American analogy for the Obamaniac's views. These are certainly not European -- Europe delegates everything to the mediating institutions and little to the people. If one wants to be really scared, consider the possibility that Obama is deliberately letting Congress ravage the U.S. economy like a horde of barbarians sacking a city because the most likely result will be a Peronist regime.

I agree that Obama's idea of "democracy" is deeply flawed. It is the '60s radical "power to the people" acting in mob assembly, or the Chicago-style one party machine, or as Mike says the SA model. Gone are the great mediating institutions of rule of law, republican layers of representation, checks and balances, diverse government sovereignties each drawing legitimacy directly from different electorates, free markets, property rights, and other troublesome checks on the will of the caudillo. Combine this with electoral fraud, census rigging, and a publicly-supported Acorn, and things will deteriorate very rapidly indeed.

If one starts from the premise that Obama, and much of the Democratic Party generally, intend the consequences of their actions, then destabilization and destruction are the goals, not bad results to be avoided. Their most logical strategy is inflation, which will wipe out middle class savings while protecting the claims of government employees and dependents, whose payments are indexed. (What they expect to build on the wreckage is unclear.) Does anyone expect them to react to things like the CBO report? Do you think they don't already know?