Former NATO secretary-general Fogh Rasmussen: "President Trump can restore America’s global leadership"

I have always had the greatest respect for Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former Danish PM and former NATO secretary-general. His latest article on the incoming Trump administration is truly worth reading:

The intellectual elites in much of the Western world are still shell-shocked by Donald Trump’s election victory in November. However, instead of squawking nervously about every tweet, astute political observers should focus on the underlying political dynamics in the coming months and years.
The elites would do well to remember that populism is often based on a core of truth. Rather than ostracize populists, establishment parties are often better off welcoming them and working with them. The government I led in Denmark between 2001 and 2009 was based on a successful coalition of so-called populists and established center-right parties. We didn't agree on every issue, but together we were able to reform the welfare state, improve our immigration laws, and back the U.S.-led coalitions in Afghanistan and Iraq. Most importantly, we dealt a cultural blow to political correctness and bureaucratic elitism.
The emerging Trump coalition of conservative activists has broad appeal in America, which remains a fundamentally center-right nation politically. Barring significant errors of execution, Donald Trump has the potential to stabilize American politics and restore reliable American leadership to the world stage in the coming years.
So far, Trump has made several personnel appointments that present a more nuanced picture of future U.S. foreign policy than superficial media coverage suggests. He has brought in many globally respected figures from business and the military. These strong leaders won't tolerate a weak and meek America. And personnel is policy, as the saying goes.

I believe President Trump will be unorthodox, challenge the status quo and look at the global stage with fresh eyes. If applied wisely, this could be an effective approach. Let’s take military spending as one example. It would be disastrous to abandon U.S. allies in Europe, but Trump is right to point out that the U.S. is paying a disproportionate share of total defense costs in the NATO alliance. Trump’s unambiguity on this issue combined with Russia’s saber rattling have sent shock waves through many European countries. Most recently, Latvia and Lithuania have taken concrete steps to reach the 2% defense target in 2018. Others are likely to follow suit.

Read the entire article here.

Trump’s inauguration "will be the beginning of the end for the Green Blob"

There is definitively something good to look forward to next year!:

But with Trump’s inauguration it will be the beginning of the end for the Green Blob—that sinister cabal of corrupt politicians, UN- and EU-technocrats, bent scientists, shrill activists, rent-seeking corporatists, blood-sucking lawyers and gullible journalists which has held the world to ransom these last four decades by promoting the man-made climate change scare story and other, related environmental scams.

Read the entire article by James Delingpole here.

The Trump administration takes on the global warming establishment

There is reason to believe that the Trump administration will return to sanity with regard to global warming:

Now the backers of the global warming alarm will not only be called upon to debate, but will face the likelihood of being called before a highly skeptical if not hostile EPA to answer all of the hard questions that they have avoided answering for the last eight years.  Questions like:  Why are recorded temperatures, particularly from satellites and weather balloons, so much lower than the alarmist models had predicted?  How do you explain an almost-20-year "pause" in increasing temperatures even as CO2 emissions have accelerated?  What are the details of the adjustments to the surface temperature record that have somehow reduced recorded temperatures from the 1930s and 40s, and thereby enabled continued claims of "warmest year ever" when raw temperature data show warmer years 70 and 80 years ago?  Suddenly, the usual hand-waving ("the science is settled") is not going to be good enough any more.  What now?
And how will the United States fare on the international stage when it stops promising to cripple its economy with meaningless fossil fuel restrictions?  As noted above, people like Isabel Hilton predict a combination of ostracism and "loss of leadership" of the issue, most likely to China.  Here's my prediction:  As soon as the United States stops parroting the global warming line, the other countries will quickly start backing away from it as well.  This is "The Emperor's New Clothes," with the U.S. in the role of the little kid who is the only one willing to say the obvious truth in the face of mass hysteria.  Countries like Britain and Australia have already more or less quietly started the retreat from insanity.  In Germany the obsession with wind and solar (solar -- in the cloudiest country in the world!) has already gotten average consumer electric rates up to close to triple the cost in U.S. states that embrace fossil fuels.  How long will they be willing to continue that self-destruction after the U.S. says it is not going along?  And I love the business about ceding "leadership" to China.  China's so-called "commitment" in the recent Paris accord is not to reduce carbon emissions at all, but rather only to build as many coal plants as they want for the next fourteen years and then cease increasing emissions after 2030!  At which point, of course, they reserve their right to change their mind.  Who exactly is going to embrace that "leadership" and increase their consumers' cost of electricity by triple or so starting right now?  I mean, the Europeans are stupid, but are they that stupid?

Read the excellent article by Francis Menton here.

Trump´s realism on environmental policy is most welcome after Obama´s crusading

Donald Trump´s realism and pragmatism with regard to global warming and environmental policy is most welcome after Obama´s ideological crusading. Trump is actually very close to what Bjorn Lomborg and the Copenhagen Consensus has been propagating. 

John Tierney summarizes in an article in the City Journal:

Trump has vowed to ignore the Paris international climate agreement that committed the U.S. to reduce greenhouse emissions. That prospect appalls environmentalists but cheers those of us who consider the agreement an enormously expensive way to achieve very little. Trump’s position poses a financial threat to wind-power producers and other green-energy companies that rely on federal subsidies to survive.
During the campaign, DebateScience.org, a consortium of science groups, submitted a questionnaire to the candidates. Hillary Clinton responded to a question about climate change by calling it a “defining challenge of our time” and promising to make America the “clean energy superpower of the 21st century.” Steering clear of this litany of green promises, Trump said merely that there was still “much that needs to be investigated” about climate change. Instead of promising to install a half-billion new solar panels, as Clinton promised to do, Trump offered the kind of perspective found in the Copenhagen Consensus, a group of prominent economists who have concluded that other problems are far more pressing than climate change.
“Perhaps the best use of our limited financial resources,” Trump said, “should be in dealing with making sure that every person in the world has clean water. Perhaps we should focus on eliminating lingering diseases around the world like malaria.  Perhaps we should focus on efforts to increase food production to keep pace with an ever-growing world population.  Perhaps we should be focused on developing energy sources and power production that alleviates the need for dependence on fossil fuels.  We must decide on how best to proceed so that we can make lives better, safer and more prosperous.”

Michael Goodwin on the Trump voters

Michael Goodwin´s column in the New York Post is worth reading. Here is an excerpt:

Trump voters had the courage of their conviction to go against all their betters, all the poobahs and petty potentates of politics, industry and, above all, the fraudulent hucksters of the national liberal media.
And who, at this extraordinary juncture, dares say that Trump is not worthy of victory and of the salute of his countrymen? He has done what nobody thought he could, overcoming the doubts and scoffs every incredible step of the way.
No candidate in modern times and perhaps ever has suffered such abuse at the hands of the dominant culture. Virtually every day, nearly all the front pages and broadcasters in the entire country vilified him in an attempt to destroy him.
The late-night comics made fun of him like so much trailer trash, Wall Street saw him as a threat, Hollywood looked down on him and even the pope added his two cents of disdain.
It was dirty pool, against any standard of fairness and decency, but that was not the would-be assassins’ biggest mistake. It was that failing to destroy Trump, the elite smart set unleashed its contempt on his supporters.
The effect was the opposite of what was intended. Instead of demoralizing the Trumpsters, the nonstop attacks hardened them and made them more determined to finish what they had started.

Read the entire column here

PS

Steve Hilton´s column on Fox News is another excellent read:

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/11/09/trumps-incredible-victory-is-second-brexit-only-better.html