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I do, and I also mail letters with the US Postal Service, which is a nice example of how efficient a government organization can be without partisan politics interfering. While the price of gas has gone up about 300% in the past 20 years, the price of mailing a letter (the USPS's primary source of funding) has gone up a whopping 55%.

The USPS now faces a budget crisis because Congress dropped 75 years of employee benefit funding on the organization, due in a span of only 10 years. This was, of course, the result of Congress's politicking.

When government organizations are insulated from the whims of politics, they can be very efficient. A national healthcare plan, managed by HHS, would likely still suffer from the backstabbing of its next political opponent, but a good leader can reduce the impact of such backstabbing on the public. That's why there are so many "Secretary shall determine" clauses, to give the administrator the ability to work around the idiocy brought on by politics.

"Green" energy is sustainable:
    - Clean energy is competitive with other types of energy
    - Clean energy creates three times more jobs than fossil fuels
    - Clean energy improves grid reliability
    - Clean energy investment has surpassed investments in fossil fuels
    - Investments in clean energy are cost effective
    - Fossil fuels have gotten 75 times more subsidies than clean energy

For more details on these points:
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/03/28/453122/fact-sheet-6-things-you-should-know-about-the-value-of-renewable-energy/

That petition alleges that the Chinese government unfairly subsidizes crystalline silicon photovoltaic solar cells and modules by providing cash grants, tax rebates, cheap loans, and other benefits designed to artificially suppress Chinese export prices and drive U.S. competitors out of the market.

http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/03/15/445193/us-decision-chinese-solar-panel-imports-tariffs-partial-solution/?mobile=nc

Why was the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge built in China?
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/business/global/26bridge.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Why is American infrastructure in general being built by Chinese?
http://americanmanufacturing.org/blog/why-are-chinese-firms-building-americas-bridges-and-roads

Why are these jobs subsidizing China?

Because we can't find welders,

Watch the video.
http://americanmanufacturing.org/blog/why-are-chinese-firms-building-americas-bridges-and-roads

Solar has been dropping precipitously in price since at least 1978. How far back do you want to try and blame China?

On the other hand, it's probably best to just ignore whatever Fox news says. After all, 7 studies have now confirmed that Fox viewers are among the worst informed Americans. Any time someone says "I saw this on Fox News", my first response will likely be "Do you have a credible source to confirm it?". That should be a source that is not also owned by Rupert Murdoch. There's just too much disinformation on Fox News for it to be worth my time to sort out what's true, what's half-true, and what's out and out lies.

Bingo. And I say this as a Conservative American. I'll take the irritating liberal slant on CNN over the outright bullshit on Fox any day of the week.

On the other hand, it's probably best to just ignore whatever Fox news says. After all, 7 studies have now confirmed that Fox viewers are among the worst informed Americans. Any time someone says "I saw this on Fox News", my first response will likely be "Do you have a credible source to confirm it?". That should be a source that is not also owned by Rupert Murdoch. There's just too much disinformation on Fox News for it to be worth my time to sort out what's true, what's half-true, and what's out and out lies.

My head just exploded, and it's your fault.

Now, if you want to talk about not paying taxes (which the oil companies did)

Really? So how much federal income tax did Exxon pay in 2009?

(hint: the same amount as GE in 2010)

He was actually doing pretty well until he said the economy looked like it was doing fine just before it collapsed. Of course Democratic partisans will say that he never had a chance, but as a middle-of-the-road decline-to-state voter it really looked like a close election up til then.

Are you kidding? McCain was a doddering mess of flip flopping incompetence that was disliked and distrusted by his own party. Running for the presidency after said party destroyed the economy, trashed the constitution, and became mired in endless corruption scandals.

2008 should have made the blowout of '64 look like a nailbiter in comparison....and it would have, but for three reasons:

1. Obama's race brought out the racist troglodytes - see the "birther" BS
2. The media loves a horse race and always gives the underdog a boost
3. Obama was too darned nice to clean McCain's clock

Unless you'd tell us with a straight face that if Obama confused Shiites with Sunnis no less than six times while running as the foreign policy candidate, called Petraus chair of the joint chiefs of staff, and went on about Iraq's border with Afghanistan (it's called Iran), that he would have gotten a free pass from the media and the Republican Party....

