Asian carp make the New York Times: Fight Against Asian Carp Threatens Fragile Great Lakes Unity... Two points are added here. First, several other Great Lakes states have joined the proceedings started by a Michigan suit against Illinois, all on Michigan's side. Second, and more important, this issue comes at a time when the states bordering the Great Lakes (as well as Ontario) had achieved a high level of cooperation and a number of accomplishments in preserving and restoring the lakes. So, naturally, there is concern that the spirit of cooperation may be dampened by the carp controversy.

Whigs make a comeback? Whig party leaders hope to offer voters more options... Former high school American history students may remember the Whig Party, which existed from the 1830s to the 1850s and placed three presidents in office before it disintegrated, with some members going on to found the Republican Party. Why would there be a Whig Party today? This article speaks with the leader of the Florida Whigs, who seem to be aiming for the middle ground between today's Republicans and Democrats. Today's Whigs, as in the past, are big on states and individual rights at the expense of federal and presidential powers. There are Whig organizations in 31 states, though so far only in Florida are they approved to appear on statewide ballots.

Franken shuts down Lieberman on Senate floor ... Senator Franken was presiding over the senate, Senator Lieberman was speaking, ran out of time, asked for more... and Senator Franken did not grant it. His spokesperson said they're running the Senate very tightly in order to get things done.

Reports that Senator Franken gave Senator Nelson (news) the evil eye when he rose to speak are as yet unsubstantiated.

WWE CEO Linda McMahon wades into Conn. Senate race

Good gawd. Why don't I run for Senate.

One more straw: Warren Cracking Down on Street Basketball... apparently we now have a terrible law enforcement issue in that young people are putting portable basketball hoops in the neighborhood streets and ... playing basketball. Traffic may be impeded! Noise may be made! This is an outrage!

You know what the outrage really is? How the city government has, over the last few years, passed laws repeatedly that limit what people may do in Warren. This year they revised the noise ordinance so that "quiet hours" are now from 10 p.m. to 8 a.m.; formerly they were 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. They've changed the ordinance governing lawn maintenance, so that grass must be no higher than six inches, instead of nine as it was just a few years ago. It is no longer acceptable to use a portable metal fire pit, as my friend Leslie used to have for wood fires when she lived here in the early part of the decade. The last three to five years have seen a continual effort on the city council to over-regulate the residents.

None of these efforts is making Warren a more desirable place to live. People are not moving into the city; the population has been declining for years. It's not enticing new economic development in the city. Aside from the mayor's hare-brained scheme to entice General Motors to move its world headquarters from Detroit to Warren, there's been virtually nothing done in the way of economic development during his administration.

You hear a lot of people complaining about rumors of what the President Obama might do that will restrict the rights of citizens. I submit we have to look at all levels of government to understand the full weight of all the restrictions. I have no problems with federally mandated improvements in auto gas mileage. But the picky little things imposed by local officials make me want to dump tea in a harbor somewhere.

Thirty-six hours, now, of listening to right-wing Republicans talk trash about Judge Sonia Sotomayor, and I've come to the conclusion that those folks — Karl Rove, Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, Dick Cheney, Mitch McConnell et al. — all need to Just. Shut. Up. They're embarrassing America with their facile schoolboy insults. They're contributing nothing useful to the debate. They're stupid because they say these things without realizing that they're being hypocritical to a laughable degree. And they are roadblocks to government because they absolutely refuse to even look like they want to work together with the Democrats in Congress.

I take my hat off to John McCain, who had the only reasonable-sounding quote I found yesterday among Republicans in reaction to Sotomayor's nomination. Now, maybe it's the media's fault, and they should be trying to find moderate Republicans to get quotes from. I know they're out there. Somewhere. But please, can we make the loudmouth bullies be quiet for once?

