jawfish

Making Washington Productive
john posted in politics & culture on February 24th, 2006

Whether you think government is capable of providing important services ( Democrats ) or incapable ( neocon Republicans), taxpayers can all agree that we aren’t getting very much for our money right now. But for a change, here’s some good news:

Biomass energy projects are turning to hog waste as an energy resource. Pig manure energy generation also has the side benefit of reducing the powerful stink of a hog lagoon. Rather than burn it directly, researchers are working on schemes that turn hog manure into fuel oil. Since the President has discovered recently that we are “addicted to oil” – most of us had no idea – and with 100 million porkers processing feed into waste 24/7, there’s an opportunity for real energy production.

Mechanical Engineering Magazine reports on the current technology. As far as the staff of Jawfish can tell without actually doing research, Jawfish is the first to propose connecting the waste in Washington directly to the biomass fuel industry. Our reasoning goes like this:

2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

1.	There’s a terrible stink all around a hog operation.
There’s a stink rising over Washington.
Hogs feed at the trough and produce pork and manure.
Congress feeds at the public trough and produces pork and manure.
This is too easy…
Hogs have lobbyists in Washington who bring money and take home pork.
Washington has hogs who take money and bring home pork.
The pork output of Washington is already connected to Agribusiness.
Sharing manure lagoons would proactively generate maximised synergies for the uptake of stakeholders in the bio-mass fuel conversion industry.
Who says we can’t do corp-speak?
Surrounding Washington with manure would keep out lawyers, lobbyists, and other terrorists.

With a closed-loop of pig manure lighting and heating Washington, and ready supplies of pork at hand, we’ll soon have the halls of Congress and the White House humming.

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Thanks to The Straight Dope for research and uncovering the original story.

The 12 Tribes of American Politics
john posted in politics & culture on February 15th, 2006

On Beliefnet and now in The Atlantic, Steven Waldman and John Green correlate data from the 2004 election and come to some very interesting points about the relative sizes of the religious right, left, and the center, and the so-called culture wars.

Original story

Follow-up

Their essential conclusions:

The hard-core religious right, those evangelists who believe in biblical literalism, are against all abortions and gay marriage, and are pro-war, about equal the secularists on the left, those who want no religion in government, want abortion to remain an option, support gay marriage, and are anti-war. Each is about 10-12%.

Bush has made few changes to fulfill his promises to his hard-core constituency beyond the bully-pulpit. ( This is arguable, depending on Roberts’ and Alito’s future behavior.) Clinton made few of his own changes to appease his hard-core supporters. ( He did not have a Democratic Congress). Quibbling aside, they seem to make a point.

All data below taken verbatim from Beliefnet story.

Tribe	Percent of 2004 voters	L-R continuum	Religion	Examples
THE "RELIGIOUS RIGHT"	15%	Conservative: 66%, Moderate: 25%, Liberal: 9%	Highly orthodox white evangelical Protestants	Tom Delay, Jerry Falwell, James Dobson
HEARTLAND CULTURE WARRIORS	14%	Conservative: 50%, Moderate: 41%, Liberal: 10%	Conservative Catholics and conservative mainline Protestants, Latter-daySaints, and other smaller groups.	GW Bush, William Bennet, Milt Romney
MODERATE EVANGELICALS	9%	Conservative: 48%, Moderate: 26%, Liberal: 16%	…white evangelical Protestants hold less orthodox religious beliefs (54% are biblical literalists) and don’t show up in church quite as often as the "religious right"	Jimmy Carter, Bill Frist
WHITE BREAD PROTESTANTS	7%	Conservative: 37%, Moderate: 43%, Liberal: 20%	The core members of the Protestant "mainline" churches	GHW Bush, Dick Cheney, John Edwards
CONVERTIBLE CATHOLICS	7%	Conservative: 29%, Moderate: 49%, Liberal: 22%	The core of the white Catholic community,	John Kerry, Arnold Schwartzeneger. Maria Schriver
THE "RELIGIOUS LEFT"	14%	Conservative: 20%, Moderate: 50%, Liberal: 30%	Theologically liberal Catholics, mainline and evangelical Protestants.	Wlliam Sloane Coffin, Mario Cuomo
SPIRITUAL BUT NOT RELIGIOUS	3%	Conservative: 26%, Moderate: 49%, Liberal: 25%	Most report spiritual beliefs–85% believe in God and more than half are sure there is some kind of life after death-	Dennis Kucinich, Depak Chopra, Tony Robbins
SECULARS	11%	Conservative: 17%, Moderate: 48%, Liberal: 35%	Non-religious, atheists, and agnostics.	Bill Maher, Howard Dean
LATINOS	5%	Conservative: 28%, Moderate: 45%, Liberal: 27%	Majority Catholic, but with a large Protestant minority.	Bill Richardson, Mel Martinez
JEWS	3%	Conservative: 19%, Moderate: 36%, Liberal: 46%	Common cultural identity mixed with diverse religious beliefs.	Allan Dershowitz, Al Franken
MUSLIMS & OTHER FAITHS	3%	Conservative: 10%, Moderate: 46%, Liberal: 44%	Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Wiccans, and other smaller groups.	Mohammed Ali, Richard Gere
BLACK PROTESTANTS	8%	Conservative: 27%, Moderate: 48%, Liberal: 25%	Fairly orthodox in practice (59% report attending worship once a week or more) and belief (56% are biblical literalists).	Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson