A tough question for the candidates

First of all, to any "moderates" who might be reading this: There is a substantive difference between McCain and Hillary. McCain might have been a straight talker in 2000, but now he is beholden to the far-right, including neo-con pro-war Repubs that lurk behind Bush's worst policies. Hillary, even if she chooses Wesley Clark as her running mate, will be need to keep Nancy Pelosi and others more liberal than her happy. Think about it.

Second, I believe Obama is more electable than Hillary, due to her divisiveness. After 8 years of Bush, what a waste to make the election a referendum on Hillary rather than a referendum on Bush. Obama would pick up the states Hillary won (CA, NY), but Hillary would not pick up Kansas, Idaho, etc. Think about it, superdelegates.

Finally, I think that the candidates need to be asked a serious question, since all 3 of them are in the Senate and may get to vote on this horrendous military budget that swallows up all chance of making any real social or environmental progress on this ice-cap-melting planet. The answer to this question may determine who I end up voting for (and I'm not above a write-in), so c'mon candidates, answer this one right, and you may get the prized Rumsfeld Invaders constituency:

“Senator, in all your previous debates, you have not criticized the bloated military budget so often documented by the media, Pentagon audits and GAO reports for Congress to be replete with waste fraud and abuse. The Soviet Union is gone. Yet military spending now consumes half of the federal government’s operating expenditures. 1/2 a trillion dollars a year?! While New Orleans still lies in ruins?!

“Specifically, what would you do to significantly reduce the tens of billions of wasted dollars and eliminate redundant weapons systems? Would you support cutting the military budget in half, starting next year?

“And, further, would you abolish the missile defense project, deemed by the American Physical Society and other leading physicists to be technically unworkable (and the original inspiration for Rumsfeld Invaders)? It costs about $10 billion a year with a total expenditure of over $150 billion since its inception under Ronald Reagan, without any indication that it can fulfill the function for which it was designed?
What about the Iraq War? Remember, the sooner you de-fund it, the sooner our troops come home, and the sooner we can work on Real National Security, and Real Homeland Security (renewable energy, green collar jobs, healthier diets and lifestyles, etc.)
Please be specific.”

Homeland Security Means Being Vegetarian

From a terrific article in the New York Times:

Excerpts from "Rethinking the Meat Guzzler":

In the last five months alone, the Brazilian government says, 1,250 square miles were lost to burning and cutting of the country’s rain forests for crop and grazing land.

Per capita meat consumption has more than doubled since 1961.

The U.S. kills nearly 10 billion animals a year for food, more than 15 percent of the world’s total.

An estimated 30 percent of the earth’s ice-free land is directly or indirectly involved in livestock production, according to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization, which also estimates that livestock production generates nearly a fifth of the world’s greenhouse gases — more than transportation.

2.2 pounds of beef is responsible for the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the average European car every 155 miles, and burns enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for nearly 20 days.

The majority of corn and soy grown in the world feeds cattle, pigs and chickens. Meat contributes to nearly three-quarters of all water-quality problems in the nation’s rivers and streams, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Meat contributes to health problems in the U.S. - heart disease, some types of cancer, diabetes.

“When you look at environmental problems in the U.S.,” says Professor Eshel, “nearly all of them have their source in food production and in particular meat production. And factory farming is ‘optimal’ only as long as degrading waterways is free. If dumping this stuff becomes costly — even if it simply carries a non-zero price tag — the entire structure of food production will change dramatically.”

If price spikes don’t change eating habits, perhaps the combination of deforestation, pollution, climate change, starvation, heart disease and animal cruelty will gradually encourage the simple daily act of eating more plants and fewer animals.

My comments: This all goes back to my proposal to change the focus of Homeland Security to reducing meat consumption. At the airport, a nurse would ask you about your eating habits. C'mon, let's follow the numbers and spend the money where we can save the greatest number of American lives. It's patriotic. God bless America, and on July 4th, or President's Day, let's eat veggie burgers.

Edwards drops out, Nader drops in?

Well, I liked Edwards a lot. I'm sorry to see him go, just like I was sorry to see Kerry concede in 2004 when there were voting irregularities to be investigated and possible recounts to be recounted.