Detroit has another new mayor. Voters, or at least a tiny portion of potential voters, selected businessman and former basketball star Dave Bing to take over from the acting mayor Ken Cockrel, Jr. And now they get to do it all again, as the regular mayoral primary comes in early August, followed by the general election in November. This might be a good plan, eh?: Install a new mayor every seven or eight months. Should keep corruption down, since nobody sticks around long enough to get cozy with the corrupters. I'm not sure about effective government, but hey.

But, this is what the city charter called for when the previous former mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, resigned. There was no better way to read the charter, even though everyone knew all these elections would, in the implied words of the citizens, suck. Nothing else could be done, legally.

According to the Detroit News, turnout was only about 15 percent of the electorate, which more or less matches the primary turnout in February. So, 85 percent of the potential voters couldn't be bothered over who should lead a city in crisis? Anyone wondering why the city's in crisis now?

Of course, they're still stuck with the same eight city council members until November. Maybe the prospect of throwing a few of them out on their ears will nudge the turnout up a little higher.

It's not that I'm picking on Detroit here. It's just that you can't really have functioning democracy with low voter turnouts, and I've said that for years about all kinds of elections.

I've been noticing a lot of media coverage of the lamentations and vitriol of the right wing in America that has been growing in volume since at least Election Day, 2008. It's gotten to the point where at least one state legislature is considering a resolution asserting states rights over the federal government's. (link; unsurprisingly, the state in question is Texas.) Back in January, my thought was, "Well, doesn't that make us look silly" — us meaning the left-wingers, who spent the preceding eight years engaging in ... lamentations and vitriol over the right-wingers controlling federal government.

So, what I'm saying is, America is a nation of whiners, right? Well, not really, but ... well, maybe some of the time. Problem is, by and large, liberals sat and moped for eight years. Conservatives are showing signs of militancy after not even a hundred days.

When us libruls are unhappy, we get together and ... drink lattes and write blog posts. We generally don't take up arms, because one of the more pervasive planks in our platform is gun control. We're trying to make cities safer and move beyond using firepower to make points.

Right-wingers have guns. Their belief system is based on the power of the gun to get you out of situations you don't want. Some of their rhetoric indicates that they, at least some of them, are not far from forming a well-organized militia and marching down Constitution Avenue. Already! The paint is practically still drying in the Oval Office.

OK, on the left we do have the anti-corporate protesters who turn out for every world trade-related meeting. But they're not our mainstream leaders. Their people don't have media shows that reach millions of viewers or listeners. The guy or gal who organized the G-20 protests doesn't also govern a state.

We all have opinions, and we're not all happy all the time. The remedies that some would use for their unhappiness should scare us all. It doesn't bode well for bipartisanship, or for the nation, for opposing sides to couch their statements and actions in fear and distrust.

Debate Rages Over Elk Feeding .... here's the short version: At the beginning of the last century, near Jackson, Wyoming, people started feeding elk, which had been over-hunted to near extinction. Over the decades, the elk herd grew to healthy levels and beyond. So far, so good: The initial aim was achieved, and the elk herd survived and thrived. A tourist attraction began to grow around the feeding, too.

Now, the herd is huge. Large herds of critters in one area are susceptible to illnesses. Being in one place like this is probably not in the elks' best interest. But, the surrounding area is developing, which makes it difficult if not impossible for the herd to resume its former migration patterns. There are ranchers, too, and the ranchers do not want their own herds of livestock to be infected should a disease break out in the elk herd. There are now even biodiversity issues—many species of birds no longer frequent the area where the elk are. And the local economy is now dependent on the tourism brought by the sight of the elk herd, at the seeming expense of ranching.

I'm sure nothing in that second paragraph was foreseen when they started feeding the elk near Jackson, WY. Now, whatever problems people and elk have, have only complicated, entangled, even painful solutions.

My mantra lately has been a rant about "unforeseen consequences." We humans are sure good at causing them—not just in wildlife conservation but in economics and finance to social issues to international relations. It's too bad we don't seem to be very good at forestalling or even predicting them.

