Alaska Kills Wolves!
I once had a single bumper stick that emblazoned my first car, a beat-up smurf-blue Chevy, that simply stated, "Little Red Riding Hood LIED."
I grew up in an inner-city area. The only wild animals I ever saw were squirrels, pigeons and the occasional rat, and their wildness was in question. I never saw a deer or raccoon other than behind bars until I went away to college in a more rural and mountainous setting. My eyes opened up...
Moving Towards Sustainability: Why the Plastic Drinking Straw Signals a Starting Point
Even though I consider myself fairly low impact in most of my everyday practices, giving up the plastic straw was an oversight I didn't finally address until fairly recently. I had been on the way to weaning myself slowly off of excess waste: bringing my own tupperware to restaurants to pack leftovers (and simply not eating out as much), refusing paper and plastic bags in favor of my own canvas ones, and bringing my own reusable mugs and cutlery in my bag as part of a permanent carry-along item, along with my wallet, keys, and the ever-present pen & paper that always is on a self-identified writer's person.
But as for straws...well, when did my vendetta against them begin in earnest? I had, these past few years, intermittenly refused them at restaurants, though it didn't bother me so much if I forgot to or not (which I often did). If they still adorned my glass, I took it in stride and shrugged it off. I don't eat meat, rarely drive and hang-dry my clothes, so I have done my part...there are so much bigger things to worry about, right?
Obama, Liberals Threaten Our Nation
Since we just celebrated our nation's victory for independence, it's healthy to step back from the canvas of the current admininstration to better understand the genesis and current context of its policies.
In the area of national security and military intervention, it's been a fascinating exercise in political forensics to witness the response to President Obama's firing of General Stanley McChrystal. If history demonstrates anything it's that its lessons are perpetually susceptible to revision based on new evidence and more informed analysis. So it is that over the centuries, the credibility of Herodotus' rendering of the Peloponnesian War has attenuated, while that of Thucydides is deemed more persuasive.
The Tea Partier in the GOP’s midst
Here is what I wrote in April:
The Republican Party will experience it at the local and state levels first, as Tea Party candidates defeat conventional Republicans and win GOP nominations. Some of those Tea Partiers will be kooky, others will be single-issue ideologues. A few will be anti-immigrant, a smattering will be paranoid. Others will be very like the Republicans they beat.
Blunting the Arizona Boycotts
Those of us who believe the state of Arizona has a right to protect its borders should do our part to blunt the effects of liberal-organized boycotts against that state. We are in the majority here. Most polls show that Americans favor Arizona's new immigration law by nearly two to one. There is power in numbers, and they are on our side this time.
The boycotts are starting to mount up, from school boards meddling in politics and depriving their student athletes of the chance to participate in sporting events in Arizona to the Los Angeles city council's recent vote to suspend business activities with that state. Arizona will soon begin to feel their negative effects.
Europe's search for the new Holy Grail
We have met the enemy, and he is us.
- Pogo, the comic strip philosopher created by Walt Kelly
Texas' New Curriculum - The Founding Father Argument
"This is what the Founding Fathers intended" - a commonly used phrase in the U.S. in defending heatedly discussed issues, such as the right to bear arms. The Founding Fathers are the heavy weights of debate, the killer argument if you will, no more reasoning necessary, discussion completed.
The same argument could be heard in recent months in a public debate over revising Texas' school curriculum. The Texas board of education considered changing the Founding Fathers' strong commitment to a secular government to a more Christian-based interpretation. Never mind that the idea of America as a Judeo-Christian nation has been revised and discussed for decades. The Texas School Board of Education treats these ideas as established and unmovable truth. And never mind that Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, was a strong advocate of a strict separation of church and state. The board simply removed him from its canon.
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Emergent misbehavior
How would you like a beer? How about a beer company along with it?
On Thursday, the 6th of May, for a few minutes, you could have bought a delicious Sam Adams plus a substantial interest in its maker, the Boston Beer Company, all for the price of a pint. Boston Beer stock, along with dozens of others on the major U.S. stock exchanges, plummeted to zero, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average nosedived 700 points in a matter of minutes.
We Should Learn from Socialism's Collapse
We would all be wise to take warning from the recent events in Greece that have led to jitters in our stock market as well as markets around the world. The problems in Greece, of course, were caused created by socialism.
Too many people were getting too many freebies off the backs of too few others. There was no way that such a system could sustain itself. It was doomed from the beginning. It was just a matter of time before it would begin to collapse. The chickens are now coming home to roost.
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Earth Day Reflections: Plastic Ocean Patches, Hermaphrodite Fish and No Talk of Cap and Dividend
Today is Earth Day. I started my morning, as I almost always do, looking up the latest environmental news brought to my email Inbox by the Society of Environmental Journalists. Today's news consisted of: a killer whale who died off the coast of the Puget Sound gorged on plastic debris and other garbage (the objects didn't kill him, though scientists think it might have been the ingestion of invisible industrial chemicals), the latest update about yesterday's explosion of an offshore oil rig off our Southeastern coast, and an AP article about the events that spurred the first Earth Day with a comparison about our current state of the environment.
