SUPER CONGRESS

It's becoming more nightmarish to follow the U.S. Budget Negotiations. The August 2nd "doomsday" deadline is rapidly approaching. (Doomsday is when the Treasury loses borrowing ability and we risk a budget default.) And since bratty Congress hasn't been able to agree enough to pass anything, the "debt ceiling negotiators" have a new solution:

MAKE A SUPER CONGRESS !
What's so great about Super Congress? Well, they will be able to pass laws super-fast without having to be too accountable to the public. "This 'Super Congress'...isn't mentioned anywhere in the Constitution, but would be granted extraordinary new powers." Any new laws they approve will be fast-tracked through both chambers of "Little Congress" (our current House + Senate), where regular "little" lawmakers could not amend their laws, only give each an up or down vote. And those "little" votes are less powerful than today's votes. The proposed Super Congress only ever needs 51% to pass any law, and they don't need presidential approval (i.e. vetos have no effect on them).

So, does this sound like a good idea to you? It's not like the the regular Congress we have now is particularly heroic. I mean, Republicans want to extend the debt ceiling just long enough to have it fail pre-election season, while Democrats want to extend it just a little bit longer, till post-election. That's why they can't agree to pass something before financial doomsday. So now we're being held hostage to create a Super Congress to save us from disaster?

It feels more like a Super-Villain Congress. And I'm not the first person to think lawmakers with unlimited power would be dangerous. You've heard the saying that "absolute power corrupts absolutely?" Well, this whole message board seems to agree that "any new branch of government, especially one with 'extraordinary new powers' scares the hell out me. No thanks!"

America is Pro-Life...and Pro-Unplanned Pregnancy?

LifeNews has a wonderful way with statistics. They can take data that shows 76% of Americans support legal abortion, 50% of Americans favor the current legal status of abortion, and come back with a headline that says AMERICA IS PRO-LIFE.

How do they do this? Well, it's all based on a Gallup poll that can be viewed directly here. Originally Gallup asked people to support 1 of 3 categories; abortion legal in any circumstances, abortion legal in some, and abortion legal in none. When split this way, 27% favored legal in all, 49% favored legal in some, and 22% favored legal in none. So only 22% were for banning abortion.

Gallup then fixed the stats by splitting the middle category into those who wanted abortion legal in most circumstances, and those who wanted it to be legal in only a few. In this way they got 10% of voters wanting legal abortion "under most circumstances," and 39% wanting it to be legal in "only a few circumstances." So now they can say that 39% + 22% = 63% of Americans support no or severely limited abortion.

Does this mean America really is Pro-Life? Well, you can split the stats anyway you want. You can say that only 22% of Americans favor banning abortion completely. 50% of Americans DO want to allow abortion in "some circumstances." And this is what we already allow (our circumstance being abortions up until the third trimester.) So half the country wants NO change to our abortion policy.

Even when looking only at the extreme views, MORE (27%) Americans favor always allowing abortion rather than never allowing abortion (22%). So any way you cut it, most Americans don't favor a change to our abortion policy. But Gallup biased the results by splitting up the middle group. The lesson: If you split up the majority of a group, you can transform their consensus into a series of conflicting categories, hiding the true majority opinion.

So most Americans want to allow abortion under some circumstances. But most Americans also support severely limited abortion. Can all of this be true while America is still Pro-Life? Rest assured, it can all be true. It's just that we have to really think about what "Pro-Life" means.

Remember, we can hide the true majority opinion if we split up a group into conflicting categories. In America, we have "Pro-Choice" and "Pro-Life" categories. Both positive sounding terms. But they're not really that clear and distinct, because pro-choice people could also be pro-life in many circumstances. The difference is that pro-life on a political level means everyone has to be pro-life, all the time, or be criminally responsible and morally wrong. So really, we might rename the Pro-Life position "Pro-Forced Birth" or "Pro-Unplanned Pregnancy."

I wonder how THAT would bias the statistics? If Pro-Life means abortion is NEVER legal, under any circumstances, that would mean only 22% of America supports it (according to this poll). America is not THIS kind of pro-life. But if we allow pro-life to mean allowing abortion only under a few circumstances, without defining exactly WHAT those circumstances are, it's much easier to include the majority of Americans as pro-life.

