I did something this year that I did four years ago with great success: I did not watch either the Democrat or Republican Conventions on TV. Instead, I relied on independent observers’ accounts: blogs, newspapers, websites, and my favorite, word-of-mouth. Having attended both parties’ conventions in 1992, I have experienced the phony, Hollywood-style atmosphere first-hand. But this year, I think the creepiness has totally permeated the events to the point where they are utterly unpalatable even from a cumulative distance of several thousand miles.
Having not seen the GOP picnic, I’ll let someone else sum it up in the way that most corresponds to my observations, Tom Shales, media critic of the Washington Post. Bottom line: George Bush was in charge but someone else sneaked into Washington back in 2001 and f**ked everything up. The Republicans certainly had nothing to do with any of it. And guess who’s the right party to fix everything that got mysteriously screwed up over the past seven years? That’s right- the people who screwed everything up over the past seven years.
Apparently, the Republican Party thinks the American people are grotesquely stupid and suffering from severe memory loss. Reading some of the remarks of people attending the shindig, maybe they’re right.
Irony is lost on the born-again- not to mention truth, facts, what’s really in the Bible and whose side God is on. But despite the Radical Christian Republican Party’s lack of a sense of humor, the bizarre and utterly groundless religious statements coming from their Twin Cities tent service are so sad they’re funny. Sarah Palin and the Republicans are now basing their efforts to make the oil companies richer, pollute and destroy the Earth even faster and further, and usurp the rights of innocent people in Iraq on “God’s Will.”
IS THIS IN THE BIBLE? DID I MISS IT? WHERE DOES GOD SAY THAT ANYWHERE? HOW DOES A FORMER BEAUTY QUEEN AND ATV DEALER KNOW THIS IS WHAT HE WANTS?
The Republican convention continues to degenerate into a farce, fraud and classic example of why these people shouldn’t be allowed to destroy our country anymore. Arresting a reporter- the highest-profile left-wing reporter in the world- doesn’t do anything to gain voters and it certainly doesn’t project the image of a party or ideology that is either inclusive or unifying. Not that the GOP had anything to do with her arrest directly. But they helped created the climate both in Minneapolis and America that led to the type of Beijing-style throttling the Republicans exercised at their past convention in New York and in their enforcement of the Patriot Act.
Sadly, it’s typical. Forget about “Trailer Park Pinup” Sarah Palin. Her and McCain’s hypocrisy on and abuse of federal earmarks- a far bigger issue than her pregnant teenager- is a way of life in our two-party system regardless of whose side you’re on. If there was any reason left to vote for McCain or any Republican, it was that they sort-of represented hope of restored freedom that was ravaged by the Bush-Cheney Regime. But as with everything Bush and Republican, it’s all talk. And it’s becoming clearer every minute that McCain=Bush. Maybe not by design but more because that’s just the way Republicans roll.
As for Obama, he’s probably just sitting watching, enjoying the whole debacle. The needless arrest of Amy Goodman, McCain’s unraveling credibility and his unflagging Mr. Nice Guy campaign make him look better every day. And that’s a lot for me to say. Thanks, Amy for going above and beyond a journalist’s duty. You may just have put us over the top.
Even the mainstream media are reporting and lamenting what appears to be the senseless but calculated demise of federal support for renewable energy. The renewable industry admits the final attack on American independence launched by the Bush White House with Cheney’s Big Oil task force behind them is going to be Katrina-esque in scope. We can only hope that President Obama and an enlightened Congress can resurrect renewable energy tax credits before Bush and Company destroy more jobs, environment and hopes that the United States can ever be anything more than a fading empire again.
It’s tragically but tantalizingly ironic that the once-mighty Republican Party is cowering in the shadows of an approaching storm, not terrorists, oil companies or even the Chinese. Bush and Cheney have canceled their last chance to say something good about their horrendous nightmare of an administration. The GOPhers are talking about cutting the convention short: more worried about being seen partying during a national disaster (isn’t that what they’ve been doing the last seven years?) than actually doing anything to help.
What the Republicans fear most is America watching John McCain give his acceptance speech in split screen with live video of bodies floating in the streets of New Orleans. Especially after Obama’s triumphant Denver address that was more like the Jacksons’ Victory tour. But that’s the Republicans’ karma. They created the PR nightmare that is approaching our southern coast, not Nature. And hopefully, many of them are thinking what Robert Preston’s character Big Ed Bookman, faced with divine retribution for his corruption, confessed so eloquently in “Semi-Tough”: “Lord, I’m a sinner and now you’re gonna f**k me.”
