President Bush: The Environmentalist

OK, brace yourself to read this. You braced? OK. Here it is:

"President Bush will create the world's largest protected marine area today, designating as a national monument a 1,200-mile-long chain of small Hawaiian islands and surrounding waters and reefs that are home to a spectacular array of sea life, senior administration officials said last night." - The New York Times

REALLY. There doesn't seem to be any strings attached. Like, it's not Bush's "Healthy Forest Restoration Act," which allowed loggers to cut down more trees and build more roads to "protect" forests from "dangerous" forest fires. Or his plans to "protect" our oceans or to "protect" the Alaska wilderness by opening both up for some oil and gas drilling. Or when he pledged to "protect" our drinking water from arsenic.

But this pledge seems to be pretty honest. So I have a few more suggestions for our new "environmental" president.

Join the rest of the world and sign the Kyoto Accord to limit greenhouse gases being emitted by this country into the atmosphere

Pledge to make at least 50 percent of this country's energy come from renewable resources by 2015

Protect our wetlands. Ban any construction or draining of any of this country's wetlands

OK, that's enough for now. Can't ask for too much, right? I mean, he is protecting an unexploitable area of the United States. How dare we ask him to protect areas that his supporters are exploiting on a daily basis? Really.

Traffic stops make sense, ya know?

Am I the only person not shocked, or appalled, that blacks (and to a lesser extent, Hispanics) are being stopped at an unproportional rate in this county near Sacramento? Stopping blacks at three times the rate that other drivers are stopped seems a little dramatic. But honestly, stopping blacks and Hispanics more than whites makes some sense - we cause the most crime!

OK, OK, I'm not a sellout. I just think we need to be realistic. Who lives in the areas with the highest crime rates? That's right! Blacks and Hispanics. If police officers are conducting good policing, they are checking out anyone who looks suspicious. And to be honest, I'm somewhat thankful for this. I hardly get stopped (mainly because I don't look like a thug), but when I do, I am fine with it. Know why? I didn't do anything wrong.

Sometimes we need to be inconvenienced a little for our own good. You know, like buying a smaller car to save some gas?

It's so easy to say that cops are racist because many are. But they are also charged with protecting us. With gang crimes out of control, cops need to try numerous things to make sure that us non-gang members are kept somewhat safe.

I know what my liberal friends will say. "Whites commit just as much crime, but they aren't prosecuted!" Yeah, whites do commit a lot of crime. But facts are, most of those crimes aren't street crimes. Street crimes stem from economic despair. White communities in the Midwest that are in economic despair have tremendously high crime rates. I'm sure the amount of traffic stops there are extremely high as well.

I also know that this can be a slippery slope. If we are asked to accept the fact that cops will pull blacks and Hispanics over to "check them out," what will they ask for next? But what is the next step? Honestly, unless this country continues marching down the path of fascism, they will not ask us to allow ourselves to be temporarily detained. Our leaders are not that stupid.

So yeah, let's be intellectually honest about this and not be ACLU-appalled at every instance of racial disparity in statistics. Thanks.