From Papua New Guinea to the United States at the climate talks in Bali:

"We ask for your leadership. We seek your leadership. But if for some reason you're not willing to lead. Leave it to the rest of us. Please get out of the way."

NPR

No kidding. Apparently the whole world wants to go one way and the US has to plunk itself down in the middle of the road and say no. Fortunately, there was a sufficient quantity of booing and hissing to get the US delegate to back down and for there to actually be an agreement on doing something about climate change, but, OMG, that it's come to this. Our government's policies make this country look more and more like a schoolyard bully.

And the sad thing is that it doesn't have to be this way. Despite all the posturing to the contrary, the only reason we look the way we do on to the rest of the world is because the executive branch is power-grabbing and the other branches are letting it get away with it. Hey, Congress, Do Your Job Already. Say no. Actually investigate. Deny funds. Enforce accountability. Impeach. This is America. We're supposed to be a democracy, not a monarchy or an oligarchy, no matter how much Bush and Cheney and Rove might wish otherwise.

I'm watching the primaries and counting down to the election, hoping, hoping, hoping, that this we'll get clear, incontestable results that puts a level-headed, open-minded, living-in-a-global-society-in-the-twenty-first-century person in the executive office. I'm hoping that whoever gets there can make swift, real progress at balancing this country. But we don't have to wait for that. There are two other branches of our government who can act now to put the brakes on our current slide away from democracy. If only they'd do their jobs.