Zarqawi's death

Here's a comment I found on AMERICAblog that sums up my position pretty well:

I've been noticing how much the media is playing up the "al Qaeda" angle, giving everyone the impression that killing Zarqawi is a blow to the same organization of 9-11 and Osama bin Laden.

There's absolutely NO discussion of how these two al Qaedas are basically unrelated organizations with no reported organizational ties, and that Zarqawi is pretty much just a wannabe who changed the name of his group to "al Qaeda in Iraq" in order to glom onto the original al Qaeda's notoriety.

I suppose that most of the media thinks this point is too "subtle" for most Americans to grasp? Or maybe they don't even know themselves, because so many "journalists" nowadays are nothing more than White House stenographers?

I'm also disgusted by the rejoicing that's going on in the press. We call terrorists and insurgents barbaric when they kill helpless people and show it on the web. And yet we're allowing our basest instincts and desire for revenge and aggression take over in our response to Zarqawi's death.

How do we look to other people around the world when we respond like this? We're certainly not presenting an admirable or moral face to the rest of the world. And we're also not setting a good example for our own children, either.

It's too much to hope for really to expect the press to do its job.

I know I'm being cynical today. Sorry. But I think it's warranted.

Friday cat blogging!

Leroy

Photo by Ellie Finlay

That vast right-wing conspiracy

It's for real, actually. And the press is in collusion.

I want to call your attention today to an article entitled, "How the press discriminates against Democrats". The subtitle is, "John Murtha, Harry Reid and Hillary Clinton are just the latest Democrats to face biased media coverage -- but they won't be the last."

I've blogged about this before, as you know, and I just can't overemphasize how harmful this is and what an uphill battle we have. Here's how it gets started:

Last week, MediaMatters wrote:

"At this point, you'd have to be blind to miss the pattern. Every prominent progressive leader who comes along is openly derided in the media as fake, dishonest, conniving, out-of-the-mainstream, and weak. We simply can't continue to chalk this up to shortcomings on the part of Democratic candidates or their staff and consultants. It's all too clear that this will happen regardless of who the candidate or leader is; regardless of who works for him or her. The smearing of Jack Murtha should prove that to anyone who still doubts it."

The recent media treatment of Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) illustrate this point: No matter who emerges as a progressive leader, or a high-profile Democrat, they're in for the same flood of conservative misinformation in the media. Too many people chalk up outrageous media treatment of, say, Al Gore or John Kerry to the men's own flaws, pretending that if they were better candidates, they'd have gotten better press coverage. That's naïve. The Democratic Party could nominate Superman to be their next presidential candidate, and two things would happen: conservatives would smear him, and the media would join in. To illustrate this, we look back over the last dozen or so years.

Go on and click through to the rest of the article to read the examples. It's a long article but we really need to be informed about how this stuff goes down. I'm afraid I'm very pessimistic about the possibility of change. Why does the press still favor Republicans and smear Democrats when Bush's poll numbers are so low? Undoubtedly it's because they've been thoroughly bought out by big business.

Americans want universal health coverage

Well, this is very interesting. Take a look at a CNN article entitled, "Americans want universal health coverage, group says":

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The federal government should guarantee that all Americans have basic health insurance coverage, says a committee set up by Congress to find out what people want when it comes to health care.

"Assuring health care is a shared social responsibility," says the interim report of the Citizens' Health Care Working Group, a 14-member committee that went to 50 communities and heard from 23,000 people.

The committee describes its recommendations as a framework. The recommendations don't say who would pay for universal health coverage or how much it would cost. The concept of government-guaranteed coverage runs counter to the Bush administration's position that consumers should bear more responsibility for their initial medical expenses.

The group's findings will be officially presented to the president and Congress in the fall, but first comes 90 days of public comment. The president will submit to Congress his response, and then five congressional committees will hold hearings.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, said he and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, came up with the idea for establishing a group that would work outside of Washington to find out what Americans want. He said they were tired of years of gridlock on health care issues.

CNN also took a Quick Vote on the issue. Here are the results so far:

Would you support government-guaranteed health care for all Americans?

Yes 79%

No 21%

Okay. So now we know. The public wants guaranteed health care. Now let's see what the Bush administration does with that information.

Well, this is encouraging.

A typically conservative population now believes in global warming and that something should be done about it. Take a look:

A new poll of hunters and fishermen finds the majority think the country is on the wrong track with its energy policy and should be a leader in combating global warming. In the poll of licensed hunters and anglers, 76 percent said global warming is occurring and 73 percent believe it is impacting or will impact hunting and fishing conditions. A full 78 percent said the solutions should involve conserving more energy, developing fuel-efficient vehicles and expanding the use of renewable sources.

The nationwide poll of 1,031 hunters and anglers was conducted by Responsive Management of Harrisonburg, Virginia for the National Wildlife Federation.

The respondents had voted for President Bush in 2004 by about a 2-to-1 margin, and half of them identified themselves as evangelical Christians.

This is from an article entitled, "Hunters and Fishermen Want Action on Global Warming".

Interestingly, I used to live in Harrisonburg, Virginia. Very conservative part of the country.

Some history on the oil lobby

Today I got an email from the Organic Consumers Association and I learned something disgusing about the petroleum lobby. Take a look at this:

* Rudolf Diesel, the inventor of the diesel engine, designed it to run on vegetable and seed oils like hemp. In fact, when the diesel engine was first introduced at the World's Fair in 1900, it ran on peanut oil.

* Two decades later, Henry Ford was designing his Model Ts to run on ethanol made from hemp. He envisioned the entire mass-produced Model T automobile line would run on ethanol derived from crops grown in the U.S.

* Even in the 1920s, the oil industry had massive lobbying power in Washington. Lobbyists convinced policymakers to create laws favoring petroleum based fuels while disgarding the ethanol option.

* Nearly a century later, amidst oil wars in the Middle East, Global Warming, and a nearly depleted oil supply, the U.S. government is finally shifting attention to fuels that are more along the lines of Diesel and Ford's original ideas.

* In an interview with the New York Times in 1925, Henry Ford said: "The fuel of the future is going to come from fruit like that sumac out by the road, or from apples, weeds, sawdust -- almost anything. There is fuel in every bit of vegetable matter that can be fermented. There's enough alcohol in one year's yield of an acre of potatoes to drive the machinery necessary to cultivate the fields for a hundred years."

Just imagine how different our situation today would be if we had supported ethanol as a fuel all these years. You can learn more about this right here.

The true moral outrage

I found this comment on Father Jake Stops the World:

If people are so concerned about the moral health of our nation, then they should take a look at what Congress is about to do; repeal the estate tax. Now there's a real affront to all morals and decency.

The richest Americans are about to get what amouts to a government subsidy paid for by all the rest of us, and taking bread out of the mouths of the poor. Paris Hilton is about to get a huge multi-million dollar tax break while New Orleans still lies in ruins and our veterans (especially from the reserves) return from combat forced to buy their own health care coverage, and to benefits drastically cut by all those same chicken hawk legislators who yell the loudest to support the troops.

If you want to see a real scandal, then quit peaking in bedsheets and take a look at C-Span.

I just can't believe they're going to do this - and with our deficit too. It's obscenely immoral.

What is a progressive? The contest results

Well, I got an email today from Campaign for America's Future. Here is the winning entry answering the question, "What is a progressive?"

A progressive is someone who understands that it is the people of our country who make it great, and unless we take care of the people first, we'll never be successful in maintaining our greatness. Taking care of people means providing healthcare for everyone. It means keeping the environment clean, safe and preserved. It means great schools and great jobs. It means improving the lives of families, rather than lining the pockets of big business, or big politicians. It means taking care of each other here, and around the world. We're all in this together.

And here's the first runner up:

Progressives believe that a better life is possible for everyone. They know that when we make room at the table for everyone, we are all enriched. Progressives actively pursue new, more effective solutions to the problems we face as a people. Status quo is not a given -- it is a challenge to do better.

And the second:

A progressive is someone who believes in the common good -- in a fair shake for every person -- and is willing to fight for it.

All excellent. All inspiring.

What Osama wanted

Could be:

I hate to say it, but that murdering terrorist Osama has really kicked America's ass right where it hurts the most: in the pocketbook. He knew Bush would overreact. And, it could end up costing us our Country...just the way he planned it.

-- Grant Gerver - Shot Off the Press

What Osama wanted

Could be:

I hate to say it, but that murdering terrorist Osama has really kicked America's ass right where it hurts the most: in the pocketbook. He knew Bush would overreact. And, it could end up costing us our Country...just the way he planned it.

-- Grant Gerver - Shot Off the Press

What Osama wanted

Could be:

I hate to say it, but that murdering terrorist Osama has really kicked America's ass right where it hurts the most: in the pocketbook. He knew Bush would overreact. And, it could end up costing us our Country...just the way he planned it.

-- Grant Gerver - Shot Off the Press

What Osama wanted

Could be:

I hate to say it, but that murdering terrorist Osama has really kicked America's ass right where it hurts the most: in the pocketbook. He knew Bush would overreact. And, it could end up costing us our Country...just the way he planned it.

-- Grant Gerver - Shot Off the Press

What Osama wanted

Could be:

I hate to say it, but that murdering terrorist Osama has really kicked America's ass right where it hurts the most: in the pocketbook. He knew Bush would overreact. And, it could end up costing us our Country...just the way he planned it.

