HinesSight

Colbert’s comedy makes George Bush cringe

Oh my God! Laurel and I couldn’t stop laughing at Stephen Colbert’s “tribute” to President Bush at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner last night. We watched his hilarious send-up of the Bush Administration’s absurdities today via the Internet.

Links to complete video of Colbert can be found at Democratic Underground. The broadband challenged can read a transcript courtesy of the Daily Kos. Naturally I recommend the video, which includes a Colbert audition tape to be the new White House press secretary. You’ll never be able to look upon Helen Thomas the same way.

The best part of Colbert’s performance was how uncomfortable he made Bush feel. The cutaway shots of Bush’s unsmiling face once Colbert got warmed up and rolling are priceless. Almost made me forget the pain of November 2000 and 2004.

Clearly the President was not amused. Good. Colbert went right up to the edge of good-natured satire. Probably he crossed over several times. Kudos, Stephen. This was your chance to speak your mind to the leader of the Western world, who was sitting uncomfortably just a few feet away from the Master of Truthiness.

Colbert rose to the occasion. Democrats, did you take notice?

We check out of Sustainable Fairview

Today we cashed out of Sustainable Fairview, the 245 acre site in south Salem that, according to the local newspaper, is “envisioned to become a model of mixed-use and environmentally friendly development.”

Hope so. But at 1:30 this afternoon I traded two shares in Sustainable Fairview Associates (SFA) for a check, shook hands with Sam Hall, the managing member of SFA, and brought to an end our sometimes satisfying but mostly frustrating experience as investors in this development.

The property has been sold to a group led by Phil Morford, a Portland-area developer, and Gordon Root. Good luck to them.

And thanks to Phil and Gordon for buying the property from SFA, because a few hours after picking up the check I was standing in front of a clerk at the Marion and Polk Schools Credit Union paying off a home equity loan that we’d used to buy the five acre lot next to our home. (See “We buy some really expensive blackberries”.)

Many SFA investors are keeping their shares in play, staying on board while Morford and company pay off their purchase price over the next few years. We may be passing up an opportunity to make more money than the 30% or so we realized over the four years we were SFA members.

But Laurel and I never hesitated to jump ship when the opportunity was presented to us. We (mostly me) have been two of the gadflies who questioned how well Sustainable Fairview was being managed and whether basic principles of sustainability were being applied by SFA.

I’ll end with a compilation of the Sustainable Fairview-related blog posts I’ve written (and ranted) over several years. Digging them out of the “sustainability” category just now, I remembered how passionate I used to be about this development. Then, I lost interest.

I haven’t been to a SFA meeting in several years. I’ve been reading the minutes and keeping a general wary eye on our investment. However, there never was an opportunity for creative, enthusiastic greenies like Laurel and me to become involved in anything but a passive way with the project.

That’s too bad. Hopefully the new owners will realize, as SFA never did, that sustainability isn’t just about enviro-friendly building codes and other mechanistic means of saving energy, recycling waste, conserving water, and all that. In my “Sustainable Fairview Associates—a cautionary tale” post, I said:

Thoreau puts it so well: “Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance and obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board.” What truly sustains us? Not water, not air, not food, not shelter. These are all for the body, not the “us” that is our soul, spirit, consciousness, original nature, true self—whatever you want to call it.

A so-called “sustainable development” that doesn’t sustain this part of us, the most important part of us, the part of us that finds meaning in life beyond bare existence, it isn’t sustainable at all. Man (and woman) does not live by solar collectors, living system wastewater treatment, permeable roads, and fuel cells alone. A life absent genuine community—where I can commune both with myself and with my fellow human beings—is a life absent what makes life worth living.

Glancing over my SFA-critical blog post oeuvre, I realize that I sound pie-in-the-skyish at times. Lots of times. Undoubtedly this is how I sounded to SFA management as well, who turned a deaf ear to my “Let’s be truly green!” entreaties.

Well, I tried. Sustainable Fairview has turned out fine. Maybe it will end up more than fine—excellent. We’ll see. Time will tell. There’s no doubt that these 245 acres will end up in much better shape than they would have if a traditional developer such as Chuck Sides had gotten hold of them.

For that, I’m happy.

Here’s my compilation of Sustainable Fairview blog posts. Perhaps someday they will become fodder for a graduate student thesis concerning the history of this development. In a decade my writings will appear either prescient or foolish.

Whatever. I just said what I had to say—the blogger’s creed.

Sustainable Fairview overview
What’s sustainable?
New name for “Fairview”
Renaming Fairview makes the news
Thanks for feeding PollMonkey
On remaining in a room
Relativity and sustainability
Sustainable Fairview Associates—a cautionary tale
Seriously seeking special setting
“You say you want a revolution…”
Power to the weblog, right on!
275 urban ac.; 700,000 sq. ft.; grt. vu.; Salem; $13 mil/offer
“Sustainable” Fairview: is it really?
Sustainable Fairview update
Pringle Creek Community, a Salem sustainable development
Salem City Council knows zilch about sustainability

Personal & political

It’s said that the personal is political. Absolutely. When I hear about a new Bush administration idiocy, I can’t help thinking of his misstep in my own personal terms.

Take the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s ridiculous claim that marijuana has no medical benefits. They should have talked to me before they issued that report.

I’ve got proof that marijuana is effective against depression: I lived in San Jose, a.k.a. the armpit of California, for four years—1966 to 1970—while I was attending San Jose State University. Never got depressed. Was happy to contribute to medical marijuana research ahead of its time.

Then there is Bush’s death bed conversion (given how low his poll numbers are, he’s fighting for political air) to environmental greenness. All of a sudden he’s talking up alternative fuels and hybrid technology. This from a guy whose vice-pres famously termed conservation an act of personal virtue, not a valid national policy option.

