Are they the greenest Olympics ever, or what? Some say, "Or what."

From Grist.org's Jonathan Hiskes, a simple solution for a greener Olympic experience:

For all the efforts to minimize the impact of the Olympics, one big solution never gets taken seriously. So much of the environmental and financial cost of the games comes from cities trying to build facilities that suit both a massive, two-week influx of athletes and spectators and also the long-term needs of locals. So you get things like Montreal’s Olympic Stadium, built for the 1976 summer games and not paid off in full until 2006. Or the “spookily quiet, deserted” Olympic village Tom Philpott saw in Turin, Italy, two years after the games there.

The solution: Hold the Olympics in the same location every time, one spot for the summer games and one for the winter. Since the greatest concentration of athletes comes from Europe, putting the summer games in, say, Athens and the winter games somewhere in the Alps would minimize jet travel, which accounts for fully half the carbon impact of the Vancouver games.

From E-Magazine's Brita Belli, a little angst:

With such worldwide attention and grand-scale showmanship, it seems almost inappropriate to calculate the emissions and “sustainability” of the Vancouver Olympics. Each Olympics aims to be the greenest, and Vancouver is no different. As E wrote in a recent feature "Are the Games Really Green?" there‘s a certain amount of greenhouse gas emissions—specifically 330,000 tons along with ecosystem and habitat damage—associated with creating and hosting the Games that’s just inevitable. When organizers do build arenas, tracks and buildings, they aim to set a green example. That includes the highly efficient Olympic Village in Vancouver, the temporary home for more than 2,000 skiers, snowboarders, figure skaters, curlers and other competitors, that has been called one of the “greenest neighborhoods in north America” by organizers and the National Resources Defense Council. When the Games have ended, the mini-city’s buildings will be turned into mixed-income housing, and aim for Gold LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification. A 64-unit building called Southeast False Creek that will later become senior housing is actually net zero—meaning it produces as much energy as it consumes.

But the Olympics are polarizing, and draw the ire of activists who see the Games as wasteful, destructive and out of step with their own agendas. Figure skater Johnny Weir—who wore a fur-trimmed outfit during the Nationals—decided to stay in the Olympic Village instead of a hotel as a result of what he describes as threatening harassment from anti-fur activists.

And now Friends of the Earth is using the Olympics to generate attention to tar sands exploitation in Canada. The group is particularly concerned that several oil companies involved in strip mining operations are also Olympic sponsors.

Green Daily writer Cat Lincoln's just happy things are getting better:

Whenever you bring together a big group of eating, drinking, trash-making humans, the green clique starts to get concerned about the environmental impact of the event.

In terms of architectural green-ness, Vancouver is pretty impressive. The Olympic Village is being built to the LEED Gold standard and they will have a LEED Platinum Community Centre. The speedskating oval is built from pine beetle damaged wood. But as Treehugger reported, some folks are disappointed because these uber-green buildings are too utilitarian. In short, they're ugly.

...

Aesthetics aside, official Olympics beverage sponsor, Coca Cola, is shooting for a carbon neutral Olympics. They introduced bottles made from 30 percent plant-based materials, and they're using hybrids for delivery.

Watching the green progress from two years ago gives the games an interesting added dimension for us Greeniacs at home, who worry about how many energy bar wrappers and plastic water bottles are going to wind up in the trash. This year, it sounds like that number is going to be closer to zero than every before. Now that's a reason to cheer!

See one of the sustainable innovations inVancouver's Olympic village for yourself:

Well, someone needs to make some headway and Erskine Bowles has a good track record when it comes to reigning in spending in Washington. Here's hoping he can work his magic once again.

Republicans, of course, are stomping their feet over the creation of an appointed commission to, as the article below states, "tackle the federal debt."

If you look at their platforms, though, you'll find that Republicans technically favor reducing the national debt. So, what's their problem? Shocker: They still don't like our president, which means they're going to kick and scream whenever he proposes anything — no matter how much the country will benefit. Which is, you know, very patriotic of them. Anybody want some tea?

President Barack Obama is plowing ahead with a commission to tackle the federal debt despite resistance from Republican leaders.

Mr. Obama will name former Clinton White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles and former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson as co-chairmen of the commission Thursday when he signs an executive order creating the panel, an administration official said.

The commission's job will be to help bring down the federal budget deficit to 3% of gross domestic product by 2015, compared with nearly 10% today, and to propose ways to hold down the surging costs of government programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. The president will also ask the panel to look at the U.S. tax code and has not ruled out tax increases for the middle class should the commission deem them necessary.

Mr. Bowles, currently president of the University of North Carolina, brokered the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 with Republicans in Congress when he was White House chief of staff.

Read the entire Wall Street Journal article, by Jonathan Weisman, here.

Further reading: Party gridlock in D.C. feeds fear of debt crisis

Five people, places and things we really ain’t digging today:

• Big banks

• Charlotte's jacked-up roads

• Anyone who thought that the Stimulus Package would halt the global financial meltdown in one year. Actually, anyone who's impatient with an administration that's only been in office for a little more than one year. Seriously folks — as the president warned when he was elected — it took us a long time to get into this mess and it's going to take a long time to get out.

• Bill James ... again

• The death of an extremely creative guy like Alexander McQueen

That's a good damn question. We lure them into service with big signing bonuses, promises of college tuition and then, when they return broken and bruised — mentally and physically — we torture them with bureaucratic bullshit, deny benefits and turn our faces when we hear of their suicides or life on the street.

No, of course not every veteran falls through the cracks. But, a lot of them do. Too many of them do.

Just this weekend, I ran into a homeless man in fatigues, a weathered metal pinned to his jacket. He was sleeping in the corner of a Burger King in Virginia, trying to stay warm on a cold day. I touched his shoulder, he jumped. I asked him if he could use the cash I was holding out to him. He nodded, looked at the floor and tried to hide his right arm -- which was missing a hand.

What's wrong with our society?

Here's one example of our ridiculousness:

North Carolina's members of Congress have grown increasingly impatient with the military over its role in water contamination more than 30years ago at Camp Lejeune.

The Department of theNavy has refused to pay for a $1.6million mortality study that could indicate a trend in deaths among former residents of Camp Lejeune.

U.S. Sen. Richard Burr, a Winston-Salem Republican, has blocked two Navy presidential appointees and vowed that he'll stop every nominee until the department ends its "continued intransigence" on funding the study.

Burr and U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan, a Greensboro Democrat, have vowed to push legislation on health care for the affected families despite a recent setback in the Senate.

And over in the House, U.S. Rep. Brad Miller, a Raleigh Democrat, has gathered nearly 20 co-sponsors for identical legislation that he hopes will have better success.

Some estimates are thatover a 30-year period, as many as 1million people were exposed to well water that contained trichloroethylene, tetrachloroethylene, benzene and vinyl chloride.

Read the rest of this Raleigh News and Observer article, by Barbara Barret, here.

Read on, from the Washington Post: Soldiers Face Neglect, Frustration At Army's Top Medical Facility