James Howard Kunstler writes about the problems he sees us heading towards when it comes to our energy needs:

As the world passes the all-time oil production high and watches as the price of a barrel of oil busts another record, as it did last week, these systems will run into trouble. Instability in one sector will bleed into another. Shocks to the oil markets will hurt trucking, which will slow commerce and food distribution, manufacturing and the tourist industry in a chain of cascading effects. Problems in finance will squeeze any enterprise that requires capital, including oil exploration and production, as well as government spending. These systems are all interrelated. They all face a crisis. What’s more, the stress induced by the failure of these systems will only increase the wishful thinking across our nation.

And that’s the worst part of our quandary: the American public’s narrow focus on keeping all our cars running at any cost. Even the environmental community is hung up on this. The Rocky Mountain Institute has been pushing for the development of a “Hypercar” for years — inadvertently promoting the idea that we really don’t need to change.

I wanted to post about this because it’s now the top story at reddit. The idea that people need to change their lifestyle in the face of a crisis is a difficult message for any politician or pundit to put out there. If the predictions turn out to be overly alarmist, all it does is make people complacent towards the real dangers that exist. This is a common problem with the environmental issues we face, and why I often compare them to the foreign policy issues we face. When either side of the ideological spectrum exaggerates the dangers (whether it’s Kunstler on the environment, or Joe Lieberman on Iran), it only works against those who are intent on fixing the problems.

I tend to believe that Kunstler is underestimating what the demand for technical innovation will produce. When people are faced with the prospect of giving up their lifestyle, their financial calculus changes. When this happens across the globe, I believe we’ll see some radical changes, but we’re not returning to a time where everyone is cut off from the rest of the world again. The innovations of the 20th century (commercial air travel, computers, the internet, space travel, and television) were largely inconceivable to someone in 1900, and the major advancements of the 21st century are largely inconceivable to us now. It’s not a bad idea for people to change their lifestyles, and with the price of oil what it is, many people are going to anyway. But what we need to do most of all is place more emphasis on science in our educational systems. And we need to return to a time when our government valued and respected science so that the innovations that build the 21st century come from America, just as they did in the 20th.

More and more news is surfacing about the ongoing problems that medical marijuana patients in this state are facing. Here are some more links:

Dominic Holden writes about another transplant patient being denied.

Carol Ostrom writes in the Seattle Times about how the State Department of Health is now likely to miss the deadline for establishing a legal 60-day limit for medical marijuana patients and providers because law enforcement didn’t like the initial number proposed. I commented on the whole mess here.

I just got back from a long weekend in Chicago, and I’ve apparently missed out on a few local medical marijuana cases. Here’s a quick roundup:

– A medical marijuana patient named Alex Morris, who is suffering from Crohn’s disease, is serving a 30-day jail sentence and is unable to use the medicine a doctor has authorized him to use. He’s lost 10 pounds in 8 days. Even under the Washington State law approved by the voters, his medicine is not legally available to him while in prison.

I’m not able to find out if Morris was sent to jail for marijuana-related charges or something else, but the effects that his lack of medicine is having on him should make us question having a person in his condition serving a 30-day jail sentence in a state where the prisons are already overcrowded.

– Another Crohn’s patient named Steve Senn was sentenced to one year in jail today, although he will be out on bail awaiting appeal. A Snohomish County judge has ordered Senn not to use his medicine while under Department of Corrections supervision. Even though Senn had already served his deferred prosecution for a refusal to submit to a breathalyzer test, the judge cited failed drug tests due to his legal medical marijuana use as the reason to invalidate the deferred prosecution.

– Bruce Olson, the husband of Pam Olson, had a pre-trial hearing today in Kitsap County. The case may be postponed until after July 1, when the state Department of Health is expected to announce the quantity guidelines for medical marijuana patients. As with all cases, showing up at the courthouse to show your support for the patients is always appreciated.

In recent weeks, Eric Earling has been making the case that Barack Obama has a problem winning votes among “white, hard-working” Americans. Around the time of the Pennsylvania primaries, I and a few others tried to explain to him in the comments that he was mistakenly extrapolating a local trend in a way that doesn’t translate across the entire country. Having lived in several regions of this country (and having grown up mostly in Pennsylvania), I’m rather familiar with the fact that rural Pennsylvania is very, very different from rural Texas or rural Wisconsin or rural Idaho. But now that this erroneous belief has been finding its way into Hillary Clinton’s talking points, some more people are starting to dig into its inaccuracy.

