Recently in Policy Category

When I was a child, journalism was ruthless.  Investigative reporting was in its prime, shining the light of day on corruption, indolence, criminal activity, under the table deal making and the like.  The government hated the media because they showed the American people in very real terms the horrible truth some powerful people wanted hidden:  the civil rights movement, the war in Vietnam, the extreme police action at Kent State, to name just a few.  60 Minutes did ground-breaking work that defined the standard for journalism.

Today, Clay Shirky and other insightful thinkers state that the expensive and extraordinary work of investigative journalism was funded by the ample profit margins gleaned from media advertising, both television and print.  Now, with the advent of cable media and the internet, advertising to the masses, according to many, has reached its true value.  As a result, profit margins have radically dropped.  As a result, print news media is dying.  The LA Times, for example, is probably 80% advertising and 20% news.  And, some notable sources say the result has been the death of investigative journalism.

During the George W. Bush administration, the Republicans pushed for and got changes to FCC regulations that effectively and significantly reduced the number of news outlets even further, allowing fewer people to have greater ownership and control of media outlets.  From my vantage point, the confluence of these two things (lack of investigative journalism and reducing the number of media outlets) appears to have compromised one of democracies most vitally needed pillars, an informed citizenry.  Have you noticed that an increasing percentage of the news articles across all media outlets have the exact same titles, even the same content?  I seriously wonder who is paying for me to read and hear these "stories?"

I have lamented CNN becoming "the Crime News Network" as they focus so much attention on sensationalizing missing persons and individual murder cases.  (I'm sure this is inexpensive for them.)  And the whole of cable news seems to create an artificial sense of crisis around lack-luster "reporting" to sell their media, creating a 24 cable hour news cycle that amounts to little more than an overdramatized feeding frenzy.  As local papers have died, corruption is going undetected creating an unprecedented environment of bold fraud and theft of tax payer dollars like the Bell, California, city officials who actually thought they could get away with salaries of $8,000,000.

We need a populist movement that will hold government accountable for protecting "We the people..." by providing significant incentives to create a variety of non-partisan media outlets, rather than the current incentives to reduce their ownership to a few wealthy people.  We need to de-centralize news media.  We need to stop attempting to kill funding for public broadcasting.  News media outlets must never be the puppet of a few stunningly wealthy people or any political party.  People need to turn off and unsubscribe to media that is doing a poor job of honest, non-partisan investigative journalism.  Demand unbiased, fact-checked, relevant news!

To allow our current system to continue is to perpetuate a meaningless national conversation focused on polarity, not problem-solving and threatens the very survival of democracy.  [I also suspect that to attack Wikileaks is to attack free speech, but that's a whole different "can of worms."]

Related Posts at tt.us

• We Need a Populist Movement-Part 1: Healthcare
• We Need a Populist Movement-Part 2: Governance
• We Need a Populist Movement-Part 3: Civil Rights
• We Need a Populist Movement-Part 4: Journalism (this post)
• We Need a Populist Movement-Part 5: Faith Practice

Related articles

• The future of news? (maureenholland.wordpress.com)
• US investigative journalism merger (guardian.co.uk)
• Clay Shirky's Nuanced Position on WikiLeaks (boingboing.net)
• Investigative Journalism, RIP (outsidethebeltway.com)
• Defend WikiLeaks or lose free speech - Dan Gillmor - Salon.com (marccooper.com)
• Required Reading: Clay Shirky on WikiLeaks (slog.thestranger.com)

It's pretty simple, really.

I can not imagine a United States in which women were not allowed to vote, in which they were considered more as a man's property, his birthright, his just reward for manhood.  I can't imagine a United States in which black people were considered property, slaves, people owned and bred for the profit of white men.  I simply can not imagine a United States in which entire nations of people, the American Indians, were exterminated because white men wanted what was theirs.

And to do these things in the name of a god, a deity, a faith practice that holds to some ancient tenets most of 21st century civilization finds barbaric and so out of touch with present reality as to be rendered irrelevant superstitions is appalling, oppressive, and the very definition of evil.

Now don't misunderstand, I think people should be allowed to practice their chosen faith but within constraints that will be the content of the upcoming post on faith practice.  Denying the civil right of marriage to inter-racial couples is the stuff of antiquity.  To deny same sex couples the right to marriage is also the product of a similar hate-filled thinking process.  To deny gay men and women from serving in the military is just as ignorant, intolerant, and, like the aforementioned marriage issues, the product of forcing a narrowly defined faith practice on people who do not hold to the teachings of that ancient religious belief system.

Additionally, the whole marriage concern poses another interesting issue.  The church claims that they must "defend the traditional definition of marriage." That tradition is, of course, born in the very religious intolerance of which I've already written.  In other words, marriage is a curious legal and religious institution in which church and state are not separate. The founding fathers built as a major and fundamental tenet of this nation the separation of church from the state.  They, after all, had fled the religious tyranny of the protestant British Empire, though Sarah Palin might think it was the North Koreans.

