Rocky Mountain News editorial page editor Vincent Carroll, on the latest issue of Time Magazine:
Time magazine continues its descent into a parody of the 1970s’ Whole Earth Catalog with its current issue highlighting “The Global Warming Survival Guide.”
To be sure, Time’s list of “51 Things You Can Do to Make a Difference” manages to engage a few serious topics, such as a possible carbon tax vs. the “cap-and-trade” of carbon emissions. But the list is also chock full of lifestyle suggestions that are trivial, dubious or even silly, and which do nothing but confirm the moral superiority of those who adopt them—in their minds, of course. Each item even includes a rating for its “feel-good factor.”
Time’s feature also confirms that a growing number in the green movement have become latter-day versions of Francis of Assisi, eager to repudiate worldly goods and embrace a life of asceticism—or what passes for asceticism in today’s pampered world.
“Live simply,” Time exhorts. “Meditate. Consume less. Think more. Get to know your neighbors. Borrow when you need to and lend when asked.”
When else would I borrow—when I don’t need to?
There’s much more of this drivel. You should: Mimic UPS by planning your driving routes to “avoid making left turns”; “shut off your computer”; “pay your bills online” (what happened to shutting off my computer?); “remove the tie” (so we can let summer office temperatures drift upward, say, to the 82.4 degrees that Time reports the Japanese government adopted in 2005; can you spell “s-t-i-f-l-i-n-g”?); “move to a high-rise” (sure, right away); “Take Another Look at Vintage Clothes” (Time means secondhand clothes); plant a bamboo fence (don’t ask); and “Ditch the McMansion” gives you a flavor of the various offerings.
Meanwhile, much of the text reeks of snotty condescension. “Think more”? How does Time know how much you and I think? How does it know that “oversize houses”—whatever they are—are “architecturally offensive”? All of them? Are those tiny (Time would probably say “cozy”) 1950s tract homes architectural gems?
Good question. But a few I bet don’t make the list of offensive houses are the actual mansions of, say, Al Gore, John Edwards, Robert Kennedy Jr., Robert Redford, and the rest of the Green Machine—who have purchased a bit of grace by dint of “bringing the message to the people.” Which, hey, they need to be rewarded in some way, right?
Maybe Francis of Assisi was equally annoying when he started his great anti-materialism movement. But at least it included an order of friars dedicated to good works and the welfare of the poor, sick and persecuted. And Francis, bless his heart, never preached a single sermon against left turns.
Gee. And here I was thinking that turning left was a virtual precondition for joining the new ascetics.
Rob Dreher notwithstanding.
That’s no way to talk about LiarBlogFake, Times.
Or was that your quaint leftist = brainiac intellectual hierarchy?
Yeah, rhetorical question, I know.
I once had a misunderstanding at McDonald’s—my burger came with about 1400 Franciscans.
And I had distinctly said “no” when asked if I wanted to Super-Size™.
Please, Jeff, you know that people like Al Gore, John Edwards and Robert Kennedy Jr. are the new nomenklatura of the Watermelons.
[Watermelon: green on the outside, red on the inside]
TW: We have to be led35!
I think this explains the bamboo thing.
I laughed, I cried, I hurled….
When did National Lampoon buy Time?
In the same vein, maybe now they’ll re-print the
Deteriorata!
Ya’ know, maybe the fastest way to derail the enviro-wack movement is to force them to really take up aceticism.
Uh, but wouldn’t 82.4 degrees mean more women in halters?
From happyfeet’s link:
Right. ‘Cause planting bamboo moves the earth ever so slightly farther away from the sun. Or something.
You think you’re being bamboozled, Jim?
The fences actually look kinda cool. But this is clearly not a “planted” fence. If you look at the bottom of that page you’ll see that other recommended uses include “Build a hut.” Who’da thunk?
Yeah, I have a shooting pain in my bullshit detector.
What crap.
Was the last line “wear sunscreen”?
Can we just plant Dennis Kucinich and live off of the Tofu-Pups that will inevitably grow?
