Nothing To See Here

It's my sister's birthday, and as usual, I forgot to send a card, so here's one. Sort of. It's based on recent events.




Image credit: I Can Has Cheezburger

It's a silly place.

No, I'm not going to explain that. Nothing to see here. Go back to your homes. Have a nice day.

Maybe You Can Fight The System

Post-dated from June 8, 2008, 1:30 PM. This expresses my mood today as much as when I wrote it. There's a new afterword, but the rest is as it was.

[Even confined to his chair, Sheridan manages to overshadow his interrogator. Image credit: Screenshots by Cujo359. (See NOTE)]

One of my favorite science fiction television episodes is the Babylon 5 episode "Intersections In Real Time". In that episode, John Sheridan, a war hero who has led a rebellion against Earth's corrupt and sadistic government, has been captured. He is now being held in secret in a prison facility that apparently is used mostly for the purpose of handling political prisoners.

The show is basically what its writer, J. Michael Straczynski, refers to as "two people in a room". It is about the interplay between Sheridan and his interrogator, who never actually reveals his name. The interrogator is a fascinating character - he swears to Sheridan that he will only tell him the truth, a promise that he actually does keep through the show. Yet he is as duplicitous as the worst liar you've ever met. He cannot be trusted to do anything except fulfil the role his superiors have given him. As he tells Sheridan, he has no interest in the truth, or justice, or fairness. All he wants is a signed and sealed confession.

How he tries to obtain that confession is a mixture of threats and attempts to gain Sheridan's confidence by, as he puts it, being the only one who is on Sheridan's side. He disavows any responsibility for what he is doing to his prisoner, blaming it on his superiors, or on Sheridan. While it's true that he is ultimately responsible for his own actions, odds are he actually believes what he is saying. He can probably be summed up in this line, which he says to Sheridan about two thirds of the way through the episode after Sheridan says they'll just kill him after he confesses:

If anything, they'll encourage you to travel, so that more people can see you as a symbol of the preeminent truth of our time - that you cannot beat the system. I'm telling you the truth. Sign and speak and you can leave here. It's really that simple.

He is, in short, a company man, someone who is only loyal to those above him.

If you haven't seen Babylon 5, I heartily recommend that you rent or borrow the DVDs, starting with Season One. This episode is from Season Four, and while it can be appreciated on its own, it probably will make more sense if you know Sheridan's background and the history of the show. B5 was a complete work, with some elements introduced in the first season not explained until the last. It is a unique thing in television, and I think it's well worth the time even if you're not big on science fiction.

There are what could be considered mild spoilers below, so if you haven't seen the show yet, be warned.

Toward the end of the show, Sheridan and the interrogator have this exchange, which starts with the interrogator storming into the room and waking Sheridan up. Sheridan is, as he has been for much of the episode, confined to a chair:

Interrogator: Right. Now, listen to me. Wake up. There's something you have to understand. Focus. Focus on me! Do you know why they're doing this to you? It's because you're a war hero, one of the few to come out of the Minbari War. They've invested a considerable amount of time and effort making you a hero in the public's eye. The problem is, when a war hero starts believing certain things and saying certain things, the public listens. They figure maybe there's something to it. Your credibility has become a threat to their credibility.

So one of them has to go. The best way out for everyone is for you to confess and lay the blame for what's happened on the alien government. Whether it's true or not doesn't matter. Truth is immaterial. They can sell it. And they will let you live.

Note, I said it is the best way. I did not say it was the only way.

The other way, Captain, is a posthumous confession. Your signature is not a problem. They have your image on file. They can create you reading the confession. That's not as good as having you where people can see you so they know it's true that even you can be broken, you cannot resist. With a video record there will always be doubt. It's not the same as breaking you, but I'm told that as of this morning, .. it is an acceptable option.

I can save your life. Right now. If you'll let me.

Sheridan: You know, it's funny, I was thinking about what you said. That the pre-eminent truth of our age is that you cannot fight the system. But if, as you say, the truth is fluid, that the truth is subjective, then maybe you can fight the system. As long as just one person refuses to be broken, refuses to bow down.

Interrogator: But can you win?

Sheridan: Nods Every time I say "no".

This dialogue encapsulates much of the madness of our own time. Sheridan, a war hero who managed to survive a suicidal war, is considered by those in power to be someone they made. They blame their actions on the circumstances they find themselves in, refusing to acknowledge that they had a choice of actions, if not an entire universe of possible alternatives. They deliberately chose a path that they must have known would lead to having to victimize people like Sheridan in order for them to escape the consequences of their actions.

