Schreiner’s Media Landscape

April 30, 2010

BP Gulf Oil Rig, Massey Coal Disasters Show We Don’t Understand Energy Independence or Security

Filed under: 9/11, America, Bush, Oil, Power Grid, Solar, coal, dualism, geothermal, mining, nuclear, politics, pollution, renewable, wind — Ken Schreiner @ 4:23 pm

The latest oil-coal-nuclear-or-whatever in the Gulf of Mexico is just another headline unless you understand this:

OUR LACK OF ENERGY INDEPENDENCE AND SECURITY IS MORE FRIGHTENING THAN GETTING ATTACKED IN A SKYSCRAPER.

But Americans spend more time trying to discredit innovative, job-creating, decentralized, cleaner and renewable energy sources than finding and using alternatives to the crap we’re addicted to. We can’t get past the idea that fossil fuels are the only thing that works when the reality is that fossil fuels are perhaps the worst thing humans could possibly come up with to provide electricity, heat, etc. Even manure is cleaner.

If one oil rig, one power plant, or just one feeder cable goes out and you are crippled, that’s wrong. If you have viable, sustainable and affordable energy sources like solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, soy diesel and a myriad of other fuels available and affordable and you’re still dependent on fossil fuels, you’re stupid. If we trust the future of our entire country to companies like BP, Exxon-Mobil, Enron, and Massey Energy, we’re doomed.

America could be the world’s leader in renewable energy development. Instead our captains of industry and so-called “leaders” have lashed us to the oil rig and coal bin and we’re getting- well, drilled by the rest of the world because of it. Regardless of the cause of the Deepwater oil rig calamity, it exposes the Achilles Heel that America’s current energy “policy” is. And if we don’t break the chains of enslavement that Saudi Arabia, Russia, Massey and other fossil fuel masters have around our necks, we have no right to complain or expect improvement.

April 28, 2010

Mormons Build First Solar-Powered Meetinghouse; Conservatives Finally Live Up to Their Name

Filed under: America, Environment, Solar, Utah, conservation, dualism, geothermal, nuclear, politics, pollution, religion, renewable, wind — Ken Schreiner @ 8:46 am

“We’re trying to be as energy efficient and conservation conscious as we can.”

- Bishop Richard C. Edgely

Where the LDS Church stands on environmental issues has been a moving target since right-wingers (which the mostly Mormons are) demonized caring for the Earth as somehow un-Christian. But now, the church has created its first totally-solar-powered meetinghouse. And the controversy appears to have shifted from what environmentalists outside the church think to what the Mormons and other right-wingers think of it themselves.

As usual, the best part of the story is reading the comments to it, especially in the Mormon-owned Deseret News. Some say it was done for economic reasons, some say for environmental reasons, using quotes from the Book of Mormon to support both positions. Which is exactly THE REASON why renewable energy makes sense: it is both economical and environmentally friendly. How some commenters feel Al Gore or leftist radicals are somehow responsible for this act of faith and adherence to church principles is tragic and destructive.

For those of us in the renewable energy movement, this is a momentous occasion. It’s affirmation of renewable energy’s benefits, regardless of where you stand politically. America’s other so-called “conservatives” would be well-advised to take notice of the root word of their name- “CONSERVE”- and recognize that neither renewable energy nor environmentalism are political issues- but social or even spiritual responsibilities.

April 27, 2010

China to Require Telecom Companies to Snitch on Customers; A New Low

Filed under: America, China, Internet, Tibet, media — Ken Schreiner @ 8:41 am

“Information transmissions should be immediately stopped if they are found to contain state secrets.”

- China’s official Xinhua News Agency

Whatever “state secrets” are. Just when you thought the Chinese government couldn’t stoop any lower to punish its own people, they come up with this: requiring telecommunications companies to rat on their customers. Sure, China’s already a freedom-lover’s rathole. But the government, military and other hard-line authorities continue to try to make the country as unliveable as possible socially while lavishing their citizenry with higher incomes, better housing, cars, HDTVs and other advancements.

Don’t think that they’re going to limit their spying to what the government says is “information that concerns state security and interests and, if leaked, would damage state security and interests in the areas of politics, economy and national defense, among others.” As we’ve seen in Tibet and throughout the Chinese empire, the Chinese government makes up the rules as it goes along and will consider whatever information it doesn’t like as potentially damaging.

It will result of thousands of new unjustifiable imprisonments, invasions of privacy, and other human rights violations. But the Chinese government doesn’t care about its own people and they certainly don’t care about what Americans or anyone outside of China thinks of them. Whenever I hear one of these Tea Party freaks talk about how bad America is now, I think of China and feel a whole lot better.