So it seems no one really wants to have abortions, but most people feel it should be allowable in certain circumstances. There is our general consensus. Now if we could just leave the law to allow for that, American could move on from this whole issue.

Trees, Now With the Power of GMO!

Are you a fan of trees? Then you'll love these new super-trees being developed at Berkeley and Oak Ridge National Laboratories.

Called the "organic enemy" of global warming, these new trees act like mini carbon vaults, sucking up huge amounts of carbon from the air and then sending it down to the soil, never to see the light of day again. So, if carbon is the criminal causing global warming, these super-trees are the global policemen who will catch and imprison that carbon, thereby allowing humans to frolic freely and burn as much fossil fuels as we want!

Meanwhile, the soil under these GMO trees will become filled with carbon, which will stay there "for centuries." A small amount of carbon is already naturally present in soil, and is good for plant growth. Could too much carbon in the soil become toxic? No one knows yet, but if that happens we can just invent a super Potato-Bug to eat up all the carbon in the soil!

California: Killing the Environment to Save Jobs

Californians, get ready to vote this November! Your ballots will now include the California Jobs Initiative. With unemployment rates at a frightening 12%, who wouldn't vote for such a heroically named law?

Now, while this law may not directly create any jobs, it does do the important duty of repealing global warming law AB32, which caused "higher utility rates and fuel prices," and paid subsidies to over 300 renewable energy companies. Lowering prices on fossil fuels and killing off that unproductive upstart industry of clean energy is clearly the best way to deal with an economic crisis. That must be why the guardians of public good, oil companies, covered 78% of the $3 million it took to get this law on the ballot.

Yes, the oil companies are going to protect YOU from that pesky environmental law that's making energy "so expensive." I mean, California oil companies can't help that oil comes with all these extra costs, like cleaning up the COSCO Busan spill in 2007 or the billion dollar BP mess of today. We just need to remove taxes on oil for a little while to let everyone get back on their feet! The California Jobs Initiative won't remove environmental standards forever, just until the state's unemployment rate drops below 5.5% for a full year. Sure that would require some of the lowest unemployment rates in California history, but with big oil protecting your jobs I'm sure we can all expect a new golden age to hit the state soon.

Geoengineers, the All-Stars of Science

Have you ever heard of geoengineering? It's a great new science that lets us FIX our climate! Brains from all around the world have been coming together this year to discuss ways we can lower the earth's temperature and keep global warming at bay.

Some of their lovely ideas include:

• spraying sulfuric acid into the stratosphere (this creates aerosols which block solar radiation)
• creating brighter clouds that produce more rain and block more sunlight
• sucking CO2 from the air and storing it where it can never escape--cleverly named Carbon Capture!
• shooting reflective disks into space.. at the exciting rate of 1,000,000 a MINUTE for 30 years!

Now, I know some people might worry that such hip and snazzy methods could be a little risky:

"But geoengineers, your sulfur particles that block the sun are the same ones that cause acid rain!"

Not to worry, concerned public: Sulfur aerosols that geoengineers create will be put above rain clouds, not into them! As Austrian physicist Jason Blackstock said, "by putting them higher, they stay up longer because they're above the clouds, which means they aren't raining out as acid rain all the time." And as long as you don't have acid rain ALL THE TIME, everything should be just fine.

Also, that guy who said what goes up must come down? He clearly wasn't at the conference.

An Office for Unborn Children

Today, I am writing to thank Senators Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) for jumping to protect our children, even before they are born!! Together, they are working to pass policy that will guarantee healthcare to unborn children, and create an Office of Unborn Children’s Health, to stand up for the rights of unborn children everywhere. As Senator Hatch says, " America itself is built on the foundation of unalienable rights which we receive from God. Government exists to secure those rights." Yes, aren't we lucky in America, to have a government there to promote God's will!

You'd think that giving healthcare to the mother would be just as important, that we could have an Office of Mother's Health too, and someone to stand up for what the mothers need in all of this. But wait...who does God love more, adult women, or unborn babies? Why, there's nothing more pure and free of sin than an unborn baby, while the mothers are just women who got pregnant, and so...I guess we can see why this policy is a good idea.