Keeping up appearances is a 24/7 gig when all you’ve got is the APPEARANCE OF CARING OR ACCOMPLISHMENT, not any kind of record of it. But after seven years of monumental gaffes and dismal failures- 9/11, Iraq, energy prices, the federal deficit, Social Security, the housing crisis, one ill-fated debacle after another- it is Hurricane Gustav and Nature that frighten our pillars of strength and integrity more than Osama bin Laden, Barack Obama, protesters- even Janet Jackson. You think the GOP considered curtailing its little bash in the face of threats of violence, $4/gallon gasoline, and crippling recession?
Bush, Cheney and the Republicans have led an all-out assault on Nature during their reign of error. Now, their endless, senseless campaigns of destruction make any hurricane, wildfire, even a bear attack or other act of Nature seem like justifiable revenge against an evil overlord. I feel for the people of New Orleans and hope Gustav and his younger sister Hanna who’s yet to come are not as bad as everyone fears. But I also hope that Bush and his partying party finally get the message:
YOU MESS WITH NATURE- NATURE MESSES WITH YOU. Party on, fellas. Don’t bother cleaning up when you leave. We’ll pick up. Just go.
Like the U.S. and other countries, Mexico faces an energy crisis as the underground supplies of oil show rapid deterioration and ultimate exhaustion in as few as ten years. Do they have geothermal, solar, wind and other renewable resources? They sure do. Check the solar power map, the wind map, and especially the geothermal map (left). If there was a country ready for renewable energy, it’s Mexico.
But the opportunities to change their fortunes are lying there waiting, like they are for America. And some visionary individuals and companies are saving the planet and making money off the Renewable Revolution. Read on.
Every time I see one of these stories I wonder “Why isn’t Utah getting any of this?” Google is dropping $10.25 million on a “breakthrough” geothermal technology which will be spent in Texas, California and other places that don’t have nearly the abundance of geothermal activity that Utah, Wyoming, Idaho and Nevada do.
It’s clear that AS LONG AS THE SAME PEOPLE RUN UTAH, WE WILL CONTINUE TO LOSE BILLIONS TO COMPETITORS INVESTING IN AND DEVELOPING RENEWABLE ENERGY while we dish our money to the same old, wealthy fossil fuel companies who are going NOWHERE.
What do we have? Pie-in-the-sky oil shale, unproven gasification and a bunch of other maybe technologies that won’t do anything to bring the price of energy down or fight environmental degradation. What are our so-called leaders thinking- assuming thinking is, indeed, going on?
$24 million. Not a bad investment in the security, independence and economic stability of our country as recently announced the Regime. But their “efforts” to help implement solar energy on a mass scale pales before similar programs in Germany, China, India and virtually every country on the planet. We can only hope that the next administration recognizes the urgent need to develop renewable energy- not give away more public land for fruitless drilling and digging by obscenely wealthy oil and coal companies who THEMSELVES admit the days of fossil fuels are numbered.
It’s hard to explain why one human and his underlings are so pathological, ruthless, ignorant and destructive. There are many theories and books on why our not-soon-enough departing emperor is so violent, jealous, stupid and out-of-touch. He had problems with his father, did poorly in school, and screwed up everything he did his entire life. Yes, before the White House this poor, little rich kid ruined several oil companies and a baseball team but it’s hard to tell if he ruined Texas. Then there were the drinking, drugs, bad driving and general floundering that molded him into the dangerous loser who’s left our country in the same shape he left his other tragic ”endeavors.”
But it’s still difficult to understand why he wants to ruin the environment. His minions’ rush to rewrite America’s environmental laws to destroy more wildlife, Nature and anything in the path of developers, drillers and digging machines appears to be a form of punishment of his opponents rather than sound policy. I suppose like most twisted psychopaths, he hates and fears his opponents and seeks to torture then kill them- in this case, environmentalists. So it’s probably about politics or jealousy or his mental instability. Something other than hating the Earth.
Either way, he’s punishing the American people and the world again- the same folks who elected this idiot TWICE and who’ve been rewarded with economic disaster, terrorist paranoia, endless wars, loss of respect around the world and a nation even more divided in just about every social and economic category. We know Hitler’s problems began when he determined that he wasn’t a terrible artist- it was that everyone else was wrong.
Despite his privileged childhood- perhaps because of it- W (we won’t even start on Cheney) appears to be taking revenge on those who laughed at, pushed around and, in W’s mind, caused him to be a failure. His pathetic cockiness, mockable swagger and and pathological cluelessness all indicate he believes it’s not him- but that everyone else is wrong.
