To Dick Cheney: Sit Down and STFU

Former Vice President Dick Cheney (he seems to constantly forget the "former" part) slithered out of his undisclosed location to slam the Obama administration for the would-be Delta plane terrorist/bomber.

Well, Dick, let's get a few things straight, in case you've forgotten.

1. The Bush administration did not keep this country safe. I seem to recall that the worst terrorist attack in this nation's history happened on 9/11/2001, eight months into your administration. As I recall, almost 3,000 innocent civilians were killed. Four planes were hijacked. The Pentagon ended up with a big hole in it. One plane was ditched into the ground only after courageous civilians aboard (sound familiar?) stopped the terrorists from plunging the plane into another target, probably in Washington, D.C. So all this "Bush kept us safe" nonsense is just total crap.
2. Your administration had more than enough time and evidence to know the attack was coming. The Clinton administration warned you about the danger, which your administration ignored. Richard Clarke, Clinton's chief counter-terrorism advisor, stayed on with the Bush administration and he, among others, warned you that al Qaeda was going to try terrorist attacks against the U.S. He was marginalized and his advice ignored.
3. What was the title of that Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) you guys got in August, 2001 again? Oh, yeah -- "Bin Laden Determined To Strike In U.S."
4. Your administration set up another big bureaucracy, Homeland Security, to deal with terrorism (as if we don't have a boatload of alphabet soup agencies that don't talk to each other already).
5. Your administration had the 9/11 commission come up with recommendations as to how to make this country safer. Your administration then neglected to carry out most of the recommendations.
6. Your administration was responsible for setting up the new rules regarding air travel that were in place when the would-be bomber got on the Delta plane.
7. In 2004 your administration came up with yet another bureaucrat to oversee things (the alphabet soup agencies and Homeland Security apparently not enough) called the Director of National Intelligence. His job was supposedly to get the agencies we had talking to each other. Guess what -- they still weren't talking to each other years later when you left office.

Oh, and need I remind you that the Iraq War would never have happened without you. As Secretary of Defense under the elder Bush's administration, you advised then President George H.W. Bush not to go into Baghdad and remove Saddam Hussein from power after he had invaded Kuwait. A huge mistake you later tried to rectify by making up lies to get us into the Iraq war with W's administration. I don't believe for a split second you thought there were any WMD in Iraq at all. I think you advised W to go to war because you regretted the decision you made as SecDef under the first Bush administration.

So you tell me, Dick, what gives you the right to come out of your hidey-hole every week and criticize this administration for anything?

A Word About "Climategate"

It's truly tragic that climate change deniers who stole some e-mails from scientists at the University of East Anglia have used cherry-picked portions of those e-mails to try to turn the public against the urgency of climate change.

The science behind the climate change argument is overwhelming and comes from scientists and agencies all over the world, including NASA and NOAA, not just scientists working at the University of East Anglia. We also know that many scientists working on climate change have experienced break-ins and computer hacking by deniers who want to prove that our planet is not really warming, when of course it is.

The glaciers are melting at a rapid rate. Ice in the Arctic is melting much faster than originally feared. The sea levels are rising and coastal erosion is occurring. We have floods in some places and droughts in others, along with hurricanes that are worsening in severity. The data about the warming of the planet is not in any serious doubt amongst scientists. However, it's easy to convince some people who doesn't really understand the science to begin with that a couple of lines in an e-mail blow all the science gathered over the decades completely out of the water.

Here's a link to an article in Scientific American magazine about the current controversy:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=scientists-respond-to-climategate-controversy

Let's put it this way -- if we decide the science about climate change is wrong and we do nothing to address the threat, we will continue to have erosion of our land masses, sea levels will continue to rise, we will continue to have droughts that shrink our water supply (Google this concerning southern California or Las Vegas, for instance), wars will erupt to protect eroding crop lands, the glaciers will completely disappear, population masses will have to be shifted (see the link to the article below from geology.com about how climate change is helping erode the Alaska coastline), and our air quality will continue to suffer, which has caused an increase in lung-related problems, particularly childhood asthma.

http://geology.com/usgs/alaska-coastal-erosion/

Regardless of whether you think the science about climate change is correct, what's the worst that can happen by keeping more toxic gases out of the air, cleaning up the oceans and using fewer pollutants? We get cleaner, healthier air, water and land, that's what happens. We get a healthier population. What's the downside here?

That should be simple enough for everybody to understand. Too bad some people don't.

The Trials of the 9/11 Terrorists

There is much angst on the right about the U.S. Attorney General's choice to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and others now detained at Guantanamo Bay in New York City in civil trials instead of in a military tribunal.

Mohammed has been detained since March 1, 2003. 2003!! That's six years that the Bush administration had to put this guy on trial and they failed to do so. It's just one more thing that they left for the Obama administration to clean up. Now the right wants to rip Obama and AG Holder for not trying them at Gitmo? Give me a break. It's just another one of Bush's failures they want to blame on the current administration.

I think those folks need to be reminded that one of the things Obama ran on was closing Guantanamo Bay, for which there was widespread support. How can people now say they didn't really expect him to do it, they just liked him talking about doing it?

Maybe the reason the Bush administration never put him on trial was because they waterboarded the guy over 180 times. Isn't the definition of insanity doing something over and over and expecting a different result? 180 times? And how did they expect anything given up under that to be admissible anyway?

Fortunately, I hear that he gave a detailed interview to al-Jazeera before he was captured that lays out exactly how he planned the 9/11 attacks. I don't doubt that will give us our conviction without having to use the information obtained under what has now been determined to be illegal torture.

It just goes to show what cowards Bush and Cheney were that they never put these guys on trial while they were in office. They didn't want to be held responsible for their treatment during their detainment any more than they wanted anybody to know that they purposely leaked the name of a CIA operative for political payback.

Now, hopefully, Mohammed and the other terrorists will be tried and finally, legally, face the death penalty they so richly deserve.

Sarah's Newseek Cover Photo

If you're looking for me to give a review of Sarah Palin's book Going Rogue, you will waiting a long time. I have no intention of wasting good time reading the thing. But I find her lambasting of Newsweek's decision to run a photo of her in runner's shorts and tennis shoes on the cover so disingenuous I couldn't let it pass by.

Newsweek decided to run a photo of Sarah Palin that had she had taken for an issue of Runner's World where she's wearing a red long-sleeved shirt, blue shorts (pretty short, by the way), and tennis shoes with the head-scratching addition of pantyhose. She has called Newsweek "sexist" for using the photo. Now, it can be argued that of all the photos out there of Sarah Palin, it is curious that Newsweek chose this one for their cover. However, Ms. Palin posed for the photo. And I presume she had to physically put the shorts on, so if she thought the photo was too sexy or too revealing or whatever -- why the heck did she pose for it in the first place? And how can she now claim it's sexist because Newsweek used it and not just Runner's World? If it's sexist, it's sexist, regardless of where it runs.

This from the woman who ran around the country during the 2008 presidential campaign in red high heels and designer clothes. I don't know how many times I saw her wearing a black pencil skirt and those heels, not exactly comfortable attire for a day of running around the country, getting on and off a bus, and being on your feet for hours and hours at a time. But by golly she managed to do it! Just like she always managed to have fresh makeup on and her hair done. I think most of us who work all day would be hard-pressed to make sure we were so dolled up all the time, but despite the time pressures Sarah always managed to look good. Somehow I just don't think that was by accident.

