Scarlett wrote: just willing to do anything at all to keep his name in the media.

Bucky wrote:Another take: (Subscription required, I think).

But here’s what’s scary: our problem is so much worse than you think. We have no energy strategy. If you are going to use tax policy to shape energy strategy then you want to raise taxes on the things you want to discourage — gasoline consumption and gas-guzzling cars — and you want to lower taxes on the things you want to encourage — new, renewable energy technologies. We are doing just the opposite.

Are you sitting down?

Few Americans know it, but for almost a year now, Congress has been bickering over whether and how to renew the investment tax credit to stimulate investment in solar energy and the production tax credit to encourage investment in wind energy. The bickering has been so poisonous that when Congress passed the 2007 energy bill last December, it failed to extend any stimulus for wind and solar energy production. Oil and gas kept all their credits, but those for wind and solar have been left to expire this December. I am not making this up. At a time when we should be throwing everything into clean power innovation, we are squabbling over pennies.

That really is pathetic. I wish Gore would've won way back when.

swishnicholson wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:I support this law because I think voter fraud is BAD. I find negative campaigning fascinating when both sides do it, and I love to follow the give and take. Negative campaigning is, however, different than voting under a name that is not your own because, and here's the kicker, it isn't illegal.

I don't care enough about how you all vote (unless you live in NJ-03) to spend my time here lying about what I believe to try and sway your opinions. The vast majority here are beyond saving anyhow. It's absurd anyway that it's that hard to believe that I could possibly support the actual intent of a law that was deemed Constitutional by a 6-3 margin yesterday. It's not like I'm sticking up for Stalin here or something.

I'm upfront and honest about when I'm being a cheesy partisan tool so that when I'm not you guys can see that too. Or at least that I'm not being overly partisan in my own mind. I really think this law is common sense. The $#@! IDs are $#@! free.

I'm not sure why jerseyhoya's support for this should be seen as cynical applause for a measure just because it may exclude some Democratic voters. I think his feelings about voter fraud deserve to be taken on face value.

I do see his support as reflecting one of the few actual philosophical differences between the parties-although jerseyhoya can certainly tell me if I'm full of crap. Republicans are more likely to support this measure because they believe if you want to vote/become a citizen/get a better job/own your own home/be educated etc. that's great,but you need to take the measures necessary to do so, whether it's obtaining an ID card or whatever. the role of government is to provide the opportunity for ANYONE to do it, but not necessarily to hold your hand through the process.Democrats also believe that if you want to vote/become a citizen/get a better job/own your own home/be educated etc. that's great too, but are more likely to look at the obstacles, some of which are self-imposed, which prevent EVERYONE from participating, and to then focus on eliminating these obstacles on the way to a larger goal.

Now how much these philosophies actually get into practice in day-to-day politics is debatable. But I think it is the point where people are likely to butt heads, the Republicans frustratedly asserting that anyone already CAN do this, and Dems more likely to assert, but what about THEM?

I don't think either attitude deserves to be offhandedly dismissed.

dajafi wrote:Twenty years from now it might be debatable whether Bush/Cheney's disgraceful failures on energy policy are an even worse legacy than Iraq.

swishnicholson wrote:

Scarlett wrote: just willing to do anything at all to keep his name in the media.

I vote for this. Maybe his retiring was the worst thing that could happen to Obama. When someone is used to having an audience each and every Sunday, that's a hard thing to give up.

In fact he seems to have just taken his show on the road. I understand he's appearing in Philly soon, and I'm sure the "tape" will be rolling.

dajafi wrote:

Bucky wrote:
That really is pathetic. I wish Gore would've won way back when.

This was a fantastic piece (and it's free). Friedman can be such a fatuous ass that it's always cheering when he brings the substance as he did in this one.

Twenty years from now it might be debatable whether Bush/Cheney's disgraceful failures on energy policy are an even worse legacy than Iraq. Not that the Democrats have distinguished themselves at all either.

These are extracts from a press release by Friends of the Earth. So what? Well it was published on December 11th - I mean to say, December 11th 1997. The US had just put a wrecking ball through the Kyoto Protocol. George W Bush was innocent; he was busy executing prisoners in Texas. Its climate negotiators were led by Albert Arnold Gore.

The European Union had asked for greenhouse gas cuts of 15% by 2010. Gore’s team drove them down to 5.2% by 2012. Then it did something worse: it destroyed the whole agreement.

traderdave wrote:[
I saw that Scalia bit on Stewart last night and I could do nothing but shake my head. FWIW:

Punish - to treat harshly or injuriously
Torture - any severe physical or mental pain, agony, anguish

When you have to split hairs like these guys (i.e. Scalia, Ashcroft, Cheney) do, you know you are doing something wrong. The whole conversation reminded me of the college thing Ashcroft did that was posted before.

Message to Scalia, et al:
Look, the US is at war with terrorist so we know what is going to happen to anybody the military catches. But don't insult our intelligence by trying to distinguish between punishment and torture. It only makes you look more guilty!

Woody wrote:Al's got quite a financial interest in all this green ish, don't he?

