Foot and mouth

It's been a while since I've been moved to add to this site, a combination of factors but not because of a lack of interest in matters political or environmental.  
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In what started as a bit of a down period for me in the power watching and seeing the drift to the right in the US and here the last week has been a big uplift.
First there was the secret recording of Mitt Romney at a private, close-doored Republican fund raiser for (very) wealthy donors where he was heard to say he had no interest in the 47% of low income earners who weren't going to vote for him anyway. 
When Mother Jones put the video up on their web site it became the biggest traffic driver they had ever had but also it showed Romney in a light he was not keen to see made public.
On analysis it turned out that a lot of the people he dismissed as Obama voters are in fact seniors who vote Republican or did.
Then there was our very own Tony who in his trademark negative way criticized our Julia for choosing NYC and the UN over more important business, namely going to Indonesia to meet their President.  Sorry Tony he's in NYC too.
For once our mass media reported this gaffe and even the dear old tired Age ran with a story about Tony shooting himself in the foot, the one he had in his mouth.  Now there's an image.
You might ask, "As it has been obvious to us from the beginning that the man will say anything, do anything and it doesn't matter if it is true or not" to him why now?  Even that ardent admirer of Tony's, Michelle Grattan, seems to have seen this latest gaffe as too much too often, too stupid, too reckless.
Now as the ALP stocks are rising as people realise that the crap they are being fed ("global warming is crap", TA) is just that and the sky hasn't fallen in on July 1, maybe there is some substance to Greg Combet telling us about the deal with the EU on carbon trading, that the majority of the world is moving to some form of trading or market mechanism for carbon abatement and even (in the Coalition vocab) China and India are moving swiftly to take measures to decrease their carbon footprint.  
California too has measures afoot.
So while continuing to lie to the Parliament and the Australian electorate on these issues they are being found out.
For me, not a moment too soon.

As for the US race it looks like Romney has shot himself and although the obscene amounts of cash at his disposal from the likes of the awful Koch brothers, resource billionaires who were the funding drivers behind the Tea Party it looks like the American voters will not be bought off by a massive tv campaign that insults their intelligence and bypasses democratic values in the name of more buck for the few.  Ironically the US is looking more and more like the USSR where a few billionaires feel that there money deserves a louder voice (and a bigger vote) than everybody else.
I have been encouraged by the anger of some emails from David Ritvo and Janet Bell on their side of the argument and too many to mention in good old Oz although the frequent discussion with Bernard Rechter continues to underline the point. Thanks to Janet for the link to Mel and Carl being interviewed by Jerry Seinfeld.

Many think that the Coalition will dump Tony as his disapproval rating skyrockets but who is there to replace him.  Malcolm Turnbull looks logical but we are not dealing with a logical crew. After all we are talking about a Party in coalition with a mob that has Barnarby Joyce as their leader. Go figure.

I mentioned the fear discussion below and the two books.  I have almost finished the Landzmann book which only gets better as it gets to the end.  The Jacobson book has given me a lot to think about and I commend it in advance of sharing my thoughts on it.