R.I.P. George H.W. Bush, the last Republican President I voted for

Last August, I wrote R.I.P. John McCain, the last Republican presidential candidate I voted for.  McCain was never President and I voted for him in 2000, when he ran against George W. Bush, who was one of the reasons I left the Republican Party.  Yesterday, George W. Bush's father George H.W. Bush, the last Republican President I voted for, died.  ABC News paid tribute in Celebrating the life and legacy of George H.W. Bush.

Remembering the 41st president of the United States of America, dead at the age of 94.

The video mentioned one of the reasons I still have some self-respect when I write that I voted for Bush, twice, the Americans with Disabilities Act.*  The Daily Beast mentioned it and other of his actions I still approve of in George H.W. Bush Was a Better Kind of Republican.

He put David Souter on the Supreme Court. He signed the Americans With Disabilities Act. He ordered a temporary ban on certain semiautomatic weapons, costing him the NRA’s support when he sought reelection (and he resigned his membership). He put in place an EPA administrator who actually cared about the environment and wanted to start doing something about climate change 30 years ago.

While the senior Bush was no Al Gore, he did do something about climate change.  In conjunction with the release of National Climate Assessment, Forbes reminded its readers of the elder Bush's role in making that report possible.

The U.S. Global Change Research Program was established during President George H.W. Bush's administration in 1989 by a Presidential Initiative. Congress then mandated further action with the Global Change Research Act of 1990. The law specifically mandated the following key actions: Directs the President to establish an interagency United States Global Change Research Program to improve understanding of global change. Requires the Chairman of the Council, through the Committee, to develop a National Global Change Research Plan for implementation of the Program. Sets forth required Plan contents and research elements, including that the Plan provide recommendations for collaboration within the Federal Government and among nations.

The Surprising Climate And Environmental Legacy Of President George H. W. Bush quoted that passage and added the following.

The Global Change Research Act of 1990, signed by President George H.W. Bush, also "requires the Council, at least every four years, through the Committee, to submit to the President and the Congress an assessment regarding the findings of the Program and associated uncertainties, the effects of global change, and current and major long-term trends in global change."

In the same article, Forbes listed another environmental achievement of the elder Bush and his Administration.

President George H.W. Bush also signed the landmark 1990 Clean Air Act Amendment. The Environmental Protection Agency EPA website points out, "In June 1989 President Bush proposed sweeping revisions to the Clean Air Act. Building on Congressional proposals advanced during the 1980s, the President proposed legislation designed to curb three major threats to the nation's environment and to the health of millions of Americans: acid rain, urban air pollution, and toxic air emissions. The proposal also called for establishing a national permits program to make the law more workable, and an improved enforcement program to help ensure better compliance with the Act."
...
The Clean Air Act of 1990 with Title VI sought to protect the ozone layer. It specifically required the EPA to regulate  ozone-depleting substances like hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), methyl bromide, halons, carbon tetrachloride, hydrobromofluorocarbons, chlorobromomethane, and methyl chloroform.  Many of these things were commonly found in air conditioning refrigerants and spray cans used by the public. As with the current climate change- fossil fuel industry "tug-and-pull," there was push back to the Montreal Protocol and limits on ozone-depleting substances. The Act also ensured the U.S. commitment to the Montreal Protocol.

Without this amendment to the Clean Air Act, the shrinking of the ozone hole over the Antarctic may not have been possible.  For that, I'm grateful.

Of course, there are some things Bush did that I'm still not happy about.  One of them is the appointment of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, which I use as the prime example of the revolving door between Monsanto and government.  However, today is not the day to speak ill of the dead.  Instead, it is the day to wish the 41st President of the United States to rest in peace.

*The owner of the bar I used to hang out at in the Irish Hills once said I had to be a liberal because I was an educator.  He ended up being right, but I dodged his remark by telling him that I voted for Bush Senior twice.  He was satisfied with that.

The smart money is on Rubio to beat Trump

I opened Bye, Bobby! Jindal drops out with dueling observations on the state of the GOP field.

Kunstler remarked on the state of the campaign at his blog yesterday.

The cowardice in the college executive suites is mirrored in our national politics, where no persons of real standing will dare step forward to oppose the juggernaut of Hillery-the-Grifter, or take on the clowning Donald Trump on the grounds of his sheer mental unfittedness to lead a government.

I disagreed with him about the Republicans being unwilling to take on Trump.*

There are plenty of people with stature in the Republican Party trying to dislodge Trump and Carson from the top two spots.   Off the top of my head, I count four current senators, three current governors, a former senator, and four former governors, along with a former CEO of a Fortune 500 corporation, all trying to beat that "immigrant-bashing carnival barker" and his competitor Doctor Pyramid.  They're just not succeeding at it.

That was only half of what I had to say on the topic of Republicans taking on Trump.  Here's the rest, which I promised to use in the comments to Record page views, comments, and 100th follower: Monthly meta for October 2015.

