Fairweather Zealot

Let me preface this by saying, “Yes – I am a little OCD, it seems”.

Okay, now that THAT’S out of the way, let me explain. I don’t listen to radio very often around here, almost exclusively when I’m in my car. But when I do, the radio is usually tuned to WXPN, a local station that focuses on more independent (read: folk and singer-songwriter) music. However, there are times when WXPN is playing some programming (such as Kid’s Corner or during their pledge drives) that I have had to turn elsewhere, and my first two choices have been two rock stations – 93.3 WMMR and 94.1 WYSP. Continue reading

I had a rather startling – and worrying – surprise waiting for me this morning. When I woke up and came downstairs to check my computer, I found out that the subscription to my internet security software – Trend Micro – had expired. Well, I knew that was coming, actually, but what I hadn’t expected was that when the subscription expired, Trend Micro would completely shut down all of the software and not allow me to use it until I purchased another subscription.. That’s right – for 6 or 7 hours, all of my computer’s protection was GONE because this software decided that end of subscription = end of software. Continue reading

…to keep rampant industrialization of our natural resources, a permanent wartime footing and idiotic ‘mavericks’ out of office. Did you make your choice?

I’ve been pretty quiet here because I’ve been so damn busy lately.  But I have to write something about the clusterfuck that is the economy and the government’s response to it.  It was bad enough that they offered the bailout package idea in the first place, but the fact that Paulson’s original plan was all about saving the people that created this very situation, and giving himself a near-complete autonomy over what happened with $700 BILLION. Continue reading

that I’m a dumbass. In the immortal words of “That 70′s Show”:

Eric: I don’t know. You know, it seems like bad things are always happening to me, like I have bad luck or something.
Red: [slowly] Son, you don’t have bad luck. The reason that bad things happen to you is because you’re a dumbass.

Continue reading

The last week has been one of those weeks that tries men’s souls – and women’s, for that matter. But I’ve vowed to myself that I’m going to be more positive, so I’m going to try to find the silver lining in all of the crap that’s been happening. Warning: This is more than a little bit of a bitch session … don’t say I didn’t warn you. I just needed to vent a bit. For something more amusing, look at my next post Continue reading

My sister, brother-in-law and nephew are all up in PA this week for my cousin Erin’s wedding, and for weeks I’ve been trying to figure out the schedule so that a) I could get to see them and b) we could take them for the ethnic dinners we promised when we visited in April (for some reason they can’t get good Indian or Thai out in rural Georgia – go figure). As the days grew closer to their arrival, I tried to get an idea of the schedule and worked with my father to figure out what would be the best days to go to the Franklin Institute and the Natural History museum across the street with Caleb who’s 2 1/2 going on 5. Two weeks ago, it was fairly set we would go on Friday. A week ago, it appeared it would be Monday. Last weekend it was back to Friday (aka today). Last night it was “probably tomorrow” (again, aka today).

This morning, it was 10:30 and they still hadn’t left the house. They were still going to see my grandfather, which meant that instead of meeting in Philly by noon, they wouldn’t be there until at least 1 or later. And we still had to go to the rehearsal party at my aunt’s tonight – leaving scant time for doing the Franklin Institute, let alone that AND the museum. My father is notoriously late and takes an hour to get ready for anything, so I’m a little frustrated. Why?

Because it’s frickin’ 12:30 already and they still haven’t started moving toward Philly yet. Suddenly, my ONE day with Caleb – a day I took off of work for – is becoming the ‘hi Caleb, bye Caleb’ event. At this point, Shari can’t even go because she has to go to the rehearsal dinner to take pictures.

I really wish people would get their frickin’ acts together sometimes.

