We are so screwed

Why, why, why isn't the world taking this stuff seriously????

WASHINGTON - The world’s wetlands, threatened by development, dehydration and climate change, could release a planet-warming “carbon bomb” if they are destroyed, ecological scientists said on Sunday.

Wetlands contain 771 billion tons of greenhouse gases, one-fifth of all the carbon on Earth and about the same amount of carbon as is now in the atmosphere, the scientists said before an international conference linking wetlands and global warming.

If all the wetlands on the planet released the carbon they hold, it would contribute powerfully to the climate-warming greenhouse effect, said Paulo Teixeira, coordinator of the Pantanal Regional Environment Program in Brazil.

“We could call it the carbon bomb,” Teixeira said by telephone from Cuiaba, Brazil, site of the conference. “It’s a very tricky situation.”

Some 700 scientists from 28 nations are meeting this week at the INTECOL International Wetlands Conference at the edge of Brazil’s vast Pantanal wetland to look for ways to protect these endangered areas.

It's from an article entitled "Destroying Wetlands Could Unleash “Carbon Bomb” by Deborah Zabarenko.

O'Brien is coming along!

Check this out:

Yesterday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi referred to President Bush’s time in office as “a total failure.” Bush defended himself, saying, “Oh come on, I hardly spent any time in my office.”

- Conan O'Brien

Just too funny!

Another one from The Tonight Show

Take a look:

And with all this financial panicking going on, President Bush held a press conference and told everyone to “Take a deep breath.” “Take a deep breath.” That’s a good advice, huh? The economy is tanking and he’s giving Lamaze classes.“Take a deep breath.” Isn’t that what he told the people of New Orleans when the water was rising?

- Jay Leno

Rich people really ought not to be so cavalier about economic difficulty. It's quite unseemly.

Usury

This is the clearest way of putting it I've seen yet:

Usury, to be clear about it, is rich people taking advantage of poor people by lending them money on terms that are sure to make them fail. All three of the great religions, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, had a moral prohibition against usury because they recognized that society can't function like that. People of great wealth and their institutions like banks naturally have the power to overwhelm people of lesser means. And you can't allow that in a decent society. It won't survive.

-- William Greider

Saturday night joy

Okay. So here's how it went. I had a hankering to listen to the Beatles original and, after doing so, noticed the video below on YouTube. I'd never heard this performance by Ella Fitzgerald before. Oh my, oh my, oh my. Just take it in and give yourself a real lift:

Something we really need to remember

This seems to be often forgotten in our country:

The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.

- Harper Lee in To Kill a Mockingbird

Friday cat blogging!

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

A modern parable

Hank Weaver sent me the following cautionary tale:

A Japanese company (Toyota) and an American company (Ford Motors) decided to have a canoe race on the Missouri River. Both teams practiced long and hard to reach their peak performance before the race.

On the big day, the Japanese won by a mile.

The Americans, very discouraged and depressed, decided to investigate the reason for the crushing defeat. A management team made up of senior management was formed to investigate and recommend appropriate action.

Their conclusion was the Japanese had 8 people rowing and 1 person steering, while the American team had 7 people steering and 2 people rowing.

Feeling a deeper study was in order, American management hired a consulting company and paid them a large amount of money for a second opinion.

They advised, of course, that too many people were steering the boat, while not enough people were rowing.

Not sure of how to utilize that information, but wanting to prevent another loss to the Japanese, the rowing team's management structure was totally reorganized to 4 steering supervisors, 2 area steering superintendents and 1 assistant superintendent steering manager.

They also implemented a new performance system that would give the 2 people rowing the boat greater incentive to work harder. It was called the 'Rowing Team Quality First Program' with meetings, dinners and free pens for the rowers. There was discussion of getting new paddles, canoes and other equipment, extra vacation days for practices and bonuses. The pension program was trimmed to 'equal the competition' and some of the resultant savings were channeled into morale boosting programs and teamwork posters.

The next year the Japanese won by two miles.

Humiliated, the American management laid off one rower, halted development of a new canoe, sold all the paddles, and canceled all capital investments for new equipment. The money saved was distributed to the Senior Executives as bonuses.

The next year, try as he might, the lone designated rower was unable to even finish the race (having no paddles,) so he was laid off for unacceptable performance, all canoe equipment was sold and the next year's racing team was out-sourced to India.

