If I didn't feel that it would be unfair to those that would suffer on the other 'side' of new-springfield, it wouldn't really be the end of the world to let O'Reilly have his own country. We could re-unify in 50 years or so after the complete and utter failures of right-wing social and economic policy had run their course and we'd be done with that particular political theory for a very long time.

Setting aside issues of social justice for a moment... I don't understand what all the fuss is about here. A the fuel plantation isn't exactly what I'd describe as a 'carbon-sink' either, but its something better - a net-zero carbon energy source. The tree plantation is more like a primitive (but effective!) solar battery. If I planted a tree to offset the carbon for every gallon of gas I burn in my car, I'd have run out of room on my .25 acre lot long ago. While my carbon emissions would be offset, I'm also using a lot of land to do so and burning just as much gas. However, if I planted trees on my lot and burned them to get to work instead, I really am running on a renewable fuel here and all those pounds of carbon from gasoline are no longer being released, instead I'm just cycling the same amount of carbon into and out of the atmosphere. The carbon becomes the 'working fuild' of my (hypothetical) solar powered car. Sadly I have no such car.

I love my country and I hate what is happening to it. So what so often comes out as 'You hate America', is really, 'You hate what I want America to be'. Which is utterly true. Simply because they have co-opted my country, my society and yes even my religion doesn't mean I have to like their vision.

I suppose thats why its called a culture war.

No, Stephen wasn't funny. He was brilliant, as in he illuminated the Truth. I for one don't care if anybody laughed in that room.

Stephen's performance is one that I will remember for a long time, far far longer than if it has been just another SNL skit. Like Dan Rather's famous line to Nixon, Colbert delivered a flawless and daring moment of truth. We don't need to laugh.

I'm not sure what happened in Pennsylvania really counts as a hate crime. A horrid crime yes, but probably not motivated by hatered per-se. The reason we called people 'sexual preditors' is that the relationship they see between themselfves and women is one of preditor and prey. Preditors we will presume do not hate their prey, they simply want something from them that would never be given willingly, so it is taken by force. A preditor might be considered as thinking no more of taking from their prey them you or I would of eating lettuce. It is a means to an end and there wasn't anything personal about it. A hate crime is a relationship where the attacker is attacking because of a perception of superiority or injustice because of whatever class the person being attacked is a member of.

Distorting the language of sexual predation into the loaded terms of hate benifits and protects nobody.

Next up: Agnew

For those who live in Oregon, be sure to contact your state legislators and senators. A proposal to extend Oregon's bottle bill to include PET water bottles is up in the current legislative session. Its well neigh time Oregon caught up with California (whom I remember as not having a bottle bill at all until fairly recently...)

As for all those plastic bags, I use them as trash bags at home instead of buying bags for that purpose. As well I keep a collection of re-usable bags that get ferried around in my car for my groceries.

As well the Oregon legislator at the prompting of our governor is considering joining the Feb 5th crowd.

Eastern Oregon is mostly managed by the BLM and forest service and historically has been a mix of a couple of vegitation types. A similar problem with a native tree (the Juniper) has arisen with it extending it range across a lot of 'high desert' terrain and starving out high desert plants with its more efficent root system. This has come about for possibly similar reasons (grazing, aggressive fire suppression etc.), though I'm not sure anybody has done a definitive study.

I've actually considered in the past if it would be possible to economically harvest juniper wood and convert it into wood pellets for fuel (Juniper wood has a very high percentage of ligin in it and would pelletize very efficiently). The problem however is labor and transportation costs (fuel, trucks etc.) So this just doesn't work here. I suspect the BLM will at some point end up spending a lot of money to remove the stuff and burn it in place.

I used to work for a filbert farmer in my teens. My job was to walk all 200+ acres every spring and pick up every twig that was bigger than my thumb (filbert harvesting works by vacuuming up everything thumb-sized and smaller and the sorting equipment can distinguish one small round woody item from another). That is a LOT of twigs btw. My back still hurts thinking about it....

Anyways the other product of a healthy filbert orchard is: wood. Wood has tons of uses. Every year we would prune out a small hills worth of wood (think a mound of wood 300'x100'x30'). And that was almost every year.

My son, who is 3, will be paying interest on this loan, so I figure I should just give it to him now and he can at least not loose as much when it is his turn to pay the taxes. Me? I'm paying off the vietnam war and star wars.