Change Up

It looks like there is a distinct possibility that a strike against Syria may be delayed or even not happen at all. A conversation between the president and Vladimir Putin at last week's G20 meeting sparked a Russian overture to the Syrians to allow their chemical weapons to be placed under UN control or possibly destroyed all together. Taken with a grain of salt, this is good news.

Assuming they allow such a thing to happen, this would head off an attack by the US and might actually start the country back towards stability once again. If the UN is allowed in for this purpose, it might be able to spread its influence around the country and be able to be our eyes and ears on the ground in Syria. We can monitor what Assad is up to and gauge our response accordingly.

This also gets Congress off the hook from having to make a very tough vote. Now they can back to the business of being silly about the budget, health care, and immigration.

What The Heck Happened To This Party?!?

George Zimmerman Back in the News Again. And Again. And Again...

Since being acquitted of murdering Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman has not kept a low profile.

He visited a gun factory, was stopped for speeding in Florida and Texas, and was sued for divorce by his wife of six years. Shellie Zimmerman recently pleaded guilty to perjury for lying about the PayPal account that held money people sent Zimmerman.

Now Zimmerman has apparently punched his father-in-law in the nose and threatened his wife with a gun:

Shellie Zimmerman, who has filed for divorce, initially told a 911 dispatcher that her husband had his hand on his gun as he sat in his car outside the home she was at with her father. She said she was scared because she wasn't sure what Zimmerman was capable of doing. But hours later she changed her story and said she never saw a firearm, said Lake Mary Police Chief Steve Bracknell.

I think Shellie Zimmerman knows exactly George Zimmerman is capable of, and that's why she changed her story -- she doesn't want to get him too riled up. It's ironic that of the two of them, she is the only one to pay a price for the killing of Trayvon Martin: she is on probation and community service; Zimmerman got off scot-free.

Zimmerman appears to be a violent and arrogant man, who has learned how to manipulate the system, perhaps due to his close association with the law (his father is a judge). He has proved that he can literally get away with murder.

Is Zimmerman arrogant enough to think he's so clever that he can pull the same trick again, or will he simply self-destruct in a very public and messy way?  The real question is how many other innocent victims he'll take with him.

Does it really make sense for guys like this to be able to run around with guns at will?

Back In Session

Congress comes back this week from summer vacation with a veritable schmidt load of items on their agenda. First up is whether or not to strike Syria. As of right now, support looks pretty thin in the House. Shocking, that the House GOP would use any means to fuck over the president. My oh my how the hawks have become doves...

Of course, the president is getting much support on the left either so his address to the nation better be a home run tomorrow night otherwise he won't get the vote. Contrary to the media hysterics, if he loses the vote, this will not be the end of his presidency. Congress did not support FDR during the 1930s regarding Hitler's march across Europe. Congress did not support President Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Anyone remember who those people were?

The budget is probably the next item on the list to tackle and we are already hearing signs of playing chicken again with the debt limit. It seems we will have a large group of people that don't understand that it's money we have already spent. Worse, far too many still haven't grasped the concept of the difference between individual debt and government debt. I'm sure we'll be hearing the anti-spending old ladies out in full force over the next few weeks.

Immigration is likely to take a back seat which is really a drag as reform could solve many of our other economic problems. I was impressed with Marco Rubio and his fellow Senators for coming up with a great bill to address this issue. Unfortunately, it has now come to the short wave radio listening Civil War reinactors in the House so that means it's going nowhere.

Oh, and doesn't the ACA roll out on October 1?

This is going to be one exciting fall!

Climate Change Update

There have been several interesting pieces about climate change over the last few weeks. The first is the draft summary of the next United Nations report on climate change which states with a higher level of certainty the effects that human beings are having on the rise global temperature. They also address the adolescent "n'yah n'yah" of the recent slowdown of warming which is interesting.

NASA has a nice list up of why climate change is settled science, thus torpedoing the notion that there is conflict not consensus in the scientific community.

