“The “your guy’s a baddie” argument doesn’t really fly for people who don’t view George Bush as “their guy”, and fully concur that he is a “baddie”.”

“you’re suffering from misplaced blame syndrome. This is a perfectly normal side effect of “History started when I woke up this morning” syndrome. Failing to take history older than the Bush administration into account, you fail to observe significant amounts of relevant information that would be inconvenient to your worldview.”

“”I know you are, but what am I!”"

Thank you for playing!

Just because globe makers benefit by people believing the world is round doesn’t mean there is a cabal keeping flat-earthers out of the map market.

On the second point, I don’t believe I demonized Your Hero as much as pointed out that the current tax subsidies that he championed at the behest of the industry that feeds him are at least as much to blame for the current situation as the Dirty F***ing Hippies.

On the third point… no, wait, is there even a point there besides Librul Derangement Syndrome?

You’re suffering from “history started when I woke up this morning” syndrome. Don’t worry, it’s common to your breed. Ethanol has been subsidized for years before that evil Bushy took office. It was mandated as an additive to gasoline to boost octane ratings when lead in gasoline was reduced, and eventually outlawed, in the ancient times. Like, 30 years ago. Like, before Clinton took office even. And why did we switch to unleaded gasoline and increase ethanol additives? It certainly wasn’t because “Big Oil” wanted it that way. I’ll give you a hint: it had something to do with environmentalism.

Additionally, you’re suffering from partisan hack syndrome. You view George Bush as the uber-conservative, and consequently view anyone who identifies themselves as conservative as sharing identical viewpoints to his. However, many conservatives do indeed loathe George Bush because he is too – get this now – liberal! For some people, it is possible to separate political ideology from a particular politician. Most conservatives don’t have “Our presidential candidate is the Messiah” syndrome. The “your guy’s a baddie” argument doesn’t really fly for people who don’t view George Bush as “their guy”, and fully concur that he is a “baddie”.

Finally, you’re suffering from misplaced blame syndrome. This is a perfectly normal side effect of “History started when I woke up this morning” syndrome. Failing to take history older than the Bush administration into account, you fail to observe significant amounts of relevant information that would be inconvenient to your worldview. This makes it easy to blame Bush, the free market, conservatives, “Big Oil” baddies, and, most strangely, lack of government intervention, for 35 years of US energy policy, but is good for little else outside of your Daily Kos social circles.

In the interest of saving us both time and energy (oooh, ironic), in lieu of any further responses I will defer to the following argument: “I know you are, but what am I!”

Using food crops for fuel, especially when the immediate and clear result of such practice is food scarcity and famine, is immoral.

Leaving aside who pushed for the idea (BUSH), or who benefits from the tax subsidies (farmers, ethanol refineries, the gas industry, alot of it in Texas) or who got played on the benefit of the scheme (the masses), the end result is, as Mr Brewton implies and I (a progressive-liberal for those keeping score) agree that the practice is immoral.

So, what is the remedy? Here is a case where both conservatives and progressives seem to agree that it is in fact governments duty to step in and regulate for the sake of morality, if nothing else. Perhaps we should rescind the tax cuts and ban the use of food grain in fuel, as well as the use of food producing arable land for any non-food plant. And perhaps we should encourage international support for such bans.

Clearly, this may mean the destruction of an entire sector of the energy industry, unless an alternate cellulose crop is used, but that is clearly the moral thing to do. I understand hemp is very good for this sort of thing, so perhaps that could take the place of corn.

