Yes, I read paleocon blogs, too.

[randomness]

From http://www.amconmag.com/blog/2008/07/29/el-rushbore/:

Limbaugh endorses China’s fuel subsidies:

Folks, I don’t know what the price of gasoline is in China and I don’t know to what extent, if any, it is subsidized — okay, it is subsidized. See, the ChiComs need their economy growing. They need people driving around, moving around. They need people to be able to afford fuel, so they’re subsidizing fuel. They’re not bailing people out of stupid home mortgage messes. They’re buying their gasoline for them, because they need an economy. Know what energy means to this, the whole subject of economic growth. So meanwhile, the ChiComs, a country certainly growing, certainly on the rise, but it ain’t the United States of America. How does it make you feel that Zhang Linsen has a big Hummer with nine speakers blaring as he pulls out into a four-lane road with so much smog he basically can’t see the car in front of him, and you are trading in all of your cars and trying to go out and find basically a lawn mower.

It’s amazing what passes for conservatism these days. The market is currently dictating that Americans become more fuel efficient, which Limbaugh apparently disapproves of. Imagine the uproar if Obama or Clinton said that the U.S. should become more like China.

(Via Daniel Larison, who adds: "Actually, it makes me feel relieved that I don’t live in smog-infested cities where marathoners collapse and die because of the pollution.")

Comments

Re: You don't know many people outside of your political social circle, do you?

[ketzl.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. s/wingnuts/Rush/ at the very least.

So are you in favor of McCain's 'eliminate the gas tax' idea?

[fin9901.livejournal.com]

I'm fairly ambivalent about it, actually. High prices tend to be their own economic correction, and it's already working; resale values of SUVs have fallen through the floor and you may have noticed that gas prices have backed off 20 cents or so in the last few weeks. I think McCain's motivation is less from an economic standpoint and more from a social standpoint-- a lot of people have been really squeezed by the price of gas doubling over the last two years, and McCain wants to give them a break at the pumps for the summer. Note that the 'eliminate the gas tax' idea was a summer-only thing; if he was doing it primarily for political gain, he would have proposed that the gas tax be suspended for the rest of the year (i.e. until after the election).

I don't think eliminating the gas tax for the summer would really matter much one way or the other. Really, we should be trying to increase *all* domestic sources of energy-- wind, solar, nuclear, drill in ANWR, drill off the coasts, suck the oil out of the shale in Colorado, clean coal, all of it. We've been pouring money primarily into research for 'alternative' sources of energy for a long time now, and haven't gotten much out of it; it's high time to go for the energy we know we have. Every bit of energy that we can produce ourselves, no matter the source, is that much energy we don't have to import from countries that hate us, and shipping oil from Alaska or from off-shore platforms has to be less risky than shipping it from halfway around the world.

[ketzl.livejournal.com]

Market forces DO work, most of the time. Which is why the tax suspension would have done more harm than good, from the analyses I saw which said that the lower price would spur greater consumption which would drive the price right back up, with the added bonus of leaving the federal government short on highway funds.

I wholeheartedly agree with you re: increasing all sources of domestic energy. Of course we don't want to create environmental messes that cost more to clean up than the energy's worth, but what we're currently doing by importing so much energy (besides destroying the US economy) is just exporting the environmental risks. But it's all one planet.