For as long as humanity has existed, but until now, the Earth has been for all practical purposes, infinite in terms of its resources. The volume of air in the atmosphere is enormous. The volume of water in the oceans is enormous. The number and varieties of animals and plants in this biosphere, the amount of oil, silver or wood — these quantities are astronomical numbers and these resources have basically seemed infinite to previous generations. That is a primary reason why the United States of America has risen to power in the world so quickly. Vast resources. The Earth is big. But…

These resources aren’t infinite anymore. The number and quality of fish in the world’s oceans is declining. The air has been getting pumped full of so much stuff for the last 100 years that its quality is changing. We will run out of oil someday not so long from now and we will probably run out of other things, too. We have lived in a very nice little world where you could just dig up new resources and those days are coming to an end.

One obvious reason is population growth. There are getting to be quite a lot of people on this planet. The other is that each person, on average, uses more resources now than previous generations. So we have essentially something like exponential growth going on in terms of resource usage.

This can’t go on.

Now let me say on the other hand, there is no shortage of mass or energy in the universe. These quantities are not at all scarce. The sun is pouring an ungodly amount of energy on the Earth every day. There are kinetic energies in the wind and surf. I believe that we will harness new energy sources to the degree that energy will be nearly free. There’s tons of energy out there in a lot of different forms.

I believe that we should be extremely careful with the biosphere. It is super critical that our biosphere be healthy and diverse. It is not worth the risk to be concerned only about short term things like jobs or the economy when it is possible, if not probable, that very habitability of our planet could be at stake.

Conservative love to laugh this off like “Mr. Hippy Trippy gettin’ all ‘we gotta love the earth, man’ on us. ” I am not talking about hippy-trippy I’m talking about science. You can do the math and take the data on these resource issues and we are beginning to have a measurable impact on these previously considered “infinite” resources like the atmosphere and the oceans. We aren’t in Kansas anymore. Regardless of whether you agree it is happening yet or not, it’s happening. Let’s be super smart about how we handle it.

How about not-this:

“President Bush strongly opposes any treaty or policy that would cause the loss of a single American job…,” said James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

Some of you have probably seen the comparison between the 2004 Presidential Election results map and the map of the Free States and Slave States, before the Civil War. I’ve reproduced them for you here. I do not take any credit for recognizing this and I thank whomever noticed it originally.

I am struck by this comparison mainly because I have been thinking about what it means to be a liberal and what it means to be a conservative. At dictionary.com we see that liberal means:

“Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry.”

Conservative, on the other hand, means:

“Favoring traditional views and values; tending to oppose change.”

So, by definition, one side embraces change and one side opposes it. At face value there is not an intrinsic better or worse view of the two but in practice, in terms of the history of this country, there certainly is. One side fought for slavery and the other side opposed it. One side fought for women’s right to vote and the other side opposed it. One side fights for civil rights, for minorities including gays, and one side fights against it. When you say you are against change you are saying everything is perfect right now, or at least that change would take us further from perfect, and this is what is so god damn perplexing about the reelection of George W. Bush. 51% of the people in this country think a change away from George W. Bush would be a bad thing. They apparently are perfectly satisfied with how things are now. That leaves 48% of us wondering what the hell they are thinking.

As has been pointed out, what they are thinking is “God, guns and gays”. They love the first two and hate the third one. Apparently they think that a “culture of life” means executing doctors who perform abortions and not being overly concerned about the 100,000 civilian casualties in Iraq. Apparently they think that Jesus would encourage us to deny rights and compassion to our homosexual brothers and sisters. Apparently they think that fear and bigotry are important American values.

