STATE OF THE UNION: Chill the Beer and Break out the Popcorn

Chill the beer and break out the popcorn. It’s that time of year again. I’m not referring to Martin Luther King Day, nope. President’s Day, nope. Ground Hog Day, nope. Nope, It’s time for our Dope’s annual State of the Union Address to Congress. Tuesday night. Be sure to tune in for the hilarity as MSNBC is doing all day coverage on Tuesday, pre, present, and post State of the Union Address!!!

You almost have to feel sorry for someone like Bush, who is so defeated, delusional, and in charge of a walking disaster in Iraq. He can’t, with honesty, say much of anything positive about his administration. Bush is our Dope, and we are stuck with him and his idiot cronies for another two years. You could feel pity for him in all of his mess, except that he is so willfully belligerent in his wrongness. He is in desperate need of good, accurate diplomatic advice, but he has only this carnival-esque coterie of an Administration to advise him now.

The Repub. Party has mucked-up the hunt for Bin Laden, Afghanistan, Iraq Civil War, the national debt, the trade deficit, energy policy – done nothing here, global warming, New Orleans, relations with every country in the world, threatening any country they feel like insulting on a particular day, ignoring the Iraq Study Group Report.

This State of the Union Address of 2007 will be fun to watch if only to glean more ammunition with which to embarrass Mr. Bush. If we are lucky we may hear a sentence or two that ring true, but not many. Politically, Bush cannot afford to be honest about anything for the sake of his Repub. party. He’s a salesman, for sure, and he’ll give it his best effort, but he won’t sell many of us. We’ve heard all of the lines and lies, been insulted when we disagreed or called his hand, and we’re sick of his unnecessary militarism.

I will throw myself on the floor laughing hysterically if he tries to tie Iraq to 9/11 one more time.

Bush is a Dope, but he’s our Dope, and we are stuck with him – as off he goes, wallowing around the world muddying all he touches for the next two years.

This may be the last good laugh this nation gets to enjoy for a long time to come, as we try to untangle Bush’s grotesque national and international messes.

So chill the beer and break out the popcorn.

DuPont, Caterpillar, Alcoa, US subsidiary of BP, saying GLOBAL WARMING IS NOW!

The chemical giant DuPont, the bulldozer company Caterpillar, the aluminium producer Alcoa and the US subsidiary of BP, will all join with environmental groups next week to pressure the Bush Administration to get serious about global warming. STORY HERE OR HERE

The age of global warming denial, meanwhile, also appears to be drawing to a close. Exxon Mobil, the world’s largest oil company, has cut its funding to groups who argue global warming is a hoax, and is now working to develop strategies it can accept for emissions reduction.

It’s about time. Hell, even the religious fundamentalist dinosaurs know global warming is upon us. “It’s time for us to become good stewards of the earth,” as one of my very best friends, a religious liberal, told me two days ago. “God would want us to do that – protect our earth that he created.”

Actually, it would help change the dialogue if we changed the “global warming” label to “global climate change.” There’s always a small handfull of pesky oil company employees who troll around the blogosphere, posting about how the winters are colder than they can ever remember in Houston, and about lost orange crops in southern California. I could play their game and remind them that I’ve seen much colder winters here in Texas, those of 1983, when the temps didn’t get above freezing for 12 days, or that of 1987 when ice storms brought down 38 steel communications towers in West Texas and wreaked havoc with electricity and telephones for hundreds of towns. (Hello, Mick and “Ethanol.”) This winter is not fun, but it’ s not as bad as others I’ve had to work through.

“Rapid global climate change” would be a better nomenclature for what greenhouse gases are doing. The north and south poles are melting. Bears are not hibernating in Siberia anymore. Birds are returning to the New England states earlier every year, as are blossoming fruit trees.

BUT, some places around the globe will see colder winters. Canada, for one, as the polar ice caps melt and let arctic winds blow across open sea waters instead of ice with its insulating properties. England and the northern European countries will see colder winters because the Atlantic Gulf Stream water currents won’t carry as much tropical warming that far north anymore. And Houston, Texas may get more freaky ice storms?

Global Warming, Rapid Global Climate Change, call it what you want, just don’t call it a hoax. It is here upon us. A few dinosaurs and employees of oil companies will continue to troll and whine, and to be scorned by all thoughtful, intelligent people.