Are We Seriously This F’ing Stupid?

Bush and McCain and some others have been espousing the virtues of off-shore drilling in order to fix the energy crisis and frankly, I’m flabbergasted.  I’m amazed that no one hasn’t just smacked them upside the head.  Or that a decent amount of people are actually choking this horse-manure down.  Seriously, at this point, everyone knows that it will take 10 years to develop a single field into something producing.  Even then, will the production volume amount to enough to make a difference?  Or is it something like ANWR, where development would only impact us by $0.10/gallon?

OK, so skip ahead 10 years, and we’ve got all these lovely off-shore rigs on the horizon while we sun ourselves on the oily beaches.  We’ve still got a few big f’ing problems: greenhouse gasses; oil spills. Oh yeah, and it’s still a limited f’ing quantity, meaning that at some point probably within our lifetimes, we’ll be facing this whole issue all over again! 

It needs to end people.  It just needs to f’ing end.  Seriously.  If your solution to high gas prices involves drilling for more oil, or shale oil (what a crock), then just f’ing forget it.  It doesn’t solve anything. At absolute best it just delays the mess we’re in, with the likelihood that next time it won’t be so easy to solve.

High gas prices are here to stay.  Instead of spending 10 years developing new oil fields, let’s spend 10 years getting sustainable energy solutions out into society.  Then maybe we can get on with the business of other issues.

P.S. If you see these idiotic ads for “Clean Coal”, just ignore them.  The technology doesn’t exist – look it up.  It’s all a marketing gimmick to save a couple thousand crappy jobs.  Those folks would be better served by green energy jobs that won’t kill them 30 years early.

Nancy Pelosi is the Death of Justice

By taking impeachment off the table, she effectively gave Bush and company a free pass to do what they wanted.  She publicly announced that there would be no investigations, and confirmed that she would disrupt our government’s natural system of checks and balances by ensuring that there was none for Bush.  History will likely judge her as one of the key people in this grand scheme of Bush’s lies who could have done something about it all, but didn’t.  What evidence, you ask?

She promoted the wiretapping bill as a good bill. I still cannot understand why FISA was not good enough – anyone who studies the arguments sees Bush’s motives were not true.  The FISA court already provided great latitude.

Bush and company will not face consequences for the attorney general scandal. As one commentator pointed out earlier today on NPR, we can no longer say that an investigation by the AG office is not politically motivated.

There are frankly so many reasons now why Bush should be impeached that it’s a full time job.  The Iraq war alone provided a half dozen legitimate reasons for both impeachment and war crimes tribunals (and no, not by Kucinich’s ridiculous list).  Perhaps that’s why Pelosi took it off the table – she didn’t have the time.

But no, we know it’s because she saw it as difficult and messy.  But the simple truth is that bringing justice, in proportion to the injustice, is never easy.

Global Warming Doom

So my thing about global warming is, what if the scientists are right?  I mean, 90% of them agree now that global warming is happening, and it’s bad.  The only disagreement is how bad.  James Hanson was right 20 years ago – what if he’s right again? (http://news.wired.com/dynamic/stories/S/SCI_WARMING_SCIENTIST?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2008-06-23-21-35-41)

The funny thing is, democrats are usually the “do nothing” party.  This time around, it’s the republicans who want to do nothing, and they’ve got some funny reasons for it too.

I’m the father of a small child.  I just know that in 20 years, when the shit’s really going down, I’m not going to turn to him and say “I thought they were wrong.”  The consequences in this game are too steep.  And frankly if they are wrong, the downside is a cleaner environment and more jobs created through the creation and deployment of green technologies. 

C’mon people, let’s stop choking down what big-wig industry fucks are feeding us, and do something real.  We got nothing to lose at this point…

“Godless Liberals” Debunked

As you probably heard, the Pew Research Center did a survey and found that 92% of Americans believe in God (http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080623/NEWS07/80623052/1009/NEWS07). I would like to point out that this proves that liberals are not godless, as many would have you believe, as more than 8% of the country is liberal.

Suck on that, Ann Coultier.

The Petabyte Age

I love wired magazine because they make insights that once read, are perfectly obvious. But until then, are totally unrecognized. For example, see their recent write-up on the Petabyte Age (http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/16-07/pb_intro). Basically, the premise is that we have collected, and are continuing to collect, so much data that science as we know it will soon be dead. Soon, instead of formulating hypothoses and testing them, we’ll be able to aggragate and sift data to find answers and seed models.

What White People Don’t Get About Black Pride

Disclaimer: I’m a white almost middle-aged male.  So I hardly know what I’m talking about…

But I’m a white almost middle-aged male, so maybe I can help “my people” understand this concept.  I’ve seen so many forwarded emails over the years declaring the white man’s struggle for pride… most white guys just don’t get it.  These emails usually point out that it’s acceptable for black people to have black pride, but it’s totally uncool to have “white pride.”

Well here’s the way to look at it my white friends: how many times have you verbalized pride for your english/scottish/irish/german/french/italian/etc. heritage?  Right – lots, if not all of you.  Now, you may be asking, “I’d be cool with black people showing pride in being from Egypt!”  There’s just one problem – how many black people do you know who know they’re from Egypt, or any other African country?  Exactly – none, unless they’re first generation.  Black people have “black pride” because slavery stripped their ability to have country-specific pride.

So white pride = racist because it’s about the race.
Black pride is not racist because it’s all black people have left.

Clear?

Cost of War

What people seem to fail to realize is that the biggest cost of the war in Iraq is the cost of Lost Opportunity.  For example, take the genocide in Darfur.  If we weren’t wrapped up in Iraq, then we’d have the military resources to put forward in Darfur and stop the genocide.  After WWII we said “never again” – it turns out that what we meant was “never again – as long as we’re not busy doing something else”.

I also heard someone once say that the war had to be fought and that “liberals don’t understand security.”  But I challenge that assertion, because frankly, we’re fairly defenseless right now.  Our military is exhausted.  Bush seems to think that the next place to go is Iran, but we won’t be able to do that for years.  And in the meantime, we’re beginning to lose Afghanistan because our president has ADHD and can’t concentrate on one thing at a time.

Old People

old people love extra steps in the process – it increases the likelihood that something will go wrong and they’ll get to complain

I didn’t expect to become a liberal…

It just kinda happened. It was really more of a “well if that’s conservative, then I’m a liberal” reaction to the kinds actions the Bush administration has been taking over the last 7 or 8 years. More than anything, it’s the conservative “my way or the highway” type of approach to politics. They’ve decided that in all matters, if you’re not with them, you’re with the terrorists. This polarization of America is driving me nuts. And honestly, I see this as being the anti-thesis of democracy and America. For god’s sake people – this country was founded on the distrust of government.

Intro

Well hello readers! er, future readers, as this is the first posting, so there are no current readers. Well, you can look to this blog for a bit of pointless dialogue on everything.  Or nothing. Enjoy.