Well, our two-car fleet of hybrids averages 35 mpg: 45 mpg for our compact Toyota Prius and 25 mpg for our mid-size Toyota Highlander SUV. If Bush and his oil industry-friendly cronies had pushed hybrids five years ago and demanded higher auto industry mileage standards, a lot more people would be driving patriotically like us and sending less money to jihad-supporting Middle Eastern oil producers.

Lastly, no good for progressives is going to come out of the Democrats cozying up to the Bush administration’s drive to give amnesty to illegal aliens. Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid is all aflutter about passing an immigration reform bill this year that would put illegals on the road to citizenship and give more American jobs to temporary workers.

This is an utterly un-progressive attitude that is going to backfire on the Dems. I’m confident of this because I brought up the subject of immigration during a get-together of a bunch of unrepentant liberals at our house a few weeks ago. I was the rightiest person in the room and I’m a left-leaning moderate. When I blurted out that I didn’t want twelve million illegals made citizens, I was prepared to shelter myself from the organic cookies and carrot sticks that were about to be hurled at my progressive-heretic head.

Didn’t happen. Every person but one agreed with me that legalization would be a mistake and that guest worker programs drive down the wages for low-income citizens. What they wanted was tough penalties on those who employ illegal workers, something the Bush administration is unlikely to pursue beyond a few well-timed INS raids to buy off the conservative “shut down the borders” crowd.

So there we have it. Marijuana is a medical godsend. Hybrids should have been a policy priority long ago. Immigration reform is a landmine for Democrats. Next question?

April beauty on the Metolius

Here are some images taken during our long late April weekend in Camp Sherman.

Every morning I ride my bike a mile to the Camp Sherman store to buy the Bend Bulletin. It costs me thirty-five cents. The view of Mt. Jefferson over the Metolius is priceless.

I pass this horse corral on one of my late afternoon dog walk routes. Black Butte is framed in the distance. I think this is called Johnson Meadow. It borders the head of the Metolius River, which springs full gush from volcanic fissures.

The dog and I walk back to our cabin along the river. I don’t fish, but I love the rustic fishing platforms along the Metolius. Kind of makes you want to walk the plank, except once you do, you’re in the coldest damn water you’ve ever felt.

Several miles downriver there's a cluster of non-functioning water wheels. In the old days of Camp Sherman they made electricity, or so I believe. I talked once with the owner of a water wheel equipped cabin but have forgotten most of what he told me.

Some of the cabins on leased forest service land are wonderfully charming, like this one. Ours is of the blander variety. And we don’t have a view of the river. Like I said before, poor us.

Here’s our stick happy dog, Serena, and Laurel on our downriver walk today. Black Butte rises in the background.

A close up of Black Butte from the same location. There’s still a lot of snow on top. Laurel just read me a story about how before the road was built more than halfway to the summit, the people who manned the fire lookout on the top of Black Butte regularly would walk the ten miles round trip from the lookout to the Camp Sherman store (3,400 foot elevation gain), sometimes returning after midnight. One guy made the return trip in a shade over 48 minutes. Wow!

I never get tired of watching the sun dance on the Metolius near the Camp Sherman store. This is one of the most beautiful rivers in the United States. Heck, even more: the world.

Yesterday on a trip into Sisters, about ten miles away, I was struck by how much new construction is going on. Given the view from town, I can understand why. These are two of the Three Sisters rising over Sisters.

Salem Barbie

After I read the amusing Oregon State Barbies post over at Jack Bog’s Blog, the omission of a Salem Barbie was painfully obvious. Laurel and I gave it some thought:

Salem Barbie comes with a bland wardrobe and sensible shoes. The navigation system on her white Jeep Cherokee is preset with her favorite destinations: Target, Big Lots, Tin Tin Buffet, Lancaster Drive, and the Four Square Evangelical Church of Jesus the Redeemer. Customize her ride with included bumper stickers: “Support the Troops,” “Stop Abortion Now,” and “My Child is a Honor Student at Christ the King Bible School.”

Salem Ken’s prison guard uniform fits stylishly over his beer gut. A TV remote control slides neatly into Ken’s right hand for those exciting Salem Saturday nights. VIP Pass from Hollywood Video slips into Barbie’s purse along with her Fred Meyer rewards card and lottery tickets. Karaoke Bar set can be purchased to celebrate the couple’s romantic anniversaries and birthdays. Available only at the Lancaster Drive Fred Meyer.

The original (and anonymous) list of Oregon Barbies was clever enough. Read the comments to the post for some additional entries. I particularly liked Chris' Hawthorne (a particularly liberal area in liberal Portland) Barbie:

Hawthorne Barbie:

This Barbie comes with dark-rimmed "smart" glasses, nose piercing, obligatory shoulder tattoo and your choice of green shoulder-length hair or dreadlocks. You'll have hours of fun driving her around SE Portland in her own 1986 Toyota Corolla adorned with crystals hanging from the rear-view mirror and "Bush lied, People Died" bumper sticker. Hawthorne Barbie comes with an optional "Slacker Ken" doll complete with "Firehouse" T-shirt, scruffy beard and a couch for hours of cartoon doodling and pot smoking.

Act now and get a free pack of American Spirit cigarettes and complimentary liberal arts degree from Reed college.

New DR Field and Brush Mower making my life more mulchy

Vive le difference. My wife is happy now that we have tile rather than carpet downstairs. I was content with what was there before, but I’m happy she’s happy. As for me, I’m thrilled that, when I mowed the tallish grass today, my new DR Field and Brush Mower didn’t leave clumps of cuttings all over the lawn.

To Laurel, this earns a big yawn. But she wasn’t the one who had to keep going over the lines of grass clumps produced by my old side-discharge, three blade, non-mulching mower. I’d remow some clumpy cuttings, which would merely shoot the clump over five feet or so.

