Alternatives

I'll admit it - I didn't watch the speech last night (it wasn't a State of the Union address, no matter what you may read on the interwebs). Nor did I watch Bobby Jindal's response.

I've heard amazing things about Obama's speech, and awful things about Jindal's, but I'm not prepared to stand in judgement as I didn't watch either (and honestly, I feel terrible for Bobby Jindal - he had the miserable task of standing up and giving a speech right after the nation's most popular and charismatic politician, AND had to deliver Republican talking points on top of it, AND was being held up by his own party as the next great hope, which is a ton of pressure to live up to - I don't envy him the task at all).

No, I can't comment on the style of the evening. But, having read through transcripts and reviews, I can comment, at least in part, on the substance.

What really struck me about Jindal's policy prescription, in contrast to Obama's, was how predictable it was. It is literally the same policy plan they've offered for decades, with some words changed to present the illusion of modernity. The details are touched up, but the spirit remains the same - government is the problem and must be defeated so that the private sector can reach it's full glory.

Now, I understand that's the root of conservative thinking. What I don't think they realize is that in the face of Wall Street scandal, huge populist resentment, rampant bank failures as a direct result of flawed bank policies, massive CEO entitlement scams and golden parachutes galore, that criticizing the government and offering as a solution the exact fucking things that are utterly collapsing under the weight of their own greed is probably going to be a rather tough sell.

What they're doing is setting the next election cycle up as a choice between the private sector and the government, rather than trying to offer a new alternative viewpoint - and I have trouble believing that anyone is going to vote for Bernie Madoff's coworkers, even in proxy.


The only way they could make it worse would be to use that false paradigm as an excuse to shamelessly obstruct President Obama's initiatives for the next four years in an effort to score political points.

Oh, damn.

Well at least they're not making up stupid, fictional talking points that even their own supporters decry as utterly - oh, shit.


*Sigh* So long, GOP.

Something to think about

Good friend and prolific writer Matttbastard is working with blogger Sarah J on a chapter-by-chapter break down of Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine." What I've read from the two so far has been as outstanding as it has, to make the obvious but nonetheless accurate pun, shocking.

You can read for yourself what Sarah and Matt have to say, and I do recommend it.

Happy reading!

Dear Humanity

Dear Humanity;

You may want to consider re-reading that book I sent you a while back.

Remember the part where it said I wouldn't want two people to love each other and be happy together?


"Fidelity": Don't Divorce... from Courage Campaign on Vimeo.


Me neither.


Love,
-God

The Other Half

The NYT had a great article recently about how this recession is really hitting certain people harder than others - meaning, of course, the wives and mistresses of the banking class. Take a look:

Dawn Spinner Davis, 26, a beauty writer, said the downward-trending graphs began to make sense when the man she married on Nov. 1, a 28-year-old private wealth manager, stopped playing golf, once his passion. “One of his best friends told me that my job is now to keep him calm and keep him from dying at the age of 35,” Ms. Davis said. “It’s not what I signed up for.”

Can you imagine? No golf! However will the poor dear survive?


In other, much less important news, 45 million Americans remain uninsured.

On the plus side, odds are looking pretty good that our poor Mr. Davis won't be off the links for long - at least not if he's in line for one of those fancy, publicly-funded bonuses.

In other, much less important news, 45 million Americans are completely unable to get basic fucking medical care.

The time for universal health care is now, and not a day later.

Of course, if you live in any industrialized country on the planet EXCEPT the wealthiest one in history, the time was years ago.

What are you waiting for, America?

Young love

How sweet it is!

Global warming - the skeptics

I get to listen to a lot of conservative talk radio in the truck at work, which is every bit as humourous as it sounds. One thing I occasionally get to hear about, both from the radio and from my boss, is climate change skepticism. Since environmental issues aren't my strong point (you won't find me outdoors unless I'm getting paid to be there), I decided to look it up.

I think my favourite article was this one from the Washington Post, back in March of 2008, on the climate change skeptics. An outtake:

Both the Republicans and Democrats are poised to nominate presidential candidates this year who back a mandatory federal cap on greenhouse gases. After years of voicing doubt, President Bush has said repeatedly that he is convinced that humans are contributing to Earth's warming and that the nation needs to break its dependency on fossil fuels.

Not so, say the skeptics. While the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change shared a Nobel Peace Prize with former vice president Al Gore last year, this cadre of critics has formed a counter-group called the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), which issued a report yesterday arguing that recent climate change stems from natural causes. (While the IPCC enlisted several hundred scientists from more than 100 countries to work over five years to produce its series of reports, the NIPCC document is the work of 23 authors from 15 nations, some of them not scientists.)

(Above emphasis mine)

I've claimed before that the climate change skeptics were a vanishing minority of scientists, only to be contradicted that it's actually a whole slew of scientists from around the globe. In my search for proof of that statement, the closest I could find to any enumeration of the ranks of the skeptics was the above - hardly a rousing number for those last remaining die-hard deniers.

Wait, what?

I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of how awesome the President of the United States is.

Life is pretty darn good.