And Time magazine put a piece last month about why more people aren't acting on climate change even though more people accept that the earth is warming.

For some, the answer lies in cognitive science. Daniel Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard, has written about why our inability to deal with climate change is due in part to the way our mind is wired. Gilbert describes four key reasons ranging from the fact that global warming doesn’t take a human form — making it difficult for us to think of it as an enemy — to our brains’ failure to accurately perceive gradual change as opposed to rapid shifts. Climate change has occurred slowly enough for our minds to normalize it, which is precisely what makes it a deadly threat, as Gilbert writes, “because it fails to trip the brain’s alarm, leaving us soundly asleep in a burning bed.” 

Recalling our times as cavemen, most people don't act until they are on fire. Essentially, it needs to be personal.

Hey Kids...Want Some Candy?

It's hard for me to imagine the gun community being even bigger dicks than they are but this idea really sucks.

The group is working on educational pamphlets in advance of the event. Reed said some gun owners may pass out candy to neighbor kids.

I wonder how many people are actually going to turn out and, if they do, what happens if there is some sort of accident? And how can we tell if they are "good guys?" It seems to me that some "bad guys" might try to take advantage of this...

Well, anyway, there goes the small amount of concern that I had that the bloviating gun rights folks would be taken seriously for a significant amount of time. Maybe they should hand out the candy from tinted vans...

The Syria Explanation

The president did a great job yesterday explaining why we need to attack Syria and why it's not really his ass on the line. Check out the video below. My only gripe with it is he used the word "unpack" in reference to an idea which is bullshit seminar speak.


   

We Overcame It!

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Video Archive

How Far They Have Moved Right...

Finally

I'm happy to report that someone got the memo on the need for a real fucking news station as opposed to three we have now that can't resist bright shiny objects like Miley Cyrus. Al Jazeera America is simply fantastic.

I waited a few weeks since it launched to see if they could resist the paparazzi like stories we see on the other three networks and they have. In addition, they pick an issue on focus on it for a considerable amount of time. The show, "Inside Story," recently focused on climate change and to my complete delight, they did not play the Cult of Both Sides and focused on the actual science.

No doubt AJA will lead to several bowels being blown by those on the Right who just can't help themselves in predicting the coming End Times. Clearly, those who will engage in this haven't even watched the station. I was struck by how many average Americans participate in the discussions. These people come from all walks of political ideology and don't necessarily look great on TV which I think is totally fucking mega.

To see where you can watch Al Jazeera America, click here and enter your zip in the upper right hand corner.

The Only One

It appears that I am the only one who thinks that the president asking Congress for permission to bomb Syria makes him stronger, not weaker. That's true even if Congress turns him down.

Consider what would happen if that was the scenario as it was in the UK. Congress, not the president, would be blamed if we allowed the use of chemical weapons to go without an appropriate response. This would be a similar situation to World War II where President Roosevelt lobbied hard to get the United States involved in the war only to be rebuffed continually by Congress and their isolationist ways.

Granted, Bashar Asssad is no Adolph Hitler but ignoring his actions would have massive repercussions in the region. Iran would feel emboldened as would the various terrorists networks that both they and Syria support. In short, it's far too late to do nothing.

And the president knows this. But he wants to do this the right way and that's why Congress needs to be in the decision making process. They need to see the evidence over the next week (as will the world) of Sarin gas use in Syria. Once this happens, much of the hand wringing and fretting that we see in the "liberal" media is going to go away.

Honestly, I think Assad's days are numbered.

250 K?

On this Labor Day, I thought it appropriate to check in on how Governor Scott "250,000 jobs" Walker is doing on his promise. We need look no further than Walker Job-O-Meter over at Politifact. Apparently that promise is now a goal, not necessarily a reality. He's also been lying about some other job related matters but what do the numbers actually say?

It looks like is about a third of the way there with 84,000 jobs added. This graphic shows it's been real up and down this year...sort of like that national picture.

Now, if this were President Obama, these numbers would be horrible. But since it's Scott Walker, well, what a great job he is doing, eh!?

