G W Bush, environmental visionary

Cuz now, after he’s been obstructing national and international efforts to mitigate climate change for years, shirking responsibility for reducing the emissions in the number one greenhouse gas producing nation (per capita, about 4x what China produces), he’s willing to encourage his successor (please please please be Obama) to take some steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Now, I understand that implementing a sustainable energy policy will be hard, and there are those who think that the growing pains will be economically painful.  Especially if you make most of your money investing in  greenhouse gas emitting fuels, I suppose.  So of course, Bush wouldn’t have wanted to be associated with that.  But I’m willing to concede that he meant well all this time, and just wanted to check the figures himself before really endorsing a climate change policy.  And now that his feet will be off the fire, he’s willing to put someone else’s there.  Because that’s just the kinda guy he’s always been.  Uhm, nice and well meaning, I mean, not irresponsible and habitually blameless.

Drilling for US oil

Why is Bush so determined now to drill for oil in ANWAR and the continental shelf? He was complaining in his Sky News interview the other day of people “squawking” about the price of oil, so he thinks it’s a good time to start drilling for more oil in the US.

His estimate is that a US drilling program would supply 18 billion barrels of oil, total. Now, that’s a lot of oil, it would run my Ford Focus for…well, longer than I expect to get out of the car. And since oil is up over $120 a barrel, maybe that would help lower the price of oil…Except, we know of about 1.3 trillion barrels of oil around the world. I am not an economist, but I don’t think the amount of oil we’re exploiting by 1.5% would make a big dent in price. Maybe if we kept all that oil to ourselves, and just live off our own cheap oil? Well, the US uses 21 million barrels of oil each day, so our local reserves would last less than 3 years, if that’s all the oil we used. Not exactly a good long term strategy.

So, does Bush just mean to placate the squawkers, for political reasons? Pretend he’s doing something useful? Nah. He’s thinking it’s a great time to revisit the issue, because he wants to get that $2 trillion (and climbing) of oil in the hands of his friends in the oil industry. With oil prices high, he’s hoping to convince us that it would solve our energy problems if only we’d give that oil to someone to sell to us. It won’t save us but a few pennies, but whoever gets to sell it to us stands to make a killing.

See how that works?

UPDATE OF MONUMENTAL IMPORTANCE!!!!: Apparently, NYT editors read my blog:O Yeah, must be…NYT editors and no-one else.  How ’bout that.  It was published after my original post here, therefore it must be plagiarism.

Cui Bono?

I’m not shy about it. President Bush and the Republicans are not* fascists, not totalitarians, but they sure don’t care if America slips into authoritarianism of some kind or another. There are probably some forms they’d prefer over others–he’s ostensibly willing to lock the US down to keep Al Quaeda from establishing a Muslim authoritarian empire from taking over the US.^† Quite possibly some don’t realize that an American led dictatorship could be a bad thing…I mean, America, it’s by definition always good, right?

But, why are they so willing to tear away our freedoms? Cui Bono? Who benefits? Cuz really, it’s not making us safe from terrorism, and if it were, well, no-one’s making us safe from natural disasters, and they’re doing more damage recently than terrorists ever have.

So, who benefits? The party. The Republican party mostly. The Republican party strongly supports a well defined social pecking order. Those with the most money win, and get special privileges. Men and whites are higher in the pecking order than women and minorities, and the Republicans like it that way. Clergy like to maintain some control over their flock–no-one else is paying their bills, you know (and since they ain’t even selling anything…). So, if those on top of the pecking order, the wealthy elite, can keep the party of the wealthy and the elite in power, so much the better for them. And so much the worse for the rest of us. So all the police state tactics, intimidation, corruption, vote-rigging, are a means to the end of keeping the Repubs in power (they’ve even on occasion-Nixon, e.g.-mentioned as much), for the good of America, by which they mean the wealthiest people in America.

The same goes for Republican economic policies, actually. Take climate change. A realistic economic assessment of the problem wouldn’t pretend that the globe isn’t warming, or feign ignorance. You don’t get ahead economically on wishful thinking alone. You’d say yep, there’s a problem, now how can we best mitigate it, or better turn this knowledge to our advantage. However, those at the top in the US are so wealthy that they can reasonably hope to live above the consequences; and even better for their relative social status, those at the bottom might even be much worse off.

That said, a solid two-party system is better for both parties than a three party system, or a many party system with enough indie parties at least to force alliances on votes. Ergo, the Democrats are worth propping up, too, if you’re interested using politics to maintain your place in the pecking order. So Democrats aren’t to be trusted as a rule, either…but I find they general actually do handle themselves better, and are more reality based in their policies than Republicans are.

So, I’m voting Obama ‘08!

And will blog something about video game math soon, I promise!!!

*necessarily

^†I don’t care either way, Muslim or oligarchic, I don’t want to live in a dictatorship

The last thing I want…

Is a president of the US who would SLANDER AMERICA!. Watch this! Now what the hell? A Sky News interviewer brings up a couple of our most noble, glorious American projects, and Prez Bush has the gall to say that talking about those is slandering America? Now, last I checked, in order to be slander, the claim has to not only be false (which clearly it isn’t) and also has to do damage to the slandered, i. e. it has to be a bad thing. But this is America we’re talking about, we don’t do bad things! And I won’t let my Prezzie say we’ve done anything wrong without giving him hell about it.

I <3 America! I <3 rendition and torture! I <3 imprisonment without due process! I <3 dissappearing people! These things aren’t things we should be ashamed of! We should be proud of them. Live at all costs, just don’t let them kill me! Freedom isn’t worth it. Or something like that, my memory isn’t always so good.

And that Republican scum would say bad things about America is why I’m voting Obama ‘08.

I will get back to video game math in the near future, I promise x<3

Bush <3 Doublespeak

Bush said the rising cost of gas “troubles me a lot” because it is “like a tax on the working people.”

-AP

Well, no. With a tax, we pay the government, and we get a collective service back, or a subsidy for something we value. Like, say, a fire department, roads, education, social safety nets, etc. Rising gas prices don’t do that for us.

But of course, Republicans don’t want us to remember that taxes are supposed to be for something. Better for them if we just think of a tax as an abyss we throw money into, which we’ll then never see again.