Denial Is Not A River

While you may have missed it yesterday, since virtually none of the major U.S. or World news organizations gave the story anything other than brief mention, Sunday was Earth Day, for 2012.

For forty two years, Earth Day has been a day for many outside of the scientific and politic realms to also stand up, get involved, and take a serious, fact-based look at what mankind has done, and continues to do, to our planet. The science pointing toward climate change is far older than that, going back over a hundred years.

Still, climate change deniers continue to yell that climate change is a hoax, even as the facts add up against them - including things like cold weather animals and plants adapting to warmer weather to survive. Frankly, we'd love to see a polar bear move into their neighborhoods, if we thought it might awaken them to reality.

One of the most important facts is the difference between climate and weather.

Long and short, climate is the average trend of all the weather data, in a specific location, over a long period of time. That location can be as big as the Earth, or as small as your neighborhood. In contrast, weather is simply the atmospheric factors that are or have happened at any one point in the climate record.

There are those people who claim that the current trend of warmer and wetter than usual weather is just a normal adjustment in the natural shifting of the world climate - and those people would be wrong.

Climate scientists have done enough modeling to understand long-term trends in very accurate ways. They've done millions of computer simulations, with climate data from all over the world, taking into account all the actions that mankind has done to the environment over the last 100-150 years. The simulations keep saying the same things: without the heavy influence of mankind, the climate of the world could not have changed as fast as it has, in as short a time as it has. Period.

We're well aware that Earth Day was started by former Democratic Wisconsin Governor and U.S. Senator, Gaylord Nelson. For many modern Republicans, this automatically puts them on the other side side of the issue, because they seem to think they need to always be on the opposite side of anything anyone in the Democratic Party does. To us, that's a stupid idea.

Climate change is very real, and it is already highly likely to affect things - drastically - like the price of corn, and to drive new technologies, especially with renewable energy sources. That will mean the renewable energy sector will need some help from governments all over the world - including ours. It also means that when governments make investments in private exploratory research companies, and the market makes drastic turns - as it did with the Solyndra company - taxpayers will lose those bets once in a while.

Of course, what's rarely mentioned when right-wingers bring up Solyndra is that it was less than 2% of the U.S. government's investment in clean energy projects. The others were all successful - and in fact, the U.S. solar industry grew 69% during the time Solyndra was in existence.

Even nations like Mexico are now acknowledging that climate change is real, and their governments MUST do something about it. President Obama has done what he can, without Congress' assistance, by raising fuel efficiency standards and promoting climate change and renewable energy bills. Republicans in Congress, unsurprisingly, have not only killed the President's proposals, but also tried to stifle clean energy committees. The Republicans have even killed bills to reduce completely unnecessary subsidies to energy polluters like big oil and big coal.

Even if climate change wasn't real, the further development of clean, renewable, energy will benefit every American, as we can decrease or eliminate our dependence on oil purchased from the Middle East and South America. That's something we think even most climate change deniers could agree on.

We won't hold our breath it will change the minds of the deniers, though.

Maybe we'll just have to wait for their friendly neighborhood polar bear to bite them in the backside, before they wake up and realize the truth about climate change.

Friday Funday: Not Horsemeat Yet

In a week that's seen the deaths of legendary rock n' roll presenter Dick Clark, and legendary rock and roll singer Levon Helm, it seems fitting that tomorrow, Saturday April 21, is International Record Store Day - a real actual holiday, of sorts.

If you've never heard of it before, that may be because International Record Store Day began just five years ago, partially as a grassroots stunt, and partially as as a celebration of small, independent music resellers around the world.

Like cartoons and comic stores, the record store industry has been devastated by the advent and growth of the internet. Digital technologies - like smartphones, music players, and tablet computers - that have come with the growth of the internet have often turned musicians, cartoonists, writers, and photographers into people that major companies, and even our neighbors, tend to think of as "free content generators" - an offensive euphemism most often used by those who want to get our work for free, and sell it for a profit.

Thankfully, much as cartooning is finding new respect online - in part, due to the success of mostly-online cartoonists like Matt Wuerker, who, this week, won a Pulitzer Prize for his work with Politico - the old-fashioned, local, brick-and-mortar music stores are also beginning to find their place in the commercial hierarchy again.

Part of that success may also be because an estimated sixty-five percent of the music buying public continues to buy physical versions of the music they love.

For audiophiles and lovers of vinyl - like our staff member Shawn, who has worked in radio professionally for almost twenty years - International Record Store Day is a day filled with rare releases, and usually some pretty incredible deals, to boot.