I strongly, adamantly advocate for the separation of church and state.  Obviously, in the context of marriage, we need, as a nation, to explore this intermingling of the two.  The two must be separated!

As I have written before, if a church does not want to "endorse" or participate in a same sex couple's marriage because that marriage is inconsistent with the ancient teachings of their church, teachings to which they choose to adhere [are any of them out there still doing blood sacrifices?], then they should not be required to.  But for any religious body to try to inflict their faith practice on others is unacceptable and completely out of touch with the fundamental and founding tenets of this nation.

I frankly am glad that the religious front organization, the bogusly named Family "Research" Council, was labeled a "hate group" the day before yesterday by the Southern Poverty Law Center.  Indeed, they are a hate group.  They are trying to force their hate-filled beliefs about a minority group on the nation as a whole.

Their activist agenda is immoral. Their activist agenda perpetuates a culture of hate and intolerance that continues to encourage and even endorse violent words, verbal assaults, bullying, taunting, physical assaults, murders, suicides, verbal abuse, distrust, and hatred. This can not be tolerated by those who value the separation of church and state, who value tolerance, understanding, civility, and who aspire to live by the golden rule. Their activist position is the antithesis of American values, is the antithesis of who I believe God to be and what God wants of people.  And while this post will not be popular with some of my very conservative friends, I believe in my soul that my position is the moral and just one that will stand the test of time.

People can oppose marriage and military service equality and not be a hate group.  I can respect that.  And for those who find the notion of same sex marriage and inter-racial marriage something loathsome, then I invite them to live by the simple words Whoopie Goldberg recently said, just "Don't get one.". It's pretty simple really; isn't it.  In the land of the free and the home of the brave, no one will force them to.  They simply must stop trying to force their chosen, narrowly defined, religious beliefs on those who do not accept them as the teachings of a loving, relevant God.

Related Posts at tt.us

• We Need a Populist Movement-Part 1: Healthcare
• We Need a Populist Movement-Part 2: Governance
• We Need a Populist Movement-Part 3: Civil Rights (this post)
• We Need a Populist Movement-Part 4: Journalism
• We Need a Populist Movement-Part 5: Faith Practice

Follow the money.

I personally think that our nation's government has never been so broken or dysfunctional in my lifetime. And I completely agree with Larry Lessig on the cause: Congress is beholden to corporate interests above all else because their expensive elections are funded by corporate donations. This is the root cause; therefore, fixing how elections are funded is step one--priority one.

To say I was flabbergasted and horrified by the Supreme Court's decision to allow corporations to make unfettered and undisclosed contributions to our elected officials would be an understatement!

I truly am naïve enough to believe deeply in "We the people..."  We are a noisy bunch, filled with conflicted interests and ideas, but basically I think people believe in taking care of people.  Corporate interests believe in increasing profits, and all too often their focus is just on this quarter.  The future be damned.

And, regrettably, those who run the increasing number of "too big to fail" transglobal companies in this nation (another huge mistake) are raking in disproportionate levels of income.  I'm sorry, but in the world according to Tim, unless one cures cancer or AIDS or provides humankind with a clean way to live fossil fuel-free or some other noble gift to our species, no one is worth an annual income of $10 million or more--no one: not me, not you, not anyone else.

So how to address this mess in which we find ourselves:  government caring more about monied interests than the average person on the street?  I'm advocating for a populist movement:  support the Fair Elections Now Act.  You can learn more about it at Fix Congress First.  Fix Congress First has no political agenda, no party affiliation.  It's only focus is correcting how we fund our elections.

Until we return government back to "We the people..." we will continue to see our elected officials serve as the puppets of monied interests and not the people of this nation.

In the next day or two I'll publish another in this series.

Related Posts at tt.us

• We Need a Populist Movement-Part 1: Healthcare
• We Need a Populist Movement-Part 2: Governance (this post)
• We Need a Populist Movement-Part 3: Civil Rights
• We Need a Populist Movement-Part 4: Journalism
• We Need a Populist Movement-Part 5: Faith Practice

Now, I've actually written a lot more than 2,500 posts here at tt.us over the past 6 years, but a good number of them never got published for one reason or another:  they became old news before I finished the post, I was venting and then reconsidered, I waxed insane and recanted...  The list goes on.

So what is Post #2,500 to herald? (I have no idea why I feel it deserves some level of distinction!)

After careful thought and consideration (not!) it turns out this post will be about current events:  The TSA.  I bring you this cartoon from The New Yorker with a concluding thought.

