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blogging at the speed of life
Sometimes it’s a very tough thing to do to blog consistently, and as I’ve shown over the past few months I’m quite poor at it. It seems when you blog at the speed of life the number of blog posts works in an inverse proportion to the amount of free time I have. Who have thought it? Anyways, I have today and tomorrow off (well I left work early today, and batman premiers tomorrow, so I’ll be sleeping all day waking up at 4 PM and then going to stand in line) so life is at a standstill for me. Thus I am able to post a few quick thoughts before things start to pick up again.
Iran
First, it seems that the Bush administration is backing down from its previous condition that it will not talk to Iran unless if fully quits its nuclear program. (link) Our third highest ranking diplomat (how do you rank diplomats anyways?) will be meeting with an Iranian envoy (and other nations) on Saturday. This coming after Iran test fired their new long rang missiles capable of hitting Israeli targets, so I’m going to guess the two events are related.
I see this going one of two ways… It can turn into a foreign policy victory for the US (Iran agree’s it stop nuclear proliferation), and show that preconditions are not needed to diplomatically resolve issues. Or the talks can fail to produce results and open the door for the next President (or the current one) to say that diplomacy does not work and live war is the only solution to the disengagement of the Iranian nuculear program.
With the sucess of the North Korea anti-nuke campaign acheived through talks rather than force, it is my deepest hope that the same can be acheived here, and if we do reach such a point, we need to take a look at all the other “unstable” countries who carry around nukes (cough Israel, Pakistan, India) and furthur deconstruct and destroy our own minutemen nuclear brigade. I’m doubtful that these latter actions will happen as it seems that our Big Stick policy is firmly implanted in our heads, but we shall hope for the future.
Oil and such
So the news that oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens is throwing in with those crazy environmentalists by building the worlds largest wind farm, with enough energy to power 1,000,000 homes. Yes, One Million Homes. (Link), thats a pretty good sounding chunk of renewable energy. At a 6 billion dollar price tag there is a chance that the deal could fall through, but the news that an oil tycoon is seeing the potential of renewable energy is great news indeed.
Mass Transit (and a wag of the finger to my state)
So, while CNN reports on the massive increases in the number of mass transit in other cities and states nationwide (link), in a straw poll placed in yesterdays primaries in Georgia, the expansion of our Mass Transit system (MARTA) was shot down. The vote was split deeply along party lines, from what I heard on the local news last night Republicans shot it down by a 55 to 45 percent margin, while the democrats voted in favor by 70 to 30 percent (note: more Republicans turned out that Democrats). It’s a travesty that the ninth largest state in the US has such a pathetic mass transit system. The good news from the vote is that actual percentage difference was much closer to 50/50 than when the straw poll had been set up several times prior, perhaps an official November poll question will yield different results.
a couple thoughts
You may have missed it, but Bush talked about high prices on both food and oil in a news conference out on the front lawn today. He made a few good points, and a few poor one.
The most striking point he made was that we should buy from LOCAL farmers, I wholly and totally support this idea (but I’ve yet to put it in full practice…).
But he also talked about Ethanol and touted it as a solution to the fuel crisis, but I think that idea has been sufficiently debunked. The usage of corn based Ethanol as an alternative fuel source is, in large part, a cause for the current food problems throughout the world. He also stated that we need to be exploring oil sources at home, or in other words, we need to be drilling for oil in Alaska.
I haven’t really formed a full opinion on drilling in Alaska, I’m leaning against it right now, but I could be swayed the other way if I read a compelling argument for it. I do think that we need to be exploring alternate (alternative) fuel vehicles, not just hybrid vehicles. Drilling for more oil is not going to solve the problem in the end, but lessening our dependence on oil (not just foreign oil) via alternative sources of fuel.
But I’m really only speaking what has already been said, and I’m likely only “preaching to the choir,” I just wanted to give a few quick thoughts on his news conference today.
He did make one other point (just now- the conference is still going on, I wanted to essentially live blog it because I doubt that there will be a full transcript) about how hard it is to fight against men who strap bombs to their chest and blow up innocents to achieve their objectives, I guess there’s a big difference from dropping bombs from the sky that kill innocents.
I might edit this as the conference continues, but as of now… that’s all folks.
Ok, EDIT: Just read that the Indian Taxi Fund is already at $1000 (in less than a week), and there is one more spot available for the free* Red Cowboy Design job. Also, still looking for that donor match if anyone’s willing, contact me via email.