I felt like the Oregon equivalent of Sisyphus, doomed to mow and remow grass clumps for eternity. However, the good folks at Vermont’s Country Home Products have come to my rescue. I’ve owned three of their Field and Brush Mowers, to which can be affixed a nifty lawn mowing attachment, and they keep getting better and better.

You’ve probably seen them advertised on television. A guy is shown walking behind the self-propelled mower, whacking down saplings and brush with ridiculous ease. I can testify that this is pretty much the reality now, but my first DR Mower had a small engine, bicycle type wheels, and no reverse.

I’d enthusiastically rev it up, get a running start, and plunge with reckless bravado into a six foot high thicket of dead blackberry vines. I’d then not so enthusiastically work on wrestling the machine backwards out of the vines, cursing the absence of a reverse gear.

That was fixed with my next DR Mower. And it had a bigger engine. However, several frustrations remained. The lawnmowing attachment left the aforementioned giant clumps when the grass was high, and changing between the field mower and lawn mower attachments was a twenty minute ordeal. Numerous bolts and springs to unfasten, plus dealing with a belt that would barely fit over a protruding engine part.

All in all, a bad design that marred an otherwise well-fashioned machine. So after spending seven years with DR Mower #2, this winter I decided to treat myself to a DR Mower #3. Sort of like “Big Love,” but my tripartite mower polygamy was sequential rather than simultaneous.

Several months ago I uncrated the new machine and with some trepidation set out to affix the lawnmowing attachment. It went on in just a couple of minutes. Love at first attachment! Since then I’ve put in about four hours of mowing time. Side-discharge, until today.

When I put on the mulching part—a plastic gizmo that fits over the discharge chute. The instructions said that you shouldn’t cut more than a third of the height of the grass if you want to mulch mulchily. Though the lawn was about six feet high, I said to myself, “Screw that advice. Let’s roll!”

Because Mower #3 is more powerful than #2 (the engine has a pleasing throaty sound and you can easily do wheelies), I’d been noticing that with my usual mowing pattern, it had been shooting grass clippings way up into the ground cover and other plantings next to the lawn. If I reversed the pattern, then it’d shoot the clippings into the middle of the lawn, where they would clump together like mad with the grass so high.

Hence, the decision to become the Mad Mulcher this afternoon, breaking the 1/3 cut rule. Fortunately, the mower worked great. Hardly any clumping at all. What there was came mostly from the large rear wheels, whose knobby tires accumulate clippings until they fall off in a clumpified heap.

Mower #2 did that too. I can live with it.

So if you’re thinking of getting the new and improved DR Field and Brush Mower from Country Home Products, which probably means that you live in the country, have a home, and need some products, I give it a thumbs up.

It seems solider and a bit heavier than my old machine. Takes a bit more work to turn it. If you’re small or sort of frail, this probably isn’t the mower for you. The handlebar controls have been enlarged. I’ve got pretty big hands, but it’s kind of a stretch for me to operate the grips.

It’s nice to have a brake on the right handlebar now. Except, I forgot to use it recently and ran into a tree while on a downhill mowing run. Bent the front left wheel support pretty good, so much that it was rubbing against the mower deck.

I considered running the support just as hard into the tree from the other direction, but figured I shouldn’t press my luck. A sledgehammer, piece of 2 X 4, and some energetic blows accompanied by “take that, George Bush!” did the trick. It’s nice to find out that our President is good for something.

Oregon is not a high tax state

Repeat after me, conservative politicians and right wing talk show hosts: “Oregon is not a high tax state.” Again: “Oregon is not a high tax state.” Good. Now say it on your own. Over and over.

And don’t let me hear you say the opposite this election year, because it isn’t true.

Yesterday I didn’t like writing checks and sending them off to the federal and state governments. But when I licked the envelope that went to the Oregon Department of Revenue it made me feel better to know that Oregon ranks 36th out of the 50 states in state and local taxes as a percent of per capita income.

Check it out. The U.S. average is 10.1%. Oregonians pay 9.6%.

So there’s good reason to argue that we should increase the state income tax to pay for essential services such as schools, prisons, and my own personal favorite, the state police (Remember the days when, if your car broke down, you’d say to yourself “a highway patrolman will be coming along soon.” Those aren’t these days).

The most obvious place to raise taxes is on Oregon corporations, who pay the lowest taxes in the nation. Before we consider a sales tax, let’s see how much money can be raised by having corporations pay their fair share.

The Oregonian editorial board agrees. Unfortunately, they chose the most mystifying possible name for today’s lead editorial that spoke about the need to change the state’s lopsided tax structure: “Oregon Koyaanisqatsi.”

I just spent ten minutes laboring on my own to figure out what Koyaanisqatsi means. I wrote down the letters in reverse order. I toyed with anagrams of political leader names, but couldn’t get Kulongoski, Mannix, Minnis and such to fit together into Koyannisqatsi. Then I tried the obvious: Google, which led me to Wikipedia.

Koyannisqatsi is a little known documentary film with the subtitle, “Life out of balance.” Nice to know that the newspaper assumes that its readers have such highbrow tastes as to be familiar with a movie that has no narration and relies on slow motion and time-lapse photography.

They likely are wrong about that. But the Oregonian got tax policy right:

While it may be hard to imagine Oregonians ever voting to impose a sales tax, even if it could be shown to be revenue-neutral, there are a couple of obvious things the state should do soon. One is to raise the minimum corporate income tax from its easy-sound-bite level of $10. Another would be stop sending tax kicker checks back to corporations.

These modest steps wouldn't solve the state's budget problems. But they would be steps in the right direction -- and they would be good business for Oregon.

