Tag Archives: Progressive

News

GREAT NEWS: Senate votes to de-fund ACORN 83-7!

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I am so happy that I am crying.

Story from Ed Morrissey of Hot Air.

Excerpt:

Senator Mike Johanns (R-NE) introduced an amendment to the HUD and Transportation appropriation bill to strip ACORN of all federal funding.  A week ago, Johanns wouldn’t have gotten the amendment to the floor.  Today, however, after three straight days of BigGovernment.com’s video exposés of ACORN offices in Washington DC, New York City, and Baltimore offering assistance to pimping, tax evasion, and trafficking in underage Salvadorean girls, Johanns not only got his vote — but he got an impressive bipartisan showing.  The Senate passed the Johanns amendment 83-7.

At the beginning of the vote, it appeared that Democrats might resist.  Initially, a half-dozen Democrats cast votes in opposition to the amendment.  A few more cast votes against it as the rest of the Senate voted, but the tide appeared to shift.  More and more Democrats signed onto the amendment, and votes started changing.  One male voice could be heard in the chamber saying, “I want to change my vote!”  Among those who changed their votes: Tom Udall (D-NM), Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), and Herb Kohl (D-WI).

There’s so much good news lately… I am just so happy about it!

These are the Democrats in favor of taxpayer funding of consultations on child prostitution:

  • Dick Durbin (D-IL)
  • Roland Burris (D-IL)
  • Robert Casey (D-PA)
  • Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)
  • Patrick Leahy (D-VT)
  • Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
  • Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)

Michelle Malkin reports that ACORN has been dumped by the Census Bureau as well!

Commentary

Is Thomas Friedman a liberal fascist?

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Consider this post from extremely left-wing NYT.

Excerpt:

Watching both the health care and climate/energy debates in Congress, it is hard not to draw the following conclusion: There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today.

One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century. It is not an accident that China is committed to overtaking us in electric cars, solar power, energy efficiency, batteries, nuclear power and wind power. China’s leaders understand that in a world of exploding populations and rising emerging-market middle classes, demand for clean power and energy efficiency is going to soar. Beijing wants to make sure that it owns that industry and is ordering the policies to do that, including boosting gasoline prices, from the top down.

Our one-party democracy is worse….

Jonah Goldberg adds:

So there you have it. If only America could drop its inefficient and antiquated system, designed in the age before globalization and modernity and, most damning of all, before the lantern of Thomas Friedman’s intellect illuminated the land. If only enlightened experts could do the hard and necessary things that the new age requires, if only we could rely on these planners to set the ship of state right. Now, of course, there are “drawbacks” to such a system: crushing of dissidents with tanks, state control of reproduction, government control of the press and the internet. Omelets and broken eggs, as they say. More to the point, Friedman insists, these “drawbacks” pale in comparison to the system we have today here in America.

I cannot begin to tell you how this is exactly the argument that was made by American fans of Mussolini in the 1920s. It is exactly the argument that was made in defense of Stalin and Lenin before him (it’s the argument that idiotic, dictator-envying leftists make in defense of Castro and Chavez today). It was the argument made by George Bernard Shaw who yearned for a strong progressive autocracy under a Mussolini, a Hitler or a Stalin (he wasn’t picky in this regard). This is the argument for an “economic dictatorship” pushed by Stuart Chase and the New Dealers. It’s the dream of Herbert Croly and a great many of the Progressives.

All of this is courtesy of Muddling Towards Maturity.

News

Are we ever going to run out of oil and natural gas?

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Story from Sweden’s Royal Institute of Technology. (H/T Stop the ACLU via ECM)

Excerpt:

Researchers at KTH have been able to prove that the fossils of animals and plants are not necessary to generate raw oil and natural gas. This result is extremely radical as it means that it will be much easier to find these energy sources and that they may be located all over the world.

“There is no doubt that our research has shown that raw oil and natural gas occur without the inclusion of fossils. All types of rock formations can act as hosts for oil deposits,” asserts Vladimir and adds that this applies to areas of land that have previously remained unexplored as possible sources of this type of energy.

“With the help of our research we even know where oil could be found in Sweden!” says Vladimir Kutcherov, Professor at the KTH Department of Energy Technology in Stockholm.

Together with two research colleagues, Professor Kutcherov has simulated the process of pressure and heat that occurs naturally in the inner strata of the earth’s crust. This process generates hydrocarbons, the primary elements of oil and natural gas.

According to Vladimir Kutcherov, these results are a clear indication that oil supplies are not drying up, which has long been feared by researchers and experts in the field.

Maybe this will help some of the overpopulation/resource scarcity people on the left to stop trying to impose totalitatarian government on the rest of us? I don’t mind if they obsess over the end of the world, but could they please engage in their religious speculations in private? Leave the energy policy to the grown-ups.