apple juice

Another reason for the lack of recent blogging is my mild depression regarding all things government. Health care: underwhelmed. Financial regulations: meh. More tea party crazies in government: Positively scary.

And then this…

We’re Gonna Be Sorry

I could blame Republicans for the fact that not one G.O.P. senator indicated a willingness to vote for a bill that would put the slightest price on carbon. I could blame the Democratic senators who were also waffling. I could blame President Obama for his disappearing act on energy and spending more time reading the polls than changing the polls. I could blame the Chamber of Commerce and the fossil-fuel lobby for spending bags of money to subvert this bill. But the truth is, the public, confused and stressed by the last two years, never got mobilized to press for this legislation. We will regret it.

 

Friedman’s op-ed actually opened up a new line of reasoning I hadn’t considered before. What exactly would the motivation be for climatologists to fake global-warming? If someone could answer that for me, I’d love to know.

I’m really confused. Rush is happy that America lost?

“Protesters who attended Saturday’s Tea Party rally in Washington found a new reason to be upset: Apparently they are unhappy with the level of service provided by the subway system.

Rep. Kevin Brady asked for an explanation of why the government-run subway system didn’t, in his view, adequately prepare for this past weekend’s rally to protest government spending and government services.

Seriously.”

(Via Wall Street Journal.)

Awesome. Protest government spending on one hand, and complain about the lack of government services on the other.

“Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Wilson’s outburst was ‘totally disrespectful — [there’s] no place for it in that setting or any other and he should apologize immediately.'”

(Via Huffington Post.)

Thank you, John McCain

the republicans reached new lows this evening during the President’s speech:

The most recent Thomas Friedman op-ed is excellent:

The G.O.P. used to be the party of business. Well, to compete and win in a globalized world, no one needs the burden of health insurance shifted from business to government more than American business. No one needs immigration reform — so the world’s best brainpower can come here without restrictions — more than American business. No one needs a push for clean-tech — the world’s next great global manufacturing industry — more than American business. Yet the G.O.P. today resists national health care, immigration reform and wants to just drill, baby, drill.

‘Globalization has neutered the Republican Party, leaving it to represent not the have-nots of the recession but the have-nots of globalized America, the people who have been left behind either in reality or in their fears,’ said Edward Goldberg, a global trade consultant who teaches at Baruch College. ‘The need to compete in a globalized world has forced the meritocracy, the multinational corporate manager, the eastern financier and the technology entrepreneur to reconsider what the Republican Party has to offer. In principle, they have left the party, leaving behind not a pragmatic coalition but a group of ideological naysayers.’

(Via The New York Times.)