Only read the paper for about ten minutes this morning and then rose from my bed in disgust.
What are they thinking? The DOT announces "new" fuel standards for light trucks and SUVs that will increase to 21 mpg in SIX years!!!!! What are they thinking? My extend-cab Ford Ranger gets 28-30 mpg, depending on whether I'm on the highway or dawdling along the country roads in NH. And that vehicle is now 17 years old and has I don't even know how many hundreds of thousands of miles (the odometer goes back to zero every time it hits a hundred thousand and it's hard to remember how many times that's happened. The last number I'm sure of is 250,000)
Anyway, it is beyond me how a technologically advanced nation can keep going backward in regard to its use of energy.
Somebody must think that Americans get a particular kick watching those numbers on the gas pump roll over faster and faster.
Don't get me wrong. I don't fault people for wanting to get in their cars and DRIVE........
How else are they going to get away from the really depressing way of life we've managed to create for ourselves?
The other story, actually a column by Scott Lehigh, that got me out of bed is about Judge John G. Roberts' family. Now, while I think it is absolutely tasteless to critique a person's familial arrangements when considering their qualifications for high office, Roberts invited some of it by dragging his small children into the lime-light, long after what should be their normal bed-time (my pre-school children were always in bed by seven PM). Indeed, I considered this tasteless display of their children a mark against the Roberts. Lehigh's column does nothing but magnify the tastelessness by making light of what might be the judge's attitude to parents who spoil their children and fail to make them behave properly in restaurants.
Of course, Lehigh is not as far off the mark as one might think. On the front page of the Globe there's a story about a judge setting bail at $250,000 for a twelve year old who shot off a bb gun on a street corner because the judge thinks he needs to "send a message."
I'm not sure whom he's sending a message to. The 12 year old, reported to be developmentally delayed probably has no idea what 250,000 of anything means. His mother has never seen that much money and any other kid who discharges a bb gun is unlikely to think about how high his bail (if he even knows the word) will be set.
Crazy--absolutely crazy. But, that's what republicans believe--that what you do to one person will affect how another acts. That's why we're attacking Iraq--to keep China from going ahead with whatever nefarious plans it's got.
BTW, perhaps I should confess a bias. We have some really good friends whose daughter married a man born and reared in China. When they visit his family there, guess what they do in their leisure time for fun. They go dancing. Now, it seems to me, a person who's married to a man who does not dance (hence the bias), that people who go out dancing in the evening aren't really into attacking people who drive around in SUVs and get fatter by the hour (there's also a report today about how adults are getting fatter all over America).
Posted by Hannah at August 24, 2005 04:44 PM