In Detroit, a rustbelt city busy waving bye-bye to the auto industry, there are plans to split the burg into a collection of small urban centers separated from each other by countryside. This reverse-supersizing is already well on the way to implementation in Flint, Michigan.
I remember touring some Mayan ruins several years ago. A pyramid and a few other impressive stone structures stood restored surrounded by neatly trimmed lawn. I climbed to the top of the pyramid and peered out over the jungle. The guidebook described how the city originally spread for miles in every direction. But for reasons unknown to us, the Mayans abandoned it, giving the entwining vines the only opening they needed to take back what had been theirs.
I imagine some day archeologists will explore the area we now call “Detroit” and conclude that at one time a large, vibrant people group—future anthropologists will call them something like Factory Workers Americanus—had inhabited a vast area but apparently abandoned the land for some reason which, by then, will be lost to history.
The day after I started working on this blog, I came across another item that does not portend well for this nation. WWMT in Kalamazoo, Michigan reports, “More than 20 of the state's 83 counties have reverted deteriorating paved roads to gravel in the last few years, according to the County Road Association of Michigan.” It only costs about $10,000 per mile to grind up old pavement and replace the road surface with gravel. To repave costs $100,000 per mile. This phenomena isn’t isolated in Michigan. According to WWMT, although the trend is biggest in Michigan, it is happening in other states as well.
When Charles Erwin Wilson, then GM president, was on his way to being President Eisenhower’s Secretary of Defense, he told the Senate, “…for years I thought what was good for the country was good for General Motors and vice versa." Certainly Michigan’s troubles can be directly traced to the failing auto industry. Was Wilson speaking a truth perhaps bigger than even he thought at the time?
The American automobile has been the icon of the good life in the United States for the last 60+ years. It enabled the invention of something called “suburbia” which set the stage for modern America, the America that became the leader of the free world.
But now the automotive heartland is plowing itself under and letting its roads revert to ruts. Can the rest of the nation be far behind?
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Sunday, June 7, 2009
More truth than you can take
Want to raise money without raising taxes? How about this: US out of Germany. Better yet: US out of everywhere. Then let's allow countries to bid on our presence. Our troops provide protection and pump billions of dollars into the economies of the countries where we have bases. That should be worth something to the "host" countries.
If Presidents Bush and Obama have accomplished nothing else, they have certainly brought into focus the social divide between conservatives and liberals in our nation:
Conservatives believe in freedom which is tempered by responsibility and the belief in eternal, transcendent truths.
Liberals believe in freedom as unfettered permissiveness with no absolute truth. Pornography on public school and library computers. In-your-face expression of homosexual (and heterosexual) behavior. Violent pornographic lyrics blaring in public. Video games that portray the most gruesome killings imaginable.
On security issues, conservatives want to maintain a safe society in which responsible citizens of all stripes can exercise their rights and freedoms while liberals believe the highest good is to protect the rights and freedoms of those who most directly threaten the rights and freedoms of responsible citizens. For example, liberals object to snooping on people talking to known terrorists, yet advise police to start snooping on people sporting Palin bumper stickers.
Conservatives desire to protect the innocent while liberals desire to protect the guilty. We see this most starkly in that conservatives oppose abortion while liberals oppose capital punishment.
Tell me where I’m wrong.
MISCELLANEA: Iran Clones Goat. I'll let you, valued reader, build a joke around this news item. And not to be outdone, scientists at Dubai's Camel Reproduction Center (this place actually exists) have cloned a camel, of course…Want to cut oil imports? Make all the roads toll roads tomorrow…Newspaper closings. As we depend on electronic media we open ourselves to info disruption by enemy hackers or EMI…The day I read about thousands of government workers being laid off the same way I've been reading about factory workers, I'll know someone in Washington is serious about saving money… Are you as tired of President Obama's "nose in the air" national lectures as I am? His arrogance is overwhelming.