Now I know that there are plenty of conservatives who are not religious. They see themselves as fiscal conservatives and don’t think we should reward failure in this country by having vast government safety nets. Many of them are pro-choice and support gay rights. To these people I would say two things. 1. The Republican party is no longer the party of fiscal conservatism. See my previous rant, The Myth of Republican Fiscal Conservatism. Certainly it is hard or impossible to argue that Bush is a fiscal conservative. The libertarian notion that government should not reward failure is also not fiscally conservative. Poor, sick people cost our economy much more than middle-class healthy people. It may seem counter-intuitive at first, but we cannot grow our economy if we leave a large percentage of our population to poverty and sickness. Like him or not, Paul Wellstone said it perfectly: “We all do better when we all do better.” 2. I think it is entirely non-sensical for fiscal conservative/social liberals to support the Republican party because they agree with a small percentage of the platform and doom us all to the radical religious extremism that now characterizes the party. Single-issue politics, whether based on small government, gun ownership or abortion, are irrational and dangerous.

The red states in this country are completely misguided by their so-called religious values. In these states you could probably easily make being homosexual a crime punishable by law. You could probably pass referendums that set civil rights for minorities back by decades. You could easily pass ballot measures making Christianity the state religion of the United States of America. This is what appalls the blue states and the rest of the free world about this election. It is what Thomas Jefferson called the tyranny of the majority. We are now being held hostage by the least tolerant, least educated, least compassionate and most self-righteous 51% of the people of this country and it is completely understandable why the blue states and the rest of the world are scared shitless.

This election season is just hilarious. Both sides are constantly accusing the other side of being undemocratic. Both sides are doing childish things like stealing lawn signs. Both sides are constantly slandering the other side. Both sides are arming their lawyers to fight over the results. Both sides are trying to get their people to vote and stop the other side’s people from voting. Look, folks, if we really all agree that we want a democracy we should lose these constant double-standards. I really believe that most people would rather have their candidate win unfairly than have the other guy win fairly. That is undemocratic. Silencing people’s opinions is undemocratic. Constantly assuming that the other side is cheating is undemocratic. Treating the other side as if they are unpatriotic is undemocratic. In this way Ann Coulter and Michael Moore are equally guilty. Now let’s hear from one right-winger with balls that agrees with this! Let’s stop hating each other over this shit.

I am a Wellstone liberal. I think Paul Wellstone was the last guy with balls in Washington. His book, The Conscience of a Liberal is incredible and a must read for liberals and conservatives alike. I know without a doubt that Paul Wellstone would be supporting John Kerry in this election. While I think Ralph Nader is right on just about everything he says, the math is unforgiving: Ralph Nader is unelectable. I wish that were not the case, but it is. A vote for Nader is a vote for idealism that will give us four more years of the worst president we have ever seen in the history of the United States.

Now I liked John Kerry long before he was running for president. He is extremely smart and he is very good at policy. Some people don’t like that he is a politician and speaks like a politician but we have a government, by definition, made up of politicians. As refreshing as straight talkers like Jesse Ventura may seem at times, they are wildly ineffective in our political system. John Kerry is very good at public policy and will be very good as the American president.

While John Kerry is not half the man that Paul Wellstone was, he is twice the man that George W. Bush is. John Kerry runs from the word “liberal” even as Paul Wellstone embraced it. John Kerry makes decisions with intense political calculation — Paul Wellstone followed his heart and trusted that we would see the political truth behind it. John Kerry has a lot to learn from Paul Wellstone. I hope he does.

John Kerry is the best choice for president because he is a little bit like Paul Wellstone, a little bit like Ralph Nader and almost nothing like George W. Bush. A sincerely hope that the American people reject the politics of fear and embrace the politics of reason.

As much as the Republican/Rove machine wants to spin it otherwise, Bush looked like a fucking idiot in the first debate. He slurred his words, looked like a deer in the headlights, left long uncomfortable pauses, was repetitious and pissy, and in general looked like someone on the defense who was getting hit too hard too often to the point of blacking out. All hail the idiot king!

If these idiots keep saying that Kerry is a flip-flopper and hasn’t articulated his platform, I hope the undecided voters see through these shallow tactics. Over and over this administration seems to think if you say it is true it magically is true. It’s not true of the economy, it’s not true of the Iraq situation and it’s not true of Kerry’s positions. They wildly underestimate the intelligence of the American people and unless you are stubbornly anti-Kerry you can’t be oblivious to their constant spin machine.

