The Curious Experience of Caucusing in Texas
Two district conventions were held together in the fire station a mile or so from my house this evening at 7pm. This isn’t the kind of event I would have predicted I would be spending an evening on a couple years ago even, but having spent so much time bemoaning a combination of disappointing candidates and meaningless votes in Texas, I felt I owed it to my self-respect to make the most of this day when neither were true for me. And apparently I’m not done yet.
Driving up at 6:55, I was stunned to see people lined up outside in the chilly night, and I was lucky to get one of the last places to park around the firehouse. While I waited outside, cars would begin streaming into the church parking lot down the street, and people would build until a crowd of a couple hundred or so were milling about, chuckling about how much worse it would have been if it were during yesterday evening’s ice storm, asking each other about Texas caucusing arcana, and having a look at what exactly Texas Democrats look like.
The doors opened at 7:15 and it was over an hour for everyone to get inside the door, and have them put their names down for one candidate or another. The question was constantly asked if we had to stay or if we could go once we had signed in. The answer was the latter and by far most people left, although I stayed just to satiate my curiosity. The caucus was called to order, a temporary chairperson and secretary were selected, who then presided over the nomination and voting in of a permanent chairperson and secretary.
The names were counted, and the proportion used to split the district’s delegates to the county convention (where delegates will be selected in similar fashion for the state convention… where the delegates to the national convention will be selected, also in kind). My district was assigned 18 total delegates, 1 delegate per 15 people who voted democratic in the last gubernatorial election — curiously that’s only about 270 which seems a small number compared with the number caucusing tonight. Here, Obama won 11 to Clinton’s 7. I heard from the next room that their district fell in similar proportion.
We were sectioned off into two corners of the room to select our 11 delegates, plus 11 backups, to attend the county convention on March 29th. Only 17 remained so the Obama camp had to settle for 6 backups.
One of which seems to be me.
March 4th, 2008 at 7:54 pm
good to hear you’re getting involved, you will appreciate the process more.
March 4th, 2008 at 8:27 pm
Something I forgot to mention… There was also a Republican caucus at the same location tonight. Weirdly it seemed to be comprised of one chairperson, and one potential delegate. I have no idea what it was about, but there was much chuckling from the rest of us.
March 4th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
And now that I’ve had time to sit and think back on the proceedings, I’m struck by how disorganized the whole thing was. The party rules that were meant to prevent any group from subverting the proceedings were ignored and, although Obama won the most delegates, it’s hard to say if the numbers were accurately counted or assigned. The older gentleman who was running things did some odd things such as ask for “nominees to lead the Clinton caucus”, then took the winner of that voting and assigned her the role of the chairperson. Somebody spoke up about this and it wasn’t clear (honestly) if he was just being senile or cunning. The Obama camp precinct captains were clearly much less organized than those for Clinton (who seemed to be supported by a large, vocal cadre of middle-aged women).
So I dunno, I have no real reason to believe that anything untoward really happened here, but I guess it’s a little depressing that I can very much see how these conventions can go wrong. Politics felt very local indeed tonight. Very interesting.
March 5th, 2008 at 5:11 am
But in the final analysis, it’s good to see that Texas did the right thing and helped keep the Clinton campaign going. Hopefully, this is the beginning of a change in Hillary’s fortunes, and marks the onset of a historic comeback.
March 5th, 2008 at 11:31 am
thanks ymatt that was interesting: especially the cunning senility of it all!
March 5th, 2008 at 11:34 am
In the end, what matters is not the process itself. What matters is the legitimacy that everyone assigns to the process. Our government only functions at the consent of the people.
ymatt, from what you saw, was the process legitimate enough for you?
March 5th, 2008 at 11:57 am
Yes, it was. I was talking to jbc about this, and I mentioned that it was very much a “helping make the sausage” experience, but it is a tasty sausage in the end.
By the way, the latest results that I’m seeing on the Texas Democrats webpage is that Hillary will walk away with 4 more delegates than Obama in the primary, and (although it’s still early) Obama will probably have the edge in the caucus delegates.
March 5th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
One thing is for sure: The democratic pocess in the US is alive and well! At least on the ‘D’ side anyway. Gives me great hope.
March 5th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
That is true. It was amazing seeing and talking to a lot of people the other night who clearly had never done this before (like me), many of them a bit wide-eyed (like me) at the spectacle. It’s a wan sort of silver lining to the last 8 years that they may have inspired a generation of people to reengage in the political process — and I don’t think it’s just the D’s. It will be interesting to see how much churning of Congress happens in the next few years.
March 6th, 2008 at 5:41 am
This campaign gets more interesting every day
http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/03/05/congressman-calls-special-meeting-to-discuss-fla-mich-delegate-dispute/
March 6th, 2008 at 10:09 am
Golly, that sure sounds fair, right? (Obama wasn’t even on the ballot in Michigan)
FL should redo their primary if they want their voted counted prior to the convention.
March 6th, 2008 at 10:48 am
The Clinton’s have several layers of unfair to go before they even get to illegal, but they will get there in due course.
March 6th, 2008 at 11:50 am
shcb,
That’s probably a correct forecast, based on past trend lines (e.g. Bushrovian crimes.)
On a not all that unrelated matter, did you hear Rove’s explanation for phoning Zellikow during the 911 investigation on 4 occasions? He says he phoned to inform Zelikow about an elderly neighbor (92) with a WWII oral history and an old lady with potentially historically valuable Republican materials from her work in the party over some 40 years. It’s not even a remotely believable lie, but the audience lapped it all up because of the nationalistic and patriotic fervour with which he spun the yarn.
March 6th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
heh, pretty funny, shcb
at least your sense of humor is better developed than some around here.
how low will McSame go?
March 6th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
Inky,
McCain will dance down the sidelines like Jerry Rice. If he can get a toe out of bounds without the ref seeing him so be it. The Clintons on the other hand will knock over the old lady in the wheel chair to catch the ball in the third row if they have to. Obama and Bush will stay 3 yards from the line even if it means not making the catch.
March 6th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
shcb,
Throw Bush into the same category as the Clinton’s and I’d agree with that. Does that make you more partisan than me? I think so.
Did you know that there are still two candidates for the Republican nomination, despite McCain having clinched the delegate count? Any reasonable comments as to why Ron Paul has not conceded or why there is absolutely no mainstream media coverage of that anomaly?
March 6th, 2008 at 8:00 pm
Knarly,
Bush isn’t a bad guy and hasn’t done anything wrong, much as you wish for it to be true it simply isn’t. But that will just get us into a pissing match, Ron Paul is more interesting.
Paul is a true believer, he truly believes in libertarianism, unless the pork is for his district of course. But at least he is faithful in his message and like most dogmatic true believers he is un electable in anything but local elections. I only know what I researched in the last ten minutes about his district, the 14th, but it is Texas coastline the size of Massachusetts with two cities of 60,000 and one of 18,000 the rest is small towns with shrimpers, oil patch hands, farmers and ranch hands, all independent, salt of the earth types. These are the type of people that someone like Paul resonates with. They don’t need nor want government intrusion into their lives. So he can be elected there, but his message won’t be accepted in Dallas, much less Detroit. So why isn’t the press covering him? Because there is no story, he is a quirk, like Tom Tancredo. They have no illusion of actually winning the presidency but they run because it get’s their message out and it raises money from all over the country that they can use in their next congressional race. And with what is left over they can help fund candidates in other races that have some of the same philosophies. Paul is old, he may run another time, maybe not, but he has what, 5 million dollars left over, that can run 4 or 5 Senate races, maybe 8 or 10 congressional runs. With this one presidential run he could be funding likeminded politicians after his death. What a legacy. He’s not doing this because he is a bad person, to the contrary, he could be using this money to travel and schmooze with the upper crust, but he will leave it as a sort of trust fund for his beliefs.
A question back to you. If he had not run for president would you have known who he is or what his message was? Mission accomplished.
March 6th, 2008 at 8:21 pm
Since voter fraud was alluded to in this thread and Republicans have once again been labeled crooked, I present Colorado house bill 1039, requiring a photo ID to vote and HB 1177 requiring proof of citizenship, not necessarily a photo ID but a passport or birth certificate. Both failed to make it out of committee (State veterans and military affairs committee) last week, the bills were defeated before they were voted on the house floor. The vote was along strict party lines, 7 D’s and 4 R’s. There has been little to no mention in the local press. Party trumps person.
March 6th, 2008 at 9:19 pm
Heh, well as it turns out I can very much speak to what is accepted in Dallas and I saw quite a lot of Ron Paul stuff here: bumper stickers, freeway banners, even (weirdly) somebody who had written “Ron Paul” in the dirt on the side of an 18-wheeler. But more directly, I work with a lot of reasonably affluent suburbanite types who think Paul is the man. As I always tell people around here, I think Paul is actually the President most Americans would want if they only knew him as other than a “fringe candidate”.