Face it, Ms. Palin -- you're no longer a politician, simply a celebrity that some people (for reasons I certainly don't understand) have gone ga-ga over. Well, I take it back... I do understand why the Republican males like you. Ever since I was a little kid I knew it was the cute girls who get attention from the guys, not the ones with the most brains. Guess things haven't changed any! So enough with the faux indignation already. You're all about selling books, after all, so in that regard Newsweek did you a favor.

The (Very Christian) Memorial to Ft. Hood Victims

Last week there was a terrible tragedy. An Army psychiatrist, conflicted by his Muslim faith and about to be deployed to Afghanistan, shot and killed 13 people in a murderous rampage at Ft. Hood. Since then Army Chief of Staff Gen. Casey and others have been in front of the press trying to stress that the Army needs diversity, that it's tolerant of other religions, yadda yadda yadda.

But is that what's happening in actuality? I was listening to NPR yesterday and was struck by the juxtaposition of two news stories that ran back to back. The first was a recap of the memorial service for the Ft. Hood victims attended by the President. The next story was about a lawsuit in a case that had been decided in favor of removing religious imagery from a public site.

I listened to the Ft. Hood memorial on NPR and realized that it was a very Christian event. Hindus need not apply. Muslims need not apply. Buddhists need not apply. And for crying out loud, this was certainly not a memorial for secularists. But it was sponsored by our government, attended by our President and First Lady (the President giving a very mainstream Christian speech), and if you think about it, every government-sponsored memorial service that I have ever seen is exclusively Christian.

So what happened to religious freedom in this country? For anyone who thinks that our forefathers created this country to be a "Christian nation," you know nothing about our forefathers and certainly nothing about the Constitution, which only mentions religion to guarantee freedom of it. None of the following words can be found in that document: God, Christian, Christianity, Jesus, or Christ. If this country was meant to be a "Christian nation," then wouldn't those words be all over that document?

Gen. Casey had been making the rounds of the news networks all week trying to assert that the Army is inclusive of all religions and beliefs. But what that memorial service said, at a volume much louder than Gen. Casey's voice had been all week, was that Christians only need apply. Where was the memorial service for anyone else?

Let me make this clear. What Major Hasan did (and I must say allegedly here, I suppose, since we must subscribe to the principle of "innocent until proven guilty") was horrible and inexcusable. The Army should have given him a discharge and he should have pressed for that harder than he apparently did before he went off the deep end and killed 13 people. While I personally would have preferred the outcome to be that he didn't survive his wounds, I suppose that if he hadn't he would have become even more of a martyr for Muslim extremists. But I do think that the Army inadvertently gave credence to Major Hasan's assertion that it is not really tolerant of other religions by showing its obvious Christian bent that was so prominently on display at that memorial service. This while the government is trying to convince us that all religions -- and by extension, secularism -- are welcome in Today's Army. (And by the way, why do we still have "In God We Trust" on our currency if, on the other hand, lawsuits to remove religious imagery from public areas have succeeded precisely because putting religious items in a state-sponsored, public area has been determined to be unconstitutional?)

The message is clear. The government gives lip service to inclusiveness while clearly displaying the exact opposite.

What do you think the odds of a Buddhist, a Hindu or a secularist being elected President are? My point exactly. In the last election cycle there were plenty of people who weren't happy that a Mormon was running!

This country has a loooooong way to go before we can truly say that there is religious freedom here. We should begin by making government-sponsored memorial services accessible and relevant for everyone. It's not enough for the Christians who run this government to think that this is a "Christian nation" that is simply tolerant of other people who happen to live in it.

Ridiculousness on Capital steps

Brain-challenged Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann called a Tea Party and all the nuts showed up. What I hadn't seen mentioned elsewhere was the fact that most of those people were bussed in by an oil and gas conglomerate. Hmmmm.....

Here's the Mother Jones article:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/11/tea-partys-takeover-gop

I expect that kind of crap from Bachmann, whose IQ ranges somewhere south of her bra size. But Majority Leader John Boehner? You'd think he'd know better. Sorry so short a post, but that's really all of my time those people are worth.

Some thoughts post-election day

I knew it would happen. The Republicans pick up a couple of victories and all of a sudden the talking heads are trying to say it's a sign of things to come in 2010 and 2012. Give me a break.

It's no surprise that Corzine lost in New Jersey. Nobody likes the guy in his state, his favorability rating is in the tank, and just when everybody's ticked off at the banks and the bank bailouts, we're reminded that he's also the former CEO of Goldman Sachs. Yikes! It's a wonder that race was as close as it was.

In the meantime, I happen to live in a Southern state that is now completely and totally BLUE. That's right, Democratic, baby! Last year we elected a Democratic governor and a Democratic Senator. The mayor of our fair city is now a Democrat for the first time since anybody can remember. Our city council now has an 8-3 Democratic majority. We sent our electoral college votes in for Obama last year. But do any of the talking heads mention this? No. All they can talk about is how the Republicans beat us in a couple of governorship races that were no surprise to anybody. Whoop-dee-doo.

By the way -- I have to mention that I was having a chat with a co-worker of mine today and she said something that just makes me sad. She is terrified -- I mean terrified -- that Congress is going to vote in a tax increase on... wait for it....... overweight people. Now, this is a professional, intelligent person. (Does this sound like the "death squad" crap, anybody, or is it just me??) Where do people get this stuff? Do they think Congress is going to hire a squadron of federal workers to take scales around to everybody's house? What??? I don't get it. Now there has been some discussion about taxing sugary sodas and juice drinks. And it's entirely possible that insurance companies, in their zeal to wring every last cent out of the American populace, may in fact raise rates on people who are considered obese -- if they want to take the time and effort to do so through some mechanism such as a pre-insurance exam. But taxes? On overweight people??? Me suspects that some right-wing nutball has been poisoning my friend's otherwise logical mind!

Palin "writes" a memoir - what the....??

Former Alaska governor and former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin has written her memoir. Well, actually somebody else wrote it because everybody knows the woman can't put a coherent sentence together. But I have to ask -- just what has this woman done to deserve having a book written about her?

She was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska for about 6 years. This is a town that's smaller than the one I live in, which has a grand total of 1 exit off the highway. At least mine has a college. She was the chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission for a year until she -- guess what -- resigned. She was elected governor of Alaska in 2006, spent about a year and a half or so at that until John McCain inexplicably chose her as his vice presidential candidate (something I think he should apologize to America for) in an unsuccessful campaign. And then, apparently having grown too big for her britches, as my mother would say, she resigned her governorship post.

Sarah Palin has proven that she is unbelievably uninformed, on the extreme far right-wing of just about every issue, and that she has the attention span of a gnat. She doesn't complete anything she starts and she has yet to really buckle down and actually try to learn anything about, say, foreign policy, the environment, education, health care, or any other pressing issue.

I hear her book is already a bestseller. What does that say about the folks on the right wing in America? Apparently that they're more interested in looks and celebrity than in substance and knowledge. That's pretty sad.

