Tolerance ... and Proposition 8

As most people probably know by now, Proposition 8 is the initiative that was passed in California on Election Day that provides that marriage can only be between a man and woman. Lots of people are very upset that it passed, and there have been lots of protests. There have been several protests outside the LDS temple in Los Angeles. I am sure that part of the reason is that the church supported the passage of Prop 8. Here are some pics:

I can't get the pictures to line up well, but you get the idea. These photos were taken at a protest outside the LA temple. The gay rights movement is constantly asking for tolerance. If these pics are any indication, I think they are sadly lacking in a trait they demand from everyone else.

When you consider that only between 2 and 5 percent of the voters in California are Mormon, the vote clearly did not ride solely on the Mormon vote. And if most Mormons voted for Prop 8, so what anyway? Aren't we all supposed to vote for what we think is right, regardless of whether other people will like it?

Election repercussions?

I had an interesting thing happened yesterday. James and I went to a local gun store, and got to chatting with one of the owners. He told us something interesting. In a normal week, he sells 1000 to 2000 rounds of ammunition. In the last week since the election, he has sold over 80,000 rounds. That is many times what he sells in a normal week. Turns out, people are saying they are worried that once Barack Obama is in office, he will immediately start restricting gun rights. Some people are even saying they think he will sign an executive order his first day in office outlawing guns.

I think that is ridiculous. First of all, you have to consider the second amendment to the constitution. As everyone should know, this guarantees the rights of individuals to bear arms. It takes major effort and time to repeal a constitutional amendment, and it would never pass. Secondly, with the recent ruling from the Supreme Court that strongly supports gun rights, he would be fighting an uphill battle to actually create a gun ban that would not be struck down by the Supreme Court. Third, he is a brand new president coming into office already facing many challenges. I really don't think he would want to alienate large numbers of Americans by pushing a gun ban, when he has much bigger fish to fry, such as the economy and health care, that he enjoys huge support for. He will gain political capital by working on those issues, and can only lose it by banning guns.

I don't think we have to worry just yet about losing our guns, but people are sure acting like it. Alaska is already armed to the teeth, but in the last week, gun and sportsmen's shops have all but sold out of guns and ammo.

Siding

So, the bishop of our ward happens to own a log cabin business. In addition to providing full cabin packages, one of his other products is siding. This siding is made from logs that are sliced lengthwise, so that we have 10' long slices of log that are an inch thick. The slices of log are nailed in two overlapping layers along the sides of the house. The siding isn't done, but two walls are completely done, and the third wall is more than halfway sided. It should be completely done in the next few days, except for the tops of the gable ends. We haven't completely decided yet what we will do there, although James is leaning towards galvanized corrugated metal. The next project will be to weatherize the wood. We decided not to paint because we want to keep the wood appearance. So we will most likely do a colored penetrating stain, that adds some color but allows the texture and grain of the wood to shine through.

We like this siding for several reasons. It is rustic in appearance, in keeping with the character of the entire cabin. It is a local product, made from Alaskan logs that are milled less than 5 miles from my house. And buying it helps a friend.

The last two reasons are especially important from my perspective. It is important to us that we were able to use local products, and we wish it would have been feasible to do this with the entire cabin. If we had wanted a log cabin, we could have done much more of it with local materials, but that wasn't what we wanted, as 8 inch log walls only have a R10 insulation value. With economic problems becoming more severe, and oil depletion quickly becoming a looming issue, it is absolutely vital that local products be used as often as possible, in part to cut down on the distance things are shipped, and in part because I believe it will soon become necessary to rely on local products for many items that will become not worth shipping, so we need those businesses to stay open.

In addition, there is the issue of helping someone I know. Community building is critical with the economic struggles our nation is facing. In times of economic crises, people depend on the people they know for support. Studies have shown that the people that best weathered the Soviet collapse had networks of friends, neighbors, etc outside of the main economic system that they relied upon. If things get worse, and I very much suspect they will, those community ties will become critically important. I buy siding from my friend. Maybe I will give some raspberry jam from next year's harvest to a friend. That friend may drive my kid to school. And so on. And if we all help each other, we will get by much better than each family struggling to do it all. And in the process, develop those social ties that are important on an emotional level as well. That friend that gave you a bushel of potatoes may be the person you call on the phone when your camel's back has been broken by that last straw, maybe something major like a foreclosure, maybe something little like a draining day with quarrelling children, and you just need someone to talk to. And maybe they may turn to you for something big, like space on the floor to sleep if their heat breaks in the middle of winter, or they run out of heating oil, and the barge doesn't come back til spring.

