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...Neil Young's new album is out and free to listen to. I'm likely to be humming 'Let's Impeach the President' all day, I admit. Aside from the Bush quotes. The man has no rhythm.
...speaking of, Bush is still treating the budget bill he and the Republicans 'certified' (despite it not being approved by both levels of Congress) as law, not that you'll see much coverage of /that/...
...oh, and he threatens to veto the appropriations bill for funds to the soldiers in Iraq and the sadly delayed and bungled Katrina clean-up and building, unless it's massively cut. The Republicans have enough signed names that they can sustain the veto...
...at the same time, he's willing to give most Americans a hundred dollar bribe if we just ignore the drilling in Alaska, and give him yet more authority in setting fuel standards, and pass a likely toothless new energy bill...
...and there are calls from Republicans (and Loe Liberman) to abolish FEMA as a 'useless' agency, after said agency was crippled by incompetent Bush appointees and by being folded into Homeland Security, where it was largely ignored...
...and, predictably, the Democrats do nothing. Except, of course, attend Fox News parties. (Looking at you, Hillary.)
In other news, I have my iPod back, and the happy gaming convention this weekend. So at least that's happy.
...speaking of, Bush is still treating the budget bill he and the Republicans 'certified' (despite it not being approved by both levels of Congress) as law, not that you'll see much coverage of /that/...
...oh, and he threatens to veto the appropriations bill for funds to the soldiers in Iraq and the sadly delayed and bungled Katrina clean-up and building, unless it's massively cut. The Republicans have enough signed names that they can sustain the veto...
...at the same time, he's willing to give most Americans a hundred dollar bribe if we just ignore the drilling in Alaska, and give him yet more authority in setting fuel standards, and pass a likely toothless new energy bill...
...and there are calls from Republicans (and Loe Liberman) to abolish FEMA as a 'useless' agency, after said agency was crippled by incompetent Bush appointees and by being folded into Homeland Security, where it was largely ignored...
...and, predictably, the Democrats do nothing. Except, of course, attend Fox News parties. (Looking at you, Hillary.)
In other news, I have my iPod back, and the happy gaming convention this weekend. So at least that's happy.
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But no, there's not much of one. Which is one of the reasons why the Democratic Party is doing so badly...people like Lieberman and most of the Southern Democrat are far more likely to side with Republicans than they are their own party. The Dems don't have any intra-party discipline at all.
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Here is what is making me absolutely crazy today:
Brazil is currently energy independant. It had two things going for it: crazy despots in the 70s who nationalized every gas station and sugar cane. Sugar cane produces the best and cleanest ethanol in the world. You need a very high concentration of sugar glucose to make high quality ethanol, and Brazil makes nothing but. So when the crazy despots nationalized the gas stations, they made them all support ethanol. When GM released flex-fuel engines, GM sold the patent to VW. VW made affordable cars and sold them to Brazil. In Brazil, they filled them up with ethanol and got off foreign energy 100% and now their economy is going crazy. They make far more ethanol than they can consume.
In the US, our brilliant Republican-run Congress has done two fascinating things:
1. Put a 54 cent/barrel tariff on ethanol from Brazil (or the Caribbean or any other high producer of sugar cane) to ensure that we never buy this overstock of ethanol.
2. Put in a mandate that by 5/1/2006, the additive MTRC (called 'oxygenate') be removed from all gasoline and replaced with corn-made ethanol from the Midwest.
Except:
1. Corn ethanol sucks. It does not burn anywhere near as well as sugar cane ethanol.
2. Iowa cannot possibly generate enough ethanol to support the supplies of the East Coast or the West Coast, since there is no distribution system for it in the US.
3. Since we have a protectionist/isolationist tariff in place, we will not import sugar cane ethanol from Brazil to releave the price pressure and drive prices back down.
The end result? As soon as shaking a nuke at Iran spiked prices -- and YES that is what caused instability in the Middle East and sent prices over $75 a barrel -- combined with the ethanol mandate, mass shortages and gas at $3.50 a gallon.
Our Dear Leader, the Decider, and his lackies in Congress have no one to blame but themselves.
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Welcome to the slow lurch to the end. Have a fiddle.