"The impact of climate change is a tremendous risk to the security and well-being of our countries," Nancy Pelosi announced to a group in China. Exactly what is the risk to our security if the world warms up or cools down a few degrees? Or to our "well-being"? Explain please. It's just hyperbole, nothing more. Isn't it ironic, by the way, that perhaps the biggest socialist in our government, Nancy Pelosi, went to the world's biggest socialist/communist nation, and found that they are more committed to growing their private sector than we are?
During the campaign no one dared whisper Hussein when referring to the candidate's name, but now President Obama virtually insists on using this Muslim moniker. As part of his rapprochement to the Islamic world, our president asserted that the US is one of the world's largest Muslim nations if you count the number of Muslims in the population. As soon as people started to crunch the numbers it turns out that even with the most generous estimate of the number of Muslims living in the USA, the country would be no more than the world's 34th largest Muslim nation, behind world powers such as Burkina Faso and Tajikistan. Another lie from BHO. (Isn't that an airport abbreviation?)
“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,” Judge Sonia Sotomayor, Obama's pick for the Supremes, said repeatedly.
Of course I disagree with her, but if what she said is true, I know one thing: a wise Latina woman who happened to be a judge aspiring to higher office would have had the sense not to say as much publicly.
• • •
If Presidents Bush and Obama have accomplished nothing else, they have certainly brought into focus the social divide between conservatives and liberals in our nation:
Conservatives believe in freedom which is tempered by responsibility and the belief in eternal, transcendent truths.
Liberals believe in freedom as unfettered permissiveness with no absolute truth. Pornography on public school and library computers. In-your-face expression of homosexual (and heterosexual) behavior. Violent pornographic lyrics blaring in public. Video games that portray the most gruesome killings imaginable.
On security issues, conservatives want to maintain a safe society in which responsible citizens of all stripes can exercise their rights and freedoms while liberals believe the highest good is to protect the rights and freedoms of those who most directly threaten the rights and freedoms of responsible citizens. For example, liberals object to snooping on people talking to known terrorists, yet advise police to start snooping on people sporting Palin bumper stickers.
Conservatives desire to protect the innocent while liberals desire to protect the guilty. We see this most starkly in that conservatives oppose abortion while liberals oppose capital punishment.
Tell me where I’m wrong.
• • •
MISCELLANEA: Iran Clones Goat. I'll let you, valued reader, build a joke around this news item. And not to be outdone, scientists at Dubai's Camel Reproduction Center (this place actually exists) have cloned a camel, of course…Want to cut oil imports? Make all the roads toll roads tomorrow…Newspaper closings. As we depend on electronic media we open ourselves to info disruption by enemy hackers or EMI…The day I read about thousands of government workers being laid off the same way I've been reading about factory workers, I'll know someone in Washington is serious about saving money… Are you as tired of President Obama's "nose in the air" national lectures as I am? His arrogance is overwhelming.
• • •
"The impact of climate change is a tremendous risk to the security and well-being of our countries," Nancy Pelosi announced to a group in China. Exactly what is the risk to our security if the world warms up or cools down a few degrees? Or to our "well-being"? Explain please. It's just hyperbole, nothing more. Isn't it ironic, by the way, that perhaps the biggest socialist in our government, Nancy Pelosi, went to the world's biggest socialist/communist nation, and found that they are more committed to growing their private sector than we are?
• • •
During the campaign no one dared whisper Hussein when referring to the candidate's name, but now President Obama virtually insists on using this Muslim moniker. As part of his rapprochement to the Islamic world, our president asserted that the US is one of the world's largest Muslim nations if you count the number of Muslims in the population. As soon as people started to crunch the numbers it turns out that even with the most generous estimate of the number of Muslims living in the USA, the country would be no more than the world's 34th largest Muslim nation, behind world powers such as Burkina Faso and Tajikistan. Another lie from BHO. (Isn't that an airport abbreviation?)
• • •
“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,” Judge Sonia Sotomayor, Obama's pick for the Supremes, said repeatedly.
Of course I disagree with her, but if what she said is true, I know one thing: a wise Latina woman who happened to be a judge aspiring to higher office would have had the sense not to say as much publicly.
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