Daily Kos diarist DHinMI posted up on Monday with a series of charts showing the counties where Obama or Clinton won 65% of the vote. The top map is where Obama won 65% of the vote and the bottom map is where Clinton won 65% of the vote:

These maps show that despite Earling’s claim that Obama’s support is coming solely from urban areas, he’s winning overwhelmingly among Democrats in some very rural, very white parts of the country. Obama’s problem, which is stunningly illustrated by the second map above, is with Appalachia, a part of the country with its own unique culture and political history. Josh Marshall discusses it here, and Jonathan Tilove adds to the analysis here, reinforcing my belief that Jim Webb would be an awesome VP choice for Obama.

Going back to the overall point, Greg Sargent looks into the recent Quinnipiac poll to show that the notion that Hillary does better against McCain among working class white voters (those without a college degree) is pure fiction. Hillary and Obama each have their weaknesses among certain subsets of white America, but despite that, both of them are polling ahead of McCain in a head-to-head matchup (and those polls aren’t even factoring in Bob Barr, who’s able to get airtime on the Fox Business Channel). Considering this nation’s past when it comes to racism, it’s easy to get nervous about the prospects of the first African-American candidate to win a major party nomination, but the facts just don’t back up the notion that rural, or even less educated white voters won’t vote for Obama.

While so much attention has been focused on the race between Obama and Clinton, few people have noticed that things aren’t as rosy as they appear with the Republican race. Andrew Malcolm writes in the LA Times Politics blog:

In the last three months, [Ron] Paul’s forces, who donated $34.5 million to his White House effort and upward of a million total votes, have, as The Ticket has noted, been fighting a series of guerrilla battles with party establishment officials at county and state conventions from Washington and Missouri to Maine and Mississippi. Their goal: to take control of local committees, boost their delegate totals and influence platform debates.

John McCain (who my father-in-law referred to as a “Democrat” yesterday) clearly doesn’t have enthusiastic support among the Republican base. This is causing problems with Republican GOP conventions across the country where Paul supporters are trying their best to ensure that he gets enough pledged delegates to be able to speak in St. Paul. They created mayhem at the Nevada State Convention, are being targeted by the Missouri GOP for their alleged disloyalty to John McCain, and are finding both success and special GOP counter-measures against them in several other states. Meanwhile, to demonstrate the depth of his support among younger people, his book was at the top of the Amazon bestseller list for a week after it was released on 4/30 and is still in the top ten (#7) today.

Paul has already said he won’t endorse McCain, and with the Libertarians potentially having a candidate with very good name recognition among Republicans (former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr), the GOP may have much bigger unity problems than the Democrats this year.

In the middle of a busy week. Here’s a bunch of random stuff:

I’m surprised that no one had pointed this out already, but (barring unforeseen disaster) Obama’s nomination speech on the last day of the Democratic National Convention will be on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

A list of possible McCain slogans.

A substitute teacher in Florida lost his job after he was accused of ‘Wizardry’ (for doing a magic trick in front of middle school students).

Can the San Diego State University fraternities busted this week for drug distribution legally be considered “gangs”? The President of San Diego State’s chapter of Students for Sensible Drug Policy speaks out.

What do the current British and Canadian governments have in common? They’re both threatening to ignore their own appointed advisors in order to fall in line with the drug war.

Which is the more infuriating drug war story: this or this?

Some amazing photos of a volcanic eruption in Chile.

A strong contender for the Nobel Prize in Marketing.

Game 1 of the Flyers-Penguins Eastern Conference Finals is tomorrow. If you’re looking for a good place to watch the game, head to Spitfire at 2219 4th Ave in Belltown.

This week’s Birds Eye View Contest is posted along with a special announcement.

Anyone guess what’s wrong with this screenshot from Fox News?

Yep, the geniuses on staff at Fox and Friends thought that the ‘Douglas’ in the Lincoln-Douglas debates was Frederick Douglass, the freed slave who went on to become an author and politician, and not Stephen A. Douglas.

God help us all.

I just received word that Timothy Garon passed away this afternoon. I’ve said what I’ve needed to say about what happened to this man. There’s a lot of tragedy in this world, but it’s especially tragic when people who we don’t expect to be among the ranks of the willfully ignorant bring about a result like this.

