Obama stands up, we think, to Ghadafi

Obama has issued an ultimatum to Ghadafi, telling him to stand down his troupes or else.

My question is, "Or else or what?" Despite the rumors I've heard about our President going in for a spine transplant, I can't help wondering what he plans to do if Ghadafi thumbs his nose at us.

So, because everything from choice of soft drinks to running the country is now put to a public poll, I have one for all of you.

If Ghadafi doesn't heed the warning, Obama will do...

A. Pass a series of resolutions

B. Give a very long speech to the American public

C. Send a few hundred soldiers to Afghanistan

D. Write a check to some Wall Street bankers

grab an opportunity where you can

An email from our assemblyman, Luis Alejo contained the following line: "On Monday, March 14th, my colleagues and I joined to adjourn in memory of the victims of this on-going disaster." Calif is in a financial crisis, and the two major clown parties can't agree on a budget. However, they can all agree on one thing, use a disaster on the other side of the globe as an excuse to take the day off. 
Gotta love this creative thinking.

Good ol' American priorities.

All over the world, people are dealing with heavy problems. Japan has the earthquake disaster, followed by nuke meltdown. All over the middle east, people are fighting in the streets against dictators. There are civil wars in Africa and the world economy is on the verge of collapse.

Here in American, the feds raided a medical pot place in Montana. It's nice to know that at least America has it's priorities straight.

a nation of 12 year olds

Let me see, we spend billions occupying Iraq and Afghanistan for year (eventually decades), but we can't send a few planes to fly over Libya to keep a dictator from bombing his countrymen. We can lay off public employees who do vital jobs, but we can't ask multibillionaires for an extra couple thousand to pay for services we all use.

We can spend hundreds of hours debating things endlessly in our legislative halls, but we can't spend ten minutes passing the most mundane budgetary law. We can cause mass panic with trumped up accounts of tsunamis, but we can't educate our people about what to do in a real disaster. We, as a nation, can bullshit endlessly, but we can't take a moment to think about what we're saying.

We've become a nation of 12 year olds.

Sudden panic over nuclear power

The unfortunate partial melt down of Nuclear reactors in Japan has provoked the expected knee-jerk reactions back here. The people in Washington who get paid to talk are all chatty about rethinking our nuclear plans. Now, I'm sure some senators will get up and vote against any new nuclear plants.

No energy source is without risk, from coal to oil to nukes. Short of covering every square inch of the US with wind farms, wind isn't going to supply our needs, and solar isn't ready to pick up all the slack, if it will ever be.

The issue isn't black or white. It's not build nuclear power plants everywhere or nowhere. It's a matter of thinking about where you build them. Earthquake fault lines, in low coastal areas prone to tsunamis, at the foot of active volcanoes are among the least desirable places for them. Cautious planning and construction, along with continuing research into storage of spent radioactive material, will make nuclear power safe enough for us to use.

What the hell; we can always just turn off all the lights.

Natural disasters

Often people search for either meaning or some pattern in natural disasters, often attributing them to human action or some divine punishment.

The relationship between disasters and humans come in three varieties. There are the ones we are responsible for. If we channel a river and then build in the flood plain, when there's a good rain and the river comes up, we cause our ill-conceived building to flood.

There are disasters that are a hybrid of human and nature. Pumping CO2 into the atmosphere causes climate change, which, through a chain of activity, can make hurricanes, natural occurrences, more intense, thus causing more damage.

Then there are disasters that have nothing whatsoever to do with humans, such as the huge earthquake that hit Japan. In those cases, the earth does what it does, and it has nothing to do with us. We aren't all that important.  

Panic in Watsonville

I've always wanted to go to Norway and see the migration of the lemmings, where then swarm to the edge of the bluffs and often plunge into the sea. I haven't made it yet, but I saw the next best thing. The recent earthquake in Japan caused a tsunami warning, actually more of an advisory along our coast. People who lived along the three sea level neighborhoods were advised to go to higher ground to avoid possible problems from a projected 2-3 foot tsunami.

It did come, and the ocean retreated and than washed in again and up the beach. It didn't inundate the beachfront streets. However, in Watsonville, over three miles from the beach, a beach which is backed by 30 foot sand dunes, thousands of people crowded the streets, stopping traffic for miles, in a effort to get up the hill. Some went as far as Hollister, almost 30 miles inland. At most of the schools perhaps 10 percent of the students showed up. I can only guess about the businesses that tried to open without their employees.

I doubt that a herd of sheep would have acted this way.