Edjimacation

No one seems to know for sure why Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who is said to be considering a run for President, didn't finish college. He got almost all the way through his senior year and then just pootered out. I'm guessing some people are better than others at knowing when they're full up with education. Pour in any more, and you risk a spill.

Most presidential candidates do have college degrees, and many of them seem to be in economics, which is a particularly interesting line of study, in that it prepares you to have strong opinions about things that are the exact opposite of the opinions of others in your very same field, and do this all day long, and nobody ever has to prove a dang thing. And if they get involved in politics, why, they can even be in a position to test out some of their hypotheses--say, they can move a whole bunch of people's money over here, and funnel it to a tiny cohort of other people, and see what happens. And when what they think will happen doesn't happen, they don't have to question any of their beliefs. They just try them again louder. It's a ton easier than climate science that way.

Which is easy enough. Economics major James Inhofe, 80 years old [die now] and still rosy with rectitude, demonstrated all you need to know about it by throwing a snowball in Senate chambers and grinning like he'd personally worked out the Periodic Table.

I can't blame him. I too am often moved to go into the Senate chambers and throw things, except instead of mocking climate scientists with a snowball, I would be mocking idiots with a smooth, sharp stone, at close range. At any rate, unlike in D.C., we can't spare a snowball here. Generally right about now we're watching our local volcanoes fill up with snow, some of which they'll still be wearing when the next winter boots up. But today you could drop a yardstick into the stuff at high elevation and still see the end of the stick. They say we're losing our glaciers here fast but it's looking to me like they mean this year. There are ways of explaining this, but some people with an economics degree are liable to start with the market value of what we're pulling out of the ground as a starting point and force all their conclusions to dangle from that.

I so desperately want a Congress full of people who are smarter than I am. I'm plenty smart, and fairly well educated, but I have a porous memory, and there are hundreds of millions of citizens in this country, so it should be plenty doable. We have, as conservative columnist Rich Lowry laments, a surfeit of Harvard and Yale graduates among what he refers to as our congressional "elites," as though the best of the best would be a bad thing. I do accept that many of these graduates are smart and educated, and others have trickled out of these institutions on a well-worn channel carved by their fore-sperms. But I'm not prepared to say a real high-end education is worthless.

So much, I don't know what to do. I watch the pure horror that is religion run amok and am helpless to guess what our course should be. I suspect, based on history, that knee-jerk violent reaction will not get us where we need to be, and that those who believe so are animated partly by their own base desires, but I don't know. I want other people in charge and I don't want them to be idiots. We've tried that.

Rich Lowry thinks it's silly to fret about the level of education of our politicians, and he has a point. One of his points is that two-thirds of the population also doesn't have an advanced degree. And, as W. famously pointed out, mediocre students need representation too. But I find it kind of depressing that we elect so many people without what I'd consider a basic education. And that so many voters think smart, educated people are a personal affront to them.

We're not far from a campaign in which one candidate bleats about his working-class high school equivalency degree and the next brags about never having cracked a book. And a third thumps his chest because he knocked up a girl in eleventh grade and made most of his child support payments without government assistance, and they all get trounced by the guy who admits he still eats his boogers.

Meet The Priss

The atmosphere in the ExxonMobil Room was electric. The new Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell pranced in on his coal-black unicorn Republican Wave, slid off with the agility of a much younger man, and bounced up to the microphone, his cheeks pink with arousal.

"Well met, well met, well met!" he boomed archaically. "I'd like to welcome you all on this suspicious Caucasian. The American people have handed us a mandate for change. The American..."

"Sir, before you claim a mandate, would you care to comment on charges of voter suppression?"

"Please. Have you seen the turnout? Those people voted longer than anybody. Leave it to the coloreds to have nothing better to do than stand in line all day to vote! Am I right? Now. The American people have spoken, and they said it's time to get things done. The American people said they're not interested in climate change, so: Job One. We're getting rid of it. Poof!"

Cheers erupted as Mr. McConnell waved his tiny wand and a swirl of black dust settled over the room. James Inhofe, presumed new chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, patted his fingers together in ecstasy and had to be excused when he sprained his face giggling. Republican Wave whinnied and hawked up a loogie while Lamar Smith, chair of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee strolled in to enthusiastic applause, flanked by Adam and Eve and a triceratops.

"That's right, sir," he said.  "The American people sent us here today to solve problems, and the biggest problem we face is science. That's Job One, right, guys? Let's all give a hand to our friends here, Adam, the little woman, and this big fellow."

