Fucktards Unite!

I don't usually link to Fox News. Usually, they're full-of-shitness is so absurd as to hardly merit a glance. Yesterday, however, Fox had an unusually full-of-shit-head on Your World with Neal Cavuto. The gues, Jack Chambliss, wasn't completely full of shit, mind you. He made some good points. However, his starting point, a point I should add, which relates hardly or not at all to the larger theme of his appearance, was so off-base, so patently wrong that I hardly know how to respond to it.

Mr. Chambliss began his appearance by stating that Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution was never intended to give Congress the power to provide disaster relief in places like New Orleans, LA. That's quite a claim. This is the section of the Constitution, you may recall, that says that "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes...and provide for the...general welfare of the United States." It is, of course, a familiar conservative trope that any reference to something as broad as "general welfare" cannot be read literally and that the phrase is modified and limited by the ennumerated powers that follow. (Mind you, these same people will also argue "the right to keep and bear arms" is a specific and well-delineated concept and that "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state" is a phrase which in no way limits or modifies it. That, however, is a topic for a different place and time.) Conservative complaints about the "general welfare" clause of Article I typically focus on the many government functions (roads, education, environmental regulations, etc.) which they believe to be unconstitutional and symptomatic of an overly-agressive nanny state. They may be right in some instances. However, what, may I ask, does the "general welfare" mean if it doesn't mean the ability to LIVE?

There are people in New Orleans right now who are dying for a lack of food, clean water, shelter. Regardless of why they are there or how they got to be where they are, those people's welfare, their very lives, rest in the hands of the federal government. Like it or not, providing these people with a means to survive the next few weeks falls pretty clearly within the ambit of the phrase "general welfare". To argue otherwise is, I would assert, a clear sign not only of one's inhumanity but also of a disturbing willingness to place abstraction on a higher plane than harsh and obvious reality. So, from the very get-go, Mr. Chambliss proves himself to rank high on the fucktard ladder.

And that, my friends, is a shame. Because I think Mr. Chambliss has a decent point to make. Namely, why does the federal government still subsidize insurance that allows people to live in highly sensitive ecological zones, many of which are subject to profound natural forces (flood, fire, wind, etc.)? New Orleans may have been built 250 years ago when people didn't know any better, but how about the countless golf and country clubs that you see around New Orleans and Lake Ponchartrain? How about the wealthy suburbs that are built, burned and rebuilt periodically in the fire zone in Malibu in California? Why are we building new communities in lahar zones around Mt. Rainier?

Experience shows us that the risk in each of these instances is high. Was it any great surprise that a giant hurricane hit New Orleans? Or Biloxi? Or Gulfport? Or Mobile. No, no, no and no. Is any great surprise that houses built in a dry, mediterranean-type climate burn at the slightest provocation in Malibu? No. Will it be any surprise when sulfuric acid finally eats through one side of Rainier and Puyallup is buried under 35 feet of boiling mud? No. Yeah, it's difficult to predict when these will happen. But that they WILL happen is a certainty. We don't bet on sure losses, so why do we develop on them? As Mr. Chambliss rightly points out, because the federal government assumes much of the risk that the individual used to have to bear.

I, for one, fully support the idea that the federal government and society at large should help absorb some of the risk that life entails. There are risks, like those related to economic downturns, catastrophic accidents and health crises that are both unforeseeable and unavoidable. Government should be there to help. There are risks, like fire in Topanga Canyon that are foreseeable and avoidable. Government should stay the hell away. More importantly, government shouldn't be actively promoting policies that increase the number of people and entities who take such avoidable, foreseeable risks.

Thus, I kind of agree with Mr. Chambliss on the deleterious role of federal policies that promote risky behavior. I completely disagree that providing disaster relief to starving, homeless people is one of those policies.

My new job

It's been a while since I last posted. I spent last week in a flurry of house preparation for the peanut and I started my new job on Monday. Both have conspired to keep me away from the keyboard and, hence, out of the blogosphere. For a bit there, I was considering stopping this thing altogether in a witty little post called "The Demise of the Public Trust". I would have somehow tied together the re-election of George Bush (the obvious reason for the demise of the public trust) and the federal government's decision to hire me on (the ironic and potentially humorous reason for the demise of the public trust).

Anyway, my wife of all people suggested that I don't quit on the blog just yet. As she noted, I'm going to need something to do when it's 3:30 in the morning and a colic-y peanut won't sleep. Hmmmm... I don't like the sound of that. In any case, the PT is here to stay for a while longer. I hope the long absence hasn't scared anyone off.

Incidentally, my new job is in the enforcement branch of our nation's environmental agency. I'm going to draw an sharp line between work and blog and you may, as a result, see somewhat fewer environmental themes on here for a while. I need to feel my way around and do a little reading to make sure there's no ethical or legal impediments to blogging and federal employment. I mean, it's not like I do this anonymously or anything. Any Joe Blow could see my name on a federal document, type "Everett Volk" into google and get taken straight to this site. I can't say off-hand that that sounds like a good thing to me. Oh well, we'll see. If I get dinged, I get dinged and I'll stop blogging then.

