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Barack Obama participates in the second presidential debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York.It's somehow fitting that the only question about energy in the presidential debates so far this year came from a 52-year-old registered Republican and owner of a Long Island strip club. About 20 minutes into this week's town hall debate, Phillip Tricolla asked President Obama: "Your energy secretary, Steven Chu, has now been on record three times stating it's not policy of his department to help lower gas prices. Do you agree with Secretary Chu that this is not the job of the Energy Department?"President Obama did not answer the question. Instead, he launched into a long, obviously rehearsed speech about energy independence, rising U.S. oil production, the virtues of "clean coal" and the distant promise of clean energy. All boilerplate stuff. When it was Romney's turn to respond, he didn't answer the question either – breaking into a tired love song to oil, gas and coal that sounded like it was scripted by Koch Industries (which, given the fact that Charles Koch has promised to raise $400 million to help Romney defeat Obama, it probably was).Let's do a little thought experiment and imagine for a moment that President Obama wanted to answer Tricolla's question honestly and directly. What might he have said? Here's one possibility:"You are correct, Phillip. It is not the job of the Secretary of Energy to lower gas prices. The Secretary of Energy's job is to safeguard America's nuclear stockpile, direct energy research, and, as a member of my cabinet, advise me on broader energy issues."In fact, the truth is, Phillip, even the President of the United States doesn't have much control over gas prices. Gas prices are, of course, largely dependent on oil prices, and oil is a global commodity. And America is only one player in a very large market. More importantly, we consume about 20 percent of the world's oil, but we produce only about two percent. So even if we doubled production of oil in the U.S., it would only have a small impact on the market – and it would do very little to lower gas prices."Nobody likes high gas prices. But the best solution is not to pretend that we can drill our way out of this, but to reduce our consumption. That's one reason why my administration recently issued rules to double the average fuel economy of vehicles by 2025, saving 12 billion barrels of oil in the coming years. But that's just a start. The best way to really cut consumption quickly is by making gasoline more expensive. Does that mean I have a covert agenda to do what I can to keep gas prices high? No. It means that Americans have to get over the idea that we have a God-given right to cheap gas. More importantly, we need to think seriously about the virtues of an economy-wide carbon tax, which would raise the price of oil, coal and gas. This is, I know, a tough argument to make in economic hard times, but the truth is, it would trigger a huge investment in clean energy and be the single best step we could take to solving our dependence on foreign oil and reducing the impact of high gas prices. And this is not some crazy liberal fantasy. Even one of Governor Romney's top economic advisors has advocated a $1 per gallon gas tax."I'd like to make one further point, Phillip. I understand why you would ask about gas prices, and why that is important to you. But focusing our discussion about energy on the price of gas is a distraction from the larger issues we face – especially climate change. In fact, talking about gas prices plays right into the hands of Big Oil – which is, of course, why Governor Romney brings it up whenever he can. The governor and his pals in the oil industry want to keep Americans whipped up in a hysteria about gas prices because as long as that is the subject, no politician – including myself – can make broader arguments about long term energy problems, which inevitably involve reducing our consumption of oil."The real threat America faces is not high gas prices, but a superheated climate. The science is very clear: climate change is real, it is happening, and it is largely caused by humans. Just consider what we've seen this year: the arctic is melting at unprecedented rate, 2012 is likely to be the warmest year on record and food prices are rising, largely because of the impact of drought on agriculture. The governor may think climate change is a joke, but I assure you, it is not. Just in economic terms, it is a very big deal – one study has found that climate change is already reducing the global GDP by $1.2 trillion, and predicts those costs will double by 2030."We can deal with rising gas prices. We can drive more efficient cars, take public transportation, move closer to work. It's not easy, but it's not catastrophic, either. What is catastrophic is rising sea levels, drought, heat waves, food shortages and all the other challenges we face on an overheated planet. The simple fact is, we need to get off fossil fuels as quickly as possible. We need to invest big in