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I fell down a green rabbit hole

You know that rabbit hole that Alice fell into. Well it’s one of those days. Some of this stuff is hard to take. It’s like the Mad Hatter is loose.

Try this on for size. This comes from the Detroit News:

“U.S. automakers are taking their fuel economy case to Middle America, warning that too dramatic an increase in federal efficiency standards would cost billions and put jobs at risk if they were forced to stop making their biggest, most profitable models.

General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC will hold rallies in downtown Chicago and St. Louis, beginning Thursday in the Windy City.”

Let’s rally for lousy fuel efficiency. Let’s rally to spend more money at the pumps. Let’s rally so American car makers can continue to be stupid.

Who does the PR for these people?

Listen to this:

“The automakers hope the grassroots effort will help beat back a proposal passed by the U.S. Senate earlier this year that would raise corporate average fuel economy mandates 40 percent to 35 miles per gallon for cars and trucks combined by 2020.”

A pink and purple Detroit without trafficWhoops! Did they use the word “grassroots” referring to General Motors and Ford and Chrysler?Last I looked “grassroots” meant “the ordinary people in a community or the ordinary members of an organization as opposed to the leadership.” How in the world can a rally organized by the car makers be characterized “a grassroots effort?”Where is the word police when you need them?

The article goes on:

“Hundreds of United Auto Workers members at Ford’s South Side Chicago assembly plant and Chrysler’s Belvidere, Ill., factory will attend a rally Thursday at Federal Plaza in Chicago.

They will present petitions signed by factory workers and others that will be delivered to local congressional offices, including the office of presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., who has sharply criticized Detroit automakers for not doing enough to improve fuel economy.”

So those great grassroots demonstrators are the folks who are dependent on the automakers for their jobs. I wonder what happens to the autoworkers who miss the rally.

But hey what’s a little fool inefficiency. It’s not like any of this really matters.

Oh but wait. What if the Mad Hatter is mad?

Just maybe this means something:

“Islands emerge as Arctic ice shrinks to record low”

Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent of Reuters reports:

“Previously unknown islands are appearing as Arctic summer sea ice shrinks to record lows, raising questions about whether global warming is outpacing U.N. projections, experts said.

Longyearbyen, Norwegian Arctic - Francois Lenoir/Reuters

Polar bears and seals have also suffered this year on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard because the sea ice they rely on for hunts melted far earlier than normal.

“Reductions of snow and ice are happening at an alarming rate,” Norwegian Environment Minister Helen Bjoernoy said at a seminar of 40 scientists and politicians that began late on Monday in Ny Alesund, 1,200 km (750 miles) from the North Pole.”

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