Right now, the smart money is on Rubio, as PredictWise's aggregate of betting markets gives him a 47% chance of winning the nomination.  Trump may be in second, but he's well behind at 19%.  Then comes Cruz at 13% and Bush at 10%.  The rest of the field, including Carson, is in single digits.  Let's see if the people putting their money where their mouths are end up being right or losing their shirts.

Since last Monday, those odds have moved.  Rubio is still at 47%, while Trump and Cruz have both gone up to 22% and 16% respectively.  Bush is still at 10%, while Christie is hanging on at 4% and Carson has fallen to 2%.  The "smart money" among gamblers may think that Rubio is the most likely to win the nomination, but they are taking both Trump and Cruz more seriously.  That last is not good news.

Follow over the jump for more.

Andrew Sullivan quotes Michael Stafford's Soviet references about the GOP

My friend Michael Stafford, like me a former Republican who got disgusted with the Republican Party and was also involved with the Coffee Party, offered a hopeful picture of the state of our former party in The Conservative Spring at the Cagle Post.  Andrew Sullivan over at the Daily Beast picked up on his article, but turned Michael's title into a question, quoting two passages invoking the similarity between the modern GOP and the Communist Party in the Soviet Union.  First, here is the hopeful passage about the party's state.

Now, as the GOP regroups from its electoral debacle, public criticisms of conservative dogmas have expanded beyond a small circle of dissidents. Prominent conservatives are saying heretical things that would have gotten them tarred, feathered, and banished a few months ago.

The long night of strict doctrinal conformity- a period when dissidents were condemned for the slightest deviations in the equivalent of media show trials, purged, and then airbrushed out of old CPAC convention pictures- shows signs of ending.

The high priests of the conservative infotainment industry are both discredited and politically vulnerable. Their agenda has been exposed as a bankrupt fraud- a Potemkin village, a path to nowhere.

Of course, this could be the equivalent of a Prague Spring, or, to extend the metaphor to a Communist country, a Tiananamen Square.

The window of opportunity for reform could shut quickly. The Conservative Spring might be followed, swiftly, by dour Brezhnevian repression, and another round of purity purges.  Authoritarian elites, after all, have a nasty habit of regrouping and reasserting control. And it is unclear whether reform ideas can be effectively communicated to a base that believes in movement conservative inerrancy, is cut off from other information sources, disdains intellectuals, is dangerously misinformed, and is accustomed to the confrontational, schoolyard bully-style of talk radio.

Sullivan stopped there, but he could have quoted one more Soviet reference.

Through the years, dissidents have paid a heavy price for daring to question conservative dogma. Some, like Bruce Bartlett and David Frum, have lost jobs and suffered other career consequences for speaking out.  Others, including me, have been driven into political exile of one form or another.

We’ve endured scorn, petty harassment, ostracization, and worse because, in the words of Andrei Sakharov, we told uncomfortable truths about the huge amount of “substitution, deceit, and lack of correspondence with reality” in modern conservatism and refused to subordinate our integrity to demands for ideological conformity.

Sullivan may have not fired all the ammunition my friend Michael gave him, but he did use the opportunity to give his prescription for GOP reform.

Until the GOP accepts its cultural and intellectual dead-end, it will not endure for long as a national party... I propose two places to start: a commitment to developing conservative ideas for environmental protection and a volte-face on gays. That was one way the Tories climbed back to electability in Britain. But David Cameron didn't have a fundamentalist religious movement and a far right media-industrial complex to overcome. And it took the Tories three consecutive losses to get real.

Sullivan isn't that optimistic about the GOP's likelihood of turning around in the next four years.  As for me, it's too late.  I'm not going back.

Christine O'Donnell's "Troublemaker" living down to its name

I know this doesn't fit the theme of sustainability in Detroit. It does fit the Nablopomo theme of Fiction and the listing of this blog under politics on the Nablopomo blogroll. Besides, I see the Tea Partiers as obstacles to achieving sustainability. so it's not as off-topic as one might first think.





First, the e-book version of her book says it's a work of fiction, hence the Nablopomo badge.

Huffington Post: Christine O'Donnell Memoir's E-Version Called 'Work Of Fiction' By E-Publisher

Failed U.S. Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell is out with her new book "Troublemaker," which she describes in the introduction as "a political memoir slash campaign diary slash position paper slash rallying cry, with an emphasis on the slash." In an email to supporters, she promised the book would offer "the real, raw story of my life.

But the e-version of her book says she's making it all up.

The copyright page of her book in both the Kindle and iTunes versions state that O'Donnell's memoir is, in fact, a novel.

"This is a work of fiction," reads the disclaimer. "All of the characters, organizations and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously."

"Emphasis on the slash," LOL.

Next, the trolls are having a field day mocking her through the tagging and recommendation functions of Amazon.

The Daily Beast: Christine O’Donnell Gets Punked

Just in time for her book’s release, the former Senate candidate’s Amazon page is the target of cyberpranksters—who won’t let shoppers forget the Tea Partier’s past comments about witches, masturbation, and abstinence.

Many of the recommended products are NSFW.