Something to think about

It's been a while since I last posted. Too much work getting the house in order for the penaut and too little time, I guess. That, and I'm a lazy bum. Anyway, as you all know, Pat Robertson, America's favorite Christian psychopath, announced the other day that America should assasinate Hugo Chavez, the President of Venezuela. According to Mr. Robertson, such a move would protect us from communists and Muslims and, presumably, feminists, abortionists, gays, the ACLU and People for the American Way.

With Mr. Robertson waving his "Christian ethics" around for everyone to see, I suggest reading the following two articles. The first article is all about training young Christians to inject their ethics into the political process. Keep in mind while reading this article that there is a sizable sub-culture of American Christians devoted to promoting Reconstructionism and Theonomy as a means of governing this country. The similarities between reconstructionist beliefs and the folks described in the article are not, I believe, mere coincidence.

It is easy, though, to focus on the evil that arises when politics and religion mix, especially when the bartenders are right-wingers. Thus, I point you to The second article in which the author relates his story of travelling through the middle east with a diverse group of seminarians and laity. The kindness, compassion and thoughtfulness displayed by most of the people in this group are heartening, and I think you'll appreciate the author's discussion of the struggle between exclusionary and inclusionary impulses in many thoughtful theists. Point is, although there are lots of batshit insane religious believers in this world (many of whom would gladly imprison or kill you for disagreeing with them), there are probably just as many who believe otherwise and who understand the diverse nature of humanity and its religious beliefs.

P.S. Anybody else notice the theme running through the Post article of how spiritual awareness often comes most easily in natural settings. Interesting.

On being a host

I'm feeling uninspired and apathetic and so I have nothing to write. Thus, for your reading pleasure, I will point you to The Worm Within, an object lesson on why one should always eat their meat roasted, not raw.

Not (just) for kitties.

When I was in Thailand I marvelled at the ubiquity of roasted meat on sticks. They had sausage on sticks, cuttlefish on sticks, grasshoppers on sticks, and squid on sticks. They did not, however, have roasted rats on sticks. For that, you have to cross the Mekong and go to Laos.

You call that a voice?

THIS is the conservative voice? Good god, can someone give the conservative voice a muzzle? Or atleast and editor.

And hey, guess what! Women's right to control their bodies is "a bunch of crap because it ain't in the Bible. And did you know there's an invisible "L" in the acronym NOW? Yup. It really stands for the "National Organization of Lesbian Women".

Good fucking god, will somebody please tell me that this is a joke? Please. Can these knuckle-dragging fucktards believe everything they write? I know, maybe Torquemada invented a time-machine and is sending his legions of religion-addled psychopaths to the future!

Right.

In Cod We Trusted

The Post has a short article today reporting that cod stocks in the Northeast have dropped 25% over the last 4 years. For anyone who has read the book Cod: A Biography of a Fish that Changed the World, this will likely come as no surprise. Trawling fleets pretty much decimated the cod population off of America's Northeast Shelf from about the late 1950s through the early 1990s. At the time, fisherman couldn't be convinced that cod were in danger of going extinct, much less suffering a population collapse. Their argument to the contrary: "Look at the all fish we pull in, there must be healthy stocks." That is sort of like using a bigger spoon to eat your cereal and averring that because your mouth is fuller, there must be plenty of cereal in your bowl. It is, of course, total bullshit. Take a peek at this page and look at the chart about half-way down. It shows commercial landing amounts and trawler population surveys for 1965-1995. The population surveys show a steady if erratic decline over those years, while the landing amounts climb until 1989 when they begin to plummet.

Fast forward ten years and what are the people saying about cod now? Fish stocks have declined 25% in four years. The NEFMC and National Marine Fisheries Service dragged their heels for most of those four years trying to avoid implementing a recovery plan that would burden the cod industry with catch limits or other regulations. They finally put a plan in place and when population figures show declining numbers of cod, they argue that we must wait "several more months" for the plan to start working. C'mon now people, do I look like an idiot. I know the NOAA folk and the regional fishery management councils must deal with political realities, but if political realities are divorced from physical reality something is very wrong.

The political reality is, northeastern fisherman want to continue fishing for cod and nobody wants to limit their catch. The physical reality is, the cod stocks are crashing again. We put in a plan that allows overfishing to preserve local economies. If you're trying to recover fish stocks alrady decimated by overfishing, how will more overfishing help them recover? I find this all very frustrating. I know every fishing town in the Northeast can't become a tourist mecca, but there must be a better way than our current myopic and irrational system.

American competitiveness?

The New York Times has a story today outlining how the Bush Administration is going to exempt the biggest SUVs from new CAFE standards. CAFE, or corporate average fuel economy, is the means by which the government has traditionally regulated automobile fuel economy (and, incidentally, greenhouse gas emissions). For years the CAFE standards have exempted light trucks which, when the standards were initially created, were used primarily for commercial and industrial uses. In recent decades, though, this has obviously changed and the standards are finally being adjusted to confront that reality.