Adam nodded shyly and patted the triceratops on the thigh, his fig leaf beginning to flutter. "Found him in the Garden of Eden," he said, as Eve cast him a demure smile. The triceratops rumpled up his face plates in confusion and motioned for an interpreter.

"But you can't--" the reporter winced as if in pain--"you can't just wave a tiny wand and make science or global warming go away. You--"

"Just did, son," McConnell said, his hand in a complimentary bowl of Cheetos. "It's the responsible thing to do. Look. You can have all the airy-fairy theories you want, but at some point you need to grow up. We can't fix climate change and burn fossil fuels both. And the American people know what they want. We're not going to stop giving it to them until all the money is drilled out. We're the greatest nation on Earth! We'll be fine."

"But--but that's like saying Hiroshima was no big deal, because the Enola Gay had comfy seat cushions."

"Exactly." Member of the assembled new Republican majority shrugged in unison, pleased at the consensus.

"Job One number three," House Speaker John Boehner put in, dabbing away a tear, "Repealing Obamacare." He held his hand up, acknowledging the ovation. "We're going to rip Obamacare out by the curly hairs, and replace it with a good Republican plan that guarantees a marketplace of affordable insurance options, prohibits the cancellation of coverage for pre-existing conditions, and allows children to stay on their parents' insurance until age 26."

The reporter appeared to be working out a kink in his neck. "But that sounds exactly like O--"

"FreedomCare," Mr. McConnell inserted. "It's completely different, son. And we're adding a phrenology benefit and a free annual balancing of the humours."

"But--"

"And no website. Am I right? We'll have Marge and Phyllis back on the switchboard, doing what they do best for America. Make no mistake: we are here on America's business, but we are extending the crabbed hand of cooperation and hoping the President will agree to meet us halfway. Say, the sixteenth century," he concluded.

"I would like to point out at this time," whined Harry Reid from a low stool in the corner, "that the room is fast filling up with unicorn and triceratops shit. And your friend Adam over there is looking a little gassy. Can we adjourn until such time as we get this all cleaned up?"

"Cleaned up!" McConnell was tinkly with laughter. "Let me show you how it's done, my friend. We don't clean up. We'll just adjourn to the GlaxoSmithKline Room for now, head over to the Monsanto Cafeteria for lunch, pee-pee in the BP teepee, and reconvene tomorrow in the Johnson and Johnson Senate Chambers. Clean up!" The room had collapsed into hilarity, with several members off-balance from attempts to connect with a high-five.

Boehner honked merrily into a hankie. "It's not like we're going to run out of rooms," he wheezed.

D'Earth

Priests in a village in India have officiated over a wedding between two frogs, Punarvasu and Pushala, hoping that it would end the terrible drought and bring on monsoon rains. It was by all accounts an arranged affair, although no objection from the celebrants was reported. The frogs were decorated with flowers and anointed with oil of turmeric and generally done up to the nines. Other than the fact that no one could keep the cummerbund from slipping, most agreed that the nuptials went off splendidly. It is not known whether or not the effort was enough to budge the monsoon schedule.

But at least they're trying, which shows that India is way ahead of us. Not only do we not have a working roster of eligible amphibians, but we officially refuse to recognize that we're in deep shit, climate-wise. Those who suggest that we might be are being scorned as alarmists. Which is true, in the same sense that people are alarmists who yell "fire" in a crowded theater. That happens to be on fire.

Because right now, we're in the same position the dinosaurs were, when it dawned on them that they should never have gotten into the asteroid-manufacturing business. They never did? Then this is very different.

Senator James Inhofe, having studied the numbers ($509,250 in donations from the oil and gas industry), has concluded that global warming is a hoax. Sen. Louie Gohmert Jr. (R-Kingdom Of Oil) has examined similar data and determined that the best climatologists in the world have been pulling our legs just to get their names in the paper. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Coal Country) has helpfully pointed out that the earth has periodically gone through a number of such spasms of warming. Not while we were here, of course, but we're here now, by gum, and we'll adapt. Because we have Ingenuity! We can adapt technologically by using more air conditioning, which is like curing acid reflux with pizza. Or we can adapt physiologically: gills and snakeskin, coming right up. No worries!

Meanwhile, it is the position of the fossil-fuel extraction industries that global warming is a hoax. It is their practice to explore for oil in areas of the Arctic that weren't feasible before they melted all the ice.