On Easter, we worshipped at the altar of remodeling

We didn’t have to leave our house to have a holy experience this Easter. Laurel and I spend the morning tidying up the newly tiled “Dog Room.” Some people would call such an area the “Family Room,” but as we revealed in one of our Christmas letters, our life revolves around the original Wonder Pet.

At night Serena sleeps in her dog crate. Or on the futon. Her choice. Now, if she has to urgently pee or poop the mess will be on tile rather than carpet. That actually was a prime consideration in our plan for remodeling the Dog Room. Like I said, we know where the center of our existence lies.

It isn’t in church or an organized religion. Not on Easter. Not ever. Today many people heard, “He is risen.” To us those are three meaningless words. No one knows if they were ever true. Belief is fine, but believing is far distant from knowing.

Our Dog Room rose to life today. That was real. We experienced it. From an empty room, devoid of furniture, we returned it to fullness. I made peace with the mitre box that had been devilishly confusing me (molding and me hadn’t had much of a relationship until this home improvement project brought us together).

Why does religion have to be about far-off times and places? Why is an intermediary necessary to bridge the gap between us and the divine? Why can’t holiness be found in the most mundane activities of daily life. Putting in molding. Carrying furniture. Sealing grout.

As the saying goes, chop wood, carry water. Is there anything else to do?

Over on my Church of the Churchless blog I can sound like a curmudgeon about religion. Most recently, I wrote that “I’m arming for the War on Easter.” (But I’m shooting blanks compared to real anti-religious battlers like PZ Myers; his “Easter mourning” rips Christianity a new one.)

At heart I’ve got no problem with religious belief. Myself, I’ve been there and done that, so I understand the appeal of unfounded faith. What I do have a problem with, a major problem, is when people take their private belief and try to make it public policy. We’re heading toward an American Theocracy, and that scares the shit both out of me and Kevin Phillips, who wrote the book with that name.

Today my wife and I created something concrete instead of sitting in a room with true believers, listening to strange abstract notions about what God might be like. We acted positively this morning.

All too often, religions don’t. The religious impulse gets misdirected into destructive channels. Witness the upcoming GOP agenda intended to mollify the religious right. Constitutional amendment against gay marriage. Limits against abortion. Restricting embryonic stem cell research.

Negative to the core. Life-denying. Irrational. Ridiculous. This is the unholy side of religion. It should be sliced off and sent into oblivion. Superstition, prejudice, and fear of science belong in the Dark Ages, not the 21st century.

What really needs to be remodeled are the minds of the fundamentalists who want to make the United States into a Christian Taliban nation. We’ve got to keep an eagle eye on that un-American agenda.

Oregon cougar plan a slap in the face to voters

In 1994 Oregonians passed Measure 18. It forbids sport hunters from using dogs to track and kill cougars. Yesterday the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission passed a plan that will allow federal hunters to use dogs to track and kill cougars.

Not problem cougars that are threatening people or killing livestock. No, potential problem cougars. Cougars that are just hanging out, not bothering anybody. To me that sure sounds like killing cougars for sport.

Slap!

How does it feel, Oregon voters, to have a state agency say to you, “Thanks for telling us how you wanted cougars to be managed. But we’ve got our own ideas. And that includes spending $600,000 to pay federal hunters to kill cougars that aren’t causing any problems.”

Somehow the geniuses at the Fish and Wildlife Commission have come up with a plan that simultaneously irks predator defense folks and sport hunters. It is based on lousy science, as I pointed out in “Oregon cougar plan based on fictions, not facts.” The plan assumes that reported sightings are a valid way of estimating the cougar population, even though people can mistake a kitty cat for a cougar.

No person ever has been attacked by a cougar in Oregon. Maybe somebody will one day. Lots of people have been attacked by dogs. Some have been killed. It makes a lot more sense to start reducing the number of pit bulls than to thin the cougar population.

How would you like it if you were walking your well-behaved pit bull and a government employee came up and said, “Sorry, but I’ve got to shoot your dog. There are too many pit bulls and we’re worried that yours might bite somebody in the future.” The same screwy logic is what flimsily supports the Oregon Cougar Plan.

Financially, the plan is supported by hunter fees. So hunters who aren’t allowed to use dogs to hunt cougars themselves will now get to pay for federal employees to do the hunting. That doesn’t thrill hunters, or the NRA.

Hunters seemingly are supposed to be happy that if there are fewer cougars, there will be more deer and elk for them to kill. That’s dubious.

What isn’t dubious is that cougars kill the weakest prey, while hunters kill the best specimens. Nature knows how to manage deer and elk populations a lot better than government bureaucrats do. Left alone, cougars are an integral part of a predator-prey ecosystem that has worked just fine for many millions of years.

We’ll see how long it takes for the obvious flaws in the Oregon Cougar Plan to become even more evident than they already are. The Predator Defense League is considering leading an initiative effort to ban sporthunting of cougars entirely. I hope they go ahead with this.

When the voters learn that the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission has slapped them in the face, I’m pretty sure they’ll respond with their own slapdown at the ballot box.

It’s obvious who should replace Rumsfeld

CNN reported today that retired Maj. Gen. John Batiste has called for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation, saying:

We need a leader who understands team work, a leader who knows how to build teams, a leader that does it without intimidation.

It’s obvious who should replace Rumsfeld: the marvelous troika of Ling, Ming-Ming, and Tuck.
“What’s gonna work? Teamwork!”

Talk about effective utilization of minimal forces. I've watched quite a few episodes, and these three little creatures are always fully capable of dealing with complex situations involving baby animals in trouble. In five minutes, max. They'll work, if not for peanuts, for a celery stalk.

Plus, the FlyBoat clearly possesses some sort of advanced stealth technology, since it's able to zip in and out of the school without anyone noticing.