American manufacturers, of course, hate this regulation because it places some constraints on the size and capacity of the vehicles they make for regular sale. Given their current dependence on high-profit margin SUVs, the manufacturers are especially opposed to including these SUVs in the CAFE standards arguing that Americans won't buy their trucks anymore. On that point, I think they're wrong. Crackheads buy crack regardless of the quality or size of the rock they're buying. They might bitch and moan, but they still buy the rock. Americans and cars are the same way. You'll get a bunch of carping from gasoline-addicted suburbanites and republican "think"-tanks, but people will keep laying out the dough for whatever shiny behemoth Detroit shits out.

But American's buying habits and environmental affects aside, I think the article brings up an interesting point about the competitiveness of the American auto manufacturers. Consider the following two quotes:

"[D]omestic automakers are likely to see [the Bush plan] as a victory, since the new plan will decrease advantages that some foreign automakers, like Honda, have in the current system because they do not make the heaviest trucks and S.U.V.'s."

First, I have a complaint about the logic of this sentence. It says that Honda has an advantage under the current system because they don't make big SUVs. Actually, if the current system doesn't regulate big SUVs and only the American manufacturers make such vehicles, then it is the American manufacturers that have the advantage. At least some portion of their products go un-regulated while all foreign manufactured products are regulated. Regardless, the basic gist of the sentence is correct: American manufacturers are pleased that the Bush Administration is foregoing regulation of big SUVs because it ensures some slant in the playing field to their benefit. The question is, why is such a slant necessary? The answer is here:

"Automakers have had powerful incentives to produce such [large] vehicles because they are exempt from fuel regulations, have had rich profit margins, and many consumers can claim tax breaks for them. The administration had suggested including larger S.U.V.'s in fuel economy regulations in a first wave of proposals in December 2003, but domestic automakers objected that such a move would harm their fragile bottom lines."

There you have it, American car manufacturers are opposed to fuel regulations on large SUVs because they think they'll go bankrupt if such rules are put in place. Of course, I think that Americans will buy SUVs regardless of their fuel economy. So why will fuel economy rules on big SUVs hurt American manufacturers? Because they can't build small SUVs that Americans will buy or, at a minimum, buy in sufficiently large numbers to keep them solvent. That's got to be the reason. Our domestic manufacturers rely on uneven regulations to give them an advantage in a market in which they otherwise can't compete.

Suppose we stopped regulating fuel economy altogether. What then? I guess the Big Three (or is that two?) would build nothing but giant gas guzzlers and hope that Americans keep on buying them. Would that be a prudent decision? The article suggests not. As gas prices have gone up, manufacturers have had to begin planning for smaller SUVs. The foreign manufacturers? They've already got 'em. They call this competition?

Playing the numbers

In that great big gambling game Republicans like to call "Governance", the real prize does not come when your man wins the Presidency. Nope, the real prize comes when your man puts his weasels into the administrative agencies. Only then, can you really load the dice in your favor and begin to reap the rewards of elective office. Whether we're talking about ergonomics rules in workplaces, media ownership limits in local markets, or FTEs filled for Clean Air Act enforcement, the last five years have proven that President Bush is willing to stick every corporate give away he can think of up our collective rectum.

Of course, while he is busy lubing the national anus for another deregulatory assault, he has to comply with that annoying thing called "the law". The real trick for President Bush and his crony weasels is to stick with the letter of "the law" while finding ways to circumvent its spirit. One excellent way they have found to do this is by way of cost-benefit analysis, which has been required of most or all federal regulations since atleast the 1970s. Since that time, OMB has been analyzing regulations to ensure that the burdens and benfits of a regulation are in some way commensurate.

The Bush Administration has become adept at developing new ways of driving down the estimated benefits of regulations, thus making it possible to argue that the such regulations should not be implemented due to their heavy burden. Back in 2002, for example, the Administration started using valuations that estimated that old people's lives were worth only 63% of a younger person's. Through this actuarial sleight of hand, the Administration could then argue that regulation of pollutants which disproportionately harmed older people provided too few monetary benefits relative to the cost imposed on the polluter. Nice, eh?

In any case, to the informed observer of this Administration, it came as no surprise when it was reported this morning that the Forest Service is scaling back estimated values of recreational benefits created by national forest resources. What is the net effect of such a decision? First and foremost, it increases the relative value of logging and other resource extracting activities in national forests. And this is important why? Because economic value is one of the factors included in timber sale decisions. An excellent way of arguing for the approval of a timber sale is to show that it will produce net economic benefits. If recreational values decrease relative to extraction value, that job becomes immediately easier.

The question, of course, is whether the Bush Administration artificially de-valued recreational values, or whether the Clinton Administration artificially inflated recreational values. It's hard to say but a 90% reduction certainly seems extreme to me.

Chocolate Polenta Cake

It's been a while since I last posted a recipe, so I thought I'd give you all something tasty and easy. It's vaguely Italian, but not really. Use hazelnuts and it's almost like a moist Gianduia. Regardless, I liked this recipe A LOT and plan on making it again.