If you read the memo: http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/heartland_k-12_curriculum.jpg

you will notice that there is nothing with regard to the Heartland Institutes ongoing activities cited in the memo that can not been verified by others sources.

If there is, which one is it?

The authenticity of the documents seems not to have deterred British Newspapers, who are all over this see for example:

  http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/feb/15/leaked-heartland-institute-documents-climate-scepticism

Which has republished the original document in question:

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/heartland_k-12_curriculum.jpg

A rather chilling read, when you consider the amount of money their sponsors are pouring into this effort.

The depth of the Climate Denier Conspiracy will continue to be big news as more and more of its internal operations are exposed and as the climate continues to grow warmer.

While I agree to you that is how it SHOULD work, ReDigi is still trying to find out if it has legs to stand on.

http://thinkprogress.org/alyssa/2012/02/08/418729/redigi-itunes-and-the-legal-fight-over-first-sale-and-digital-content/?mobile=nc

There was such a press release. But it was quickly debunked by people who knew what they were talking about.

4 - Instrumentation. Anthony Watts has demonstrated the pathetic state of some of our temperature records.

Anthony Watts is a non-scientist, college drop out full blown, outed fraud:
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2009/07/29/204427/the-video-that-anthony-watts-does-not-want-you-to-see-the-sinclair-climate-denial-crock-of-the-week/

I do not think that video says what you think it says.

It basically says 'this is Anthony Watts. This is the study of the temperature sensors that he's organising. This is his book about it. His book was published by these people who have also been involved with smoker's rights issues. Therefore they are funded by tobacco companies and inherently evil. Anthony Watts must therefore be evil. This is the response from NOAA to Anthony Watts' claims: "yes there are some problems with the siting of some of the sensors". This is a graph (with no error bars) of temperatures from all the sensors. This is another graph (with no error bars) of the 70 sensors Anthony Watts recommended as being correct. Look they're the same. Therefore Anthony Watts is wrong as well as evil. Some people who looked at animal behaviour have said that it's changing, and mostly in a way that we think it would change if the climate was warming. The End'.

What I got from that is:
- NOAA confirmed that yes there are some problems with the sensor sites (and they adjust the temperatures from those sensors to allow for the warming from the changed surroundings), so the sensor survey was valid, good science that should have been applauded.
- Graphs without error bars are pretty much worthless. They cut the sample size from >1000 to ~70 and nothing changed? really?

At no point in that video does anyone disprove or even find any serious flaws with anything Anthony Watts has said...so why is this being held up as the video that shows Watts to be an anti-scientific 'denier'?

Links, please, to back up where you believe the science is faulty, and to back up your premise that if you disagree with the general consensus of climatologists that it's hard to get funding. I just don't buy that; especially not with the general Republican stance. They love their climate denial scientists lots. Though, they seem to have a lot of trouble finding any to fund. And thus, they try to cut funding for ALL climate change research.

I do know, however, that GWBush tried to silence NASA scientists from talking about Global Warming, and that House Republicans are still at it (we all know how biased NASA is, right? /snark)

So, please. If you're going to make assertions, back them up. Otherwise, it's just faith based denial.

1 - History. I'm a student of history. I became a skeptic when they tried to erase the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age.

\

And I give a shit just how a student of history misunderstands atmospheric physics because WHY again?

2 - Statistics/Data Analysis. M&M made Michael Mann's Hockey Stick look like a total fraud.

And I give a shit just how a student of history misunderstands atmospheric physics AND statistics because WHY again?

3 - Physics. Most serious skeptics will grant that CO2 absorbs energy at one important wavelength. They will grant as much as 1.4 degrees warming for a doubling of CO2. The thing they won't grant is the feedback necessary to get dangerous warming.