On days like this, after losing a desperate battle to save our country from the lunatics who run it, I feel as though we Americans are the ones stuck in that chair, with the collection of cowards, fools, and opportunists who are running our government as the interrogators. They already are bleating about having to do this thing, even congratulating themselves for having reached a compromise, when the only thing that's really compromised is the truth. Most will never admit the truth about the shameful act they committed yesterday.

Anyone who understands the swiftboating of John Kerry or the exposure of Valerie Plame Wilson knows that these people don't give a crap about heroes who don't play ball.

It took John Kerry more than four three years to admit that his vote for the Iraq War was pathetically mistaken. As I noted long ago, if anyone should have known better it would have been he. Yet he's spent so long in the bubble that is our nation's capitol, surrounded by his wealthy colleagues and the news agencies their supporters have bought and paid for, it's easy to forget what reality is outside the beltway.

So, we have to be the ones who say "no". We have to do it again, and again, because the people who run things will never admit they are wrong. As long as we keep saying no, they won't have broken us.

Maybe we can even beat the system someday.

NOTE: Babylon 5 is a copyrighted work of Time Warner, Inc. Neither they, nor the producers of the show or anyone else connected with it has endorsed, supported, or even become aware of this article.

Afterword (Apr. 6, 2010): This article was written just after losing the fight to keep the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act from being gutted by the Democrats in Congress back in June, 2008. Since this was written, of course, the Democrats won the White House and large majorities in Congress. Nothing else has changed, as near as I can tell. We're still in those ruinous wars, the government has done nothing to roll back the human rights abuses and grabs for extraordinary power of the last decade, and they clearly don't intend to. The economy has finally taken the dive many folks suspected it was headed for. Then they sold us out to the insurance and drug industries.

I feel just as strapped to that chair as I felt two years ago. Except that now there are even fewer of us still fighting.

This is one of those articles that people have consistently found over the years. I think it appeals to both Babylon 5 fans, and people who need a reminder that nothing that's worth doing is easy. At least, I hope there are some of the latter.

Still, all we can do is keep saying no. As long as we do that, we win, at least a little.

(What follows are the original updates to this article. They aren't quite as topical now as they were at the time. That's why this afterword appears ahead of them. The second update is somewhat prophetic, in that it foreshadows all the later betrayals of progressives by the Democrats in Congress.)

UPDATE (3:16PM) Finally corrected all the spelling and grammatical mistakes. I think.

UPDATE 2: Christy Hardin Smith quotes Jonathan Turley:

OLBERMANN: Have the Democrats blinked or Mr. Feingold and Mr. Leahy are going to kill this in the Senate?

TURLEY: Well, this is more like a one-man staring contest. I mean, the Democrats never really were engaged in this. In fact, they repeatedly tried to cave in to the White House, only be stopped by civil libertarians and bloggers. And each time they would put it on the shelf, wait a few months, they did this before, reintroduced it with Jay Rockefeller‘s support, and then there was another great, you know, dustup and they pulled it back.

I think they‘re simply waiting to see if the public‘s interest will wane and we‘ll see that tomorrow, because this bill has, quite literally, no public value for citizens or civil liberties. It is reverse engineering, though the type of thing that the Bush administration is famous for, and now the Democrats are doing—that is to change the law to conform to past conduct.

It‘s what any criminal would love to do. You rob a bank, go to the legislature, and change the law to say that robbing banks is lawful.

'Countdown with Keith Olbermann' for Thursday, June 19

[emphasis mine]

I disagree that it has no value, but that's beside the point. It makes OK what is not OK, and that is the problem. It looks like even Turley's in the bubble. But the fact that the Democrats hope that this will just go away, and that the only reason they haven't is that we citizens keep raising a ruckus is at least encouraging.

This thing goes to the Senate, and it's not over yet.

UPDATE 3 (Jun. 22): Thanks to Beachmom's comments, I've amended my statement about how long it took John Kerry to publicly recant his vote on the AUMF. Here's a speech he gave three years after the AUMF was passed. See the comments for further explanation. It's too bad he hadn't given that speech a year earlier. He'd probably be President Kerry right now if he had.

I appreciate the correction.