At this point even the sweltering or flooded or blown-about man on the street seems to realize something's up, and would like something to be done about it, but, because he does not have the clarity provided by lobbyist cash, he would also like to keep gas under $3 a gallon. People tend to discount the most dire predictions, mainly because they haven't happened before. That's true. The end of everything is pretty much a one-time event.

I would like to see something done. And in this case I'm not being a big socialist liberal who wants the government to decide everything for us. No, I am just fine using the market system. But. I want polluters to pay for their pollution. I am required to take out the garbage, and local industries are required to contain or pay for their effluent. Someone soils a river, he's going to have to pay. It's the price of doing business, and it should be. I'm not exactly sure why we let the industries that dump CO2 into the atmosphere get off scot-free, just because their effluent is only dooming the entire human race. What if the producers of fossil fuel energy were required to pay a whopping carbon tax?

Why, Murr, they'd just pass that on to their customers.

True enough. But then consumers would have a real choice based on the real price of everything. We could decide whether we'd rather be able to drive to the beach on a whim or survive as a species.

Because things are about to get really ugly. If the planet does go up by eleven degrees, as some models predict, we'll have to rename it (Dearth. Or Holy Shit. Or Mars.) This is not survivable. Unless you're a cockroach. Which might explain the intransigence of Inhofe, McConnell, Gohmert and the rest. We can't even get those dickheads to marry off a couple of frogs.

Expensive Speech

The word has come down from the Supreme Court that Fred Phelps and his pious pustule posse at Westboro Baptist Church are supported in their right to picket military funerals with obnoxious, hurtful, and factually inaccurate signs (if God hated fags, he would never have made them so fabulous). What some people call hate speech is, from the church's point of view, an informational picket. For once I agree with the Roberts court. Our right to free speech is our best national idea and critical to our very glory. As a person who is likely to say something at any time that the ruling junta would find objectionable and smackworthy, I want to see it protected.

Interestingly enough, the court specifically upheld these protesters' speech as protected political speech. I am wondering if the same judicial consideration would be given to a rag-tag passel of funeral spectators in foam suits waving signs that said "MATTRESS SALE CLOSEOUT! LAST DAY!" If not, then there may be other ways of contending with the particular furuncle on the fanny of Freedom that is represented by Fred and his festering friends.

My inclination is to protect all speech, but there are lines to be drawn, and many of them involve what, exactly, is considered speech. Here in Oregon, for instance, nude dancing is defended as free speech, even though you're really expected to tip.

But at least nude dancers are demonstrably human. The case that I find really deplorable is the other Roberts court decision that allows corporations to spend as much as they want on political campaigns in the guise of it being free speech. But that's a mighty big G-string and it holds a lot of cash. Free speech is one thing; I don't think we should lay out the red carpet for expensive speech. If Corporation can somehow be barged in, squeezing between the buildings downtown and locating a spot in the public square he can stand in for a turn at the mike along with everyone else, fine. I personally would like to limit free speech to those entities who, I don't know, breathe, and fit on a bus.

And although there are laws against misrepresentation in effect, they do not, apparently, apply to political figures, who are free to say any fool thing they want, regardless of its proximity to the truth. And that is why James Inhofe's face has not yet been duct-taped shut. He recently pronounced that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant and should not be regulated as such, even it it's cooking our planet. The legal problem here is that it is still permissible to not yell "fire" in a flaming theater. So we'll have to come up with some other solution for Mr. Inhofe (R-Hell). I'm thinking of a counter-demonstration. Like carbon dioxide, water is a naturally occurring substance and thus, according to Mr. Inhofe's reasoning, not a pollutant. I submit we could hold the good senator under a bunch of it until he quiets down.

Legendary Hotness

Climate science is very complicated. There are reams of data to collect and analyze about a multiplicity of systems interconnected in an infinite number of ways. Throw in feedback loops and the whole enterprise seems almost impossibly complex. It's serious business. How is the average person expected to make sense of it all? It's simple, with the Peter-Meter. Earlier last year, when a couple of British scientists were discovered talking smack in their emails, the very foundation of climate science took a big hit. But neither scientist was caught diddling the pool boy, so we were unable to come to any conclusions.

Fortunately, now we've got much more information to go on. Al "Call me Al" Gore has been rumored to have engaged the services of a massage therapist here in Portland who had more legitimacy than he was counting on, and before you could say "lock box," a convenient hand of truth was shoved down the groin of mendacity. Mr. Gore reportedly thought the Northwest Passage was open and had his mighty vessel all ready to break through, but it was not to be.

