MuffinBlog

I’m still torn between letting American auto companies fail that are clearly too big to survive on their own (as opposed to the much used “too big to fail”) and saving the many jobs the industry provides. It seemed like Congress had made up it’s mind what it wanted to do, and as long as they required the automakers to retool and come up with plans for making greener cars (which I was under the impression was the plan) I was content.

As usual Congress has completely let us down. They kicked the problem up to a very lame duck president who has been doing nothing but gutting as many environmental rules as he can before he leaves office. So even if Bush decides to do something for the automakers, it will likely be a simple bailout with no attempt to take advantage of a great opportunity to fight our addiction to oil, global warming, and our sour economy. Republicans deserve a good portion of them blame since their only goals seemed to be to stick it to the auto workers. That said, Democrats hold an almost filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and a big majority in the house. What in the world are you people waiting for? Jesus?

Way to go, Congress. You missed a big opportunity for helping the country and the planet that may never come again. I can’t wait to see how you’ll take Obama’s plans and flush them down the toilet…

For anybody who’s still monitoring this blog, I just updated the photos section of the site with photos of the kids for all but December of 2008. Enjoy!

Peter

I haven’t seen the film “Expelled”, but from what I’ve read it’s just anti-science, creationist propaganda. Considering that I’m in school to become a scientist, this really annoys me. If you’ve considered seeing the film, be sure to at least also check out the National Center for Science Education’s website debunking the film: http://www.ExpelledExposed.com/.

Big surprise, as I predicted, Cheney was responsible for telling the EPA to overrule California’s attempt to set it’s own emissions standards (ok, so I said “Bush”, but I meant “the Bush administration”):

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2231965,00.html

In short, the car company executives came whining to Cheney; so he promptly abused his office to intrude on California’s sovereignty for the sake of the auto makers’ profits.

The only question I have is this: why didn’t Cheney send out Christmas cards to everyone with a photo of him and all the car executives naked and in bed with each other. Perhaps with the message “Merry Christmas and a happy new year of screwing you helpless peons over!” I mean come on, he’s not even trying anymore to cover up the fact that he’s just a corporate puppet. Show the country you’re trying to plunder SOME respect ya big bag of crap!

After my last post a few minutes ago, I was just thinking that many people might not ever contact their representatives and senators because they don’t know where to start or how hard it will be. Here are some tips for taking action:

1) The NRDC has a great feature on their website that lets you search for your elected officials, and then easily send a message to them in a uniform manor. Visit http://www.nrdconline.org/nrdc/leg-lookup/search.tcl. This page finds both your federal and state officials. Even though it’s relatively easy to find your federal officials via the federal government’s web sites (see tips #2 and #3), finding state officials is a little harder. In general you can go to <state>.gov (substituting <state> for the actual state name, of course), but each state’s web page is completely different.

2) For finding Senators, you can also just go to http://www.senate.gov and use the drop down selection box in the upper right-hand corner of the page to find your senators by state name, and a link to a web form for communicating with them. This may be easier to remember if you forget to bookmark the NRDC page.

3) For the House of Representatives, you can go to http://www.house.gov and use the form on the upper left-hand corner of the page to search for your representative by zip code. If you don’t know the extra 4 digits of your zip code, go to http://www.usps.com and click on the “Find a ZIP Code” link on the far left of the top navigation bar to search using your home address.

I hope this helps make it easier for any Americans reading my blog to communicate with our government. Voicing your opinion is really only a few clicks and an email away. Use it!

This really chaps my hide. The EPA is saying California can’t regulate it’s own tailpipe emissions from automobiles. It makes some sense from a certain perspective that a state could be overruled on something like medical marijuana use (i.e. protecting all citizens by establishing nationwide standards). It makes absolutely no sense how a state protecting it’s own citizen’s more than the national standard should or can be overruled. If the national standard for marijuana use was to allow it only for treating chronic pain, it would be perfectly acceptable for California to ban marijuana completely. A real example is Illinois’s maximum speed limit of 65 mph when the national limit is 75 mph.

Ok, I’m playing stupid. It makes perfect sense if you are concerned more about corporate profits than your own citizens’ well being. This decision by the EPA was either made by corporate sycophants that Bush already strategically placed in the EPA, or Bush directly told the EPA to overrule California. Either way, the EPA has clearly overstepped it’s power. Let’s hope the courts can quickly free California’s hands from this ridiculous and unprecedented restriction. If not, it will be up to the citizens to raise hell with their congresspeople.

