In case you forgot you won the election last Nov. Why are you letting the Radical & Angry Right & the Sissy Blue Dogs (their own name for them not mine) drive the debate? The Radical Right never changes positions. They are the party of No; of hate & anger; of slander & smear. They are the party of victims (mostly of their own actions) & the party of the oppressed (in their own skewed logic). They are the party of I Got Mine, FU. The party of I Got Mine & I want yours & yours & yours & I'm entitled to his & hers even though I stole more than I earned. The party of name calling & labels. The party of Shoot First & Ask Questions Later. The party of secrecy, deception & need to know.
The self-anointed Sissy Blue Dogs . . . I don't know what their problem is. They were happy enough to ride the coattails of success. To agree with campaign rhetoric & align themselves with a winning party. If they weren't so worried about remaining in office through the next election cycle, they could give meaning to their words. If they get voted out of office in the next election cycle, it won't be because they delivered. It will be because they showed themselves to be just another pol, eager to win & not so eager to deliver or offend big campaign contributers.
If the party of Yes We Can waffles on the centerpiece of the 50 state campaign; does not deliver on campaign promises, there will be plenty of disappointment & blame to go around. I don't think it is even reasonable or helpful to adopt any old health care legislation just to get something on the books without offending the Radical & Angry, & BTW Minority Right or Fat & Bloated Insurance companies. Depending on banks to do the right thing with billions in bailout money has not worked out so well. It is just plain unacceptable to expect that insurance companies will behave any better.
When the Party of No takes offense that a duly elected President wishes to address the nation's youngest citizens in public schools where the majority of children attend & where there is the greatest need for role models & team spirit & the Yes We Can attitude, I guess there's no pleasing them. So why bother?
Organize for America the way you organized your campaign. Git 'er done. The real Blue Dogs & Red Dogs & dogs Left, Right & Center that helped get you elected are still watching . . . & waiting.
OpalK9 OTJ
As is often the case our in public discourse, the individuals or groups most adversely affected by someone else's bad behavior are never asked for an opinion. Such is the case with Michael Vick.
I think I can call you Joe. You're an infinitely more affable fellow that your predecessor. You don't even wanna know what I called him. Anyway, Joe, RE: Solicitation for ideas to ensure recovery/bailout funds spent wisely, I have some suggestions.1. put the Cash Cow on the extinct species list & leave it there. Cash Cow benefit a very few while exploiting a great many. Hardly democratic.2. If a project is growth inducing or speculative in nature . . . it's a cash cow. Taxpayers don't need it. If a few speculators or casino operators put a pile of money into something betting on the come, too bad. If a project requires plan amendments, significant & irreversible cumulative impacts, taxpayers don't need it. If a project requires multiple plan & zoning amendments, it's speculative. Taxpayers don't need it. That money can be better spent elsewhere. If a project requires expansion of existing infrastructure, stretching development further into wildlife habitat & over burdening existing urban services, it's growth inducing, speculative. There is plenty of in-fill land for growth & development. There is a standing stock of commercial structures in which to house new or expanding businesses. Heaven knows, there are plenty of vacant residences in all manner of condition. We are overbuilt. It's speculative, growth inducing & there are better ways to spend tax payers dollars.3. If a project contributes to the sustainability of existing urban areas, fine & dandy. If a project relieves traffic congestion, makes roads safer & smarter, ensures the existing standard of living will continue, dandy. Bring it on. If a project contributes to viability of urban areas & reduces further encroachment into wildlife habitat. ducky. If a project sustains existing agricultural land or perhaps even reverts to ag land, fine & dandy. We need to start growing & producing our own food again. In fact, we need to return to the self-reliance & ingenuity that sustained us in the past.
We need some standard for comparison to figure out how well we are doing. We should have drawn urban limit lines around all urban areas 6 months ago. It's not too late to get started. Urban Limit Lines around the perimeter of all urban areas would provide a geographic area in which to assess resources & assets, raw materials & laborl. We've got nowhere to go but up from here.
Sincerely OpalK9 OTJ
Come on, Californians. Are we the Land of the Fruit & the Nuts or what? Are we gonna stand around swooning while Lawmakers & Politicians bicker & squabble, tinker & Twitter & hi-jack the Golden State back to the Stone Age?
Take a look @ this site: www.commonsense4ca.org. Tell them what you think. At least resolve to solve the budget crisis in a fair & sensible manner. Vote early & often.I, 4 1, am kinda tired of CA Apologists Inside the Beltway. CA is not just Hollywood Royalty & 90210, sun & silicone. We gotta lotta assets, resources & infrastructure to work with . . . if decision-makers could get beyond their own personal agenda & parochial bias.
