Oregon's Growing "Water Footprint"

The State of Oregon and the City of Portland are leading the way in sucking up water resources that leave a "water footprint" denying the rest of the world critical water resources.

That's the fallout from the current UN report on water needs around the world that are quickly growing to dire proportions. It takes massive amounts of water to produce biofuels such as ethanol--70 to 400 times as much water as producing oil.

Water guzzling ethanol is now required by Oregon state and Portland city law. An Oregon state law is ramping up to require all Oregonians to use at least 10% ethanol in their gasoline by September. The City of Portland already implemented a similar requirement last year.

From the AP story:

It's not only our carbon footprint we should worry about, U.N. experts say. They warn about our growing water footprint.

Nearly half the people on Earth, about 2.5 billion, have no access to sanitation, many of them in urban slums. The world's cities are growing by 1 million people a week, and soon their aging water systems will not cope. Farming demand on water is increasing.
. . .
A report published this month by UNESCO's Institute for Water Education in Delft said it takes 70 to 400 times as much water to create energy from biofuels as it does from fossil fuels.

It said 262 gallons of water is needed to produce crude oil that provides the same amount of energy from biomass grown in Brazil - primarily sugar cane used for ethanol - that requires 15,972 gallons of water. Biomass grown in the Netherlands needs 6,284 gallons, the report said.
[emphasis mine]

Why is Oregon and the City of Portland leading the way in hogging water resources essential to life? Because its leaders and advisory groups did not do the serious scientific work of studying the implications of proposed policies. (Not even on ethanol's impact on global warming.) They wanted the policy and fudged the science to approve it. Even a perfunctory check with the UN about current ethanol studies would have turned up the fact that massive waste of water resources in producing ethanol was being studied.

In politicizing science, State of Oregon and City of Portland leaders have produced and implemented bad science and harmful policy. They are forcing Oregonians to act like quintessential Ugly Americans who want their own way irrespective of the needs of the rest of the world.

Nat Hentoff: Barack Obama Needs to Learn about Disabled Americans

March 27, 2008 (Jewish World Review)

By Nat Hentoff

In none of the endless presidential candidates' debates has there been a meaningful discussion of the rights of disabled Americans. However, in the Feb. 26 debate in Cleveland, Barack Obama casually and ignorantly revealed his misunderstanding of the basic issue in the highly visible and still-resonating official death sentence of a disabled woman, Terri Schiavo.

I have repeatedly called her death the result of "the longest public execution in American history."

When moderator Tim Russert asked Hillary Clinton and Obama if "there are any words or votes that you'd like to take back ... in your careers in public service," Obama answered that in his first year in the Senate, he joined an agreement "that allowed Congress to interject itself (in the Schiavo case) into the decision-making process of the families."

Obama added: 'I think that was a mistake, and I think the American people understood that was a mistake. And as a constitutional law professor, I knew better."

When he was a professor of constitutional law, Obama probably instructed his students to research and know all the facts of a case. The reason Congress asked the federal courts to review the Schiavo case was that the 41-year-old woman about to be dehydrated and starved to death was breathing normally on her own, was not terminal, and there was medical evidence that she was responsive, not in a persistent vegetative state.

One of the leading congressional advocates of judicial review was staunchly liberal Democratic Tom Harkin of Iowa, because he is deeply informed about disability rights. By contrast, in all of this inflamed controversy, the mainstream media performed miserably, copying each other's errors instead of doing their own investigations of what Terri's wishes actually were. Consequently, most Americans did not know that 29 major national disability-rights organizations filed legal briefs and lobbied Congress to understand that this was not a right-to-die case, but about the right to continue living.

Among them were:

The National Spinal Cord Injury Association; the National Down Syndrome Congress; the World Association of Persons with Disabilities; Not Dead Yet; and the largest American assembly of disability-rights activists, the American Association of People with Disabilities. AAPD's head, Andrew J. Imparato, has testified before the Senate that: "When we start devaluing the lives of people with disabilities, we don't know where that's going to stop. You also need to take into account the financial implications of all of this. We have an economy that is not doing as well as it once was and ... one way to save money is to make it easier for people with disabilities to die."

I recommend to Obama — if he wants to make amends — that he consult the disability-rights experts at Not Dead Yet for the facts of the Terri Schiavo case and its acute relevance to many Americans in similar situations.

Not Dead Yet is about 12 miles from Chicago at 7521 Madison St., Forest Park, Ill. If this presidential contender and former law professor had bothered to do his own research, he would have discovered — as I did in four years of covering this story and interviewing participants, including neurologists, on both sides, that:

The husband of the brain-damaged Terri Schiavo, Michael Schiavo, had stopped testing and rehabilitation for her in 1993, 12 years before her death. Moreover, for years he had been living with another woman, with whom he had two children, and whom he has since married. Michael Schiavo has continually insisted that he finally succeeded in having Terri's feeding tube removed because he was respecting Terri's wishes — which she could no longer communicate — that she did not want to be kept alive by artificial means.