The Wonder Pets have great Special Forces skills, even though, as they say, "we're not too big and we're not too tough." Thing is, they work together, which gives them the right stuff.

Go, Wonder Pets! And goodbye, Donald Rumsfeld.

(If you’ve got no idea what I’m talking about, you need to put some joy in your life and start watching The Wonder Pets).

The Tao of Tango explains why politicians stumble

Life is a dance. I’ve just finished reading a little book, “The Tao of Tango,” that has some good insights about why we stumble. Both Taoism and Tango are all about yin and yang, following and leading, female and male energies.

When these dualities aren’t balanced, missteps occur. Harmony goes down the drain. Shit happens. On our little personal dance floor of life, these stumblings are of little consequence except to us and those few with whom we come in contact.

But when you’re a political leader, falling over your feet can bring a whole nation to its knees. Or even the world.

Johanna Siegmann wrote The Tao of Tango. It’s self-published, over-priced, and contains a disturbing number of typos. Still, it was worth the $18 I sent off to Amazon.com. Laurel and I are into our second month of tango lessons. As I wrote back in February, “we tango and also get tangled.” I need all the tips I can get.

We’re dancing more smoothly now. Siegmann explains why.

The dance is not only the perfect representation of the male and female energies working together, it is also the experience of both energies within each person. While the female energy is submissive, reactive, and responsive, the male energy is directive, active, dominant. All people need both these energies to function properly.

In the man, the male energy leads. In the woman, the male energy is what keeps her separate from her partner and what she uses to complete the steps. Without it she would lose her mobility and be unable to actualize her creativity.

In the man, the female energy is what keeps him connected to his partner, what allows him to wait for her, and where the imagination for the next step comes from. In the woman, the female energy is what allows her to surrender to her partner, to accept and trust the process of being led. If there is an imbalance of either energy in either partner, he would be unable to lead her, and she would be unable to follow him.

In Tai Chi, which I know much better than Tango, yin and yang forces almost always alternate. For example, an energetic male push forward is followed by a receptive female acceptance backward.

It’s a truism that you don’t meet force with force. If someone leans on you, you relax and release your tension. That changes the dynamics, leading to fresh possibilities (like watching the other person stumble forward as the “wall” that is you is no longer there to be leaned on).

Observing today’s political scene, it’s interesting to apply The Tao of Tango principles to President Bush. Bush’s big problem is that he moves to only a single dynamic. He considers it a virtue to always be aggressive, never back down, stay the course, not admit mistakes.

Bush’s admirers interpret this as forceful male leadership. But they don’t recognize that he’s seriously underdeveloped in the other half of the qualities that make for skillful political dancing. He’s clueless when it comes to listening receptively, adapting to changed circumstances, being open to other people’s (and nation’s) ideas.

This is why the Bush Administration is falling all over itself now. They did all right so long as Congress and the citizenry allowed themselves to be puppets. When you’re pulling all of the strings and there’s no independent response from the other side, it’s easy to look like you know what you’re doing.

But that’s like dancing with a passive mannequin. It’s not really dancing. When the mannequin comes to life, as elected officials, voters, and the media are finally doing, that’s when Bush’s political dance skills become evident. And what we’re seeing are an awful lot of missteps.

In Tango, as in life, you have to move with your partner. Which, for the President, is the entire population of the United States—and indeed, the world. You need to be able to balance your male and female energies, your leading and following, your dominance and submission.

Bill Clinton knew how to do that. George Bush doesn’t. I long for the days when we had a president who really knew how to dance. Hopefully 2008 will bring us a much better partner in the Oval Office.

Bad week for creationists and intelligent designers

Evolution was on the march last week, crushing the creationist crazies and intelligent design dogmatists. Will they now give up their anti-science jihad? Not likely.

Unfounded religious beliefs are addictive, like other drugs. They relieve the anxiety that comes from living in a complex, mysterious, uncertain world. When the unknown can be banished with the wave of a faith-filled hand, that’s damn appealing.

It's wrong. But still appealing.

Myself, I prefer reality. And that’s what evolution is: real. More evidence of this has arrived via two breakthroughs: a transitional fossil that shows how fish evolved into land animals has been discovered, and molecular biologists demonstrated that so-called “irreducible complexity” actually can be the result of small genetic changes caused by random mutations.

Life happens. On its own. For the life of me, I can’t understand what’s so metaphysically frightening about this. Nature is natural. The Taoists have been telling us this for thousands of years, as have many other naturalistic belief systems.

Why do so many people feel lost without a belief in a personal and paternalistic God-the-Father who directs every aspect of the cosmos? Grow up. We don’t remain children forever. At some point every human should learn to stand on his or her own feet, physically, psychologically, and spiritually.

Sadly, though, many young people are being held back by religion from achieving this sort of maturity. In “Testing Darwin’s Teachers” the LA Times reports that biology teachers are challenged by students who unthinkingly spout the Christian creationist party line.

And we wonder why the United States is sinking lower and lower in cross-national rankings of scientific literacy. Nations who are high in religiosity have lower science scores. Blind faith and critical thinking are like oil and water: they don’t mix.

Baby carrot community shaken to roots

Nice headline, if I may say so myself. Which, since this is my blog, I am. I should clarify, though, that by “community” I basically mean “me.” Nonetheless, this is a big story for baby carrot crunchers: the King of Baby Carrots, Robert Grimm, died recently.

At age 54. Of a heart attack. When I saw this in TIME’s “Milestones” section I almost choked. On a baby carrot.

I eat a lot of baby carrots. My wife makes me. At the age of 57 I still need babying. “This is why,” Laurel tells me, “married men live longer than single men. They’ve got wives who nag them to eat healthy.”