Honestly, he just doesn’t have one of the magic three things that make the media take you seriously: money, power, or celebrity. But hopefully if there’s one thing the media takes away from the Republican nomination race this time, it’s that money (Romney), power (Rudy), and celebrity (Thompson) alonedon’t cut it for voters, and so the only candidate with any sort of credibility, McCain, glided into the nomination. If they would have given Paul the viability blessing from the get-go (or at least once he started pulling in a ton of money), I bet it would have been an interesting race.
March 6th, 2008 at 9:23 pm
By the way, I just picked this up on CNN:
Knowing what I (now) know about this Texas caucus process, I think we can safely interpret that as “fuck it, let’s do it the old fashioned way”, ie. let’s just let the delegates show up and vote rather than trying to get a count done for them ahead of time.
Once more into the breech for me!
March 6th, 2008 at 10:26 pm
Geronimo! GL ymatt, but no need to report back unless there’s a scandal or more senility. chuckle. And thanks for your comments about RPaul, especially the eyes on the ground in Dallas, all interesting.
You too shcb, thanks, your comments were much as I’d suspected to be the case but you added depth to my understanding.
Did not see any answer to why he has not conceded. The money must be drying up, there is no sense in contributing to a lost cause. In my opinion, continuing his lost fight for the nomination just undermines some of the credibility gains he has made, and he has gained a lot of credibility. He’s not getting any press, so it’s not like hanging in there helps to get his message out. So I can think of only a few reasons why he hasn’t thrown in the towel, none of them very good: 1. stupid pride; 2. he has some long shot hope that delegates will revolt when they discover McCain was not a prisoner of war but was actually hiding out in a Vietnamese gay bar for 5 years; 3. he’s stubborn and likes geting his message out; 4. he wants to remain as a thorn in the side of the current Republican establishment he has grown to hate for how far they have drifted away from fiscal responsibility (or at least his own pretty well informed idea of FR) and for how far they have buried the constitutional principles of America, and for …. I’ll stop there I think I convinced myself the reason is #4 and I was beginning to sound like his webpage.
Someone’s gotta have a better reason for his not conceding - ymatt, is this another example of being unable to determine if it is cunning strategy or senility? He does not sound senile to me.
March 7th, 2008 at 6:18 am
Sure you will find people who like these strong willed and righteous candidates, but they simply can’t be elected to anything but local races. Tancredo and before him Pat Schroeder were the same. They are Colorado politicians so I know them but the same type is in all states. Matt is right about some of the reasons they won’t be elected, but just because the reasons are frivolous and silly doesn’t make these candidates more electable.
Why has he not conceded? I haven’t looked but my guess is he has all but stopped actively campaigning (spending money) his name is still on every poll and every crawler showing the delegate count, and staying in means the Republicans will have to give him a stage at the convention. He has proven a third party candidate can function inside one of the major parties by utilizing a new fangled thing called the internet. Kind of cool for an old man to be the one to pioneer that aspect of politics (I know Edwards did it first, us old guys need to be thrown a bone every now and then).
He’s been in politics longer than most of you have been alive and has been consistent throughout, he has been unsuccessful as both a state wide candidate and a third party candidate, this is the best he’s ever done, and he should be proud of this accomplishment. He has moved the discussion from the left and right to the point around back where libertarianism resides. He has also proven a more moderate, better looking, more charismatic slightly libertarian candidate can collect enough money to mount a viable campaign. Mission accomplished.
March 7th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
“Bush isn’t a bad guy and hasn’t done anything wrong”
wow
anything?
really?
I don’t have time to list all the many blunders of the worst president in 100 years… how about:
Lied to get us in to a war in Iraq
Bungling Afghanistan
Katrina response
Illegally tapping the phones of Americans without FISA oversight
Roadmap to Peace
Tax cuts that favor the rich
Holding the hand of Saudi douchebag and talking about bluebells
Bungled US tax surplus
Worst federal deficits ever
Response to science of climate change
Worst job creation record is decades
Failed to change US energy policy after 9/11 (see Cheney, Energy Task Force)
and my personal favorite:
nearly choked to death on a pretzel
(how f’ing stupid can one man be? o wait it’s w…)
I could go on, identify specific laws broken, lives ruined thousands of dead Americans and perhaps as many as a million dead Iraqis, but it won’t change your mind in the least. Partisanship trumps citizenship for dear shcb.
March 7th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
Inky,
This is what I meant about going down that road would just turn into a pissing match. The bulk of your charges aren’t based in anything resembling fact (still waiting for an example of a lie) and the rest are either his (and mine) opinions versus yours or they are who cares, holding hands with a Saudi? Global warming for instance is just a natural occurrence with the bulk of the warming coming from, wait for it, the sun. There is a Russian scientist that makes a good case that we are in the beginnings of a cooling trend.
The Clintons on the other hand are just bad people with bad friends.
March 7th, 2008 at 9:03 pm
I’m with Inky. Choking is beneath contempt. Fuck Tennessee Williams!!!
March 7th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
I take it back rwnj: you don’t have a healthy sense of humor.
bush choked on the pretzel because it went down the wrong pipe.
That is a fact.
Many of those other items are facts, no opinion at all. Your value judgement of the Clinton’s is clearly mis-informed partisan extemist opinion.
lefty, stfu, back in your cave.
March 7th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
As much as I agree that rwnj partisianship trumps citizenship (great line Enk), and that shcb doesn’t see any facts because he shuts his eyes and screams LALALALALALA!! anytime a fact gets too uncomfortably close to him, I’d like to share an interesting item from Rense about The Curious Experience of Caucusing in Texas (which is after all the topic of this thread, ahem.)
http://www.rense.com/general81/24.htm
March 8th, 2008 at 7:34 am
I really didn’t want to get into this, put yourself in my shoes, you say he lied, I say give me an example, you say well it was more like a deception, a few weeks later you say he lied, it has gone past déjà vu to surreal. And yet you keep believing he lied and I am the one who is a mindless partisan follower even after I give you the statute that gives the President the authority to utilize warrant-less wiretaps. I sometimes feel like Lewis Black coming out of one Starbucks only to see another across the street and realizing he is at the center of the universe.
Lied to get us in to a war in Iraq – sigh, example please
Bungling Afghanistan – I guess you are using a different benchmark Taliban has been defeated, they have held elections seems things are going pretty well there
Katrina response – by law he can’t move troops in without the ok of the Democrat governor, who only grudgingly gave him the ok after Bush was on the ground, four or five days later. People were moved from the superdome by the next evening.
Illegally tapping the phones of Americans without FISA oversight – read the FISA law, he can tap phones of Americans if they are suspected of terrorists ties. The FISA law gives him that authority, not exclude that authority. Read the damn law, don’t be so lazy that all the information you base your decisions on is from a 45 second out of context film strip.
Roadmap to Peace – you can have this one, stupid idea, peace will only come with the death of the radicals in that area, either by a bullet or old age.
Tax cuts that favor the rich – platitude, way too complicated for you to grasp and impossible until you get over your envy of anyone making a dollar more than you
Holding the hand of Saudi douchebag and talking about bluebells – you got me there, shaking the hand of foreign dignitary, march em’ to the gallows!
Bungled US tax surplus – ditto tax cuts
Worst federal deficits ever - ditto
Response to science of climate change – and you complain about “worst federal deficit” and yet you want us to decimate the free market capitalism that has made this country great so socialists can take over all because of some goofy science that is based on bad models. Ditto tax cuts
Worst job creation record is decades- not really something the president has a lot of say so over unless they are government jobs and then we’re back to making that pesky “Worst federal deficits ever” worser
Failed to change US energy policy after 9/11 (see Cheney, Energy Task Force)- who blocked drilling in Anwar?
and my personal favorite:
nearly choked to death on a pretzel – got me there, Sergeant, marshal a firing squad at once!
March 8th, 2008 at 9:39 am
Now c’mon, Inky. Don’t you think you’re being a little disingenuous here? I mean, really. I realize that you’ve never started a war or anything, or bungled anything as important as Afghanistan, especially since no one’s dumb enough to put you in charge of anything or actually listen to anything you say (even if they will let you fly an army jet - boy, would I love to sell THAT guy a bridge.) Really, though - can you actually say that you’ve never, ever choked on a piece of food? A pretzel? A potato chip? I know you people eat grits down there - they’re probably easy to choke on.
March 8th, 2008 at 9:53 am
I got an idea. Let’s just cut and paste the previous 100,000,000,000 words we’ve thrown back and forth on these subjects, including all the insults. That would save so much time we could actually walk away from our computers and do something real for a change.
March 8th, 2008 at 9:59 am
Or we could just post a bunch of links to stories until no-one cares anymore.