A "So What?" Story

This is one of those "so what?" stories, as far as I'm concerned:

With Republicans poised for a strong showing in the November midterms, the Republican National Committee is reeling from a spending scandal that has now led to the resignation of top figures in the party and threatens to squander the political wind Republicans have at their backs.

Many of the details are inside baseball, but they add up a serious crisis in the leadership of the national GOP. Steele's 14-month tenure at the RNC was already defined by an ongoing series of gaffes and damaging press stories, including about Steele's questionable book and a controversial leaked RNC fundraising presentation.

Problem Spending And Mass Resignations Threaten To Implode RNC

I think of it as no big deal, I suppose, because it was only a little more than a year ago that they elected Steele to head the RNC. At the time, he seemed like the best choice available, even if one didn't consider the obvious problem Republicans have with appealing to black voters. The others seemed even more corrupt and crazy than he was.

That's what I take away from this - these guys still have no ability to run anything, even their own party. As bad as the Democrats have been lately, they still manage to look good next to these guys.

As things stand right now, the only thing standing between the Republicans and control of the House this fall is themeselves.

Big Thought For The Day

Anyone who tells me that the Ten Commandments should be plastered on public buildings is going to have to name them. This test will be closed-book, by the way. You'll also have to know what the first book of the bible is, and you'll have to be able to explain the significance of the Sermon On The Mount, and why it was different from its parent religious philosophy. And you'll have to know which testament (old or new) Romans appears in. There's extra credit for knowing who wrote it.

This test will also be required of anyone who thinks that organized prayer should be allowed in public schools, or that "In God We Trust" is a dandy motto for a country that has a law stating that the government will not make any laws establishing a religion.

Image credit: Screenshot by Cujo359 (Complete explanation here.)

Here are a couple of our proctors, and as you can see, they're well armed. Forming your own militia will not help you here. Number two pencils will not be provided. They're sharp objects, and unlike some churches, we have liability concerns.

Trying To Blog Against Theocracy

Image credit: Original image by Tengrain. Modified by Cujo359. (Anyone else wanting to use this image, be my guest.)

Many years ago, Monty Python put the idea of theocracy and ritualism in its place:

King Arthur: I am your king.
Woman: Well I didn't vote for you.
King Arthur: You don't vote for kings.
Woman: Well how'd you become king then?
[Angelic music plays... ]
King Arthur: The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. THAT is why I am your king.
Dennis: [interrupting] Listen, strange women lyin' in ponds distributin' swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
...
Oh, but you can't expect to wield supreme executive power just because some watery tart threw a sword at you.
...
Oh but if I went 'round sayin' I was Emperor, just because some moistened bint lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away.

IMDB Quotes: Monty Python And The Holy Grail

It's Blog Against Theocracy week, and it's really hard to think of something to write that I haven't already. That's because one of the rules is that you're not supposed to insult religion.

Yet that is sometimes rather hard to avoid.

Take, for instance this sign, and others like it that are being put up on billboards and buses at different times in different parts of the country:

This particular version was put up in late summer of last year on some buses in Des Moines, Iowa. It's nothing more than a declaration that there are people who don't believe in a god. It's not an insult in any sense that I can imagine. Yet the governor, who calls himself a progressive, and numerous others felt that this was a grievous insult. The local bus agency removed the ads while it considered the gravity of this declaration. One woman was so upset by this billboard that she risked her job rather than drive a bus that displayed one.

That's crazy. You would think that no one in his right mind would do more than chuckle or shrug his shoulders at such an ad, assuming he disagreed with it. Yet this sort of thing happens everywhere that ad appears. Here's what someone had to say when they appeared last year in Dallas, according to a local television station:

The Fort Worth billboard will be located within sight of Calvary Cathedral International church.

"They have a right to believe what they want to; this is America," said Michelle Cavero, who rejoined the church Sunday. "But why put it here and discourage others from their beliefs?"

Don't Believe in God? You're Not Alone

How does this discourage someone's belief? All it does is affirm someone else's.

Most religions require their adherents to believe some crazy things. Christians are supposed to believe that their religion's founder was tortured and killed in one of the worst ways imaginable, given the technology and medical knowledge of the time, so they could be forgiven for their sins. Huh? This makes absolutely no sense, no matter how you spin it. What makes sense, given what we know of the situation, is that Christ was crucified because people found him annoying and their leaders thought he was a troublemaker.

No doubt, he was insulting the religious beliefs of the time by declaring that he had his own.