No, no, Jim, it’s really just indigestion or maybe a little gas. Don’t burb or fart and save the earth, just as bamboo could be the answer to our planet’s fever…
whirrrr … buzzzzzt…WHIRRRRR …
*FOOOOOOOM*
Stupid sarcasm generator piece of crap…
Dan, how do you live with yourself?
You know what’s really scary? The left has gone so far off the tracks that lately Kucinich doesn’t sound as far out as he used to.
Geez, Louise, Mark, that made me shudder like walking through a dark, inner city alley at 3:00AM.
What’s next? Michael Moore as international statesman?
*shudder*
Dear God I hope not. You haven’t seen my co-workers.
And you don’t want to either.
Sure, why shouldn’t he, like Jimmah Carter, be entitled to formulate his own foreign policy?
This is Dennis’ hippie wife. I don’t think any further comment is necessary. Just kind of adds a bit of nuance to how I think of ol’ Dennis is all.
Bamboo? BS.
Mint. Mint can do it. You have to work hard to kill the stuff, and it spreads like wildfire. My brother transplanted some by breaking off a piece, driving an hour, setting the piece on the ground and tamping it into the soil a little. Within five years it had spread to three other beds in the garden. Shortly after that it jumped over the concrete foundation of what had been a silo, into the yard in general.
Was really nice mowing that patch of the lawn. Talk about “minty fresh”…
Robert, that sounds like the onion patch in my front yard, courtesy of the previous owner’s quirky housekeeping habits. I suspect I’ll end up treating that part of the yard like a Superfund site to get rid of the stupid onions and get grass to grow there.
Have you ever written a post that couldn’t suitably end on the note of “Rob Dreher notwithstanding”?
Onions? I like ‘em, but I’d hate to mow them.
Try wild horseradish taking over the lawn. Impossible to eradicate once it gets going. Can’t till it out and nothing from the store seems to keep it back. A little harvest goes a long way, and mowing it’s like sticking pins in your eyes.
McGehee, did the order of friars come with Old Bay seasoning?
The sanctimonious Left at their most annoying. I think this sort of approach is as off putting as their most noxious warmed over socialism.
That’s why Dreher is so unreadable, even if he ocassionally has a decent idea or thought: the unbearable smugness and surety. The sheer Ned Flanders-ness of the entire thing is pure nausea.
Spray a little soapy water on it before you put the weedkiller on it. Acts as a surfactant, gets the poison into the leaves better.
Onions aren’t so bad, though; I get bunches of chives every spring.
I usually read lefty insults’ random “Mc”-insertions (as in Chimpy McHalliburton) as linguistic vestigia of New England Progressive-era Irish-hating, but this “Mc” is special. It’s a “brand consciousness” ad for McDonald’s.
The word’s used so carelessly, slurring pretty much any detached dwelling not owned by a rich Democrat or European royal, that no one who uses it or hears it knows precisely what it points to. Therefore, it points only to McDonald’s. With hate, yes, but that doesn’t matter. You have to have an inner McDonald’s to feel that hate. That’s all McDonald’s wants from you.
That and five dollars.
(And I want a Shamrock Shake.)
Beer, mostly. You?
Because you’re a drunk? With bad taste in beers?
Uh, but wouldn’t 82.4 degrees mean more women in halters?
BH, Dan – it sure wouldn’t bother me at my office…
Hey! When did Time Magazine become “The Weekly Reader”?
Kinda sad to see the Republicans turning into a single-issue party.
I don’t think pro-global warming will prove to be a winner in the coming years.
Would that global warming were a single issue.
Too bad Time stills prints on glossy paper; if they used regular newsprint, we’d have a nationwide emergency supply of toilet paper.
Rather unfortunate that Time does use the glossy paper, as it it much, much more difficult to recycle, and as a consequence, we have to cut down more trees, and reduce total organic carbon sequestration.
Explain that , please .
Bill,
A heat wave or bad hurricane season in 2008, and the Republicans might just cease to be a national party.
I’ll go to sleep thinking about Japanese female office workers in halters, thanks guys!
Bad weather ….. good policy ?