And I give a shit just how a student of history misunderstands the relative importance of isolated "facts" in physics he scrapped off some denier's site online because WHY again?

4 - Instrumentation. Anthony Watts has demonstrated the pathetic state of some of our temperature records.

Anthony Watts is a non-scientist, college drop out full blown, outed fraud: http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2009/07/29/204427/the-video-that-anthony-watts-does-not-want-you-to-see-the-sinclair-climate-denial-crock-of-the-week/

It goes on. There are other mechanisms that can explain the late 20th century warming. If you want to seriously talk about skeptics, you really should study them a bit more.

Meet Anthony Watts of WattsUpWithThat infamy.

http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2009/07/29/204427/the-video-that-anthony-watts-does-not-want-you-to-see-the-sinclair-climate-denial-crock-of-the-week/

Actually the price of solar has dropped 95% since 1979, so the argument that solar subsidies were successful is much easier to make for solar than E85.

I see how you get that. You misunderstood the numbers or what I'm saying...

While paying a tax rate of 18% for the wealthiest americans
http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertlenzner/2011/07/25/the-400-richest-americans-pay-an-18-tax-rate/

and a tax rate of 24% for the top 1% of americans
http://blogs.reuters.com/david-cay-johnston/2011/10/25/beyond-the-1-percent/

The share of federal taxes they pay is 36%.

They reason they pay a lower rate but a higher share of taxes is that they take much more than their share of the countries income.

The top 1% has 40% of the nation's wealth and takes home 24% of the entire countries income. They took just 9% in the 1970's.
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/10/03/334156/top-five-wealthiest-one-percent/?mobile=nc

---
Let me put it this way.. if these trends continue, by 2040 they will have 75% of the nations income. At that point- since they took most of the income, they would pay even more of the income tax even if their income tax rate fell even further.

---
And let me put it another way....
If you take home a FOURTH of the nation's income, and everyone doesn't really pay taxes on the first 6k of their income, then you will pay a THIRD of the total taxes.

---
Had an error in my post above. The gas tax on the poor is 1.6%, not 5%. And it's still .000185% on the top 1%.

---
And FYI, the top 1% is really just a cover for the top .5%. The bottom half of the top 1% are basically poor compared to the top .5%.

$380k per year income. (bottom of the top .5%)
Millions to Multi millions per year in income (top of the top .5%)
http://www.lcurve.org/

he did release a signing statement specifically stating that he didn't like it.

Then why did he sign it?

The detention legislation was attached to the military spending bill for the next year and he did release a signing statement specifically stating that he didn't like it.

Most importantly, all of the predictions made by the Global Warming scientists are wrong. They predicted that the past 3 years would be the worst ever for hurricanes - they turned out to be some of the most mild. The predicted temperature changes couldn't have be much worse.

But we did get this:

"The year 2011 brought the most billion-dollar climate disasters to the United States ever, piling history-making events on top of each other to catastrophic results. The litany of disaster included a scorching drought that rivaled the Dust Bowl summer of 1936, a tornado season twice as bad as the great 1974 tornado outbreak, and flooding worse than the the great 1927 flood on the Mississippi River. [...] Nationwide, more than 6,000 heat records were broken this year. On average, the U.S. has three or four events every year that are considered major natural disasters. But, this year, there were at least fourteen billion-dollar disasters. Damages are expected to exceed $53 billion."

Given that this is mostly a prediction ... citations are a bit hard to come by. If it's about the voting down, here's an example : http://thinkprogress.org/progress-report/the-tea-party-tax-increase/ (the article is written as if the bill being downvoted was actually not a tax increase, but read on to see how little thought "thinkprogress" assumes in it's readership. You can just feel the crybaby frustration dripping between the sentences).

If the tea party attitude lowers the deficit, they will have turned out to be really good. If not, well ... Given what is already happening with the current government bungling ... I'm going to go with less money in the hands of the government being a good thing.

Putting up a factual page about Newt Gingrich at newtginggrich.com won't make Mr Gingrich happy, but legally they should be OK.

