Edged in Blue

The City of San Francisco is letting voters decide if they want to name a sewage plant in honor of George W. Bush.

Personally, I’m all for renaming Mill Creek for him.

The Jib Jab boys are back, like cicadas, only once every four years. Not nearly as good as “This Land Is Your Land” with Kerry and Bush, but still funny.

It’s no secret I’d like to see the gasoline-powered engine head the way of the buggy whip.  And while I continue to call $4 a gallon gas little more than consumer rape (Try the $8 a gallon they pay in Europe.  I’m surprised there hasn’t been a few civil wars over that yet.), I am glad to see the auto industry pushing harder to build more hybrids, flex-fuel engines, electric cars, and…  Dare I say it?…  Hydrogen?  (GM plans to shift its hydrogen fuel cell program into high gear sooner rather than later.) 

But all that’s the long-term.  Even assuming GM’s first fuel cell vehicle goes into limited production by 2012, it will be in limited numbers until the price falls in line with current technology.  In the meantime…

I keep hearing the same rank stupidity whenever domestic drilling is brought up.  “It won’t produce anything for 3-10 years.  And it won’t drop prices.”

Um…  Can I have whatever you’re smoking?  Sounds like some really whack stuff.

First off, not producing anything for 3-10 years is not an intelligent objection, let alone a legitimate one.  3-10 years is actually much later than we need domestic oil.  Far be it from me to praise George W. Bush, the Warren Harding of his generation, but George got it right when he lifted the executive ban on offshore drilling.  Let’s be honest here.  What makes the people who object to this think the Saudis, Iranians, and Venezuelans are going to be any friendlier in 3-10 years?  And what good will come of staying with them when gasoline hits $5 or $6 a gallon?  Yes, we need to get off crude oil, but it ain’t happening in the next 3-10 years.  On the other hand, maintaining the status quo while we wait for the auto industry, British Petroleum, and Shell to change over to ethanol, hydrogen, and electric is inviting a few more planes into the upper floors of some very tall buildings.

Assuming the airlines are still in business to supply the hijackers with planes by then.

To the latter point, explain to me how not having to ship oil by tanker across multiple oceans - already proven to be an environmental risk greater than drilling itself - is going to run up the price of oil.  It’s not.  Here’s the problem with that theory.  Even if oil still goes higher, at least domestic supplies will keep the profits here.  The problem is we’ve been sending money overseas to people who don’t like us much, and people we don’t like much, either.  You tell me what’s cheaper:  A few rigs off California?  Or the Saudis turning off the taps.

At some point in the next decade or so, America and Europe are going to turn off the spigots, or at least turn them way down.  At that point, no one will care what the Middle East or Venezuela thinks of the rest of the planet, other than…

“Hey, buddy.  Got a bite to eat?  We’re starving over here.”

Until then, we need to bring the oil home and stop pissing off the rest of the world because we’re too self-righteous to drill our own.

I’ve embarked on a project to read a biography of every president of the United States, including the obscure ones famous more for their facial hair than their accomplishments. So far, I’ve read Edmund Morris’s Theodore Rex and David McCullough’s John Adams. I’ve come away with new respect for Fox News. Their more outrageous assertions (those not spewed by Sean Hannity, anyway) are pretty tepid compared to some of the outright libel printed about Adams and Jefferson in the early days of the nation or perpetrated by Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst.

What I’ve also noticed is that it’s easy to pick out a relatively objective biography of a president up to about Nixon, and even then, some even-handed accounts are coming out about Tricky Dick. In fact, I would have to say Ronald Reagan is the most recent president you could find a biography about without a large amount of political ax grinding. Oh, sure, you have to hunt for one that doesn’t make him out to be either evil incarnate or a Conservative God to whom Rush Limbaugh sacrifices ex-wives.

You can’t read about a sitting president objectively. It’s not possible. While I wouldn’t put money on the current George Bush being the Second Coming of Harry Truman (for starters, too rich. Truman’s net worth in 2008 dollars was less than mine.), there is the cold, hard fact that history is going to need time to make its own judgment.

Similarly, I’ve yet to hear anything about Bill Clinton that doesn’t make him out to be either a treasonous serial rapist or the greatest president since Lincoln. No happy (or in George W. Bush’s case, unhappy) medium.

So why not George HW Bush, aka Bush 41, Bush the Elder, Bush the Wiser, or The Man Who Should Have Pulled Out? Considering the elder Bush’s presidency was largely finishing up Ronald Reagan’s paperwork and bringing in the Cold War for a soft landing, one might think it possible to give a thoughtful, objective overview of his time in office after 15 years.

Thanks to his son, everything Bush, Sr, did is going to be regarded in light of what Bush, Jr, did. Even if George W. Bush had the most successful presidency in history, his taking office a mere eight years after his father colors and shadows any accomplishments or mistakes made between 1989 and 1991. John Quincy Adams had the luxury of taking office 25 years after his father and with a different party. Benjamin Harrison, remembered largely for being Grover Cleveland’s seat warmer, was the grandson of a president, and one who promptly got sick and died after taking the oath. But W? He started out in his daddy’s shadow and ended up eclipsing him.

Granted, no account of a president’s life can be wholly objective. Historians have agendas like anyone else, and everyone - even me, who says he has no party or ideological loyalty - has an agenda. It’s human nature. But the farther a president fades into history, the more we have to rely on their papers, letters (and someday emails and texts), and records and less on the media’s usually questionable account of the day’s events.

So who’s the most recent president you think you can read about without feeling you’re being lectured by some pompous ass like Hannity or Michael Moore?

Once upon a time, there was a US territory called “The Panama Canal Zone,” so named because America was running the canal instead of Panama.  And prior to 1953, an American born there was not eligible to run for president.