Sadly, the End.
~~~~
Here's something else to think about: Ford has spent the last thirty years moving all its factories out of the US, claiming they can't make money paying American wages.

TOYOTA has spent the last thirty years building more than a dozen plants inside the US. The last quarter's results:

TOYOTA made 4 billion in profits while Ford racked up 9 billion in losses.

Ford folks are still scratching their heads, and collecting bonuses...

My goodness. It's depressing. Yes, it is. Seriously.

Just for fun

The celebrities, in order of appearance: John Candy (as Yosh Schmenge from SCTV), Andrea Martin (as Edith Prickley from SCTV), New York Mets Keith Hernandez & Mookie Wilson, Jane Curtin (of SNL and Kate & Allie), Madeline Kahn, Joe Williams, Paul Reubens (as Pee Wee Herman), Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Wynton Marsalis, Celia Cruz, Ihtzak Perlman, Gordon Jackson & Jean Marsh (as Angus Hudson and Rose Buck of Upstairs Downstairs), Paul Simon, Jeremy Irons, Pete Seeger, Rhea Perlman and Danny Devito, and NY Giants Sean Landeta, Mark Ingram, Karl Nelson and Carl Banks.

This is from a 1988 PBS pledge drive.

Oh. My. Word.

Leno rules!

Take a look:

Today, President Bush lifted the presidential ban on offshore drilling that was imposed by his father, the first President Bush, 18 years ago. But hey, remember Bush’s dad also said invading Iraq would be a huge disaster, and cutting taxes would ruin the economy. So what the hell did he know?

- Jay Leno

Silver lining

I know this is obvious but I want to post it anyway:

No doubt about it, there’s a lot of bad news. But as the cliché has it, every cloud has a silver lining.

The high price of gasoline has done what years of dire warnings have failed to do — get Americans to change their driving habits.

Air and water pollution? Global warming? Sending our dollars to unfriendly countries and corrupt regimes? That wasn’t enough to get our attention. Now that the money is coming out of our pockets, Americans are doing what environmentalists and others have been urging for years: saving energy.

The gas crisis has generated a fundamental shift in attitude. A friend recently told me she used to do errands whenever she thought of them. “Now I combine them, and map them all out so I don’t drive extra miles,” she said. “And I walk whenever I can. I’ve made it part of my exercise routine.”

More cars have their windows open and the air-conditioning off, despite the heat. People are carpooling to work and school. College students who live off campus are enrolling in online classes to save on the commute. GM has stopped making the once wildly popular Hummers.

It's from an article published on Common Dreams entitled "Gas Shock’s Silver Lining" by Deborah Leavy.

UPDATE: Here's something else on the same subject I just found:

A nice little side-effect: Greenhouse gas emissions will be reduced immediately, with future gains as new technologies come on-stream. Those who care about climate change, the fate of the planet, etc., should be pleased with this.

A somewhat less obvious benefit is the smack in the face urban planners are about to receive. As the cost of transportation rises, people will value housing nearer to their work. Urban design that brings homes, shops and employers closer together — and allows people to get around on feet and bicycle wheels — will flourish. Suburban monocultures and soul-crushing commutes will slowly shrivel.

High oil prices will also challenge China’s unhealthy dominance of global manufacturing. Why do cheap Chinese goods flood every market from Nome to Nigeria? In part, because cheap oil made global transport cheap — and so the fact that Chinese factories are very far away from the markets they swamp didn’t add much to the cost of Chinese goods. Soon, it will matter. And local manufacturers will get a little breathing room.

It’s the same story on food production. With cheap oil, it didn’t matter whether apples are grown 100 miles from the consumer or 10,000. With expensive oil, it will. And local farmers will reap the rewards.

I especially like the part about the challenge to China's manufacturing dominance.

The above excerpt is from an article entitled "Rendering The Old World Obsolete" by Dan Gardner.

Fr. John Dear on peacemaking and diet

I've admired Fr. John Dear for a long time. He is a tireless worker for peace. But I only found out today that he is also a vegetarian and that he sees the refusal to eat meat as an aspect of peacemaking. Alternet has published his article "The Only Diet for a Peacemaker Is a Vegetarian Diet". Here's how it gets started:

In Fort Lauderdale, Fla., last week to speak at the National Convention of Unitarian Universalists, I met my old friend Bruce Friedrich. We spent eight memorable months together in a tiny jail cell, along with Philip Berrigan, for our 1993 Plowshares disarmament action. A former Catholic Worker, Bruce is now one of the leaders of PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. He gave a brilliant workshop on the importance of becoming a vegetarian, something I urge everyone to consider.

I became a vegetarian with a few other Jesuit novices shortly after I entered the Jesuits in 1982 and later wrote a pamphlet for PETA, "Christianity and Vegetarianism." I based my decision solely on Francis Moore Lappe's classic work, Diet for a Small Planet, a book that I think everyone should read. In it, Lappe, the great advocate for the hungry, makes an unassailable case that vegetarianism is the best way to eliminate world hunger and to sustain the environment.

At first glance, we wonder how that could be. But it's undisputable. A hundred million tons of grain go yearly for biofuel -- a morally questionable use of foodstuffs. But more than seven times that much -- some 760 million tons according to the United Nations -- go into the bellies of farmed animals, this to fatten them up so that sirloin, hamburgers and pork roast grace the tables of First-World people. It boils down to this. Over 70 percent of U.S. grain and 80 percent of corn is fed to farm animals rather than people.

Conscience dictates that the grain should stay where it is grown, from South America to Africa. And it should be fed to the local malnourished poor, not to the chickens destined for our KFC buckets. The environmental think-tank, the World Watch Institute, sums it up: "Continued growth in meat output is dependent on feeding grain to animals, creating competition for grain between affluent meat eaters and the world's poor."

Meanwhile, eating meat causes almost 40 percent more greenhouse-gas emissions than all the cars, trucks, and planes in the world combined. (The world's 1.3 billion cattle release tons of methane into the atmosphere, and hundreds of millions tons of CO2 are released by burning forests due to dry conditions as in California or due to purposeful burns to create cow pastures in Latin America.)

Once more, let me ask this: If you're not willing to become a vegetarian, would you be willing to keep one vegetarian day a week? Or maybe two? Would you just be willing to cut down on the amount of meat you eat every day? Those things will help. Really they will.

Something about conservatives

Here's an observation from a posting by Avedon on Eschaton:

What always gets me about conservative policies is the way they make all the problems they purport to solve worse, thus generating the "need" to do more of the same. For example, being "tough on crime" actually creates more tough criminals, so then you "need" to have more severe (and more expensive) policies and more prisons and get even tougher.

How is it they keep getting away with it?

I guess because an awful lot of people out there who just aren't too bright.

Remember voting machines?

Here's a quote sent to me by Frank Ford. Really gives one pause, doesn't it?

If airplane code were written to the same standards of reliability as voting machines, every day about 10 planes flying out of Baltimore/Washington International would experience a software failure during flight.

-Justin Moore, Duke University Software Analyst

Just for fun

Okay. Just came across the following meme:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open it to page 161.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of this sentence in your blog along with these instructions.
5. Don’t search around and look for the coolest book you can find. Do what’s actually next to you.

