apple juice

I can’t go anywhere these days without hearing all these Republicans squawking about privatizing Social Security and de-regulating health care.

I mean, you have to hand it to them, it’s worked so well for banking and financial services.

Err…

Senator Bernie Sanders:

“For years now, they’ve told us that we can’t afford — that the government providing healthcare to all people is just unimaginable; it can’t be done. We don’t have the money to rebuild our infrastructure. We don’t have the money to wipe out poverty. We can’t do it. But all of a sudden, yeah, we do have $700 billion for a bailout of Wall Street.”

Exactly. via DemocracyNow

Why would Republicans, the party of business, want to focus our country on breathing life into a 19th-century technology — fossil fuels — rather than giving birth to a 21st-century technology — renewable energy? As I have argued before, it reminds me of someone who, on the eve of the I.T. revolution — on the eve of PCs and the Internet — is pounding the table for America to make more I.B.M. typewriters and carbon paper. “Typewriters, baby, typewriters.”

Friedman is right on here, once again. I suggest reading his column, Making America Stupid.

I guarantee you this: Reducing our use of fossil fuels is more important than increasing our supply of those same fuels. If we can power our economy in ways that don’t rely on dwindling resources, we will unlock our success in the next century. Future economies, countries, and corporations will be successful in a direct inverse relationship to the amount of fossil fuels they use. I’m going to coin that Colianni’s law. Unless it’s been coined.

love this song, by The National… this is an instrumental version.

too bad it was full of lies.

fact-checking palin

Thomas Friedman’s excellent new op-ed, Flush with Energy, contains this startling stat:

Denmark today gets nearly 20 percent of its electricity from wind. America? About 1 percent.

What are we doing here?

I don’t agree with everything position Obama takes, I think he could be even stronger in his plans to break our addiction to oil… but, it is pretty hard to tell Americans that “As president, I’m going to make gasoline $10 a gallon”.

Here’s Obama’s latest ad, “Hands”. I think it compares nicely with McCain’s plan for “more drilling”.