Ingredients

1/2 c. butter
4 oz. bittersweet chocolate OR 12 tbsp. cocoa
4 eggs
1 1/2 c. sugar
1 tsp cinammon
1/2 tsp. baking poweder
1/2 c. flour
1/2 c. polenta or cornmeal
1/2 c. toasted pine nuts or toasted, chopped hazelnuts

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Melt the chocolate or cocoa in a double boiler with the butter. Cool this mixture. Beat the eggs until they are foamy. Mix in sugar, cinammon, and baking powder. Sift the flour and cornmeal/polenta into a separate bowl, then add to the egg mixture and fold in by hand. Fold the chocolate into the batter and, just before finishing this folding add the nuts. Pour into a greased 8" x 8" pan and bake for 20 minutes.

Notes
I don't have a double boiler. I use a smaller saucepan inside a larger saucepan, the larger of which has about 3 inches of water in it. This works like a charm, but is a little more difficult because the small sauce pan bobs in the water...

If you're unfamiliar with folding, you might check out this article. Folding in this recipe is not as important as when you're making meringues or something, but you want to keep the mixture fairly light. Basically, just don't mix vigorously. Draw your spatula through the mixture and turn it up onto itself. It's easy!

You can use either cornmeal or polenta. The meal will be finer and you'll get a pretty dense crumb. The polenta will be coarser and you may find the cake to be crumblier. Likewise sometimes the polenta will not fully cook so there can be crunchy bits. I like that, but some people prefer the cornmeal approach.

Finally, with regards to baking time: DO NOT OVERDO IT. This recipe can be a little dry, so you want to underbake a little rather than overbake. The eggs will be done and baking less will give you a moister product.

Boxing us in

Who the fuck are these people and do they even know any liberals or progressives? Jesus Christ, if I hear one more Republican try to put me in some cramped little "liberal" box, I'm going to puke. Yeah, I hate America. Yeah, I want my peanut to be a drug-addicted, amoral, sexually-deviant, playwright. Yeah, I love islamic radicals. Yeah, I love tiny little insects more than other people. The list goes on and fucking on and I do not understand where these people are coming from.

I insult Republicans. A lot. I call them douchebags. I suggest they have theocratic tendencies. I say that they would willingly shit on my head. I say a lot of nasty things. But I don't ever recall writing a "You must do X becuase you're a Y" sort of post about them. Fact is, I've known waaaaay too many conservatives to think that they're easily pigeonholed. Moreover, I know many, many liberals and I know that it's just as difficult.

Seamus Mitwurst is a gun-totin', beer-guzzlin', smack-talkin' paranoiac fruitcake. He's a progressive. Doc Shlomo is a pacifist, Christian, bookwormish, bicycling activist fruitcake. He's a progressive. I'm a potty-mouthed, bicycling, beer-brewing environmentalist fruitcake. I consider myself a progressive. Do any of us want our potential future progeny to grow up to be X? I don't know. Do any of us hate America? Hell fucking no. Do we love humanity? Without a doubt. Well, sort of. Do any of us fit some neat definition of "liberal" or "progressive"? I don't think so.

So why the fucking hell do Republicans insist on trying to do that? One answer: If they can convince voters that liberals are limp-wristed aesthetes, they can win their votes. I don't buy everything George Lakoff says, but it sure seems like Republicans making these sorts of statements are striving for a sort of cultural or sociological framing. So far, I think, they've been pretty successful.

I ain't talking about the Fuckemos

I've got one simple rule that I use to guide my everyday life. It is the following:

Any magazine article that includes the sentence, "The black helicopters that deliver The New York Times every morning must have skipped my street." has got to be worth reading.

Really, it's that easy. If I am reading a magazine and I come across this sentence, I know that I must finish the article because it is well-worth reading. So, imagine my delight this afternoon when I saw that exact sentence (!) in this article about Rick Santorum in the American Prospect. Some people scoff at my fundamental principal, but today it really payed off!

Paul Hackett is the antithesis of a douchebag.

About three weeks ago, after reading much about Paul Hackett's run against a right-wing Republican in Ohio, I donated $50 to his campaign. Hacket is a Marine in the active reserves and a trial lawyer. He recently served in Iraq and decided to run as a Democrat in the heavily Republican 2nd district when the sitting representative, Rob Portman, was appointed to be the US Trade Representative. Hackett proved to be a fantastic candidate and he pulled in nearly 48% of the vote. No doubt, part of Hackett's appeal to the voters of the 2nd District was his willingness to tell the truth (that, and own a couple of guns and ride a Harley).

Anyway, Daily Kos reports today that Mr. Hackett has responded to recent attacks against him by Rush Limbaugh. Why does Rush attack Mr. Hackett? Probably because, as Hackett says, Rush is a "fat ass drug addict" who doesn't knot shit from shinola, and Rush (and his fucktard listeners) are scared that some Democrat somewhere finally grew himself (or herself) a set of balls.

A cosmic confluence

On Monday, I had a post in which I suggested that Freepers are "batshit insane".

Yesterday, I called Miguel Miranda a "douchebag".

