Comments Posted By revenantive
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OBAMA BRAGS ABOUT BANKRUPTING COAL POWER PLANT COMPANIES
"clean coal" is one of the biggest jokes of the year. there is no such thing.
look rick, i think you need to understand that to move forward in a way that won't fuck up our environment (which would ultimately cost more in terms of human life and damages) we need to move on from coal as a power source. renewable is the only answer. wind, solar, geothermal, etc.
every day coal plants run puts us closer to the brink of extinction. don't believe it? look at the quickly deteriorating arctic and the scary condition of glaciers around the world. we are warming up very fast...and that's going to cause more and more katrina's, ike's and other weather related disasters.
the time to act is NOW. coal, sadly, must go. as a human race, we can't afford to pollute our air and destroy mountains for a few years of cheap energy. we don't have much time left. we have to cap and move on.
Look - no responsible climate expert says that the danger is imminent - no one. Climate change - even "quick" climate change - takes decades to become noticeable. You are taking what are arguable occurrences (there are studies that show the Greenland glaciers growing as well as the polar ice cap) and extrapolating disaster. Its nuts. It's why thinking, rational people are saying slow down. Temperatures have not risen on iota in a decade, models are off by as much as 50% as to how much CO2 we are putting in the atmosphere, and this rush to catastrophically cut emissions is being pushed by people who could care less about the environment but who care very much about destroying western industrialized civilization.
Coal scrubbers technology is improving all the time. It would not surprise me if in a decade, we have answers that elude us today. To give up on the most abundant energy resource we have and give up trying to make it cleaner is just plain stupid.
ed.
Comment Posted By revenantive On 3.11.2008 @ 09:02
IF ELECTED, OBAMA WILL BE MY PRESIDENT
Calling someone 'the one', 'the messiah', etc. isn't very American.
Grow up.
Comment Posted By revenantive On 14.10.2008 @ 09:49
Reading some of the latest comments here, it appears that all conservatives care about is abortion. If that's the case...conservatism will never return to prominence.
Call me a baby-killer, but I want my children to have a choice. Women shouldn't be forced to have a child after being raped, but many conservatives believe that's god's will via predestination.
I gotta call bullshit when it comes to pro-life arguments. For a group of people who argue for less government intervention to say they really want intervention is just two-faced and short sighted.
I would also like to remind all those pro-life conservatives that your patron Saint, Ronald Reagan, was one of the first Governor's to sign legislation that allowed abortion. How does that make you feel?
Comment Posted By revenantive On 14.10.2008 @ 09:48
As a long time democrat, from a long line of democrats throughout my family tree, I am heartened by your words Rick.
When I think about the past 20 years or so, I think the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton were perhaps the low point for this country's politics. Compared to other scandals (Iran-Contra, Watergate, Torture during the war on terror, Congressional Check Fraud) a blow-job and it's cover up were small beans. There was no reason for the flare up, but after years of stretching the truth (the hair-cut, the partisan Starr investigation that cost MILLIONS, the attempts to paint Clinton as 'slick', etc.) Republicans just couldn't control themselves. They decided to go nuclear on the Clintons, and even that turned out to be less than the smackdown that was promised: Clinton left office highly popular and our country had a budget surplus for the first time in decades.
The difference in all of this is that republicans decided to make a mountain out of a mole-hill. The 1994 republican takeover of congress was supposed to be a change, a Contract with America if you will, that would bring transparency and good will to a political institution succombed to petty scandals. However, Republican control of congress quickly degenerated into a lobbying charade that catered only to those who could afford to purchase influence via K-street. People like Rep. Tom Delay and his cronies turned into psychophants who only wanted things their way or no way. There was no meaningful political debate. There was major gridlock. Wages stagnated as conservatives decided to leave the minimum wage untouched for 12 years.
The irony is that the conservative movement peaked during 2002, helped no doubt by international events and a fearful American populace. The peak wasn't all that great in terms of numbers. There was no real mandate for the sort of angry rhetoric from the right wing. If conservatives could have mustered a 90-100 seat majority, perhaps they could have played things as rough and tumble. But that just wasn't the case. The conservative movement could have expanded their majority by toning down the culture war, but instead chose to push the case as far as possible. The Terry Schiavo episode probably represented the zenith and the beginning of the end of the 40 year conservative hegemony. At that time, we were still in a stumbling economy, overall wages (for everyone except CEOs and top management) were stagnant for 4 years and job creation was consistently lagging behind our growing population. The promises of explosive economic growth made during the push for deregulation and tax-cuts just never materialized. The push to exclude medicare from negotiating with Big Pharma prescription drugs was disastrous and has cost us billions at a time of war. There was no push for American sacrifice, something Americans have done during every major war for centuries. Indeed, complete conservative oversight of our government from 2000-2006 (with the exception of the Senate from 2000-2002, a slim Democratic majority at best) was a COMPLETE disaster.
Conservative ideas have now been proven to be less than. The ideas themselves have failed to bring the promised results. But I am sure that conservatives will NOT be able to blame themselves. They will blame a 'liberal' media that is controlled by mega corporations like GE, Westinghouse and Rupert Murdoch. They will blame Bush and McCain for not being 'conservative enough,' and of course blame people who live on the 'elite coasts.'
Look, if the conservative ideals were so strong, why isn't California conservative and dominated by Republicans? Why isn't New York, home to some of our biggest financial companies and their employees dominated by a conservative majority? Why are places like Saint Louis and Chicago, right in the heart of the bible-belt midwest dominated by a conservative majority? It's because the ideas proposed by conservatives just don't work. And who gets the blame for conservative failures there? 'Those people.' Well, I hate to be the one who informs conservatives of this, but 'those people' are Americans, too.
Right now, we are experiencing what could be a generational change in our politics. Conservatives have pieced together a slight majority to rule this country for the past 40 years. The only exceptions were 12 years of Democratic control by 'centrist' democrats that were really DINO's.
Now the Republicans have to deal with a new majority filled with true liberal progressives. Democrats haven't been voting for liberals most of the past 20 years. Now that we are, you are seeing significant differences in policy compared to conservatives. When we trotted out 'centrists', there wasn't much of a difference between them and the republicans, and that has hurt our party in many ways. I am a democrat, but I couldn't stand Bill Clinton in 1992. He was not the sort of democrat I wanted, but by the end of his two terms he did more good than harm and earned my respect. I can't say the same about George W. Bush and his two terms.
Barack Obama isn't the most liberal member of the democratic coalition, but he represents MAJOR change from the Clinton/Bush status quo of the past 20 years. For that he earns my vote.
I grudgingly accepted George W. Bush as president after the horrific 2000 election. George W. Bush, in my opinion, was not Presidential material mainly because he lacked intellectual curiosity, an attribute shared by many of our best presidents over our 200+ year existence. I even supported the Iraq war, provided it was effectively pursued. It was not, and my confidence that George W. Bush could lead us during future crises to come dropped as well.
From my perspective, the end of the Bush era cannot arrive fast enough.
It is my hope that Barack Obama can continue to untangle the stigma against liberals. I'm a proud liberal hawk, and will fight anyone who calls me an appeaser. I am a liberal who owns guns. I am also a liberal that fights wars from a family that has many of it's members in the military. I am an American.
I hope that conservatives can now act like Americans, too. It sure would be a nice change of pace from the past 8 years of conservative demagoguery.
Comment Posted By revenantive On 14.10.2008 @ 09:34