You're absolutely right... the problem is, they aren't doing that. Newtgingrich.com currently redirects at random to a list of other sites:

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2011/12/gingrichs-campaign-still-looks-awful-lot-book-tour/45977/
http://www.greektravel.com/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/gingrich-senior-aides-resign/2011/06/09/AGN77VNH_blog.html
http://www.tiffany.com/?siteid=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaZFfQKWX54
http://www.freddiemac.com/
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2009/09/11/60353/gingrich-porn/
http://www.intrade.com/v4/markets/contract/?contractId=654836

And at that point, it starts to look more like bad faith registration. I know they picked the domains it redirects to as a form of political protest, but most visitors won't see that redirection list. Under the UDRP, I think Gingrich could seize the domain name.

Just tried the link http://newtgingrich.com/ and up comes freddiemac.com

Looks like it is on a rotating forwarder. The briefest of examinations suggests that it sends people to a URL from this list:

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2011/12/gingrichs-campaign-still-looks-awful-lot-book-tour/45977/
http://www.greektravel.com/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/gingrich-senior-aides-resign/2011/06/09/AGN77VNH_blog.html
http://www.tiffany.com/?siteid=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaZFfQKWX54
http://www.freddiemac.com/
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2009/09/11/60353/gingrich-porn/
http://www.intrade.com/v4/markets/contract/?contractId=654836

I think it is great. I'd think it was funny if it happened to any politician, or any public figure really.
At a minimum it is funny because of all the people who will get their panties in a wad over it.

The US Chamber of Commerce is a lobbying organization -- it's not like they have Industrial Super Secrets. Besides, a high proportion of their clients are Chinese anyway and presumably have pretty good access to the organization already.

True, The Chamber Of commerce also hacks anyone who criticizes their illegal and immoral behaviour. HBGary Federal payback perhaps?

You're assuming an executive branch that respects the authority of the judicial branch. Considering that a leading presidential candidate has been talking about having judges arrested for rulings that defy his positions, I wouldn't count on that.

It appears that you just said "smaller, more restrained government is a fantasy".

It appears you have a reading comprehension problem. The fantasy I'm taking about is the premise that the tea party operates on; the idea that the government has grown significantly in size in recent history. The government has grown slowly over time, but these have been overwhelmingly due to programs that are immensely popular with all Americans - even Tea Partiers.

It sounds a lot less idiotic than saying that "We are going to destroy X" means "X should not exist". When I say that Obama should not be a president, it doesn't imply I'm right on the way to kill him, no matter how much you try to twist the words.

I don't know about plans by Iran to kill all Jews and hand the land back to Palestinians, but I now about plans by high level Israel official about "transferring" Arabs and Palestinians out of Israel or about constant insistence on Israel being "Jewish state".

The problem actually has nothing to do with the Post Office's business model. The USPS makes quite significant profits. The problem, instead, has to do with Republican legislation put into law in 2006 built with the very purpose of killing the USPS: the USPS has to forward-pay the benefits of its employees *for 75 years into the future*. See here:
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/09/28/330524/postal-non-crisis-post-office-save-itself/

So basically, we shouldn't have to deal with this. But the Republicans want to kill the post office.

It makes no sense. No sense at all. If you find spending that you're willing to cut, cut it. Don't play games by trying to include a token revenue raise that accomplishes nothing, and then claim that because that token isn't met the other side is evil and unwilling to compromise. You're the one holding onto the completely irrational token!

Both sides are doing that -- the Dem mandatory spending proposal is a joke: http://thinkprogress.org/health/2011/10/26/354289/instead-of-cutting-billions-from-medicare-democrats-on-super-committee-should-modernize-the-system/

It's 200 billion in Medicare cuts in exchange for 1 trillion in new taxes PLUS 300 billion in stimulus spending. Is that your definition of compromise?

With all due respect I think you're making a false equivalence here. Please provide an example of how the Democrats are as extreme as Republican with regards to debt reduction. The Democrats have put their sacred cows on the table despite popular support for preserving the social safety nets. They've offered cuts to these programs in exchange for tax increases on the richest people in our country.