Wingnut mania over Obama's speech to schoolchildren

Just when I thought some people couldn't get any nuttier, they do. Some parents have decided they are going to keep their kids home from school on Tuesday because **gasp** the President has decided to actually talk to kids in school!! OMG!!! He's going to indoctrinate them, he's going to try to make socialists out of them!! They're not going to allow this to happen in America, by golly!! Never mind that George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan did the same thing -- but that was perfectly fine because, after all, they were white Republican Presidents! But that black Democratic President, the one they're sure is secretly a Muslim, for crying out loud, who actually used to live outside the United States at one point (and may have been born outside of it, too, they've heard), well, he's certainly not like them, and who knows what he's liable to do to indoctrinate their precious little mini-Republican kids??

I have to wonder if this would be happening if John Kerry were President instead of Barack Obama. I think not.

Unfortunately, these nutty people get validation from some off-the-wall right-wingers who have a microphone these days. But see, here's the thing these folks don't get... Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and their ilk are out to make money. If they agree with President Obama on anything, they will lose their audience ($$). So even if what Obama says makes perfect sense, they aren't about to agree with him lest they lose the knee-jerk jingoists, outright racists and those who tote guns to presidential town halls and deface posters of the President to make him look like Hitler. Without them, Rush wouldn't have had a $400 million contract, now would he? Sarah Palin wouldn't be making six figures for a friggin' speech, either.

I'm beginning to think Bill Maher is right - there are some people who just aren't smart enough to be voting.

R.I.P. Senator Ted Kennedy

Senator Kennedy died Tuesday following a battle with brain cancer. The remembrances I have heard from his colleagues in the Senate, and from others who knew him, are universally warm, and describe a person who may have been wealthy, but was down-to-earth; who may have had privilege but worried about his constituents who were not as fortunate; who had immense power but worked until the end of his life for those who needed his help the most.

Ted Kennedy was a man whose heart was in the right place; he was in politics for the right reasons. He certainly has shown personal failings, but when he could have quit and just gone sailing he kept his head down, became a legislative workhorse in the Senate, and in the process had a career and earned a legacy that may never again be matched by any other Senator.

While most of us dream of the day that we can retire, Senator Kennedy worked almost until the day he died at 77, doing a job he loved, surrounded by family, colleagues and constituents who had genuine affection for him. Now that's the way to go.

Rest in peace, Senator.

Obama Needs to Ignore Repubican Pressure

I heard that President Obama is ready to drop the public option in health care reform in order to get some Republicans to sign on.

So what was the point behind Americans giving the President a 60-seat majority in the Senate and a large majority in the House? He had a landslide electoral college victory and picked up 9 "red" states. This is his golden opportunity to do what needs to be done to get health care for all Americans.

Yes, there are a lot of people out there who don't understand it. They may be a vocal minority, but who cares? When you have ignorant people out there like the 35-year old woman who thought passing this bill meant we were going to "become Russia" and that we would be soon "be waiting in line for toilet paper," then you're not obligated to pay attention to her or to any of those folks who are calling you a Socialist, Mr. President. You ran on health care reform and health care for everyone, including those who become unemployed, and you owe it to the people who put you in office to make good on that promise.

The Republicans are only playing to their base for 2010. Don't get confused by thinking that there's anything you could do, any bill you could put before Congress, that would get the Republicans on board. It's like Rush Limbaugh. If you had the best idea in the world he wouldn't sign on because it would cost him ratings to agree with you. The same goes for the Republicans in Congress.

So get the deal done, President Obama, with or without the Republicans. We don't need 'em to do what's right for the American people, because they don't care what's right for us -- only what will get them reelected.

Insanity Reigns

It's impossible to try to follow any logic on the right regarding the health care reform debate. There simply isn't any logic to be had.

Let's see...

If you are over 65 and retired, you are on a government-sponsored health care program called Medicare. If you are under 65 and you lose your job, having the option of purchasing health care insurance through a government program is socialism and the President is a Nazi -- if you're a conservative.

If you're on Medicare you currently don't get reimbursed for discussions with your doctor regarding living wills, but you would like to be reimbursed for it. If you're not on Medicare you call discussions with your doctor regarding living wills "government control" and claim that it's euthanasia -- if you're a conservative.

If you're a conservative you will take the word of a loudmouth college drop-out or a former governor who refused to finish her one and only term over those of the President, the AARP, the AMA and the Nurses' Association.

If you're a conservative you call a proposed panel of doctors and specialists a "death panel" and claim they're out to kill disabled babies, yet everyone knows all insurance companies have panels whose main purpose is to determine how not to pay claims.

If you're a conservative and you have health care coverage you're fine with it, and are not in the least bit bothered that someone who is out of work can't afford to go see the doctor.

Well, all I can say is, thank goodness I'm a liberal.

Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich join the wingnut ranks

I can still hear the bullet whizzing by my ear. You know, the one we dodged when John McCain and Sarah Palin were defeated in November.

Now Sarah Palin has said that the Obama health care plan will create a "death panel" that would try to euthanize her Down Syndrome baby, Trig. Newt Gingrich defended her outrageous statements, saying also that "you're asking us to trust the government."

OK, I've always known that Sarah Palin was a lightweight in the brains department, but this isn't just a stupid statement, it's downright dangerous. Now we have morons interrupting town hall meetings saying things like "keep your government hands off my Medicare" (last time I looked wasn't Medicare a government program? Oh, yeah, it is!!) Out there on the right there seem to be a lot of people who are willing to believe anything that comes across their e-mail, no matter how outrageous and untrue, if it comes from someone of the Republican persuasion. That's sad, but unfortunately I know it to be true. I get these e-mails forwarded to me by my right-wing father. I should say, I used to.... I've had to set my e-mail to automatically delete my 88-year-old father's e-mails because they got me so incensed.

And by the way, Newt... "you're asking us to trust the government?" I seem to recall you used to be, let me see... oh, yeah -- the Speaker of the House!

Republicans going too far to try to stop health care reform

OK, I've had it. I expect the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity to lie through their teeth about just about anything, but this takes the cake. Lying to old people about end-of-life decisions to scare them? Because God forbid the Obama administration should get a victory like much-needed health care reform! This isn't about whether or not we need health care reform -- everybody from the AARP to the AMA to the pharmaceutical industry agrees we must have it or risk our entire economy eventually collapsing -- this is about politics and the 2010 elections!

The right-wing is so pissed that we have a Democrat in the White House and a majority in both houses of Congress that they are willing to do something so heinous and disturbing as to make stuff up to scare the elderly. Limbaugh, Hannity, Boehner and everybody else pushing this nonsense should be ashamed of themselves. I'm ashamed that these people call themselves Americans.

I'll let an article on HuffPo by Bob Cesca do the rest of the talking:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/republicans-lying-to-old_b_247400.html

The Wingnuts are at it again

You know, I almost hate to put anything about this silly Obama birth certificate crap on my blog, but when I ran across Jon Stewart's take on it on HuffPo I just found it so damn funny I couldn't resist. So I'll let Jon do the honors for me:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/23/jon-stewart-eviscerates-t_n_243383.html

The only thing he misses about the lawyer/dentist/real estate agent wingnut is that she got her "degree" from an online correspondence course. Just sayin'...