Great Quotes

Addicting Info has a great list of quotes from our founding fathers that don't really seem to jibe with the whole not really sort of but really yes please theocracy conservatives want for our country. Among them...

"In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own. It is error alone that needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.” ~Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Horatio Spofford, 1814

I think I might need to highlight a quote a week from this page.

Amen

Which Car is Outselling The Rest?

That would be the Tesla.

In the first half of 2013, Tesla captured 0.6 percent of the total light-duty vehicle market in the state—more than Buick, Fiat, Land Rover, Lincoln, or Mitsubishi. And looking only at June, the latest month for which figures are available, Tesla also topped Cadillac, Chrysler, and Porsche. That’s especially impressive when you consider that those brands are selling multiple different cars, whereas the Model S is the only Tesla vehicle in production.

I was told there was no market for this sort of vehicle. Huh.

The Arrogance of Ignorance

There they go again. Todd Rokita, an Indiana Republican, recently said that humans can't possibly change the climate of the entire planet:

“I think it’s arrogant that we think as people that we can somehow change the climate of the whole earth when science is telling us that there’s a cycle to all this,” he said. “And that cycle was occurring before the industrial revolution and I suspect will occur way into the future.”

This is like saying that something the size of ant couldn't possibly tear down a house. Ants are just too small! Termites, however, can easily destroy houses.

It is not arrogant to think that humans can change the climate. It is the height of ignorance to think that we can do anything we damn well please without affecting the future of our of grandchildren.

The fact is, humans have been changing local climates for thousands of years. When you chop or burn down trees and convert forests to croplands, you change the climate.

You can see this for yourself: just take a bike ride down a trail in Minnesota on a hot day. When you're pedaling along a trail shaded by trees the air is cool and damp. When you leave the shade and enter a grassy area -- or a wheat field -- the air is dry and the temperature jumps several degrees. This is because forests cool the earth, and help to retain water locally instead of sending it all back into the air. Trees may even make it rain.

The effect is even greater when you replace trees with cities. This produces an effect called the "urban heat island." Areas denuded of foliage and covered with concrete and asphalt retain heat and and don't retain water, changing the local climate. Climate change deniers are well aware of this: they count on it to attempt to discredit historical climate data (which scientists have accounted for in their calculations).

Farmers in Brazil and Indonesia have been burning and chopping down the great rain forests for decades, turning lush, damp forests into dry fields. Haitians scavenging for wood to burn have chopped down all the trees on their side of the island. The American West has been hit hard by wildfires, and thousands of square miles have been burned in the last few years. This has changed the local climates, making them drier.

If you change enough local climates through deforestation and urbanization, pretty soon the continental and global climates change.

There are seven billion people on earth. Yes, there have been natural climate cycles in the past. But there have never been seven billion people before. The land area of the earth is 149 million square kilometers, or 58 million square miles. That gives us a population density of 121 people per square mile across the entire planet. By comparison, Macau has 73,000 people per square mile, India has 954, China has 365, Nicaragua has 120, the United States has 84, Alaska has 1.2. This means that, if we put our minds to it, we could easily chop or burn down all the forests in the world even with tools as primitive as stone axes. Which would drastically alter the global climate. And if you consider what would happen if we detonated all our nuclear weapons at once, it's clear that humanity has more than enough power to change the climate of the planet.

Over the past 200 years we have been digging up oil, gas and coal which were formed by the remains of forests and plants over millions and billions of years. Not only are we burning the forests of today and putting their carbon into the atmosphere, but by burning fossil fuels we are putting the carbon of millions of years of forest and plant growth into the atmosphere, all in the blink of an eye on the geological scale. It's like burning all the forests that ever existed all at once.

That is something that has never happened on earth before, so any talk of science's "natural cycles" goes completely out the window.

To think that that the activities of seven billion people can't change the climate is both arrogant and ignorant. So the question is: are we going to be termites, gnawing at the foundations of the world's climate until it comes crashing down upon us? Or are we going to be good shepherds of this earth?