Rain, AZ, Chris Christie, and the Keystone XL Pipeline

So, with everything that is going on everywhere it is difficult to know just what to write about.  Of course, one of the nicer and better things to write about is that it is RAINING!  This won’t stop the drought, but I do believe the grass grew at least an inch while the sun was shining yesterday.  The hills are finally green, a little bit, anyway.   

We can be glad that Arizona finally got its act together, or at least Gov. Brewer did.  It would have been much better had she vetoed the “religious freedom act”, which it wasn’t, on the grounds that it violated people’s civil rights rather than it would cost the state financially.  But at this point, almost any reason will do.  I maintained that the law, if passed, would violate my religious freedom as well as my civil right to associate with anyone with whom I was pleased to associate.  It would violate my religious freedom since my religious beliefs make me not want to associate with those who blatantly discriminate.  Or, unblatantly discriminate, for that matter.  Since we have family living in Arizona we didn’t feel we could boycott Arizona completely, but if visiting there would certainly spend as little as possible, and would only support those businesses that had signs that they were open to everyone.  But, now we only have to find the other states who are trying to pass similar laws so that we don’t go there, either. 

There is always Chris Christie to write about.  He is the gift, as they say…  On Rachel Maddow the other night, and I don’t remember if she just inferred it or came right out and said it, that New Jersey is the most corrupt state in the nation.  Which thought was not actually new to me.  If so, then think, as my husband did, that Chris Christie rose to almost the pinnacle (the Presidency) of political aspirations in the most corrupt state in the nation.  What with all of the information that comes out of New Jersey, almost hourly, it would appear that either he surrounded himself with extraordinarily stupid people, who sent multiple damaging e-mails constantly, and who drummed up a really ludicrous story about the bridge closure being a traffic study, without ever telling the local Fort Lee police about it ahead of time, and of not having a hard copy of a traffic study to hand around to people to corroborate their story, or even a thumb drive of a purloined study to exhibit, or he was directly involved.  There would have been plenty of time to take an already completed study from somewhere, and with search and replace capabilities, make it look sort of like the George Washington Bridge traffic study.  I remember one such occasion years ago when the subject of closing our General Hospital was before the Board, prior to my being elected.  This was during the floppy disc era when they only contained about 30 pages per disc.  I was reading the report when I realized that the first 30 pages were different than the rest of the report.  So I went back to the beginning and really paid attention, and, lo and behold, that is what had happened.  Even some 25 years ago it was possible to put together a boiler plate report, then as projects came in to be evaluated, with search and replace, make it applicable to the location.  Someone had goofed, and not done the search and replace on the first 30 pages.  I have never trusted hot-shot accounting firms ever since!!  But I digress.  If Christie was not directly involved, he is a complete bungling nincompoop. 

Then there was John Boehner on Ed Schultz’s program last night proclaiming about the Keystone XL pipeline, “This pipeline had been studied for over five years.  It’s time to get it built”.  As a result, I dreamt about developers and pipelines and time lines all night long.  It doesn’t make any difference how long something has been studied, for heaven’s sake, or any place else.  It depends on the quality of the work that has been done.  Whenever I used to hear that comment about an Environmental Impact Report (EIR), I knew it was flawed and would require an even more careful reading than I was used to doing.  And invariably, I would find the “fatal flaw”, which was generally hidden in a lot of unnecessary words and made-up charts.  If the writers of said reports had spent as much time doing good work as they had trying to hide the bad, something good might have come out of it. 

It is almost time to turn on my TV, hope the power doesn’t go out again, and catch up on, “The Never-ending Saga of Trenton Place.  Trenton, NJ, that is.”