Yahoo reports:

The House passed legislation Thursday that would prevent the Supreme Court from ruling on whether the words “under God” should be stricken from the Pledge of Allegiance.

Fox News reports:

Across America, many local government meetings begin with public prayers but a Tampa city council meeting recently started out with members leaving because of the invocation.

Atheist Michael Harvey was about to give the invocation at a Tampa City Council meeting when some members became angry. A debate continued for nearly 30 minutes until three members walked out.

One of the more irrational people at the Tampa City Council meeting said: “[I shouldn’t have to] listen to an atheist sit here and tell me what I should or should not believe in.”

What a frickin’ joke. In the former story, the House is trampling on the separation of powers and in the latter case we are showing that only certain religions are allowed to get the stage at meetings and football games and the like. Actually, there is exactly one religion allowed at these events and it is Christianity.

We non-believers have to listen to Christians telling us what to believe all day every day. It’s about time we got a chance to invoke some reason at the city council meeting rather than listen to the shallow mythology of a simplistic book that has been twisted to support the most oppressive ideologies of our time. I have nothing against Jesus, it’s radical Christians that I have a problem with. Keep your fucking religion out of my government.

Thank you Michael Moore for writing this. One of the best points:

The polls are wrong. They are all over the map like diarrhea. On Friday, one poll had Bush 13 points ahead — and another poll had them both tied. There are three reasons why the polls are b.s.: One, they are polling “likely voters.” “Likely” means those who have consistently voted in the past few elections. So that cuts out young people who are voting for the first time and a ton of non-voters who are definitely going to vote in THIS election. Second, they are not polling people who use their cell phone as their primary phone. Again, that means they are not talking to young people…You are being snookered if you believe any of these polls.

You may be a freak and a commercialist, not unlike the nutso, professional idiot Ann Coulter, but on the opposite end of the spectrum, but you are often right nonetheless. Bush is losing. He may get trounced.

This is almost humorous to watch. The Republicans viciously attack John Kerry throughout their convention but whenever John Kerry criticizes Bush they act like “poor John Kerry needs to resort to negative attacks”. Further, they act like the Bush agenda is nothing but success after success and that John Kerry has not articulated his platform. None of this is true! Even if I try as hard as I can to pretend I am a Republican, I could not (yet) call the war in Iraq a success. There is still way too much volatility and the place is not secure. I think Saddam Hussein fooled us by telling his army to basically disappear into the citizenry. We could have violence for years in terms of civil war, an extremist Islamic state or a military government like we had under Hussein. In terms of protecting our interests in the Middle East, the current situation may or may not be to our long term advantage.

What else? Oh yeah, the economy. Well, not exactly the economy I’d want to hook my election wagon up to. There is no proof that tax cuts are helping the economy. Job creation is negative. The market is tepid. The national debt is soaring again. Where is the good news here — it could have been worse? Is Bush running under a “it could have been worse” slogan?

Now throw in the social issues. The Republican platform wants to deny all rights to same-sex couples. No hospital visitation, no estate planning, no shared insurance, nothing. They want to make abortion illegal. They want to prevent stem cell research. They want to teach creation in the schools. The want to abandon the UN. They want to have an international policy of preemption — attack first and ask questions later, just like we did in Iraq. (Oops, it turns out Iraq posed no threat to the United States.)

Bush has nothing great to run on. As John Stewart of the Daily Show says, it’s like the Republicans are saying “Give us 4 more years so we can continue the work we never started.” Bush uses the past tense to describe his accomplishments, like it is all completely solved: we left no child behind! we got prescription drugs taken care of! we made the world safer! None of this is true.

So Bush lashes out with the tried and true Republican tactics: he’s gonna raise taxes! he’s wobbly! he has no message. None of this is true. John Kerry is experienced, intelligent, capable, proven and twice the man Bush will ever be. He is not the most charismatic person in the world. He doesn’t speak to the heart as well as Clinton or Reagan. On issues, though, he is almost always right on. He is right about this stuff and given the chance his ideas will work.

This election is still very close and I still stand behind my prediction that Kerry will win.

Remember: if you don’t vote you are voting for 4 more years of Bush.