Good luck with that request.
This could be #52, courtesy of the GoogleAds up over there on the other page. The YouTube vid has the inventor in it – it’s kind of like the happy trees painter guy, but with candles involved.
….so , using this same logic ….. if …?
Smarten up .
Bill? I was kinda thinking he could have a point there. Maybe I listen to too much NPR, but I can definitely imagine the media eviscerating the Republicans with something like that.
alphie, Where is some of that Global warming? I’m sitting here getting freeze warnings from the weather bug and forcast for “record” cold. You can stop basking in Algor-abge’s farts. The heat has left them.
I see the lefties can’t stand the truth again. They have resorted to sending dirty threatening email to the utility company that provides Algor-abge’s power and gas numbers. Doesn’t that remind everyone of the whining from the lefties when the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth told the truth about Hanoi John and then proceeded to prove he was a liar and phony. What was that line? ‘You can’t stand the truth’. We may forgive (temporarly) but we never forget. Dark days will return for the democrat party traitors.
THE WEATHER , IT’S BECAUSE OF THE HEGEMONY !!!
Anybody else find anti-entropy more than slightly funny.
Becaues, doncha know, the Republican party is made out of Kleenex, and we all know what happens to Kleenex when it gets wet or sweaty.
Right, aphid?
Scrap,
It was Republican Richard Nixon who pulled our troops outta Vietnam. I can’t believe you’d hold a grudge against the wrong party for over 30 years.
And record colds aren’t out of line with Climate Change predictions.
I don’t see any downside for the Dems on this issue.
A few vague, feel-good recommendations to live a little cleaner appeals to a lot of people. Even the oil companies are on board after last Novemeber.
But for the pro-climate change Republicans, a heat wave or record hurricane season next year will hit them right in their base along the Gulf Coast and the MidWest.
A real loser of a strategy.
No surprise there.
Mark:
I think it’s that he’s not an angry guy. On the substance he’s as loony as ever, but unlike a lot of the left these days he’s just never struck me as a guy who hates his opponents.
Alphie:
I don’t mean to suggest that this settles the issue, but two close friends of mine are climatologists. Both are absolutely convinced of anthropogenic global warming, both are strident critics of the Bush administration.
So I was interested, in a discussion not long ago, to hear them agree on how absurd it is to look at a bad hurricane season, shout “Aha!” and chalk it up to global warming. Both of them, huge fans of Al Gore and An Inconvenient Truth, felt he comes irresponsibly close to claiming a cause-and-effect link between warming so far and the hurricane season of 2005.
For what it’s worth.
Language IS important here , alphie .
Take your pick , Global Warming , Climate Change , Climate Injustice ….. well ?
No, but a couple of ‘em smelled of Old Spice.
Needless to say, I tossed ‘em.
… as long as you didn’t roll them …
I don’t see any downside for the Dems on this issue.
Oh, maybe the call for de-industrialization to acquiesce to emissions standards outlined by punative international environmental treaties might lose a few, if not tens of thousands, union jobs here and there. Perhaps that’s why Dems needed to hold fast to the “open vote” rule to make sure the union minions toe the line.
Curious as to why West Virginia turned “red” during the 2000 election? Look at the rift between the coal miners and Clinton/Gore regulations.
But no biggie. As long as folks are feeling good about themselves “living a little cleaner”.
Did you say something about loser strategies?
I did not know that St. Francis had a 20-room mansion with a 220,000 KWHr/yr. electricity jones.
You learn something new every day.
LD,
I think the West Virginia split has more to do with lopping off mountain tops and filling valleys with sludge for a quick buck than anything to do with Climate Change.
The anti-climate change proposals of the Democrats would cost America less than a week’s worth of funding for the Iraq fiasco.
A small price to pay to feel good about ourselves, don’t you think?
No, those would be the Pentecostals.
Might I suggest bamboo telephone poles? They type a lot less than the ones we’ve got now, so there’s less energy wasted because they don’t use computers and we wouldn’t have to reply to them.