The false equivalence here is that you've assumed that any compromise on the Democrat "sacred cows" is a sufficient enough compromise, whereas you've clearly put stipulations on specific levels/sources of revenue increases on the Republicans to be viewed as "compromise". Personally, I believe the proposals the Dems have put forward are an absolute joke. The last one I saw called for nearly a trillion dollars in revenue increases, 300 billion in stimulus spending, and only pitched 200 billion in mandatory spending cuts (http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2011/10/super-committee-democrats-go-big-3-trillion-plan/44169/). A 5-to-1 tradeoff in taxes vs entitlement reform? And you find that fair? 200 billion in mandatory spending over ten years is 20 billion a year -- that's a drop in the bucket next to the ~2 trillion we spend on mandatory spending per year. And on top of that, they want to spend even more than that on stimulus spending! (in the same bill that is supposed to be cutting expenses)

You see, that is the problem. Event he smallest pittance of a compromise by your side you find reasonable, but when the other side does a similar nigh-useless gesture, you recognize it for the horseshit that it is. Heck, even thinkprogress.org recognizes the proposal for the tripe that it is: http://thinkprogress.org/health/2011/10/26/354289/instead-of-cutting-billions-from-medicare-democrats-on-super-committee-should-modernize-the-system/

They get it: "Such reforms are vastly superior to misguided policies that do not actually reduce health care costs, but merely shift them. Unnecessary cuts to benefits and indiscriminate, across-the-board cuts to providers -- as the Super Committee is reportedly considering -- are blunt methods of reducing the federal deficit. Instead, the Super Committee should seize the opportunity to modernize the health care system -- and reduce total health care costs while improving the quality of care."

Right. The warming that isn't happening that isn't causing the Arctic ice to thin. I suppose you can convince yourself of anything if you refuse to look at any evidence that disagrees with your conclusion.

Except the on-going accusations of a bunch of racists, Koch-funding ex-Birchers, "wingnut" birthers, violent milita types, and paid Republican plants?

Do you deny that tea partiers showed up toting guns to a peaceful rally on public property [1], or that the Koch brothers funded them [2]?
There's baseless accusations, and then there's facts. You can't complain about "accusations" that are rooted in fact and provable.

[1] http://helenair.com/news/article_f01b1b8a-4676-11e0-bbad-001cc4c002e0.html
[2] http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/11/03/360433/romney-koch-tea-party/

Update A judge has ruled that Bloomberg cannot lawfully evict protesters from Zuccotti Park and has issued a temporary restraining order against New York City. The order allows the protesters to return to the park until after a hearing on the matter today at 11:30 a.m. from: http://thinkprogress.org/special/2011/11/15/368427/midnight-raid-occupy-wall-street/

It's what happens when government is in concert with corporation - in China, many of the top corporations are, as you point out, effectively state owned.

Here in the West, it's the other way around ; the government is in large part, owned in influence by the corporations. Happily, some part of it remains in public hands.

I don't think your expressed desire for less government is unreasonable from the idealistic point of view, but this is not tenable in real life. Really, I suspect the majority of powerful people who express a wish for less government really mean - "less of the kind of government that gets in my way". I suspect they are not opposed to more of the kind of government that supports them by bailing out their banks, spending tax money on war materiel, and passing laws that continuously erode the original spirit of collective bargains like copyright and patents. Even the Tea Party doesn't put its money where its mouth is, and keeps its cash in a bailed-out bank.

Much of the the West is currently governed by the right wing ; well, China is the furthest end of right wing and has probably always been so - one mighty corporation in all but name. They have much less government than the West, and the common man is much worse off.

Bush's budget issued in 2001 warned that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were overleveraged, and said that they needed tighter controls, oversight, and a host of reforms...

I would love to see a source for that.