The first step is for moral conservatives like Mr Brewton to join with, rather than demonize, scientists and progressives who recognize the immorality of food for fuel, and oppose President Bush, the Republicans in congress and their friends in the energy business in continuing down this wasteful path.

http://www.news.com/Fuels-industry-seeks-its-ethanol-2.0/2100-11395_3-6153349.html

we get, “Although he didn’t use the word “cellulosic” in his State of the Union address, President George Bush’s call for increased RENEWABLE (note: as opposed to wind/thermal/solar) fuels on Wednesday turned the spotlight on an emerging form of ethanol technology,” and “To achieve the PRESIDENT’S GOAL of producing 35 billion gallons of alternative fuels a year by 2017, experts say production of so-called cellulosic ethanol–made from woody substances, such as straw or wood chips–would need to be brought on line at a large scale” and that “The Renewable Fuels Association–the main ethanol lobbying group in the United States–lauded Bush’s stepped-up energy target,”

All of this was part of The Energy Policy Act of 2005, a broad measure that nonetheless failed to raise mileage standards in cars and trucks.

So, to recap, contrary to Mr Brewton’s assertions, the only people who “feel good” about ethanol subsidies are the industry lobbyists who wrote the legislation and the companies they work for, as well as Tom Delay and Bush, who proudly heralded its inception. Progressives and environmentalists have been critical of idea since the beginning, and are even more so now.

So tell me, Mr Brewton, are you ready to lobby that known liberal Bush to lose the ethanol tax credits?

Free markets are only sustainable if ALL of the costs are factored in. If some costs are left out, eventually the imbalance will bite you in the ass. In the case of fossil fuels, the costs of global climate change and the associated costs in famine and resource shortages have never been factored in, and now it’s biting us in the ass. Assessing and levying the true costs of our decisions is exactly what government is for – do you really expect the oil companies to do it?

Oh, and explain again how it is that the liberals, who have not been in charge federally for some time, and whose state-level initiatives have been shot down by this administration are to blame for bad energy policy?

As for your last question, no, there is no other way to do work besides heat transfer, but as it happens, there is a huge ball of fire in the sky which seems to do little else but transfer heat… I have a feeling that were we to honestly asses the costs of burning fossil fuels, than turning to solar generated power would be more than cheap enough (after all, it’s almost there now, even without that honest assessment).

“Whether masses ‘respond’ is not really the issue.”

Then what was your point in saying, “Perhaps if the party controlling the political discourse had spent more time educating with reason we wouldn’t have gone down this path in the first place.”?

“But were I to try and solve the problem, I would begin by looking at ag policy, not pointing fingers at liberals. … Mr. Woronko, in the previous article on this blog, quite rightly points to government policy, not straw-men liberals, as the fulcrum for bad energy policy.”

This is like saying, “People aren’t inherently evil; it’s society that makes them evil.” [When all along society is nothing but, guess what, people!] This is not to mention that it’s liberals who are constantly pushing environmental legislation. In fact, they take credit for it.

“… the real culprit is an economy that depends almost exclusively on BURNING THINGS.”

Do you know of any other way to do work besides heat transfer? [This is a physics question.] Up to this point, “burning things” [namely oil] is the most cost-efficient means currently available. As soon as burning oil becomes economically infeasible, it will be replaced.

“This author offers nothing but straw men and obfuscation.”

I think his point is that millions of individuals working in a free market solve economic [and most other] problems better and more efficiently than a few bureaucrats because no matter how smart bureaucrats are, they can’t know everything [such as everyone’s needs and wants] about every transaction that has to take place; and besides that, bureaucrats don’t respond to market forces, they respond to political considerations. I heard George Soros once say, “Government doesn’t give to benefit the recipient; it gives to benefit the giver. [Must have been before he became a liberal.]

If you doubt the ability of the free market, here http://www.bkmarcus.com/cache/POW is a short article, “The Economic Organization of a POW Camp” that explains how the individual and overall well-being of a POW camp is raised by a system of free trade. “Very soon after capture, people realized that it was both undesirable and unnecessary, in view of the limited size and the equality of supplies, to give away or to accept gifts of cigarettes or food. ‘Goodwill’ developed into trading as a more equitable means of maximizing individual satisfaction.”

After reading that article, ask yourself what would happen if a modern liberal with lungpower were to be injected into the camp.