Iran's election; and missing the point

[mindstalk]

Iran may have a decades-long democratic past but it's looking bad at the moment. Ahmadinejad had been polling at 40%, but the gov't claims a 60% win. Fraud seems likely given various factors, analogous to Obama winning Arizona or McCain winning Chicago.

* In other news, GOP denounces climate change plan as an energy tax. Half-right: we need a *fossil carbon* tax, to harness market forces in making people use it less. They propose

In the GOP's weekly radio and Internet address, Indiana Rep. Mike Pence said Congress should instead open the way for more domestic oil and natural gas production and ease regulatory barriers for building new nuclear power plants.

Nukes are fine (though "easing regulatory barriers" needs a wary eye), but encouraging more oil and gas production? No, that's the exact opposite of what you need in a climate-change bill. We need to replace production, not expand it.

Comments

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

That may well be true. Still, deregulation has a lot of bad examples to rise above; the reasonable presumption is to be suspicious.