I do personally recall Bush campaigning in 2004 based on the increase in home ownership. Here are some direct quotes: link
(think what you will of the linked source, it was the first I found in google with actual quotes)

http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/10/25/352918/robots-are-not-causing-the-recession/

Here's the last line in the article; "I hear about people going out to lunch less often and cooking for themselves more. If the whole economy became a tiny number of highly paid robot engineers and a mass of low-wage salad-makers, there would be many reasons to regret that outcome but high unemployment wouldn’t be the issue." The whole article is worth a read, and even has an informative graph!

Wait, where's the crazy here?

Legalizing, regulating, and taxing marijuana. Not crazy. Crazy would be suggesting that the status quo is ok.

Forgiving student loan debt. An extreme solution to an extreme problem. Again, crazy would be suggesting that the status quo is ok.

The TSA? Every single dollar spent on the TSA has been wasted. They have caught not a single terrorist, and pretty much spend their time harassing grandmas and truckers. You despise it for good reason, yet don't want it abolished? You're the one who is crazy.

Which one of these is not a genuine concern?

He didn't say he'd instantly teleport everyone home his first day in office. Troop levels in Iraq started dropping fast and have continued to drop the entire time Obama has been there. No one every promised or even suggested we "cut and run". Note also, we're finally dealing with Afghanistan, the source of 9/11 terrorism, which Bush used as an accuse to one up his failed father or whatever unexplained reason he went into Iraq.

Not really. Obama is shutting down oil extraction out of the gulf and is complicating extraction throughout the country.

Ok, time for a reality check. US oil production is at it's highest in nearly a decade. It was at it's lowest point in 2008 when Obama took office. What impact has Obama's "Drill baby, Drill!" policy had on gas prices? Nada. As it turns out we are a bit player in a global economy. Tapping new expensive and dirty sources is not going to change that. Drill, baby, drill fails: Oil prices soar in spite of sharp increase in U.S. production under Obama

Maybe you should try getting more of your news from the Daily Show as well. It has been shown that Daily Show viewers are more informed than others. http://thinkprogress.org/default/2007/04/16/11946/daily-show-fox-knowledge/

Oldish study, there was another done in 2008 http://digitaljournal.com/article/259144 (still oldish)

Of course you would already know this if you watched the Daily Show. =)

And why is that? Why should they jump out, in public, of their personal area of true expertise into something which is not their job?

Because they are jumping out in public now to advocate for various measures. I give you one Dr. Mann.

And then there are the nuts at the IPCC.

Of course, I think you are being rather disingenuous by retreating to the cover of objective science and claiming that they (you) are merely reporting the facts. It is plain to even the casual observer that Climate Science and schemes for fighting Global Warming are all part of the same group.

There is no separating the greater AGW community from the calls to impose limitations on CO2 through government policy that almost exclusively entail cut backs on energy use, rationing and taxes. Once you get past all the stupid sniping and name calling on Slashdot you inevitably find a call for these policies. Every major political figure/initiative I've heard of that is remotely related to AGW is sole focused on these kinds of policies. Maybe I missed the Nuclear Advancement and Energy Independence Act being introduce and discussed in a State of the Union addressed and Presidential speeches, but I doubt it.

And lastly, why wouldn't they? If, as Dr. Jones thinks, AGW is a threat to the world as we know it, why would he and his colleagues not all jump to endorse the one technology we have here and now that would do the most to mitigate CO2 emissions?

Extent is not the only important trend as it can be signficantly affected by winds, either clumping or spreading out. Another, arguably more important is total sea ice volume, which is down 65% from 1981 which was a remarkably low volume for the period.
http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/sea_ice_VOL_min_to_date.png

Also, while this year's extent was slightly above 2007's record low, the area was slightly lower. Having lurked on several skeptic and denialist blogs, I see a lot of talk about extent but a glossing-over of area and volume.

Oh, I see - now any investment is automatically a scam. That's not very Republican of you. Except when it's a Democrat's plan for investment. I get it now.

Don't you get it yet? Blinded by promises from your party or hatred for the other party?