What I would like to see is this debate move from arenas like this into a more logical framework where the debate is controlled by rules of law. You know, something like the Hague International Court, or failing that I would even settle for something like this:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:HE00333:@@@N
March 8th, 2008 at 10:14 am
Back to my pet subject, Ron Paul and how it relates to the topic of this thread (remember? it is Caucusing in Texas…) this was interesting to read yesterday:
Now I do not believe that in its entirety, but it does suggest to me there is a truth somewhere between that statement and what the MSM (medicated strange media) suggests. I beleive RPaul wants to run but will be forced to shut down his campaign by a dearth of funding. But don’t believe me, think for yourself; here are two sides, you can figure out where the “truth lies” (and by the way, if a major scandal involving John McCain comes to the spotlight all bets are off!):
MSM:
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/03/07/ron.paul/index.html?section=cnn_latest
Alternative media:
http://www.dailypaul.com/node/41511
March 8th, 2008 at 10:53 am
The dailypaul guy doesn’t want to face reality is all, it happens when you put your whole heart and soul into something. notice how similar the Paul spokesman’s statements were to mine? The dailypaul guy thinks the objective was for Paul to win the presidency, it wasn’t, he is just a little naive
March 8th, 2008 at 10:56 am
if a major scandal involving McCain comes to light, Romney will and Huck will restart their campaigns and Paul will still have 1 or 2 percent of the vote, something insignificant.
March 8th, 2008 at 8:00 pm
Knarly
In regards to your March 8th, 2008 at 9:59 am post, I would love to discuss the legalities of going to war. Are you sure you’re up to it? In general you guys don’t fair very well when it comes to fact checked debates, you’re stronger with emotional, fuzzy wuzzy points of view. The Kucinich bill for instance, did you read it? Judging from past performance I doubt it, you probably just saw impeach bla bla bla Cheney bla bla bla bunch of names, close enough. I particularly liked point
All evidence? Really, you realize I would have a field day with that don’t you, we would work our way from the UN to most of the intelligence agencies in the world. Then we have the statement that a million Iraqi citizens (innocent) have been killed. Really, not the super inflated 650,000, too many numbers to remember I guess, just round it up to an even mil. No wonder this bill was never taken seriously.
Sure you want to take on this task?
March 8th, 2008 at 10:17 pm
Hi shcb,
Not a chance. I’d like to see the pros argue the Kucinich bill in a fair forum, a debate on this with you will change neither of our minds. Did I read the Kucinich bill? Yea, I scanned it (a month or so ago?) and I was not impressed. I threw it into the mix here only as an example, if you re-read that post you might see that was fairly obvious.
“Despite all evidence to the contrary” means that all evidence that did not fit the VP’s agenda was discarded and NOT shared with the American people. Obviously it does not mean that all the evidence showed there were no WMD’s. That’s part of the reason I have no interest in debating this with you here, it’s just a waste of time correcting your intentional warping of words.
By the way, great comments on the Ron Paul thing, I agree with you 100% there, even though I’d like to see a fairy tale ending to his run at the presidency.
March 9th, 2008 at 7:21 am
Here is something else that is interesting, the Republicans to some degree voted for the bill, this would have forced the hand of the Democrats, so instead of this issue being used as red meat for folks like you, (the far left base) the general public would see the evidence, or lack there of for impeachment and would see the Dems in congress as the stooges they are. In typical liberal fashion they (the dems) then accused the Republicans of doing what they were doing. They feigned indignation that the Republicans would use such a serious issue (impeachment) as a political tool. Since there is no cause for impeachment, this is what the Dems were doing in the first place. In the end the Dems folded because of course they didn’t even have a pair of deuces, same as you.
http://somd.com/news/headlines/2007/6687.shtml
March 9th, 2008 at 7:27 am
By the way, the Dems own congress, I wouldn’t call that a fair forum, but it certainly is a favorable, even friendly forum, but they don’t seem to want to show their cards. Why do you think TV has said repeatedly to “bring it on!” in regards to impeachment.
March 9th, 2008 at 10:16 am
History will be the one to define George W. Bush’s presidency. In my opinion, because of his incompetence and because of outright lies and deceit to the American people and to the world, he will not be remembered favorably.
Anyone who thinks otherwise in blinded by their own partisanship.
SHCB, I have a question for you:
Many right-wingers seem to think converting their economies to be more green will destroy their economy.
Why is it then that the countries that are implementing green technologies and sustainable energy initiatives are doing just fine, while your economy is in the dumps?
Your argument doesn’t hold water, and even John McCain realizes that. What’s going to happen if you don’t take your heads out of the sand is the US will fall even further behind in green technologies (= green jobs = economy growing).
Science is our friend, not our enemy.
March 9th, 2008 at 10:28 am
“I’m occaisionaly reading, I want you to know, in the second term.”
George W. Bush
Washington DC, March 2005
(Perhaps he should read the science behind climate change :-)
March 9th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
shcb said “Lied to get us in to a war in Iraq – sigh, example please”
how about 232 examples (WMDz) and another 28 (al qaeda/iraq)
“President Bush, for example, made 232 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and another 28 false statements about Iraq’s links to Al Qaeda.”
http://www.publicintegrity.org/WarCard/
260 false statements - otherwise called lies
I could do the same with each point but I have better things to do.
March 9th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
Inky,
That is one statement that turned out to be wrong many months later, not a lie. 0 times 260 still equals 0, unless of course you change the definition of the word to fit your needs, something liberals have never had a problem doing.
NL,
I don’t think a country buying into the “green” fad is going to make it’s economy much better or worse. This green thing is for the most part sales hype. “Ford is greener than Chevy, buy our truck, it runs on ethanol, no oil” (except for the oil to run the tractors, and trucks, and the natural gas to run the power plant to produce the electricity to refine the corn (can’t use coal, not PC anymore)). It’s kind of like “organic” food, our family farm raised “organic” wheat, it was only 160 acres (homesteaded and passed down through the generations), the guy that farmed it made a ton of money selling his wheat to yuppies because he didn’t use pesticides on that 160 acres, of course it was surrounded by 600 acre parcels that had the crap sprayed out of them.
Conservatives have no problem conserving, it’s in our name after all, we just want there to be a real reason and we want to do it in a sensible manner. If new scrubber technology for coal fired plants comes out install it when the old one is ready to be replaced, don’t mandate it when all it will help is a fraction of a percentage.
It wasn’t widely reported but Bush signed a bill all but outlawing incandescent light bulbs in a few years. This is of course to lower electricity usage, only one problem, it doesn’t. A small town in I forget where had a light bulb exchange program, bring in your old bulbs and they would give you a compact florescent for free. Electricity usage went up 7 or 8 percent. Problem was the new bulbs have to be left on 15 minutes or the life is drastically reduced, they also take a while to come to full brightness so people were leaving them turned on all the time instead of clicking them on when they went into the room and off when they left. Hopefully new technology will fix these problems before the law takes effect, but it is a bad idea to pass such a law before that. Bad Bush, bad.
I’m designing a new ceiling system now and one of the things I plan on incorporating is LED lighting in the grid system, drastically reducing the need for even florescent lights. We are also working on “smart” systems to open and close window coverings inside and outside the building to limit air conditioning usage. Most of these innovations are because of new technologies not because it is being mandated, and guess what, we plan on making a profit, a huge profit if we can. But it has to sell, and it has to make sense before it will sell.
The Denver City Council tried (and failed thank god) to pass a law that would make it illegal for grocery stores to use plastic shopping bags, paper only please. The problem is that it takes 10 times the space for the same number of bags, 10 trucks and trailers verses 1, not very environmentally sound, not to mention the paper bags take more energy to produce than the plastic to start with. I went into a grocery store in Holland and everyone brought a few bags with them, great idea, but that is a cultural thing.
The part of things like Kyoto conservatives really get upset about is the socialistic “take it from the rich and give it to the poor aspect” one way or another America was going to pay a “tax” to poorer countries (carbon offsets and such) and we weren’t going to get a new bridge or an educated child from those dollars, they were just gone, bad for the economy and didn’t do squat for the environment.
Reasonable science is our friend, socialists are not.
March 10th, 2008 at 6:07 am
NL,
I don’t think I really answered your question. The reason the US economy has fallen relative to the rest of the world has nothing to do with whether we embrace “green” policies, it is a combination of an over valued dollar, high oil prices, bad loan policies etc.
March 10th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Great job, Inky, in finding a source that perfectly matches your own non-partisanship standards. With such glowing, credible reviews from such non-partisan giants as The New York Times, Harry Shearer, Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart, Reuters, The Washington Post>/i>, NPR, Keith Olbermann, TPM Muckraker, Daily Kos… this “study” by the “Center for Public Integrity” is far above suspicion or reproach. In truth, your source is no more non-partisan than Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, etc.
Comparison: Since Katrina, scientists have predicted numerous monster hurricanes for each and every summer, guaranteed to wipe out cities in the areas of the Gulf region and the Eastern seaboard. All lies, I tell ya (using the liberal definition), based on faulty, cherry-picked global warming intelligence (as we all know now, in hindsight). The lies were repeated thousands of times by news sources worldwide – accomplices in the massive fraud, all of them. Thousands of doomsday weather-related lies… thousands of them… someone must do a “study” to expose all those criminals.
