Huffington and Puffington

I like the Huffington Post. I read it regularly, even if it's too enormous for me to read it all. Arianna Huffington and her host of regular and guest bloggers routinely expose the dirty deeds of the Bush administration, counter the non-arguments of conservative blowhards like Bill O'Reilly, and offer smart, witty commentary on the affairs of the day.

But sometimes HuffPo writers are full of crapola.

Case in point: This post by Raymond Learsy showers praise on China for its tax on fuel-inefficient cars, blasting the U.S. government's new fuel standards for SUVs for not going far enough. HA! China, environmental role-model? We're talking about a country that subsidizes gasoline for its drivers to get them to drive more. We're talking about a country that adjusts its policies to keep energy company profits high. We're talking about a country that is one-fourth as fuel-efficient as the U.S. And Learsy admires China for offering slightly lower gas subsidies and a 3% tax on certain cars?

Please. Someone has a serious double-standard here. I will not tolerate any China-fawning in my liberal movement! At the very least, people like Learsy should do a little research before they write their posts. This is a country that exploits its workers in ways America's robber barons could only dream of...a country where corruption is so endemic it makes Halliburton look tame in comparison...a country that dispossesses its peasants...a country with a weath gap twice the size of ours...a country that has the worst environmental record in recorded history...and a country that executes thousands of people a year and then sells their organs.

Perhaps news-reading people have just been so dazzled by China's economic growth that they've decided China is the "strong horse," and therefore we have to sing its praises at every turn. Screw that. The liberals of old fought to reform the most powerful countries of their day, and I would hope we're up to doing the same.