Ok, I just got back from a walk, making ONLY right turns.But, I had a bit of a “gas” issue (girls don’t fart) … so how much do I owe in Carbon Offsets?
Part of their problem is that if you are going to write an environmental sermon, many people are already doing basic environmental stuff. People recycle, carpool, use public transport, etc. People have more energy efficient houses and so on. So how do you come up with a new article with new ideas?
That’s how you start to get goofy – I’m pretty sure (although I can’t really prove it) that most of the really off the wall doctoral theses like the “Abraham Lincoln was a woman” kind are because all the reasonable doctoral theses are taken and all that’s left is nonsense. You need something creative and unique? Hell just make something up, what difference does it make in modern academia?
So we get an article telling people to do the very things that the writers think are silly or that they don’t need to do, idiotic stuff that not only would have almost no impact, but nobody is going to follow. Just to have an article and feel like you are contributing to the master cause.
And lets face it. Journalism is dragging the lowest common denominator pool. For decades their hiring policies and promoting has been based not on skill, experience, and talent, but on how politically correct you are. By now the publishers, editors, and staff are all infected with this nonsense. Basically, they are incompetent and stupid. So we get this crap.
That sounds like a reasonable explanation JPS. I’m still a bit disturbed though, that he said something the other day that I agreed with—that was a first (and I’ve scrubbed whatever it was from my brain already to maintain what I call sanity)
I don’t walk (except to the car), but I’ve been doing that right-turns only thing for years. I started when my state legalized “right-turn on red.”
Sometimes I go 70 or 80 miles out of my way to avoid left-turns, but I do conserve via throwing Coke cans in the backseat instead of out the window…
I don’t see any downside for the Dems on this issue.
Of course you don’t. Because hypocricy doesn’t bother democrats, and no matter what the climate (hot,cold,wet,dry), zealots will claim it as “proof.”
…and no matter what the climate (hot,cold,wet,dry), zealots will claim it as “proof.â€Â
My point exactly, Carin.
Any bout of abnormal weather will earn the Democrats votes, but normal weather won’t earn the Republicans any votes.
Think of weather as a casino.
The Democrats are the house, and the Republicans are the suckers.
The Pubs used to be smart that way.
Are they, though? I think that there’s a serious communication problem here. The lefties and many of the global warming folks come across as preachy and condescending. It’s automatic that peoples’ hackles are going to rise—it’s human nature. So we dig in our feet and say, “What global warming? You’re full of it!” I have to laugh, because environmentalism is the new lefty religion. They want people to behave a certain way and follow certain rules based on something that that they themselves cannot even see, but that certain figures of authority tell them is the true state of matters. At any rate, I think that if both sides cut a bit of slack to each other, and we all just try to conserve a bit of energy and reduce our contribution to air, water and land pollution (which is something that we CAN see), it certainly can’t hurt.
Wow, little “a” so you’re saying that not only are the Democrats counting on failure in Iraq, but that their success also depends upon destruction of the environment as well. And you wonder why the Republicans aren’t hanging their political fortunes upon such a “smart†& ”tough” platform? Your conservative roots sure are showing… of course conservation of rationality doesn’t really count.
Any bout of abnormal weather will earn the Democrats votes, but normal weather won’t earn the Republicans any votes.
Think of weather as a casino.
The Democrats are the house, and the Republicans are the suckers.
The Pubs used to be smart that way.
And you don’t have a problem with the inherent dishonesty of this approach?
Islamofascism, Gaiafascism. For the tranzies, the important part is the “-fascism”. Any excuse to oppress the peasantry will do.
alphie’s right on the politics in many ways. A big percentage of people inclined towards not giving any credence to global warming will think different once they are seriously inconvenienced or worse by weather of any kind. I think at base it’s just one of those power of suggestion things.
Hey, anything that furthers the socialist agenda with the happy side effect of harming American interests he’s all for.
On the other hand, the converse is actually true as well. A lot of people currently inclined to support saving the environment will start balking when they see the magnitude of the sacrifices expected of them and especially if either the climate changes anyways (or even seems to) or they don’t see the rich doing their fair share. Higher auto gas mileage is fine until people realize this means that more people die in auto accidents, especially if a sob-story anecdote makes big news.
