BY GAREN YEGPARIAN
Ah yes, everything is just as it should be in the corporate-bought-and-paid for US of A! Some idiot Louisiana federal judge has found the president of said country to be out of line, maybe even reckless, for imposing a six month moratorium on deep-water offshore oil drilling. Perhaps he inhabits a different plane of existence than the rest of us witnessing soon-to-be billions of gallons of petroleum gushing in- and on- to food producing and recreationally used waters and coasts. Now the guy who did this, you know, Obama, has the authority to unleash weaponry capable of incinerating all life on the planet, but according to this judge, he hasn’t the authority to be wise enough to prevent potential additional disasters. He’s not terminating the practice of deepwater oil production, just having it checked out before continuing. On a household scale, if you were planting trees in your yard, and they started to die, quickly, wouldn’t you stop to have the soil and air checked out for what might be killing them? According to this judge, you shouldn’t be allowed to be that wise, but rather, continue throwing away you money on trees that “inexplicably” die.
On another legal front, the Supreme Court is up to its old tricks again. It just ruled in favor (arguably) of Monsanto and its alfalfa seeds. Now these are no ordinary seeds. They have been tweaked to resist Monsanto’s own “Round-Up” herbicide. This is a very nasty, lethal, substance. Hence the reason for producing seeds that can tolerate it. All this seems very reasonable, right? We don’t want weeds damaging our food supply. So, we use poisons to kill them. But anything that poisons/kills one plant often has a similar, if lesser, effect on other plants. So, the plants producing our food have to be rendered tolerant of the poison, hence the special alfalfa seeds. But, the problem is that this tolerance for the poison can be transferred to other plants via pollen. Result? The plants we want dead can also develop tolerance, now we’re stuck. Plus we’ve poisoned the soil that feeds us. There’s gotta be a better way, don’t you think?
The beaches in California are supposed to be accessible to the public. Yet, we have rich and arrogant creeps, “neighbors” as the LATimes refers to them, who have fought through stealth, trickery, and sometimes the courts, to keep the public off the beaches the PUBLIC paid for. In some cases, this has dragged on for decades! I remember about four years ago walking on the beach in Malibu (where such access issues exist). One other person was with me. When we got to a sign saying “No Trespassing”, I was going to ignore it because I knew legally we could go. But that sign scared off my co-walker, and we turned back…
Talk about idiocy. Recently, I was giving blood. Of course a donor’s vital signs are checked. But for the first time, I was informed that the pulse, the heart rate, must be an even number. So despite the fact that the Red Cross employee had counted an odd number of beats, he recorded an even number one beat greater. How’s that for ridiculous?
The most personally annoying irritant happened just a few days ago as I was riding my bicycle on my daily work commute. Just a few blocks from arriving at the office, a motorcycle cop was directing traffic even though the traffic light was working. Odd, but whatever… As I waited at the intersection, I noticed a long string (at least two dozen) of MTA buses escorted by more motorcycle officers. Now things got interesting… The light changed, I looked at the officer directing traffic and he nodded assent for me to proceed. I crossed the street and proceeded on my way. My route obliges me to make a left turn, so I had to get from the right hand side of the buses to their left. I gave a left-turn hand signal, went between two buses, and got shouted at by what I can only describe as an idiot cop on a motorcycle positioned nearby that I should go to the right. This was the third time ignorant law enforcement had interfered with my commute. If they’re going to enforce the laws, they should really know them. They should also not presume to know what route and turns a bike rider has to make in getting to where s/he needsfc to go. To top it all off, the buses were full of hundreds of police officers being taken, I assumed, to a VERY IMPORTANT event… The Lakers’ victory parade!