Today, I had a post in which I noted that I would like to keep chickens, and a second post in which I noted that some people might think that I hate America.

Now, go to Google and type in "batshit insane". The 9th link down takes you to a blog called...GASP!...Doucheblog. Look to the archived posts. The 3rd post down is titled...GASP!...Anti-American Chickens.

Coincidence? I think not! Proof that I have too much time on my hands? I think so.

Ain't it cute

In the spirit of roasted meat, I offer you this picture of a jovial young lass cavorting with a well-braised guinea pig.

Why do I hate America?

I don't. But if I did, it would be because:

a) There are endless numbers of fucktards who like to tell me that I hate America, and

b) Americans generate demand for things like this.

The fireman is right. I'm a tree-hugger, literally and figuratively, and this truck pisses me off to no end.

Why not keep fowl?

Another great article in the Times this morning, but on suburban chicken husbandry not proto-lesbianism. My brother- and sister-in-law keep chickens at their house on Bainbridge Island. They get delicious eggs and have something to eat a lot of their chicken scraps. The birds are beautiful, their coop is small, and they aren't smelly or dirty. They've been doing it for years, and I've always been impressed. So much so, that I've often thought about getting a couple of chickens. It'd be impossible to do in our current house, but when the wife, peanut and I finally move someplace nicer than DC, you can bet your ass we're going to have some chickens.

On a related note, here's further proof that douchebag yuppie Californians all need to be rounded up and shot because they will otherwise ruin this world. Wait, I take that back. It's actually proof that douchebag yuppies everywhere need to be rounded up and shot because they will otherwise ruin this world. However, in my nearly infinite munificence, I make the following offer in lieue of being shot: all the douchebag yuppie busybodies in this world can get their pale and droopy asses to Dallas, TX, where they can call the health department on each other; paint their 4500 sq. ft. McMansions any one of the three different shades of periwinkle; and drive their American-flag plastered H1s, H2s and H3s to fucking Chilis where they can gorge their bloated selves on 3,000 calorie fatty mcfat burgers to their heart's content. Aren't I nice?

What would James Dobson do?

He'd probably pass a law forbidding such crushes and then amend the constitution to outlaw non-supervised contact between females.

What am I talking about? This article in this morning's New York Times about the biology and social import of female crushes. It's pretty interesting stuff, though I wish they'd gone a bit more into the evolutionary aspect of it all. Without a more in depth discussion of the biology, the article seems to verge on (thought not quite extend into) tittilation. Not that it matters, I suppose; the article IS in the Style section of the paper.

Manuel Miranda, douchebag

Why, oh why, must I engage in childish name calling? Don't I have the intellectual wherewithal to come up with compelling and evocative posts to my blog, much less substantive blog content? Apparently not.

That's why I recommend that you immediately leave this blog and head on over to Lawyers, Guns and Money for a very nice post on why Manuel Miranda is a hack and why Judge Roberts should not become Justice Roberts.

Benefit without the burden.

NPR has had an interesting series these past few weeks in which they send correspondents around the country to interview people about their relationship with the government. This morning, they interviewed cattle farmers in Missouri who are currently suffering from a fairly extended drought.

As you may know, Missouri is, on the whole, very conservative and, not surprisingly, so are its ranchers. Thus, in the course of the five minute spot, I heard the sort of small government complaints that I tend to expect. Towards the end of the post, the interviewer spoke with a rancher by the name of Vernon Zelch. Mr. Zelch raises beefaloes, a creature that is half cow, half buffalo. Mr. Zelch pointedly complained about the Conservation Reserve Program, a program which pays farmers to keep certain environmentally-sensitive acreage free from tilling and planting. The lands the CRP typically pays for are in riparian zones or free-standing wetlands, the preservation of which is generally essential to ground and surface water quality and which often serves as excellent wildlife habitat. Mr. Zelch's complaint is that the CRP drives up land prices for ranchers because the government will pay more per acre for preservation than the rancher can pay a farmer per acre to plant a feed crop. Moreover, Mr. Zelch pointed out that his tax money is being used to drive up his operating costs.

When I first heard this, I rashly assumed that Mr. Zelch was just another one of the subsidy-grubbing rural welfare queens in Missouri who voted Republican and than took his share of the $62 million that Missouri ranchers received in livestock subsidies in 2002. I was wrong. Mr. Zelch, it turns out, received a mere $5,605 in farm subsidies between 1995 and 2003. Compared to the teat-sucking corporate welfare whores like Missouri Delta Farms, Mr. Zelch is hardly a speck in the farm subsidy universe. If I could apologize to Mr. Zelch, I would.

However, let us consider the merits of his argument for a second. He's basically arguing that subsidy programs like the CRP distort the market and lead to inefficiency in the agricultural system. In fact, in the interview, he says that the government should leave the agriculture business alone and let farmers plant where, when and how they want. This is, of course, the typical free market argument. My problem, as always when discussing economics and free markets, is the underlying assumption in Mr. Zelch's argument. Namely, Mr. Zelch assumes that he and other ranchers are operating with perfect or near perfect information. Moreover, his argument suggests that the government is over-paying for land conservation. Is that the case?

