President Bush, yesterday:

The majority was elected on a pledge of fiscal responsibility, but so far it’s acting like a teenager with a new credit card.

Outstanding United States public debt under Republican government:

January/Year	Public Debt (Trillions)
2001	$5.7
2002	$5.9
2003	$6.4
2004	$7.0
2005	$7.6
2006	$8.2
2007	$8.7

That’s a teenager with a $3 trillion credit card.

I haven’t paid real close attention to presidential campaign rhetoric, but one of the talking points I recall Senator Hillary Clinton using–repeatedly–at the last debate was that we should elect her because she would “fight” for us voters. In fact, she said it so often it seemed as if this was the only reason we should vote for her. She’s fought Bush and she will keep fighting.
Well, Senator, if this is your way of showing us how you confront adversity, you’re doing it wrong:

After a tour, the candidate [Clinton] took questions from the crowd.
She called on a young woman. “As a young person,” said the well-spoken Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff, “I’m worried about the long-term effects of global warming. How does your plan combat climate change?”
“Well, you should be worried,” Clinton replied. “You know, I find as I travel around Iowa that it’s usually young people that ask me about global warming.”
There’s a good reason for that, too. The question was a plant, totally rigged in advance, like a late-night infomercial. Just before the public forum a Clinton staffer had chosen the young woman, a student at Grinnell College, and asked her to ask that specific question.

Arranging for staged punches isn’t exactly the hallmark of a champion fighter.
I’m not totally unsympathetic to campaigns wanting to focus their message on campaign events. And if I was a candidate I’d probably grow weary of fielding lame questions at such events. But if the Clinton campaign felt they had to set something up, couldn’t they have at least generated an interesting question? That wasn’t even as creative as a fake FEMA press conference.
What’s up with all the “fighter” talk, anyway? I think this is the Clinton campaign’s cleaver way of trying to mask her high negative numbers. People don’t like her because she is so effective in combating Republican ideology, the excuse goes.
That would be nice if it were true. Unfortunately, I think there’s much more to her unfavorable numbers than that. And this kind of story only perpetuates the notion that Clinton isn’t a straight shooter.

What can right wing bloggers do while waiting to rehash their “war on Christmas” foolishness? Gin up bogus outrage about how someone recognizes another holiday.
According to this L.A. Times article, some people have been getting bent out of shape over–of all things–the decorative logos Google occasionally features on holidays or to commemorate historic events. According to these people, Google hasn’t been patriotic enough in its use of logos.
Frankly, I think you’ve got to be awfully bored to be keeping track of Google’s logo usage. But if you want to fault Google for having skipped Memorial and Veteran’s Days, while recognizing most other major holidays, that’s a fair–though trivial–criticism.
Remarkably, it’s gotten far sillier than that:

[L]ast week’s decision to honor the 50th anniversary of the Sputnik launch — the second “g” in Google was replaced with a drawing of the Soviet satellite — is being blasted by some conservatives.
Not only did Google honor an achievement by a totalitarian regime that was our Cold War enemy, they griped, but it did so without having ever altered its logo to commemorate U.S. military personnel on Memorial Day or Veterans Day.
“It’s a kick to your belly,” said conservative blogger Giovanni Gallucci, 39, a social media consultant from Dallas. “I understand these guys are scientists and engineers and they have their quirks and want to make sure people are recognized who might not normally be recognized . . . but why not celebrate the struggles that we’ve come through as a people?”

“Kick to you belly”? How much more petty can one get? We’re not even in the Cold War anymore, are we? Is Soviet Union bashing still mandatory?
Whether because of this pressure or otherwise, yesterday [Veteran’s Day] Google did have a special logo featuring WWI-era helmets. Hopefully the search engine police were able to sleep easier last night.

Juliet Eilperin has an article in today’s Washington Post which outlines the risks inherent in campaigning on a platform to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In a nutshell, calling for changes which cost consumers money (at least in the near term) is not the best strategy to win votes.
From the piece:

According to energy expert Tracy Terry’s analysis of a recent Massachusetts Institute of Technology study, under the scenario of an 80 percent reduction in emissions from 1990 levels, by 2015 Americans could be paying 30 percent more for natural gas in their homes and even more for electricity. At the same time, the cost of coal could quadruple and crude oil prices could rise by an additional $24 a barrel.

I don’t know if Ms. Terry has been paying attention to energy prices lately, but they’ve been increasing at a faster rate than that, without any new regulations. Frankly, this is a reason I’ve been ambivalent towards imposing an additional carbon tax to reduce emissions. Nature is in the process of imposing its own “tax” as energy supplies fail to keep pace with demand. Oil is poised to rise above $100/barrel and beyond. How much can we expect drivers to shell out? Do we really want to add another tax as gasoline rises to $4 or $5 a gallon? At some point you have to worry about the impact high energy prices will have on the economy. This is a more immediate problem which I think Democratic candidates should be focusing on.

Thanks to a high electricity prices and a generous renewable energy law, solar energy is a booming growth industry in Germany:

Even though millions of Germans flee their damp, dark homeland for holidays in the Mediterranean sun, 55 percent of the world’s photovoltaic (PV) power is generated on solar panels set up between the Baltic Sea and the Black Forest.
So far just 3 percent of Germany’s electricity comes from the sun, but the government wants to raise the share of renewables to 27 percent of all energy by 2020 from 13 percent.
It is a thriving industry with booming exports that has created tens of thousands of jobs in recent years, posting growth rates that surpassed the optimistic forecasts made by the fathers of a pioneering 2000 renewable energy law.

I don’t know whether or not it’s wise to adopt the German incentive model here in America. Many people couldn’t afford it if we doubled electric rates. But Germany is demonstrating what we are capable of doing if we mobilize to change our energy paradigm.
If cloudy Germany can harness the sun’s energy, we can certainly do it in the Southeast.
Here’s a clip from PBS’ Nova which examines German solar energy: