Across the Great Divide

The Good Thing About Meth.

Two suspects were arrested outside a storage unit where cash, sales records and a supply of methamphetamine were found. See if you can figure out what's wrong with this story:

Officers contacted Corley walking near the storage unit, and he admitted there was meth and cash inside the unit and that he planned to jump the fence into the business to retrieve them, the affidavit said. He later admitted he owned the meth and cash. He said the money came from selling meth, and he planned to use the money to buy more meth, the affidavit said.

Willis, who was found driving near the storage unit, told officers there was meth inside the storage unit and that she helped take it there, the affidavit said. Paperwork inside the unit indicated the unit belonged to Willis, the affidavit said.

Notice the suspects immediately confessed, even though they hadn't been caught doing much of anything. They must also have been users. My brother the cop says that's one positive aspect of dealing with meth addicts. They don't lie or even dissemble. In fact, they'll often volunteer information about their past crimes.

Parting Shot.

This shot of the table in the Palisade Brewery men's room nearly says it all about this country.

Pick-a-Presidential-Pastor Guide!

I meant to do this a week ago, and it's rapidly getting stale now. But if we're picking presidents based on pastoral associations, we should have a handy voter's guide.

UPDATE:

I don't know how I could have left out this one!

A Name for the Times, if Not the Place.

My long shots of Knowles Canyon in the McInnis Wilderness Area don't capture the feeling of the place, so here are some textures from a day's hike instead. It's the last one in Colorado for awhile.

One of the great ironies of life in the west is that a national conservation area can be named for a former Congressman who is a lobbyist for an oil company that wants to drill in sensitive wild areas.

In Congress, Colorado Rep. Scott McInnis ran about a 15% approval rating from the League of Conservation Voters and was a lead sponsor of the Bush Administration's Healthy Forests Initiative. He now represents EnCana Oil & Gas, perhaps the biggest leaseholder in western Colorado and the likely largest driller when the BLM opens up the Roan Plateau, a remote area north of where McInnis and I grew up. (Our families went to the same church in Glenwood Springs.)

The Roan is under management by the Bureau of Land Management, which has plans to permit more than 1,500 wells in the  area. It has thus far rejected plans by the governor and appeals from representatives of both parties to consider the state's plan for phased oil and gas development to protect wildlife. 

The log at the trail head asked for comments and got one scrawled all over the margins about the travesty of naming a wilderness area after someone who was hardly a friend of the wild when he was in office and now gets paid to advocate its development.

But his namesake is also a fitting memorial to an era when black was white, pollution-friendly legislation was called Clear Skies, and Healthy Forests was another name for clear cuts.

Lost: One Soul. Answers to Leftie.

Chris Hedges quotes the president of Chicago Theological Seminary —  "Once you sell your soul, it is hard to get it back." — in his essay, The Left Has Lost Its Way. He argues that the left has lost its sway by failing to hold fast to core issues. Let politicians compromise, he says.

Political and social change, as the radical Christian right and the array of corporate-funded neocon think tanks have demonstrated, are created by the building of movements. This is a lesson American progressives have forgotten. The object of a movement is not to achieve political power at any price. It is to create pressure and mobilize citizens around core issues of justice. It is to force politicians and parties to respond to our demands. It is about rewarding, through support and votes, those who champion progressive ideals and punishing those who refuse. And the current Democratic Party, as any worker in a former manufacturing town in Pennsylvania can tell you, has betrayed us.

[...]

The failure of the left is the failure of well-meaning people who kept compromising and compromising in the name of effectiveness and a few scraps of influence until they had neither. The condemnations progressives utter—about the abuse of working men and women, the rapacious cannibalization of the country by an unchecked arms industry, our disastrous foreign wars, and the collapse of basic services from education to welfare—are not backed by action. The left has been transformed into anguished apologists for corporate greed. They have become hypocrites.

There's more. Hedges says, rightly, "The rise of a corporate state, and by that I mean a state that no longer works on behalf of its citizens but the corporations, is as much a part of the Democratic agenda as the Republican agenda." The working class has a right to be bitter with liberal elites.

The struggle now for progressives is to find their nerve, he says.

Looking back across the grim 8-year legacy of the Naderite Rebellion and the Kerry Collapse, it's tempting to go for the electoral win, no matter what "our" candidate represents. The consequences of more Bushism are terrible to contemplate. But it wasn't just the GOP that brought us the prospect of broader economic collapse, perpetual war and a widening class divide, was it?

What's the Statute of Limitations on Spin?

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said today, "President Bush is well aware that the banner should have been much more specific and said 'mission accomplished' for these sailors who are on this ship on their mission. And we have certainly paid a price for not being more specific on that banner. And I recognize that the media is going to play this up again tomorrow, as they do every single year."

"Mission Accomplished" was all a misunderstanding, a serendipitous camera angle, as if this president has ever stepped in front of a banner his advance team didn't place. He wasn't talking about the whole enchilada in Iraq. He was just talking about the aircraft carrier he happened to land on that particular day.

Yeah, right.

Playing the Robocall Card.

I was not very complimentary of a recent "study" by Women's Voices, Women Vote (WVWV). Maybe this is why my Spidey sense was tingling.

Turns out the Dem-leaning, non-profit group Women's Voices Women Vote has now admitted conducting an unethical and probably illegal anonymous robocall campaign in North Carolina that's clearly aimed at confusing potential primary voters who might be expected to support Obama.

And this.

[T]he firm in charge of voter outreach for WVWV is MSHC Partners, whose president is Hal Malchow. Sourcewatch.org reports that Malchow was a member of WVWV's leadership team.

At the same time, MSHC also does direct mail and outreach for the Hillary Clinton campaign. In fact, the campaign owes MSHC $807,000, according to Politico.com.

TPM sees other ties to Clinton.

WVWV, though, just says oops!

Immigrant Climate Change Affects Farm Economy.

A local Colorado corn grower is moving his hybrid seed operation to Nebraska. Instead of employing 150 workers in the summer here, he will grow and harvest corn with a mechanized operation that needs only a dozen laborers. The reason: Colorado's stricter immigration laws.

Since 1958, the company has relied on the seasonal migration of workers. Harris, 55, said he’s being forced to turn his back on the men who have toiled to help build his company because of the “unfriendly climate toward immigrants in Colorado.”

In 2006, the state Legislature approved of penalties for employers hiring illegal immigrants, and since 2001, the federal government has increasingly tightened restrictions on border crossings in the name of homeland security.

Foreign workers deserve more, Harris said.

“They need to be able to participate in the genius of America to help keep this economic engine going,” he said.

No surprise that the Minutemen disagree. So does Colorado's worst legislator.

 

 

The "Serious Problem" Isn't Paying for Gas.

A Kaiser Family Foundation survey designed to track the impact of health care costs on family budgets found that "nearly three in 10 Americans (28 percent) report that they or their families have had a serious problem paying for health care and health insurance as a result of recent changes in the economy."

But the biggest concern cited by respondents was paying for gas (44 percent). For households earning under $30,000, 63 percent called it a serious problem compared to 43 percent earning $30k-$75k and 27 percent earning $75k+.

Without minimizing the impact on lower-income households, this finding could be interpreted several ways.

1. Many households are living so close to the bone that a few dollars a day constitutes a "serious problem"
2. America has a serious problem with development patterns that force over-reliance on the automobile
3. Americans have lost perspective on what constitutes a serious problem

As Thomas Friedman wrote yesterday, even two presidential candidates can't figure it out.

It is great to see that we finally have some national unity on energy policy. Unfortunately, the unifying idea is so ridiculous, so unworthy of the people aspiring to lead our nation, it takes your breath away. Hillary Clinton has decided to line up with John McCain in pushing to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for this summer’s travel season. This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks. What a way to build our country.

When the summer is over, we will have increased our debt to China, increased our transfer of wealth to Saudi Arabia and increased our contribution to global warming for our kids to inherit.

Bad Ads Mocked: Rudy the Protector.

It seems a long time ago that Rudy Giuliani was in the race, but bad political ads and campaigns live on. Here's my parody pick for Rudy the Protector.

And a reminder that Aaron Brown, former host of CNN's News Night, will headline the Worst Political Advertising in America Awards, Wednesday, May 21s at the Pantages Theatre.