All the major religions of America require belief in the idea that after you die you go to some other place. This is a place that no one can get to while they're alive, and no one can locate. You can only go there when you're dead, and thus, can't report back on what you've found. Yet there are millions of Americans who will tell you firmly that this place exists, and that you're a fool not to believe it.

That's crazy. People are comforted by the idea that they can go someplace after they die. No one likes to contemplate the end of his existence, and for some people this existence really is a lousy one. It's full of pain, disappointment, and loneliness. It would be nice if all that suffering were leading up to something. So people believe in something that their own experience, and any real learning they might have encountered along the way, should tell them is impossible. If that were the end of it, though, it wouldn't be so bad.

The problem is that people want to believe this so much that they'll believe any other mumbo-jumbo that goes along with it. They'll believe that utter nonsense like the Trinity is profound. They'll believe that the end times will be great for them, but not for you. They'll believe that the guy who runs their church is infallible. They'll believe it even though they should know better, and if they do know better, they'll pretend not to.

If I were to declare that Richard Dawkins was infallible, you'd say I was nuts. You'd be right, too. The difference between the Pope and Prof. Dawkins in this particular instance is that Dawkins would agree with you. This quote that I've published before illustrates that point fairly well:

Rivers of Medieval ink, not to mention blood, have been squandered over the 'mystery' of the Trinity, and in suppressing such heresies as the Arian heresy. Arius of Alexandria, in the fourth century AD, denied that Jesus was consubstantial (i.e., of the same substance or essence) of God. What on Earth could that possibly mean, you are probably asking? Substance? What 'substance'? What exactly do you mean by 'essence'? 'Very little' seems the only reasonable reply. Yet the controversy split Christendom down the middle for more than a century, Emperor Constantine order that all copies of Arius' book should be burned. Splitting Christendom by splitting hairs, such has been the way of theology.

The God Delusion - pg. 33

No one who is sane would kill someone else over something like this. Scientists, not to mention engineers, lawyers, politicians, and business people, have far more substantive disagreements daily, yet the most they'll usually do is not speak to each other for a while. Yet people will gladly kill others for their own shot at Heaven.

That's why people think you insult their religions because you have a different belief - you're making them question their own. The crazy lady from Dallas was right - it's cruel to make people like her think for themselves on this issue. Any hint of a rational discussion of their beliefs might lead them to question what they've been doing all their lives, and what might happen when their lives end. That this is a frightening thing should be obvious, particularly when you consider that the most popular question among people I've told I'm an atheist is "You mean, you think when you die, that's it?"

Which is why theocracy is so dangerous. People will believe all manner of nonsense if their religion calls for it. Calling out that nonsense, or believing in your own, is a dangerous thing to do. Making it a part of the country's laws would be disastrous.

I'm not a big student of religion. I never was. Yet, I know that Genesis is the first book of the Bible, which is more than half of America's Christians do. I can recite the Ten Commandments, which probably would put me in the 95th percentile among American Christians. In fact, I know that four of them, including the first, are about how the adherents of that group of religions are supposed to practice their religions. If you believe these Christians, however, we're supposed to plaster these commandments all over our public buildings to remind us what the foundation of our civilization is. Never mind that the foundation of our civilization's beliefs in the rights of man and freedom were first developed by the pagans of Greece and Rome, and that they were later expanded on by many non-believers during the Enlightenment. Their knowledge of history is a match for their knowledge of their own religions.

Leaving people in charge who believe that faith in whatever superstitions they happen to believe in is more important than knowledge and experience is no basis for a system of government.

If that insults your religious beliefs, tough.

UPDATE: I almost forgot - Happy Easter, or happy first Sunday after the first full moon in Spring, whichever applies.

Sunday Photo(s)

As with last week's photos, these are more seascapes from the vicinity of White Center and Fauntleroy, on the Puget Sound. This one is in the same vicinity as last week's, and it's toward the west. Once again, there are some sailboats clearly visible on the Sound:
Image credit: Cujo359

This view is toward the south:
Image credit: Cujo359

On the left is the shoreline of Seahurst, with Three Tree Point jutting out into the Sound.

Click on the images to enlarge them. Have a good Sunday.

RIP, Patches

Updated April 4

This is a friend of George's named Patches, and George's wife Diane. Patches died awhile back, and George memorialized his friend today at Decrepit Old Fool:



Go say hi if you're a regular visitor.