clean energy. We need to pass a carbon tax. We need to take the lead on a global agreement to reduce carbon pollution. But most of all, we need to admit the dangers we face by continuing to heat up the planet."I know this is not what you want to hear, Phillip. And I know that I bear some responsibility for failing to educate Americans about the risks of climate change. But my silence on this is ending now."A response like this, of course, would have been political suicide. Or so the conventional wisdom goes. But at least in the case of Phillip Tricolla, the President didn't have much to lose. Tricolla admitted to an AP reporter after the debate that after hearing the President's response to his question, he is going to vote for Romney.To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here
Showing posts with label Should. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Should. Show all posts
Saturday, October 20, 2012
What President Obama Should Have Said About High Gas Prices
Barack Obama participates in the second presidential debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York.It's somehow fitting that the only question about energy in the presidential debates so far this year came from a 52-year-old registered Republican and owner of a Long Island strip club. About 20 minutes into this week's town hall debate, Phillip Tricolla asked President Obama: "Your energy secretary, Steven Chu, has now been on record three times stating it's not policy of his department to help lower gas prices. Do you agree with Secretary Chu that this is not the job of the Energy Department?"President Obama did not answer the question. Instead, he launched into a long, obviously rehearsed speech about energy independence, rising U.S. oil production, the virtues of "clean coal" and the distant promise of clean energy. All boilerplate stuff. When it was Romney's turn to respond, he didn't answer the question either – breaking into a tired love song to oil, gas and coal that sounded like it was scripted by Koch Industries (which, given the fact that Charles Koch has promised to raise $400 million to help Romney defeat Obama, it probably was).Let's do a little thought experiment and imagine for a moment that President Obama wanted to answer Tricolla's question honestly and directly. What might he have said? Here's one possibility:"You are correct, Phillip. It is not the job of the Secretary of Energy to lower gas prices. The Secretary of Energy's job is to safeguard America's nuclear stockpile, direct energy research, and, as a member of my cabinet, advise me on broader energy issues."In fact, the truth is, Phillip, even the President of the United States doesn't have much control over gas prices. Gas prices are, of course, largely dependent on oil prices, and oil is a global commodity. And America is only one player in a very large market. More importantly, we consume about 20 percent of the world's oil, but we produce only about two percent. So even if we doubled production of oil in the U.S., it would only have a small impact on the market – and it would do very little to lower gas prices."Nobody likes high gas prices. But the best solution is not to pretend that we can drill our way out of this, but to reduce our consumption. That's one reason why my administration recently issued rules to double the average fuel economy of vehicles by 2025, saving 12 billion barrels of oil in the coming years. But that's just a start. The best way to really cut consumption quickly is by making gasoline more expensive. Does that mean I have a covert agenda to do what I can to keep gas prices high? No. It means that Americans have to get over the idea that we have a God-given right to cheap gas. More importantly, we need to think seriously about the virtues of an economy-wide carbon tax, which would raise the price of oil, coal and gas. This is, I know, a tough argument to make in economic hard times, but the truth is, it would trigger a huge investment in clean energy and be the single best step we could take to solving our dependence on foreign oil and reducing the impact of high gas prices. And this is not some crazy liberal fantasy. Even one of Governor Romney's top economic advisors has advocated a $1 per gallon gas tax."I'd like to make one further point, Phillip. I understand why you would ask about gas prices, and why that is important to you. But focusing our discussion about energy on the price of gas is a distraction from the larger issues we face – especially climate change. In fact, talking about gas prices plays right into the hands of Big Oil – which is, of course, why Governor Romney brings it up whenever he can. The governor and his pals in the oil industry want to keep Americans whipped up in a hysteria about gas prices because as long as that is the subject, no politician – including myself – can make broader arguments about long term energy problems, which inevitably involve reducing our consumption of oil."The real threat America faces is not high gas prices, but a superheated climate. The science is very clear: climate change is real, it