Here's my sentence:

Rebellion comes from trying to set ourselves up as gods instead.

It's from Quotable Saints by Ronda De Sola Chervin.

So do it already! Post the results in the comment section. Should be really interesting.

Hard to label this one

Simply unbelievable:

The American leader, who has been condemned throughout his presidency for failing to tackle climate change, ended a private meeting with the words: "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter."

He then punched the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock.

Mr Bush, whose second and final term as President ends at the end of the year, then left the meeting at the Windsor Hotel in Hokkaido where the leaders of the world's richest nations had been discussing new targets to cut carbon emissions.

He has no shame. No couth, either.

From a Telegraph article intitled "President George Bush: 'Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter'".

Friday cat blogging!

Green-eyed abyssinian

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Pertinent limerick

This is a cause for concern for a lot of us:

Dear Obama, your flight to the right
Is making me feel quite uptight.
It’s alarming how fast
You’re forsaking the past
And converting to GOP-lite.

--By Madeleine Begun Kane

Sign that DNR order!

Okay, folks. When you're dying, how do you want the medical people to treat you? Do you want heroic measures taken no matter how painful they are - and how ultimately useless?

Rhonda Steiner sent me a very powerful article called "Can we just print this out, post it on the fridge, and be done with it?" that was written by a nurse. And I really beg you to click through and read the whole thing. Here's how it gets started:

You know it's going to be a bad day when you walk in and somebody immediately calls a code.

Except this one wasn't a code. It was, technically, a "Rapid Response Team" situation, but given that the patient ended up intubated and 100% ventilated, it was a code. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

A lot of families hate the idea of signing a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) on Grandpa or Grandmother. They think that a DNR means "Do Not Treat" or "Ignore" or "Hasten the Death Of" rather than what it actually means.

To wit: Grandpa was not in the best of shape when he came to us X days ago. He'd had two major ischesmic (clotting) strokes and a large, horrible bleed in his brain and was breathing irregularly and gaspingly when he was delivered to us by a relieved ambulance crew. Grandpa hadn't moved on his own or responded to anything short of pretty intense pain for days.

Grandpa was a full-code, or a "Do anything and everything to save this person's life" when he came to us.

Let me be totally clear here: Grandpa was in no way, shape, or form, ever going to get better. The best neurologists and neurosurgeons in the country had already determined that. Okay? Okay. You got it. Grandpa's gonna die; the only question left is how.

So go on over and read the graphic details of exactly what was done to this poor man because the family would not sign a DNR order.

I've signed mine, okay? Did it a long time ago.

How about you?

If I were a terrorist

Hat tip to Grandmère Mimi over at Wounded Bird.

The importance of church-state separation for the religious

This is really so obvious that I don't see why it is not more widely acknowledged:

The much-celebrated freedom that is the ground of the American consensus is, above all, freedom of mind and heart; freedom to think and believe as one chooses; freedom of conscience. Without that, there is no genuine democracy. But, more to our point, without that, there is no genuine religion. The only possible guarantor of such freedom, as the Founders understood, is a magistrate who acts with absolute religious neutrality. Religious people, that is, need the separation of church and state as much as atheists do. That separation, in fact, is why religion thrives in America.

It's a paragraph from an article called "Secular Rule Benefits the Faithful, Too" by James Carroll.

This pretty much sums things up

I want to suggest that you go on over to Alternet and read "AlterNet's Weekly Zeitgeist List -- The 10 Hottest Issues of the Day". The subtitle says this: "A pilot feature of AlterNet on key questions of the day -- is Obama really tacking to the center, and why gas is so damn pricey."

It's short, succinct, and provides links for reading more about each issue.

(Interesting, though, how climate change is not one of them....)

Oh boy this really scares me

The Founding Fathers and today's America

This is really tragic. Take a look at the first part of this CNN article:

How would the likes of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin feel about the way the United States has turned out 232 years after declaring its independence?

Not pleased, a majority of Americans recently polled said.

According to a new CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey, 69 percent of adult Americans who responded to a poll June 26-29 said the signers of the Declaration of Independence would be disappointed by the way the nation has turned out overall.

Goodness. This really breaks my heart. But it doesn't surprise me in the least.

Two visions of America

Today is our national birthday.

For some years now, I have spent this day in quiet reflection - in prayer for our nation, for all her citizens and for all affected by her actions. This year is no exception.

I found the following a few minutes ago and want to share it with you:

There are two visions of America. One precedes our founding fathers and finds its roots in the harshness of our puritan past. It is very suspicious of freedom, uncomfortable with diversity, hostile to science, unfriendly to reason, contemptuous of personal autonomy. It sees America as a religious nation. It views patriotism as allegiance to God. It secretly adores coercion and conformity. Despite our constitution, despite the legacy of the Enlightenment, it appeals to millions of Americans and threatens our freedom.

The other vision finds its roots in the spirit of our founding revolution and in the leaders of this nation who embraced the age of reason. It loves freedom, encourages diversity, embraces science and affirms the dignity and rights of every individual. It sees America as a moral nation, neither completely religious nor completely secular. It defines patriotism as love of country and of the people who make it strong. It defends all citizens against unjust coercion and irrational conformity.

This second vision is our vision. It is the vision of a free society. We must be bold enough to proclaim it and strong enough to defend it against all its enemies.

-- Rabbi Sherwin Wine

May this Fourth of July be a day of both celebration and reflection for you.

And may there truly be liberty and justice for all!

"A strong collectivist vision"

This is great and I completely agree with it:

There are plenty of libertarians among techie geeks and science nerds, but it remains my steadfast belief that a rational, sustainable future society must include a strong collectivist vision. We should strive to use technologies to form communities, to make it easier for people to help the most helpless members of society. A pure free-market ideology only leads to a kind of oblivious cruelty when it comes to social welfare. I don't believe in big government, but I do believe in good government. And I still look forward to the day when capitalism is crushed by a smarter, better system where everyone can be useful and nobody dies on the street of a disease that could have been prevented by a decent socialized health-care system.

-- Annalee Newitz

Quote of the week

From Sojourners, of course:

Property's not worth killing someone over.

- a 911 dispatcher trying to convince Joe Horn, of Pasadena, Texas, not to confront two burglary suspects with his shotgun. This week, a grand jury cleared Horn of all criminal charges after he shot and killed both men, who were undocumented immigrants from Colombia.
~~~
I so agree. If you don't agree, let me ask you this: Do you really think if a buglar were convicted in a court of law that he or she should get the death penalty? If not, then how can you justify killing someone just because that person is stealing your stuff?