I also like our true conservative seemingly cheering on massive government intervention in private lives just because its popular with the chattering class liberal elite that use their influence to drive opinion and therefore seems “popular” with the public.
I hope it can play out that way C, but the media…
Okay, here’s what I’m hypothesizing, here… I move into one of those implement sheds featured in the TIME article; I use paper or plastic or canvas, depending on the eco-marching orders of the day; I unicycle to work; I hold my breath (and other, er, emissions) until I can exhale into an old natural gas well; and in general put on the whole environmental hairshirt. Then, Eta Carinae blows up, and hoses us all down with lethal gamma rays, leaving the world dying in radioactive agony. If that happens, I’ll be applying for a carbon credit refund.
Ah, remember how fondly the “moral equivalent of war” Carter energy standards were greeted? Nothing like waiting for that driver’s license in August in a lovely 78 degree office…
An easy question to ask would be “who first do you tell they are laid off to appease the Earth gods?” Or “what parts of California will no longer get electricity from Gaia hating coal plants in other States?”
That hypocrisy will be our ultimate saviour from the Gore hysteria—there is simply no way the “progressives” will sacrifice anything at any time for any reason when it threatens their comfort.
OK. I feel better, MJ. I was just reading today how they just gave Spike Lee a Peabody Award for his Katrina documentary thing, and that is the sort of thing I find disheartening. But thinking rationally, I would say to alphie that on reflection his theory is probably compromised by Katrina itself. Any climate event on a lesser scale probably won’t do much to move the dial, and media hysterics will likely be all too transparent.
Um…have ya ever been to New England? Or Florida, for that matter?
Being inconvenienced by weather is a way of life for some folks. I’m perfectly willing to trade shoveling snow for a closer coastline.
Oh, Major John, that ain’t the half of it.
What happens when Dale and his associates get bashed in the Democratic triumph? D’you suppose they’ll start voting right, err, correctly, or just stop pumping natural gas North?
Regards,
Ric
You’re right, Pablo, I didn’t think that one all the way through, for sure. I’ve got this lens of Katrina where I really experienced that as a completely unprecedented event in terms of scale and ferocity – not in terms of the damn storm, but in terms of the media coverage. The media tasted power then of a vintage wholly new to this generation. I guess I do agree with Alphie to the extent that I’ve no doubt at all that the media are thirsty for another hit off that crack pipe.
The danger is when you otherwise rational people start accepting this Global warming BS out of simple fatigue. Then we will all find out what happens when an unabashed power mongering democrat is mated with a Supreme Court ruling, which makes it a crime for you to exhale.
happyfeet,
You’d think NOLA took the brunt while Missisippi, Alabama and the rest of So. LA skated, wouldn’t you? The storm, on the other hand, had other ideas.
Yeah, given that no named storms made landfall last year, they’re already ramping up for the worst year EVAH!, hurricane wise, to compensate.
If they could get the 10 day forecast right, I’d be mighty concerned. Meanwhile, I just hope algore is preaching in August, as he tends to attract cold fronts. God has a fabulous sense of humor.
Alf,
No, a traditionally “blue” state in West Virginia was turned “red” by those whose jobs were either in jeopardy or lost because of environmental regulation by the Clintonistas. Whether one deems the regulations as “excessive” or not, when one’s job is on the line, it’s more than feeling good about living cleaner. Explain how excessive regulation to purportedly prevent these bad weather spells is a winning strategy for Dems with the union base when it’s already cost them one election?
Did the model used to calculate the cost of Donkey regulation vs. cost of one week in Iraq look like a hockey stick at all? Cuz if so, I’ll definitely believe it.