But, when the going gets tough, the tough get going.
I got to admire Nader's timing.

I wonder if he was waiting, because Edwards had a great platform, and if Edwards made it further, Nader might have sat this one out.

I know a lot of people who supported Edwards, including people who had been Greens for decades, who switched, "just this once," to vote for Edwards on Super Tuesday. Now those people look sorta foolish.

Those votes may go to Nader now, or maybe to Cynthia McKinney, who actually registered Green, has congresssional experience, and could bring some fresh faces into the Green Party.

I just read that Cindy Sheehan just resigned from the national board of the Progressive Democrats of America. Cindy and Cynthia...hmm...(but they can't both be from California).

Well, this may be a new phase in the '08 campaign.
OK, Kucinich supporters, the panty lines are drawn, which side are you on?

Hey Bush, waive this!

The U.S. EPA's denial of California's waiver request regarding regulating greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles represents a larger effort by the Bush Administration to marginalize West Coast liberals. This makes Governor Schwarzenegger the Achilles' heel for Bush. Bush signed the new Energy Bill that increases CAFE standards, and is using that as cover for a supposedly federalist philisophy on tackling climate change. What about States' rights (a Gingrichian mantra), let alone all the cities and counties that are taking action on climate? Bush (or I should say Cheney) would try to stop those too if he could, since they impede oil company and automaker profits.

Well, let's hope Bush's war against West Coast liberals is as (un)successful as his other wars have been.

Note: A Cheney-like graphic originally accompanied this thoughtful and measured posting. It was removed voluntarily. Click here for more information on the Million Finger March.

On the short-lived candidacy of Colbert

Colbert's candidacy was confusing. Was he running as himself, or as his character? I thought if he won the nomination he should choose Borat as his running mate, or Borat's creator, Sascha Baron Cohen. Then you would have two fictitious characters who are parodies of right wing sentiment, asking their liberal fans to vote for them instead of voting for "serious" candidates.

Colbert's candidacy also asks, what is a serious candidate? As someone who has voted for Nader in the past (and maybe will do so again in the future), I do face that question, and people, especially Democrats always want to convince me that Nader is not a viable option. People say the same of Kucinich or Ron Paul. Any "protest" vote is supposedly "wasted." Well, Colbert was more of a fictitious candidate than a protest candidate, but those lines are blurred in media-infested American politics.

Is all of American politics a joke? The campaigns are ridiculous. And Republican sexual antics in airports are so funny that I forgot to laugh. But the consequences of bad politics are not funny at all. See the Iraq War for details. So, really, we need to take the actual results seriously. And a protest vote is a strategy. It's unclear if it is a successful strategy. Maybe in the long-run. Maybe Al Gore's renaissance as Nobel Prize winner shows that if you have guts and say what you think, you will be more popular, than if you cower and try not to offend anyone.

Back to Colbert, he helped educate his viewers about getting yourself on the ballot. I think his candidacy was a positive experiment in taking his show outside the studio. Colbert's other famous time doing that, when he gave a speech in front of Dubya, was a huge success. Good job, Colbert, for being brave, putting yourself out there, and raising questions. I know several people who will be writing in Jon Stewart's name on the ballot again. Take heed, "serious" candidates.

Homeland Security means Clean Water in the Developing World

I heard a representative of UNICEF the other day at a World Water Forum event. She said that 4,000 children die every day from lack of clean water and sanitation. That is more people than died in the World Trade Center on 9/11. Does Rudy Giuliani know about this? Will his gritted teeth address this problem?

In another post on this blog I proposed that Homeland Security focus on heart disease, the #1 killer of Americans. Now, I propose that they also address the global clean water and sanitation problem, the #1 killer of children on the planet.

If thousands of children are dying everyday, my Homeland (the Earth) is not Secure.

OK, presidential candidates, let's hear you propose to change the focus of Homeland Security to the UN Millennium Development Goals.

Gore gets Nobel, Bush doesn't

I'm happy for Al Gore. I'm glad that the Nobel Committee chose to focus the world's attention on climate change.

But, there is a nagging voice that asks, would Gore have won the peace prize if Bush wasn't so horrible? Did the Nobel Committee consider that giving Gore the peace prize might imply that Bush should get the Nobel War Prize?