I don't like hype. Never have. In the 1970s I hated the Beatles, in the early '80s I hated Billy Joel, and to this day I still dislike Friends and Seinfeld. (I've changed my mind about the Beatles and Billy Joel since then.) If it gets that much attention, it can't possibly be that good. So, it's kind of predictable that I didn't stop to watch the inauguration yesterday, which was possibly the most hyped political event in my lifetime.

But this meant I missed Itzhak Perlman and Yo-yo Ma performing John Williams' Air and Simple Gifts at the inauguration. I'd heard it was incredible, and when I finally saw the YouTube video of it, I had to agree. It's a beautiful piece of music, and the musicians have such joy in their faces. The clarinetist is Anthony McGill, and Gabriela Montero is the pianist; their part in it is just as important as the superstars'. It became an instant favorite of mine on YouTube, and I now kind of regret not seeing it in its context of introducing the swearing-in of President Obama and his inaugural address. (See also Inauguration quartet simply filled with hope.)

Following up on my post last week about the Senate vote on the auto bailout bill... The main point was to list the senators who seemingly crossed party lines to vote—the Democrats who voted against the motion and the Republicans who voted for it. The first thing I discovered that seems odd is that the cloture motion was apparently unrelated to the auto bridge loans; it was, in fact, to move forward on the Alternative Minimum Tax Relief Act of 2008. (The AMT is another fine piece of work, a great example of unintended consequences that I won't go into now.) I did some checking to find out more but failed to uncover any explanation. My guess is that the Senate's agenda required that the AMT Relief Act be advanced before the auto bridge loans could be considered.

My interest in who-voted-how came from seeing Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania) remind his colleagues on the Senate floor that plenty of Republicans voted for the Democratic-sponsored bill, so apparently not enough Democrats supported it. And this indeed was true. Now, the Democrats have 48 seats plus the consistent support of two Independents (Obama has resigned; Biden and Clinton have not yet done so); that makes 50. Ten Republicans voted for the cloture, but only 42 Democrats did. What was interesting, bordering on fascinating, was that not even the Senate Democratic Leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, supported the motion. That explains why I said earlier "seemingly" crossed party lines; it now appears to me (as to most other commentators, I think) to have been a sectional dispute rather than a party dispute. Yes, we still have sectional disputes in America; they're not just relics of the 19th century.

( Gory details... )

I promise something lighter next: Photos of my Christmas tree. I know you just can't wait.

The bridge loan package for the Big Three automakers (GM, Ford, Chrysler) failed in the Senate on a procedural vote. On top of all the other nothing that the 110th Senate has done since January 2007, this must ensure their position as the biggest waste of taxpayer money in elective government ever. The session is not yet adjourned, so there is a chance they will revisit the issue, but that chance is very small. Members of Michigan's congressional delegation have proposed asking President Bush to direct some of the Wall Street bailout money to the automakers—we're only talking $14 billion of the $700 billion, and all three automakers have huge financing arms so it's not the biggest stretch to do this. President Bush has already indicated support for the automakers, in the face of vehement opposition from Republican senators from southern states. Lest one thinks I'm going to slam Republicans, it must be known that several Democratic senators voted against the procedural motion that killed the deal. Defeat was a bipartisan effort. Edited to add: See this follow-up entry for some voting details.

It has been incredibly frustrating watching the shenanigans of the Senate over the last few years. It seems that almost nothing gets voted on directly. Bills all fail because of procedural votes. What sank the auto bailout was typical: an attempt to invoke cloture (to end debate, or more specifically to kill a filibuster by one or more senators), which must pass with 60 or more votes. The bill itself would need only a simple majority, but because so often this cloture vote must come up in order for things to progress, it's as if a supermajority is necessary for everything. That's why, in the recent election, the Democrats were trying so hard to get 60 senators elected—though it's obvious that they presently can't even get the 50 they already have in line.

Anyway, the story isn't over yet. It sure looks pretty bleak, though. It would be nice if some senators hadn't thought that it might only look bleak in Michigan, and who cares about Michigan. Truth is, the auto industry is a little bigger than three buildings in Wayne and Oakland Counties. But I suppose they'll have an opportunity to learn that soon enough.

