gop logic

For those of you with no sense of history, which ironically enough includes almost the entire Tea Party movement, here is a reality check as seen in The Economist, March 27 issue.

About what we now affectionately call Obamacare: ."..closely resembles the approach the Republicans themselves offered up as an alternative to Hillarycare in 1993."

There is more:

"Despite the resemblance, the Republicans have been swift to denounce the legislation as an abomination and its centerpiece -an obligation on all citizens to buy health insurance on the pain of a fine-as a violation of the constitution."

Other similar parallels have been drawn, in particular to the healthcare solution proposed by Mitt Romney -now a staunch critic of any reform- in Massachusetts.

And that just goes to show you that the opposition to healthcare reform, probably the most needed reform in the country, is driven by nothing more than partisan politics and backed up by nothing more than threats and hot air.

TSA tries to be funny

Here is a double standard for you. Don't try to make a joke, especially not one about guns or bombs, at the airport. We all know that doing so will result in jail time, fines, and tons of nasty treatment. TSA it seems, hates jokes. But only if you, the passenger, about to be treated like a criminal -guilty until proven innocent- try to make light of the ridiculous situation.

TSA itself has no problem making fun of you. They love to tell jokes. They must know the joke is on us and what better way to show who's in charge than to make fun of the people who are about to have their privacy invaded, and now thanks to amazing technology, their privates exposed. TSA apparently thinks this is all very funny, and not only do they have screeners making bad jokes and thereby delaying everyone, but TSA has gone to a full media assault using videos to make fun of passengers trying to get their luggage on a plane.

At a recent TSA checkpoint that uses the new naked scanners, one bright officer thought it was very funny to tell people over and over again to empty their pants. He reminded everyone to remove everything from their pockets. Don't leave any nuts in your pockets because we will see them, he said with a big smile on his face. Now how is that for a good joke?

TSA also showed videos of clowns trying to get past security with overloaded packs. Don't these idiots know that one is only allowed one tiny bag, containing no dangerous liquids -water comes to mind- or other subversive materials like toothpaste and mouthwash? That is exactly how TSA sees the traveling public, a bunch of morons who don't understand the important security measures that keep our skies safe.

The reality is a bit different. Time and time again tests have shown the incompetence of the screening process. People get past the elaborate security charade with all its scanners, X ray machines, and magic wands, with knives, ice picks and other forbidden items. Meanwhile busy TSA officers stop moms with babies to look for explosives in sippy cups. Elderly people are searched while those in wheelchairs create traffic jams at the magnetic scanners. All of it in the name of no profiling. No wonder TSA thinks the whole process is one big joke!

extremists vying for attention

Yesterday, former eBay CEO Meg Whitman and State Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner tried to outdo themselves to appear like right wing extremists to please the crowds in Orange County. You may remember that Orange County is the county where people must waste water. It is therefore not surprising that extremist views are welcomed here.

Apart from the regular Republican mantras such as cutting taxes, Whitman and Poizner tried to show how they would fire people, deny them healthcare and basic benefits, run them out of the state, and make their lives harder in other meaningful ways. Clearly both these former business people mean business when it comes to race, ethnicity, and other controversial issues. Like good business people, they also know how to word these proposals so nobody could accuse them of being racist.

Mr. Poizner will balance the budget by cutting taxes. Already the state has a multi-billion dollar shortfall, but that will not stop Mr. Poizner from making matters worse if he needs to do so to get elected. Ms. Whitman, no doubt remembering her days at the helm sucking up to Wall Street, will fire tens of thousands of state workers. Apart from the moral outrage, one has to wonder how a consumer economy will recover if more people are forced into bankruptcy and more housing will go into foreclosure.

Both candidates acted as if they had just returned from a three year vacation to another planet.

Clearly the debate was underwhelming enough so that no TV station deemed it necessary to waste airtime on such sloganeering. Or maybe they were afraid the advertisers would balk at broadcasting extreme views that play well in Orange but might infuriate the rest of the electorate?

genomic waste

One can understand that laymen may have a hard time understanding evolution and its implications. Especially in a country like America, where evolution is often treated as a philosophical idea akin to religion, instead of the scientific notion it really is.

Evolution is not palatable to the common folk. They already feel intimidated by all the smarts around them. The last they want to hear is that they are descended from monkeys, with the obvious implication that they are closer to those monkeys than the smart ones, who must -by definition- be more evolved. All of this is hogwash of course, but try to explain that to the press.

However when a bunch of geneticists start wasting money because they don't understand the implications of natural selection, one has to wonder. That is precisely what happened when the HapMap project was announced. One could argue the scientists can be forgiven for there are many forces here to cloud the picture.