I know what a mess bio-fuel manufacture made in other states. Saw that on my roadtrip last summer. CA's got an abundance of rooftops & sunshine. Put 'em together & whadda ya' got? A statewide solar array ready-made to take 1 state off the grid. No additional encroachment into wildlife habitat. No huge new infrastructure investment. Wind & solar farms are a redundancy we can't afford. Plus manufacture & sale of solar panels = Jobs. Jobs. Jobs. My. That was easy.
CA's gotta lotta car & a lotta outta work auto sales personnel. What with dealerships closing & all. They could be employed mining DMV databases, searching for the oldest cars in the fleet which are eons old & powered by old, old school technology. CA has car crush programs. Charities are begging for dontated cars. Those Old Smokers & Gross Polluters can be replaced with newer used cars or new cars from an inventory that must be given away anyway. Gear up fleet turnover. Create green jobs. Presently common wisdom is jobs, jobs, jobs, not location, location & location. If we can force the turnover of the TV fleet from analog to digital, we can facilitate the turnover of the truck & auto fleet.
USC (go Trojans) is developing a bionic eye to make the blind see again. Do you think the bionic eye will give lawmakers & decision makers new insight? Whatever. Maybe research could focus on battery operated residences. They said rock n rock was a fad. They said the PC was for geeks & gearheads. They said Who wants a Tweet from a Twitter? & yet Twitter is facilitating revolution in Iran. Stranger things than battery operated homes have happened if we just focus & concentrate.
Heretofore, I had taken as an article of faith that CA Curbside Recycling is indeed removing reuseable resources & materials from the wastestream. Given the many, many betrayals of public trust lately revealed, perhaps I shouldn't assume . . . If our junk is merely being shipped off to China or some 3rd World Banana Republic, we better reform recycling cause idea is fine. CA better work out reciprocal arrangements with industries in other states that do the heavy lifting in the recycling arena. Then all our resources, plastic & paper, metal & glass can be accounted for & we aren't wasting anything. Not rocket science.
CA has an emissions trading program developed to comply with federal clean air standards. Presently the program only address smog forming emissions. Wouldn't take much to tweak that model into a national Carbon Cap & Trade Program. CA's budget shortfall & crisis of credit are not derivative of environmental sensibilities. Global Climate Change is real. It's now. & it's expensive to fix. CA's got the model. It's not brain surgery.
I know . . . I'm just a dog. Oughta shut up & mind my own bidness. Oughta quit digging in Mymi's garden too. As long as there's a squirrel or a cat out there, that ain't gonna happen. Besides what's good for humans is good for dogs & other critters. What's good for GM is good for CA is good for the USA. OpalK9 OTJ
Our Govenator may have failed to mention yesterday, upon the occasion of the Presidential visit, that CA has an Air Resources Board, CA Energy Commission, CalEPA, local planning agencies, special districts & coordinating councils & other agencies responsible for cleaning up CA's environment & managing natural resources. Probably because during the 80's when a lot of these agencies came into being he was busy being Hollywood Glitterati & Legend of the Silver Screen.
Be that as it may during the 80's a lot of time & angst was spent attempting to prepare for this New Age of alternative energy sources by requiring residential developments to orient lots so that at least 80% had adequate roofline orientation on which to place solar panels to take advantage of CA's almost limitless sunlight.
Now would be a good time to use the Budgetary Scalpel to forge a new public/private partnership to retrofit existing residences with solar panels. That's a shovel ready project.
Wind & solar farms are fine & dandy & will help reduce our dependence on foreign oil & reduce our carbon footprint. But it is very expensive infrastructure & ignores a resource we already have available - residential rooftops. Wind & solar farms are also centralized power grid structures. People could have more control over their energy needs & resources if their home became an energy generator instead of energy absorbers.
Centralized power grids are also very vulnerable to terrorist tactics & being held hostage by the Enrons & Ken Lays of the world as happened to Californians when CA deregulated the energy industry (mostly at the pleasure of a Republican Governor much in the image of Ronald Reagan).