March 10th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
I failed to properly close the italics - sorry. Impeach me!
Great job, Inky, in finding a source that perfectly matches your own non-partisanship standards. With such glowing, credible reviews from such non-partisan giants as The New York Times, Harry Shearer, Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart, Reuters, The Washington Post, NPR, Keith Olbermann, TPM Muckraker, Daily Kos… this “study” by the “Center for Public Integrity” is far above suspicion or reproach.
Comparison: Since Katrina, scientists have predicted numerous monster hurricanes for each and every summer, guaranteed to wipe out cities in the areas of the Gulf region and the Eastern seaboard. All lies, I tell ya (using the liberal definition), based on faulty, cherry-picked global warming intelligence (as we all know now, in hindsight). The lies were repeated thousands of times by news sources worldwide – accomplices in the massive fraud, all of them. Thousands of doomsday weather-related lies… thousands of them… someone must do a “study” to expose all those criminals.
March 10th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
NL, SHCB - clearly you both have different views on environmental / global warming issues / science, and you are both probably partially right.
FYI shcb - your statement “reasonable science is our friend” makes about as much sense as “islamic terrorist”, in other words it makes no sense.
Science is impartial and absolute. Where it is wrong, it gets corrected in time as new discoveries are made. Period.
Islam is a submission to God’s will. One who submits to God’s will by definition can not be a terrorist. Therefore terrorists are NEVER Islamic, just like mercenaries are NEVER Christians.
Regarding the lies told by your administration to push your country into the Iraq war, I think our disagreement comes from the clash between (1) my willingness to believe that there is no way in hell that a reasonably intelligent person could have (a) overlooked or disregarded the evidence indicating that Saddam did not have WMD’s and (b) considered evidence such as that offered by the known liar Chalabi as more credible than the counter evidence and (2) your willingness to trust your administration’s excuses that they were naive and were mislead by the evidence they received. You won’t accept (1) and I won’t accept (2). That is an impasse.
FYI, belief in (2) brings McCain and a 100 year war with Iran et al, leading to a poorer futture or early death for your grandchildren.
FYI, besides impeachment proceedings, here is where (1) takes us:
March 10th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
“President Bush, for example, made 232 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and another 28 false statements about Iraq’s links to Al Qaeda.”
http://www.publicintegrity.org/WarCard/
260 different lies
not one lie that you disbelieve
your new math doesn’t work out there rwnj
March 10th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
Knarly,
Would your accuracy filter be happier if I said “reasonable scientists and their science is our friend, socialists and their unreasonable scientists are not”?
Really? So who were those guys beheading folks live at five a couple years ago? Actors on a sound stage in California probably.
Something you guys seem to not take into consideration about the run up to this war is what if we would have given more weight to Sadam not having WMD’s and we had been wrong. Sometimes you have to error on the side of caution.
Now this quote you just gave said 90,000 Iraqis dead, Kucinich says a mil, the Palestinian woman says 650,000. And ya’ll wonder why we have trouble taking you seriously. Facts don’t seem to be your friend.
March 10th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
shcb,
I personally don’t think that demanding wealthy, industrialized nations - who have contributed 99% of the environmental damage to our planet - to invest more to rectify the problem is asking too much. You may call that “socialism”, I call it moral responsibility.
And you still didn’t address why world economies that are going green are flourishing. You did address why the US economy is tanking, which really doesn’t have anything to do with their lack of investment in green technologies, but rather many other bad economic policies. It makes me wonder why you would listen to those same “economists” when they say being more environmentally friendly will destroy your country.
As for your points about light bulbs and grocery bags, the fact that you are using those minimal items as a counter argument really shows your lack of understanding about the environmental problems we face as a human race. For example, my energy –saving bulbs do not have to be on for at least 15 minutes to save power, that’s just fucked up and I think whoever decided on those bulbs needs to go back to school and learn how to do some research.
March 10th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
Perhaps if you weren’t pissing away 12 billion a month (!) on two wars you wouldn’t mind spending a little money to leave your children and grandchildren a more sustainable and healthy planet.
March 10th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
Nice to see shcb admit there was evidence against WMD’s.
Using his logic about “erring on the side of caution” suggests America should have bombed the hell of half the countries in the world by now, wiped out North Korea, Russia and China all in one fell swoop.
For your information, erring on the side of caution does NOT mean: ATTACK!!!
Erring on the side of caution means playing defence while getting at the truth. Seems to me with homeland security not yet even close to securing your ports from a dirty bomb attack in a cargo container you folks do not seriously think erring on the side of caution has any merit and you folks certainly have not learned how to be cautious.
March 10th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
NL - amen.
March 10th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
You guys are idiots, the US doesn’t produce 99% of the worlds pollution, it may provide the technology to clean up 99% but it doesn’t produce it. What exactly was going to happen with all that money from Kyoto? Was China going to clean up it’s water supply? Was Romania going to stop using 2 cycle engines, pumping so much diesel fumes into the air you can’t see or breath? No, it was just going to be pissed away, thank god we had a president (2 actually, even Clinton didn’t buy in into the Kyoto crap) that had the sense to tell the socialists to keep there grubby hands off our treasure.
NL, I know the environment is a hot issue for you, but I can remember Carl Sagan saying we were all going to be living in a nuclear winter from global cooling because of pollution by the year 2000 if we didn’t stop bla bla bla. That just happened to be the same year Ted Danson said there would be no life left in the ocean if we didn’t bla bla bla. Keeping the earth as clean as reasonably possible is a noble and worthwhile cause. Destroying the economies that make that possible to achieve some utopian goal is just foolish. So excuse me if I don’t believe everything I hear from the chicken littles.
The economies that are “going green” are looking good because the US is on a down turn not because they are on an upturn. Look at unemployment in France and Germany. Being more environmentally friendly won’t hurt the economy if it is done reasonably, paying money to bloodsuckers to placate liberal’s guilt will.
How exactly does going green help an economy? It might, I just don’t know how. Less waste? Using nuclear power like France? That might help. Mandated wind power in Germany is costing about 30% more than coal fired plant electricity, they are also having problems with exploding transformers that have to be replaced. It has made the grid so unstable equipment shuts down because of power spikes. Does that help an economy?
This is the problem with making policy based on feel good rhetoric instead of thoughtful research.
If we weren’t pissing away billions a month, your country would be. By the way aren’t you guys up north doubling your defense spending in the next 5 years? Wonder where that money is going. Maybe a few bil to the war?
In a free and open society with as dynamic an economy as ours you can’t inspect every package, every container, every inch of the border, that is why you kill the bastards where the live and breath.
It’s a good thing adults have been in charge for the last few years. And we’ll survive the D’s running things for a few, then the R’s will have to clean up the mess again.
March 11th, 2008 at 8:15 am
Iraq had no operational relationship with Al Qaeda
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/29959.html
“An exhaustive review of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents that were captured after the 2003 U.S. invasion has found no evidence that Saddam Hussein’s regime had any operational links with Osama bin Laden’s al Qaida terrorist network.
The Pentagon-sponsored study, scheduled for release later this week, did confirm that Saddam’s regime provided some support to other terrorist groups, particularly in the Middle East, U.S. officials told McClatchy. However, his security services were directed primarily against Iraqi exiles, Shiite Muslims, Kurds and others he considered enemies of his regime.
The new study of the Iraqi regime’s archives found no documents indicating a “direct operational link” between Hussein’s Iraq and al Qaida before the invasion, according to a U.S. official familiar with the report.”
- - - -
600,000 documents in the study. One assumes each of the 600,000 dead Iraqis clutched a single document in their hands (thus: they is trrrrists!) before we killed them. To be fair, bad water, lack of electricity, rampant crime and sectarian strife probably killed the majority. Though the US set all those calamities in motion… so. No need to examine how we got here folks!
Oh and dear rwnj, if you really think the last 8 years have been a great success, I think you should ask your doctor for a brain scan, you seem to be missing yours.
March 11th, 2008 at 8:31 am
Idiots? Hmm, name calling, a sure sign you know you’re wrong on this one. But, I guess I will respond in kind:
Did I say the US was responsible for 99% of the world’s pollution? No. I said “wealthy, industrialized nations”, which includes many countries, even my own. Learn how to read. Idiot.
We are increasing our military budget, mostly to assert our arctic sovereignty because global warming is making the ice melt which is opening up the Northwest Passage. Trust me, it’s not so we can go and illegally invade another country. Idiot.
By the way, we’re also investing heavily in cleaning up our environment, including a plan unveiled yesterday (sort of ironic) by our conservative government that will, among other things, “impose regulations on industry, the source of half the country’s emissions, which will cut greenhouse gases by 165 megatonnes. Combined with other federal and provincial measures, the department estimates Canada will have cut its emissions to 21 per cent below 2006 levels by 2020.”
