Hot air.

May 17, 2014 Joseph

Senator Marco Rubio of Florida is just the latest Republican politician with presidential ambitions to cast doubt on the validity of climate change, a necessary prerequisite for claiming the G.O.P. nomination in 2016. Indeed, anyone who is going to have a ghost of a chance with the tea-party fueled right-wing electorate in that party needs to be a climate change denialist to the core (though Rubio has since backpedaled slightly, perhaps in embarrassment). Sadly, then, the senator is not alone.

Now, I don’t usually comment on opinion columns, but I will make an exception on this occasion, only because columnist Tom Morgan is spectacularly deserving of the “tin ear” award for his column “Remember that report? Well, forget it.” I know Morgan is trying to be, well … sort of funny, I guess, but when he spouts something like this, the humor escapes me:

That is part of the problem the president and the Greens face. They want us to be alarmed by climate whatever. But the reason they changed the term from global warming is that the globe did not warm — not the way they predicted. And so many more of their predictions have not come about.

Morgan goes on to say that many of the predicted “calamities” related to climate change have failed to occur. All of this, mind you, on the week when it was reported that the West Antarctic glacier is, well, melting away … in fact, it’s in the midst of what’s described by researchers as an unstoppable retreat which will result in a precipitous rise in sea level over the long term. That’s long term.

Short term, the evidence of climate change is simply undeniable. Glaciers are retreating in Greenland, the arctic is melting, California and Texas are experiencing unprecedented drought, and extreme weather is becoming more and more extreme. Maybe Morgan doesn’t live in Tornado alley, but frankly, if he doesn’t now he may soon. Here in upstate New York, we’ve had more tornadoes in the last couple of years than in the previous 30. The next big storm may be headed your way.

Perhaps when Super Storm Sandys start happening twice or three times a month, people like Morgan and Rubio may start admitting the obvious. But I’ll believe it when I see it.

luv u,

Usual Rubbish

What’s next.

May 9, 2014 Joseph

How about a bicycle tour around Scandinavia? They don’t have any big hills there, do they? Oh. Okay, well … how about Holland? Right. Too many stoned drivers. So I guess, by your logic, Colorado is the worst of all possible worlds for bike tours.

Yeah, well … Lincoln didn’t think that last comment was too funny, and apparently now he’s determined to jump back into the past, where (arguably) he belongs … even though in much of the past, he’s dead. So I guess he’s saying he’d rather be dead than spend another summer with Big Green. That’s just plain sad, you know? I’m sure plenty of less revered ex presidents would be more than glad to spend the summer with us, rather than in some poorly defined version of America’s past. But Lincoln does not count himself among that number.

So, it looks like pretty soon we’ll be going down to the cobweb-choked basement of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our adopted home, and dusting off Trevor James Constable’s orgone generating device – the only piece of technological instrumentation capable of putting Lincoln back where he belongs. I’m a little nervous about doing this in Mitch Macaphee’s absence. He is, after all, our mad science advisor, and I hesitate to engage in the fraught discipline of mad science without his counsel. But … my president has called upon me, and I must respond.

Have you stopped laughing yet? Good. I’ll continue.

Part of the issue here is that we’re just not sure what to do with ourselves, man. What the hell is next for Big Green? The bike tour idea was suggested by Marvin (my personal robot assistant), so that means we arrived at it almost entirely at random. I’m not sure who told us this (perhaps our first manager, way back in the day), but I’m pretty sure we’ve established that it’s not a good idea to make major life decisions through any process that resembles random selection. We need to put on our thinking caps.

Caps on? Great. Think, Big Green, think. Get me your ideas by midnight Thursday. Or not. I’m easy.

Political Rants

Week that was (redux).

May 9, 2014 Joseph

Okay, I’ve been out of commission for a few days, taking comprehensive exams for a master’s degree in lethargy. (Hard to study for, actually … I keep falling asleep.) And though I’ve been quiet, very quiet for the last couple of weeks, I have been paying attention to what’s going on out in that wacky world of ours, and I have a thing or two to say about it. Just bet you can’t wait to hear it! Harumph!

Benghazi. Really? I mean, really? The republicans are on this Benghazi thing again? Why? Because the Affordable Care Act may not be as good a campaign issue as they thought? I keep hearing this trope about how awful it is that four people were killed. Yes, it’s awful. But Libya is a war zone. And these people make more noise about those four lives than they ever did about the more than 4,000 Americans that died in their Iraq war. How about we hold someone (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc.) accountable for that first, then maybe look at Benghazi (right after Afghanistan)? If magnitude counts for anything, Benghazi shouldn’t even be on the list in the first place.

Let us pray. It’s official – public meetings can be opened with some kind of Jesus prayer. Thank you, Supreme Court and, yes, George W. Bush, who replaced the then-dying William Rehnquist with another reliable young conservative, thereby locking us into reactionary decisions from the Court for another generation. I love the way proponents of prayer in the public square frame this as a freedom of religion issue. For crying out loud, YOU CAN PRAY ALL DAY LONG IF YOU WANT TO. When you do it in a public meeting, representing an institution of government that should have no association with a particular religion whatsoever, you are just cramming it into people’s faces and undermining their trust in the impartiality of government.

Nigerian abduction. Well, it took long enough for the press to talk about this, but they are finally giving it the coverage it deserves, thanks to a groundswell of anger from the grassroots. For a couple of weeks after this abduction, I kept thinking, where is this story? Our press tends to keep its distance from stories in Africa, unless they are real blockbusters. It’s just as well that there is some people power behind this … maybe that will bring about some meaningful change in Nigeria.

luv u,

BIG GREEN

Hot air.

What’s next.

Week that was (redux).

Weird ass music since 1986