Can and will Barack Obama do it?

When I ask can and will Obama do it, I am referring to not only becoming the next United States president, but also following up to his most important campaign promise, to fix our environmental/energy issues.

We need DRASTIC action on these things. The climate is out of control, as we are finding out by the massive amounts of melting ice, amphibian population declining in massive numbers, dead zones in the oceans, air and water pollution, and all the other issues we’re facing.

Our only landbase

Al Gore says we need to implement ten steps in ten years, T. Boone Pickens has a plan to beef up our wind and solar energy sources (although many rightfully have questions for him), and economists are saying the worst is still ahead.

So what good news to believe? Hah. The good news is, we are still semi-intelligent creatures on this planet and are most likely capable of reversing most or all of these problems we’ve created.

Derrick Jensen, at his talks and in his literature, etc. asks the questions we need to be asking – his favorite which he never gets a “yes” for – that is, if anyone thinks humanity will make a willful change over to a sustainable way of life (maybe I’ve mentioned this before).

But there is good news. Hybrid (and hopefully fully gasoline-free) cars are very popular (this solar car team won a 2400-mile race), and many celebrities are doing the “green” thing (does this really work?) which I can only look at as inspiration for a society/culture that is downright obsessed with our celebrities and their accompanying celebrity worship.

So Pickens has a plan. Gore presents some ideas. A site I found the other day called We Can Solve It has a plan for massive adoption and implementation of alternative energy.

But many say that we don’t have much time. How true is this? Time has an article about turning it around by 2015. Gore’s plan calls for 10 years, and I read somewhere that they predict optimistically that we need to make massive changes in 100 months.

So, back to Mr. Obama. The good news for him is that the Republican party is freaking crippled.

For some reason I was watching Countdown with Keith Olbermann the other night, and his replacement was interviewing a man who was saying the Grand Old Party is morally bankrupt, the conservative mindset is unpopular, just like our current president (Mr. Bush is one of the least-liked presidents in United States history).

One fifth of the U.S. senators are not attending the Republican National Convention. Crazy, right? Empty room with John McCain is what I’m envisioning. The man is just so OLD! Experience yes, but does he have lasting power, or any connection with generations beyond the earlier ones?

Maybe a Democratic upset what it will finally take to get at least SOME of the idiots away from our government.

Not that Democrats are that much better.

Fiction?

But perhaps a new outlook is needed after all these painful Bush years (a man not only a Republican but also a bumbling weirdo). I’m not going to say George W. is a dumbass. he simply might not be. He looks like a fool quite a lot of the time, but maybe he gives off that disconcerting, creepy slimy persona to connect with peoria. (“Yes, but will it get them off their tractors?”)

It’s ironic that a man always harping about good “moral fiber” and being “of your word” is going to end up being one of the most unpopular presidents in our history.

Pot, kettle, chicken, road.

It’s always same shit different day, but some days, the shit smells slightly less rank.