UPDATE (Apr. 4): I'll just add this thought, which is a perhaps more coherent version of what I wrote at George's place.

Cats really are our friends. They choose to be with us, or not. They either like us or they don't, and if they don't like us they won't hang around much, even if we're the ones who feed them. Assuming they like us, they hang out with us when they have the time. That's what friends do.

It's nice to be liked, and it's nice to feel needed on some emotional level. Cats can provide that feeling, which is one of the reasons we miss them when they're gone.

Quote Of The Day

Quote of the day goes to Steve Clemons, via Talking Points Memo:

The White House is working hard to secure deals that yield fluffy, feel good commentary about the Obama White House. One American White House reporter used colorful terms to describe the arrangement. The reporter said, "They want 'blow jobs' first [in the press sense]. Then you have to be on good behavior for a bit or be willing to deal, and then you get access."

"Axe" and "Gibbs" know who needs access to get their books pushed forward. They know who will pay for play -- and are taking notes on who has been naughty and nice in their reporting.

Communications Corruption at the White House

If you've wondered why supposedly progressive reporters have been giving President Obama a pass on his regressive policies, I suggest you read this article. It provides an example, which is that there are reporters perfectly willing to fudge stories in exchange for the inside access necessary to write a successful book about Obama. Right now, books about Obama are in demand. Politics being what it is, that could change fairly quickly, so the time to sell out is right now.

Anyone familiar with Robert Woodward's books about George W. Bush will recognize this phenomenon. Woodward's books were initially overly respectful, one might even say "fawning", of Bush. The later ones, after Bush was re-elected and his poll numbers were in the toilet, were more critical.

Clemons' use of the word "corruption" in the title is apt. This is corruption, and since we depend on reporters for an understanding of what's going on in the White House, it's a particularly dangerous form.

Change, Baby, Change

Caption: Areas proposed to be opened to offshore oil drilling by the Obama Administration as part of the new energy bill.

Image credit: found it here

No one who actually understands what went on during the health care reform fiasco should be in the least bit surprised by any of this:

In proposing a major expansion of offshore oil and gas development, President Obama set out to fashion a carefully balanced plan that would attract bipartisan support for climate and energy legislation while increasing production of domestic oil.

Risk Is Clear in Drilling; Payoff Isn’t

By "domestic production", this New York Times article mostly means offshore oil drilling:

The American Petroleum Institute, using the high end of government estimates, hopes that the opening of the areas on the Atlantic and eastern gulf alone would make available more than four billion barrels of oil and more than 30 trillion cubic feet of natural gas — enough to fuel more than 2.4 million cars and heat eight million households for 60 years.

Risk Is Clear in Drilling; Payoff Isn’t

According to the CIA World Factbook entry on the United States, we use roughly 19.5 million barrels of oil a day. Just multiplying that number by 365 shows that we use about 7.1 billion barrels a year. Subtracting our domestic oil production from that total, we import roughly 4 billion barrels a year. Everything they hope to find in the areas Obama is proposing to open up is about seven month's worth of consumption, or a year's worth of imports. For this, we will risk turning valuable beaches and fisheries into oil slicks.

Speaking of oil slicks, where they might occur if this new legislation is enacted should be no surprise, either:

Mr. Obama’s plan, delicately pieced together by the Interior Department with White House input, carved out a large coastal buffer zone in the eastern gulf to mollify Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, an opponent of drilling there. It also included continued access to the oil fields off the North Slope of Alaska to win the support of Alaska Senators Mark Begich, a Democrat, and Lisa Murkowski, a Republican.

Most New England officials, including Maine’s two Republican Senators, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, are considered swing votes on energy legislation. They strongly oppose offshore drilling, and the North Atlantic was exempted. And because there is almost no support for drilling and there is little recoverable oil off the Pacific Coast, the whole area was declared off limits, said Ken Salazar, the interior secretary.

But by opening the mid-Atlantic region, from Delaware south to Central Florida, for oil exploration, Mr. Obama angered New Jersey’s two Democratic senators, Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez, who have been generally supportive of Mr. Obama’s push for climate legislation.

Risk Is Clear in Drilling; Payoff Isn’t

Lautenberg and Menendez didn't present a problem for Obama during the health care "reform" campaign, so I'm pretty sure they'll be pushed out of the way here, too. Nelson, Snowe, and Collins are people who matter, so you can bet there won't be oil washing up on their shoreline.