But at a January 2000 trial — as reported by Notre Dame law school professor O. Carter Snead in "Constitutional Quarterly" (published by the University of Minnesota Law School) in its winter 2005 issue:

Five witnesses testified on whether Terri would have refused artificial nutrition, including water, in the condition she was in. Her mother and a close friend of Terri testified she had said clearly she would want these essential life needs. The other three witnesses said Terri would have approved the removal of her feeding tube.

These last three were in alliance on what became a death penalty: Michael Schiavo, his brother and his sister-in-law!

It was on the basis of that 3-to-2 vote that Florida state judge George Greer ruled that "clear and convincing evidence" allowed him to remove her from life — and then 19 judges in six courts, including federal courts — agreed. Like the press, those judges did no independent investigations of their own. And those careless judges are now joined by the equally irresponsible robot-like judgment of Sen. Barack Obama. He should be proud of the Senate vote he now recants — and learn a lot more about the disabled.

Christ Crucified

"But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling-block, and unto the Greeks foolishness; but unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God."--I Cor. 1:23, 24

One would have imagined that, when God sent his gospel to men, all men would meekly listen, and humbly receive its truths. We should have thought that God's ministers had but to proclaim that life is brought to light by the gospel, and that Christ is come to save sinners, and every ear would be attentive, every eye would be fixed, and every heart would be wide open to receive the truth. We should have said, judging favorably of our fellow-creatures, that there would not exist in the world a monster so vile, so depraved, so polluted, as to put so much as a stone in the way of the progress of truth; we could not have conceived such a thing; yet that conception is the truth. When the gospel was preached, instead of being accepted and admired, one universal hiss went up to heaven; men could not bear it; its first preacher they dragged to the brow of the hill, and would have sent him down headlong; yea, they did more--they nailed him to the cross, and there they let him languish out his dying life in agony such as no man hath borne since.

Charles Spurgeon - from the sermon: Christ Crucified

Barack Obama--Peacemaker or Partisan?

From what I've heard of Sen. Obama's speeches, I like the view he proposes of accepting and working with people of different beliefs and not throwing anyone under the bus--even when they say things that are offensive to others. There should be a slim line of rhetoric that is off the charts--real hate speech like that of Stalin, Hitler or Ahmadinejad.

The troubling thing is that Obama's past political life doesn't demonstrate that he really is accepting of others and willing to work with those he disagrees with.

What in his four years in the U.S. Senate has shown a difference between the way he acts and the way other senators have acted? What has he done to bring the two parties and the nation together? His voting record has been partisan. Is there a single time when he voted with the majority of the opposing party against his own party? Can't remember it.

The only major candidate left standing who has actually worked with those of the other party and different political views is Sen. McCain. There is McCain-Feingold, McCain-Kennedy (which Sen. McCain has paid a political price for), but where is the Obama-(any Republican name) bill? Has he ever paid a price for working with Republicans when the majority of his own party was against a measure?

It's long past time for a change. The baby boomers brought political hatred into the arena with the student protests and riots of the late 1960's and early 1970's. That hatred continued to ramp up. I remember one otherwise reasonable young woman saying she was glad Pres. Reagan had been shot. The politics of hate had seeped deep down.

Can the younger generation turn that around? Can Barack Obama turn it around? Will he really try?

Long ago I initially supported a young changemaker who promised a different sort of politics. He turned out to be the worst president in the last 50 years. The nation was left a mess. There was double digit inflation, the highest interest rates under any US president, high unemployment, oil shortages and the only time I remember in my lifetime when U.S. gas stations had signs out that they had no gas. You had to wait in long lines at gas stations and hope there was still gas by the time you got to the pump. President Jimmy Carter was partisan and self-important. He still is critical of anyone who doesn't bow to his viewpoint--even huffing about President Clinton not allowing him to be more active in foreign policy during the Clinton administration.

One hopes whoever the new president is, he or she will actually follow a new politics mold that brings something better instead of leaving something worse.

William Buckley and Malcolm Muggeridge on Sharing One's Faith

Here is the clip from the conversation between William F. Buckley, Jr. and Malcolm Muggeridge about the difficulties of sharing the Christian faith in private settings that I alluded to in my February 27 tribute to Bill. It was recorded September 6, 1980, and broadcast on the Firing Line program titled "How Does One Find Faith". Sharing their faith in Christ was something both men thought about seriously.

William F. Buckley, Jr.: a blessing to the nation – a personal hero and friend

Today William F. Buckley, Jr. passed into the presence of his Lord. He leaves a legacy of political discourse that enriched the nation, energized his friends and charmed his foes (many of whom became his friends). He had the gift of a quick wit and brilliance in debate, speaking and writing.