Now, I got to thinking the other day that I couldn't recall a time when there were left-leaning wingnuts (although I'm sure there must be some) who had addle-brained conspiracy theories out there, certainly not any that would have made it to CNN -- despite the fact that Lou Dobbs was apparently unaware that Kitty Pilgrim, subbing for him on his own program, debunked the whole Obama birth certificate conspiracy nonsense! No, I was trying to think of a time when that happened and by golly I just couldn't come up with anything! Guess the wingnuts are all right-sided.

Anyway, thanks Jon, for the laugh. It reminded me of the lady with the crazy hair at the John McCain campaign event! You know... the same John McCain who was born in Panama. Hmmmm...

We can and must pay for health care reform, and I know how

President Obama gave a speech today at the White House that he hopes will get the health care reform bill back on track. I hope it will, too. Despite support (and in some cases, monetary concessions) from hospital groups, pharmaceutical companies, AARP, the AMA and nursing organizations, it seemed that votes on the Hill were slipping into the "No" column due to the CBO analysis that the bill would cost $1 trillion dollars.

Now, a trillion dollars is a LOT of money. But critics make it sound like it's a trillion dollars a year, which of course is just ridiculous. It's a trillion dollars over TEN years, which is a hundred billion dollars a year. It's still a lot of money, but not compared to what we just spent to get the banks back on their feet.

If anyone has health care coverage from an employer they probably know that the cost of this coverage has been going up every year (probably faster than any raise they may have received), and the employers are not eating these cost increases -- they are passing them on to the employees. Anyone who has been laid off from a job and lost their health care, or who doesn't have health care through their employer, knows what a roll of the dice it is not to have coverage. Health care expenses are the #1 cause of bankruptcies.

President Obama has said that 2/3rds of the cost will already be paid for. I know where to find the remaining 1/3rd, which would be about $33 billion a year. In fact, I know where to find more than that. We need a higher gas tax, and we need it now.

Americans put about 146 billion gallons of gasoline in their cars and trucks every year. For many years now the gas tax has been about 18 cents a gallon. When gas was $1 a gallon, this was 18% of the price. Now gas is about $2.50 a gallon, and the 18 cent gas tax is about 7.2% of that. If we were to increase this tax 25 cents a gallon to 43 cents a gallon, we would raise about $36.5 billion dollars a year.

Nobody likes to pay more taxes, but it's high time we increase this tax. For one thing, it would make those who drive gas-guzzlers more responsible for the environmental damage they are causing. It's (unfortunately) not enough to tip the scales toward people getting rid of their guzzlers, but it's enough to help pay for the health care reform we need. Remember when gas went so far up in price recently? Not many people parked their cars and took public transportation, or traded their vehicles for more fuel-efficient models, until gas got up to $4 a gallon. That seems to be where the tipping point is for most people.

When politicians run for office they always run on the promise to cut taxes. I think this is a mistake. We as citizens can't expect more services for less money, it just doesn't make sense. A recent poll said that the majority of people are willing to pay a little more money if they know they would have health care should they lose their jobs. It's time to get health care reform done, and raising the gasoline tax would help pay for it.

Time to get rid of political parties?

It has occurred to me that nothing gets done in Washington because of political party nonsense. Let's take health care, for instance. Love the health care bill or hate it, it will pass or not due less to its own merits than whether or not the Democratic party can expect its members to march in lockstep, and whether the Republicans can intimidate their members into voting against it.

That's the way things work on the Hill. If you're a free-thinking Republican who might want to vote your conscience, or on the actual merits of the bill itself, woe be to you if you're even thinking about running for reelection. Because if you don't toe the Republican line (which these days just means voting against anything the Obama administration wants), you can expect a cold shoulder from the party at reelection time. And, to be fair, the same thing happens in the Democratic party when the President is a Republican.

Have you ever noticed how difficult it is for an "average Joe" to get elected? That most of the folks in Congress tend to be wealthy? It's almost impossible for anybody to get any support from their political party unless they've got contacts in all the right places. And that's a shame -- because I happen to think that if the manager of the local hardware store has the best ideas for how to shape things up in Washington, then he or she should have the opportunity to launch a serious campaign.

Maybe it's time we dump these labels, have campaigns be publicly funded (which would make them a whole lot cheaper than they are now), and stop the gridlock.

Sarah Palin resigns as Governor of Alaska

I find it interesting that the talking heads on TV are so surprised by this resignation, especially the conservative ones (the ones who were counting on her to run for President in 2012). She said she was a "lame duck" -- after two years? If she is intending to run for President, and I would be very surprised if she is, then she just made a big mistake by not finishing her commitment to Alaska and staying in office before her run. But I think there are other forces at work here...

She has had a string of bad press, from the public infighting with her daughter's baby daddy to the leaking of memos from the McCain campaign that showed how clueless she was. The most recent e-mail leaks concerned the fact that her husband was a member of the Alaskan Independence Party for seven years, which if you look at the front page of their website clearly shows that their members want to have a revote as to whether or not Alaska should be a state. They also believe that the U.S. government has too much control over their lives. Below are three quotes copied and pasted directly from the front page of their website:

"The Alaskan Independence Party's goal is the vote we were entitled to in 1958, one choice from among the following four alternatives:
1) Remain a Territory.
2) Become a separate and Independent Nation.
3) Accept Commonwealth status.
4) Become a State."

"There is a commonly held belief across Alaska, that the US Constitution has been set aside, and other then ourselves, there are no protections to the liberty and freedoms we are to have as our continued inheritance since the formation of the Union of the "several States". "

"The US government is far and away outside the bounds placed on it by the 9th and 10th amendments and is operating illegally for all ."

I think that's pretty clear, but Gov. Palin apparently did not understand what the goals of this organization were, if you read her e-mails to McCain's campaign manager.

I think there may also be another, larger reason, though, for Gov. Palin stepping down. Seven million of them, to be exact. As Governor she makes $125,000 a year. She just got a $7 million advance to write her memoirs. Memoirs for a woman who has been Governor for two years (several months of which was spent in an unsuccessful campaign for the Vice Presidency)? Okey dokey. Funny thing is I know this will sell amongst conservatives. At any rate, I think she's taking the $7 mil and running and, according to Andrea Mitchell's reporting, she's not looking to come back to elected office.

It just goes to show what a bullet we dodged when the McCain/Palin ticket failed to get elected.

Well, there's another name crossed off the list of possible 2012 Republican presidential nominees. Looks like it's clear sailing for Mitt Romney.

According to Rush, Obama to blame for Sanford affair

No, you read that right, and this is not the National Enquirer. Republican Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, who for the past year has had a torrid affair with a married Argentinian woman, and who decided to split for a week to see her without telling anybody -- apparently had this affair as a result of the Obama administration destroying everybody's lives, according to class clown Rush Limbaugh.

See, Rush's twisted logic here is that Obama has screwed up so badly that the governor did the only sensible thing he could do -- leave the country (and his state legally leaderless) to go get some strange in Argentina! Well, I certainly see the connection there, don't you? Especially since the affair started last summer when then-Senator Obama was only campaigning for President. Maybe Sanford was clairvoyant?

You can see the vid here in Jason Linkins' article on the HuffPo:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/25/limbaugh-blames-sanfords_n_220993.html

Boggles the mind, doesn't it?

