Texas GOP Vote

After the legislature gives the Emperor unlimited power in the Third Star Wars and the whole assembly breaks out in applause, Padme commented, “That is how democracy dies, with applause.” In a recent Scientific American, the following words were uttered, “Human societies must now change course and steer away from critical tipping points in the Earth system that might lead to rapid and irreversible change. This requires fundamental reorientation and restructuring of national and international institutions toward more effective Earth system governance and planetary stewardship….. To be effective, a new set of institutions would have to be imbued with heavy-handed, transnational enforcement powers.”

Blogger Ann Althouse observed, "A love of autocracy often lurks beneath the liberal veneer. There's this idea that the right answers are known and the people are just too deluded and distorted to see what they are and to vote for them." New York Times Tom Friedman stated "... [W]hat if we could just be China for a day?... You know, I mean, where we could actually, you know, authorize the right solutions....I want my democracy to work with the same authority, focus and stick-to-itiveness. But right now we have a system that can only produce suboptimal solutions." This is not the first time that Friedman expressed