is happening, and it is largely caused by humans. Just consider what we've seen this year: the arctic is melting at unprecedented rate, 2012 is likely to be the warmest year on record and food prices are rising, largely because of the impact of drought on agriculture. The governor may think climate change is a joke, but I assure you, it is not. Just in economic terms, it is a very big deal – one study has found that climate change is already reducing the global GDP by $1.2 trillion, and predicts those costs will double by 2030."We can deal with rising gas prices. We can drive more efficient cars, take public transportation, move closer to work. It's not easy, but it's not catastrophic, either. What is catastrophic is rising sea levels, drought, heat waves, food shortages and all the other challenges we face on an overheated planet. The simple fact is, we need to get off fossil fuels as quickly as possible. We need to invest big in clean energy. We need to pass a carbon tax. We need to take the lead on a global agreement to reduce carbon pollution. But most of all, we need to admit the dangers we face by continuing to heat up the planet."I know this is not what you want to hear, Phillip. And I know that I bear some responsibility for failing to educate Americans about the risks of climate change. But my silence on this is ending now."A response like this, of course, would have been political suicide. Or so the conventional wisdom goes. But at least in the case of Phillip Tricolla, the President didn't have much to lose. Tricolla admitted to an AP reporter after the debate that after hearing the President's response to his question, he is going to vote for Romney.To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click HereSaturday, September 15, 2012
Russian Prime Minister Says Pussy Riot Members Should Be Freed
Yekaterina Samutsevich, Maria Alyokhina, and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova of Pussy Riot during a court hearing in MoscowAndrey Smirnov/AFP/GettyImagesRussian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev showed sympathy for the imprisoned members of Pussy Riot at a regional meeting for the ruling United Russia party today, the Wall Street Journal reports. He maintained that their two-year prison sentence is excessive. "The term is very strong. I would even say a terrible burden," said Medvedev in his televised response. "I don't want to replace the judge... but the time they have already served is, in essence, more than enough to make them think about what happened, whether it was from their own stupidity or for other reasons."
Medvedev also said that he believes a suspended sentence, including the six-plus months the women have already served, would have been enough. "Prolonging their time in prison in connection to this case seems unproductive," he said. Still, Medvedev said he was "sickened" by the group's acts and the "hysteria" they caused.
The three imprisoned members of Pussy Riot have appealed their convictions, while other members of the group have fled Russia to escape arrest. The group recently released a video thanking Madonna, Björk, Green Day, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and other artists for their public support while they burned a poster of Russian president Vladimir Putin.
To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click HereSaturday, April 14, 2012
Frances Bean Cobain: 'Twitter Should Ban My Mother'
Frances Bean Cobain has responded to her mother Courtney Love's recent Twitter rant accusing Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl of hitting on her 19-year-old daughter.
"While I'm generally silent on the affairs of my biological mother, her recent tirade has taken a gross turn," says Cobain. "I have never been approached by Dave Grohl in more than a platonic way. I'm in a monogamous relationship and very happy. Twitter should ban my mother."
Grohl also shot down Love's accusations. "Unfortunately Courtney is on another hateful Twitter rant," he said in a statement released late yesterday. "These new accusations are upsetting, offensive and absolutely untrue."
To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click HereWednesday, April 4, 2012
'Game of Thrones' Recap: No One Man Should Have All That Power
Jaime Lannister in 'Game of Thrones,' Episode 1, Season 2.Here's one Game of Thrones that's already got a winner: Peter Dinklage now takes top billing in the show's opening credits. Gone is Sean Bean and his heroic, honorable, doomed leading character Eddard Stark; in his place is Dinklage's Tyrion Lannister, a diminutive antihero whose weapon is his wit rather than his sword, played by an actor whose size would relegate him to comic relief on nine shows out of ten. The message is clear: This isn't your average heroic fantasy, and this isn't your average show. No, it's Game of Thrones, and in case you had any doubt what that means, someone dies not 15 seconds after those credits finish rolling. That sets the tone for the whole affair. Game of Thrones episode 11 is fast, crisp, confident, relentless, and above all intense.