April 26, 2010

Discovery’s “Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking” Documentary Thought-Provoking Though Speculative

Filed under: Earth, media, television — Ken Schreiner @ 8:15 am

Discovery viewers got more physics Sunday night than a “Big Bang Theory” marathon. First, it was “How the Universe Works” which was outstanding for its information and graphics, though they got repetitious after one hour. That led into the debut of the documentary “Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking.” The professor was in form but possibly out of his element in his speculations about alien life forms. Even so, the program made headlines and likely garnered decent ratings in a non-ratings period. Anyway, at least it wasn’t another cop show.

April 25, 2010

Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most- If You Choose

Filed under: Earth, Nature, Utah, conservation, dualism, forest, weather, wind — Ken Schreiner @ 9:13 am

Doctors once prescribed a tonic, Sulphur and molasses was the dose

Didn’t help a bit, my condition must be chronic, Spring can really hang you up the most

- “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most”, music by Tommy Wolf, lyrics by Fran Landesman

Spring is my least favorite season (autumn’s tops). Growing up in Chicago, it was cold, windy, rainy. In Colorado, Minnesota, Michigan, Vermont and other places I’ve lived, it’s mud season. Everywhere it’s allergy season and a particularly bad one this year. Utah has the best springs of any place I’ve lived but it’s not immune. It’s snowed a couple of times since Spring arrived and the temperatures have careened from the 20s to the 70s. More suicides are committed in Spring (May specifically) than any other time of year and the weather’s believed to play a part.

At the same time, Spring is rightfully celebrated around the world. May Day, Arbor Day, vernal equinox. It’s the time when our planet is in its glory, new life and hope literally spring forth. That’s where the name comes from. I could take or leave Spring personally but I know how important it is as a natural process so I approach it looking for the good things. Case in point: The picture above I took at Torrey Pines State Park near San Diego a few weeks ago. While my friend Jeff was suffering miserably from allergies, he wanted to take me there to take pictures because it’s his favorite place on Earth, especially in Spring.

Which sums up what I think is the right attitude towards Spring- and maybe life in general. It’s beautiful, it’s cruel. It’s unpredictably awful with occasional moments of delight. April showers bring May flowers. It’s an enduring indication of how the human race cannot separate or immunize itself from Nature’s powers. Spring is classically natural, it’s what our planet does. There’s nothing you can do to change it. You can only change how you deal with it. Just like life.

April 24, 2010

States Rights, Old West Rear Ugly Heads in Arizona Immigration Law, Utah Firing Squad

Filed under: America, Hollywood, Utah, dualism, politics — Ken Schreiner @ 10:15 am

“I know there are a lot who suggest getting rid of firing squad is more humane but we’ve had the firing squad since statehood and it’s effective.”

- Utah State Sen. David Thomas (R)

“Decades of federal inaction and misguided policy have created an unacceptable situation.”

- Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R)

The New West often looks just like the Old West. Not just Monument Valley, Mojave Desert and the other natural movie sets that have formed our concepts of the American West. But the politics, society and just the way things are done out here because they’ve always been done that way.

Two events from the American West are causing the rest of the country to shudder: Arizona’s new, more restrictive and borderline (pardon the pun) unconstitutional immigration law and the scheduled execution of a convicted murderer by firing squad in Utah. Both are cases where states are not only doing what they’ve always done but turning up their noses at other states and the federal government as if to say “what are you going to do about it?”

For as “wild” as the Wild West was, these cases illuminate one common denominator between them and the Old and the New West: the overwhelming, relentless desire for self-order and self-sufficiency. The reason the Old West was what it was is because the people who went there were looking for all these things- for themselves and those like them. But ironically, to establish a place to exercise THEIR rights, they violated virtually everybody else’s: using violence, discrimination, and deception to keep out their neighbors and governmental authority, and pointlessly routing the Native Americans who’d lived there for centuries, stealing their land, and assisting the biggest genocide in the history of civilization.

It’s this history and tradition of the pre-eminence of the individual, the resulting moral selectivity, violence and hatred that are at the heart of both of these current issues. Six-gun justice, corruption, kangaroo courts, racism, rustling, greed, lynchings, massacres, environmental destruction and other atrocities are enduring legacies of the Old West: ones not only most Westerners but white America as a whole are still sadly proud of. The Arizona immigration law and Utah’s firing squad are reminders that you can take the cowboy out of the West, but you can’t take the West out of the cowboy. And heaven help the federal agent or fancy, Eastern city slicker who tries either.

April 23, 2010

Politico Study Confirms Tea Party Disillusioned, Self-Absorbed “Victims”

Filed under: America, Bush, Cheney, dualism, gun, politics — Ken Schreiner @ 8:44 am

“…there is a word for what poll after poll depicts as a class of largely white, middle-class, middle-aged voters who are aggrieved: Republicans.”

- Politico Tea Party poll

The squeaky wheel making the noise on the American political scene lately is the so-called “Tea Party”. While the name is an homage to the drunken folks who dumped a shipment of tea into Boston Harbor to protest pre-revolutionary taxation by their British masters, the reality is that these Tea Partiers are more like 75-year-old suburban white women sitting and sipping a nice cup of Earl Grey complaining about the weather- and everything else.