Quite of the Day

“It’s not that I don’t enjoy getting involved in a great story, or caught up in an engaging article, but I have the attention span of a cat at dusk, cranked up on Shrimp Medley, during a massive bird migration.”
– from Coudal Partners

The Phillies line-up is amazingly agonizing. One one hand you have the hottest player in baseball, Chase Utley (.364, 9 HR, 18RBI, homers in 5 straight games) and the surprising Pat Burrell (.354, 7HR, 19RBI). On the other hand, you have one of the saddest hitting line-ups out there: the Phillies’ starting line-up has 2 players hitting .250 or under and THREE PLAYERS HITTING UNDER .200 (Bruntlett – .174, Howard – .193, Ruiz – .196). That’s just unforgiveable. Continue reading

With the party campaigns grinding down, one would think that we would be starting to get a better idea of the specifics for each candidates plans for different things. After all, how many debates were there this year? However, it seems to me that the majority of the focus has been on a handful of issues (although they are important issues): Iraq, immigration and health care have led the topics, but another huge topic has been the environment – or rather, specific facets of the environment: fuel and climate. Go to any candidates website, any major news site or pretty much anywhere else and you’ll see a section on the candidate’s stance on “The Environment”:

• Candidates: Clinton, Huckabee, McCain, Obama, Paul
• News: CNN (1, 2), MSNBC, Fox, BBC

But the scope of that section is always fuel and climate, and while they might differ in how they will deal with those issues, it’s still just one small aspect of the environmental policy of this country. Paul does the best at speaking to something else on the site itself, while Obama does tackle some other issues in his downloadable “Read the Environmental Plan”. But I wanted to know more about what all of the remaining candidates felt about different issues regarding the environment: conservation, endangered species, clean air and water, national park lands, drilling and mine rights on Federal land, the EPA and BLM and more. And you know what I found?

ALMOST NOTHING.

After almost an hour of looking, it seemed like the only environmental opinions that any of the candidates had was a) Global Warming; b) Lowering Dependence on Foreign Oil. Don’t get me wrong – those are very important, but at this point in the race, I think we know how all of them feel – which is to say, they all want to lower both (a) and (b), while keeping jobs in the U.S. Their methods differ slightly, but the overall point is the same. So, what about the rest of it?

I finally found some information on the League of Conservation Voters website, particularly their 2008 Presidential Primaries Voter Guide, which gives the breakdown of each candidate on several additional issues. They scored all of the candidates on their environmental records and stances over a variety of issues:

1. Obama – 96
2. Clinton – 90
3. McCain – 26
4. Paul – 20
5. Huckabee – 0 (he hasn’t voted federally, so they don’t have a voting record to count).

But the real meat was their Presidential Profiles page, which actually goes more in-depth on how the candidates feel about the issues beyond the global warming and energy areas. For each candidate, they give an overall scorecard, followed by each individual category:

1. Global Warming and Energy
   • Mandatory Emission Caps
   • International Action on Global Warming
   • Fuel Efficiency Standards
   • Renewable Energy Standards
   • Efficiency Standards
   • Nuclear Energy
   • Liquid Coal
   • New Coal Plants
2. Public Health
   • Air Pollution
   • Superfund “Polluter Pays”
   • Chemical Security
   • Clean Water Act
   • Environmental Justice
   • Pesticides and Rural Communities
3. Natural Heritage
   • Oceans: Marine Life
   • Oceans: Offshore Drilling
   • Endangered Species Act
   • Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
   • National Forest Roadless Areas
   • Mining
4. Funding
   • Land and Water Conservation Fund
   • National Parks
5. The Larger Context
   • International Trade Agreements
   • Federal Pre-emption of State Laws
   • World Population
   • National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)

The great thing about this is that they sent the same questionnaires to all of the candidates, and relied on the answers given (supported by their voting records) for their scoring. You can read the text of each question from within the report, so you can get an idea of how the questions were framed, and understand how the candidates were answering. The fact that it touches on such a breadth of topics is great – it gives me a lot more information on who is thinking of which pieces of the environmental pie outside of the mainstream media’s focus – is fantastic. It’s just a shame that it took me so long to find this information – but I think it’s worthwhile to take the time to find out about what our next President might feel about the environment. Especially when they’re going to have a heck of a job cleaning up the mess that the Bush administration has made.

Today is the so-called “Super Tuesday” – only today it might be very apt. In all likelihood, it will probably determine the ‘man to beat’ in the Republican race; the Democratic race is more likely to be a closer split which will take longer to resolve. Continue reading