I can't say, it's really an empirical question. However, given the history of human endeavours, particularly as they affect the natural environment, I'd say that Mr. Zelch is probably incorrect. Market failure is common when discussing environmental values, and commodity markets typically undervalue environmental services. Thus, when Mr. Zelch asserts that he can only pay $28 per acre for tillable land, I doubt very much that his figure includes external costs of tilling such as water pollution. Meanwhile, by definition, the government's payments of $35 per acre DO include the productive value of preserved land and, perhaps, other environmental service values.

Consider this water quality report from the State of Missouri for 2002. If you go to page 9, you will see that the greatest source of pollution for classified water bodies in Missouri is none other than agricultural runoff. This certainly suggests that farmers and ranchers, generally, are externalizing some of the costs of their operations in the form of water pollution. Again, whether this holds true of Mr. Zelch, I cannot say. However, atleast with regards to the Conservation Reserve Program, there seems to be some reason to believe that the prices it pays are not so much inflated as inclusive of values not typically captured in market prices.

In any case, I owe an apology to Mr. Zelch for my rash assumption about his acceptance of farm subsidies. I owe no such apology to the other ranchers on the program who bitch about big government and then demand disaster relief. Boys, that's what we pay taxes for. As contract law suggests, there's bound to be some burden to go with the benefits you receive.

Why we need environmental education.

The Times has a story this morning on the discovery of snakehead fish in a lake in Queens. The snakehead as you may or may not know, is a voracious and effective predator from eastern Asia which, when introduced into non-native ecosystems, is quite capable of decimating fish populations and permanently altering the balance of those ecosystems. What I found interesting about the article was this quote:

"He said someone might have bought several in an Asian fish store a few years ago before the ban was enforced and deliberately released them in the lake, hoping they would reproduce there and provide some inexpensive dinners. Of course, it would not be the first time that an ecological nightmare was unleashed by someone who did not know any better."

How many of you would know better? I'm guessing, most. Why? Because, I think, all of us have had some degree of environmental education in the course of our secondary and post-secondary educational careers. At the very minimum, in high school biology, we heard about ecosystems and ecosystem change. The question is, without such exposure to topics like invasive species and ecosystem health, would we be aware of the risks of introducing new species to non-native environments? It's hard to say.

I suspect that most southerners are familiar with destructive introduced species like the nutria. Moreover, lots of folks on the East Coast and in the midwest are probably familiar with chestnut blight and dutch elm disease, both of which are due to introduced species. But these are only a few examples of the hundreds of introduced species that affect America's various ecosystem complexes. Relying on word of mouth, alone, to pass this sort of knowledge along is a precarious way to educate the public. That's why I applaud state curricula that include environmental science requirements. Even Texas, where the certifiably insane Republican party controls state government, the state education standards include a comprehensive "environmental systems" requirement for high schoolers.

Of course, there are people on the right who think that environmental education is a liberal plot ot institute communism. Why? Presumably because educated voters recognize the value of environmental legislation and regulation, and such laws and regulations stand in the way of the perfect corporate state. Back in 2001, for example, The Nation had a great article describing how much of the anti-environmental and anti-environmental movement is basically a front for the polluting industries. It makes sense, if natural heritage means nothing to you and money means everything what do you do? (That's easy! You lie about your policy goals, you manipulate gullible Christians to vote for your candidate, you spend billions in soft money, and you get George W. Bush elected to office! I'm kidding...kind of.)

Logically, if you want to operate unfettered as a polluting industry, you must game the system that currently regulates most industrial activity in this country. You must attempt to influence the policy and political debates, but you also must influence the electorate. The easiest way to do this? Change educational standards and use modern marketing and outreach methods to weaken Americans' scientific understanding and call the very institution of "science" into question.

I would argue that this process is already under way. As The Nation article points out, folks like John Stosser and the people at the Competitive Enterprise institute have already begun attacking science and environmental education. At the political level, moreover, we are faced with the unpleasant image of Joe Barton, the sleazy north Texan who represents the Dallas area, recently attacking scientists and the scientific method itself. Why? If Republicans and their corporate funders can make enough people believe that scientists have a political agenda and if enough people lack sufficient education to understand the basics of the scientific method, then presumably it will be that much easier for them to gut the corpus of legal and administrative protections that constitute our primary protection against a degraded and debilitated natural environment.

Call me crazy, but that's atleast one reason why we need environmental education in this country. That, and to stop people from releasing snake heads into local lakes...

Aborting a food baby.

A few years ago, before I realized it is impossible to rationally debate or otherwise communicate to members of the modern American right-wing, I attempted to engage in a debate over abortion over at Free Republic. Given my generally libertarian tendencies with regards to civil liberties and the right to privacy, I expected to find at least a few people who shared my views on abortion. I was, of course, totally wrong. Over the course of a day, the discussion devolved into a shouting match in which Freepers vied to see who could write the longest message in capital letters in which they asserted, among other things, that birth control pills when used as a contraceptive are abortifacients.