Propaganda --- 50s style

My old friend Walter Calahan sent me this comedy video. The audio part is from an actual film for civics classes back during the Cold War.

Remember honor?

Please go read the article entitled "Sense of Honor, French and U.S. Style" by Brian Cloughley. Here's part of what it says:

In France on June 29 a soldier taking part in a demonstration mistakenly fired live rounds instead of blanks. He wounded 17 people who were watching the display. The Chief of Staff of the French Army, General Bruno Cruche, submitted his resignation to President Sarkozy, who accepted it next day. There had been speedy analysis of a horrific incident ; immediate acceptance of responsibility ; then a self-imposed and principled end to a distinguished career by an officer who has set an example in honor and decency for generations of French soldiers. And for any others who care to take note.

Compare this incident with the aftermath of the evil scandal at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, where scores of Iraqis were tortured by US soldiers in the most disgusting circumstances. All the victims of casual violence, which was enjoyed so much by their torturers, as was evident from their happy photographs, were scarred for life, mentally or physically. Some were murdered in the prison; some died later. And we don’t know the half of what went on there. In 2004 US legislators were shown videos and still pictures of even more revolting and degrading atrocities than had been leaked to the public. There are scores of scenes of dreadful torture that the US administration has ordered to be kept forever secret.
...
But did any generals resign over this appalling affair? Nary a one, of course.
...
A few people were court-martialled. But most charges were reduced, dismissed, or dealt with by “non-judicial punishment” – you’ve got to laugh about that particular weasel-wording in spite of all the horror. Then a female one-star officer was reduced in rank. Apart from that : nothing – except that the officer appointed to investigate the sickening mayhem, Major General Taguba, ended his career when he recorded the truth. What a poisoned chalice he was handed : allow a cover-up and advance to three stars ; or permit the truth to be told and be destroyed for what his peculiar superiors would call “disloyalty”.

And this sort of thing has continued. Countless atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan have been denied, ignored or covered up. The conduct of US troops has only too often been horrendous to the point that the phrase “war crimes” is inadequate. The lies told by US army officers of the highest rank concerning the accidental killing of Pat Tillman by his own comrades in Afghanistan are a blot on the army’s reputation. But not one of these reptiles resigned.

I was brought up in the Deep South. Now please don't get me wrong here. I'm not defending the Confederacy as a cause. But the ideal of honor was very strong and certainly continued into the time of my childhood. I learned, for example, of the swords that were engraved with these words: "Draw me not without provocation. Sheathe me not without honor."

I still value that principle. Would that it were still valued by our military officers.

So are guns REALLY for self-defense?

Take a look at this excerpt from a CNN article called "More than half firearm deaths are suicides":

The Supreme Court's landmark ruling on gun ownership last week focused on citizens' ability to defend themselves from intruders in their homes. But research shows that surprisingly often, gun owners use the weapons on themselves.

Suicides accounted for 55 percent of the nation's nearly 31,000 firearm deaths in 2005, the most recent year for which statistics are available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

There was nothing unique about that year -- gun-related suicides have outnumbered firearm homicides and accidents for 20 of the last 25 years.

Goodness. I had no idea that was the case. How very disturbing.

The Common Good

I just came across an article called "Who Stole the Common Good?: The Shadow of Ayn Rand" by Julian Edney. It ends like this:

So, do you want to find out if your friends, coworkers or spouse understand the common good? Some do, some don't. Try a simple game you can play called the Nuts Game -- with things you find around the house.