At first, many of us were inclined to discount this story, putting it down to the legendary hotness of Portland women, but as the tale unfolded, it became clear we have all been taken for a ride. Mr. Gore allegedly attempted to remove the straps of her camisole, revealing the underpinnings of the global warming hoax. Then he flang the woman onto a bed and launched himself on top of her with a thwomp and a wobble, and that, ladies and gentlemen--that is the sound of glaciers growing, of seas retreating, of hurricanes relaxing to swizzle-stick velocities. It's over, folks. There's no need to panic anymore, no need to soldier through the mountains of research, and best of all, no need to change a thing.

Senator James Inhofe has said that all along, of course. Senator Inhofe, who has irrelevantly siphoned off tankers of oil industry cash, nailed global warming as a hoax a long time ago. So we will have to take him at his word, at least until he bangs the maid.

Oh, if only Copernicus had been revealed to have a wide stance in the bathroom, we'd already have that sun back revolving around us, just the way God set it up.

Stamping Our Feet And Demanding Our Cake

The leaders of the world have come and gone and we're still getting nowhere with this global-warming business, and I totally blame Rudolph.

Here in Portland, we've had this big uproar over a large neon sign downtown. There's a white stag on it from back when it was owned by the White Stag clothing company. At some point, someone plonked a red bulb on its nose for the Christmas season. People loved it; they went all gooey inside over it. When the sign changed hands, the new owners were prevailed upon to keep the stag, even though they sold china, just so Portland could still have its nose. I mean, folks were getting upset. This was messing with tradition. The stag stayed. Then a few years later the sign changed hands again and holy hell broke loose over the possibility that the stag would be lost. A city commissioner, taking a break from that tiresome schools-funding issue, proposed that the city buy the sign for $65,000 just so that Portland might never suffer a lack of seasonally adorned deer. Because it's always been there.

Well, actually, the stag dates to 1969, when it replaced a White Satin sugar sign. I still remember the fuss when the china people bought the sign. Perhaps I'm in denial, but I find it sort of annoying that anything could be thought of as a sacrosanct tradition that isn't even as old as I am. But that's the nature of people. We believe in our traditions so strongly that we'll eat stuff we don't even like as long as it's traditional. Norwegians scarf down lutefisk at Christmas as though it didn't taste like something a crab would spit out. They say they like it, but they couldn't possibly mean it.

Even a child as young as three is capable of claiming traditions, stamping her feet and insisting on the same birthday cake she's had her whole life. Our perspective tends to be limited by our own experience entirely. The actual song Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, for instance, is older than me by four years, so that's a solid tradition. Because--write this down--history began when I was born.

That's where the global warming comes in. We are either faced with the likelihood of a man-made cataclysmic change in climate which can only be averted by a serious global application of political will, or it's all a bunch of hooey concocted by a conspiracy of 99% of the world's scientists who don't think they could get a grant otherwise.

That is the view promoted by James Inhofe (R), a petroleum-based senator from Oklahoma, who reminds us that just a couple weeks ago we were all complaining about how chilly it was. In other words, this is just another he-said, everybody-else-in-the-world said situation. And if so, who should we believe?

Here's an even better question. Why would scientifically illiterate people bet the ranch--all the ranches--that the world's scientists are collectively goofing on us?

We living things are all bundles of stored energy, although just between you and me, some of us are dimmer than others. But let's say we pile up mountains of organic material, just like us and maybe several continent-sized expanses of swamp; say we do that for thousands and thousands of years, and then say we press it into a concentrated sludge for a hundred million more years. Now, what say we then suck it up and set it all on fire in a few decades. Why wouldn't we think this might have an effect on the atmospheric status quo?

Why, because all we know is that for our entire lives--forever, in other words--we've been able to get in our cars and roar off to the grocery store five blocks away and buy a banana that grew halfway around the planet. It's natural. Isn't it? Two hundred years after Lewis and Clark, we stand in line preparing to take a cross-country trip that will last six hours and whine about having to take our shoes off. In fifty years, some kid will be waiting inside the human teleporter and he'll smack the side and say "Come onnnn." That's how we are. We have no concept of how unusual fossil fuel is and how special our tiny sliver of history is. Nope. All of this is totally normal. Not only that, but it's our birthright. If we were not meant to sit around in shorts and a tube top watching TV in the middle of the winter, God wouldn't have put all that oil and coal out there for us.

And we feel it is somehow our due that, after another terrific scare, the nose on the White Stag sign lit up once again this year according to sacred tradition, right on time, a week before Thanksgiving.