You read that correctly, abortifacients. In other words, these people, and there must have been atleast 12 or 15 who wrote something like this, women who take birth control pills are aborting unborn babies every single month. The logic behind this? I don't know, there is no logic to such an argument. However, given that most bc pills act to prevent ovulation, the argument would seem to rest on the assumption that unfertilized eggs are the equivalent to a fetus. By that logic, though, menstruation is equivalent to abortion. Clearly, the people I was "conversing" with didn't know their asses from apple butter and were mostly likely totally batshit insane.

Whatever the case, the folks I "debated" at Free Republic have a lot in common iwth the members of an organization known as the National Association for the Advancement of Pre-born Children (NAAPC). These fruitcakes have actually sued the administrators of California's stem cell institute, claiming that stem cell research violates the civil rights of embryoes. This, my friends, is yet another example of George Bush's "base". They think contraception is abortion, they think that undifferentiated cell masses are people, they think that God is on their side. Dangerous, dangerous people, and George Bush and the Republican party pander to them every single day so they can have a voting majority to institute their corporate state. Nice.

Incidentally, the subject of this post has no relation to anything.

I'm a sexist pig.

Take a trip over to Fables of the Reconstruction and check out his stunningly funny and spot-on taxonomy of conservative blogs. If you've spent any time at all wading through the inanity of the right-wing blogosphere, you should appreciate the post.

Some folks have complained about the author's characterization of Michelle Malkin, especially his reference to her tits being the basis for her success. On the whole, though, I have to think that he's correct. There are other far more intelligent, far more interesting female bloggers out there who happen to be right-wingers. Why does MM get the nod? Same reason that monkeyfuck nut-job Ann Coulter does: Cheetoh stained right-wingers cowering in their mother's basements need something to whack off to. Call me a sexist pig, but in this instance I think there's something to FOTR's theory.

And now for something completely different.

Here, you will find a small fraction of everything you never wanted to know about anything.

Cabrito!

Here is a gratuitous picture of goat meat.

Give me an Arkansas Black

The Post has a really great story on the market forces that led to the generification and blandification of the Red Delicious apple. For any of you unfortunate enough to have eaten a red delicious in the last 15 years, this should be a good read. More importantly, the experience of the Red Delicious can be generalized to larger trends in our society like, say, the growth of the McMansion a la yesterday's rant. But, seeing as I'm busy at work, I'll have to leave that sort of bloviation to another time.

Is it me?

What is this ad trying to say? It may be me, but I'm picking up on atleast two almost overt references to fellatio....

A world of shit.

Even if we don't already live in a world of shit (which is debatable), the profit motive will ensure that eventually we will. The LA Times has an article today about suburban swine buying and selling pieces of the West Texas desert to other suburban swine, all with an eye to make money. I don't understand this desire to "develop". What, besides the profit motive, drives people to buy beautiful pieces of land and "develop" it into leperous tract housing? They want to build some god-forsaken McMansion with all its accompanying demands for water, electricity, and other vital resources IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FUCKING DESERT?

ARRGGGGHHHH!

These people make me crazy. It's a goddam shame that my peanut is going to come into a world full of people like this. What happened to making a living? What happened to trying to lead a good, ethical life? What happened to concepts of virtue, excellence, and the like? When did lucre become the final goal and the perfected self something to scoff at? Why, may I ask, does everybody want to be Donald Fucking Trump?

I was talking to someone yesterday and she told me how she's moving to Greensborough, NC, where she bought a house. She was ecstatic that the house is 3000 sq. feet with three bedrooms, 2 baths, a jacuzzi, and a two car garage. I wanted to ask her who, exactly, was going to live in all those rooms, given that she is single. I didn't, of course, but this weird American desire for hugeness certainly seems to feed into the cult of development.

Anyway, all my Texas readers should appreciate the article. I know you guys are just watching the same shit happen all around you.

Thinking about Roberts

Last week, I suggested in a post that I would withhold judgment on John Roberts, President Bush's nominee to replace Sandra Day O'Connor until I felt I could better judge his fitness for the Court. At the time, the only thing I really knew about him was that he was just another pro-corporate, anti-environment jurist of the right-wing variety. If I had the luxury of being choosy, I would vote against such a person on that basis alone. I do not, however, and thus I was wondering whether there was anything in Roberts' record to suggest that he was unfit for the Court.

I held that opinion until Monday when I read this article in the Post. In my mind, this article makes it very clear why Roberts (and probably every other reactionary the President would care to appoint to the Court) should not be consented to by the Senate. Two key passages helped change my mind. The first concerns voting rights:

"[M]emos by Roberts...argued for reining in the federal government's role in civil rights disputes. They indicate, for example, that he was at the center of articulating and defending the administration's policy that the Voting Rights Act -- a seminal law passed in 1965 and up for renewal in 1982 -- should in the future bar only voting rules that discriminate intentionally, rather than those that were shown to have a discriminatory effect."