This will be one of the “most massive environmental infrastructure projects in Canadian history”. Industry, not taxpayers, will carry the financial burden.
All this while our country’s financial position is strongest among G8 nations.
Idiot.
March 11th, 2008 at 8:33 am
Idiots? Hmm, name calling, a sure sign you know you’re wrong on this one. But, I guess I will respond in kind:
Did I say the US was responsible for 99% of the world’s pollution? No. I said “wealthy, industrialized nations”, which includes many countries, even my own. Learn how to read. Idiot.
We are increasing our military budget, mostly to assert our arctic sovereignty because global warming is making the ice melt which is opening up the Northwest Passage. Trust me, it’s not so we can go and illegally invade another country. Idiot.
By the way, we’re also investing heavily in cleaning up our environment, including a plan unveiled yesterday (sort of ironic) by our conservative government that will, among other things, “impose regulations on industry, the source of half the country’s emissions, which will cut greenhouse gases by 165 megatonnes. Combined with other federal and provincial measures, the department estimates Canada will have cut its emissions to 21 per cent below 2006 levels by 2020.”
This will be one of the “most massive environmental infrastructure projects in Canadian history”. Industry, not taxpayers, will carry the financial burden.
All this while our country’s financial position is strongest among G8 nations.
Idiot.
March 11th, 2008 at 9:55 am
I probably shouldn’t have called you guys idiots, not very professional. But sometime I just get so infuriated, because, well you are. You worry about things that aren’t important, did you know that if humans did nothing to add to co2 other than breath, we would reduce green house gases by 0.05%. The major component in green house gasses by a huge margin is water vapor, clouds, and I don’t think we want to get rid of them. You’re right, I misread your comment, but that statement is just silly the way you have it written, of course an aggregate of all industrialized nations produces most of the pollution. That’s like saying all wife beaters are men, it is inherent in the definition of the words. Change the word to spouse and you have a different animal. If all those countries produced a bazillion tons today and reduced that number to half a bazillion, they would still produce 99% And you don’t worry about things that are important, you defend the enemies of the west that are sworn to destroy us, and villainize those that are doing the protecting, madness.
We call that an indirect tax, it is kind of the definition of fascism.
Since your country’s ecconomy is connected at the hip with mine, you are in for a downturn as well, unless this recession is short.
And last but not least, Inky. Be sure to post that study when it comes out the loaded phrase is “operational relationship”. It’ll be fun to see how that is defined or if it is.
March 11th, 2008 at 10:31 am
Actually, Germany is using tons of solar.
They lead the world in passive and pv solar installation (despite their somewhat meager solar resources). One word for you: Nanosolar - cheaper than coal.
Pointing out that their power grid has weak spots or old equipment is somewhat ironic considering we recently had the same problem in Florida (you know, blacked out much of the state? you know, facts).
Or I could point out how CA got a new governator due to dumbya’s corrupt buddies gaming the power grid to rip off billions. Facts are facts.
March 11th, 2008 at 10:36 am
shcb
no WMDs, no AQ links, 4000 dead US service men and women, somewhere south of a million Iraqis dead, 3 trillion spent, terrorists and their support skyrocketing and you are going to justify the whole thing on the definition of the word “operational”? That is just weak. Like arguing about the definition of the word “is”.
March 11th, 2008 at 10:47 am
The problem with solar or wind is that it is undependable, you have to have almost a full backup of conventional sources in the event there is no wind or sun (90% is the conventional wisdom). These sources are fine as additives to the grid but once you depend on them for anything more than an insignificant amount of total generation you will have hills and valleys in the grid supply. This is another area where the technology just isn’t there yet. The generation technology is ok but there is no good storage method. Pumping water up hill is the best we have at this point but you use so much energy getting the water to the top it just isn’t efficient except on a small scale. A couple small towns in the mountains use this method around here, but they are only supplying a few hundred households. It really has nothing to do with the age of the equipment. California? Just can’t have a discussion without a little hate the R’s tossed in can you?
March 11th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
I’m not justifying the war on the word “operational” just refuting this one point. And of course I am not even doing that now since I don’t know what is in the report. I’m just using past experience to predict what will be said. There was a book written a couple years back, I don’t remember the name or author, that detailed all the connections between Sadam and Arab terrorists. Here is a piece by Deroy Murdock that gives you a feel. What I suspect is in this study (or the liberal spin) will very narrowly define “operational” as having directly helping Al Qaeda or meeting face to face with bin Laden. But of course all they are trying to do is have a headline knowing folks like you won’t read it critically. It’s a struggle but we have to refute these distortions of the truth one at a time, no matter how trivial.
http://www.nationalreview.com/murdock/murdock200310210934.asp
March 11th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
shcb, so when your kids were young and they made a mess and you made them clean it up, you were being facist?
And since were are joined at the hip economically and since we’re also making industry take responsibility for the damage they cause to the environment, Canada’s economy should be really screwed soon.
We shall see.
March 11th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
NL
Your analogy would fit in the case of an oil spill, and then no it wouldn’t be fascist they made the mess they should clean it up. In this case the consumer will pay or the taxpayer will pay and in most cases they are one in the same. So it is just another tax, what makes it fascist is it is something the company wouldn’t do on their own under normal circumstances. Which is fine if Canadians want to pay either way that is their decision, it’s just one more reason for people like your doctors to move south. If the cost gets too high your companies will simply move south to America and our unemployment numbers will go down and yours up. But it shouldn’t be sugar coated, it’s just another tax. It’s like corporate taxes, corporations don’t pay taxes, consumers pay taxes, it’s included in the price of the product, which makes it so silly when you hear people wanting to raise taxes on the evil corporations, they are raising taxes on themselves. Idiots.
March 11th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
So let’s see, you are still referencing discredited pre-war BS from 2003, while a 2008 study completed of 600,000 actual documents we captured in Iraq shows a complete lack of operational relationship btwn Iraq and AQ. None. Zero. Nada. But you just can’t give up the neocon wet dream that invading Iraq will fix everything. It broke a whole lot more than it fixed. Fact.
Sure Saddam was a bad guy, he harbored bad guys and paid suicide bomber bad guys’ families but the Arab world looked on him with utter contempt for these blatantly BS PR payola stunts. How many terrorists and criminals has the US coddled over the last 50 years? Plenty. For example we funded the Afghan Mujahaddein and helped Pakistan with the Taliban. How did that work out for us?
So was the Iraq War worth it? 3 trillion dollars. 4000 dead Americans. Up to a million dead Iraqis (bet their relatives are pissed) No WMDs, no AQ ties, no wave of pro-western Democracy sweeping the middle east. $109 a barrel oil, a shredded US Constitution, we now torture people (sickening) the list goes on and on and on.
Will you be signing all your posts “idiots” from now on? Is that a sig or a comment on your opinion of anyone who dares to disagree w dumbya?
yMom might not approve.
March 11th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
the idiot thing is just a phase I’m going through, like puberty or a mid life crisis, we’ll just have to wait and see what the report says
March 11th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
just to show you I have a sence of humor, they just played a cut of Bush singing on the radio staion I’m listening to, I’m sure it’s on utube somewhere, it’s pretty bad.
March 11th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
to answer your question, yes it was worth it to do nothing would have been worse.
March 11th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
exactly how worse?
he had no WMDs, no AQ connection. None.
We could have concentrated on Afghanistan (which seems to be backsliding quite a bit). Of course if the neocon jingo johnny’s would have read any of Richard Clark’s many memos. Or that PDB “bin Laden determined to strike in US” mentions airliners, hijacking (you know, facts)… unless of course they wanted it to happen… gosh it’s not like the Gulf of Tonkin Incident that lead to the Viet Nam War was faked or anything. Nope, no false flag anything. Ever. Hey look a shiny object! /satire
my new sig is in bold:
rwnjs - wrong on Iraq, wrong on Iran, wrong on the economy, wrong on every damn thing since they seized power I just pray President Obama can lead us out of this insane mess dumbya and co. have created. Heck of a job bushie!
March 11th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
Inky, you know, I think I may use “idiots” as my tag line. I kind of like it. Yours needs to be shorter. I always liked my favorite liberal’s tage line, Linda Ellerbee’s was “and so it goes”. She is as talented a writer as they come, and a sexy voice to boot. My favorite piece of hers was when she told of her relationship with Frank Zappa shortly after his death. They had been phone friends for a couple years having never met in person. He would call her at least once a week and start the conversation with “Ellerbee, Zappa” then he would continue with something like “are you out of your mind?” she being a liberal and he being a staunch conservative, the two or three hour conversation was heated but civil, kind of reminds me of my conversations here with NL. We have to get your tag line shorter, we’ll work on it .