Gov. Sanford Goes Walkabout

** UPDATE ** Well, it appears that Gov. Sanford was in Argentina (for a week) to see his mistress instead of hiking the Appalachians. Another possible 2012 Republican presidential candidate implodes! The only good thing is that his wife didn't stand up there beside him and let him humiliate her in public like some political wives have done. Mrs. Sanford, get smart and divorce the jerk posthaste. As for the governor, I think he should resign, not because of the affair (after all, being a Democrat I would have to also defend those of my party who have committed similar moral crimes), but because leaving the state (and the country) without telling his family, his staff, his security detail or his lieutenant governor where he was going shows a horrible lack of judgment and created a constitutional crisis as the state was left without legal leadership in case of an emergency. The people of South Carolina deserve a governor who doesn't get so distracted by the notion of seeing his girlfriend that he forgets to hand over the keys to somebody before he scrams out of the country. Governor Sanford should resign for the good of the people of South Carolina.

****
Mark Sanford, the Republican governor of South Carolina, apparently decided to take a powder and left South Carolina leaderless in the process. When his state legislature did the sane thing and overrode his asinine decision not to request $700 million in federal stimulus money the state was entitled to, Sanford apparently couldn't deal and decided to take his shalaleigh for a little stroll in the Appalachian Mountains. For six days. Without telling anybody -- not his wife, not his Lieutentant Governor, not his security detail -- no one. He was not even reachable by phone.

Now if Mr. Sanford were a plumber, this would be a little weird but not particularly dangerous. If you encountered a plumbing problem you could just call the next guy listed in the Yellow Pages. But Sanford is a governor. He has responsibilities in case of emergencies, and his deciding to pout his way through the Appalachians after his legislative defeat is indictive of somebody who apparently lacks the ability to handle the stresses of his job. In his absence his responsibilities should fall to the Lieutenant Governor, who was not told that the Governor would be gone. What if the Lieutenant Governor had decided to go walkabout at the same time?

Well, I do believe Gov. Sanford is going to have some 'splainin' to do if he wants to run for President in 2012. Such as, how you can say you have "family values" when your family doesn't know where you are for a week (and over Father's Day weekend, too)? And how you can leave your state leaderless for a week so you can "clear your head"? And this guy wants to be President? Can you imagine what would happen if Obama just disappeared for a week without the Secret Service, without telling Michelle or VP Joe, all because Congress did or didn't pass some bill or another and he was pissed off about it?

The fact that the Governor was so surprised that this was a big deal when he finally got in touch with civilization is disturbing and says a lot about the guy's sense of responsibility. Next time you folks down there in S.C. get a chance, you might want to hire somebody who's somewhat more serious about doing his job!

Pro-lifers miss the point of Dr. Tiller

Like most people who engage in the debate over abortion, pro-lifers miss the whole point behind the need for doctors like Dr. George Tiller, who performed late-term abortions in Kansas and was murdered yesterday.

I have only known one woman who had a late-term abortion, but I will briefly relate her story. She was a co-worker of mine many years ago. She married in her late 30's, and she and her husband, knowing her child-bearing years were few, set about to start a family. She got pregnant and went happily through 5 1/2 months of pregnancy, until she had a sonogram (this was in the early days of HMOs, when they were seriously stingy about doling out services). The sonogram unfortunately showed that the fetus had abnormalities so severe that there was no way it would be viable outside the womb. In reality, Mother Nature would normally have caused an early miscarriage to happen with abnormalities of this kind, but for whatever reason the pregnancy had continued. In addition, carrying the fetus to term would only mean that a C-section would be in order, and the fetus would die a slow, painful death.

My co-worker lived in Missouri; she had to go through the Christmas season pregnant, and after the holidays flew to Texas to have a late second-term abortion procedure. This is a married woman who desperately wanted children; this was NOT someone who simply waited too long to decide they didn't want to be a mother. This was a fetus that unfortunately was not a perfect, cherubic little child who could be easily adopted; this fetus had zero chance of living outside the womb and, if a doctor such as Dr. Tiller had not intervened, would have died a horrible death instead of the much less painful procedure the doctor performed (sorry, but I'm not going into details here, you'll just have to trust me that it was a preferable way to die, given that death was inevitable).

Pro-lifers never understand that THIS is why we need to keep abortion legal. I frankly don't care if somebody who is an adult got pregnant by accident -- as far as I'm concerned abortion is not to be used as birth control by irresponsible adults. It's people like my former co-worker, or the 10-year old who was raped by her father, that I care about. That's why abortion must remain legal. From what I understand, Dr. Tiller's practice was not centered around women who just took too long to decide they didn't want a baby, but around those unfortunate and sad cases when a late-term abortion is medically necessary or is simply the more humane choice of the two options, as in the case of my former co-worker. This is the point that pro-lifers don't understand, but they need to. If they did perhaps we wouldn't have had the tragedy of Dr. Tiller's murder in the first place.

EPA OKs Mountaintop Removal for Coal Mining

It's been a while since I've climbed on the ol' soapbox! Can you tell that since Obama has been elected I've had less to get up here for? But that doesn't mean that his administration has been perfect.... and I have a big problem with right now with the EPA and its new administrator, Lisa Jackson.

The vast majority of applications under consideration by this administration for mountaintop removal in the Appalachians have been approved. This is an environmental tragedy of epic proportions, and one I had hoped the Obama administration would end.

Mountaintop removal is just that -- the top of a mountain is blown off and the debris quite often ends up in rivers and streams. This has been a priority for some time for the NRDC (National Resources Defense Council), but they were unable to get anywhere under the Bush administration with stopping this nonsense.

You can't regrow a mountaintop. If you were to look at an aerial view of West Virginia, for instance, where coal mining abounds, you would see utter devastation.

While we are (unfortunately) going to be dependent on coal for some time (it's the major source of fuel for most power plants in the U.S.), there is no such thing as clean coal. I for one hope I see the end of coal mining in my lifetime. If we don't get onto renewable, clean sources of energy, we will continue to be passed by other countries in the development of these sources. They're not waiting on us.

Swine whaaat?

Well, it seems like deja vu all over again.... I seem to recall some kind of dire warnings about bird flu. Now we have swine/bird/human flu all mixed together, and we have the press going ga-ga again with the predictions of doom. I pity the pigs in Egypt -- being a majority Muslim country, pigs are only raised there for the minority Christian/non-vegetarian population, so the government, in all their infinite wisdom, had no problem ordering all pigs to be slaughtered despite the fact that you can't get swine flu from eating pigs.

Do I hear the cry of a wolf?

It now appears that swine flu is no more deadly than any other garden variety kind of flu, which unfortunately people can and do die from, particularly if they are young (and therefore haven't been exposed to as many viruses as us oldsters) or have other medical issues.

When will the press learn that it is irresponsible to try to a cause a panic just for the sake of ratings? Tsk tsk.

John McCain not doing his job for Arizona

John McCain is so proud of the fact that he never asks for earmarks in Congressional bills. Well, isn't that nice. There's just one problem with that -- it says to me that he's not doing his job for the state of Arizona.

Don't get me wrong, I don't like pork. But not all earmarks are pork. Pork is a subset of earmarks. Without federal money there are a lot of things that states could not afford. What about roads, Senator McCain? What about education? Health care for people who don't have it? Airports? Flood control? Public transit?

