Can we get science back yet?

How about sometime in late January next year?

White House blocked EPA studies, GAO reports:

A congressional watchdog agency has found that White House officials repeatedly intervened in the government's scientific process for assessing the health risks of toxic chemicals, prompting Sen. Barbara Boxer to threaten giving Congress control of the program.

The Government Accountability Office reported Tuesday that the White House's budget office, the Pentagon and other agencies had delayed or blocked efforts by the Environmental Protection Agency to list chemicals as carcinogens by requesting more research or more time to review the risks.

I don't think I'll ever understand how Clinton was impeached for having an affair with an intern while Bush has invaded a country, disrupted the economy, and demonstrated an undying love of interfering with the advancement of our country and humanity in general by blocking science at every turn.

What gives?

And the cutest part:

GAO officials also faulted the administration for setting new rules that keep secret any involvement by the White House or a federal agency in a decision about the risks of a chemical.

Oh come on! Are you kidding? How do we reserve our outrage for people's failure to wear flag pins while we allow our government to act like characters out of the latest Grisham novel?

Everything old is new again

This Rev. Wright story just won't die - it's become a bit of an albatross for Obama, it seems. That's bad news coming on the heels of Clinton's most recent primary victory.

But is it possible we've lost sight of the forest for the trees?

No one is really calling this a racist issue, but if we don't call it out, are we lying to ourselves? The scary black churches that the majority don't understand, don't attend, and don't know about, are being confirmed as something Other, something we can't understand.

We've been so busy patting ourselves on the back for this momentous feat of having a black man and a woman as candidates, we haven't noticed we're slipping backward.

Once in a Governor Blue-Moonbeam

Tortured title, sorry. But have you heard? Jerry Brown is sounding an awful lot like he'll be taking another run for the governorship. He's been there once already. Kind of a crazy idea.

I'm sure she'll win

Or not: Anti-war Cindy Sheehan files to take on Pelosi

I wish the anti-war movement had more traction, but it doesn't. I don't know what that says about us.

Keep changing the game and you'll find one you can win

That seems to be the pundit's take on tonight's results - highlighting the Clinton campaign's desire to turn the discussion from delegates to the popular vote.

But can you blame them? Obama would do the same. Wouldn't any savvy candidate? Would you want a non-savvy candidate in office? I wouldn't. If they aren't smart enough to win, they aren't smart enough to be president.

Of course, you can be smart enough to win but still too dumb to be president. This isn't a reciprocal equation. President Bush, I'm talking to you!

Sad Polar Bear

I just wanted to share that picture above. So true.

In Illinois, they had an earthquake. How much have we screwed up the world, that they're getting earthquakes in the middle of the country?

Tornados here?

In Case You Hadn't Noticed...

Gas is kinda expensive. More.

S.F. on verge of $4-per-gallon gas

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I paid over $4 yesterday.

Can't you just say 'no, he sucks, forget it?'

Both candidates were asked during the debate whether they would seek the advice of, or asking anything of the former presidents - including George W. Bush.

Clinton sort of B.S.ed through her answer - when they all come together, it's powerful, etc. Obama said he'd go to George H.W. Bush before he'd hit up the son.

I'd rather they both just said, no, what, are you kidding me, of COURSE NOT!

Would either really get the votes of Bush supporters anyway? No, c'mon.

The gun issue

It'd be great if either candidate would answer these questions about guns and gun control and gun rights like Democrats and not like would-be general election candidates. They're not really fully fessing up, I think.

Turns out, Democracy has a price. And it's a little high, thanks.

Crappy turnout in San Mateo County is making people think harder about vote-by-mail as the default, rather than the opt-in.

Assemblyman Gene Mullin wanted to pass a law authorizing an all-mail-in process for the Speier special election, but couldn't get the higher level of votes to pass the urgency measure, partly for lacking the necessary support from Reep leaders. In a novel role-change, Reeps were concerned that mail-in balloting could disadvantage elderly or minority voters. Aren't older voters more frequent voters and more frequent voters-by-mail? Eh, alright.

Oregon does it by mail. I bet we could to. This last special cost $26.70 per voter. Per voter! That much. It's crazy.

Is it USGS appropriations time again?

Researchers today pointed to alarming evidence that reports of alarming evidence of impending geological terror increases radically when funding for geologic surveys comes under review.

Kidding.

I think evidence does point to that.

Anyway, the link above will take you to an article about how a giant earthquake - the "Big One" if you will - will hit sometime in the next 30 years?

Really? I've been hearing that for at least 20 years. So do we only have 10 years left, or did we get an extension? Can we do ANYTHING on time?

Good for DC, But I'd have liked her for Governor, too

I suppose it's still our win, but it's a shame Speier is taking her skills and experience to the Federal level, when we need people here in Cali, too.