Once such individual is John McCain.  Oops.

Wanna bet nothing comes of this, but would have if it were Barack Obama?

Actually, nothing will come of this because the GOP fears having to watch Mitt Romney try to sound black again.

But if Barack pulls another boner like the FISA compromise, at least we’ll have a president who will finally get those damn kids off the White House lawn.

Dear Mr. Kristol:

Recently, in the Paper of Record, you wrote a piece that I may be late to the bandwagon in rebutting.  However, I finally did run across your column in June 23 New York Times while in the restroom at work yesterday.

It was a good thing I was already sitting down considering what it made me do.  Your column decried MoveOn.org’s most recent ad about a woman worried her toddler son may have to serve in Iraq because of President McCain’s policies.  Here’s what got my blood boiling and bowels moving:

I’m not persuaded. Having slandered a distinguished general officer, MoveOn has now moved on to express contempt for all who might choose to serve their country in uniform.

So if a parent worries that their son will be involved in an endless war, which, you must admit, your candidate is not doing a good job persuading us we won’t be, it’s contempt for those who serve in uniform.

Mr. Kristol, you are so full of what I was leaving in the toilet when I read your column that it’s a wonder you’re not wearing diapers.  Frankly, I resent your comment.  I am a new stepdad.  And while my wife and I doubt AJ will serve in the military (He’s probably better informed about the war than you are.), we (and likely AJ’s father) would be proud if he chose to do so.  It represents an opportunity I myself was denied when I was younger.

But I am scared that, if he has to pursue that option, he might very well die by a roadside bomb in a never-ending war.  Sure, John McCain says it would be more like our presence in Germany or Japan.  Any thinking person, however, knows that the culture of that part of the world would never tolerate such a presence.  Any parent with a child old enough to serve as part of that presence (meaning even some parents who haven’t been born yet) has a damned good reason to worry.  We’re not safer for this war.  My day job has me moving from between two major federal buildings to this city’s tallest building by 2011.  All this war has done is paint a Manhattan-sized target on my back.

So tell me, Mr. Kristol.  Is being a good parent unpatriotic?  If so, I’ll put my patriotism up against yours any day.

See, I love my country enough to criticize it, even if people like you can’t handle that.  You merely love your party enough to keep your nose planted in its backside.

That’s not patriotism.  That’s crass ideology.

The Saudis are demanding OPEC cut its prices, saying that the current price of oil is too high.  Meanwhile, it’s Arctic drilling vs. alternative fuel in Congress while Americans tighten their belts as $5/gallon gas becomes a possibility.

Sure, when their biggest customers were still buying SUV’s and taking long trips, the price of crude was fine.  When they start talking about drilling their own oil, burning less gas, and maybe putting something else in the tank, suddenly, those prices are outrageous and unfair.

Too bad Putin…  er, um, I mean Medvedev…  isn’t friendlier toward the US.  Run a pipeline under the Bering Sea into Alaska, and suddenly, gas is $1.80 a gallon again.  Right now, that would be an expensive price cut with the way the Kremlin uses oil.

Look, it’s time to write off one of those places we don’t want to drill, at least in the short term.  The nation can’t afford not to.  But it’s also time to kiss the gas-powered motor goodbye.  No, I don’t subscribe to the peak oil theory (although we will eventually run out), but wouldn’t it be great to be wrong about that and not have it matter?  “Well, gee, we only need it for plastic, and we’ve got more than enough for that.”

We’ve sat on our hands for too long.  We can’t afford to any longer.

2008 brought us a year when a black man won a major party’s nomination for president.  It brought us a year when a woman made a serious run at that same nomination and, to the surprise of quite a few people, came up short.

2008 promises to bring the two final candidates together in the same setting to discuss…  yanno…  issues?

There are some who decry this.  There are some who whine that the candidates violated party loyallty to reach across the aisle.  Let me just say this about party loyalty:  Unless you’re actually running for office or working for someone who is, party loyalty is for losers.  George Washington hated it.  John Adams hated it.  Believe it or not, neither of them were Federalists, just most of their cabinets.  (And John wasn’t shy with the pink slip when someone played the party card with him.)

2008 made me actually give a damn about politics again.

John McCain, a man gracious enough to tolerate the Warren Harding of his generation to raise funds for him, has kissed enough babies with full diapers to get the GOP nom. Barack Obama has narrowly defeated the first viable female candidate for president and is seriously considering her as his running mate.

Now McCain wants Obama to join him in 10 town hall-style debates between now and the election in November.  “What a welcome change it would be were presidential candidates in our time to treat each other and the people they seek to lead with respect and courtesy as they discussed the great issues of the day, without the empty sound bites and media-filtered exchanges that dominate our elections,” he says.

Barry, I say go for it.  If you’re serious about change, if you’re serious about doing business differently, you need to take McCain up on this.  I know this is salt in the wounds of people who live for partisan rancour and ideological chest beating, but so what?  Those people have wrecked America.  If they don’t like it…

Well, it’s your turn to whine about moving to Canada.  Just do us a favor.

Follow through.

(Sorry, Canada.  We have to send the True Believers of both colors somewhere.  If it makes you feel better, send them to Newfoundland.)

Hillary Clinton will concede.

Finally.

She reminds me of a comedian at last night’s Clash of the Comics at the Newport Funny Bone.  During the Clash, you get five minutes.  If you go over your five minutes, they cut off your mike and start playing music over you.  Like the comedian, Hillary looks a little pissed off.

Yeah, but I paid my money to see grandpa and the black guy with the funny name go at it.  So off the stage, Hill.  You are not this year’s Last Comic Standing.