First, there was the enormous inventory of sequencing and PCR machines that now stood idle. Second there were the government bureaucrats, who felt somewhat disappointed when the much ballyhooed genome project failed to deliver all the medicines and therapies they had promised to their sponsors. Third there were the very people who drove much the project, many of whom were mathematicians and physicists, who never sat down and thought about evolution. And finally, there was the master of them all, the kumba-ya singing apostle of fundamentalism and science, who was appointed the high priest of the project.

But face it, HapMap was and is a glorious failure. Even more so than the genome project itself. That project had at least one redeeming factor: a lot of technology was developed that has other uses. Much like the velcro and the space project one could say.

HapMap was based on the mistaken assumption that common diseases would be caused by common gene mutations and that these would be relatively easy to find if one applied enough genotyping and sequencing volume. Enough brute force, it was truly an American idea.

Nobody ever thought that maybe, just maybe, natural selection would have weeded out these common errors before they could become common. That simple notion, the first one that is taught students when they learn about biology, escaped the great minds of the genome.

Now hundreds of millions of dollars later, they are finally coming face to face with reality. They are finally realizing the old saying, "garbage in, garbage out."

People can ignore evolution if they choose to do so. They can ignore gravity too. But when they do, it will cost them dearly. Such is the nature of reality. It is a bit different from religion.

orange country logic

Orange County isn't know for its smarts. But now the city of Orange is pulling out all the stops. The city is suing a couple who removed their front lawn, thereby reducing their water usage from 229,221 gallons in 2007 to 58,348 gallons in 2009. Given California's problems with drought and the fact that some cities in the Southland are contemplating or are building desalination plants, one would think that the couple would win an award.

But the city of Orange does not think so. It thinks the Ha's are criminals for not wasting water. Its laws require that residents waste water. The city forces residents to cover significant portions of their front yards with live ground cover. The Ha's front yard is not overgrown with weeds, it is not an eyesore according to the LA Times. Furthermore, the Times reports it has recently been covered with wood chips, drought tolerant plants and a nice fence.

None of that is not acceptable to city officials, who claim city codes require that 40% of the yard be landscaped predominantly with live plants. And that is why the couple will have to appear in Orange County Superior Court on Tuesday to challenge the city's lawsuit against them.

big business fights climate change

Just in case you wonder, Democrats are not that different from Republicans. All lawmakers listen to the beat of one drum: big business and its campaign contributions. Even if doing so goes against the wishes of voters, or common sense. These lawmakers figure their donors will be successful at convincing voters anyhow. History has shown that they are often right to think so. Nobody is as brainwashed as the American voters. American voters are the only ones who gladly and proudly vote against their own interest as is clearly shown by what is happening around Health Care Reform.

A democratic senator from West Virginia, aka coaltown, John D. Rockefeller IV introduced a bill that would put a two year freeze on the EPA's ability to regulate greenhouse gases from power plants. It was just one of many proposals from both chambers designed to delay or overturn the EPA's regulations.

What is Senator Rockefeller IV worried about? That fossil fuel prices could go up? How is that for logic? Fossil fuel prices should go up. They should go up by a lot. Anyone who cares for the future of humans on the planet knows that. Only higher prices will deter people from wasting energy and producing more greenhouse gases.

Guess what Rockefeller is waiting for? Clean coal? He calls it a technological breakthrough to reduce emissions from burning fossil fuels. He also said," Today we took important action to safeguard jobs, the coal industry, and the entire economy." What he really meant was, "today we are setting back environmental regulation by several decades to please my big business campaign contributors."

The oil and mining industries immediately started lobbying for Rockefeller's bill, although the American Petroleum Institute was clearly upset that the bill did not go far enough. "We don't know why the freeze on EPA authority isn't made permanent," a policy analyst for the Institute said.

reagan bills

Conservatives want to put Ronnie on the $50 bill. What better way to celebrate a man who lies at the root of our current fiscal mess!

Patrick McHenry, a Republican congressman from North Carolina, made the proposal. He says his generation needs its own heroes and that it is time to honor President Reagan. McHenry is 34, a proud member of Generation X.

Reagan would bump Grant, the 18th President and a general in the civil war. Grant is a hero to the Union Army who led them to victory over the Confederates. It may be good to point out that that is something that does not sit well with the people South of the Mason-Dixon line. Grant like Reagan was hugely popular -in the North that is- and like Reagan his presidency was no great success. Oops, I forgot the conservatives do think Reagan was a success.

Reagan's leadership in the cold war and his economic policies and tax reductions -that we will pay for in decades to come- no doubt put him on par with Grant's accomplishments in McHenry's mind. Of course Reagan can be forgiven since he suffered from Alzheimer's disease. McHenry though has no such excuse.

Although anti-Reagan opinion focuses on Iran Contra and the failure to recognize the AIDS epidemic, Reagan's credit card economy is his real handiwork. Granted (sic) that economy made some people outrageously wealthy. So why not put their hero on the $1,000 bill instead? Or on some CDO's?