Where's the money? That's what they want (don't be a fool, it's Republicans AND Democrats). It's all sitting in private retirement accounts. Untaxed 401Ks, 403Bs, IRAs, etc. How do you get your hands on it? "Infrastructure Bank"!! WooHoo!! It's the answer to the IMF and the World Bank for America this time.

The big investors in Solyndra were the Wal-Mart family, the Waltons.

Really? I hadn't heard that. They lost a lot of money, then, didn't they?

they got Bush to approve the loan that Obama's administration carried over.

Whoa - wait a minute - I know Bush was a fuck-up, but I had no idea he was involved in this scam... Ah - found this. Of course, the guy never mentions in his detailed time-line the Obama "photo-op" visit to the facility, taking full credit for promoting "green companies". But then, he's shilling for the Democrats, as if they are different or something.

Obama is just as bad as Bush, he's still pushing and promoting all the worst policies that Bush put in place, expanding and extending the Police State tactics, the foreign intervention, the market intervention, the crony capitalism, and on and on.

The worst part of all this is the people that go around claiming if only the RIGHT PARTY were in charge, things would change.

The Heritage Foundation claim that the poor aren't really poor because you can buy a TV on Craigslist for 20 dollars has been thoroughly debunked:

http://front.moveon.org/the-craigslist-welfare-program-will-it-work/

http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/07/19/272511/poverty-is-mostly-about-housing-health-care-and-education/

The availability of cheap household durables aside, being poor in the US sucks a lot. Which is why we outstrip the rest of the first world in homelessness, school drop-outs, incarceration of the poor, and people dying of treatable illnesses.

Orders to Cater to Creationists Makes National Park Agnostic on Geology

The USGS pushes gas fracking with wild tales of vast reserves. Until it admits it overestimated by 400%. Fracking doesn't create the jobs, either.

The Fish and Wildlife Service has allowed many species and habitats to be extincted and ruined, either by sportspeople themselves or by the industries the F&WS is charged with protecting them from.

And then there's the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which was at the center of the way Republicans were selling casino franchises to mobsters through their Christian Coalition mafia, through Jack Abramoff. At least in that criminal enterprise people went to jail.

That's just off the top of my head, and from what's been reported. I'm sure there are people and perhaps whole offices that are not corrupt - it's a big department. But if we're rounding off, it's fair to say "totally corrupt".

The only people making it political are politicians backed by big money interests who stand to lose money by policy changes.

Whoops

While it's not exactly a peer reviewed protest, James hansen was recently arrested protesting...you guessed it, a fossil fuel enabling device, aka the Keystone Pipeline.

Among the "scientific" things he said were, "Exploitation of tar sands would make it implausible to stabilize climate and avoid disastrous global climate impacts.” and "“For the sake of our children and our grandchildren, we must find somebody who is working for our dream.”

I'm no scientists, but I dare say invoking "for the children" is not a part of the scientific method. Now he's no different the Babs Streisand or Meyl Streep.

Hansen is the poster child for AGW and it appears he's fully made the transition from scientist to political activist. And if you believe this isn't a common mindset throughout the AGW community, I have a Hummer that get's 100mpg to sell you. They are just too chicken shit to say it outright.

...and we're paying less per unit of energy because demand is lower.

I'm positive the exact opposite will occur. Again using California as an example, examine their water conservation efforts. First, water utilities actually raised their rates in order to promote "conservation" (making water unaffordable is not the same as conservation). Then, as the economy tanked AND usage dropped, water utilities raised rates in order to offset decreased revenues.

I'm all for conservation, but with union strangleholds on these industries, the government in bed with the unions, all on top of campaigns by reckless anti-progress environmentalists and NIMBYs, things are only going to go from bad to worse. Every time a new round of environmental regulations gets handed down by a government (who despises electricity generation but wants to keep all the lights on), generation stations must be retooled or closed, both meaning higher costs for consumers.

The reality is drops in power demand aren't primarily from conservation efforts: they're from the high cost of energy and the steady decay of American manufacturing, particularly on the west coast.