There goes another pleasant evening in paradise

OK so this song is a stretch, but somehow though it is probably a love song, it speaks to getting along in society as well. It may hold a lesson. It's also the first one downloaded in anticipation of a playlist.

Photo shows results of a pipeline spill of tar sands oil in
Mayflower, Arkansas, in 2013. 

Well, there is a pleasant evening gone all to hell. I really need to learn to not take things so seriously. I felt pretty good going into the evening, so good I poured a glass of wine which I seldom do any more and downloaded a song I have always wanted to have. Then I did a last look through the pages I follow on facebook and other sites before starting a romantic comedy on TV, all the time thinking I might come up with a playlist later based from the song I downloaded. I should have forgotten about the review.

Today is the day President Obama put the kabosh on the Keystone pipeline, an environmental disaster waiting to happen. It was a victory in so many ways and probably added to the good mood as I approached the evening.

 Then came the  roll through the facebook feed. In there two of Alaska's three representatives in Congress came out calling the president every name they could get away with on facebook and making the end of Keystone sound like it was the apocalypse. It started me on the downhill slide grasping for that well-being I had felt moments earlier.

Here is the statement by the missing senator. (I call him that because he ran more against President Obama than he did against his opponent, promising to stand up to the president at every step of the way. Once elected that was pretty much the last we heard from him – hence the missing senator.)

Senator Dan Sullivan

"President Obama put the interests of radical environmentalists above hard-working, middle-class Americans. The irony is, the same ridiculous arguments he made today against Keystone — will only create a handful of jobs; does nothing for our energy security; threatens our environment — are the ones environmentalists made against the Trans Alaska Pipeline, the lifeblood of our state for nearly 40 years. TAPS is a source of pride and prosperity for all Alaskans — liberal and conservative, Democrat and Republican alike. It’s a shame the President can’t see beyond his ideology to the boundless potential of our great nation." 

This being the second one of those I read (the first was Rep. Don Young's comments almost word for word) I could no longer let it go. So I responded on facebook with this:

"There's a big difference between TAPS and Keystone. All of the TAPS oil was destined for the U.S. market. All the Keystone oil was to go overseas; the pipeline only linked the oil fields in Canada with the port at Houston. TAPS employs a whole lot more than the 35 permanent jobs expected from Keystone. The tar sands oil is the dirtiest oil imaginable and the company already has a terrible record of spills. How oil drilled for in a foreign country and sent to market in other foreign countries hurts the Alaska economy takes more explaining than any of us want to hear. Listen to Dick Derevan below, we are tired of being demonized by ignorance."

First of all I am damned tired of being called a radical environmentalist. Aren't we past that by now? That is so 1970s. But then that's where the missing senator's awareness seems to have stalled. Radical environmentalists have been the go-to boogymen for everything that goes wrong in Alaska for so long it has its own acronym. REVs are to blame for everything here.

There are more ideas I would love to add to that comment on his facebook page but Alaska's Republican senators and our only representative have a history of not listening to people who disagree with them, but do often try to convince us otherwise. As a matter of fact Rep. Don Young, the other one who criticized the president today, at one time said he only represented those people who voted for him.

One point that I wanted to hammer home was from the missing senator's last statement about ideology hurting the "boundless potential of our great nation."  I mean, how do 35 jobs and providing an avenue for dirty oil to be transported from Canada to foreign nations hurt the "boundless potential of our great nation?"

And as far as raising the specter of hurting middle class Americans, oh please, anonymous one, you are a yes-man in a party that has done everything it can to destroy the middle class in this country, so you better just shut up about that one.

I guess "standing up  to Obama" really means being critical after the fact. See earlier posts about rope-a-dope

Well, these revelations and rants got me past that one but foolishly I went on down the facebook and Twitter pages until I came across the revelations about a pro football player beating up his girlfriend.

Briefly summarizing: Greg Hardy, who at the time was playing for the Carolina Panthers, was accused and convicted of beating up his girlfriend. That conviction was eventually thrown out on appeal. He was punished by the NFL by being suspended for 10 games which eventually was reduced to four. Released by the Panthers and out of football for a year, he was picked up by the Dallas Cowboys this year and has had a starring role there this season. Then, today the police investigation materials including photographs of his girlfriend's bruises were released.

Where I first picked up on it was when Cowboys owner Jerry Jones defended Hardy and called him a leader and a "Dallas Cowboy" as if that lifted him above common societal obligations. This isn't the first time the NFL or a team has defended a guy who beat up a woman in his life, nor is it likely to be the last, but it is THIS time. There is a joke on the FXX comedy The League where a guy in a fantasy league refuses to draft players with criminal records. He loses badly. In almost every other occupation a convicted criminal is ostracized. In the NFL he is defended and continues to be paid millions for playing a game. How many of these have to happen before something serious is done about it?

Maybe what we need is for President Obama to take a look at it and maybe throw another rope-a-dope at the opponents before he's done. Give the missing senator and his cohorts in the Tea Baggers something more to whine about.

Maybe with all that, the pleasant evening could come back, maybe with one of the last lines of the song. For what it's worth I really don't want to wait for these lingering issues to be over:

 So open up your morning light,

And say a little prayer for right

You know that if we are to stay alive

Then see the love in every eye

An explantion of rope-a-dope