It’s also a reminder for those participating in the 2008 Global Marijuana March on Saturday that there’s still a long way to go.

I had a bad day on the internet yesterday as I spent some time arguing that Jeremiah Wright won’t be a problem for Obama, while at the same time, Wright was busy becoming a problem for Obama. I don’t have even a fraction of the time today to fully explain how incredibly stupid this man is, so I’ll just point you to Eli Sanders, who does a good job of it.

The biggest problem isn’t the paranoia, the praise of renowned crazyperson and bigot Louis Farrakhan, or even his unwillingness to accept that he has said numerous things that are clearly known to be untrue. The biggest problem is that he keeps insisting that Barack Obama secretly agrees with him, but can’t say so publicly because he’s a politician. At this point, Obama has no choice. He has to do what he said he couldn’t do in his Philadelphia speech, and disown this man and his nutty ideas.

I’ve devoted a lot of my time and energy in blogging to understanding the realities of urban America and to what continues to hold black communities in this country back. I often find myself defending the black community from those who insist that the failures are all within. They’re not. There’s a lot of institutional racism, primarily within our justice system, which perpetuates a systemic inequality. But I find it both sadly ironic and terribly disheartening whenever a man who claims to have the interests of his community at heart can do so much damage to the effort he claims to be a part of. And that’s precisely what Wright is doing.

UPDATE: Obama addresses it:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama denounced his former pastor in his strongest language to date on Tuesday, saying he was outraged by Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s assertions about the U.S. government and race.

“His comments were not only divisive … but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate,” Obama told reporters.

“Whatever relationship I had with Reverend Wright has changed as a consequence of this,” Obama said.

Thanks to Hannah for posting this in comments.

Timothy Garon is the man I wrote about on Saturday who was denied a liver transplant by the University of Washington Medical Center because he’s a medical marijuana patient, and as a result, will likely die in the very near future. His case will be profiled at 5pm today on KIRO TV. Also, Dominic posts some contact numbers for the hospital and more information on the case over at Slog.

UPDATE: Here’s KIRO TV’s report:

Gene Johnson at the AP reports on another problem with the state of Washington’s medical marijuana laws:

Timothy Garon’s face and arms are hauntingly skeletal, but the fluid building up in his abdomen makes the 56-year-old musician look eight months pregnant. His liver, ravaged by hepatitis C, is failing. Without a new one, his doctors tell him, he will be dead in days. But Garon’s been refused a spot on the transplant list, largely because he has used marijuana, even though it was legally approved for medical reasons.

Garon was authorized by a doctor to use medical marijuana to counteract nausea and abdominal pain and to stimulate his appetite, but that was irrelevant to the transplant committee at the University of Washington Medical Center. Officials at the hospital weren’t specific about his case, but one surgeon quoted in the article hinted that transplants can be denied for medical marijuana patients on the belief that they will not be able to stop using it after the transplant (for medical reasons, many doctors tell transplant patients that they must abstain from using medical marijuana as their bodies accept the new organ). This is a common misunderstanding about medical marijuana patients and it shows that even medical professionals will often see them as addicts rather than people who find medical benefit from the drug’s effects. It’s another reminder that even here in liberal Washington State, we still have a long way to go before those who find that medical marijuana is beneficial have the kinds of protections they need.

Daniel Levy has a must-read post on what’s happening with the Israeli-Syrian-North Korean situation.

This week’s Birds Eye View Contest is posted.

UPDATE: Dominic Holden lays into Mike Carter and Paul Shukovsky for their horrendous reporting on yesterday’s drug busts.

Yesterday, Slog’s Dominic Holden challenged local reporters to ask tough questions about yesterday’s pot busts in South King County. For comparison, he showed how the proposal by Seattle city officials here to implement a $.20 fee for plastic bags got opinions from both sides of the debate over that proposal’s efficacy, but drug busts never do.

The result? Nothing. Both the Seattle Times’ Mike Carter and the Seattle PI’s Paul Shukovsky fail to provide both sides of this story. And yet they wonder why they’re going out of business.

There’s going to be a press conference at 1pm at the federal building in Seattle to discuss “Operation Green Reaper.” Can someone from the media please ask them whether the “green” in the operation name is supposed to refer to the pot plants they found or to the taxpayer money that was wasted?