Gee, I Wonder Why Republicans Lost in 2008

It couldn’t be because of their lack of understanding of topics or lack of empathy for their constituents.  It couldn’t have been because of things like:

1. Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), on the Obama administration’s efforts to regulate carbon dioxide:

Barton says the average healthy adult exhales between four-tenths of a ton and seven-tenths of a ton of CO2 a year.

“So if you put 20,000 marathoners into a confined area, you could consider that a single source of pollution, and you could regulate it,” Barton says. “The key would be whether the EPA said that 20,000 people running the same route was one source or not.”

One indication that the EPA likely would consider 20,000 runners a single source of pollution is that the agency is trying to regulate waste-water runoff and emissions of drilling rigs in oil fields by attempting to define entire areas as a single source of pollution, Barton says.

Yeah, I totally see how 20,000 runners are the same thing as 20,000 drilling rigs.  Rep. Barton’s analogy is ridiculous.  The rest of America (the sane part) knows the difference.

It’s Incredible To Have A New President

There are many reasons why I’m glad Barack Obama is President.  The first?  George W. Bush no longer is.  His “administrations'” purposeful actions to wreck everything they were responsible for will now be limited – slowly at first, but faster with time.  Prime among the policy issues President Obama is taking seriously: climate change.  President Obama also isn’t afraid to draw sharp and serious contrasts between himself and Bush.

Here is one of the whitehouse.gov’s additional issues:

President Obama will keep the broken promises made by President Bush to rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. He and Vice President Biden will take steps to ensure that the federal government will never again allow such catastrophic failures in emergency planning and response to occur.

Bush attempted, in the waning days of his presidency, to seucre his Katrina Legacy by saying he did everything he could to help the region and his “administration’s” response was swift and decisive.  That’s probably why citizens were left to fend for themselves for four days.  Since then, all Bush did was give no-bid contracts to the largest firms who already had a history of bungling reconstruction in Iraq.  Have you been to New Orleans or the remainder of the Gulf Coast since Sep 2005?  The area remains a disaster.  Many low-income areas still haven’t been cleaned up, let alone reconstructed.  And how many billions of taxpayer dollars did Bush release for that effort?  Those dollars went straight to executive compensation and shareholders, not the people who were actually affected by the storm.

Anyone who saw the response to Katrina, nearly 4 years after 11Sep2001, realized that Bush shouldn’t have been reelected because he had no interest in keeping America safe.  He refused to position supplies and emergency responders to an area that was accurately forecasted to be affected by Katrina days in advance.  That’s Bush’s Katrina Legacy.

As future disasters occur, as we all know they will, I have more confidence President Obama will respond appropriately to them than the did Bush the Squatter.  Will his responses be perfect?  No, of course not.  But if the reponse is bungled, I know Obama will hold those in charge responsible, something Bush never did.

The 21st Century has finally arrived for America.

Green Prisons & FEMA Under Bush

A prison in Washington state has developed a program to help reduce its operating costs.  In an effort to reduce waste and conserve energy and water, the Cedar Creek Corrections Center started a compost and organic farm program.  In Indiana, a wind turbine generates 10kW/hr, saving them $2,280 per year.  A prison in California installed 6,200 solar panels, generating enough energy to send some back to the grid.  As for operating costs, states alone spent $49 billion on 2.3 million prisoners last year.  This country needs prison reform.

I remember listening to the Bush administration’s empty platitudes after their bungled response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005.  Never again would they be caught unprepared, they told us.  If another hurricane hit the U.S., the federal response would be much better, nearly flawless, they breathlessly bragged.  Why then am I not surprised to read that the only lesson Bush’s failed government learned was how to keep reports of their indifference out of the news?  Why did it take nearly two months for FEMA’s deputy administrator to admit his agency’s slow response to a disaster … again?  Why were families denied temporary housing … again?  Why were resources not in the region after the disaster … again.  This despite the corporate media’s dutifull parroting that plenty of resources were available prior to Hurricane Ike’s landfall.  As with every other issue, the cons’ message is: “You’re on your own”.  Tuesday can’t come soon enough.