After I’ve chomped down a Gardenburger on a slice of whole wheat bread for lunch, often I’ll hear a voice coming from the kitchen. “Have you eaten your veggies?!” “No, I haven’t,” I reply. A few minutes later Laurel will hand me a bowl of baby carrots, celery pieces, and sliced cucumber. I dutifully munch away on it.

So it was a shock to read of Grimm’s premature death. Premature, because he was three years younger than me. I don’t like it when a guy younger than me dies of a heart attack. Especially if he’s got a strong connection with baby carrots. I’ve been counting on those suckers to keep me going until I’m 100.

The LA Times story says that Grimm’s father died at 91. You’d think that the man who led the company which became the market leader in baby carrots would eat healthy enough to surpass his dad in longevity. I began wondering, “Could there be a secret health risk in baby carrots? Should I toss them away when Laurel brings me my veggie bowl?”

Some Googling obviously was called for. Robert Grimm lived in Bakersfield, California. I found a story in The Bakersfield Californian (registration required) that had more details about Grimm and his family. I read it nervously. I was afraid it would say, “Grimm was a vegetarian who believed in eating organic foods. Baby carrots were a big part of his diet.”

Just like me. That’d be hugely disturbing. If guys younger than me die of heart attacks, I want them to have been big meat-eaters. Plus overweight and non-exercisers. Unlike me.

I came across a few paragraphs that weren’t encouraging:

Brett, Grimm's 16-year-old son, said his father would joke with him about having his five servings of fruits and vegetables a day.

Brett tried to convince his father that potatoes should count, but Grimm called them a negative two, his son said with a laugh.

Shit! This sort of implied that Grimm himself ate lots of fruits and vegetables. Just like me. If that were the case, it wouldn’t be that great of a logical leap to conclude that I was living on borrowed time. I read on, desperate to come across some lifestyle dirt on Grimm.

And there it was. Bingo!

Brett remembered the hunting and fishing, the encouragement to stand up straight and his father's love.

Vegetarians rarely hunt or fish. Grimm clearly was a meat and potatoes kind of guy. Well, meat at least. It was hard to reconcile the “potatoes” part with the “negative two” comment. In my own mind, the only place that counts, I conjured up a mental image of a hard-driving, cholesterol-consuming guy who only occasionally ate a baby carrot when he checked out the packaging plant.

So fear not, baby carrot community. Our leader may be gone at age 54, but we need not worry that our days will be so minimally numbered. We will continue to eat our veggies—without meaties.

Thank you, Mr. Grimm, for popularizing this wonderful healthy snack. May you live long and prosper in Baby Carrot Heaven.

Blowing off a Democratic fundraiser

Sorry, guy, when you phoned this afternoon and asked for a donation to the Democratic cause you caught me at a testy time. That’s why I ranted, “A pox on both the parties! More and more I’m moving to the center. Independents rule!”

I understand why you hung up on me so quickly. You were looking for my Democratic wife and assumed that I was a kindred political spirit. Which, usually I am. But not to the extent of donating to the Demowussycratic Party. I’ll leave that to Laurel.

I told the fundraiser that the Democrats are better than the Republicans. Pretty much like leprosy is better than the black plague. Both are nasty, yet one is more deadly. Hearing today that a compromise on immigration reform is likely to get through the Senate helped push me over the rant edge when I got that call.

“The Dems have lost me on the immigration bill,” I said. I was about to launch into the reasons why when I heard the solicitor hastily disconnecting. There’s nothing more frustrating than a rantus interruptus, so I’ll take the liberty of continuing my rant here.

As I wrote about before, these are strange days. On the subject of immigration reform I find myself agreeing with arch-conservative talk show hosts like Michael Savage, and the Democratic Party has aligned itself with a policy pioneered by Ronald Reagan in 1986.

Hey, Dems: have you ever considered whether it’s wise to be on the same side of the immigration divide as Reagan and Bush? Could it be that you’re being used as a pawn by big business interests eager to maintain a steady flow of cheap labor?

(The idiocy of the Senate approach to immigration reform is encapsulated in "Immigration bill repeats earlier flaws, say critics.")

Read “How U.S. Corporations Won the Fight Over Immigration” over at the Americas Program of the International Relations Center. It describes how the Essential Worker Immigration Coalition (EWIC) was formed in 1999 after the INS, gasp!, actually stopped meat-packing plants in Nebraska from hiring illegals.

The business lobby freaked out and EWIC was born. And you can bet that right now they’re pulling a lot of strings (plus throwing around a lot of money) in the Congressional debate over immigration reform. The article says:

In 1986, Reagan approved a broad based amnesty for over 6 million undocumented immigrants, who were required to show that they’d been living in the country since 1982. EWIC’s contribution has been to reframe the residency requirement contained in the 1986 legislation, transforming it into the concept of “earned legalization.”

In other words, it’s no longer sufficient to have lived in the U.S. for years—only participation as a “willing employee” in a new temporary worker program, contracted out to a “willing employer” (in the terminology of Bush and the Cato Institute) qualifies someone for eventual legalization.

…EWIC doubtless deserves credit for its lobbying and legislative skill. It may seem self-evident that migration should be harnessed to provide labor to corporate employers—if it does, it is a mark of the success of employer groups like it. But EWIC is also riding a new political wave, and its proposals reflect a growing effort by governments in all the wealthy countries of the global north to retailor their immigration policies to meet industry needs.

It’s pretty clear that we don’t have a genuine two-party system. Both the Republicans and the Democrats are under the sway of corporate interests. When big business says “jump!” almost every elected official is pleased to ask “how high?” Followed by, “when will I get my check?”

Thus it’s a waste of time to talk to me, Democratic fundraisers, until your party starts to grow some progressive balls. My advice is to phone in the morning; that’s when my wife is more likely to answer.