So the question on the table is how could it be worse. Right now Iraq is not a problem of epic proportions as it was, the job is not finished but it is manageable, same with Afghanistan. There will be an ebb and flow with these countries for a long time, but right now they are manageable. Iran is still a big problem and Syria a less problem. Without doing what we did in Iraq and sending the message we sent, not to mention killing a bunch of bad guys we would have problems in Libya, Sudan, Pakistan and probably Saudi Arabia. The unfriendlies in those countries would have seen us as “Paper Tigers” in the words of OBL. We have also had much success in the Philippines and Indonesia. All these places were put on notice with our invasion, they of course were given hope with the left’s lack of resolve, but what can you do? It’s just another hurdle we have to deal with. If the Dems win the presidency we’ll have to see if their lack of resolve will affect the Olympics. Muslims in China are flexing their muscles a bit, but of course with China being a closed society they are better able to squash bugs than we are with our legions of lawyers and bleeding heart liberals. I hope it doesn’t get disrupted, no one will see my ceiling in the swimming center if it does.
This problem is so much bigger than you realize.
March 11th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
shcb,
You can pour toxic waste down your drain for all I care. Because I know it less than a year your country’s policies towards our environment are going to drastically change, whether it be McCain, Clinton or Obama.
And there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.
March 11th, 2008 at 7:05 pm
Btw idiot, Mary Ann is a substance abusing criminal.
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080311/dawn_wells_080311/20080311?hub=Entertainment
She should hook up with Rush. They’d probably have good times.
March 12th, 2008 at 4:50 am
Given the choices in this race, I’m afraid you’re right NL, there will be many things I will despise but that’s the price of democracy
March 12th, 2008 at 5:32 am
Dawn Wells got busted, Mary Ann still lives on an island after taking a three hour cruise. I’ve been married 30 years, I NEED my fantasies :)
March 12th, 2008 at 9:22 am
lol.
Now, I’ll go get the mop. There’s piss everyone on this thread.
March 12th, 2008 at 9:56 am
you know the funny part is my wife told me to write that, no wonder I’ve been married 30 years.
March 13th, 2008 at 11:25 am
shcb - have you seen this item? It might be the “environmentally responsible” final solution to your gopher critter problems.
http://www.rodenator.com/
http://www.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/news/story.html?id=06e61f5c-c8e0-469f-947f-4be5940c6418&k=23012
March 13th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
Thanks Knarly,
The problem with this type of tactic is it kills everything in the hole, snakes, rabbits burrowing owls etc, I want to keep those critters. You also have to have access to all the varmints, I don’t think many of my neighbors would mind the total destruction of the critters but some would. And they will just keep repopulating if you don’t kill them all, and I kind of like having a few around. My neighbor tried using propane, but he was using it to suffocate them, it took a BUNCH of propane to fill a hole. I’ll keep it in mind.
P.S. Did you see the price? $2,000!!! My wife would kill me.
March 13th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
I found a great solution, too - manx “bob”cats. Great hunters. I’ve had them for three years, and they have cleaned out the entire neighborhood of moles, mice, and squirrels, and even a couple of copperheads. We no longer have a single squirrel to screw up attic insulation in this entire heavily wooded neighborhood - not even a nest. They climbed to the very tops of our white oaks and cleaned them out.
They multiply quickly, but I haven’t had any of them neutered because the word has spread locally and I give them to farmers in the area.
March 13th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
Heartwarming posts from both shcb an TV and its not even April fools day yet. I’m smiling.
Glad to hear you are concerned about collatoral damage, shcb. And I am impressed that you even thought about that. I need to give you more credit sometimes. Now, if you would just transfer that kind spot in your heart for snakes, rabbits and burrowing owls over to Iraqi schoolgirls etc. there might be hope for you yet.
March 13th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
shcb, sorry for ending that last post on a sowner note, it’s just habit.
TV, that’s an awesome manx cat story. Keep me posted about them please.
March 13th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
“sowner” shold be “downer”.
March 13th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
putting scads of propane into the ground sounds like a Darwin Award winner
bet he’s a smoker too
try hooking up the exhaust from your car to a hose and give them a blast of CO (carbon monoxide)
note that this will kill anything in those holes, rabbits, snakes etc
I used the hose method (moderate success) on moles
what really worked is a snowy owl moved in down the street
a hungry critter
March 13th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
TV, we’re on a treeless plain here and have two coyotes that run, trot actually, they don’t even give the 4 German Shepherds barking at them from the deck a second glance any more, anyway they trot across our property at 7:00 every morning like clockwork, the cats would probably be lunch.
Inky, I kind of thought the same thing, they include safety glasses with the contraption Knarly linked to, and a small shovel, maybe you dig your grave first? I tried a garden hose thinking I could flood them out, 45 minutes later I still could find no water coming out of the ground, their holes must go on forever. When they got rid of them here at work they used soapy suds to drive them out.
Knarly, don’t worry about the quip, I would have to have your wife take your temperature if you didn’t make that remark. Glad to see your still in good health and spirits.
I’ll probably just keep shooting them, it is surgical and I have an old dog that just loves to go out with me. She was in the living room last weekend and I cocked my pellet gun in my office and she came running and panting, ready to accompany the great white hunter. She can barely walk anymore but she runs out to the holes with me. I almost did a Dick Cheney on her a month or so back.
March 13th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
shcb, maybe you could buy TWO of that contraption at $2k each and tell your wife: “but honey! it’s cheaper than Eliot Spitzer’s hooker!”
a week of sleeping on the couch should be worth it for the vermin control nirvana you may achieve with The Rodenator™
If the moles return, I’ll let you know how it goes.
March 13th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
inky,
LOL
March 14th, 2008 at 5:21 am
NL,
Here is an interesting little ditty on the founder of the Weather Channel’s take on global warming. I disagree with him a bit on if the weather cools for the next few years it will prove there is no global warming, weather is not climate. But I agree with him on the rest. Note the math at the end 38/100,000/2 = about 5000 remember I said if we stop all human activity except breathing we would make a 1 in 5000 difference? nothing wrong with limiting polution and cleaning up the messes we make, just do it for the right reasons.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,337710,00.html
March 14th, 2008 at 9:48 am
o yeah a link to fauxnews - now THAT’S convincing!
let me guess: this guy is a hard core rwnj? I didn’t bother to google him, but he sure sounds like he is a koolaid drinker.
CO2 is only part of the problem. Remember CFCs? They ate a giant hole in the ozone, until we banned them. The ozone has recovered somewhat. If we do nothing about carbon based fuels, we risk many more unpleasant consequences than just a CO2 rise, there are other green house gases, other pollutants, geopolitical costs, ‘peak oil’ (did u know the Russians have a completely different theory about how oil and gas deposits form? they don’t buy into peak oil). Solar. WInd. Geothermal. Tidal. Burning gobs of dead dinosaurs to make your truck go doesn’t seem very smart at 17 mpg.
Oil is about $110 a barrel, I recall under Clinton it was under $20.
Isn’t shrubco a smashing success!?!? Hey hows the stock market doing?
We should be leading the march away from oil/coal based economies, not playing geopolitical gotcha with the middle eastern oil reserves.
Watch your Athabasca, Canada.
March 14th, 2008 at 11:17 am
You lost me with the “foxnews” link. They have an agenda they are trying to further with respect to the environment, in case you didn’t know.
If you want scientifically-based information on this matter, try the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (made of up hundreds of scientists from around the world from over 150 countries).
This is not some partisan issue people are trying to advance. There’s actually a strong consensus among scientific experts in this field about the cause and solutions.
March 14th, 2008 at 11:53 am
btw The Weather Channel Founder
sounds great, until you learn he was booted out after about a year (there has to be a story there… loose the search hounds knarly!) He is now a stand up TV weatherman. Right back where he started. Oh yeah. He’s the sage climate scientist all right (snicker).
try wikipedia
in 1982
“He then founded The Weather Channel, serving as its CEO and President during the startup and its first year of operation. After being forced out at TWC, Coleman became weather anchor at WCBS-TV in New York and then at WMAQ-TV in Chicago, before moving to Southern California to join the independent television station, KUSI-TV in San Diego, in what Coleman fondly calls, “his retirement job”.” 25 years ago a weatherman helped found the weather channel. He was forced out and is now a… wait for it… weatherman. Not some massively credentialed climate researcher. Nope. A ‘happy talk’ weatherman.
Even if carbon dioxode isn’t the boogieman, the idea that humanity should take care of it’s cradle is obvious, unless you are more partisan than citizen on spaceship earth.
