Saw this clip of Stephen Colbert with Gloria Steinam and Jane Fonda baking apple pie. This is so totally beyond awesome, that words fail me in describing its awesomeness.
Especially the part where Fonda kisses Colbert the first time.
Enjoy.
This is an interesting scenario, Trent Lott who lost his Mississippi home in Katrina is having a difficult time with State Farm. And so he is taking up a very public fight in the Senate against the insurance industry.
Obviously, insurance has been a states issue, but it is interesting to see Lott on the attack here. I am a little torn on this specific issue but I think I am eager to see Lott take this all the way, and what role ultimately the federal government will have to play here.
Insurance companies are not necessarily evil, but there is an interesting tension with respect to public policy and urban planning. The one analysis I have heard that seems to make sense is that along the Gulf Coast insurance rates were too low. The consequence to this has been that it has not led to responsible development practices. Much of the wetlands and natural buffers that mediate storm surges have been over developed. This is in no small part due to the fact that insurance premiums have not provided the proper disincentives for reckless sprawl and development. Bailouts and taxpayer mediation of insurance company risk have created some of the conditions that allow too much development in relatively high risk zones. An interesting consequence of Lott’s push might be that it puts sufficient pressure on insurance companies to raise premiums enough to dramatically alter developmental practices along the gulf coast. Regardless of Trent Lott, I suspect insurance companies are already moving this direction in hurricane zones. Ultimately, this could prove to be a boon to the environmental wetlands in the region. This is likely to serve a two fold benefit. More native species habitat, and better long term protection against hurricanes that are virtually guaranteed with the trends in global warming.
In the Northwest we have to be wary of the Lahar threat posed by our volcanic mountains. Avoiding gratuitous development in these Lahar zones will be a crucial component for avoiding catastrophe. And this is why Ron Sims’ proposals for the Orting Bridge makes a lot of sense. However, I would also suggest that the state insurance commission should be on the lookout against insurance premiums that might make for gratuitous development patterns in Lahar zones.
And I suppose this is another argument for opposing the I-933 inititiave on the Washington State ballot that is being fronted by property rights zealots who have no tolerance for growth management policies.
It is predictable that the theocons are out in full force blaming Clinton for North Korea. However, It is beyond shameful to see John McCain doing the same thing to score points with his offbase base. With this single act McCain has abolished any respect I had for him. It demonstrates that McCain is not committed to getting results in North Korea. The buck certainly doesn’t stop at any of the stations the “straight talk express” rolls into.
Ok I will admit that mixed metaphor was a touch tortured, no pun intended.
But as I see it, the current administration needs to get out more and read their bible for some sage advice. Particularly this:
Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.
It is the opinion of this lowly blogger, not following the above advice is the source of our problems with North Korea today. Clinton had more humility in his approach towards foreign relations. He understood that getting people to the table and talking is what is most important. Even James Baker, with his snake oil salesman charm, admits as much. And it is with sublime irony that Bush in 2000 pretended to profess as much when he said the following in the 2000 debates:
If we’re an arrogant nation, they’ll resent us. If we’re a humble nation, but strong, they’ll welcome us. And it’s — our nation stands alone right now in the world in terms of power, and that’s why we have to be humble.
But the reality is that the current administration only seems to respect power and have portrayed a prideful arrogance towards other nations, especially North Korea.
The argument the right seems to make is that Clinton’s policy towards North Korea is the only reason we are in the mess we are in today. Somehow, getting the North Koreans to the table and having weapons inspectors in the nation were harmful. The fallacious notion in all this is that the Clinton policy of engaged negotiations would be indefinite. It is certainly true that North Korea has failed to keep up their end of the bargin. But it is wishful thinking and distraction for the right to suggest that the Clinton/Gore team would have continued these policies in the face of egregious bad faith on the part of North Koreans. All options are always on the table, including military ones, even if we say they are not. At the very least under Clinton we had a policy where we were able to gain visibility into the affairs of North Korea. Now we are having to second guess on how many nuclear weapons and how successful their tests are.
The problem here is a prideful arrogance. The current administration seems to be “guided by the beauty of our weapons”. Apologies to Mr. Cohen. The internal logic of the theocons is that they seem to believe that they can actually win a nuclear war. So it really doesn’t matter much if North Korea develops weapons because we will rain fire down on them if they use them. And if that doesn’t work out. Oh well we are doing the work of Jesus for him by casting the earth in fire before the scheduled apocalypse.
This seems to be the only explanation I can find that explains the lack of urgency with respect to North Korea that the current administration holds compared to the Clinton administration. All there seems to be is finger pointing and not results.
Of course, lest I be thought of as a partisan hack, I must mention that it was under Clinton’s watch that Pakistan proliferated and successfuly detonated a nuclear weapon. This was and remains unacceptable.
The main problem is that weapons are big business and all other considerations seem to fall by the wayside in light of this fact. As Dr. Helen Caldicott points out in her book The New Nuclear Danger:
America is a nation that spends only six cents out of every dollar on educating its children and four cents on health care for every fifty cents it spends on the military-industrial complex. Overall, the Pentagon’s 310 billion dollars per year dwarfs the 44.5 billion dollars for the education department and 20.3 billion dollars for the National Institutes of Health.
Globally the annual military expenditure stands at 780 billion dollars. The total amount required to provide global health care, eliminate starvation and malnutrition, provide clean water and shelter for all, remove land mines, eliminate nuclear weapons, stop deforestation, prevent global warming, ozone depletion and acid rain, retire the paralyzing debt of developing nations, prevent soil erosion, produce safe, clean energy, stop overpopulation, and eliminate illiteracy is only one third that amount — 237.5 billion dollars.
And it is not even a funny irony that the current administration swept into power running a campaign on extensive education reforms, and we find ourself facing huge deficits, endless war, and spiraling out of control nuclear proliferation with Iran and North Korea.
The time is now for results.
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