I, Republican / 2-4-11

If your mind is sarcasm intolerant, you're relatively safe, for a little while.

At least for the next two posts. I went to this place called gop.com, looked up some of their positions on current issues, and came away with the stuff I most agreed with. Next up, later this weekend, I'll tackle the official 2008 platform, with all its tasteful verbiage on gun control, abortion, same-sex marriage, and other vanilla-flavored topics. Fun!

But as an appetizer to that entree (am I secretly hungry? What's the deal with all the food references?), this is the stuff from the party's website that I can support. (That I can stomach! Hee hee.)

Anyway, consider it an early Valentine to modern conservatism. Well, maybe an only Valentine.

No joke is taking place in this paragraph.

Ground rules and pertinent information: I lifted all wording straight from here, which now rests in my browser history, a fact that is of no interest to you, but rather serves as a personal reminder to go purge that visit later on.

(Done with the humor. Onward and upward.)

"A full commitment to America's Armed Forces, to ensure they are modern, agile and adaptable to the unpredictable range of challenges in the years ahead." Obviously. Without some semblance of national security, it's silly to quibble about prescription drug reimbursement programs for uninsured senior citizens.

"We oppose government-run health care." So do I. I fully endorse government-run health insurance, but competition is the lifeblood of any marketplace, including the medical one. This is a good mantra.

"We support an 'all of the above' approach that includes the production of nuclear power, clean coal, natural gas, solar, wind, geothermal, hydropower, as well as offshore drilling in an environmentally responsible way." For now, this strategy is wholly sensical. The only way to transition out of dependence on dirty energy sources is to start getting our fuel from everywhere we can right now until it becomes possible to get all of it cleanly. (Whenever that is.) So yeah, more nuke plants. Please. A thousand of them ASAP -- as long as they are well regulated, well maintained, and well funded.

"We believe in the importance of sensible business regulations" (love that word, "sensible," so malleable, so subjective) "that promote confidence in our economy among consumer, entrepreneurs and businesses alike." Nice to see the R-word in there. Thank you 2008. No, that doesn't count as snark.

"Republicans believe a judge's role is to interpret the law, not make law from the bench." That's good. I believe the same way, pretty much because I have no choice. The Constitution demands separation of powers. Congress makes the laws. Courts rule on those laws' legality or lack thereof. That's how it works, and when we don't like the result, we don't get to whine -- when a federal judge interprets the Constitution in a way that displeases us, that's kind of his or her job. And as long as that judge doesn't legislate, all is well with the system.

Well that didn't kill me. Maybe the next post will.

Love ya Ronnie!

xoxoxoxo

Sweet Dreams / 7-23-10

Haven't weighed in on the oil spill yet. It's far too depressing to dwell on from more than a few minutes at a time. I'm not sure how the journalists assigned to that beat keep plugging, day after day, filing stories about this not-even-yet-contained disaster.

It takes a lot of things going wrong at once for a spill of this magnitude to occur, but one factor has stuck with me for a day now, and I can't shake it. The oil rig has a siren designed to alert the crew when something really, really, lots of really very bad is happening.

That siren wasn't on. That's what Mike Williams, the rig’s chief electronics technician, told investigators. It was set to "inhibited," seemingly in order to cut down on false alarms disturbing the crew in the middle of the night.

I am in favor of sleep. Those of you who know me / live with me / have lived with me / can hear me snoring down the street, you all know this. I'm thinking of turning pro with the whole sleeping thing, if I don't end up blogging my way to superstardom and superwealthdom.

(As I'm sure you know, competitive EATING is a sport. They show it on ESPN and everything. This guy's an international icon. We can make competitive sleeping a reality. Join me. Let's live the dream. So to speak. PBS would televise it, for sure.)

So don't label me anti-sleep. But what reasoning led to this decision?

Supervisor: "My people need to be alert. They need deep, uninterrupted sleep to be productive. They can't have loud sirens going off willy-nilly at 3:30 a.m."
Corporate Stooge: "Good point. We like productivity. What do you suggest?"
Supervisor: "We could turn down certain warning systems."
Corporate Stooge: "Just incapacitate the superfluous ones. And keep them on, just muted."
Supervisor, later on, to crew: "You heard the man. Everything off at night. Ecological disasters, from now on, are permitted to happen in daytime hours only. Please inform Mother Nature, and retroactively pass the information on to the people who made this contraption decades ago."

Eleven people died in that explosion last April. A dumb siren might not have ended up saving their lives, and it might not even have had an impact on this whole catastrophe. (Which we ALL know is the direct fault of one Barack Hussein Obama, asleep at the switch again, busy using NASA for Muslim outreach and fostering war between Venezuela and Colombia instead of commuting to the Gulf of Mexico to run oil well shifts and conduct routing maintenance.)

But it's tempting to wonder how things would have shaken out differently if instead of comfort, safety had been the driving force behind safety procedures on the Deepwater Horizon.

Take 5 / 12-07-09

(First things first: Apologies to Dave Brubeck for the headline.)