To begin with this last item, we no longer have waterways that catch on fire or birds falling dead from DDT poisoning mid-flight, and most of our skies are not rendered mere shadows by smog and soot. Our environmental threats are now more concealed and more complex, and so harder to believe in, or combat. Chemical exposure and climate change are more difficult to see, and their threats are for the most part, slower to take hold.
No Need for Wise Men?
You go through the gate. If the gate's closed, you go over the fence. If the fence is too high, we'll pole-vault in. If that doesn't work, we'll parachute in. But we are going to get healthcare reform passed for the American people.
- Nancy Pelosi
When I was a kid, I was a baseball pitcher. I loved it: Nothing could happen till I threw the ball. I was in control.
A Second Civil War or a Constitutional Convention?
In addition to all the unrest in the aftermath of the the healthcare legislation that became law this week, there may also be a battle brewing over the recent decision by the state of Texas to use more conservative-oriented textbooks in its schools. The federal government might very well try to force Texas to reverse course, claiming that the Lone Star State is making an attempt violate the separation of church and state.
However, I don't think it's a matter Texas wanting to teach creationism or any other Christian precept as fact in the schools. If that were the case, I would completely agree that they shouldn't be changing school textbooks for that purpose. Instead, I think the changes are being made more along the lines of emphasizing the fact that many of the Founding Fathers held Judeo-Christian values and beliefs. That's a fact, not just somebody's opinion. Therefore, there's nothing inappropriate about including it in U.S. history textbooks.
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Camelot and Climate Change
"It's true! It's true! The crown has made it clear.
The climate must be perfect all the year.
A law was made a distant moon ago here:
July and August cannot be too hot.
And there's a legal limit to the snow here
In Camelot."
Sarah Palin for President in 2012?
Will Sarah Palin run for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination? Absolutely. Will she be a serious contender for president? It ain't gonna happen.
Like the all other GOP politicians with their eyes on the White House in 2012, the former governor of Alaska will throw her hat into the ring early next year. That will be the easy part. From there, she will begin to raise money and watch the polls. This will continue throughout the bulk of 2011.
Last Week’s Supreme Court Ruling: A Step Towards Corporate Communism?
This past Wednesday, the Supreme Court ruled in a 5 to 4 decision to do away with any limitations to corporate funding of political campaigns. The decision comes on the heels of the surprise election of conservative candidate Scott Brown in Massachusetts to take over the late Ted Kennedy's seat. As such, the verdict seems to have been passed in preparation of the upcoming 2010 election, by paving the way for corporate sponsorship of candidates. This decision should deeply scare us all as it establishes new legal interpretations of the 1st amendment. First, it interprets corporations as legal individuals entitled to the more rights in deciding elections than you and me. Second, it deems that money is the same as "speech," and that therefore funneling money into the campaigns is the same as voicing support for a candidate. Besides flying in the face of legal precedent, the implications of these unfortunate interpretations are potentially quite dire. It makes us consumers first, and citizens second. It defines us solely as consumers and our worth to and in this country estimated by how we oil the great corporate machine. Groups such as the right-leaning Tea Party have based much of their rhetoric on the fear of government takeover of our lives. And yet, the Supreme Court decision single-handedly puts us on the fast track of a complete corporate takeover, where corporations dominate and even dictate who our elected officials will be and how they will vote. By default, our political choices will be made for us. Unlike a government representative, corporations are not vulnerable to votes or petition signs. A corporation is not limited by election terms. A Corporation is not a human! It is granted immunity from culpability in many court cases because of this reason, and as such, should not be granted rights on equal or greater par than us.
A corporation is comprised of countless individuals, many of whom are probably not residents of the states in which they will be subsidizing campaigns. In fact, since most large corporations are multi-nationals, corporations may be calling the shots in who runs for office in your district even though they may not even be from the United States. The most disturbing aspect of this ruling is its affront against freedom of speech. The founding fathers, in creating the first amendment, sought to offer the constituency rights to which we all equally share. All of us have a voice and a means to communicate. We are, for the most part, on fairly equal ground in this respect. We do not all have easily disposable incomes. Most of us don't: a recent poll revealed that more than half of American individuals make $35,000 a year or less. For a single parent, this toes the poverty line. By claiming that money is tantamount to speech, the Supreme Court has inevitably set up a system in which corporations have the power to hand-pick candidates. We lay citizens cannot compete, as even our individual campaign donations cannot legally exceed $3,600 per candidate. Most of us can't afford airtime or to buy up bill boards as an alternative to our single votes. Our speech has thus been rendered less prominent, and so less important or influential, than that of the corporations.
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