Climate Change - For Real?

"Oh, you betchum Red Rider!"

Remember the date of November 17, 2007 well. It was today that the United Nations released its long awaited report on the issue of global warming. This comprehensive document, prepared by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is what is known as a synthesis - a gathering of everything science knows about an issue and coming to conclusions and predictions. Answer: Climate Change is real, alarming and caused by human activity.

Now, most republicans and strongly religious folk - see photo at left - don't believe it for a second. The UN and Al Gore, leaders in pushing this issue, are in their view agents of the devil who would besmirch the good name of God, neocons and and the memory of their other God, Ronald Reagan. Most have never seen Gore's documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" and avoid any scientific inquiry that supports a mere theory that is almost certainly a fact. Their multiple sources for scientific data include Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, Rush Limbaugh and church teachings. That we humans could have screwed up an entire planet is tantamount to heresy - God would never let that happen! Well folks, we did it... and God was very happy to give us the rope.

I've been trying to think of some way to make today's generation of leaders somehow accountable to the generations that will follow and suffer the consequences of global warming. The least we can do is clearly document in writing where we stand on the issue today, put the document in a time capsule, and provide for it's opening - say 100 years from now? Surely we can ALL agree on that?

Some guidelines are in order though. We should state our positions clearly, and feel free to rant against whatever people or organizations are railing against your own personal point of view. Use bad language. Lambaste them with every epithet in your vocabulary. After all, providing depth to your argument and allowing our descendants to see the "real you" is important, right? Now I realize that if my view on global warming (and the UN's) turns out to be true, then I can do little more than apologize and point to my own pathetic attempts to reverse the damage though personal action and my support of government entities that try to do the same. On the other hand, if you don't buy into all this scientific nonsense, you should have the courage "stay the course" and burn every drop of oil and every pound of coal that can be found - be proud of your position and brag about your gas guzzling SUV to your descendants.

Okay, got it? Since we'll all be dead, we need to determine what the consequences will be for those of us who blew their predictions. I suggest that the crude practice of pissing on the grave of the fools who were wrong might be the best we can do. If you were cremated, then perhaps pissing in the ocean (which may be much deeper by this time) or pissing into a hot wind might be appropriate. Could be an interesting day in 2108!

So, if I'm wrong, then my descendants can call me an old fool, piss on my grave and get on with their lives in a future Garden of Eden. If the naysayers are wrong, then their grandchildren get to piss on their graves and curse their ancestors with all the invective they surely deserve in a hot, watery world racked by war and starvation (a sort of anti-Garden of Eden).

Let's do it. I'll even provide the capsule!

My Wife is a Dot

Maintaining My Sanity


Yes, this lucky woman is Married to none other than myself. Her name is Dorothy. I realize that I'm a bit of trial, especially now that I'm semi-retired and have more time to advise her on everyday matters, day in and day out, year after year, forever and on into infinity. As she says through gritted teeth: "I now have twice the husband and half the money." But she is a true peach because she still loves me no matter how much I hang around. Go figure.

This is the second marriage for us both. We have six grown children and ten grandchildren - and we are still learning how to be good parents and grandparents. Someday I will write a book covering the last 27 years, but it would probably be burned by a large crowd of relatives that I routinely disagree with. It was touch and go the last time they stormed my house with torches and pitchforks... maybe it's because they are always wrong and I'm always right - but I'll qualify that statement by admitting that Dot can and does overrule many of my more pointed rants. Recently she asked me: "What are you NOT cynical about?"

Good question.

Right Threaded Wing-nuts

Poke me with a stick

A recent exchange of opinionated e-mails prompted this response. The specific trigger (written by a loyal Republican and Bush lover) was this bit:

"You know I could almost see myself joining you and your ilk if it were not for just a few of uncomfortable planks in your platform. Example, infanticide, social engineering through tax incentives, confiscatory taxation of the most productive workers, and a free ride for the miscreants among us. Now unlike us stupid Republicans, these policies are perfectly logical, much the same as Hitler's Final Solution. Sound laws pertaining to the murder of innocent people and the confiscation of their property. You guys are real smart, no doubt about it. "

My response falls just short of physical violence

I will take just a brief moment to reply... are you out of you're fricking MIND! No, the republicans are quite logical - on a national scale they mirror the great robber barons of the 19th and 20th centuries, which was "social engineering" on an epic scale. As to being "pro-life" I refer you to the grand stupidity of Iraq with 4,000 American soldiers dead, 40,000 wounded (now called "miscreants"?) and a couple of hundred thousand Iraqis even worse off. In my book, that's "pro-death." In case you haven't noticed, nice Mr. Asshole (our idiot president) has also doubled the national debt, is killing the dollar, and tells us to "be afraid" of big, bad Iran taking over the United States and destroying our way of life. What a FRICKING IDIOT! Republican social engineering is accomplished by driving formerly productive people into Dunkin Donuts jobs where they become an official part of the miscreant club and can die without health insurance or government subsidized pain-killers. Bush's message to you: "DIE, you middle-class piece of shit - I GOT mine!" Ah yes, the twin messages of greed and fear work every time!

As our economy continues to founder, housing prices collapse and all those formerly "productive workers" lose their jobs (not because of taxes but because some republican CEO and his Chinese cronies are stealing your meager slice of the American pie), remember how the republican party rewarded your patriotism with a wallet full of moth shit. Hitler would have been right at home in today's White House and probably received the medal of freedom by now. What? Let "market forces" and "deregulation" bring down the cost of health insurance? Do ordinary republicans really believe that insipid line of crap? Oh, I see, blame the liberals!

Get it through your thick skull that I'm a pissed-off, moderate Independent that doesn't buy the gigaton of bullshit dished out by the RNC, White House, religious right and the MacDonald's dishwasher that somehow believes the republican party gives two-shits whether he lives or dies. I'm certainly not a neocon and my positions are clearly not liberal. And yes, many of us are smarter than both extremes - a LOT smarter. There are a lot of Independent hotheads out there - so the message to people on our shit list is: "Be afraid; be very afraid!"