I get why McCain doesn't like pork. We shouldn't spend taxpayer money on porky projects designed only to satisfy special interests in exchange for campaign contributions. But legitimate earmarks are another animal entirely, and most states would not be able to afford many of these projects without federal help.

Oh, and by the way, in the latest budget six out of the top ten earmark grabbers were Republicans. Unfortunately, leaving all that money in was the only way to get them to vote for the bill!

GOP gives us their budget plan -- sort of

After receiving a lot of criticism for knocking Obama's budget plan but offering none of their own, yesterday House GOP leaders, notably John Boehner and Eric Cantor, brought out a budget of their own. Well, at least an outline of a budget. Eighteen whole pages! It was such a great plan that I had to go to several websites this morning to even see a mention of it. I finally found a short article about it in the Politics section of the Washington Post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/26/AR2009032603694.html?nav=hcmodule

There are almost no details in this plan. No indication of a deficit amount, no rundown of how much each government department will receive under this plan, no specifics whatsoever. But wait!! There is one interesting number here.... 25%! That's the maximum tax rate the Republicans want people who already have a lot of money to pay. It is now 36%. That's a whopping 11% tax cut for the wealthy!! Whaddya know... the Republicans want the wealthy to get a huge tax cut! And they don't say how they're going to pay for it! No, seriously. I'm not making this up.

Maybe Boehner will come out next Wednesday, get in front of a microphone and yell "April Fools"!

I give Dick Cheney a history lesson

I have to laugh. Really. I mean, this weekend we had Dick Cheney on John King's State of the Union program on CNN expounding on how Barack Obama's policies will make the United States less safe, that Bush kept the country safe after 9/11, yadda yadda yadda. Oh, boy, where do I start with this one?

First, as the Clinton administration was preparing to turn the keys over to W. and Dick Whats-His-Name, the incoming administration was given very pointed advice that al Qaeda was up to something, and that they needed to pay close attention to that organization. The Bush administration scoffed and promptly decided to ignore that warning.

Even after they were given a security briefing entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States" in August of 2001.

Second, we were attacked on September 11, 2001. Four airplanes were highjacked despite red flags waving that people were training to fly airplanes but didn't particularly care to learn how to land them. Very large buildings crumbled to the ground. The Pentagon ended up with a huge hole and an airliner in it. Thousands of Americans lost their lives. Remember that, Dick? And who was in the White House when we were attacked? Oh, yeah -- you and that guy who has kept us so safe.

Why is it they only refer to what happened after 9/11? As if those thousands of lives lost that day didn't count. Bush was eight months into his administration, not eight days and not eight weeks. That was his failure.

Oh, and Dick -- you're still a joke.

Magazines I Love

I love magazines. I confess to having stacks of them in my bedroom. But in my defense, I keep a lot of them and revisit them now and again. If I don't want to keep them I pass them on to a friend, recycle them or give them to a charity.

I decided I needed to subscribe to the ones I buy frequently. It saves money in the end, when a single issue runs around $5 or more. I'm subscribing to three right now, and all of these are bimonthly (six issues a year). When I open my mailbox and one of my magazines is in there, it's almost like Christmas to me!

These are all environment-related, country living type magazines, but they all have something that just about any woman would find useful or fun. All of them fit into my new goal of simplifying my life, getting back to nature, doing some gardening and canning, and connecting more to the environment. I'll be putting links to their companion websites on this blog.

My favorite new magazine is Hobby Farm Home, a sister magazine to Hobby Farm. As much as I would like to, I don't own goats or chickens (if you do, look into Hobby Farm magazine)... I don't even have much of a backyard to speak of! But nevertheless I love this magazine, because it has all my favorite topics in it. Here's what was in a recent issue -- recipes using maple syrup, an article about tapping maple from trees, how to work vegetables into your garden alongside your flowers, an article on vintage ironstone dishes, tips for getting blue ribbons at county fairs with your baking, craft articles on how to make a garden journal and another on how to make a painted floor cloth -- you get the idea.

Another new favorite is MaryJanesFarm. This one I happened to run into at Border's, I haven't seen it anywhere else, but now I have a subscription so I don't have to go hunting for it! MaryJane Butters is the Martha Stewart of all things environmental and organic. Here's some of what was in the latest issue: glamping (glamour camping for us girls), making quirky jewelry from fishing lures, building a portable garden box for growing lettuces, organic recipes, organic bedding (including stuffed vegetable toys for babies from organic cotton, so cute! I want some), making a quilted bath mat from material dyed with Kool-Aid (I'm not making this up), a pattern for a rug crocheted from a new eco-friendly cotton yarn from Red Heart, instructions for making a portable foam chair that doubles as a cot, etc. etc. The issue before that was all bee-related... everything to do with bees, honey, even vintage bee embroidery patterns for tea towels.

My third subscription is to the old environmental standby, Mother Earth News. This one is certainly less girly than the other two, but if you're into the environment and want the latest news on alternative energy, environmentally friendly housing, tips for organic gardens, recipes, and other environment-related articles, then this is a good all-around magazine to subscribe to. There's also a wealth of info on their website if you're looking for products or information.

Crime blotter

There are a few cases in the news lately that I have to give my two cents' worth about, so up on the soapbox I go!

First, singer Chris Brown beats up his girlfriend, singer Rihanna. Threatens to kill her. Puts her in a chokehold. And what does she do? She goes back to him. I'm sure, like all batterers, he convinced her he was sorry, he wouldn't do it again, yadda yadda yadda. They do that so they can get their victim close enough for a repeat performance. The only answer to being battered is "get your stuff and get out of my house, and if you come back me and my friend, Mr. Smith & Wesson, will be waiting." Rihanna is a single, successful woman who is perfectly capable of surviving on her own. There are no children involved. Why she went back to this despicable piece of garbage is beyond my imagination, but if I were her, I'd wise up and leave. My guess is this will not be the last time this will happen.

Speaking of despicable pieces of trash... Michael Vick, the NFL quarterback convicted of dogfighting crimes, is getting out of jail. Here's hoping there isn't a team in the country willing to put him on their roster.

There is another missing little girl, Haleigh Cummings, who has been getting a lot of airplay. But we shouldn't forget that there are a lot of missing children across the U.S.A. I would like to see shows that feature these kinds of stories spend a few seconds showing pictures of some other missing children. Let's hope Haleigh is found alive and well.

Not so blind item: there is a certain high-profile case where the accused is guilty, guilty, guilty. The evidence in this case is massive and unambiguous. But the defense attorney is not going to have his client plead this out, not because it's not in his client's best interests, but because he wants the P.R. of a big splashy trial. He should have his license to practice law revoked. He might want to think about a little thing called justice. I'm not saying that defendants aren't entitled to a fair trial, but when the evidence is this overwhelming the most responsible thing to do for your client is to try to work out some kind of plea deal.

All states should immediately outlaw having primates, including chimpanzees, as pets. They should also outlaw having animals such as tigers, jaguars, alligators, and any other animals whose only home should be the wild. The horrible case of the woman who was tragically mauled by a 200-lb. chimpanzee is a huge red flag. And by the way, the injuries this woman suffered are so awful that I can't even list them all here or I will have nightmares. Let me just say that I would not want to live in that condition. I hope her family can make the appropriate decisions for her, and they might be hard to make, but to consign this poor woman to a life with no quality of life would double this tragedy, in my opinion.