From those opening seconds on, characters coming to grips with their newfound power – often over life and death – provide as much of a connecting thread for this episode as the blood-red comet streaking across the sky; both elements, and the effortless direction of Alan Taylor, seamlessly link the show's many settings and scenes. The architect of that first death and current ruler of Westeros, the boy king Joffrey Baratheon, is every bit as nasty, brutish, and short as the lives of his subjects. Played with impeccable insufferability by Jack Gleeson, Joffrey is increasingly ungovernable by his adult relatives, even threatening his mother Queen Cersei (Lena Headey) with death when she slaps him after he insults her.
Then along comes Joffrey's uncle Tyrion, appointed Hand of the King by his powerful dad and rolling deep with bodyguard Bronn (Jerome Flynn), secret prostitute-girlfriend Shae (Sibel Kekilli, who injects so much sex into lines like "Cities make me want to fuck" that you should probably wear protection), and an army of what's-in-your-wallet-style barbarians. For the first time since the series started, Tyrion's up against the realm's real power-players and smooth-operators: His own ruthless sister Cersei, backstabbing moneyman and pimp Littlefinger (Aidan Gillen), polite but lethal spymaster Varys (Conleth Hill). Watching character and actor alike raise their game accordingly ought to be one of the season's great pleasures. We're off to a good start as is. Tyrion nails Cersei with one of the episode's best lines: "You love your children. It's your one redeeming quality. That, and your cheekbones." Simply watching his face as he processes Cersei's revelation that the Starks' wild-child younger daughter Arya (Maisie Williams) escaped her clutches was worth half a dozen Walking Dead episodes. (Ditto our all-too-brief shot of taciturn badasses Bronn and the Hound (Rory McCann) standing next to each other. Dare we hope for a scene between those two?)
To the north, rebel King Robb Stark (Richard Madden) has mommy issues of his own. She wants him to trade the captured Kingslayer, Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) for the missing, presumed kidnapped Stark sisters. But he's riding high off a string of victories over the Lannisters, so he's not above Joffing it up a bit himself, as we see when he pays a sneering visit to the imprisoned Jaime. Coster-Waldau plays Jaime as a man going through the motions of bravado, as though learning what it's like to lose is even more frightening to him than getting menaced by Robb's massive pet direwolf. Which looks great, by the way: The effects department uses CGI's inherent uncanny-valley slickness as a feature rather than a bug, making Grey Wind truly feel like a creature from another world.
Robb's upwardly-mobile right-hand man and foster brother Theon Greyjoy (Alfie Allen) has been tasked with recruiting his ex-rebel family's fleet for Robb's assault on King's Landing. Allen's joli-laid Jaggerface and goggle-eyes give him the perpetual appearance of a man who vehemently disagrees with whatever it is he just heard, and his hunger to earn recognition (if not redemption) is palpable. At the Stark stronghold of Winterfell, Robb's kid brother Bran (Isaac Hempstead-Wright) alternates tedious meetings with the lords he now commands with listening to ominous prophecies from his wildling helper Osha (Harry Potter's Natalia Tena, who apparently got her hurr did between seasons). When a brief POV sequence starring Bran's direwolf Summer cuts directly to a sleeping Bran, however, we get the sense that the boy may have a different sort of "power" altogether.
The most interesting up-and-comer is Stannis Baratheon (Stephen Dillane), the late King Robert's warrior brother and rightful heir (Joffrey is Cersei & Jamie's twincestuous bastard, while Robert's other brother Renly is the baby of the family). The problem? It seems like only two people in Westeros like him enough to fight for him. The first is former smuggler Ser Davos Seaworth (Liam Cunningham), fiercely loyal but also brutally honest, a tough combination given Stannis's precarious situation. Then there's Melisandre (Carice Van Houten), a red-headed priestess who looks like Tori Amos at the Renaissance Fair and who eggs Stannis on by casting him as her religion's long-awaited messiah figure. It's to the show's great credit that this brand-new trio – and the dark, fossil-encrusted island fortress of Dragonstone where they live – hold their own against people and places and plotlines we've all waited a year to revisit. Stannis and Davos in particular, never the most charismatic of characters in the books, greatly benefit simply by becoming living breathing actors rather than lines on paper. Hearing Dillane growl his way through Stannis's declaration of kingship, refusing to call his brother beloved (not by Stannis he wasn't) while insisting that Jaime Lannister be referred to as "Ser" – "Whatever else he may be, the man's still a knight" – makes his black-and-white personality pop.