That's the title of a song by songwriter, satirist, and funny/poignant guy Roy Zimmerman. He plays it on YouTube here with some commentary. Friend and local songwriter Steve Deasy brought Mr. Zimmerman to town a few weeks ago, and was encouraged to do his own version, so Steve's version is here. I've not embedded the videos here because I want interested readers to go to one of the sites and see it there. Roy Zimmerman has many more topical and humorous songs on video there. Steve's channel is small so far but growing; in fact, I predict it'll grow more soon, because I saw him shooting video tonight at the open mic.

I don't want to inflame any feelings about recent setbacks on the road to marriage equality. It's just a good song that speaks truth.

Here's what Barack Obama will not do:

He will not turn America into a Socialist state. (We don't even know how to spell Socialist here.) He will not raise your taxes and give all the money to welfare mothers, nor will he confiscate your land and turn it into a nature sanctuary. He will not turn your quaint farming community into the south side of Chicago. The airwaves will not become either a libertine wasteland or a bland politically correct wasteland.

He will also not fix the financial crisis and give a hundred thousand dollars to everyone with a mortgage. He will not get us out of Iraq and Afghanistan two weeks after the inaugural. He will not make all our neighbors any less scary, nor will he single-handedly stop global warming. He will not turn the clock back to the day before George W. Bush was elected or the days of Franklin Roosevelt.

Here's what he will do, based on what we've seen in the last two years:

He will talk to us, and he will give us straight talk that none of the self-described straight talkers we've had in the last decade have done. He will encourage us, he will push where he can, listen to both those in agreement and in opposition, and it is through this he will lead us. He will be concilatory with our allies, and he will strive to make America the shining beacon of hope and justice that it should be.

And he will ask us to do what we can. I think it's fair to say he will community-organize us. This is not a bad thing in the least.

It doesn't disturb me that he has what some people call a lack of experience. There are very few people who have the experience to lead a country such as the United States; last I've seen, the list included only former presidents. It's all on-the-job training. To me a president doesn't have to know how all the nuts and bolts work. A president must communicate. A president must know who to ask for advice, when to trust it, and then give overall direction. Sometimes the president needs to look decisive, but of course no decision is ever his alone. That's why there's a cabinet and other advisors.

Remember, we also elected a Congress of 538 members. Not even all the Democrats are of one philosophy; the conservative Democrats will put the brakes on the machine at times. There is also a large federal bureaucracy, and 51 state (and district) governments. No radical change CAN be made.

The biggest positive outcome of this election, to me, is that we're going to get rid of a cadre of leaders who are quite frankly at odds with the best ideals of America. They governed with a loose regard for the Constitution and laws of the country, and they willfully shut out dissenters. In its place, we are getting someone who will lead us, not drag us, and, we hope, install a new set of government leaders who will help us restore what we have lost in these early years of the twenty-first century.

No one is shut out. Everyone is needed. It's not a red country or a blue country. It's America.

...which is a button I have, and I probably should've worn it to the polls today.

I voted this morning before work. By coincidence, I was almost right behind my neighbors; we could have car-pooled. It was the longest voting line I've seen since I voted in the 1980 election at the armory in Marquette, not far from the residence halls. But it wasn't terrible, as it only took about 50 minutes from arrival to departure. At one point I mentioned to my neighbors that it was the longest line since 1980, and the guy in front of them looked back and said "Children!" He must've voted for LBJ in 1964, I'm sure.

The weather was absolutely perfect: sunny and upper 50s in the morning, with a high of 70 this afternoon. There was a brief cloudy spell just after noon, but the clouds dissipated. It could be like this every single day and make a lot of people happy.

I'm pretty anxious, though, worried that the results won't work out the way I and a lot of other people want. I have a lot of mental energy invested in this election, and a victory for McCain would seem very crushing, frankly. I know the opinion polls point toward an Obama victory, but it's still close. I'm tempted to go home, go to bed without turning the TV on, and buy a newspaper tomorrow to find out who won. But I probably will watch the returns on TV, if only because Dave will call at some point from in front of his TV set.