I was listening to NPR the other day when a woman who owned several species of monkeys as well as a jaguar was on defending owning these animals. She had them in enclosures (separately) and said the monkeys were "living like monkeys." THEY'RE IN CAGES, LADY!!! BY THEMSELVES!! HELLO!!!!! Monkeys (and jaguars) live in social units with other monkeys and jaguars. This is NOT appropriate, and these creatures are NOT "living like monkeys." Sheesh. Take it from somebody who found a Ball python in her backyard because some doofus who had it as a pet couldn't keep it contained. Some animals are NOT meant to be pets, and accidents with these guys can and will happen. (Not two weeks later a Ball python bit a toddler in a local park, by the way.)

Go adopt a dog or a cat from a local shelter instead. Fish are also nice.

Overpaid, Underpaid

I find it funny that the Republicans are turning themselves inside out regarding the Obama administration's proposal to roll back tax cuts for people who make over a quarter of a million dollars to the level they were at during the Clinton administration. My, my... they've worked so hard to protect their wealthy friends all these years, and here come along those pesky Democrats who might want to actually cut their tax break a teensy bit! Never mind that they've had a break for 8 years that they never should have had in the first place.

I thought it would be interesting to take a look at just who's making what. Just who are those folks that might actually be getting to keep their little pittance of a break compared to those people who might have to fork over a little bit more (assuming their tax accountants can't fit it under some tax shelter or another)? So here's a list of a few folks who are overpaid, and a list of a few who are underpaid:

Overpaid: Albert Haynesworth, Washington Redskins, 7-yr contract, $100,000,000
Underpaid: police officer, $47,500

Overpaid: Rush Limbaugh, 8-year contract, $400,000,000
Underpaid: paramedic, $36,000

Overpaid: Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis, $1,500,000 (2008), $20,400,000 (2007)
Underpaid: social worker, $40,000

Overpaid: GM CEO Rick Wagoner, $2,200,000 (2008 base salary)
Underpaid: President of the United States, $400,000

Overpaid: Tiger Woods: $115,000,000
Underpaid: teacher, $46,000

Overpaid: Alex Rodriguez, $28,000,000
Underpaid: librarian, $53,000 (with Master's)

I think it's obvious where our priorities have been in this country and I think it's also obvious that they have been pretty screwed up.

There is NO ONE worth $115,000,000 a year, I don't care who they are or what they do. Take a look at what the people do who are overpaid vs. those who are underpaid, and just think about the responsibilities that the people in the last class have vs. those who have ridiculously high salaries. Sorry, Republicans, I guess I can't drum up a lot of sympathy here for your "base."

Obama's speech and the Republican response

"Nobody messes with Joe." My favorite line of the night, but then I loves me some Joe Biden!

Obama gave a great speech, focusing on the economy as well as energy, education and health care. He continues to stress that we need to become energy independent, that our education vs. other countries is lagging behind, and that if we don't fix the health care mess our economy will continue to struggle no matter what else we do.

Health care costs are the largest reason for bankruptcies, and I know that even those of us who have good health care through our employers make less money every year because our health care premiums go up, and the employers are not eating that -- they are passing those cost increases along to the employees. So bravo to Obama for finally taking this on. Unlike what Gov. Bobby Jindal said in his bizarre Republican response to Obama's speech, this does not mean "universal, government-sponsored health care." It does mean, though, that we have to get a handle on this, and pronto.

I'm also glad to hear that Obama is going to keep his campaign promise about energy independence. This is so crucial not only to creating new industries and employment in this country, but to curbing climate change, which if allowed to run amuck could eventually cost this country dearly in more ways than one.

A lot of pundits have complained about a lack of detail, but if he had given us details on all that we would have been there for three hours. I think what he did lay out was the basics of what he intended to do, and I'm sure the details will come in future days.

As far as Bobby Jindal's response, I found it absolutely inexplicable. In the first place, he sounded like he thought he was talking to 5th graders. I would say that if the Republicans think this guy is their big hope for the future they have another think coming. He called for more of that Republican cure-all, tax cuts, when we know that Bush's tax cuts and rebates did butkus for the economy. Tax cuts don't mean a lot to someone who doesn't have a job in the first place. He criticized a non-existent "magnetic levitation line between Las Vegas and Disneyland" supposedly in the stimulus plan (there has been some money set aside for transportation but no details or locations have been decided upon). He thought it laughable to put $140 million (a teeny percentage of the total) into "volcano monitoring," but considering the natural disaster Louisiana went through just a few short years ago he might want to rethink the wisdom of taking some precautions to prevent such things. On top of that, he tells us we can't trust the federal government. Okey dokey. Well, my guess is Sarah Palin is feeling a little better today about whether this guy is competition for her for the title of Republican sacrificial lamb in 2012. But then, if Gov. Jindal refuses the stimulus money for Louisiana as he has said he will, I don't think he'll even have to worry about getting reelected down there, much less going on to higher office.

So, I thought Obama gave a good speech, I think he's on the right track, and I found myself thinking that I was just glad that after the last eight years we finally have a president who has some common sense!

Stimulus Stuff

Well, it looks like the stimulus package passed, with all of 3 Republican Senators voting for it, and no Republican House members. Looks like John Boehner & Co. have rounded up the troops and given them their marching orders, eh?

As I've said before on this blog, I think there are good parts and bad parts to this package. There are waaaay too many tax cuts in there, which were put in in order to get the votes of -- guess who -- Republicans! Well, that didn't work so hot... so we may as well have taken them out. Not that I wouldn't like a tax cut as much as the next guy, but let's face it, there isn't a tax cut coming that is going to make enough of a difference that I can go out and buy a new frig. Isn't giving us a tax cut somewhat like what the bankers have been doing by doling out bonuses when the bank is drowning in bad loans and borrowing from the feds to stay afloat? We're getting money from the federal treasury, which is trillions of dollars in debt and borrowing money from China to stay afloat. Ergo our tax cuts are being borrowed from China. I'd just as soon let them keep the extra $13 or whatever it is.

All I hear from John Boehner is that the Republicans had a better plan, that it would create more jobs for less money, yadda yadda yadda... but he never actually says what the plan IS. Gee, if it was that good, you'd think he'd let the rest of us in on it so we could e-mail our Congressman to get him to go for it.

The Republicans have decided to make a political play out of this. They're playing for 2010, banking on the economy to stay in trouble until the next Congressional races. In other words, they want this plan to fail and they're betting their seats on it. That's why Boehner and his compadre in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, put the strong arm on the Republicans in both houses. I also think this is why Judd Gregg pulled out of the Commerce Secretary position. They want to be able to blame the Democrats and the Democrats alone if the economy hasn't pulled out of the mess it's in by 2010.

Personally, I think the economy will perk up, although it probably will take time. We have to be close to a bottom. The Republicans are playing a very dangerous game; we have a popular Democratic President, and if the economy starts to tilt up by mid-2010, their party will become more and more marginalized. Hey, in the meantime, they can just go home and let the Democrats run the whole show. We don't need 'em.