Three people sit around a kitchen bowl. You, the fourth person, with a timer, start off placing ten small items in the bowl -- quarters, dollar bills, or nuts. Tell the three players the goal is that each of them get as many items as possible. Tell them one other thing before they start: every ten seconds (you have your watch ready) you will look in the bowl and double the number of items remaining there by replenishing from an outside source (a separate pile of quarters on the side).

I used to run this game with college students. You would think the players would have figured out that if they had all waited, not taking anything out of the bowl for a while, the contents of the bowl would soon have grown very big, automatically doubling every ten seconds. Eventually they could each have divided up a pot that had grown large. But in fact, sixty percent of these groups never made it to the first 10-second replenishment cycle. Group members grabbed all they could as soon as they could, leaving nothing in the bowl to be doubled (destroying the common good), and each player wound up with none or a few items. I saw the bowl knocked to the floor in the greedy melee. And even if allowed to try again, not all groups cooperatively worked out a patient, conserve-as-you-go playing style, necessary for eventual big scores. They didn't trust each other.

This is really so, so sad. I wonder if this is true in all cultures or only in capitalist societies.

Christians in Iraq

I'm watching "60 Minutes" right now. The report on at the moment is about the persecution of Christians in Iraq. Christians were safe under Saddam. It's that old "law of unintended consequences." You can read the transcript or watch the segment right here.

Iran and Israel

This is very unnerving. It's from the Times Online:

Iran has moved ballistic missiles into launch positions, with Israel’s Dimona nuclear plant among the possible targets, defence sources said last week.

The movement of Shahab-3B missiles, which have an estimated range of more than 1,250 miles, followed a large-scale exercise earlier this month in which the Israeli air force flew en masse over the Mediterranean in an apparent rehearsal for a threatened attack on Iran’s nuclear installations. Israel believes Iran’s nuclear programme is aimed at acquiring nuclear weapons.

The sources said Iran was preparing to retaliate for any onslaught by firing missiles at Dimona, where Israel’s own nuclear weapons are believed to be made.

Major-General Mohammad Jafari, the commander of the Revolutionary Guard, told a Tehran daily: “This country [Israel] is completely within the range of the Islamic Republic’s missiles. Our missile power and capability are such that the Zionist regime – despite all its abilities – cannot confront it.”

An editorial in a government newspaper, Jomhouri Eslami, said: “Our response will hit right at their temple.”

Oh my. What's going to happen next?

Friday cat blogging!

Tabby Queen

(Photo by Joaquim Alves Gaspar from Wikimedia Commons)

Conservatism

I found this over on Daily Kos:

It must be really scary to be a conservative. To be one, you must live in constant fear of terrorists nuking the United States, of gay people on the verge of convincing you that you really enjoy sodomy, of Spanish becoming the official language of the United States next week, of every African-American voting seven or eight times in the next election, of radical Islam suddenly becoming the latest hip thing among kids across the country, of perpetual lesbian orgies in girls bathrooms in high schools across America, of liberals forcing everyone to become a vegan, of Christians being rounded up into concentration camps, and of Democrats outlawing private property if they were to ever take power again.

So it's all about fear. Sad.

Irony (or something like that...)

Actually all you really have to do is look at the headline: Pastor Who Officiated at Jenna Bush Wedding Launches Pro-Obama Website.

But I'll give you an excerpt anyway:

The Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell, leader of the largest Methodist congregation in the country, launched a website yesterday titled "James Dobson Does Not Speak For Me." The site is a jab at Dobson, a stalwart of the religious right who this week called Sen. Barack Obama's interpretation of the Bible in a 2006 speech distorted "to fit [Obama's] own world view, his own confused theology."

Caldwell's site launched a day after Dobson's Focus on the Family radio program aired a harsh assessment of Obama's speech on faith and public policy and encourages readers to sign a statement declaring that Dobson does not represent them.

"I think it's a crime and a shame that Senator Obama has had to explain the fact that he's a Christian," Caldwell said in a recent interview. "Criticize his politics. Criticize his stance on whatever, but don't question his faith. Never in the history of American politics has someone said that he is a Christian and someone came back to say, 'No you're not.'"

If Rev. Caldwell's name sounds familiar, it may be because he is the same Rev. Caldwell who introduced President Bush at the 2000 Republican National Convention and last month officiated at Jenna Bush's wedding ceremony at the presidential ranch in Crawford. This election Caldwell is firmly in the Obama camp and doggedly trying to help the campaign bring other pastors and parishioners along.

And here's a comment to this article that hurts my heart but I certainly understand it:

Like thousands of other Americans, I left the USA (I was born in Iowa, the son of fourth generation Americans whose sons and daughters have fought in every war since the turn of the twentieth century) because of the lies, deceits, hypocrisy of George W Bush and his cronies. While I do not support Obama, I could never support McCain who is a harsher version of Bush and Dobson. I have lived abroad 5 years now and know the USA is definitely among the most hated nations on earth: despised for the butchery in Iraq, the extortion of the oil countries that have inflated oil prices, the arrogance of American tourists who believe their dwindling dollar value is god, and more. I had hoped to return to my native land, but race baiting and sexism is still alive and fluid. Dobson makes me ashamed that I was ever a Christian.

-- Posted by: Dr Arthur Frederick Ide

Breaking news on hand guns

Oh my. Look at this from CNN:

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a sweeping ban on handguns in the nation's capital violated the Second Amendment right to bear arms.

The justices struck down the ban in a 5-4 decision, with Justice Antonin Scalia writing the opinion for the majority.

Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty said he was disappointed in the ruling...
...
The Second Amendment says, "A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

The wording repeatedly has raised the question of whether gun ownership is an individual right, or a collective one pertaining to state militias and therefore subject to regulation.
...
Breyer expressed concern in his dissent that the majority's ruling could jeopardize the "constitutionality of gun laws throughout the nation."

Okay, folks. Just watch the murder rate go up in the District of Columbia.

And all you gun freaks out there: please go look up the word "militia" and, while you're at it, look up the meaning of "dependent clause." If the Second Ammendment were really about the individual right to bear arms, that clause about the militia would have been unnecessary, not to mention irrelevant.

McCain's mental health

A question I found over on All Hat No Cattle:

The question no one asks about McCain is, "Should a psychiatric test be given to a man who was held prisoner and tortured for five years, in order to be president?"

Now, why isn't this question being asked?

An American Radical

Here's something George Carlin said as quoted in George Carlin: American Radical by John Nichols:

Let’s suppose we all just materialized on Earth and there was a bunch of potatoes on the ground, okay? There’s just six of us. Only six humans. We come into a clearing and there’s potatoes on the ground. Now, my instinct would be, let’s everybody get some potatoes.

"Everybody got a potato? Joey didn’t get a potato! He’s small, he can’t hold as many potatoes. Give Joey some of your potatoes.” “No, these are my potatoes!” That’s the Republicans. “I collected more of them, I got a bigger pile of potatoes, they’re mine. If you want some of them, you’re going to have to give me something.” “But look at Joey, he’s only got a couple, they won’t last two days.” That’s the fuckin’ difference! And I’m more inclined to want to share and even out,” he explained in an interview several years ago with The Onion.

I understand the marketplace, but government is supposed to be here to redress the inequities of the marketplace,” Carlin continued. “That’s one of its functions. Not just to protect the nation, secure our security and all that shit. And not just to take care of great problems that are trans-state problems, that are national, but also to make sure that the inequalities of the marketplace are redressed by the acts of government. That’s what welfare was about. There are people who really just don’t have the tools, for whatever reason. Yes, there are lazy people. Yes, there are slackers. Yes, there’s all of that. But there are also people who can’t cut it, for any given reason, whether it’s racism, or an educational opportunity, or poverty, or a fuckin’ horrible home life, or a history of a horrible family life going back three generations, or whatever it is. They’re crippled and they can’t make it, and they deserve to rest at the commonweal.

And here's another quote from that article:

Carlin did not want Americans to get involved with the system.

He wanted citizens to get angry enough to remake the system.

I think it's an important distinction. And I so agree.

R.I.P George Carlin

One way of recognizing tyranny

We need to think about this, folks:

When a person goes to a country and finds their newspapers filled with nothing but good news, he can bet there are good men in jail.

--Daniel Patrick Moynihan

An imperative regarding peace

This is a very important point:

Those who love peace must learn to organize as well as those who love war.

- Dr. Martin Luther King

Prayer for the Earth

"Prayer for the Earth"

The earth is at the same time mother,
She is mother of all that is natural,
mother of all that is human.
She is the mother of all,
for contained in her are the seeds of all.
The earth of humankind contains all moistness, all verdancy, all germinating power.
It is in so many ways fruitful.
All creation comes from it.
Yet it forms not only the basic raw material for humankind, but also the substance of the incarnation of God's son.

— Hildegard of Bingen

Yes, I know Earth Day is long past. But we continue to destroy the earth minute by minute. And somehow, somehow we need to see what we're doing. Please God, let us see.

"More and better Democrats"

Oh, my. I agree. I hope this woman is elected:

Today's CNN QuickVote

I think it's clear what the American people think about this:

Should Vice President Dick Cheney testify before Congress about the leaking of a CIA agent's identity?

Yes - 83%

No - 17%

"A dangerous and unbalanced moral coward"

Ah, to see ourselves as others see us:

To Europeans, George W Bush has always appeared as a dangerous and unbalanced moral coward ~ swinging away at imaginary enemies while creating countless more with his self serving neocon agenda ~ while a patronizing mainstream press and Congress let him get away with it.

- Dr. Allen Roland

No dirty tricks

Waterless car wash

Okay, folks. I'm not kidding. This stuff is AMAZING! I used it for the first time today and I'm definitely sold:

Lucky Earth "Waterless" Car Wash cleans all solid surfaces such as paint, glass, fiberglass, plastic and chrome. Containing organic soaps/surfactants and other high-quality organic ingredients, it can be used on a wet or dry surface. It dissolves dirt and creates a non-stick surface.

Protect your car, protect your family, and protect the earth!

The difference is clear, unlike traditional car wash and polishing solutions, Lucky Earth uses alternatives that do not create harmful fumes and toxic residues.

Yes, it's expensive to start with and you have to use microfiber towels. But once you've bought them, you've bought them.

I got both the spray solution and the towels at Akin's in Tulsa. The Lucky Earth website has a list of stores for various cities.

Just THINK of all the water you'll save. I'm serious. You need no water at ALL as long as your car is not seriously mud-caked or covered with sand.

The truth about health care coverage

Go on over to Common Dreams and read an article called Health Care and Ghosts of War by Norman Solomon. Here is an excerpt:

In the latest edition of “Health Care Meltdown,” author C. Rocky White identifies himself as “a conservative Republican who has always held an entrepreneurial ‘pull yourself up by your own bootstraps’ free-market philosophy.” A longtime physician, White describes “the frustration I began to experience while trying to provide compassionate, quality health care in the context of a market in which the accustomed rules of business economics don’t apply.”