Here is a cool graphic that relates:
http://blog.phiffer.org/post/27344630
the blue green sphere is all the water in the world - including fresh and salt water. The pale pink sphere is our supply of air. Sure on a human scale those are vast amount of water and air. But 6 or 7 billion human beings now control the biosphere. message? don’t screw it up
funny how conservatives aren’t for conservation
March 15th, 2008 at 7:07 am
NL,
Everyone has an agenda, I looked up the IPCC on Wiki, they were founded in 1988 I believe. Their stated mission is to advance the climatic opinion of the UN, not exactly a pro American, or pro capitalistic organization. No agenda there. They also don’t do research according to this article. Were they the group that started this whole mess? If they were, they were made up of something over 2000 scientists, with only a handful, less than a couple dozen, that were climatologists or meteorologists. They were mostly politically connected bureaucrats. Which would make sense that they don’t do research. Two or three years after this report came out and people had time to look it over a questionnaire was sent to around 10,000 scientists, the bulk of whom were climatologists, over half of them said the research was either wrongly interpreted or the numbers were cooked. The most glaring was the effect of clouds (the biggest greenhouse gas) was exaggerated by a factor of 8. Over the years I have heard many experts discuss this at length on Rosen’s show. One was a Viscount from Britain that is a scientist, Monkton was his name I think. He went through Gore’s film (the IPCC shares a Nobel prize with AlGore) his and other folks I have listened to say while the Gore film has some truth, he cherry picks his “facts”, there is some melting of the Antarctic ice pack, in one small area, the rest of the pack is either increasing or staying consistent. There are many other examples, there are also examples of just out and out lies, not the Lies.com type, real lies. Like his assessment of how much the ocean will rise, even if global warming is as it is claimed, responsible scientists say it will rise only a tiny fraction of what AlGore says.
A professor at the University of Kansas has looked at the data closely, he says it is just junk science, he (and I) don’t think we should ignore it, just study it responsibly. His complaint is that the models being used are junk, they are starting with a predetermined conclusion and manipulating the constants until that conclusion is reached. The proof of that is that if you take historical data, insert it into the models, you don’t return historical (or current) reality. He has made a simple model that retains integrity over a thousand (or ten thousand, don’t remember which) years with the exception of the eruption of Krakatau and WWII, but in both cases the model returns to the baseline within a couple years. His fear is that we are in for a cooling period in the next 200 years, that we are at the peak of a warming cycle. Evidence of that is Greenland, why is landmass that is covered in ice called Greenland? Because a thousand years ago it wasn’t, during the last period of global warming they actually grew grapes there.
As I’ve said soooo many times, I’m not against conservation, studying or protecting the environment, I just want it to be for realistic reasons rationally.
March 17th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
“The Curious Experience of Caucusing in Texas” is not a place where I would expect to see a defence of independent analysis of established scientific consensus and conclusions about global warming.
Nice to see shcb thinking outside of conventional wisdom, too bad it falls lock-step into line with his partisan ideology. That seems to be the dividing line for shcb: what he sees on False News or hears on Rosen’s show is true to him, anything else is just liberal hyperbole to shcb.
There is no doubt in my mind that humans have an enormously bleak effect on natural systems and the weakening of nature’s resiliency. Global warming in particular though has long been something that I’ve doubted ever since I learned a year or two ago that other planets in our solar system were experiencing similar increases in temperature to earth as a result of sun cycles. I think shcb is right to point out that consensus of the world’s best thinkers does not mean something is so, just consider what Galileo replied in response to the church and their “scientists”, through the Inquisition (just think waterboards) when asked whether the earth moves.
The irony is that shcb will place his reputation in the hands of independent thinkers such as a prof. from the U of Kansas (the “intelligent design” state, no less) when it is reported by False News or RWNJ radio, but refuses to entertain independent thoughts when at odds with RWNJ commentators.
For instance, we are only now learning that the murder weapons used at the world trade towers and the pentagon, i.e. the planes, despite their transponders malfunctioning and the flight data recorders and voice data recorders NOT being recovered, were, CONTRARY to PREVIOUS STATEMENTS, never positively identified. The implications of the FBI being unable to factually verify the identity of the planes (murder weapons) is big: legally and otherwise. That’s the tip of the iceberg, the rest is posted here (note to shcb: just pretend this is a news exclusive by Faux, the announcer comes on speaking: “I can not think of any other time in history when a plane crashed and no identification of the wreckage was performed. This latest inaction by the FBI reeks of cover up… “)
Link to FBI item in next post.
March 17th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
www . 911blogger.com/node/14406
March 17th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
you make some good points Knarly, in my defense one of the things a show like Rosen has going for it is that it is three hours long. most guests are there for at least an hour sometimes two, you get a pretty good feel for how real or fake a person is in that amount of time. now of course someone could BS me for an hour I suppose, but it is different than a thirty second sound bite like you might see on the news or a couple minutes on a talk show, whether that be Hanity or Stewart. Rosen’s show is just particularly well done.
March 17th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
shcb,
Thanks and I choose to respect your opinion about Rosen’s show because you’ve (sometimes) demonstrated a keen intelligent skepticism and I myself have not yet experienced a Rosen show.
(”sometimes” - just couldn’t quite bring myself to say it! ) Cheers, Happy St . Pats.
March 17th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Happy Patty’s day to you as well. this brings up a question, I find myself agreeing with Rosen a little too much sometimes, to the point I am, not embarrassed, but concerned that I am a bit of a puppet. I do at those times reconsider my priorities and core beliefs to make sure I’m not being manipulated too much, and I do check a few facts and figures and see what the other side is saying and checking their stats as well. By an overwhelming margin I find my side more believable than the other side not always but most of the time.
Now the question, how does one know he is being fed the diet of a mushroom? And also, facts and figures can be checked, the gdp of a country is what it is for instance but how that information is used is a different story. A person’s and a countries morals, beliefs and priorities come into play.
Do we pick our mentors because they believe what we believe, or do we believe what we believe because of what our mentors have told us? Or a combination of the two?
I really don’t know where I’m going with this, but I have to go see my daughter’s coach now so maybe it will make more sense tonight.
March 17th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
shcb - those are great questions, but a word of advice: don’t ask your daughter’s coach about all that, he/she will just get confused and think you are a bigger nut than you seemed at first.
The questions you ask have haunted people ever since the scope of human knowledge increased beyond what a learned person could comprehend (somewhere in the 1600’s or 1700’s.) The historical and common solution, which I find much lacking, is to rely on established experts. Ultimately I think the answer lies in an openness for new ideas, dropping of dogmas, and developing an intuitive awareness of a higher order of honesty with the inner faith that your spirit’s pure white light can discern the truth when free of all other distractions. A combination of Eastern mysticism with scientific logic and modern realism. Or in RWNJ language, ya go with your gut. I’ll try again with a better answer Rick, it is something I want to think about more too.
March 17th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
Shcb,
One more item on global warming (GW). There is an entertaining youtube video by a science teacher who answers the question: what should we do about GW? He constructed a matrix with 4 boxes. The first row is “GW theory is wrong” second row is “GW theory matches worst predictions”. First column is “People take strong decisive action to prevent GW” Second column is “People do little or nothing except continue to study and make comfortable adjustments (i.e. the shcb approach) “
That simple analysis gives you 4 scenarios that can then be assessed and ranked:
AB
CD
A = “GW theory is wrong” & “People take strong decisive action to prevent GW”
For A, the implications are that people experience strong negative economic adjustments (probably) and gain many environmental benefits.
B = “GW theory is wrong” & “People continue to study, comfortable adjustments”
For B, the implications are that people do not suffer strong negative economic adjustments (probably) and get few environmental benefits.
C = “GW theory matches worst predictions” & “People take strong decisive action to prevent GW”
For C, the implications are mitigated environmental and economic suffering with people living in a manner that is sustainable in a normalizing global environment.
D = “GW theory matches worst predictions” & “People continue to study, comfortable adjustments”
For D, you get economic and environmental devastation on a global scale far worse than human history has ever recorded, continuing for ages.
Now that we have that, let’s see where we each sit.
NL suggests strong action on GW is warranted, so if we take his advice we get either A or C.
NL policy Best case:
A: people experience strong negative economic adjustments (probably) and gain many environmental benefits.
NL policy Worst case:
C: mitigated global warming – some environmental and economic suffering with people living in a manner that is sustainable over time in a normalizing global environment.
Shcb suggests more study and comfortable adjustments. So if we take his advice we get either B or D.
Shcb policy Best case:
B: people do not suffer strong negative economic adjustments (probably) and get few environmental benefits.
Shcb policy Worst case:
D: economic and environmental devastation on a global scale far worse than human history has ever recorded and that continues for ages.
I am a global warming sceptic but I agree with the NL policy to take action on global warming. I can live with NL’s policy option outcomes whether global warming is fact or fiction.
I am not willing to accept the risks inherent in the shcb policy; it is too much like invading Iraq (benefits a few at the pain of millions).
March 18th, 2008 at 4:47 am
Fair enough, let me deposit my view which of course isn’t covered in your example. The people that make sense to me (gut feel) are saying that global warming is mostly (96% to 99.999%) natural due mostly to solar activity, which is why other planets experience it too, the pattern develops by a combination of the earth’s orbit, its wobble on it’s axis, and sun spots and other solar activity. In the 1800’s to the early to mid 1900’s we were in the “little ice age” a cooling period, there was plenty of fossil fuel burning then. Remember soot covered London in 101 Dalmatians? There is scientific proof for you, I don’t care who you are. Anyway, I would prefer to spend our limited resources to clean up stuff that is a) real and b) really matters. Now if global warming is real, let’s fix it, if we can, if it is the sun and the earth there isn’t much we can do about it and it will start to cool eventually. I just hate to find out 50 years from now that this was just a big hoax by a bunch of socialists to redistribute wealth but you can’t drink the water, or we’re still using oil because we didn’t use our money to find something else.