Actually, it wouldn’t hurt to raise hell right now. Excuse me while I go send some emails…

Oh boy am I out of touch right now! All this moving and preparing to go back to school business has been occupying most of my time. I haven’t had the time to really pay attention to the details of what is going on in the world lately, but some things did catch my eye.

The Bushie-infested FCC is trying another push for greater media consolidation. After all, it was great for selling the Iraq war. Why not improve upon this successful mechanism for mass mind control?

Somebody in congress is trying to sneak billions of dollars in “guaranteed loans” (i.e. subsidies) for the nuclear power industry into a spending bill. Apparently none of the big banking entities (the traditional financial allies of the ruling elite) don’t even want to back construction of these plants, so the only choice left for the industry is corporate welfare. One question: where the hell are the billions for alternative energy research and infrastructure?

Finally, I found it quite amusing (and by amusing I mean embarrassing…but in a good way) that Al Gore stood up in front of the world and said his own country is mainly responsible for preventing progress during climate talks in Bali, Indonesia last week. Then news comes in Saturday that the US changed it’s mind and came to some agreement with the other talk participants. I’m not a Gore sycophant, but I do think he couldn’t be more effective right now as an individual trying to “change the world”. If he were POTUS, he’d be bogged down by politics and maintaining the largely unchecked, capitolistic status quo of the country. As a former vice president who isn’t afraid of the political ramifications of putting the US on the spot for being irresponsible, I think he carries a lot of influence.

The spammers found me. Comment moderation without registration has unfortunately become an impossibility. Registration is open to everyone. I have no reason to use any registration information nefariously, so please don’t be frightened off by the registration requirement. There is a new link under the “Meta” right sidebar section for this purpose. Thanks for your understanding.

The last couple of weeks have been eventful. We vacationed for just under a week in San Diego…right when the wildfires started wreaking havoc. Luckily we were able to visit all of the attractions in our itinerary before some of them were closed. It was bizarre coming back from the downtown area where the air was clear to just north of the city where the smoke choked everyone who found him or herself outside. We were under a voluntary evacuation at our hotel and decided to cut our visit short by a day. The air quality would have prevented us from doing much outside, and the extra hotel room was probably useful for somebody displaced by a mandatory evacuation. And of course we were worried that they’d have to kick us out anyway to prevent us from burning to death. It worked out well because we had a lot more work preparing to move back to Illinois than we thought.

This past Saturday the movers came. Anna had been worried that they wouldn’t be expecting to pack our stuff for us, but I kept insisting that everybody who hires movers expects their stuff to get packed for them. So of course the guys do a walk through and immediately call their boss. They weren’t expecting to pack our stuff, and didn’t have any supplies. Luckily we had saved a bunch of boxes from the move out to Arizona. Unluckily the U-Haul place in Gallup doesn’t sell packing supplies, and cleaning out Wal-Mart and Home Depot amounted to only 24 small boxes. Somehow we made due, though, and after an unexpected delay we left town Sunday (today) for Albuquerque. We’re sort of dreading how much extra they’re going to charge us beyond the estimate because of the flub.

Tomorrow we get to drive 11 hours to San Antonio to visit my sister. Given that Jaidee has been sick and whiny lately, it should be an interesting road trip. Still, we’re glad to finally be on the road. The Navajo Reservation was a very worthwhile experience for both Anna and me. That said, we’re glad to be going back to family and the familiar. As Judy Garland famously said, “There’s no place like home.”

I was just thinking over the weekend that there is an amusing pattern in the way Bush feels about people at different ages. He absolutely loves non-viable precursors of human life that could be used to save other lives (i.e. banning stem cell research using discarded embryos). He wants to prevent kids from being healthy (i.e. he vetoed SCHIP). He sends young adults off to die for inappropriate reasons (i.e. Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran(?)). He more directly likes to kill adults (i.e. record executions in his term as governor of Texas). And finally, he’s just plain sadistic in his attempts to confuse the elderly to death (i.e. his insanely complicated modifications to Medicare).

Of course he thinks of these things in more grandiose terms: religion, complete privatization of government, world domination, black & white justice (metaphorically and literally). But it’s kind of interesting how such “higher” views can lead to such a pattern of hatred for one’s own species. Maybe I should write a book called “A People’s History of the Bush Administration’s Policies”.