“Big Love” and semen scraping dragonflies

Laurel and I have become fans of “Big Love,” the HBO series about a Salt Lake City polygamist and his three wives. From my male perspective, the most interesting aspect of Big Love is the central question asked on the show’s web site: “Think having three wives is a dream come true?”

We’re an episode behind in our watching, but I’ve seen enough of Bill’s life with mature first wife Barbara, shopaholic second wife Nicki, and youthful sexpot Margene to be pretty certain of my answer.

“No.”

Bill has triple the sexual variety of the typical husband. However, he also has triple the nagging and complaining. At the moment, and, indeed, every moment that I can remember during our marriage, Laurel has had a “honeydo” list affixed to the side of our refrigerator with a magnet.

The chance that I’ll ever come to the end of that chore list is as great as the probability that the universe’s electromagnetic force will stop operating and the magnet will fall to the floor.

For my thirty-four years of matrimonial experience, spanning two marriages, has led me to conclude: While the man may get the proposal ball rolling, after the vows are said it is by and large the woman who proposes what needs to be done around the homestead, and the man disposes of those chores.

Or not. Depending upon his capacity for procrastination, which for me is great. And for Laurel, not so great.

Thus while being able to rotate between three attractive women in the bedroom is appealing, having three chore lists affixed to three refrigerators decidedly isn’t (Bill has three homes in his suburban polygamy compound, one for each wife).

Turning to the subject of semen scraping dragonflies, a National Geographic article about “Dragonflies Strange Love” casts light on why Bill can more or less peacefully coexist with three wives, while it’s difficult to envision a woman having three husbands. More accurately, I can envision this happening briefly—but soon two of the three men would be driven away by the third.

Males are possessive and aggressive when it comes to mating. Dragonflies more so than humans, admittedly. Yet the male Homo sapiens possesses his own dragonflyish qualities. My psychotherapist wife can supply many examples of men stalking women who wanted to break up with them and favoring their own offspring over a new mate’s children.

Similar stuff goes on in the dragonfly world, according to National Geographic.

A male dragonfly uses his penis not just to transfer sperm to the female, but also to remove sperm left in her storage organ from previous matings. When he curls into that wheel position and begins his energetic genital thrusting, he’s actually using his rigid, spoonlike, and sometimes spiky, penis to scrape out rival sperm before he deposits his own…Males want their own sperm to prevail, so they have evolved strategies for purging other sperm and for discouraging mates from copulating with rivals.

(Spiky? Ouch.) Evolutionary theory doesn’t explain everything about men and women. It sure points to some obvious truths, though. When a woman gets pregnant, she knows it is her child. After all, it is growing in her womb. Conversely, a man has no idea whether that child is the product of his own, or another man’s, copulation.

So a woman is assured of passing on her own genetic heritage no matter who gets her pregnant. If she has one mate, or three, or a hundred, it doesn’t matter: her DNA passes to the next generation. However for a man, he needs to be damn sure that the woman is bearing his child and passing on his DNA, not another man’s.

Thus there is great evolutionary pressure on men to be possessive of their mate(s). You don’t want to share your woman with another man. As a presentation for a college class on Sexual Selection says, competition between members of one sex for “breeding rights” usually is between males.

I don’t want to share my wife sexually with another man. Still, I can see some benefits to a sort of non-sexual polyandry. This week, as I was struggling to disconnect and drain an old hot water heater, I would have liked to have our household include a plumber. A carpenter often would come in handy too.

With guys, though, these sorts of helpers are called “friends.” In Big Love, Bill’s women have female friends who also are sister-wives. That wouldn’t work with men. The semen scraping instinct is too strong.

Global warming is real. Debate over.

If you have any doubts that global warming is real, read the April 3 TIME magazine cover story and “Be Worried, Be Very Worried.” The evidence is in. The debate is over. Global warming is happening. Humans are the major cause of it. And we’re heading for disaster.

Yes, there are still global warming deniers like Oregon climatologist George Taylor. But he’s been outed by Willamette Week and I haven’t heard any “global warming is a myth” craziness from George lately. Maybe he’s turned to arguing that creationism and intelligent design are fact, while evolution is fiction. Or that the Earth is flat.

It’s a free country. People can believe weird things. But they don’t have the right to destroy our planet. This is why there’s a big difference between evolution-denying crazies and global warming-denying crazies: the latter are a lot more dangerous.

TIME speaks the truth: “Polar ice caps are melting faster than ever…More and more land is being devastated by drought…Rising waters are drowning low-lying communities…By any measure, Earth is at the tipping point…The climate is crashing, and global warming is to blame.”

It may be too late to do anything about it. Once past a tipping point, it’s devilishly difficult to turn things around. But the cover story ends with:

Curbing global warming my be an order of magnitude harder than, say, eradicating smallpox or putting a man on the moon. But is it moral not to try? We did not so much march toward the environmental precipice as drunkenly reel there, snapping at the scientific scolds who told us we had a problem.

The scolds, however, knew what they were talking about. In a solar system crowded with sister worlds that either emerged stillborn like Mercury and Venus or died in infancy like Mars, we’re finally coming to appreciate the knife-blade margins within which life can thrive. For more than a century we’ve been monkeying with those margins. It’s long past time we set them right.

James Hansen, a NASA scientist the Bush administration has been trying to shut up, is one of the scolds who's been warning about the dangers of global warming. His Scientific American article, “Defusing the Global Warming Time Bomb” is both solid and scary. “Small forces,” he says, “maintained long enough, can cause large climate change.”

Humans are pumping huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Nonetheless, compared to Nature as a whole humanity’s impact on the climate is puny. The problem is, as Hansen pointed out, that relatively small anthropogenic (human-caused) forces can have big effects.