I would bet that Tony Blair has given more speeches on climate change, and enacted more action on a national and global scale, than Gore. Gore is known by environmentalists as the pragmatic non-visionary in his political career who watered down the Kyoto Protocol to its present ineffective state and then failed to even bring it to the Senate for debate. Gore promoted the research focus of U.S. policy, but I can't think of a national program that Gore enacted on climate that had anything to do with actually reducing GHGs. Tony Blair showed over a decade of global leadership on climate, moving the whole G-8 on the issue, and has put forth pragmatic solutions to global warming setting the EU on their trajectory of global leader. Oh, but Blair has a European constituency, and in Gore's defense, Gore is saddled with the mid-Western and Southern U.S. And Blair sided with Bush on the Iraq War, so the Nobel Committee chose Gore.

OK, Gore, now give us some vision. Feel free to endorse my preferred solution, www.carbonshare.org.

Ah well, the fake choice of Gore versus Blair are mere idle thoughts, while GHGs pour out of the world's exhaust pipes, and the Iraq War rages on.

Rumsfeld goes to Stanford - Academia sinks to new lows

Rumsfeld got a fellowship at the Hoover Institution at Stanford.

What could students or society possibly learn from Rumsfeld?
He is an example of what NOT to emulate.
His worldview is so warped, it frightens me to think of him as a "teacher." What next, Stanford, Jeff Skilling to teach Business Ethics? Dubya to teach Linguisticology?

Berkeley passed a resolution asking Rumsfeld to be prosecuted for war crimes, and Stanford offers him a position.
I hope Cal beats Stanford by at least 200 points in the Big Game!

Homeland Security means Eating Less Meat

What kills more Americans: terrorism, or hamburgers?

According to the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, heart disease killed 654,092 Americans in 2004.

Terrorism deaths (victims of 9/11, plus Americans put in harm's way in Iraq and Afghanistan) have not yet reached 10,000 Americans (though if you count Iraqi civilians and others, then you're in the ballpark). If 1,792 Americans die every day of heart disease, then every 3 days, there is another 9/11 in this country. What do you think of that, Rudy Giuliani?

We are spending $500 billion per year on militaristic death machines.
How much are we spending to prevent the cause of the highest number of American deaths?

Therefore, my fellow Americans, I propose that we shift all the money from the Department of Homeland Security (or just change their programs to better fulfill their mission of protecting Americans from what is killing them) to screen American travellers at the airport for heart disease.

When you put your luggage through the x-ray machine, you will also answer a few questions from a Homeland Security Nurse about your diet and lifestyle. If you eat several Big Macs per week, you might be taken into a special screening room where you have to watch a 2 minute video about fast food, heart disease, obesity, etc.
There will be scary brochures, posters and annoying recordings over the loud speaker about how to live a healthier lifestyle to prevent heart disease. The threat level will be orange.

C'mon, let's follow the numbers and spend the money where we can save the greatest number of Americans.

I know, someone reading this might say, "But those are apples and oranges." Homeland Security was created to fight the terrorists, not provide health care. And people want to feel safe at the airport.

But, I respond, Homeland Security is actually just Homeland Paranoia, and they haven't done anything to make us actually safer. They were created to give lots of government pork subsidies to private security and aerospace companies (bringing the war and bacon home), creating a Cold War here in the U.S. against an invisible enemy to boost corporate, Republican contributor profits. Also they are there to create a police state infrastructure to suppress dissent against the war, or against government economic policies which benefit the few and hurt the many. Fearful citizens are less likely to speak out, demonstrate, or criticize.

But, someone might say, they have been successful because there weren't any more attacks after 9/11.

Well, I respond, let's do a test scenario, and spend all the money on current Homeland Security in some states, and change the money to my idea with heart disease and lifestyle in other states, and see which ones have more terrorist attacks, and which ones save more American lives. (my friend says, fine, but he wants to live in the states where it is the current system. this is just a question of whether you think screening grandmas makes you feel safer. it is psychological, but not empirically proven, security).

An Election Year's coming up, who is going to propose change Homeland Security to Eating Less Meat?