Getting off oil for transportation (we will always need it for plastic production and such) is a good thing in so many ways but mark my words when we start using that sub atomic particle in sea water I was talking about earlier, the one that will produce as much power from a gallon of water as a pound of uranium with clear water as a byproduct, someone will be worried we will someday run out of sea water.
March 18th, 2008 at 7:44 am
shcb - you are thinking about helium3
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3
They are hoping to find H3 in useable quantities on the moon.
Or mine it from the gas giants. Not in our lifetimes, of course.
w has done a great job of getting us off foreign oil!
Thank goodness for Texaraq, or oil would be $110 a barrel or something.
I bet shcb was a non-believer in the ozone hole/CFC ‘debate’
I am not a big climate change believer one way or the other, but I consistently come down on the side of the believers, as their camp is interested in the same things I am. Control pollution, less oil/coal, smarter resource use, innovation.
One item Gore leaves out of his dramatic “here is CO2 over the last X thousand years”. You gasp when our ppm spikes as we industrialize the planet… only problem is the temperature spike supposedly lags the CO2 spike by about 800 years. The worry is that we may reach some tipping point beyond which real catastrophe is unavoidable.
March 18th, 2008 at 10:04 am
Maybe I didn’t tell you guys about this, I did some work for a company in Boulder that does high vacuum work, where they can suck and count the molecules through an inch of stainless. So the project I was building parts for was for a super collider in the Chicago area I believe. This was a small unit a mile or so in circumference, it was to be used to study a subatomic particle that was indigenous to sea water. They knew enough about this particle to know it had the potential to produce the same amount of power from a gallon of water as a pound of uranium in a traditional plant. The rub was they needed super conductivity and cold fusion to make it work, so they planned to study this little critter for the next 30 years or so that when those technologies came on line they would know all there is to know about this particle. That was 10 or 15 years ago, I haven’t kept up with it since, maybe it was a flop. But I did physically see the tubes for the unit and build some peripheral parts for it.
I’m certainly not against research and making changes to technology as required or as they become available. If the global warming people will just take out the political stuff, I would listen a lot harder. For instance when this all started, China was exempt from Kyoto, and yet they are producing a big portion of the pollution. Red flags go up whenever I hear things like that, protect the communists and soak the capitalists. If this is a real problem no one should be excluded. Then they started the carbon credits where I can send money to a Caribbean island so I can continue to drive my truck guilt free, I got news for you’al if I’m giving money to a Caribbean island it will be in exchange for a drink with a little umbrella in it.
March 18th, 2008 at 10:32 am
here here for drinks w umbrellas
or maybe you were thinking about Deuterium?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deuterium
March 18th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
Just so eeryone is clear, the green movemment is much more than just global warming and Kyoto. That is just one aspect of it.
I also find it interesting that many on the right are siding with Communist China. “If they’re not in, we’re not in.”
Real countries and real leaders lead by example. They don’t use a laggard country to get out of taking tough action.
March 18th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Inky, that sounds good to me, I’m a mechanical guy, if a 5/16 bolt won’t hold it together I probably don’t understand it, I kind of glazed over when the they started talking ‘bout them perpendicular tables and them squiggly lines with numbers and letters on both sides. Maybe a rum drink will straighten ‘em out. I’m about to find out.
NL,
I know the green movement has some good things, I just want whatever we’re doing to make sense, Kyoto is mostly a crock and unfortunately the good part of the green movement gets too lumped into it, kind of like no matter what I say I will get blamed the next time Fallwell says something stupid, goes with the territory. But I have a real question for you. I have a goofy idea that in some cases we may be better off putting stuff in landfills than recycling. I’m guessing that some things take more energy to recycle than to make new. I think it may be better to leave them in the ground for the next 30 years until Inky’s little particle is making bunches of electricity cleanly and then mine the stuff and recycle it then? I said it was goofy, be gentle.
March 18th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
I’ll jump in here because this is a subject where the level of discourse (in the media etc, not here) is really terrible. I hate this whole idea of “the green movement”. I find the term to be completely meaningless, but it keeps getting used both by critics and by supporters leading to an agglomeration of causes, with the various strong and weak policy proposals for each that shcb mentions. The only shared link between them is that they have to do with the use of shared resources, which is one of the areas where the free market does not optimize the result (tending to simply use the resources as quickly as possible until they are exhausted).
To have any meaningful discussion, I think we need to break things out into useful topics:
1) Global Warming (aka CO2 emissions). I still consider this a slam dunk from all that I’ve been able to read about consensus of the scientific community. This is also the main focus of Kyoto. My opinion on that is that, sure, it’s not fair that China doesn’t want to join, but if we believe there is a serious and significant risk here, the rest of us conscientious first-world nations can’t be excused from doing what we can. You don’t see us dumping our minimum wage, eliminating the FDA, or killing the clean water act just to be on a level playing field with China. We should take leadership with Kyoto, then find ways to invest in Chinese power generation infrastructure to incentivize cleaner power (and make money doing it).
2) Recycling. In many cases, I think the argument here is much more muddy, with some recycling processes taking more energy than manufacturing new materials would take. That said, there is a practical civic argument to be made for reducing how much you put in landfills, and also I believe that often incentivizing new processes in the end leads to higher efficiency (which is more profitable).
This is getting kinda off in weird-idea land, but I’m in favor of a standards body like UL (which has voluntary safety standards) that publishes voluntary product longevity and quality standards. Products bearing the mark of this standard would be designed to function for, say, 5, 10, or 20 years. I think given the option, many people would pay more for things that last longer if they had confidence in that investment.
3) Wildlife/nature Protection. I think this one has a practical aspect, and an aspect of priorities. If we maximize our use of many natural resources (forests, tundra oil fields, oceans), two things may happen. Practically speaking, some resources can be so quickly used that they cannot recover (or have other dire consequences), with short term gains for companies costing us more in the long-run through lost opportunity. These would include overfishing of oceans, clearcutting of some forests, or strip mining that leaves behind toxic chemicals.
Then there are the cases of priority, where we as human beings need to decide if economic advantage or preservation is more important. Do we care if some species of animal go extinct? Do we care if fragile habitats are destroyed? These are often irreversible decisions that should be approached with caution, although I’m suspicious of absolute arguments in either direction.
4) Pollution. Setting aside global warming emissions, there is the simple issue of making our habitat (air, water, etc) unpleasant or dangerous. Again, this often simply comes down to priorities and I think absolutes are dangerous, but clearly the free market will simply pollute as much as they can avoid public outrage, which is quite a lot, so there’s a role for government to diligently control pollution.
March 18th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
Matt, I pretty much agree with you except Kyoto and global warming, but I’ve stated my case on those issues. Just to be clear, I, and responsible conservatives, don’t mean that just because China does it we can or should. We just mean that it points to a political objective more than an environmental issue (in this case) when the left (in this case) excludes places like China. It reeks of affirmative action, which we oppose.
I know you guys are going to jump on that, but to save you the effort, we just don’t think it is fair. If there is an injustice take care of it, but don’t hold the descendants three generations removed accountable.
I kind of like your idea of the UL type organization, not sure how that would work, but it’s an interesting concept. In the end reuse beats recycling every time. Long lived products are in that same vein.
March 18th, 2008 at 7:43 pm
I don’t think I’m following your explanation of why China isn’t part of Kyoto. It sounds like you think that “the left” is somehow actively excluding China, which is a new one on me. My understanding is that we all want China to join, but it just isn’t happening. I’ve been known in the past to explain this as part of China going through its own industrial revolution, but that isn’t meant as a justification.
The rest of us first-world nations would be in a much better position to exert pressure on the Chinese to make efforts to clean things up if all of us at least signed on. It feels very much like this administration’s refusal to talk with governments it disagrees with: pushing others away by always requiring them to make the first move rather than trying to be constructive (yes, even if that means some giving, if it’s the right thing to do).
March 19th, 2008 at 5:38 am
About China, it is probably a little of both, China said no way and the left didn’t really didn’t push the matter like it was with the US and Europe. That was some time ago, during the Clinton administration. This was one of the few things conservatives got behind Clinton on was his refusal to go along with Kyoto. When you looked at it with a critical eye it went further than everyone agreeing to clean up their act, there were also transfer payments from mostly the US to third world countries, including China, I think, don’t quote me on the transfer to China part. Ostensibly it was to clean up the mess we had made, but not tangible messes like oil spills, it was things like co2 emissions. When people started looking at actual emissions some of these countries were producing as much as we were. Of course that is where