-- Grant Gerver - Shot Off the Press

What Osama wanted

Could be:

I hate to say it, but that murdering terrorist Osama has really kicked America's ass right where it hurts the most: in the pocketbook. He knew Bush would overreact. And, it could end up costing us our Country...just the way he planned it.

-- Grant Gerver - Shot Off the Press

A light bulb campaign

I got an email today from the Environmental Defense people asking me to pledge to switch one incandescent light bulb to a compact fluorescent bulb. Actually, I've already done that but I'm pledging to switch one more. Here's part of what they said about it:

Join Environmental Defense's Make the Switch Campaign - a national campaign to reduce global warming pollution through the use of energy-saving compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs).

Our goal for the Environmental Defense community - to switch ONE MILLION light bulbs over the next year.

Here's what you need to know:

* Changing a light bulb makes a difference. If every US household replaced three 60-watt incandescent bulbs with CFLs, it would be like taking 3.5 million cars off the roads!

* CFLs save you money. A 20-watt CFL, which screws into an ordinary light socket, is just as bright as a 60-watt incandescent.

* Today's CFLs are dramatically better than a few years ago. You won't miss your incandescent bulbs.

We're asking every member of the Environmental Defense community to pledge to switch at least one bulb in the coming year. If you and two friends do it, we'll easily meet our million bulb goal!

This is a painless way to reduce your personal contribution to the problem of global warming. You can take the pledge right here.

Hunger awareness

I discovered that today is Hunger Awareness Day on the blog, Father Jake Stops the World.

It's common in hunger awareness articles to talk about how children are affected but today, instead, I'm going to give you information about seniors. Take a look at this:

* The Census Bureau reported in their most recent release that 6.5 percent of households with an elderly person are food insecure. Over 460,000 of those households experienced food insecurity with hunger during 2004.

* 9.8 percent of the elderly live below the poverty line - nearly 3.5 million older Americans. The rate of food insecurity among elderly households with incomes at or below 130% of the poverty line is 18.2 percent.

* Elderly households are much less likely to receive food stamps than non-elderly households, even when expected benefits are roughly the same.

* Seniors require greater consideration towards their health and medical needs that can become compromised when there is not enough food to eat. A study which examined the health and nutritional status of seniors found that food insecure seniors had significantly lower intakes of vital nutrients in their diets when compared to their food secure counterparts. In addition, food insecure seniors were 2.33 times more likely to report fair/poor health status and had higher nutritional risk.

* For seniors, protecting oneself from food insecurity and hunger is more difficult than for the general population. For example, a study that focused on the experience of food insecurity among the elderly population found that food insecure seniors sometimes had enough money to purchase food but did not have the resources to access or prepare food due to lack of transportation, functional limitations, or health problems.

I found the above information on the website of America's Second Harvest.

Finally, I leave you with this:

"I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me." Then the righteous will answer him, "Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?' And the king will answer them, "Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me."

- Matthew 25:35-40

Simply unbelievable

You know, I'm not easily shocked, but this shocked me:

You know, not even the Red Cross was interested in taking $1 million in donation for charity from us. We got a nice letter saying, thanks, but no thanks. Every tour cycle we donate money to a charity and we had wanted to put our money where our mouth was. When they turned down our money it made me so sad this could run so deep. You feel like all of a sudden you're poison.

- Martie Maguire, Dixie Chicks Fiddler

Of course, I made up my mind never to donate to Red Cross because of their incompetence during the Katriana disaster but this is beyond reprehensible. I had no idea their collusion with the Bush administration was so deep.

UPDATE: If you want the scoop on contributions to the Red Cross please read this article from the Los Angeles Times entitled, "The Red Cross money pit".

What you eat and climate change

It matters. Not only to your health and the well being of other animals besides humans, it also matters to the environment. Take a look at this excerpt from an article entitled, "Does meat-based diet contribute to global warming?":

What we eat affects not only our health but also our environment. Any nutritionist will tell you that most Americans are damaging their health by over-consuming meat and animal products, while under-consuming healthy and nutritious whole foods -- fresh fruits, vegetables, grains and beans.

If you are going to eat meat, consume it in moderate quantities, and limit your intake to organic products coming from healthy animals that are grass-fed and raised humanely. Keep in mind that the bird flu pandemic, looming ominously on the horizon, is a direct result of raising larger and larger numbers of poultry under unhealthy and inhumane conditions.

Every day, for example, several hundred chickens routinely are crammed into manure-saturated 8-by-8-foot cages on poultry farms across China and other Asian countries. Living in filthy conditions, reared on contaminated animal feed laced with dioxin residues, antibiotics and slaughterhouse wastes; these animals are a biological time bomb waiting to explode.