Congrats, Ms. Speier.

Obvious Headline: 'Army Under Stress From Long Wars'

This is a heartbreaking story about these wars really mean to our forces. No, what they really mean.

Mainly - we aren't going to have an Army, at least, not a good one, for very much longer. The lack of morale is shocking. Just the lead paragraph of this article tells of record levels of suicide among soldiers, abandoned careers, and an army stretched to its breaking point.

Bottom line: if anything happens at home, we're done for.

Some 27 percent of soldiers on their third or fourth combat tours suffered anxiety, depression, post-combat stress and other problems, according to an Army survey released last month. That compared with 12 percent among those on their first tour.

No f&cking way the percentage is that low, if you consider the underreporting from men. Men don't admit their mental illness or mental distress.

What have we let happen?

Can I get a witness? No, really

There's a dust-up in San Mateo, thanks to a strongly worded editorial written by Deputy District Attorney Morris Maya that argued a grave danger posed by one of Leland Yee's bills.

What, a Yee bill that's not brilliant? As if.

Anyway, the Yee's bill would, according to the article, create an exception for domestic violence victims similar to what exists for sexual assault victims which protects them from being jailed for not testifying.

The DAs Association also opposes the bill as it takes away a key tool in prosecuting cases. Witnesses to domestic violence are most frequently victims or children (who can be victims as well, for that matter).

Maya wrote, rather poetically:

"Every domestic beating will be ended with the phrase, 'If you testify, I will kill you,' " he wrote in his letter to the editor, which the Daily Journal published Friday. "Successful prosecution of domestic violence will go down and ... cemeteries will become much, much more crowded."

So Yee, natch, had a press conference:

Maya wrote the letter as an individual, not as a representative of the district attorney's office, but it prompted Yee to hold a news conference Wednesday in front of the San Mateo County courthouse in Redwood City during which he called for the bill's passage and denounced Maya's "offensive and insulting rhetoric."

Yee was flanked by victims' rights group leaders as well as by Katina Britt, a domestic violence victim ordered jailed in that same courthouse in December 2005 for refusing to testify. Britt remained free pending her appeal and ultimately was never jailed.

"What irks me about (Maya's) column is it's fundamentally wrong to re-victimize victims," said Yee, D-San Francisco. "For him to sensationalize and exaggerate what may be the potential problems with this particular bill, it makes me wonder - does this guy really understand domestic violence cases, not just the law, but the psychology of it?"

Tap, tap, okay Mr. Yee, but the point is that the people who are trying to prosecute violent offenders can't do it without witnesses. It's like a tough love thing. Yee's supporters say the victims are in a better position to decide if they can testify or not. If they can see through swollen eyes or talk through split lips, I guess.

There's a lot more to the psychology really at work here than what Yee seems to comprehend. No one WANTS to jail a victim of domestic violence. But how do you break the cycle and jail the offenders? There's no winner in this situation.

I hope the DDA doesn't get fired for writing the piece.

Speaking of which

If you missed this astute editorial on why protests are exercises in futility, you really should check it out.

Flame Out

I don't know if you're as tired as I am of hearing about how big a deal the Olympic protests are. I mean, I went to school at Cal back in the day, don't people protest something every other week? Thing that definitely never would have gotten a dozen people to show up are on the evening news now just because, oh my god, they said they're protesting the Olympics.

Whatever.

But to continue that vein, the torch arrived in San Francisco today for the relay tomorrow amid *much controversy*.

I'm going to head up there tomorrow just to see what all the fuss is about.

On the Bay

Leland Yee was going to resolve the Half Moon Bay owing a developer $36 Million thing. But now he's not.

Yee dropped co-authorship of a bill that would have helped resolve the issue.

Now, it's unclear if the settlement that the city drew up with the developer is still in effect (meaning they only owe $18M) or if they're on the hook for legal fees too (total payout = $42M).

Either way, I'm glad I don't live in Half Moon Bay.

But what about the pansies? The snapdragons?

If you look at things from a trickle-down perspective, examples like the opening shot here do touch all our lives as those at the top pull back on employment opportunities and thus squash the little guys at the bottom of the market.

But really, will anyone get too misty-eyed over the credit-market-crunch's effect on this guy?

To all appearances, he's an unlikely victim. A well-paid chief executive of a small consulting firm, he owns a substantial investment portfolio and a million-dollar house in Moraga. He pays his bills on time and has no credit card debt. His credit score, he says, is around 800, a rating more or less in the stratosphere.

But in mid-March, Bank of America cut off his home equity credit line of a little more than $180,000, citing a decline in the value of his property. Meyers, 40, is now scrambling to come up with $75,000 to pay for a major landscaping project and is canceling other big spending plans.