Republicans threaten food supply

That's a pretty provocative title there, but it's true. There are some Republican Senators out there, for instance Jon Kyl, who have been going around on news shows listing things in the Obama stimulus package that should be removed because they think they're ridiculous, and they love to mention that it includes help for honeybees.

Obviously these people need some education on the subject. For the last few years we have had an explosion in Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), causing the U.S. to lose more than a third of its honeybee population. We need honeybees to pollinate 1/3rd of our crops, such as fruit, nuts, soybeans, vegetables, cotton, etc. etc. So, no honeybees means no pollination means no crops means a threat to our food supply. This is simple enough to understand if the Republican Senators who are threatening this provision would bother to Google some information about it. This has been on the news for at least the last couple of years, even. Does anybody on that side of the aisle have a clue? Anybody at all???

Scientists still do not understand why we have such a huge die-off in honeybees, however, their research suggests that the use of genetically modified crops and/or chemicals and insecticides that have been banned in Europe but not here (another duh) may be to blame. This kind of thing makes me even more determined to grow some of my own food and buy as much organic as possible. We've been messing with nature way too much, and it is coming back to bite us on the butt.

Fortunately, it looks like due to changes in the way beekeepers manage their hives colonies have lost fewer bees in recent months than in the previous few years. However, it's too soon to know what caused the die-off, whether the crisis is over or if it won't happen again.

I would encourage you to e-mail or call Republicans you see on the news who are disparaging the honeybee provision in the stimulus plan. While you couldn't directly call this a "stimulus," and while there are some provisions in that plan that should be removed (and some already are), the honeybees need help regardless of what bill it goes in.

Want to fix the economy? Become an environmentalist

I was watching a special on CNN regarding the economy, and something one of the panelists said really hit me. We've all been focused on trying to save the banks, or figuring out how to keep people in their homes... but there's something even bigger we need to think about.

The Great Depression was ended by the New Deal, but also by World War II, when we turned to manufacturing planes and tanks. After the war we needed to turn our economy to a post-wartime one, and started building houses, cars, and all those other things we didn't build and couldn't afford anyway while we were at war. Then we had a boom in manufacturing, our automobile industry was going strong and facing little competition from foreign brands.

Starting in the 70's and continuing into the 80's the boom was technology. I remember when my boss scoffed at the notion that everyone would have a computer on their desk one day! Now everyone not only has a computer, but a cellphone, likely an iPod, and multiple TVs. During this time we started to send manufacturing overseas and became more of a service-oriented society. Some companies like Dell and Microsoft did well in the manufacturing (or software) industries, but our manufacturing base largely began to disappear. No wonder China and India have become economic powerhouses.

Now it's the 2000's, and what is The Next Big Thing we need to build and consume? What's the next thing that everybody will have to have?

The only answer I see on the horizon is green technology. This could solve three problems at once -- our lack of jobs, particularly in manufacturing and retail; the massive environmental problems we will have if we continue to live the way we do; and it will stop our sending $700 billion a year overseas for foreign oil.

Green technology could affect almost every aspect of our lives. For cars, we could be looking at not only hybrid technology, but solar, hydrogen fuel cell, and advanced batteries. Fuel cells are being developed that could power our homes, our computers and other devices. Tankless water heaters already exist that could replace the old gas-powered ones that waste energy by heating and reheating the same water over and over again. How about solar-powered trains and buses? How many kids' toys need toxic batteries? Could those be replaced with some other green technology?

We already have a start on some of these, although there are difficulties with almost every technology currently out there. For instance, an investigation into Chinese companies who produce solar panels discovered that they were using toxic chemicals and dumping them into villages, sickening the people who live there. Not very environmentally happy! That's why we need to produce these here in the United States, where we can better regulate and control what goes into them.

It's a shame that one of our most ecologically fragile states, Alaska, has a far right-wing Governor in Sarah Palin who is so clueless when it comes to the environment. She refuses to admit that polar bears and whales need environmental protection. Her only concern is to drill and drill some more. Why? Because Alaskans get a cut of the profits, so the more she allows drilling the more she will be re-elected. Money in the pocket of your voters talks. She has absolutely no concern for the environmental health of the state she governs and refuses to acknowledge scientific data that is contrary to what she wants to do. We can no longer afford to leave the environment in the care of governors. Saving the environment through conservation measures and green technology must be mandated at the federal level.

Our oceans have large "dead spots," where not even plankton can survive due to pollution. No fish, no nothing. This is forcing fishermen to go farther and farther to get their catch. How much is our environment going to take before it collapses entirely? Enormous pieces of the Arctic ice shelf have been breaking off. Just last July a group of Russian researchers were forced to leave their station on an ice floe due to the ice becoming so thin. We are getting our warnings, and if we don't heed them, then we will be in for climate and landscape changes that will threaten our entire way of life.

We need to get this country back to making things, and not just consuming them. We need to quit sending money overseas to unfriendly countries who control the price of oil, and thereby control a large section of our economy. Remember what panic there was when the price of gas went up to $4 a gallon? This is not just an environmental issue, this is a national security issue. That's what the right-wing "drill, baby, drill" nuts never understood. Our nation can easily be strangled by cutting off oil, and no matter what Sarah Palin says, we don't have enough oil in the U.S. to put a drop in the bucket compared to what we use.

So I say -- bring on the green! It's our best chance at saving the economy, our environment, and securing our country.

Citigroup: Hello!! Reality calling!

UPDATE: Apparently Citigroup has decided that the plane wasn't worth the bad press (not to mention that the President kinda frowned on a bank that is taking taxpayer money treating itself to a new corporate jet). They have decided to forego the plane.

CEO tone-deafness continues. Citigroup, the bank that has taken (so far) $45 billion in taxpayer bailout money, is taking delivery on a new $50 million corporate jet. I demand my money back.

Did these guys learn nothing from the spectacle the Detroit Three CEOs made when they all flew their private corporate jets to Washington and got reamed new ones for it? Do CEOs think they live in an alternate universe? Where do they think this $45 billion is coming from??? It's coming from people who are struggling to pay their mortgages, who are burdened with the reality that they may lose their jobs tomorrow, who have seen the value of their homes drop like a rock. But the guys in the penthouse offices don't get it. Just like John Thain spending an unfathomable $1.2 million to redecorate his office, for crying out loud, Citigroup's head cheeses are tone deaf to reality. How many jobs could they have saved for $50 million? How many bank CEOs dine in private dining rooms with world-class chefs instead of having their admins bring in some deli? I have an idea... before any CEO gets any more taxpayer money to bail his ass out, let's plunk him down in a doublewide somewhere with a 10-year old car and only enough food money to go to McDonald's for a week. Maybe they'll begin to get a clue.

At some point I think these people just completely lose track of reality. Well, Obama needs to give them a dose. How about this -- any bank that has taken or intends to take taxpayer bailout money needs to turn over all the corporate perks, or one of the following two things will happen: 1) the bank will be nationalized, i.e., owned by the taxpayers whose money they are wasting, or 2) be allowed to fail.

Citigroup should get no more taxpayer bailout money. Period. If they fail, c'est la vie. As a taxpayer who flies cattle car class (when I can afford to fly at all) and who brings in PB&J sandwiches instead of eating in that private dining room, I for one am through with these guys who are living large on the struggling middle class taxpayer. Let 'em eat cake.