Reading all the reports of the world's opinion on our election has been interesting. I don't recall quite this much coverage of that in past years. Maybe it's because the damage we can do has never been more apparent than in the last few years. Well, world, those of us who share some of the pain have done what we could today. Here's hoping it turns out the best for all of us.

In honor of the gentleman, scholar, and judge of fine wine chipuni on his birthday, I offer this overview of Michigan's ballot proposals for 2008. (He asked for one proposal or race, but we only have two proposals so I thought I'd go for broke.)

We have two ballot initiatives in the state of Michigan this year (down from five in 2004). The first proposal, if passed, would permit the use of marijuana for medical reasons under state law. The second is a state constitutional amendment that would broaden the use of embryonic stem cells in Michigan.

Proposal 1 is not getting much attention at all so far. It's only been the last week that I've seen billboards for or against it, mostly for. I heard a supporter on the radio tonight saying that the legislation that would be approved is 14 pages, compared to (she said) California's which is only a few lines. I think her point was that they had been very careful in drawing up the legislation. I wasn't in the car very long, and that's all I heard, which wouldn't be very helpful if it weren't for the fact that I made up my mind on the issue a long time ago.

Proposal 2 is getting far more attention, and there is a lot of ... I'll say "unfounded extrapolation" on the part of the opponents. Many local churches have been displaying "No on 2" signs, in case you had any doubts about who the antis were. Yes, that's supposed to be illegal; apparently no one cares anymore, but that's another rant. It has also been said that our taxes would be spent on stem cell research, perhaps even increase. This is not necessarily true if one reads the proposal, though it's true that one proponent said we should support the research with public funds (but he's not a lawmaker).

( Actual ballot language under cut )
I support both proposals. I recognize that changing state law on medical marijuana will not change the federal law, which leaves the issue in limbo, but I'd like to see the federal law changed so maybe this is a useful step in the right direction. As for the embryonic stem cell research, I want to see the state take a step that might help a growing medical field, so our economy might diversify, while providing the research that might improve the lives of people who need new cures and therapies for diseases.

Last night I went to dinner with a friend—I won't say where, but if you want a recommendation for a good Japanese restaurant in Farmington Hills, let me know, because it was a fine dinner. At one point, there were was us and another couple about our age nearby. The waitress, a very friendly and welcoming young Japanese-American woman, started asking about the election. She was just about to become a citizen (today, I think), so she needed information about registering and who's running and all. She seemed to be for Obama, and as all four of us were apparently avidly for Obama too, we were all trying to be very helpful.

But there's one thing we couldn't be helpful about, really. She wanted to know about issues; she wanted to read what the candidates stood for. And while some of us were telling her to go to various websites to find this out, I started thinking about how hard a job it is for anyone, let alone a new citizen, to find out the candidate's positions. I'm sure the information is out there. But how far down on Obama's or McCain's websites do you have to dig to find it? Are news outlets publicizing it? Not much, as altivo pointed out in his LJ entry today (approximately here). They used to; in the 50s and 60s (and even into the 70s) there were long newspaper articles talking not about who said what about pigs and lipstick, but what they thought about economic and social issues and what they wanted to do once in office. Y'know, information that might really be important.

It was a hard question to answer in the few minutes between the salad and the main dishes. I wish it had been much, much easier.

I got to hear Sarah Palin talk about oil drilling today (it was an NPR report from one of the GOP campaign stops.). I didn't think anyone's voice could grate on my nerves worse than George W. Bush's, but I was sadly mistaken. But I'll be more than snarky here:

The only reason anyone wants to drill for oil in the territory of the U.S. is that the price of oil finally got high enough to outweigh the costs of drilling. It's no big patriotic endeavor, and it won't lower the price of gasoline in a statistically significant way. It's just plain Econ 101 -- it costs more to get oil out of the ground here, so as long as buying it from OPEC was cheaper that's what we did. Maybe a few out-of-work roughnecks wanted to drill here. Oil CEOs didn't. By "here" I mean ANWR and offshore, as well as any traditional U.S. oil fields.