"My wife would like a new car, but that's going to have to wait," he said. "We're taking a $75,000 cash-flow hit, and I want to boost savings."

My god, will the madness stop? Is there no mercy left in the world? I bet her car is an '03, '05 at most!

Even the article concedes that Meyers isn't a hardship case. But it still goes on to list how much it sucks that his magic pot of money ran out.

It IS true that things do trickle down, but man, there must be a way to look at this from the bottom up, not the top down. Even if more of our area code is top-heavy.

'Calls renewed to fix Berkeley's citizen boards'

Whoa guys, what is going on?

Berkeley is finding that having its own foreign policy isn't cheap. The city's recent dustup with the U.S. Marine Corps has so far cost the city more than $200,000, while businesses say they've been slammed by related protests.

And that's on top of the $1 million the city spends annually on domestic and foreign policy matters hatched by its 45 citizen commissions, which outnumber those in virtually every other city in America and debate everything from regime change in Iran to the plight of nonneutered dogs.

Dude(s), come on. It is important to discuss the things affecting our lives and history in general. But save it for the coffeehouse.

Each commission has nine members, each of whom is appointed by a council member, and meets monthly. Many have subcommittees, such as the Peace and Justice Commission's subcommittee on U.N. treaties. And every commission has a city staff member assigned to compile agendas, minutes and reports, and ensure that the board complies with the state's open meetings law and Robert's Rules of Order.

Oh, and time for a new city manager:

"It's a formalized form of participatory democracy," said City Manager Phil Kamlarz. "Do the commissions detract from what the city should be doing? Sure, they do. But we've had commissions for 30 years. They reflect the values of this city.

You know what's a formalized form of participatory democracy? VOTING. Running for office. Writing a letter. Getting to make a useless commission and talking about matters that have been, trust me, fully occupied by the feds is an insult to democracy because it fakes commissioners and those who care about them into thinking they are making a difference when, I'm betting, they aren't altering the trajectory of man. It's selfish and fantastic and needs to end.

I LOVE Democracy and liberalism and participating, but don't fool yourself into thinking you're doing good Berkeley. At this point, you aren't even doing well.

Define boost

Migden scored a minor win as a court granted a preliminary injuction allowing her to spend a wad of cash from an old campaign account.

Clear that tear of joy from your eye, free-speech advocate!

If she was really beloved and in a good position in this primary, wouldn't a rallying email telling her donors that the big bad FPPC had taken all her toys yield a ton of new donations?

No, probably not.

Imagine the disclaimer language on the bottom of the next mailer:

Paid for by Citizens Who Still Are Friends Of Carole Migden with substantial funding allowed by the Courts. Please retain this mailer. We may need to return it and give the money back to the FPPC. Thanks. FPPC #398479847598475984798

Or something like that.

This won't disproportionately affect poorer people

Pay for your sins!

Californians support the idea of charging "green" vehicle fees that would make drivers of gas guzzlers pay higher taxes and offer discounts for those driving less-polluting vehicles, according to a survey by a transportation researcher at San Jose State University.

The state now charges drivers registration and licensing fees and gasoline taxes at rates that do not take into account vehicles' pollution levels. But the survey, conducted by Asha Weinstein Agrawal, a research associate with the university's Mineta Transportation Institute, found that Californians would support a variety of taxes and fees to raise money for transportation improvements as well as combat global warming, including:

-- Raising vehicle registration fees, which now average $31, to an average of $62 and having higher-polluting vehicles pay higher rates and cleaner cars lower rates.

-- Offering rebates of up to $1,000 for people who buy new cars that emit very little pollution and levying a surcharge of as much as $2,000 on those purchasing gas hogs.

-- Levying a mileage-based tax that would replace the 18-cents-per-gallon gasoline tax. The per-mile amount would vary depending on how much a vehicle polluted the air.

Well, right, I see what you're saying, but here's the thing: even if I would agree with charging more to those driving more polluting cars, why would we incentivize people to do the right thing? It's like those kids that come door-to-door to sell candy so they stay off drugs. Kid, you should stay off drugs anyway. Whatever.

And dang it, those stupid hybrid cars are already on back-order, you don't need to convince people to buy it.

Oh, oh, and while I'm bitching: hybrid SUVs - what the hell is that? It's like this war - we never have to sacrifice a thing! Ever. How about we make smaller cars. We don't even know what the hybrid batteries will do to the environment. Smaller cars would be good. And hybrids still follow the basic laws of physics - which makes them more dangerous. Rollover? Ugh.

We're dumb. Go buy some "carbon offsets" and sleep better in your imaginary house made of wishing and creampuffs.