“You’d think that a bill with such broad support, on a public health issue of such fundamental importance, would easily reach the floor of the Senate for a vote. But it has been languishing, stuck in some legislative limbo. … Without tough food safety rules, a perverse economic incentive guides the marketplace. Adulterated food is cheaper to produce than safe food. Since consumers cannot tell the difference between the two, companies that try to do the right thing are forced to compete with companies that couldn’t care less.”

“For one who senses depths beyond the self, writing becomes a centering down, an inward listening for openings in the stillness, through which authentic words may come. ‘I know no advice for you save this,’ Rilke tells the young poet, ‘to go into yourself and test the deeps in which your life takes rise; at its source you will find the answer to the question whether you must create.’ If the answer is yes, Rilke says, then ‘only be attentive to that which rises up in you and set it above everything that you observe about you. What goes on in your innermost being is worthy of your whole love.’ … Rilke is talking about a level deeper than feelings. The depths to which he invites us, the depths from which the individual’s life takes rise, are also the source and pattern for everything else. Find your way to that ultimate ground, root your work there, and you will have something worth saying.”

My name is Tom Swift and I approve this message.

“I was persuaded in a moment of apathy when I was convinced I had a fatal illness and would not live much longer. I don’t own a computer, have no idea how to work one, don’t own a word processor, and have zero interest in technology. Many people thought it would be a nice idea for me to read my stories and I gave in. … The discovery I made was that any number of stories are really meant to work, and only work, in the mind’s ear and hearing them out loud diminishes their effectiveness. Some of course hold up amusingly but it’s no fun hearing a story that’s really meant to be read, which brings me to your next question and that is that there is no substitute for reading and there never will be. Hearing something aloud is its own experience but it’s hard to beat sitting in bed or in a comfortable chair turning the pages of a book, putting it down, and eagerly awaiting the chance to get back to it.”

Because that’s where we’re at with climate change generally and the House-passed, Senate-dead cap-and-trade bill specifically. David Leonhardt, who writes about economics in a way that even I can understand, summarizes the absurdity:

“Either way, most Senate watchers, inside and out, think the odds of a major climate bill are not great. And if this White House and this Democratic Congress can’t pass one, you have to wonder what the future of climate policy looks like.

“All the while, the risks and costs of climate change grow. Sea levels are rising faster than scientists predicted just a few years ago. Himalayan glaciers are melting. In the American West, pine beetles (which struggle to survive the cold) are multiplying and killing trees.

“According to NASA, 2010 is on course to be the planet’s hottest year since records started in 1880. The current top 10, in descending order, are: 2005, 2007, 2009, 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006, 2004, 2001 and 2008.”

The cruel irony is that cap and trade is a market-efficiency solution originally championed — back in the era of the first President Bush — by the party that now views it as another step on the march toward socialism.

“We live in a culture where the terms fascist and racist are thrown about, if anything, too easily and too frequently. Yet here is a man whose every word and deed is easily explicable once you know the single essential thing about him: He is a member of a fascist splinter group that believes it is the salvation of the Catholic Church.”