Here are five quick takes on the three topics that are legal to discuss on this blog. By the way, that holy trinity is comprised of politics, sports and spirituality. In case you hadn't noticed.

I. Health care reform

A bill reforming health care will clear the Senate. Sometime this month or next. It may or may not be a good bill. What's a good bill, you ask? Something that addresses the unethical number of uninsured Americans and something that provides for an avenue for certain folks to purchase government-issued health insurance in certain states; in other words, something that brings down long-term costs to society by accomplishing those two goals.

A great bill would be Medicare For Everyone. That's not on the table, sadly. But with incremental progress, we can get there, and this bill would appear to represent incremental progress in that direction. Just because it doesn't go far enough doesn't make it a bad bill, just a placeholder.

The opposition will not muster the 41 votes necessary to filibuster the bill, whatever form it takes. Filibustering, for the political novices out there, is the act of NOT ending debate on a bill. Debate must end, by a 60-40 or greater vote, for a piece of legislation to be considered for passage. (Even more parenthetically, it is FALSE and UNTRUE and INACCURATE that a bill must receive 60 votes to clear the Senate and head to President Obama's desk. It only needs a simple majority of 51 votes, or failing that, 50 plus Vice President Biden's.) So a very determined group of 40 or more Senators can keep legislation from ever COMING to a vote by filibustering it, but it takes 51 to vote it down once it clears that hurdle. Yes, I'm done with caps lock for a few paragraphs.

In short, not that I have any brevity-ability whatsoever, too many individual Democrats have too much to lose, and by "too much" I mean any position of privilege or leadership or committee chairmanship, by filibustering a bill brought to the floor by their own party. A number of D's may elect to vote against the bill after it clears the filibuster, but they will not commit political suicide by snubbing their self-interested noses at the party leaders. And if one of them does (yes, I'm glaring at you, Joe L.), Obama will pick off one of the Maine Republicans to break ranks.

II. TARP refund

Apparently, of the approximately $97,245 quopthrillion earmarked last year for the bailing out of financial institutions, the government will receive a refund of $200 billion. (Yes, the first figure is a slight slight slight tiny little tiny exaggeration. The second number is accuratish. Truthy, even.)

Early speculation had Obama laundering that money into a jobs bill. Because there seems to be a rumor out there that unemployment is high. Well, BHO said today he's gonna use a chunk of it to pay down the projected budget deficit instead.

This move is either shrewd, concessionary (not an actual word), morally responsible, or a combination of all three. (Always my favorite. The large supreme sans olives.)

Shrewd because it appeals to independents for whom the mounting deficit is alarming. Concessionary because Republicans have hypocritically been clamoring for excess funds to be applied to the gaping budget hole. (This despite the fact that their presidents practically invented the deficit.) And morally responsible because a good way to screw our kids and grandkids over is to leave them with a crippling national debt. We should be teaching them loads and loads of Mandarin, by the way. Just in case.

All three of the above, in 40-25-35 proportions, seems about right.

III. Merriners ad newe thurd basemen

Seeattle whill sine thurd basemen Chone (prunounced "Schawn") Figgins tuah 4-yeer, $36-miliun kontrakt tudde'.

Two out of the last 20 words are spelled right... Yes, Mr. Figgins spells his name so it'll rhyme with scone, just not the way you're necessarily used to saying "scone" unless you're from London, Manchester, Sydney, or North Uppitycrust. Parents are interesting people sometimes.

Anyway. Figgins is awesome. Ichiro-lite with the bat, only with more walks, and a good defender to boot. The M's will annoy their way to many wins this season with those two dudes at the top of the lineup. I look forward to many 32-pitch first innings from the opposing pitcher. Hee hee.

IV. Tiger

Newsflash: Tiger Woods has a penis.

V. Copin' Hagglin'

(One of my best/worst recent puns. Admire it.)

Obama hosted Al Gore in the Oval Office as worldwide climate change talks in Denmark began. Other than providing Fox "News" with a chance to put two of their favorite villians (where was Hillary!?) in the same picture without having to use Photoshop, the meeting was uneventful... except to remind us that for all of Obama's compromising with Republicans, he is committed to addressing climate change from an orthodoxically liberal point of view.

To clarify that hideous sentence, he might ditch the public option, he might work a bunch of tax cuts into a stimulus bill, he might drag his feet on closing the Guantanamo prison, but he's holding the line on climate change. 17 percent cuts in CO2 by 2020 is his short-term goal; that climbs to 83 percent cuts by 2050. This is another reason he has a chance to be the most important/successful President in recent history.

P.S. I had fun with some of the links. Enjoy. Also, I'll try to not go a month between posts again. But no guarantees.

What, did someone die? / 6-26-09

Big news this week. A major death, really.

When the House of Representatives narrowly passed a bill containing so-called "cap-and-trade," an ugly way of life died. A decades-long (centuries-long?) effort by major polluters to reap short-term profits at the expense of the environment began to be rolled back.

