Chan Lowe: The Gulf oil spill
Every disaster is abstract until it happens.
It can be demagogued, exploited, twisted, disputed, trivialized and even ignored when it is still theoretical.
Now, as the tendrils of oil approach the coast of the southeastern United States⎯ with heartbreaking pictures of petroleum-soaked wildlife struggling ashore on ruined beaches sure to follow⎯ everybody from Sarah Palin to Barack Obama suddenly finds himself on the wrong side of history.
Drill, baby, drill? Whoever said that? It’s so 2008.
The reality that our insatiable energy demands require us to drill in the Gulf in the first place provides a perfect segue to something I witnessed on the way to work this morning: Here in Florida we have these gorgeous trees called tabebuias that bloom an electric yellow for a few weeks, then drop all their petals to the ground, creating an enormous mess.
I passed a shopping center where a maintenance worker was cleaning up after one of these things. Rather than rake up the petals and dispose of them, he was using a gasoline-powered blower to disperse them off the property and into the street--where they became everyone else’s problem, meaning no one’s problem.
So, after all the fuel was burned and the additional greenhouse gases were released into the atmosphere, absolutely nothing of value was accomplished.
How perfectly American.
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For a party that likes to scare the bejeezus out of people with horror stories about socialist government takeover of our lives, the Republicans are capable of some pretty Orwellian moves in their own right.
Morality is for losers.
Here’s a game you can play the next time you are having a conversation with someone who is ranting about out-of-control government not heeding the will of the people:
If this is what passes for regulatory oversight in the federal government, you have to wonder why Wall Street is paying so many top-dollar lobbyists to fight it.
A nation is within its rights to preserve the integrity of its borders in the face of intruders. A people are entitled to preserve their culture, their language, and especially to prosper from the fruit of their labors without a tide of uninvited foreigners coming in and, through sheer force of numbers, overwhelming the existing populace.
Let’s face it, the image of wealthy financiers crying the blues doesn’t exactly tug on our heartstrings.
The big speculation, even in national circles, is whether embattled Gov. Charlie Crist is going to run as an Independent.
If big government is our beef, then what is more bloated, more out-of-control, more emblematic of the drain on our resources than Social Security?
Yesterday, when a reporter asked Gov. Crist if his veto of the teacher merit pay bill meant that he was planning an independent run for the U.S. Senate, he said, "That's the last thing on my mind right now."
So maybe the declaration of Confederate History Month was just the Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell using code to assert that his state was not about to knuckle under to the overlordship of the federal government (particularly when it came to reforming health care for its citizens).
On this, the eve of Tax Day, some reflections:
Will he or won’t he?
Let's give the Republicans in the state legislature the benefit of the doubt.
Settle down, class.
They say these are the best jobs in Appalachia. Those who have them consider themselves fortunate.
Anybody who’s ever taken a college Psych 101 course knows what behavior modification is.
The inherent problem with capitalism⎯at least the American variant of it⎯is that for someone to win, it seems like someone always has to lose.
Before my usual claque of commentators gets its nose out of joint, I will acknowledge that the type of behavior alluded to in this cartoon is practiced by both extremes of the political spectrum. It is inappropriate--and unhelpful--no matter who is doing it.
The White House's chess game is verging on being a little too clever for its own good.
CHAN LOWE has been the Sun Sentinel’s first and only editorial cartoonist for the past twenty-six years. Before that, he worked as cartoonist and writer for the Oklahoma City Times and the Shawnee (OK) News-Star.