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Rhinocrisy

30 July, 2005

Shitstorm

Sometimes too much badness happens at once. It challenges our ability to keep track. Yesterday in the U.S. Senate was a case in point. In one day, it:
  • Passed the dreadful energy bill about which Saurabh previously wrote.
  • Passed a law to exempt gun makers and dealers from lawsuits by people killed due to dealer or manufacturer negligence -- such as letting guns get stolen, selling them to terrorists, and so on. (The District of Columbia and the City of Oakland each have such cases in process; the law even kills off cases already in the system.)
  • Renewed or made permanent many of the most unpleasant parts of the martial law -- I mean the USAPATRIOT act.
  • Passed a transportation bill to build more roads, more highways, more highway bridges, more airports, and some more roads. I think the bicycles got a few bucks, too, but nothing major.
I write this from a sunny back yard deep in the exurbia of western Massachusetts. A cardinal nibbles from a birdfeeder. Wasps suckle on tiny blooms of queen anne's lace. Bees peruse the tall pink asters, then stop to collect golden grains of pollen. The air is gently scented with leaking maple sap, drying grass, and the decomposing oak leaves of the nearby woods. Somewhere in the distance rises a placeless, unidentifiable rumbling.

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