Well they certain have learned how to prolong their ”life threatening” events now-a-days. Global Warming, like African Killer Bees, the Japanese take-over of America, carbs, etc is just another fad to gain subtle control over what we do, think & hopefully, how & for whom we vote. It’s an domestically pointed out, just in case there really is some truth to this terrorist thing & the really fear-mongering Republicans were “right” – like they have mostly been about foreign policy for the last 40 years. Anyone want to compare the Nixon take on China, the Reagan take on Russia or either of the Bushs on Iraq vs. their Democratic opposition? Care to compare they takes & stances economically? Nope me either, & that might explain why I didn’t vote for Dukakis, Clinton x2, Gore or Kerry, or why most of Clinton’s lasting political moves were mostly towards the moderate end of the field & his foreign policy was so popular in France.
Being “just†17 months from an election, what generally is the topic of an election that far away rarely is come November, that is unless of course there is a war going on. If we are still in Iraq, then the Democrats once again have to answer to their historically weakest topic & given little bo-peep Pelosi’s leadership, that might be why there is such a push for the acceptance of Global Warming & to de-fund the troops & get them out before Hillary or Obama have to answer the really tough questions for which they have no answers.
Don’t believe me, just look at the way marky mark & little “a†are trending & ask yourself, when have either been coherent enough or honest enough to be right? They can’t be bothered to stay on topic, much less string together 2 rationally connected points. Hell, the margin of victory last November that they assure us all is proof enough the country wants a change was less than Bush’s margin of victory for re-election & that was against a President who was fighting a 2 front war & polling in the 30’s.
Nope, our little “a” team that couldn’t better hope that their political victories aren’t tied to either pulling the funding out from troops in harm’s way or more snow storms shutting down really important Global Warming meetings.
“… wouldn’t 82.4 degrees mean more women in halters?”
“… if bamboo were planted on a mass basis …”
It would finally get Tom Morris a permanent job, not to mention a food supply:
“Who lives in the east ‘neath the willow tree?
Sexual Harassment Panda!”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_Harassment_Panda
Dear Writers,
Let me correct some misimpressions. I am a native here for many decades. Katrina was bad here, bu only somewhat worse than Betsy in ‘65 or Camille in ‘69. Back when the strong storms were caused by the coming ice age.
My home was battered, as was most of southeast Louisiana. Katrina did NOT destroy New Orleans. It was destroyed by the failure of Federal government built levees.
We were failed miserably by the feds (Corps of Engineers, Fema, etc) state and local officials.
The only thing about warming with the storms was the massive amount of hot air spewed by elected officials.
And from experience, I can tell you that the media missed 99% of the story, and wasn’t terribly honest with the 1% they did cover. Any media story should be taken with enough salt to cause cardiac arrest.
But on the good side, the storm saw the birth of a new Libertarian.
PMain,
If we’re still screwing around in Iraq in 17 months, the Republicans will lucky to out-poll the Socialist Workers party of America, or the Libertarians.
The most disturbing thing is not that some enviro-nuts have elaborated a sort of religious ritual to cleanse one of his environmental sins. The bad part is that there’s plenty of politicians ready to convert that ritual into laws and regulations.
“move to a high-rise†and run up the stairs instead of running the elevators and the tread mills. Harness solar energy, plant your own food in pots hanging from your east facing windows.
You know little “a†to you it will always be just screwing around, no matter what happens & for that I truly feel sorry for you. To me the liberation of over 50 million people, adding the concepts of representative government or inherent rights for women, even if in dialog only, is well worth the costs occurred & the gambit that it just might take or be the catalyst of change no matter how superficially that change might appear to you.
For all of your accusations of stupidity, short sightedness or lack of vision, you or all of the other critics have never once provided any other solution or opinion other than it is & was doomed to fail & a colossal waste of time, money, effort & lives. The only options you have favored was either no action at all, which has proven throughout history to not only prolong & promote further such aggression, but when finally addressed, to cost even more lives, money & time or to immediately cut & run leaving millions of innocents to those that have already shown the ability or desire to kill & sacrifice innocents to promote their cause. All-the-while never being honest enough to acknowledge, to yourself or us, that that inevitable end result of re-deployment reflects what you’d completely prefer to happen now, the sooner the better. To you we should have left them to the lives they had prior or now leave them to the lives they’d certain get.