Palin talked as if we have limitless oil reserves here. Statistics from the Energy Information Administration indicate we have all of one percent of the world's reserves. That, translated into actual barrels, will not be a limitless number. Extracting that oil cannot help us that much.

It's not that I'm dead-set against drilling. It's just that I'm against putting more eggs in that basket when it will not only not help much, but distract resources from developing alternative energy and things that run on alternative energy.

I hatched this topic earlier today, before I saw that the McCain campaign has been very prolific with inaccurate attack ads and the Obama campaign (and supporters) are now defending themselves. That's probably worth a post, but then we have Rachel Maddow on her new MS:NBC show, which I saw tonight, so I will put that off myself.

What bothered me over the last couple of days was the number of things I saw in cyberspace where the poster basically said "Oh, well, McCain/Palin will win, anyway." The authors weren't Republicans or conservatives; they seemed to be people who want a different outcome. I guess their statements were based on polls released over the last few days that indicate the race is very close. I heard of one poll where he's a couple of points ahead, and another poll that indicated the Republican ticket was appealing to more white women than McCain was attracting before Palin was nominated. In most polls the Democratic ticket is slightly ahead of the Republican ticket, but within the margin of error.

Remember earlier in the year, there were more than a few published and broadcast reports of people saying "I like so-and-so, but he'll never get elected." Is this the same thing again? It seems to me that the surest way to lose is to not believe you can win. If enough people don't vote for someone because s/he "can't win," then s/he won't win. If enough people concede the election seven weeks before election day, then it doesn't matter who was the better candidate.

After the last 7 1/2 years, all the shenanigans, the unconstitutional acts, the fearmongering, the squandering of our international good will, and the economic shambles we're currently in, the Republican Party does not deserve to govern the nation anymore. Do not let them have another four years just because you don't believe you deserve any better.

I wasn't going to watch. But I'd spent four hours napping and waking (due to my cold) to National Geographic Channel and they ran out of interesting programming. So I watched, first the video tribute to Senator Obama, then his speech itself.

The details of his speech are findable online if you want them. This isn't trenchant political commentary. This is just a report from some guy who got his hopes raised by an incredibly fine speaker who said everything I thought was important. I have no disagreements with what he said. And at times, I was stirred in a way no political speaker has ever stirred me before.

Yeah, I know this sort of thing can be scripted (and is, to a large degree), that audiences can be manipulated, that we may not get what we paid for after all. But I don't think there's manipulation going on; I don't think we're being mislead by Obama's ideas and ideals. We need what he's proposing. We cannot keep doing what we've been doing for the last eight years. Obama—and us Americans in general—can do what should be done to raise ourselves up to what America claims it is. I would even go so far as to say we must.

I've been somewhat cynical, especially this year, but the part of me that still believes things could be better got awakened tonight.

My two favorite comic properties of all time (at least today) are Peanuts, as in Charles Schulz, and Sandman, as in Neil Gaiman. So when I saw this I could only count myself thankful I hadn't been drinking any liquids at the moment. I discovered the link in Neil Gaiman's journal; his only remark was "Good grief!"

Today is the real primary election day (as opposed to that stupid, pointless exercise Michigan had in January), and I voted before coming to work. They weren't giving out gold stars (my precinct is in a middle school; I guess they only give gold stars in elementary school), but I still felt good because I got to vote for the zoo. A very tiny tax increase to support the Detroit Zoo, that is. I voted for some people too, I guess. Almost every race had exactly one candidate per party, the one exception being the state house of representatives where, somehow, we had seven choices on the Democratic side. I don't know what's worse, having exactly one choice, or having a bunch of choices you know nothing about. What's worse is, the elections workers wouldn't let me bring my dart board in so I could make a choice easily.

There are developments on the website front and decisions to be made. Watch this space.