So, yeah, I have siding on my house :)

the canary in the coal mine

"The Arctic is often cited as the canary in the coal mine for climate warming … and the canary has died.” - Dr Jay Zwally, a glaciologist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

http://links.org.au/node/683

So, we did not have a record loss of arctic sea ice this summer as we did in 2007. No, we only had the second largest sea ice loss ever. And during a summer that was exceptionally cool and cloudy. It was cool enough this summer that most crops were several weeks behind schedule, and some things didn't produce at all up here.

I don't want to repeat the entire article linked above, but some of it, I just have to.

"The Arctic is key to the world’s climate, and Arctic changes have the potential to seriously destabilise the global climate system...The danger is that an ice-free state in the Arctic summer will kick the climate system into run-on warming and create an aberrant new climate state many, many degrees hotter. The Arctic sea-ice is the first domino and it is falling fast. Other dominos will inevitably fall unless we stop emitting greenhouse gases and cool the planet to get the Arctic sea-ice back. " [emphasis added]

So see, big deal, huh? Read on....

"And so the conclusions we reached in November 2007 were:
• Because of the dangerous knock-on effects caused by its loss, the Arctic sea ice must be restored to its normal extent as fast as possible.
• To get the Arctic sea ice back we need to cool the earth by about 0.3ºC. If we don’t, we cannot avoid very dangerous climate impacts. There is no third way. This is the new very inconvenient truth politicians seek to avoid.
• To cool the earth fast enough to get the Arctic sea-ice back quickly, we need to move to zero greenhouse gas emissions as fast as the economy can be restructured, and is environmentally safe to do so, and take about 200 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide out of the air. We also need to find environmentally-safe mechanisms to actively cool the earth while navigating this transition. [emphasis added]
• Taken together this is a staggering task in terms of the necessary scale and speed of action, but there is simply no alternative if we are to avoid catastrophic climate change. "

Catastrophic climate change. We are not talking a little bit warmer. We are talking mass eradication of species, severe desertification of current agricultural land, massive releases of methane from permafrost and arctic seabeds. And to prevent it, we have to not just cut back on greenhouse gasses. We have to stop them. Get to ZERO emissions. Heck, even my woodstove emits greenhouse gasses. The article suggests:

"The climate emergency requires leadership and courage, and an imaginative capacity almost completely lacking in ... politics today. We need to inspire people with the idea of transformative action, the willingness to promote a new vision of the future and make it the number one goal of our society and economy. It requires governments to put much of the enormous wealth generated by our economy into the solving the climate crisis. "

and...

"If politicians cannot lead, then we all must, in building a movement across society that uses the brutal reality of our position to advocate and inspire the nation to take transformative action. We can only play this game once. If we don't do enough, or at sufficient pace, in building a post-carbon economy, the climate system will get away from our capacity to correct it. Trial and error climate policy is not an option. Waiting for the market is not an option. The Arctic is our Pearl Harbor."

Does anyone really need a $150K wardrobe?

I don't think so. Not even our beloved governor turned vice presidential candidate. According to news reports, the republican party has spent over $150 THOUSAND on clothes for Sarah. Most at Neiman Marcus. She is supposedly donating them to charity when she is done, but so what? For someone that is trying really hard to portray herself as a soccer mom, a typical suburban woman, this isn't working. It's just silly and disgusting.

My economic stimulus plan

OK, so the title may be a little bit grandiose, but to be perfectly honest, I think they have it all wrong. They being the know-it-alls in Washington that have come up with one harebrained scheme after another to waste citizens' money. They keep saying taxpayers, but I am damn sick and tired of being called a taxpayer or a consumer. Anyway, this is what I think they should do:

1. Bring the soldiers home from Iraq and Afghanistan. We are spending hundreds of billions of dollars to keep them overseas. We can put that money to better use.