He also had a heart for people and the gift of making and keeping friends. I was privileged to be called his friend from the early 1970's on.

What may not always have been apparent in his public debates and commentary was his genuine care for people–and the personal humility that made that possible. He never acted as though he were someone special. He acted as though you were someone special. He treated a young, idealist nobody from Oregon as though I was special. Here's a bit from one of his letters to me:

I spent an evening and a day with Malcolm [Muggeridge] as recently as last December, and think him very special. He is coming to New York to do a Firing Line with me in a couple of weeks. It pleases me hugely that he thinks well of me, though no more than it pleases me that you do.
(April 27, 1979)

He once said after an introduction filled with the sort of overstated praise that is common to speaker introductions, “It doesn’t hurt as long as you don’t inhale.” Bill Buckley never inhaled praise or his own success.

He was ever generous and encouraging and helped many young people both liberal and conservative in political commentary and writing careers. (Jeff Greenfield was a regular on Firing Line in the 1970's.) Bill was clear in his thinking and firm on his convictions.

Those who give opinions regularly must either put themselves forward as imposters or else confess quite openly that they are the very best opinions going. That is not to say, of course, that they are the result of one's own thought, created ex nihilo. Mine most assuredly are not: I lean most heavily on other men, living and dead, men whose ideas, should I find myself at variance with them, it would cause me great anxiety, indeed would bring me to doubt deeply the wisdom of continuing in my profession. If I felt that I were losing my faith, I would lie down until I got over it. That is thought by most people to be very un-Amercan. I consider that it is very wise, provided you are certain, as I am, of the superiority of other people's thinking to your own, and know who those others are.
(WFB, from the introduction to The Jeweler's Eye)

Bill was oh so easy to be with and enjoy. He laughed easily and always had a story or humorous anecdote at hand to liven up a point either he or you were making.

Bill was a committed Christian. He loved his Lord, and the desire to publicly communicate that resulted in Nearer, My God: An Autobiography of Faith (1997, Doubleday). One could also see Bill's passion as a Christian in Firing Line interviews he did with Malcolm Muggeridge. Muggeridge wore his faith effortlessly, and Bill explored the how's and why's of Muggeridge's ease in evangelism.

Bill consistently encouraged me in my faith and desire to serve the Lord. He even offered to write a letter of recommendation for me to a graduate program in theology at a top evangelical school. I took him up on it, and one of my treasured possessions is the copy he sent me of that recommendation.

Bill did a short answer interview for Vanity Fair in the September 1993 issue. Here are some of his answers:

What is your idea of perfect happiness? Heaven.
If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? I'd like to know how to pray better.
What is your most treasured possession? My faith.
What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? The loss of faith.
How would you like to die? Painlessly.

Today he got two of his wishes. He died painlessly, and he is now in perfect happiness with his Lord (and his beloved Pat) in Heaven.

His passing is a loss to the nation, his family, friends and admirers, and to me. I loved Bill Buckley.

C. S. Lewis once wrote that the passing of a friend is a bit like losing a leg. It may not hurt so much after the amputation, but no more mountain walks. I'm already missing those mountain walks.

Mainstream Press Bias Against Hillary

(photo from www.hillaryclinton.com)

I watched some news/interview/commentary shows yesterday. I switched back and forth between Meet the Press (NBC) and Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace (FOX).

Meet the Press had four analysts plus Tim Russert. All were negative toward Hillary Clinton--even the women. So negative, that even I, never a Hillary supporter, felt the unfairness. Everything Hillary does is wrong. It seemed more like a football pile on rather than analysis.*

In contrast, Fox News Sunday, which had four analysts plus Chris Wallace, was much more sympathetic to Sen. Clinton and how hard it is for her to get a hearing on the case for her candidacy over Obama's candidacy.

Watching Meet the Press I actually felt sorry for Hillary Clinton. Maybe there was some positive statement made about her, but I can’t remember it. The one start at a negative statement about Barack Obama (David Brooks on doubts that Obama can bring unity since he has not been a part of any bipartisan effort during his time in Congress even though many other Democrats have) was quickly put to rest by Doris Kearns Goodwin as not really important.

That’s how the mainstream media works. They have their favorites. Their favorites don’t have to answer hard questions and don’t get withering scrutiny (unless there is a smoking gun that even the mainstream press can’t avoid). The alternative media, on the other hand, seems to be much fairer even to those candidates it doesn't favor.

For years the Clintons have enjoyed positive press against their political opponents. Now they know what Republicans face every campaign--what President George W. Bush has faced for almost all his presidency.

Turn about may be fair play, but it’s still hard to watch unfair treatment. And that’s what Hillary Clinton is getting now. She, Mitt Romney and John McCain can commiserate.

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*Meet the Press does deserve credit for putting a transcript up of the show. Fox has only a partial show transcript, and none of it on the political commentary.