I will delve deeply into cap-and-trade at some point, maybe when it actually becomes the law of the land, after it clears the Senate in some mutilated form. (President Obama will sign the bill, which will turn out to be, in the long run, the most significant accomplishment of his eight years in office.) I'll get into the costs to individuals, to businesses and I'll balance those against the long-term benefits we will begin to reap. I'll mine the details for clues as to the winners and losers under the new system. But for now, this very concise explanation, lifted from the L.A. Times, will have to do:

"The bill would create a system for buying and selling emission permits that give the bearer the right to send carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Major sources of those gases, such as power plants and factories, would need to obtain enough permits to cover their emissions. Or they would need to cover their emissions with 'offsets,' such as planting trees, that scrub carbon dioxide from the sky."

Translation: major polluters will be allowed to proceed with business as usual, but the financial incentive to mend their ways will be too large to pass up. They will face a choice between throwing millions away each month, each WEEK, on permits... or innovating and investing in greener processes. They will choose option B, out of survival AND responsibility to their shareholders.

Ah, the free market. It's a beautiful thing when properly harnessed.

(Impact on small businesses: that's what I have to research. I'm looking forward to it. Early signs are good, as in "not-too-onerous" as of yet.)

So for the first time in a long time, the nation's most obscene polluters are not setting environmental policy. This means we can begin, with this bill, to reverse course from the wanton destruction -- for nothing more than money! -- of our country and of our planet.

That's cause for celebration.

Now, this from April 2009: "I am a supporter of a strong cap-and-trade system, but I will not and cannot align myself with a giant government slush fund that will further burden our businesses and consumers." That's Senator John McCain. Remember him? He's come out, in the past few years, all over the place on the concept of cap-and-trade. A Google search of his position yields plenty of contradictory articles. If he gets what he wants in the Senate version, it will pass and handily. If he doesn't, we're in for a doozy of a fight.

The secret calamities of global climate warming change / 6-17-09

Unrelated introduction:
It is intellectually dishonest to discredit climate change on the basis that it used to be called global warming.
Carry on.

Everyone wants to fret about how climate change will warm the earth in places it should be cold, turn Canada into a rival wheat and corn producer to the U.S., kill off a bunch of cute critters, confuse Alaskan moose, melt some glaciers and turn Siberia into a balmy tourist trap. Some of that is neither here nor there; some of it is alarming.

Two other effects are far doomsdayier, I submit.

One is how a gradual warming of the seas will upset the underwater ecosystem. I'm not technically a biologist by trade, but I invite my billions of readers with advanced science-related degrees to confirm this suspicion of mine: even a tiny change in the balance of oceanic life will have an unforeseen major impact on land life. In the event of a sea change under the sea -- please forgive the lame joke -- the consequences are mysterious at this point, mostly because we haven't been doing the research necessary.

To give you an idea from sciencedaily.com:

"The disparity in focus on land-based compared to marine impacts was highlighted in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC’s) Fourth Assessment Report (2007), which included 28,500 significant biological changes in terrestrial systems but only 85 in marine systems."

And the study's co-author's money quote: "Climate change is affecting ocean temperatures, the supply of nutrients from the land, ocean chemistry, food chains, shifts in wind systems, ocean currents and extreme events such as cyclones. All of these in turn affect the distribution, abundance, breeding cycles and migrations of marine plants and animals, which millions of people rely on for food and income. Development of the Integrated Marine Observing System, announced in 2006, is an important step forward but securing data over the time scales relevant for climate assessment will not occur until near 2030.”

In other words, we're really just waiting for the other shoe to drop. We won't know what kind of effects rising ocean temps will have, and by the time those effects begin to, well, take effect, we won't be able to do much about them, will we now.

Just as grave is the coming toll on the poorest humans. A small rise in sea levels coupled with harsher conditions in barely arable land will displace 200 million people in the next forty years. And we're not talking about people who will calmly pack their worldly effects in a medium-sized U-Haul, leisurely travel cross-country and settle into a nice rental in the suburbs before they buy their next four-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath home. No, this is Southeast Asia we're mainly talking about here, where abject poverty AND religious extremism AND political oppression reign already. Don't think too hard about where these dispirited nomads will be headed. There are no good answers.

So don't blow off climate change as an abstract bogeyman. The effects will be global, they will be real and the time to act is the day before yesterday.

So I heard this ad on the radio... / 5-8-09

...touting the fuel efficiency of the Cadillac Escalade hybrid. I understand that putting a gas-electric hybrid engine in any vehicle, no matter how inefficient that car is, reduces its carbon output. I really do. I get it. The SUV that once got 10 mpg now gets 20. That's fantastic. It's great. In fact, it's so great, it reminds me of the story of the guy making minimum wage who wises up and stops making four daily trips to Starbucks. Now he just visits twice and only plunks down $10 a day. Yeah. He's still going to go broke. So's the planet, if that's our idea of an automotive revolution.

(Read this, too, if you want a complementary opinion.)