2. Repeal TARP, the $700 billion bandaid for the credit crisis. I have a couple of reasons for this. First, I don't think it will work. There is a lot more than $700 billion in bad paper out there, and once we start, where do we end? There was one bank that said it had over $300 billion all by itself. Secondly, the vast majority of citizens are against the plan, and I think we count a lot more than all the Wall Street corporations put together.

3. If a bank lent money it should not have, or an insurance company insured loans they should not have, or an investment firm made bad bets, they need to take their losses. If I were to invest money in the stock market, and lose it, or to lend money to someone and not get it back, there would not be any government agency standing by to hand me my money back. It should not work for them either.

4. Instead of this new economic stimulus package they are talking about, which is just another attempt at a quick fix, a get-rich-quick scheme on a national level, we should be investing that money in a way that will pay off in the future. Think New Deal. Invest in fixing the electrical grid that is old and worn out and in danger of a major collapse. Invest in alternative energy projects that will help reduce our reliance on oil. Get the railroads back in good condition, as shipping freight by rail is much more efficient than by truck. Get the CCC reactivated for these things. Not only will these things help us in the future, but using something like the CCC will create jobs. Unemployment is relatively high right now, and this type of program would help lower it, and thereby put more money in people's pockets. Slower than sending out a check to everyone, but more effective in the long run.

5. Institute a foreclosure moratorium for families who just had their rates readjusted or are newly unemployed. There should be some guidelines about this, so people that just decide to quit paying their mortgages because they are underwater don't get bailed out, and so that people can't just pay nothing and live there for free. Put in place rules for renegotiating their mortgages so that it is a uniform process.

6. Encourage victory gardens and local food production. Food prices are rising, more people are applying for food stamps, food banks are used to capacity and more. The cost of transporting food across the country is astronomical, and wasteful. For things like olive oil, that can only be produced in certain areas, fine. But Alaskans should not be buying potatoes from Idaho.

7. Create MAJOR incentives for increasing energy effciency. Things like carpooling, using public transportation, switching to higher mpg vehicles. We can save energy in other areas besides transportation too. The better insulated a house is, the less energy it takes to keep it warm/cool. Individual families that make plenty of money may not find this important, but as a nation, it is essential that we use less.

8. Create MAJOR incentives for making things here in the US. Almost everything I buy these days says it is made in China, Indonesia, somewhere besides the US. That needs to change.

I am sure I can think of other things, but this, to me, is a good start. I think it would help get us pointed in the right direction, away from the mentality that the only things that keeps the economy going are consumer spending and banks lending to each other.

as promised....

Here are pics of my new kitchen:

As I said earlier, I am very excited about having a real kitchen in my house. I have cabinets, a sink, a stove, tile floor... it's all there.

Now for the details... the stove is propane, connected to a couple of 100 pound tanks out back. Turns out a natural gas stove converts to propane just by changing one little part. This stove does not require any electricity to work, not even the oven. This is a good thing, since I don't have any electricity.

I do have running water, however, of sorts. We have a 150 gallon water tank upstairs that has a faucet emptying into the kitchen sink. It will go to the bathroom sink too, eventually. We can't use our pretty kitchen sink faucet however, because it turns out that gravity does not supply enough pressure to force the water through the faucet at anything more than a dribble. So we have a temporary faucet that is just like a typical outdoor faucet, until we have more pressure. What we don't have yet is hot water. If we need hot water, we heat it on the stove, or on the woodstove, if it happens to be hot. Our water situation is by no means a perfect one, but it works for us for now.

So, I have a kitchen. I have lived in this cabin since April 1 without a kitchen (you can see the pics here and here of my previous setup). This is a vast improvement, one I am totally psyched about.

Assault with a deadly spork...