A new study by Politico shows while this “movement” appears to be sweeping the nation, it’s actually the same old people doing the same old thing only with a makeover. The ascent of Sarah Palin to spokesmodel is more an indication of her desperate and directionless ambitions than a seachange in the political landscape. Most telling is that virtually all Tea Partiers are merely Republicans in revolutionary costumes with the “revolution” in them washed clean out of the fabric.

Also telling is that most Tea Partiers come from newly-developed “boom town” areas hard-hit by the recession caused, ironically, by the people they pushed into office ten years ago. They are essentially restless, disillusioned, white people who’ve run as far as they can to get away from America and now purport themselves as the ones who must save it. They are self-cornered animals who have nowhere to run and blame everyone else- especially the usual suspect, the federal government- for their trouble.

The real problem is while they are clearly a marginal bunch, they are heavily armed with ideology and AK-47s and a lot of time and space on their hands to rehearse their school play. Knowing how the anti-Clinton forces a.k.a. the same people produced similar marginal but ultimately effective killers like Timothy McVeigh in the 1990s, we must pay close attention to the Tea Party- not because of their political power but because of how much ammunition they have and their growing impatience to use it.

April 22, 2010

Earth Day Is the Most Important Day of the Year; It Should Be Every Day

Filed under: Earth, Environment, God, Nature, Schreiner Productions, Solar, conservation, pollution, renewable — Ken Schreiner @ 7:21 pm

Until now, I haven’t really thought about Earth Day today because, to me, every day is Earth Day. Unlike God, baseball, and curly fries, life can’t go on without Earth. Yet it is probably the one thing we take most for granted in our comparatively puny, insignificant lives. There’s also a lot of talk about what Earth Day is without a lot of action. People gather around trees, pick up a few plastic bottles in the park, go home and never think about it again until next April.

But I not only think about it every day. I  try to do something new every day to make it better.  I continue to augment my home and business’ renewable energy system, increase the amount I recycle without increasing the amount I consume. Today, I renewed my membership to the American Solar Energy Association and Green America. I drove to a lunch meeting and that’s it because I didn’t have to drive anywhere else.

Naturally, thinking as well as acting is important. If we just thought about how important the Earth is, then took a few simple steps to make it cleaner, maybe we wouldn’t treat it like dirt. Which of course, it also is.

April 21, 2010

Corruption in Utah Legislature, Carl Wimmer Create Credibility Problem for Tea Party

Filed under: America, Legislature, Utah, dualism, gun, politics — Ken Schreiner @ 9:04 am

“I often watch my children as they sleep, and I let my mind wander into the future. What will they become? Who will they be? What will their future hold? It is this last question that disturbs me.”

- Utah State Represenative/Tea Party activist Carl Wimmer

Angry White Men with Guns a.k.a. the Tea Party and all the other fledgling angry white man organizations are big in Utah as you might expect from the most right-wing state in the union. But what’s interesting here is that members of perhaps the most ethically-compromised and morally-selective political body in America, the Republican-run Utah state legislature, are not only sympathetic to the racist, pro-violence, anti-freedom-for-anyone-except-me cause. Some actively support it, even as they represent the very people the Tea Party ostensibly abhors.

Case in point: the furor over former state rep Kevin Garn who resigned after revealing his relationship with a 15-year-old girl. Right after he tearfully stepped down in a bizarre address to his fellow lawmakers/lawbreakers- who creepily rewarded him with a standing O- his entire email account was shut down and emails deleted. The Republican legislature surely knew a criminal investigation of statutory rape would ensue. Heck- THEY MADE THE LAW. But another law they made was one exempting the legislature from any email retention policy like the one THEY PASSED FOR ALL OTHER STATE EMPLOYEES.

So it’s ironic that legislators like Republican Carl Wimmer are members of the Tea Party and other hate groups. And you don’t have to do a lot of research to uncover the hypocrisy. How about this quote from Wimmer’s little diatribe about “liberty” or whatever:

We have elected leaders who have become drunk with power and the love of self. With the single stroke of a pen, our liberties are slowly tarnishing and eroding away. This is why I ran for office. This is why I help found The Patrick Henry Caucus, and this is why I am involved in the Tea Party and 9/12 movements.

If Wimmer cannot see the irony and hypocrisy in this statement, then he truly is as stupid as he appears. And if the Tea Party accepts this kind of liar and hypocrite into their ranks, it speaks volumes as to not only their credibility, but their REAL intentions.

April 20, 2010

Muslim Cleric’s Stunning Discovery: Earthquakes Caused by Promiscuous Women

Filed under: China, Earth, God, Nature, dualism — Ken Schreiner @ 9:02 am

A classic case of cause and effect: this guy apparently felt the Earth move during a weekend with the guys in Vegas

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/19/AR2010041901787.html?hpid=sec-religion

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