Dr. White immersed himself in research on health care policy and finance. Then he pored through reams of the latest data on the tradeoffs of reform options. “No matter how I turned the cube,” he writes, “the answer never changed. That answer was nearly impossible for me, a free-market Republican, to accept.”

Here are Dr. White’s two key conclusions in his own words:

* “Until we remove the motive of profit from the financing of health care, we cannot and we will not resolve our current health care crisis.”

* “Any group that proposes reform policy that maintains the use of for-profit insurance companies in a so-called free market is being driven by one single motive — to protect the golden coffers of their share of the $2 trillion cash cow!”

Dr. White adds: “To continue down this road is paramount to suggesting that we privatize our fire and police services and turn them into for-profit organizations. You do that and people will die — just like they are dying now under our current health care system!”

If a free market conservative can come to this conclusion, that says something. We need a single-payer system!

Christianity and torture

This is the Sojourners quote of the week:

It is a powerful way to be a witness for Christ, by demonstrating your capacity to not judge the way everybody else is judging and to serve unconditionally.

- Lt. Cmdr. William C. Kuebler, a military lawyer for a Guantánamo detainee, who has persistently challenged Bush Administration policy as "designed to get criminal convictions" with "no real evidence," and asserted that Pentagon prosecutors "launder evidence derived from torture."

Innocent detainees

Please go over to Common Dreams and read Oops Nation by Ted Rall. Here's an excerpt:

In December 2001, Kurnaz was a 19-year-old German Muslim studying in Pakistan. He was pulled off a bus by Pakistani security services, who delivered him to the CIA for a $3,000 bounty. He was flown to Guantánamo concentration camp, where he received what The Village Voice’s Nat Hentoff calls “the standard treatment: beatings, sleep deprivation, and special month-long spells of solitary confinement in a sealed cell without ventilation.”

He went on hunger strike, and Kurnaz’s tormentors apparently worried he might starve to death. After 20 days “they gagged me and shoved a tube up my nose, stopping several times because the tube filled with blood,” Kurnaz remembers.

What did this “worst of the worst” do to deserve such treatment? Nothing. But don’t take my word for it. Six months into his ordeal, the U.S. military determined, there was “no definite link or evidence of detainee having an association with Al Qaeda or making any specific threat toward the U.S.”

The U.S. government knew Kurnaz was innocent. Yet they held on to him another three and a half years.

Oops.

I'm ashamed to be an American. Yes I am. We need to do penance before the whole world.

Oh my. This is so good.

Ojibway prayer

Grandfather,
Look at our brokenness.
We know that in all creation
Only the human family
Has strayed from the Sacred Way.
We know that we are the ones
Who are divided
And we are the ones
Who must come back together
To walk the Sacred Way.
Grandfather,
Sacred One,
Teach us love, compassion, and honor
That we may heal the earth
And heal each other.

Today's CNN QuickVote

This is very interesting and encouraging:

Should same-sex marriage be legal in all 50 states?

Yes - 55%

No - 45%

True selfishness and unselfishness

Oscar Wilde

This is what bothers me about the so-called "social conservatives":

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live; it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. And unselfishness is letting other people's lives alone, not interfering with them. Selfishness always aims at uniformity of type. Unselfishness recognizes infinite variety of type as a delightful thing, accepts it, acquiesces in it, enjoys it.

-- Oscar Wilde

Who Killed the Electric Car? (Part 1 of 11)

This is definitely worth watching. The entire documentary is on YouTube. I'm posting Part 1 here. You can continue with Part 2 right here.

Friday cat blogging!

Harriet

Photo by Cynthia Burgess

Olbermann on McCain

Thinking of voting Republican? Watch this.

O'Brien joke

Snark, snark:

Barack Obama said his differences with Hillary Clinton are, 'infinitesimal, tiny, minute, trivial and inconsequential.' That's what he said, yeah. When he heard this, President Bush said, 'That guy knows way too many words to be president.'

--Conan O'Brien

Today's CNN QuickVote

This is current reality:

Can you get by without a car?

Yes - 14%

No - 86%

And I'm afraid I had to vote "no".

MSNBC live vote

I know these online polls are not scientific but of the people who chose to answer this is a huge percentage who think Bush should be impeached:

Do you believe President Bush's actions justify impeachment?

Yes, between the secret spying, the deceptions leading to war and more, there is plenty to justify putting him on trial. 89%

No, like any president, he has made a few missteps, but nothing approaching "high crimes and misdemeanors." 4.1%

No, the man has done absolutely nothing wrong. Impeachment would just be a political lynching. 4.5%

I don't know. 2%

A little break

Hi, folks. I just need a little break from blogging. I'll be back soon!

Friday cat blogging!

Photo by Cynthia Burgess

RFK: November 20, 1925 - June 6, 1968

Today is the day. It is the 40th anniversary of the death of Bobby Kennedy by assassination. Here's a little something from an article called My Bobby Kennedy and Yours by David Emblidge:

Robert Kennedy’s To Seek a Newer World reflects his growing discomfort with the way things were trending in America and abroad. It’s the roadmap Bobby would have taken, had he lived to win the presidency. He did not live, and there’s the pity, and yet he does.