James called me earlier today to read me this story he found while reading the Anchorage Daily News. I think it is one of the most ridiculous things I have ever heard. Apparently some guy had lunch at KFC, and must have gotten some serious indigestion or something... he stabbed a guy with his spork, oh excuse me, hybrid fork spoon utensil. When James read this to me, my reaction was, are you KIDDING me?

http://www.adn.com/crime/story/558820.html

I love Alaska.

long time no see

Well, I knew it had been a while since I last posted, but not until I looked at my blog did I realize it has been over a month. WOW. I have been insanely busy at work, getting lots of overtime, and the commute is taking up just about all the rest of my waking hours. Add church activities, sick kids (even just the minor colds and stuff they have require attention), listening to news about the financial mess, the excitement about having an oven to bake with, I have no time.

BUT DID YOU HEAR THAT???? AN OVEN TO BAKE WITH. I am leaping with joy. I am absolutely, completely ecstatic because I have a real stove. This weekend, I will post pictures on my blog of my beautiful new kitchen.

I have three days off this weekend. I am absolutely thrilled to have all that free time. I don't know what I will do with it all.... oh wait, I will bake bread. I will knit. I will play piano. I will post pictures and erudite soliloquies on my blog. I will spend time with my kids, maybe playing in our snow. I will plant daffodil bulbs and hope they survive the winter. I will.... wait, what happened to all my free time????

welfare

I have to start this post by saying that my mom is one of my favorite people. And I don't really want to pick on her. But recent events have me thinking a lot about something she said recently. See, my mom and I get along pretty well. But we totally disagree on a lot of political and economic issues. My mom is a staunch republican, and I am independent, but lean towards the democrat view when it comes to economics. So my mom and I were talking the other day, and she was saying that she votes Republican because "they seem to take better care of my money. They don't try to give it away in welfare to people that are too lazy to work."



Well, no, I agree the Republicans don't give money to the average Joe. Or the poor Joe, who may be poor because he is lazy, or does drugs, or may be poor because he has limited abilities, or poor health, or something else completely outside of his control. Or poor Joe's kids, who are also poor through no fault of their own. But they sure as hell give it away. Who do they give it away to? Um, let's see.

• Oil companies that make the biggest profits ever seen get huge welfare subsidy payments.


• Banks that make stupid lending and investment decisions, lose BILLIONS of dollars, and still pay their worthless CEO's hundreds of millions of dollars per year, get huge welfare bailout funds (um, Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, maybe Lehman Brothers soon).


• The Big Three automakers, who couldn't see high gas prices coming (I could see it coming, and I am not getting paid a gazillion dollars a year to pay attention to what direction the market is going) and now can't get loans at a "reasonable" interest rate, looks like they will be getting more billions of dollars in welfare low-interest, guarenteed loans from the government to retool their factories so they can stay in business. Never mind that an individual that made stupid decisions and blew their money can't get a loan at a "reasonable" interest rate either... it's common sense not to lend in that situation, but let's hand out money to the Big 3.


• Airlines, who also didn't see the high gas prices coming, are getting huge welfare subsidy payments. They are going bankrupt anyway, one by one.

I could keep going. But individual people, who didn't see high gas prices coming, can't get any increase in the heating assistance program, even though heating costs, especially for those dependent on heating oil or propane have gone up astronomically. Individual people, who didn't see high food prices coming, and whose salaries don't keep up with inflation or the rising cost of medical care, can't get increases in medicaid coverage for their children. Soldiers who risk their lives everyday on the battle field, and too often these days sacrifice everything for their country get paid so poorly that their family back home scrapes by on food stamps.

My mom's beef is that helping these people comes out of her pocket, and that of every American lucky enough, smart enough, ambitious enough, whatever, to make enough money to pay taxes. But how much is bailing out Freddie Mac going to cost her, me, every other taxpayer? A hell of a lot more than funding a program to help people keep their homes warm. How much do we spend every year in subsidies to oil companies that make $40 billion in profits? More than what it would cost to pay a soldier enough to be able to provide for his family, or give him adequate healthcare if he is injured.

I just think that individual people and their families, matter a whole lot more than corporations. And I know that all these industries are important to our economy, but I think that if people have no safety net in hard times, then businesses should not either. It is much more tragic for a child to starve or freeze to death, than for a corporation to fail, no matter how large.

For me, the bottom line is that Republican care about big business, and making money. Democrats care about people. That's why I tend to agree with them on economic issues.

I'll get off my soapbox now.