User: pnh Date: 2007-01-14 15:35 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

It seems a lot more likely that this Observer story is simply Blairite wishful thinking. I'd be happy to be wrong.

User: squirrel_monkey Date: 2007-01-14 15:58 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

Ten bucks on the casual lip service.

User: sartorias Date: 2007-01-14 16:08 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

What I'm afraid is that, if he shifts, it's because Halliburton has been appointed something-or-other "in charge" of investigating and solving the climate problem--and is being given a multi billion dollar budget.

User: pnh Date: 2007-01-14 17:29 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

If Halliburton really could help fix our climate change problems, I'd be happy to let them. As Bruce Sterling points out, there aren't any solutions that aren't going to involve getting Big Business and Big Government on board with supertankers full of money.

My reservation is that there's Big Business, and then there are particular firms like Halliburton that have a long track record of not actually doing a very effective job of anything except being (1) politically well-connected and (2) staggeringly corrupt. Corruption is always present in the corporate world, but some companies actually manage to be reasonably competent at achieving their ostensible aims despite it. Halliburton isn't one of those.

Yet Sterling is right:

It's gonna take a tremendous amount of money to fix a soiled planetary atmosphere. There's never been a state-sponsored project that size. Not even close. It makes the Hoover Dam look like a cork.

You look around at people taking serious remediary steps...they're not politicians. They're not shoestring activists and Seattle 99ers. They're rich moguls. Michael Bloomberg. Vinod Khosla. Richard Branson. The Google boys. Wal-Mart. Two percent of the population, the financial super-elite, owns fifty percent of the planet.

I'm not saying that's a good situation, or that its politically smart to suck up to such profoundly antidemocratic characters, but they're the only ones with levers in their hands.

User: sartorias Date: 2007-01-14 17:34 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

This is quite true. My reservation about Halliburton has to do with what you say: ineffetiveness and corruption. So far this administration has showed a trend for putting huge projects into their hands--that means billions of dollars--and so far, little result, especially in proportion to the money channeled to them.

User: juliabk Date: 2007-01-14 19:31 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

Corruption is always present in the corporate world, but some companies actually manage to be reasonably competent at achieving their ostensible aims despite it. Halliburton isn't one of those.

This is one of the great unspoken truths of our times. Or perhaps all times. People don't want to actually *say* this sort of thing out loud. (Yes, I know, people have always said it, but it never seems to percolate into the public mind.) It upsets their illusions. I'm one of the most anti-corporate people I know (and I've moved in some fairly radical circles), but I'm not stupid. I don't have a serious problem with low-grade corruption if the organization is also doing the job. It's when, like with Halliburton, the corruption becomes 'the job' and they do nothing else. There's a corporate charter just begging to be yanked.

User: marrael Date: 2007-01-14 16:11 (UTC) Subject: (no subject) Keyword: raft

He's flipflopping!

User: gregvaneekhout Date: 2007-01-14 16:37 (UTC) Subject: (no subject) Keyword: zombie

It's not atypical Republican strategy to acknowledge a problem exists (say, pollution, or poverty), and then pass minimum legislation that does little or nothing to actually solve the problem, while giving the appearance that they are. That they didn't take this approach to global warming is what makes the current adminitravesty so weird and frightening.

User: jtdiii Date: 2007-01-14 16:47 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

In an age when even Exxon admits that the disinformation campaign that it has been running might not have been a good idea, Bush may have realized the without his largest donors backing the shell corporations that have been a chorus of anti-global warming disinformation, that he might be out out there without any backing...

ideahttp://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/008200701091010.htm

User: juliabk Date: 2007-01-14 19:22 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

It's only inconsistency if a Democrat does it. If a Republican does it, it's thoughtful consideration of the facts and weighing the options presented by his advisers against the needs of the people.

I really wouldn't mind the latter, except that I don't believe the Bonehead in Chief is capable of being thoughtful.

User: tharain Date: 2007-01-14 19:46 (UTC) Subject: (no subject) Keyword: Bush

My bet is that it'll be the same "historic shift in position" that the Dickwad In Chief Made in Iraq.

You know the one: encourging resolve and sending in more troups.

Asshat.

User: zhai Date: 2007-01-14 20:20 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

This is what I thought of, too. He certainly set up an expectation that he WOULDN'T be saying the same shit all over again. I seriously braced myself for the personal discomfort of agreeing with him if he FINALLY did something smart, maybe something recommended by the military, but no. It was an interesting study in relief at not swallowing personal pride underlaid with a continuing sort of despair.

User: tharain Date: 2007-01-14 20:35 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

Agreed. I try very hard (and often fail) to listen to what Bush says, and not to the fact that he's the one saying it, so I can actually consider the material in a relatively objective fashion.

Unfortunately (for the world), I've yet to have to separate my detestation for his ideas from my personal loathing for the man. The only time it came even remotely close was over the Illegal Immigrant proposal, and then he scuttled that one by just being stupid about Building The Berlin Wall in the US while not providing for funding. Stupid Bush, on two accounts: a) it wouldn't work anyway, and b) it's so blatantly a (non funded) sop to his hard cores.

I have had the apalling situation here, in California, of gradually having to agree with and, OMG, approve of Governor Arnold. Until his got his ass handed to him in November of '05 in that ill fated special election, when the California electorate axed every single proposition he supported and shoved down our throats, he was functioning in a very Bushian political manner, i.e., ignore the people and do what you want.

That election apparently made him reassess, and in the last year, I find myself going "Yeah, I agree. That's good. Uh huh."

It has cost me no little bit of pride and arrogance to accept that. Still couldn't vote for him last November, but when he won, I was okay with it.

Scares me spitless, because I can't decide if I'm becoming apathetic and losing my edge, or if the man is actually doing a decent and good job. I hope it's the latter.

I also hope his winning the election won't change the way he's been functioning.

User: zhai Date: 2007-01-15 05:12 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

I live in New York now, but grew up in California and still basically consider myself a Californian, so that plus my family being in the state led to me keeping up with CA politics... that whole business with the election where Schwartzeneggar got in the first time was ridiculous. Has any movement been made to correct that broken system? A runoff vote allowing someone elected by a minority vote in the state following an impeachment is just insane.

It seemed, in the beginning, that he was doing things right, and then took a swerve into la-la land cutting funding from programs that were already hurting severely. I was still living in CA when the school system was starting to really fall apart at the seams.

If he actually learns, and does what he says he's going to do, I don't think that's a bad thing, and I don't think it's a bad thing to support a politician when they do so. But I have the same response for Bush. My utter hatred of him (and boy do I now need a bumper sticker that says "I hated Bush before it was cool") eclipses nearly everything else. But I still would have been relieved if he would have fixed this damn Iraq disaster. I just saw him on a 60 Minutes interview and he was doing a whole lot of very distinct counter-PR -- talking about books he's read, admitting mistakes, trying to lay blame on himself... but it's all just a sham. He is no kind of president. And what I want to know is where the hell is Harry Truman when you need him.

User: madwriter Date: 2007-01-14 20:33 (UTC) Subject: (no subject)

Of course in one nasty example, he mentioned supporting alternative energy forms in last year's SotU speech (or was it the year before?...last year, I think), and then literally within days slashed the alternative energy budget.