VoxOrion wrote:Wright is a real wild card. If they don't find a way to deal with him, he could show up and swift boat Obama in a big way come October.

drsmooth wrote:

VoxOrion wrote:Wright is a real wild card. If they don't find a way to deal with him, he could show up and swift boat Obama in a big way come October.

in the wettest of your republican dreams

I watched some of Reverend Wright this morning at the National Press Club. It seems obvious to me that he's doing everything he can to wipe out Obama's candidacy, and I'll tell you why I think it is. I think that people like Reverend Wright -- and I think there are a lot of other race business hustlers out there, by the way, who think this -- really upset that if a black candidate is elected president, that they're going to be somehow diminished in their task, at keeping everybody in their flocks all revved up and angry about the ages old sin of slavery and the ongoing discrimination.

So it appears to me, if you look at Reverend Wright, listen to what he says and analyze it from the context or perspective of what's best for him, which is clearly all he's interested in, what's best for him is that if Obama loses, because then it's easy for him to say, "See, the white power structure doesn't want a black man to rise to the pinnacle of power in the United States of America."

dajafi wrote:

drsmooth wrote:

VoxOrion wrote:Wright is a real wild card. If they don't find a way to deal with him, he could show up and swift boat Obama in a big way come October.

in the wettest of your republican dreams

Wright's either going to wipe out Obama now, or he won't.

I'll tell you what has me more than a little screwed up about this whole scenario:

I watched some of Reverend Wright this morning at the National Press Club. It seems obvious to me that he's doing everything he can to wipe out Obama's candidacy, and I'll tell you why I think it is. I think that people like Reverend Wright -- and I think there are a lot of other race business hustlers out there, by the way, who think this -- really upset that if a black candidate is elected president, that they're going to be somehow diminished in their task, at keeping everybody in their flocks all revved up and angry about the ages old sin of slavery and the ongoing discrimination.

So it appears to me, if you look at Reverend Wright, listen to what he says and analyze it from the context or perspective of what's best for him, which is clearly all he's interested in, what's best for him is that if Obama loses, because then it's easy for him to say, "See, the white power structure doesn't want a black man to rise to the pinnacle of power in the United States of America."

That's Rush Limbaugh. And--once you strip out the reverse-reverse-racism grievance and innate cruelty--I think he's probably correct.

The forces lining up against Obama represent a new pinnacle of strange bedfellows. He might not make it; the political futures markets have his odds for the nomination the lowest they've been since, I'd guess, late February. But if you chose to define the worth of the man by the character of his opponents, Obama would look pretty damn good.

CrashburnAlley wrote:

mpmcgraw wrote:HA. But you think the international community has the right to hold a U.S. citizen in a court of law, but we don't have the right to liberate a nation by giving them a voice in their government after that opressive government caused us to go to war in the first place?

I can't quite understand your logic here tex, but ok.

Who said democracy is liberating (voting, for instance, is a meaningless activity)? This great democracy of ours is turning more and more authoritarian by the day.

We have the right to intervene if a leader or leaders is/are oppressing their constituents, but we have no right to tell them what type of government to set up.

With Saddam Hussein, for example (imagine we had legitimate reasons for going into Iraq), I think the world had a right to oust him, but we had no right to topple Iraq's government and institute democracy. They don't want democracy, never have, and never will.

The remarks came during an Appropriations Committee hearing in Harrisburg on a bill that would define marriage as between a man and a woman – a measure Fumo opposes. "What you are advocating here is that we take away the rights of a minority. And I don't think that's right," Fumo told Gilbert Coleman, Jr., senior pastor of Freedom Christian Bible Fellowship in Philadelphia, during the hearing. ". . . If we introduced a bill on slavery, it might pass. That doesn't make it right."

"I doubt that sir," responded Coleman, who testified in support of the measure.

"Oh, don't bet on it in this General Assembly," the Philadelphia Democrat shot back. "I know some people up here, especially on a secret ballot, it would be almost unanimous."

mpmcgraw wrote:

CrashburnAlley wrote:

mpmcgraw wrote:HA. But you think the international community has the right to hold a U.S. citizen in a court of law, but we don't have the right to liberate a nation by giving them a voice in their government after that opressive government caused us to go to war in the first place?

I can't quite understand your logic here tex, but ok.

Who said democracy is liberating (voting, for instance, is a meaningless activity)? This great democracy of ours is turning more and more authoritarian by the day.

We have the right to intervene if a leader or leaders is/are oppressing their constituents, but we have no right to tell them what type of government to set up.

With Saddam Hussein, for example (imagine we had legitimate reasons for going into Iraq), I think the world had a right to oust him, but we had no right to topple Iraq's government and institute democracy. They don't want democracy, never have, and never will.

do you and PTK discuss these topics on leisurely row boat trips on the delaware river?

dajafi wrote:I like the ad, but that background music... ugh. Question for jerseyhoya: why do all political ads use that treacly crap?

jerseyhoya wrote:

dajafi wrote:I like the ad, but that background music... ugh. Question for jerseyhoya: why do all political ads use that treacly crap?

Most political ad people aren't all that creative, and they don't like going outside the box, especially in positive spots. That's how it's done, so that's how you do it.