Bobby was no saint. Occasionally ruthless, he even served for a time, at his nefarious father’s behest, as assistant counsel to Senator Joe McCarthy’s infamous anti-communist committee. Yet, Bobby had a capacity for growth, right in the public eye, as few politicians ever do. He investigated, pondered, analyzed, and changed course, drawing us onwards with him. Today, when the world seems, again, to be going to hell in a hand basket, with all of us complicit in the planet’s undoing, Bobby’s model is tonic.

It was the courage to confront the errors of our ways and the losses in our lives that humanized Bobby Kennedy. Victim though he was, he was also triumphant, for he embodied the tragic vision of Aeschylus: “In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”

Moving, now, toward the November election, and slouching toward our collective future, we all have regret and shame on our hands, and yet, as Bobby would have had us remember, we can change, and we must, and it can be for the better.

I have long valued that Aeschylus quote. It is deeply consoling. And today I need it. I have a challenge before me right now that I don't think I'm really at liberty to disclose. But, of your charity, will those of you who pray please pray for me.

Blessings on all!

What is WRONG with people?

This makes me want to cry:

A polar bear that swam more than 200 miles in near-freezing waters to reach Iceland was shot on arrival in case it posed a threat to humans.

The bear, thought to be the first to reach the country in at least 15 years, was killed after local police claimed it was a danger to humans, triggering an outcry from animal lovers. Police claimed it was not possible to sedate the bear.

The operation to kill the animal was captured on film.

The adult male, weighing 250kg, was presumed to have swum some 200 miles from Greenland, or from a distant chunk of Arctic ice, to Skagafjordur in northern Iceland.

"There was fog up in the hills and we took the decision to kill the bear before it could disappear into the fog," said the police spokesman Petur Bjornsson.

Iceland's environment minister, Thorunn Sveinbjarnardottir, gave the green light for police to shoot the bear because the correct tranquiliser would have taken 24 hours to be flown in, the Icelandic news channel Visir.is reported.

Sveinbjarnardottir's account was disputed by the chief vet in the town of Blönduó, Egill Steingrímsson, who said he had the drugs necessary to immobilise the bear in the boot of his car. "If the narcotics gun would have been sent by plane, it would have arrived within an hour," he said. "They could keep tabs on the bear for that long."

That poor, poor animal who was so brave to have survived for so long at such a great cost and then to think he was finally safe. Horrible. Horrible.

CNN Quickvote of the day

Not surprising:

Do you believe the economy is:

Getting better - 19%

Getting worse - 81%

"The subject of your war"

Here's a brief quote from an article called "Princess Patricia and the Taliban" By Eric Walberg:

“We do not believe in counterinsurgency,” a senior French commander, clearly recalling Vietnam and Algeria, told Saunders. “If you find yourself needing to use counterinsurgency, it means the entire population has become the subject of your war, and you either will have to stay there forever or you have lost.”

Something to think about.

June is Adopt-a-Cat month

I found this out through an email from the American Humane Society. The Society puts forth the following very good reasons for sharing your home and your heart with a cat:

* Having a cat reduces your blood pressure and helps prevent heart disease
* Having a cat fights depression and loneliness
* Cats are entertaining to watch and fun to play with
* Cats provide companionship
* Cats will cuddle up with you on a cold evening
* Cats are independent and can be left alone while you’re at work
* A cat’s mere presence will ward off unwanted mice and pests
* Cats are comfortable in small spaces like apartments
* Cats are very clean; they bathe themselves!
* A cat’s purr is instantly calming and relaxing
* Cats are affectionate
* Just 15 minutes a day of playing with you will satisfy a cat
* Cats are easy to house train, especially adult cats, who are probably already house trained
* Cats bring a little bit of the wild into your house
* Indoor cats and spayed/neutered cats live long lives, providing up to 20 years of companionship
* Cats are cheaper to spay/neuter than dogs, especially big dogs
* Taking care of a cat can help teach a child responsibility and humane values
* Lots of cats need good homes; when you adopt one, you’re saving a life!

Here's some information from the Humane Society about the adoption process.

Another death in Iraq

This one is considered "non-combat". But it's still very much about the war. The person who died, Jason Dene, was Mia Farrow's nephew. Here's something his uncle wrote:

Because of the arrogant, corrupt lies of George W. Bush and his neo-con handlers my nephew is dead, and I am mad as hell...Jason Dene was not killed by enemy fire nor friendly fire but by Bush's brutal and cynical stop-loss program.

Because of Bush's abusive stop-loss policy, Jason had been sent into an unwanted third tour of duty. He was a father of three and could not afford to lose his pension. Some 'volunteer Army'.

During his three 15-month tours in Iraq, exposure to roadside bombs and other job-related injuries caused Jason to be hospitalized several times for concussion and internal bleeding and other injuries. Recently, Jason's condition was such that the Department of Defense flew him from Iraq to Dover Air Force Base for surgery. He was released from the hospital into the loving arms of the government who sent him directly back into Iraq. He was put on active duty while he was still on a liquid diet, unable to eat solid food because of a throat hemorrhage due to a botched surgery at a military hospital.

After his second tour Jason returned home with severe mental and physical issues. He was certainly in no condition to be pressed into a third tour. He wanted out of the army. But Jason was a victim of the liar's back-door draft...

He was still on a post surgical liquid diet and he was put on active duty? That is unconscionable. The military ought to be sued into oblivion. But, of course, they can't be. That's part of the fine print you agree to when you sign up.