Power's a slippery thing, though. Case in point: season one ended with the triumphant, transcendent image of a nude, fireproof Daenerys Targaryen (breakout star Emilia Clarke) encircled by freshly-hatched dragons and worshipful followers. But the show zigs where others would zag: She and her people are now slowly starving to death in a desert wasteland, outnumbered by and on the run from forces that could destroy her and her tiny band, dragons or no. Even her horse drops dead by the episode's 15-minute mark, proving once again that yes, this is Game of Thrones.
Cutting from fire to ice, we catch up with Ned Stark's bastard son Jon Snow (Kit Harrington), now a Sworn Brother of the Night's Watch, the ragtag black-clad fighting force tasked with guarding the realm's northern border. Beyond the Wall that marks it he encounters the deeply creepy Craster, whose wooden stronghold is staffed exclusively by his inbred daughter-wives and used as an outpost by the Watch. Played by Robert Pugh, who looks like a feral Dick Van Patten, Craster's a leering, sneering fuck who puts his own medieval spin on the live-free-or-die rhetoric of the Tea Party. Knowing when to shut the fuck up is a lesson of leadership Jon's dad never quite learned, and it could lead Jon into trouble here. "He marries his daughters – what's he do with his sons?" Jon asks. Dun dun dunnnnn!
Jon's half-sister and Joffrey's fiancée-cum-hostage Sansa is also struggling to keep her feelings in check. The impressive young actress Sophie Turner plays Sansa with the thousand-yard stare and flat-affect voice of an abuse victim living from beating to beating. Sansa gets a lot of grief from fans of the show and the books alike – she's stupid, she's insipid, she's prissy, she's gutless. Bullshit. She's doing what she needs to do to survive, as the episode's opening scene demonstrates. She instinctively plays to Joffrey's narcissism and cruelty, convincing him to spare a drunken knight's life while dropping enough "Your Grace"s on him to make him think it was his idea. If she'd been less courteous, like the other Starks would have been, she'd be dead.
Even the ever-slick Lord Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish finds himself on the wrong end of the sword, attempting to bigfoot Cersei with rumors of her relationship with Jaime and nearly getting his throat cut for it. "Knowledge is power," he tells her; "Power is power," she retorts, her obedient goon's knife at his neck. It's a killer exchange for Headey and Gillen, in the show's grand wordplay-into-swordplay tradition. But as the venerable fan site Westeros has pointed out, it's also too clumsy by half for Littlefinger, a master manipulator whose motives remain far more mysterious in the book than they do for his openly power-hungry TV incarnation.
Taking the power theme to its "absolute power corrupts absolutely" extreme, the episode concludes with a move out of King Herod's playbook: The City Watch massacres the late King Robert's bastard children before they can grow into rivals for Joffrey's crown, quite literally killing babies in the process. It is, frankly, excruciating to watch – and to hear; gods know I never want to listen to a baby's cries silenced by the draw of a knife and the wet sound of a blade through flesh ever again. That scene took place off-screen, as it were, in the books, where we learn about it in passing during a conversation between an outraged Tyrion and Lord Commander Janos Slynt. In choosing to show rather than tell, writers and showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss tap into imagery as old as the Bible, as intimate as a mother's nightmare, and as powerful as both. They've laid down their latest and boldest marker yet that Games will go places most dramas, let alone most fantasies, wouldn't dare. And they speak directly to George R.R. Martin's conception of war as an engine of careless cruelty and wasted human potential. But it's also unbelievably grim and uncomfortable television. I know that's the point, but I'd imagine many casual viewers (and some die-hards as well) ended up wishing they were on that oxcart with runaway Arya Stark and bull-helmeted bastard boy Gendry (Joseph Dempsie) in the episode's final shot, fleeing the horrors of King's Landing, hoping never to return. Until this time next Sunday, that is.