This is a win/win because: 1. Energy purveyors could reduce the amout of investment required to upgrade infrastructure; 2. People could be employed to manufacture, sell & install solar panels on existing residences (probably a career for a generation); 3. The average home would reduce energy costs per year in orders of magnitude; 4. the resource already exists so there would be little if any additional impact to the environment & other natural resources like wildlife & water resources; 5. we might possibly Zero Sum our carbon footprint in our lifetime; & 6. the CA Model is not applicable only to Sunny CA. But it's a good place to start. OpalK9 OTJ
We should base all future development on a National General Plan. The planning process would begin by drawing an Urban Limit Line along the perimeter of all existing urbanized areas. No new development beyond the Urban Limit Line. There are plenty of in-fill & Revitalization opportunities in all of our urban centers. This would reduce the need to extend already overburdened infrastructure & keep development from further encroaching into habitat necessary for wildlife & for protection of existing development & investment.
The Urban Limit Line should be imposed by the Federal Gov't, perhaps the EPA, along with input from Corp of Engineers & other related planning & environmental agencies. This decision should not be left up to individual states & local jurisdictions which have permitted unchecked growth & cherry-stemming development to create a mish-mash haphazard map of development based mostly upon the whim of large corporations & other wealthy special interest groups. There should then be a 1 year moritorium on all development while the Fed Gov't, EPA, etc, develops the National General Plan Policies & Guidelines.
This would not adversely affect jobs or housing because no jobs are being created now anyway & because the foreclosure rate is greater than the new housing starts. Wouldn't adversely affect state budgets which are in disarray across the country right now anyway.
Similar to EPA legislation of the past, once the National General Plan is adopted as national policy, states & local jurisdictions would have a specific amount of time to develop planning policies, guidelines, strategies & specific plans to come into compliance with the National General Plan.
This is NOT a further expansion of government but rather realisitic & efficient use of existing federal agencies & programs.
If the McCain campaign wants to discuss questionable associations (see link below), then let's talk about the Sen's role in the S&L Debacle of the 1980s. When all was said & done, the net result of a lengthy & costly investigation re: the loss of other people's money was that McCain's buddy, Charles Keating did some time in Club Fed, McCain got a slap on the wrist & 20000 investors never received compensation or bailout for their life savings that tanked in the Keating/McCain Ponzi game.
The footage of McCain weeping before an audience when he perceived his honor questioned by the Bush campaign is a tear-jerker. McCain was not above, however, Swift-Boating a fellow Viet Nam War Hero.
McCain's debate skills are angry & argumentative. His contempt boils below the surface of his forced folksiness. That same contempt & anger is not pretty on his running-mate. And what about her affiliation with a Kenyan Witch Doctor? Sarah Palin ought to check with her peer & fellow Govenor. Even Govenators aren't bullet-proof.
McCain is quick to point fingers & look the other way, duck & deny. Sarah is awfully cute winking & nodding & giving a shout out to the 3rd grade. But white collar crime & conspiracy has ruined more American futures & lives than all terrorist attacks combined.
I know. I know. I'm only a dog. I oughta mind my own bidness & quit sniffing around complex human affairs. But Golly Gosh, Great Todo, I somehow anticipated an honorable campaign from an honorable candidate such as Sen McCain. I just believe the American public, Voters & Taxpayers, deserve the respect of a campaign that focuses on the challenges & issues before them & NOT on Weapons of Mass Distraction, smear & innuendo, phony fears & faux outrage.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081005/ap_on_el_pr/palin_s_words_analysis
Spare us Sen McCain & curb your dog.
OpalK9 OTJ & the Blue Dog Caucus
I don't know who voted for or against the House Bailout Package, but the nation owes the Nay Sayers a debt of gratitude. Now perhaps the Congress can take a deep breath and put together a package that will bail out the average tax payer caught up in the crossfire of partisan politics & failed economic policies. Maybe put some of the good ol' American Yankee Ingenuity & creativity, self-reliance (not self-indulgence) & rugged individualism to work on a package not made of duct tape & WD 40.
I don't know why the rush to bailout in the first place. CA workers & businesses have limped along for 3 months while the legislature dithered & lobbed partisan bombshells over taxpayers heads. CA is still operational however (no thanks to the legislature or the Govenator). Maybe the nation should take a time out before bailout to figure out just who is the least culpable & most vulnerable in this mess long in the making.
How could the Republicana party NOT have known this was coming. The party that argues for family values & against business regulation; the party that was ever vigilant in overseeing the personal failures of the previous presidency seems to have had no time to monitor & adjust for the matters that really make a difference on Main Street. They want less regulation in the Board Room but doesn't mind peeping into bedrooms & classrooms, doctors' offices & scientific laboratories to call a halt to endeavors to which they are personally opposed. OpalK9 OTJ