Arctic ice is melting. That’s a fact. As it melts dark water increases and light ice decreases. Dark water absorbs heat while light ice reflects it. So that causes more melting, which makes more dark water, and so it goes. The system feeds back upon itself.

TIME says that the effects of global warming are upon us much more quickly than was anticipated.

What few people reckoned on was that global climate systems are booby-trapped with tipping points and feedback loops, thresholds past which the slow creep of environmental decay gives rise to sudden and self-perpetuating collapse. Pump enough carbon dioxide in the sky, and that last part per million of greenhouse gas behaves like the 212th degree Fahrenheit that turns a pot of hot water into a plume of billowing steam.

Amazingly, conservative apologists like George Will are still saying that global warming is up for debate. It’s strange. In the old days, conservatives believed in conserving. I know this because I was raised by a woman who was both deeply Republican and deeply conservative in the best sense of the word: frugal, non-wasteful, protective of limited resources both monetary and natural.

George Will writes:

Are we sure there will be proportionate benefits from whatever climate change can be purchased at the cost of slowing economic growth and spending trillions? Are we sure the consequences of climate change -- remember, a thick sheet of ice once covered the Middle West -- must be bad?

Gee, George, what a great question. Let’s ask the people of Nebraska if they’d rather run the risk of having the United States’ economic growth slowed slightly or be buried under a sheet of ice.

Alternatively, if the answer to that question seems obvious we can instead apply ourselves to combating global warming. Hansen says, “The emphasis should be on mitigating the [climate] changes rather than just adapting to them.”

My wife and I own two cars, a Toyota Prius and a Toyota Highlander. Both are hybrids. Automotively, we’re doing our part.

Our hot water heater needs replacing. Today we ordered a new one. The energy efficient model is going to cost us an extra hundred dollars (though we’ll get some of that money back via a tax credit). Water heaterly, we’re doing our part.

Unfortunately, neither of us is the President of the United States, who isn’t doing his part. Recently I heard George Bush say that he is opposed to the Kyoto Treaty because it would harm the American economy.

As if having the mid-West covered by a sheet of ice wouldn’t. What an idiot.
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Next day P.S.: it might seem paradoxical that global warming could lead to either a mini or maxi ice age, but the Scientific American article about "Abrupt Climate Change" explains how this might happen:

As global warming continues to heat up the planet, many scientists fear that large pulses of freshwater melting off the Greenland ice sheet and other frozen northern landscapes could obstruct the so-called North American conveyor, the system of ocean currents that brings warmth to Europe and strongly influences climate elsewhere in the world.

A conveyor shutdown--or even a significant slowdown--could cool the North Atlantic region even as global temperatures continue to rise. Other challenging and abrupt climate changes would almost certainly result...As the conveyor grows quiet winters become harsher in much of Europe and North America, and agriculture suffers.

...Uncertainties abound, and although a new ice age is not thought credible, the resulting changes could be notably larger than they were during the Little Ice Age, when the Thames in London froze and glaciers rumbled down the Alps.

Immigration reform brings strange days

Strange political days have dawned when I turn on my car radio, hear arch-conservative Michael Savage ranting about how awful it would be to give amnesty to twelve million illegal aliens, and say to myself, Right on, Michael!

Like I’ve said before, the right is right on immigration reform. And by “right,” I mean the rightest of the right. Not the Arlen Specter sort of Senate moderates, but the fire breathing House Republicans like Dana Rohrabacher who said people should be able to “smell the foul odor that’s coming out of the U.S. Senate.”

It is indeed foul when Democrats abandon their historic concern for middle class working people and align themselves with business interests eager to continue paying sweatshop wages to illegal aliens rather than hire Americans at whatever salary an illegal-less workforce would demand.

When George Bush and Howard Dean are on the same page, you know that someone powerful is running the political printing press. And that is: corporations.

Having already outsourced millions of middle class jobs overseas in a quest to fatten their bottom line, corporations are dead set on continuing to insource a limitless supply of foreign workers willing to work for less than American citizens would demand.

It’s disgusting that the Dems and moderate Republicans have sold out to political pollsters who lust after the steadily growing Hispanic voting bloc. It’s rare that I’ll say anything good about right-wing Republicans, but on this issue they’re standing firm on principles that deserve to be defended. Like…

--You don’t reward sneaking across the border illegally with amnesty and American citizenship.
--You don’t undercut minimum wage laws and normal workforce supply and demand by artificially inflating the supply of foreign workers willing to work for a pittance.
--You don’t encourage an influx of more illegal aliens by saying, in effect: “We didn’t really mean to enforce our old laws, so you can assume that we won’t bother to enforce this new law either.”

Plus, I’m an avid environmentalist. If you read the cover story of TIME this week, you’ll know that global warming is here. It’s real, it means business, and it’s no joke. The United States has the biggest ecological footprint of any country on the planet. Meaning, on average each American screws up the Earth environmentally much more than a person elsewhere does.

To save the Earth, we don’t need more wasteful Americans. We need fewer. Or at least, the fewer the better. Turning twelve million Mexicans into American citizens isn’t a good thing for the planet. If some of them are needed here temporarily, fine. A minimal guest worker program might make sense.

But not wholesale amnesty. Seal up the borders. Enforce our immigration laws. Make businesses pay big-time if they hire illegals.

Progressives, I just ask you to consider this bizarre possibility: sometimes the right is right.

[Next day update: Over on Right Democrat, "Illegal immigration and the cheap labor lobby" agrees with my position and says some nice things about my own post above. Right Democrat says that I make a "strong and well-reasoned progressive case against illegal immigration." Gosh, could I actually be one--a right democrat? Maybe. Sort of sounds like an independent to me, which I definitely am.]