For an independent voter the only argument for keeping the Republicans in charge is the prospect of something worse (Cromwell, remember, replaced the Rump Parliament with a military dictatorship). And there are plenty of things to worry about with the Democrats. Their party looks ever more susceptible to the siren call of protectionism. It has no better ideas than the president for dealing with the mess in Iraq (and some worse ones). And robust scrutiny could give way to hotheaded revenge. It would surely do Mr Rumsfeld a power of good to be hauled before opposition-dominated committees from time to time; but talk of impeaching Mr Bush is dangerous. Nancy Pelosi, the worryingly left-leaning representative from San Francisco who is likely to be speaker, will have a tough job keeping control
From the Economist (behind subwall).
There are various ways to understand that sentence, but one way sure is that leaning left is worrying per se. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
The climate-change debate is especially illuminating when it come to the individual vs community issue. After thousands of years of finding ever more clever and sophisticated ways to start and use fire, we are told we have a decade to find a way to douse at least 80% of those fires.
This will be an astonishing difficult task. It is FAR beyond the abilities of either group of extremists. The market-will-solve-everything folks have to explain how Enron made SO much progress addressing climate change. The lefties have to explain why the Marxist states were such environmental disasters.
That leaves us mixed-economy folks in the middle. And yes, we DO have solutions that have at least a CHANCE of success.
Personally, I just want the extremists to STFU and get out of the way so the grown-ups can run things for a while. "Remember the I35W bridge--who needs terrorists when there are Republicans"