The second passage concerns whether Title IX of the Civil Rights Act requires equal treatment of men and women in prison:

"Roberts argued against intervening in a sex discrimination case involving alleged disparities between training programs available to male and female prisoners in Kentucky. 'If equal treatment is required, the end result in this time of tight state prison budgets may be no programs for anyone,' he wrote."

Mull over those two passages. Assuming they correctly capture Roberts' approach to civil rights issues, I find them quite disturbing.

With regards to voting rights, the first passage strongly suggests that Roberts' does not view infringement of an individual's ability to vote as problematic as long as the action creating the infringement is not intended to discriminate against the person. Polls only open from 10AM until 2PM? That's okay, as long as it applies to everybody. Literacy tests? That's fine, as long as every one takes it. All polling places located on the 3rd floor? That's okay, as long as you're not doing it to burden the handicapped. See where this goes? Voting, one of the bedrock principals of our democracy, is protected ONLY against overt racial bias under Roberts' vision.

With regards to gender discrimination, Roberts' quote is just inane. Equal treatment leads to programs for none. I'm sorry, but that's just ridiculous. Certainly, requiring equal treatment for male and female prisoners may place strain on prison budgets. But that hardly means that tight state budgets combined with equal programmatic requirements will lead to the demise of prison programs. Even if you assume that a state decreases its public safety budget by 20% in a budget year, that just means that prisons will have less to provide the programs with. But budget issues aside, the real problem here is that Roberts' appears to be saying that gender equality is bad because it might be expensive.

Did you know the price of cotton went up between 1860 and 1865 when, suddenly, there weren't any slaves to pick all that cotton for free? Imagine how expensive it was in 1918 for states who had to suddenly print twice as many ballots as they did the previous year when all those women came to vote. I don't think any rational person would argue, however, that we shouldn't have emancipated slaves or recognized that women have an equal right to vote. To deny those things would be wrong, and to deny them on the basis of cost (COST!) is downright despicable. This is what Roberts' seems to have said, and this is just another reason I have doubts about whether he ought to be confirmed.

Freedom isn't free

Sometimes you have to brutalize a few sand niggers, preferably by beating their bodies into bloody pulp and smothering them in sleeping bags while their screams reverberate throughout the un-torture chamber you are not torturing them in. Un-fucking-believable. This, my friends, is exactly what 51% of your fellow Americans voted for when they made George Bush president again. When you see a big, proud "W" sticker, just know that that person would gladly shit all over you, the Constitution and our collective humanity if George Bush asked them to.

Mobile sources and particulate pollution

If you have ever taken some time to wade through the ocean of ignorance, irrationalism, fear and loathing that constitutes the right-wing blogosphere, you've probably had the opportunity to read some hysterical rant against the evil and murderous EPA. If you've ever choked back your bile and opened the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal or National Review, you've probably read something similar there as well. In each of these venues, there is a familiar and recurring theme: that the EPA has become an abusive and obsolete bureaucratic stronghold which ought to be limited or dissolved because the environment is much cleaner than it was 30 years ago.

As with most right-wing arguments, there is a grain of truth here. Our environment IS much cleaner than it was in 1970 (or 1975 for that matter). The air is cleaner, the water is cleaner, emissions of 300 toxic substances on the TRI have declined dramatically. But these facts do not mean that the battle is over. This article in the New York Times makes this very effectively. Compare the two pictures of Los Angeles' City Hall for a perfect visual comparison. As the article points out, though Los Angeles ozone problem may be greatly decreased it now faces increased health risks from growing particulate pollution attributable to mobile sources. More importantly, because mobile sources are so diverse and because any regulation of them has a more direct impact on individuals, the problems posed by particulate pollution will be harder to address than ozone and its precursors.

Whatever the case, do read the article. It's a nice piece of environmental reporting and, even better, discusses lots of issues my lovely wife has been working on of late.

Environmental tidbits

For your reading pleasure:

The LA Times has a cool article about being hunted by a grizzly while rafting in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge.

The Post has a brief article highlighting the disheartening fact that we still view the oceans as a sump of infinite dimension.

USA Today reports that scientists preparing to contest recent evidence of the continued existence of the ivory-billed woodpecker are withdrawing their article after hearing tapes of the woodpecker's knocking.

Finally, the AP reports that times are a changin' on the Pacific Coast, but don't nobody want to blame global warming.

Potty mouth

Would I be less potty-mouthed if more people read this blog? I don't know. But seeing as I can identify nearly every single one of my readers by IP address (Big Brother is watching!), I'm not especially worried about insulting y'all. But if a larger audience suddenly started checking this site? Hmmmm...

Reading around on the blogosphere, I have to say that there does seem to be some inverse relationship between readership levels and potty mouthing (barring the occasional exception such as the Rude Pundit who, by definition, must be a potty mouth). Anyway, seeing as I'm contemplating shutting this blog down anyway, I wonder if it even matters.

Hey World. Fuck You!

Today, George Bush bent the Senate over a handy coffee table and rammed John Bolton straight up its ass. He quickly extracted Mr. Bolton and repeated the process on the United Nation's collective rectum. It appears that Mr. Bolton will lodged in this position until atleast the end of the 109th Congress.