To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click HereMonday, February 27, 2012
Weekend Rock Question: Which Artist Should Make a Comeback?
Larry Busacca/WireImage; Peter Still/Redferns; Douglas Mason/Getty ImagesFiona Apple and DMX, two icons of Nineties music, made comebacks this week, with DMX playing a rare gig at S.O.B.'s in Manhattan, and Apple's forthcoming tour of small clubs selling out in a matter of minutes. Leonard Cohen recently released Old Ideas, his first album in new material in eight years. D'Angelo, who has been missing from the pop scene for over a decade, is touring and prepping a new album. Clearly it's a good time for long-gone artists to return to the spotlight, so our question for this weekend is: Which artist should be next to make a comeback?
Feel free to choose a solo artist who has been missing in action for some time, like David Bowie or Beck, or vote for your favorite broken-up band. You can vote here in the comments, on facebook.com/rollingstone or on Twitter using the #weekendrock hashtag.
To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click HereWeekend Rock Question: Which Artist Should Make a Comeback?
Larry Busacca/WireImage; Peter Still/Redferns; Douglas Mason/Getty ImagesFiona Apple and DMX, two icons of Nineties music, made comebacks this week, with DMX playing a rare gig at S.O.B.'s in Manhattan, and Apple's forthcoming tour of small clubs selling out in a matter of minutes. Leonard Cohen recently released Old Ideas, his first album in new material in eight years. D'Angelo, who has been missing from the pop scene for over a decade, is touring and prepping a new album. Clearly it's a good time for long-gone artists to return to the spotlight, so our question for this weekend is: Which artist should be next to make a comeback?
Feel free to choose a solo artist who has been missing in action for some time, like David Bowie or Beck, or vote for your favorite broken-up band. You can vote here in the comments, on facebook.com/rollingstone or on Twitter using the #weekendrock hashtag.
To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click HereMonday, February 6, 2012
Weekend Rock Question: Who Should Play Next Year's Super Bowl Halftime?
Beyonce, David Lee Roth, and Jay-ZKevin Mazur/WireImage; Frazer Harrison/WireImage; Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images This weekend Madonna will join the ranks of an elite group of superstars including Michael Jackson, U2, the Rolling Stones, the Who, Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Prince, Diana Ross and Tom Petty who have performed at the Super Bowl halftime show.
While many of the biggest names in music have played the show over the past two decades, there are still some major stars – including Eminem, Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Lady Gaga, Van Halen and Pearl Jam – who have yet to do it. Our question for you is: Who should play the Super Bowl halftime show next year?
You can vote here in the comments, on facebook.com/rollingstone, or on Twitter using the #weekendrock hashtag.
To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click HereSunday, February 5, 2012
Weekend Rock Question: Who Should Play Next Year's Super Bowl Halftime?
Beyonce, David Lee Roth, and Jay-ZKevin Mazur/WireImage; Frazer Harrison/WireImage; Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images This weekend Madonna will join the ranks of an elite group of superstars including Michael Jackson, U2, the Rolling Stones, the Who, Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Prince, Diana Ross and Tom Petty who have performed at the Super Bowl halftime show.
While many of the biggest names in music have played the show over the past two decades, there are still some major stars – including Eminem, Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Lady Gaga, Van Halen and Pearl Jam – who have yet to do it. Our question for you is: Who should play the Super Bowl halftime show next year?
You can vote here in the comments, on facebook.com/rollingstone, or on Twitter using the #weekendrock hashtag.
To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here