On the environmental and climate change front, the facts are equally clear. Unless the U.S. and other nations drastically reduce the amount of our climate-destabilizing greenhouse gases by at least 75 percent over the next decade, our children and grandchildren will be condemned to live in a chaotic and dangerous world, where food and energy shortages will become the norm.

To avoid climate chaos, Americans must change our lifestyles and diets. We must decrease our consumption of energy and chemical intensive meat and animal products, along with highly processed and packaged convenience foods transported over long distances.
...
Organic farms worldwide use 50 percent less petroleum-derived fuel and inputs than conventional farms.

I buy organic food whenever possible because I don't want to consume pesticide residue. I'm also a vegetarian because animals are my friends and I don't eat my friends. But now there's another good reason to be faithful to both of those principles. Because I'm a vegetarian and buy organic I'm contributing less to global warming than I would be otherwise.

Please think about it.

The biased press

I said below that the press (with the notable exception of Rolling Stone Magazine) has refused to report on what was definitely a stolen election and I linked to a Media Matters article about how the press smears and slams Democrats in areas where they give Republicans a pass. Here's a telling quote by Lawrence Grossman, longtime head of PBS and NBC News.

The job of the President is to set the agenda and the job of the press is to follow the agenda that the leadership sets.

Well! I thought the job of the press in a free society was to act as a watchdog with regard to the government and to report the news objectively and accurately. Even though Bush's poll numbers are in the toilet right now, I'm pessimistic about the country because the press is simply not doing its job.

Bush definitely stole Ohio

You just gotta read this article. Go read the whole thing. It's entitled, "Bush, the most hated president ever, stole both elections". Well, I've believed this all along but this article nails it. Here are a few excerpts:

The latest polls say Americans now dislike Bush more than any other president including even Tricky Dick. It only took the public five and half year to see through him.

That said, I wonder how long it will take people to accept the news that Bush never won either election and the country is in such a mess that it will take 50 years to get back to how it was when Bush took office.
...
Some people ended up standing in line for up to 12 hours. But only those people who could miss work and go without pay for a whole day and not get fired for not showing up. And as we all know those people who could not wait in line were certainly not Republicans.

I had never seen anything like it in my life. I knew Bush stole the election by the time the polls closed in Ohio.

I knew it because in working for a major media outlet, by late afternoon I knew that all the exit polls had Kerry winning. But by the time I left work to go home, the news channels were saying "all the exit polls" are wrong. Yea right, all the exit polls were wrong.

Don't people realize how impossible that would be?

I proceeded home to watch the returns and I for sure knew that Bush stole the election the minute the news programs showed him sitting with his family pretending to be all apprehensive when his face and body language told me that he somehow knew there were no ifs about it, his second term was in the bag.
...
Its worth noting here, that there were no problems with the Republicans voting. No waiting in line for hours or anything else. Check it out on the internet by reviewing the news articles in Ohio at the time, all went well in their neighborhoods.
...
And top that off that with the outright fraud that shows that upwards of 80,000 votes for Kerry in one county were counted for Bush instead. "That alone is a swing of more than 160,000 votes," says Mr. [Robert] Kennedy [Jr.], "enough to have put John Kerry in the White House."

Do you realize what a different country we would have today if Kerry had become president? Just think of the Supreme Court for starters. And environmental laws. And we wouldn't be saber rattling with regard to Iran. Oh, I could go on and on.

If the press were doing its job, we'd have investigative reporting on the validity of that election. But the press as a whole shills for the Republicans and slams Democrats. If you don't believe me go read what Media Matters has to say on the subject in an article about media treatment of Democrats. It will truly make you sick.

UPDATE: Read this:

The story of the stolen election of 2004 has FINALLY busted into the mainstream media, thanks to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Rolling Stone Magazine.

We all owe them great thanks.

Now we'll see if there's any further media follow-up. And if the Democratic Party actually DOES SOMETHING about the fact that America is about to be hijacked again in 2006, and then for the third straight presidential race in 2008.

The massive article in this week's RS focuses on the impossible contrast between exit polls showing a clear and overwhelming Kerry victory versus bogus "official" vote counts giving George W. Bush four more catastrophic years in the White House. It also details some of the horrific intimidation, manipulation and outright theft used by Ohio's GOP Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell to deny hundreds of thousands of mostly Democratic voters their right to a ballot. And it discusses in some depth the fact that Diebold and other electronic voting machine and software producers make it possible for any inside operator to use a laptop and a few keystrokes to flip an entire election in a matter of seconds.

The above passage is from an article entitled, "RFK and Rolling Stone nail Ohio's stolen 2004 election, but much more must be done". Now let's see what the rest of the press does with this. Will Rolling Stone be denounced, supported, or met with media silence?

Here's the complete Rolling Stone article.