For retailers who sell music - even those in the big box stores - Saturday will be more like Christmas, as International Record Store Day, after just five years, is considered one of the highest profit days for retailers of any physical music products. In 2011, according to Billboard magazine, sales of physical music saw a massive spike that retailers attributed almost completely to International Record Store Day,

It's also now considered one of the best and most successful grassroots-based marketing ideas in recent history - and it may indeed be the single biggest force helping to keep the record store industry alive.

There will be hundreds of bands with special releases on CD and vinyl this Saturday, and bands will be performing at local record stores all over the world. The coordinators of International Record Store Day even have their own website, where you can check out where the closest local record store is to you.

International Record Store Day is more than just a way to celebrate physical music. It's a way to celebrate a whole part of our collective human culture: the acquiring and trading of art in a physical form, with other people - something we support wholeheartedly.

We realize, accept, and even enjoy certain facets of modern technology in music that allow us to listen to and even purchase a copy of almost any song sold, from almost anywhere human beings go. Still, with the end of so many things flashing by all of us these days - including the horseracing industry in Nebraska - International Record Store Day is another sign, like Matt Wuerker's Pulitzer Prize, that while some things may change, we're not the only ones who still respect and even enjoy art, in a good, solid, physical form.

If you're looking for us this weekend, you'll likely find our staff members at one of our local music stores, supporting people just like us - artists, who know the value of something real.

Searching For An Anchor

It's an old axiom in American Presidential politics that the most important decision any President can make is who his or her Vice President will be. With the 2012 Election, that axiom is just as true as it's ever been, for either major candidate - though we certainly don't envy the task of Mitt Romney and his advisors.

For President Obama, the choice is easy, for a whole host of reasons. For one thing, current Vice President Joe Biden has a long history in the U.S. Senate - thirty-six years as a Senator - which gives him and the President some leverage in Congress they might not otherwise have. It also gives President Obama a sort of institutional memory of Washington, DC, which may explain why some politicians act so oddly at times. Their actions may simply be because of perceived slights or actions that Mr. Biden may have observed from many years ago, back when Barry Obama was in college for a bachelors degree.

Mr. Romney, on the other hand, is facing a staggering array of choices - and he's almost certain to disappoint some voters.

That's part of why non-incumbent presidential candidates like Mr. Romney, traditionally do what Mitt did recently, when he chose his longtime advisor Beth Meyers to head up his vice presidential search committee. Meyers has been an advisor to Romney for years, and acted as his Chief of Staff back when Mitt was governor of Massachusetts, so she may have as good a feeling as anyone about what kind of person might help compliment Romney's strengths and weaknesses.

One thing we don't advise Ms. Meyers to do is look to the media for help on who might make a good vice presidential pick. Nearly every media pundit and media organization seems to have their own idea of a good vice presidential choice for Mr. Romney.

From so-called "star" picks, like New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and freshman Florida Senator Marco Rubio, to former Bush director of Office of Managment and Budget - and current Indiana Governor - Mitch Daniels, the names that members of the media keep throwing out there continue to pile up.

Some political handicappers look to potential candidates like Congressman Paul Ryan or former Florida governor Jeb Bush, as choices that might help pull a swing state into the win column for Romney in November.

Other possible choices like New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez, or former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice are seen as ways to hypothetically swing more of the minority vote towards Mitt - though we highly doubt either choice could swing enough votes, or would satisfy the Republican base of Mr. Romney's party.

Of course, as Matt Negrin of ABC News noted on Wednesday, the political ghost of Sarah Palin haunts any choice that Mr. Romney might make, much as the references to the Titanic have haunted the media throughout this month, on the hundredth anniversary of its sinking.

We don't suggest Mr. Romney & Ms. Meyers look to the members of the Republican Party for help on this either. The latest polling confirms Republicans are almost as divided on who they'd like to see Mr. Romney pick for VP, as the GOP base has been about who they've wanted for their Presidential pick.

If we were to give Mitt Romney any guidance at all on this issue, the best advice we could give is to choose the person that he'd pick for President if Mr. Romney knew he were dying of some horrible disease.

That person, man or woman, who is organized enough, disciplined enough, trustworthy enough, knowledgeable, wise, smart - and hopefully, somewhat humble - would be the person we'd recommend he pick.

Of course, if the GOP could find someone like that, who both the Republican Party base would vote for, along with the rest of the country, we doubt Mr. Romney would be the Republican Party's current presumptive nominee.