Besides offering no plan, you offer no hope or vision, just accusations. Apparently the people there & the sacrifices & efforts of the coalition members are for either people who never deserved the rights to freedom, peace or economic prosperity or that by aiding & helping them achieve it, that that goal is not worth our effort or your favored statement, “the costs.â€Â. Which is it, do the Iraqis & Afghanis not deserve to have a government that reflects their wishes or is it that it costs too much to give it to them & not worth pursuing.
Every one of your arguments & comments here has promoted one, the other or both. We are there & no matter how much Monday-morning quarterbacking you offer that will not change. So which is it, are they not worth it or is the simply cost too great for the rewards of actually providing freedom to a score of people who have never had it?
Of course the irony that your favorite American General presided over a battle that cost over 400,000 for the same concepts within a society where the those concepts had been established & recognized for almost a hundred years has completely escaped you. Why is it worth that many American lives for Americans, but not worth a very small fraction of American lives for 2 entire countries?
No matter the faults of the Bush Administration or the mistakes made, there have been plenty, at least those doing the fighting & those supporting the war, see that the people who toiled under Saddam or the Taliban not only are worth more then they have had, but that those ideals & their promotion are worth fighting for. That by enabling & supporting it, it may have costs & take more time then previously thought, that it may require some work, but god damnit man, the lives of 50 million people can never be reduced to just a small variable upon an accounting slip or used merely as a political stepping stone to promote one’s agenda.
That my friend is the real treatment you afford the citizens of Iraq, no matter how you dress it up.
I think the people of Iraq would rather take the $100 billion we’re blowing on the surge in cash and get by without our troops, PMain.
That would triple the income of every single Iraqi family.
And, as always, if you want my support, let the people of Iraq vote on whether our troops stay in their country or not.
Our puppet government in Iraq is actually less popular than the Bush administration is here, so please don’t say it’s up to Maliki.
A true vote of the people in exchange for my support.
Pretty simple.
Because money handouts have always worked, every single time, don’t you know?
That’s the problem, of course. Some “sacrifices” would be too big to ignore, though. If a liberal US government manages to push gas prices to European levels, the one sure way to reduce US gas consumption, the public will notice no matter what the media does. If economic restrictions hurt a major unionized workforce, the Democratic coalition will crack.
It’s Kudzu…..Kudzu by god, it will save the world. It will stop global warming in it’s tracks. Plant some today…your neighbor will love you for it.
I don’t see any downside for the Dems on this issue.
Odd, I don’t see any upside. Preaching to everyone about how shallow and materialistic they are and how they need to make sacrifices in their life won’t get anyone elected in this country.
Just how, exactly, did you get in here? How did you breach our bamboo fence!
A ‘bamboo fence’ is what I’ve always called a ‘hedge’. And a hedge is just a very long piece of shrubbery. And shrubbery needs to be trimmed, and long pieces of shrubbery needs to a lot of trimming, and generates a lot of yard waste, which needs to either be landfilled, burned, or composted. And the only one the ecovangelists want you to do is composting. which stinks to high heaven. Which the ecovangelists never have to deal with because their gardeners haul the stuff off far away from the pool terrace of Gaia Hall.
The blighters.
Anyway, when is this climate change going to get well and truly underway? I am waiting for the sub-tropical zone to migrate its way further north so I don’t have to drive so far in the winter in order to enjoy a nice sunny beach. Which would save gas, which is good for Gaia!
Global Warming! A win-win for all but the South Florida tourist industry!
I said it before, but, aphid, some day the passive voice is going to turn on you, gut you and eat your liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti.
Alphie, et al.
Stipulating that climate change is, at least in part anthropogenic, how do we know when we’re done cutting emissions?
BRD
They’ll notice it, but the press will be telling us it’s because of reduced supplies of oil and/or oil company greed.
Wouldn’t matter if half the price was tax, the press would run with those two narratives. It’s in their blood.
just how, exactly, did you get in here? How did you breach our bamboo fence!
That was so funny, I had to see it again.
RECORD PROFITS!!! Because a good honest company should make less and less money as time goes on.