It gets better, of course. "Clean coal", that magical substance that only exists in the fevered imaginations of politicians from coal-producing states, is another big part of the upcoming bill:

He also announced a new task force to forge a plan for rolling out affordable carbon capture and storage technology in 10 years, including having 10 commercial demonstration projects up and running by 2016.

Carbon capture and storage is meant to capture the emissions from carbon-polluting coal plants and bury them underground rather than spewing them into the atmosphere but the technology is still being researched.

Obama Eyes Biofuels, Clean Coal In New Climate Push

Caption: A coal slurry pond in Martin County, KY from around the year 2000.

Image credit: Mine Safety and Health Administration/Red, Green, and Blue

Coal isn't clean. The detritus that remains after it's burned is among the most toxic substances on the planet. Using coal to generate electricity guarantees that there will be vast pools of toxic sludge like the one that broke not too long ago in Tennessee.

On December 22, 2008, the containment pond at the TVA Kingston plant collapsed, spilling more than 4.1 million cubic meters of ash into the surrounding environment.

In the weeks following the spill, the Duke [University] team analyzed toxic elements – including radium, arsenic and mercury – in ash, sediment and water samples they collected from standing water in a tributary of the Emory River in Tennessee that had been dammed by the sludge spill, and from multiple locations downstream and upstream on the Emory and Clinch rivers.

...

Their analysis of ash samples revealed that the spilled sludge contained high levels of toxic metals and radioactivity, including 75 parts per million of arsenic, 150 parts per billion of mercury, and eight picocuries of per gram of total radium. A picocurie is a standard measure of radioactivity.

Toxic Coal Ash Threatens Health And Environment

To its credit, the Obama Administration's Environmental Protection Agency has begun looking at new regulations for this waste, but that process is a long way from satisfactory completion. To its discredit, the real power in this area appears to belong to Cass Sunstein, who is infamous among environmentalists for weakening restrictions on toxic chemicals released by the coal industry. As is this Administration's penchant, the reformers are left to flail about, while the people who make things worse are getting a pass.

I think it's also a safe bet that no Senators who matter live near one of those sludge ponds.

This is all on top of the Administration's proposal that nuclear energy be part of our energy strategy, to the tune of $8 billion in loan guarantees. There is something absolutely crazy about proposing that we build more plants whose waste products we cannot find a home for.

Somehow, mention of nuclear power, offshore oil drilling, and more coal plants never made it into the Obama campaign's "fact sheet" on their energy and environment plans. Curiously, that document mentions that energy conservation will be an important part of their plan, along with a general cap and trade policy. Both, if implemented wisely, would be effective in reducing environmental hazards and making us more independent of foreign oil. Yet one hardly ever reads about these things, except in the negative.

Go figure. NOTE: The UPDATE below has a slight correction to this statement.

Kevin Drum sums up the political ramifications pretty well:

I guess this makes me a bad environmentalist, but I've never really had a big problem with opening up these offshore tracts as long as (a) the affected states are OK with it and (b) oil companies don't get sweetheart deals. But here's what I don't get. When it comes to energy, conservatives are crazy about two things: nuclear power and offshore drilling. Now Obama has agreed to both. But does he seriously think this will "help win political support for comprehensive energy and climate legislation"? Wouldn't he be better off holding this stuff in reserve and negotiating it away in return for actual support, not just hoped-for support? What am I missing here?

Obama Opens Up The Coast

As was true in the health care non-reform effort, compromising with Republicans is not the point. The point is keeping oil, utility, and coal dollars from migrating to GOP campaign funds.

Once again, the Obama Administration will propose legislation that will not actually solve the problem it is supposedly meant to address, but will make some of their supporters rich. The ultimate expression of the policy will have little or nothing to do with what candidate Obama promised. Most of the progressives who have been extolling the health care bill will be telling us how it's important to compromise, and to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

When did "something that actually does more good than harm" become "perfect"? Probably about the time this country was predominately populated by idiots who never bother to understand what they're talking about.

UPDATE: The Obama campaign also released a "fact sheet" on energy. It does mention nuclear energy, but states that it should only be considered once safety and other issues are addressed. It does not mention offshore drilling, though it does float the possibility of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Perhaps that should have been our clue. They don’t mention expanding the use of coal, but do mention that it should be made "cleaner". I suppose that was a clue, as well.

What Day Is It?: 2010 Edition

Just be careful out there.


Image credit: I Has A Hot Dog