The Light Blue Lie

Only in Santa Barbara. No, really. No other city has a Light Blue Line.

Only here could a guy get twelve grand to paint one line. Granted it's a long, jagged line, but it's just a line, and a suspect one at that. Professor Gore and his cohorts would have you believe that there is no debate on global warming, that it's riding on the horizon like the four horsemen of the apocalypse and all but a done deal. But one needs to only look at the frequency and rapidity of new articles and theories on the issue to see that the debate is far from over. Indeed, millions if not billions will be spent over the next several years to study the impact of humans on the earth and our climate. I guess somebody's got to pay the salaries of the academics that are sure to argue and counter each other for the next 20 years. But here in Santa Barbara, you can get the city to pay you for your theories, and it pays pretty well.

The Light Blue Line folks applied for and received a grant from our city for $12,000 American dollars to paint a blue line across streets and sidewalks that purports to delineate where the waterline would be if global warming melts all the ice on Greenland (if all the ice on Greenland was in danger of melting).

Twelve grand! For a line! I love the idea. In fact it has inspired in me several new ideas for lines across our city. The front runner would be what I call the Amnesty line. Here we would draw a line around the middle of Montecito, effectively shrinking the size of that burg. The line would show what would happen if the Bush/Kennedy Amnesty bill went through, or if it ever came up again. Hispanic presence in the city of Santa Barbara would grow, their neighborhoods on the east side would expand, and the areas of town affected by gang violence would begin to encroach into the peaceful streets of the town that Oprah calls home. Scary, isn't it? I should note this is a two-color line, half green and half red, and the extra color is probably going to run the city another six grand, so let's call it 18 all day.



I know Santa Barbara has gone very green; I've commented on it here. But trying to do what seems right (paper or, uh, paper sir?) is different than taking a definitive political stance on an incomplete science. Public money for political art crosses a line akin to the mix of church and state. Let's hope that that line never gets blurred.

1984 and Your Media

The American people have spoken, your senators have listened, and yesterday the Bush/Kennedy immigration plan was shot down. The masses apparently don’t like the idea of amnesty for 12 million illegals before we fortify our (open) borders. Lest you believe I am merely a Bush honk, I want to openly state that I was very much against this bill. The whole thing stunk of a backroom deal, and clearly Americans did not want it, as they blew up the House phone lines and shut the whole system down with their telephone campaign. This is a good thing; it’s democracy in action. We speak, they listen. That’s how it’s supposed to work. But wouldn’t you know it, as soon as the final score was posted it was on to the next item in the liberal agenda: to silence the masses with a new fairness doctrine as it regards to talk radio. Congratulations Harry Reid; Joe Stalin would be proud.

Fairness in the media is a hot topic these days. You’ve got righties whining about the alphabet networks and their liberal slant. You’ve got lefties crying about the lack of a liberal voice on the radio. As soon as the gavel dropped on the immigration issue, Dianne Feinstein
was talking about the domination of talk radio by conservative voices. She blamed the death of the immigration bill on the likes of Rush and Sean, who urged their audience of millions to speak up on this legislation of disaster. Guess what: she was right. We can probably give 90% of the credit to these two guys for imploring Americans to voice their opinions on this shady deal, because they did. And now America is better off in that this bill is dead. Of course it only means that the immigration issue gets put onto the back burner as we gear up for the 2008 elections, and that is not a good thing, but it’s better than a bad fix to a worse problem. Now that that looming disaster is out of the way, you’d think our representatives would turn to pressing issues such as the war in Iraq or the European missile defense proposals or even Universal Health Care. No, all of these issues are trumped by the fact that Sean Hannity is more popular than Al Franken. That’s the big deal now. Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage are running the country, according to some pols. Scary thought? Yes. True? No.

What it all boils down to is that Dems are mired in failure yet again, and they cannot get over it. It’s the 2000 election all over again, and we’ll never hear the end of it. George Soros’ billion bucks can’t buy him Larry Elder’s audience, so the Dems are going to legislate the right right off the air. Or they’re going to try it at least. Because more people like Laura Ingraham than NPR, we need more fairness. The whole thing is so ridiculous it’s laughable. How does Hillary Clinton get to decide what I listen to? Where are we going with this? In town here we’ve got 1490 with Dr. Laura and 1340 with…. whoever they air on that station. Isn’t that fair enough? It's always someone else's fault with the left, and I'm hard pressed to figure out whose fault it is that Air America sucks so bad. Wait I remember now. It's because Janeane Garofalo is a complete loser and nobody likes her.

LOSER