The thought:  Security is an illusion.  It simply doesn't exist.  And with the tawdry junk talk, the man who dropped his trousers and stood there in his underwear, the  poor man whose medical device was yanked from his body leaking urine all over him in front of everyone while he tried to get the TSA to stop before the incident happened, the other cancer survivor made to remove her prosthetic breast for inspection, the pilots union's worries of extended and excessive exposure to harmful levels of radiation from the imaging systems, the list could go on and on...   we have the security scanning option pictured above (source: The New Yorker).

How long will it take before some man or woman boards a plane with something explosive located in a body cavity?  What then, I ask?!

The absurdity needs to stop. Risk is everywhere. Get accustomed to it.

I was just in Atlanta.  On the long flight I read Arianna Huffington's new book, Third World America.  Now, before my conservative friends go off the deep end, this is not a book about left or right, about Democrat or Republican.  This is a book about the assault on the middle class from both parties.

This is a must read for conservatives, for liberals, for members of the Tea Party, for libertarians, well, for every American.  (If you're in the top 1% and are making millions of dollars, you might want to skip this one.)

I admit that at times the numerous examples in the book become a bit tedious, but they do move the story forward by illustrating her points.

Rarely do I read a book in which I think the author just hit the larger issues spot on.  Arianna hits issues spot on.  What she writes resonates with what I have mentioned several times on my blog about my own experiences with the death of the American Dream. The last chapter in her book offers some ideas about how to keep America beholden to "We the people...".

My only point of contention with her book:  She takes an amazingly optimistic view about our capacity as a nation to undo the horrific damage that has been done to the middle class.  I honestly have come to think that, if our nation can be repaired at all, it will not happen in my lifetime.  I do hope I'm wrong.

Here is your link to purchase the book at Amazon.

Related articles

• Arianna Huffington Sees A 'Third World America' (npr.org)
• Arianna Huffington Talks 'Third World America': We Have A 'Surplus Of Talent' That's Not Being Used (VIDEO) (huffingtonpost.com)

From Bert P. Krages II's web site:

As the flyer states, there are not very many legal restrictions on what can be photographed when in public view. Most attempts at restricting photography are done by lower-level security and law enforcement officials acting way beyond their authority. Note that neither the Patriot Act nor the Homeland Security Act have any provisions that restrict photography. Similarly, some businesses have a history of abusing the rights of photographers under the guise of protecting their trade secrets. These claims are almost always meritless because entities are required to keep trade secrets from public view if they want to protect them.

He provides a downloadable PDF entitled The Photographer's Right at this link.

Jon Stewart is smart and funny.  I love how he refers to Glenn Beck as his kid's college fund.  Well, if Palin (Will she ever go away!  Who keeps paying for us to see her, anyway?!) and Beck can have a rally, so can sane people.

The Rally to Restore Sanity, being held by Jon Stewart, is slated for 10-30-10 in Washington DC!  I wish I could go.  It has to be a great and funny event about something serious. Here's how Stewart describes it:

We live in troubled times, with real people who have real problems. ... Problems that have real but imperfect solutions, that I believe 70 to 80 percent of our population could agree to try, and ultimately live with. Unfortunately, the conversation and the process is controlled by the other 15 to 20 percent.

"You may know them as the people who believe that Obama is a secret Muslim planning a socialist takeover of America ... or that George Bush let 9/11 happen to help pad Dick Cheney's Halliburton stock portfolio. You've seen their signs: 'Obama is Hitler'; 'Bush is Hitler'... But why don't we hear from the 70 to 80 percenters? Well, most likely because you have @^#% to do."

The voice of the moderate majority in this country needs to be heard.  Moderates need to be seen.  Extremism has got to go!

Stephen Colbert, another funny guy, will also be participating with his "Keep Fear Alive" rally.  Follow rally developments on Twitter.

Well, this is interesting.  I've just discovered it:  The Coffee Party.

This is a non-partisan community of people who really want change and are not comfortable with the status quo. They want the political process to return to the people and not special interests.  The emphasis seems to be on collective action based on what people find in common not a politics of division.

I'll be eager to see where this goes.

The founder, Annabel Park, talks about seeing an x-ray of the political process that unfolded in the media over the healthcare reform debate.  It was so completely broken and ineffective.  She talks of how the divisions among people in the US are greatly exaggerated.  She emphasizes engaging in dialogue to problem solve for solutions upon which we can all agree.  The politics of division has broken the entire political process. She speaks of using the collaborative tools of the internet to bring together a platform upon which people find consensus. You can listen to a really interesting interview with her at this link. She is very articulate.

Democracy is not like a football game where people watch and someone wins and someone looses and it's a zero sum game situation.  Democracy presupposes a notion of community and the advancement of the common good. ... When everything is about winning and losing, that doesn't promote collaboration. ... We have to show people in Washington that this is what democracy looks like.  [She previously emphasized civility.] ... We are not being represented well by the government and by the media.  In that sense we are similar to the Tea Party. ... The harshness of their rhetoric is alienating to me.  In the end we might want similar things, but our journey might be different."

You can watch a brief video about their Coffee Party Convention by clicking the image below.  They have an interesting and diverse group of featured guests for their upcoming event which will be chaired by Lawrence Lessig, Founder of Change Congress & Professor at Harvard Law School, and Mark McKinnon, communication strategist for John McCain and George W. Bush.

And here is their Unity Pledge:

Related articles:

• Coffee Party Convention: Liberal Response To Tea Party Plans Louisville Gathering (huffingtonpost.com)
• Roger Ebert Challenges Sarah Palin To Debate With Coffee Party Founder, Annabel Park (huffingtonpost.com)

I found this TEDtalk, on the Happy Planet Index, by Nick Marks, to be deeply inspiring and brilliantly on target.  It is absolutely worth 17 minutes of your time!  He talks about creating the world we all want to live in without costing the earth in the process.  He claims our current policy and cultural focus on productivity and materialism is flawed for measuring the well-being of a country and its people.

Nick sites these 5 things we should reflect on in our daily lives enrich our personal happiness without costing the earth.  His entire talk is fantastic and has significant implications far beyond saving the earth but could inform our policy on economics, education, health, etc.

1. Connect
2. Be Active
3. Take Notice
4. Keep Learning
5. Give

Related articles:

• TED Global 2010: Nic Marks and Happiness that Doesn't Cost the Earth (worldchanging.com)
• nic marks: the happy planet index (toomanytribbles.blogspot.com)
• The Happy Planet Index: Nic Marks on TED.com (ted.com)
• Building a Greener World through Marketplace Economics and Radical Transparency (worldchanging.com)

And I hate it that the front door to the house isn't private property.  Daily, people leave fliers and business cards and unsolicited junk on the door!

This week's big news story:  the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has decided that the government can, without a warrant, sneak onto your property, your driveway, and place a GPS tracking device on your car that tracks everywhere you go.  We no longer have a reasonable expectation of privacy for our driveways, which even delivery people can use.

Shockingly, this ruling is actually getting some media coverage.

Plenty of liberals have objected to this kind of spying, but it is the conservative Chief Judge Kozinski who has done so most passionately. "1984 may have come a bit later than predicted, but it's here at last," he lamented in his dissent. And invoking Orwell's totalitarian dystopia where privacy is essentially nonexistent, he warned: "Some day, soon, we may wake up and find we're living in Oceania."

Source:  Time

Some have pointed out that if you are wealthy, you probably live in a gated community or have gates around your property that would extend your zone of reasonable expectation of privacy.  So only the poor people have less privacy.  But that's OK, isn't it?  I mean, wealthy people don't commit crimes.  Wealthy people don't bilk billions, even trillions out of the unsuspecting.  Enron never happened.  No Bernie Madoff ponzi scheme.  No Wall Street bail out while the captains of capitalism lived off the slaughtered fatted cow.

Besides, privacy died long ago in this country — during the George W. Bush administration, I do believe.  His cronies called it The Patriot Act.  Just the name says "Run!  Don't walk!"  During his administration and the Republican rein of terror, not only were hundreds of thousands of surveillance cameras installed all over this nation, but warrantless wiretaps, "enhanced interrogations," and god knows what else were made the order of the day.

And who are we kidding?  I'd bet my last dollar that the US government routinely snags the GPS satellite data from specific cars at will.  There really is no need to place anything on the cars of serious criminals.  That's so last century.  Only puny local police departments have to actually walk onto someone's driveway to plant a GPS under their car.  The big time crooks already have GPS as part of the most fashionable bling package.

The totalitarian state is here.  Is now.  We live it.  The Constitution and Bill of Rights are just window dressing from a time gone by.

Related articles

• Court allows agents to secretly put GPS trackers on cars (cnn.com)
• Warrentless GPS Tracking Of Your Car Is Legal If You're Not Wealthy Enough To Protect It (dvorak.org)
• The Government Can Use GPS to Track Your Moves (time.com)
• The Government's New Right to Track Your Every Move With GPS (time.com)
• Judge Kozinski Doesn't Track with the Ninth Circuit on GPS and the Fourth AmendmentCalls his fellow judges 'cultural elitists' when it comes to privacy. (abovethelaw.com)

A few weeks ago I was in Saratoga, NY.  I had landed in Albany and took a cab to the wonderful inn in which I staid.  My cab driver was a young man from Afghanistan, of all places.  We had an interesting conversation about the whole Afghanistan mess.

He echoed what I had heard in the news:  that suitcases literally filled with millions of US dollars (in cash) are flown out of the Kabul airport every day.  This, he says is common knowledge.  It's business as usual.  No one asks any questions.

Juxtapose this against the lavish inequities of poverty and extreme wealth in the city.  It's insanity.  Then, add to this mix the fact that 96% of the $9.1 billion dollars designated for reconstruction in Iraq is unaccounted for.  That's &8.7 billion with a "b" dollars that has vaporized into thin air.  (Read this Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction pdf report.)

Now I realize we are talking about two different countries, but how much has been designated for Afghanistan?  How much is accounted for?

This should be a scandal of the highest order!  This should be bleeding from every headlines in this country. Why do we so rarely hear about this in our media?!  I'm a fiscal conservative.  The Republican party is wailing about the deficit.  Wail about $8.7 billion in missing government funds!!!!  Those are deficit bucks, baby!

But that's not the only interesting part of our conversation.  I expressed to the young cab driver that I didn't know why we were really in their country.  He asked me politely if I wanted to hear his ideas on the matter.  Certainly!

1.  The drug trade coming out of Afghanistan is powerful and lucrative.  He was unsure of the US roll in the drug trade but thought it indeed was involved.

2.  The country is sitting on a fortune in rare minerals the world wants, even needs.  The oil is pretty meaningless.  He thinks this is why Russia was there for a decade and now the US.  Interesting that this has been common knowledge among the people of Afghanistan but only recently has surfaced in the western media.

Our government is out of control and a direct part of the problem!

I have made no secret of my support of Larry Lessig's Change Congress effort. In his TED presentation, he clearly articulates the need for it, stating that government of, for, and by the people has certainly withered in our lifetimes. He presents a reasoned case for why changing the way we fund campaigns is essential to the survival of the US democracy!

If this TED talk by toxicologist Susan Shaw isn't depressing and a powerful call to arms, then nothing is.

She begins by mentioning the chemical industry, which is all but completely unregulated, and how many chemicals can be found in our bodies.  In Europe, the numbers are vastly, vastly lower.  The worst offender:  flame retardant.  It's in everything you can imagine (your clothes, cars, furniture...), including your blood stream now!  At least we are less likely than the rest of the world to spontaneously combust!

But her talk is on the deadly cocktail that is the chemical dispersants and the oil combination designed to cause the oil to drop to the bottom of the Gulf so we don't see the damage it is doing.  Apparently the deadly dispersants make the oil vastly more likely to enter the organs of body through the skin.  We don't even know all of the compounds in the dispersants because the chemical industry is not required to disclose them by law.  What a revolting shock!

Our US government has completely failed to protect people.  What good is it?!

I just get so angry at what we as Americans tolerate without a second thought!  Such short-sighted, live for the comfort of the moment idiocy!

I find it so unspeakably maddening that important, reflective, intelligent voices of reason such as Susan Shaw's, are ignored in mainstream media because the influence peddlers would prefer we receive a steady diet of buffoons like Sarah Palin!  Dear god!

Related articles:

• TEDTalks: Susan Shaw: The oil spill's toxic trade-off (huffingtonpost.com)
• "Toxic Chemicals Industry Designs PR Campaign for Survival: Exclusive Leaked Footage!" and related posts (naturalpapa.com)
• Cancer panel: Unregulated chemicals pose serious risk (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

Periodically, the wealthy Republicans begin salivating over all of the money in the Social Security system. They want to dump it into the free market because, as everyone knows, when we privatize non-profit administered funds into a for profit model, the wealthy can get even wealthier. (I personally believe that's why the Republics are pushing the "charter school" movement too — all of that money in the education budget could be lining the pockets of wealthy entrepreneurs.)

Just imagine: Where would today's elderly Americans be if the Republican party had gotten its way during the hideous Bush/Cheney years (the later stating that "deficits don't matter") and pushed the Social Security system funds into Wall Street!? What idiots! MoveOn.org has a great response to the top 5 Social Security myths, since the Republicans are at it again. The 5 myths they address are listed below. Check out the facts about each myth at MoveOn.org's article.

1. Myth: Social Security is going broke.
2. Myth: We have to raise the retirement age because people are living longer.
3. Myth: Benefit cuts are the only way to fix Social Security.
4. Myth: The Social Security Trust Fund has been raided and is full of IOUs
5. Myth: Social Security adds to the deficit

Senior citizen's, don't let the shameless Republicans lie their way into convincing you to lose your benefits. Vote Democrat in the November elections.

I'd vote for her!  Shoot, I'd campaign for her!  She's attractive and charming.  She's witty and articulate.  She speaks core American values.  She does her homework.

Obama, while infinitely better than his wretched predecessor, has been astoundingly disappointing as president.  This disaster affords him the opportunity to do right by the American people and fulfill one of the primary duties of government:  protect and defend — not from some invisible "terrorist" threat, but from the very visible threat of capitalism gone awry, greed and excess, of government beholden to transglobal corporations and not the people.

Once again, Rachel Maddow nails it in her "fake speech to the nation as fake President Obama."

Texas Republican Joe Barton shows he only cares about the oil industry.

“I’m ashamed of what happened in the White House,” Barton said today as a House Energy Committee panel began a hearing on BP’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The Obama administration called Barton’s comments “shameful.”

The London-based oil company agreed yesterday to Obama’s request to establish a fund to pay damages from the spill, and to temporarily suspend dividends as Gulf residents and businesses begin filing claims. BP said it will commit $20 billion to the fund.

Source:  Bloomberg:  BP's Spill Fund a $20 Billion Shakedown, Rep. Barton Says

Tony Hayward's appearance before Congress is just another expensive governmental "go-through-the-motions" sham.  I still maintain that the oil industry as a whole should be regulated like any other public utility.

Related articles:

• Rachel Maddow Blasts BP COO Doug Suttles: 'Not Even Remotely Believable' Answers In Interview (VIDEO) (huffingtonpost.com)
• BP Destroying Evidence at the Scene of the Crime - Why the Hell are They Still in Charge? (videocafe.crooksandliars.com)
• No BP Dividend; Feinberg to Oversee $20B Spill Claim Fund (themoderatevoice.com)
• BP chairman apologizes for Gulf oil spill (sfgate.com)

On one of my flights today I noticed a heavyset man in the row in front of me reading some religious magazine.  I caught the title of one of the articles and almost threw up.  I forget exactly how it was worded, but it basically was about how much more religious persecution could the church take in these last days.

My god!  The very people who persecute other people whining about their little fantasy persecution complex.  I was disgusted.  I remember this same language when I was being brought up in the extremist religious right:  how God was blessing us every time we were persecuted for our faith.

The problem was, only the most mentally unstable among us would believe that religious people in Pensacola, one of the most religious and extremely conservative cities in the nation, were being persecuted!  By who?  By what?!  But oh, the yoke of persecution was just so hard to bear.

Nutcases!

Then, to explicitly bring my point into the sharpest possible focus, the title of the next article was:  Same Sex:  Different Marriage!  I've blogged before about this perverse mingling of church and state with religion owning a civil right over which government should be a guardian and protector.  If religion wants to have it's own holy sacrament above and beyond the civil right to all of the benefits and accommodations of legal marriage, fine.  Knock yourself out.  Call it something else.  Make it your own.  You can even deny people your holy sacrament if they aren't willing members of your little religious club.  You've got that right!  But don't deny people civil rights!  That's evil.

I wanted so badly to say to this man:  Over Weight:  Different Marriage.  (Both he and his wife were exceedingly so.)  You see, even if these extremists were correct, and I personally don't believe they are, and being gay were a choice, certainly they must admit that being overweight is a choice.  And, in the church in which I was raised, it was called a "sin!"  You were defiling the temple of god — your body, because of your own selfish, hedonistic, gluttonous ways.

So, why shouldn't we vote on fat people's right to marry?  Why shouldn't fat people be denied the right to marry?  The research indicates they have children who also grow up to be fat.  See, they are recruiting, just like the wacky religious extremists insist the gays are.

Isn't it all just ridiculous and absurd?!!!!!! There is just no difference!  I don't know:  Maybe some gay people choose to be gay.  Maybe some fat people choose to be fat.  Maybe some gay people are born to be gay.  Maybe some fat people are born to be fat.  The point is people should have the legal right to marry the person they love when the other person is of age and consents because they love them back.

You probably find my calling this man and his wife "fat" offensive and disrespectful.  Good!  You should.  Just as you should find calling a person a fag just as offensive and disrespectful.  But one is condoned in this culture and the other not.  Oh, the difference a single letter makes!

My god, sometimes I think we live in the weirdest world filled with people trying with incredible meanness to impose their will on others!  Enough already!

"I don't think I'm overstating the case by saying this is America's Chernobyl." —Louie Miller, Mississippi state director, Sierra Club, at a news conference on May 1, 2010, in Gulfport, Mississippi.

Not overstating it?  Indeed!

But, unless you live on the Gulf Coast, as does my extended family, unless you know people who will lose everything because their livelihood. in fact, the economy of the whole regions already deeply depressed by the aftermath of Katrina, is completely dependent on the health of the Gulf of Mexico, this is just a minor little setback in the United State's intoxicated love affair with oil consumption and war above all else.

God forbid we should have policy that takes care of people and the environment in which we live!  That ain't Amurrrrican!  That ain't for the real Amurrrrica.

1. The extremist right wing nut jobs are blaming this on Obama?!  (Now who was it that said, "Drill baby, drill!"????)
2. BP assured everyone this would never happen, but if it did, they had plans to immediately correct it.  Now they admit to being clueless about what to do as this well pumps tons of oil into the Gulf every day!
3. If this disaster doesn't rewrite America's policy on off shore drilling, we are a hopeless and disgusting lot.
4. Record oil profits.  Record oil profits.  Record oil profits.  What do we do now?
5. This is yet another catastrophic result of a nation's government owned by corporate greed.

I mourn the death of the pristine beauty of the Gulf Coast on which I grew up:  the sugar white sands, the beaches littered with sea shells and crabs, the clearest water in the world in which you could watch little seahorses and starfish swim, dolphins play, and routinely see huge sea turtles and giant manta rays swimming in the wild.

Gone, now.  Probably forever so bubbah can drive his Hummer and Ms. Thing can sip her bottled water shipped all the way from Fiji.  Am I angry?  You're damned right I am!  Where's the righteous indignation over taking care of people and the beauty of God's creation?!  Instead, we just want to kick some terrorist butt so we can guzzle some more oil.

And where is Dick Cheney today?  Talking to King Abdullah in Saudi Arabia?  Trying to line his purse with more oil money no doubt?  Now isn't he just the clever one.  Dick never misses an opportunity!

Our reckless, live-for-the-moment, greedy, consumptive lifestyle in this nation will inevitably kill us all.  But what matters most is that some people will get very wealthy in the process.

Related articles:

• Sierra Club Director Calls Oil Spill America's Chernobyl (shoppingblog.com)
• BP Rests Oil Clean-Up Hopes On New System (news.sky.com)
• Watch-and-wait game continues for Gulf Coast residents (cnn.com)
• Some Still Call for Drilling as Oil Approaches Gulf Coast (redstateprogressive.com)
• Bob Ostertag: The New York Times, Astroturf, and the Gulf of Mexico (huffingtonpost.com)
• "BP Says It Will Pay Oil Spill Cleanup Costs" and related posts (newsone.com)
• Images: Massive oil spill imperils Gulf Coast (news.cnet.com)
• GULF COAST OIL SPILL: Wildlife, fishing could be destroyed (economy4abc.blogspot.com)
• 10 Things You Can Do to Help the Gulf Coast Clean the Oil Spill (usnews.com)
• Senator: 'BP says it'll pay for this mess. Baloney.' (cnn.com)
• Another Week at Least of Unabated Gulf Oil Geyser (abcnews.go.com)

I have rattled the notion of privacy, primarily the loss of privacy in 21st Century America, around in the back of my mind for some time since the advent of the Internet, the horror of 9/11, and the explosive growth of the pervasive surveillance technology that has silently and often invisibly crept into our lives.

I have grown increasingly concerned that we as individual citizens have perhaps already lost our privacy without even being aware of it. I suspect that many of our youth are growing up with a default "nothing about me is really private" attitude. I'm even aware of one young man who has chosen to have all of the financial transactions he makes on a particular credit card public on his blog the moment he swipes his credit card: what he purchased, where, and for how much—a lifestream of all of his purchases.

New advertising technology watches the casual passerby to see what parts of advertisements catch attention and what do not. Marketing researchers use total store surveillance to study what customers look at, touch, where they go in the store, and correlate that to what they buy. Facial recognition technology is already astoundingly powerful. The typical American living in a major city is photographed over 300 times every day. Google tracks Internet searches. Our cell phone carrier tracks our call patterns.

Where does this information go? Many are shocked to learn that some network security providers for our public schools, these are the people that are supposed to keep our children safe from inappropriate content, actually track every IM, every email, every Internet search, every keystroke, and then sell that information about what students are doing online in school. Apple stated that the Google Voice Over IP app it rejected for the iPhone would upload the iPhone's entire address book to the Google servers without the user ever even knowing it happened. What else is going on with our data about which we have no idea at all?

I won't even talk about the cleverly-marketed-by-its-very-name "Patriot Act" and the unprecedented level of access to information it affords the government to any and everything about you and me. I'm not trying to be the pervader of fear. These, and many other, thoughts and questions lead me to think about:

1. What information about me is none of your damned business?
2. What information about me is none of the government's business?
3. What should I be able to expect to be private in the 21st century in the United States?  (Anything at all?)
4. Who should be able to decide what information about me is private and what can be shared and with whom and why?
5. Who should receive money for information about me and how is that appropriate?  If information is power, what are they really buying?

I give some careful thought about what I share and what I choose not to share on this blog.  But do I currently share too much?  My mother would probably say so.  What other information about me is aggregated without my knowledge or consent?  How many times have I been forced to click "I Agree" to terms of service I neither read nor would have understood if I had.  How cheaply am I giving away my privacy?  What will be the long term ramifications of these seemingly meaningless clicks?

I suspect we will wake up one day in a tyrannical state and wonder how the hell we ever get there.

I highly recommend your taking the time to watch this thought-provoking video, Choose Privacy, made by the American Library Association.  They raise some critical questions that need to be part of a national conversation about privacy.

Are we mindlessly creating a future in which we may well not wish to live?!

Related articles:

• Smart retail strategy or invasion of privacy?; Privacy advocates are troubled by research conducted via video camera (bendbulletin.com)
• What it means to 'Not believe in privacy' (trueslant.com)
• Habits and Identities Revealed via Coupons - Facebook Fan Pages Can Make User ID Visible - Shopping Algorithms Reduce Privacy And Increase Visibility (ducknetweb.blogspot.com)

I'm confident that no one could have imagined an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.  I mean, we've never had such a thing before.  The existence of entire ecosystems have never been threatened before.  People's livelihoods have never before been decimated by an oil spill, say:  in Alaska.  How could anyone have anticipated such a thing?

Besides, we have a Chevron oil refinery right here directly on the Pacific Ocean with giant oil tankers anchored out in the bay all the time.  And just look how pristine our bay area is!  Why, I only had to spend 3 hours this morning getting some oily tar mass off of the shoes I wore last week as I walked along the surf crashing along the shell-free beaches.

As Sarah Palin so eloquently put it in just good ole, real Amurrrican English that everyone can understand:  "Drill baby, drill!"

The photo above was taken after spending about an hour scraping the oily tar gunk off using a knife.  Then I went to Home Depot and purchased some toxic chemicals designed to vaporize all living things.  After another couple of hours scrubbing the shoes, 5 plastic gloves, 2 sponges, and countless paper towels, the shoes are mostly clean.  (The rubber soles will probably be eaten off during the night by the residual chemicals.)  Pictured below is the sink after the cleaning was completed.

Yes indeed, "Drill baby, drill!"  Sarah is just so smart.  And unfettered capitalism is just so good.  I'm just feeling so patriotic today.  Praise the lord!

Related articles:

If you ask me, and because you've visited my blog–you have, Sarah Palin is nothing more than a cheesy opportunist. She quits public service because she can make money, lots of it. Well, the people of Alaska are probably better off. Now Sarah plays the role of the court jester on the national stage, and she's getting rich doing it. I don't begrudge her the money. I do disdain her hypocrisy and outright lying.

(CNN) -- First-class commercial air travel for two or a private jet -- "must be a Lear 60 or larger" -- from Alaska to California and back. A deluxe hotel suite "registered under an alias." And two unopened bottles of still water with "bendable straws."

That's what former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin wanted from a California state college foundation as part of her speaking agreement, according to a draft of a confidential contract allegedly lifted from a Dumpster by two students.

Source: CNN

Yesterday she was babbling on about the Obama deficits. Idiot. George W. Bush created these! George W. Bush spent the $1 trillion dollars on the completely unjustified wars based on his lies and deciet. George W. Bush turned a budget surplus into a global financial crisis.

I was just in Canada. They marvel at our financial mess. They are stupified about what we wasted the money on that put us into this financial mess—war! They just don't understand why we supposedly think their national healthcare plan is such a mess. Admitting it isn't perfect, they are proud of the fact that they spend their tax dollars helping people and not killing them.

Sarah needs to shut up and go away. She's like the nation's roach—always showing up when you never want to see her again.

I never cease to be amazed at how powerful fear is. Today, going through security from Canada to the US was the most astoundingly absurd security process I've ever experienced. It took an entire hour just for security, not including immigration.

Each individual person went through the metal detector. But why? They were going to screen each individual person with a handheld metal detector wand anyway? They checked each person's boarding pass a total of three times. Why? Are their inspectors that incompetent?

Then, after the wand detector was waved over every part of each person's body, they had each person empty all pockets, be patted down over every part of your body, pulled around on your pants at your belt buckle and your shirt collar, and then everything that was in your pockets was inspected piece by piece in detail--looking at every single page of my passport, for example.

They had females working with women and males working with men. Each worker did nothing until all of the workers working on that side, man or woman, had finished inspecting the person in the que. This was without doubt the slowest and most dysfunctional screening process I've ever experienced in my life. The number of TSA workers was huge, and most of the time they were just standing there waiting for the one person being inspected to go through the line before they did their small part of the inspection process for the next person.

And here's what made me madder that hell itself: they did this to all of the children in the security line as well. These kids today do not know a world of travel and exploration without fear and invasive scrutiny that treats decent human beings as if they are all terror suspects. This is despicable!

In just a few more years people will have completely forgotten what living in a free society really is. It has been redefined by fear. It has been repurposed by governments wanting to control their masses. If we must live our lives this way, at least we should call it what it is: tyranny. The bad guy won. They will always defeat the tyranny of our ever increasingly invasive security measures that have killed freedom of travel, probably forever.

And we tolerate this as if this is how life should be in a "free" society. If I could never travel again, I would stop today.

-- Posted From My iPad

Location:Los Angeles,United States

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Cost and value. Value and cost. The "deal" is some magical balance between cost and value.

Let me see. The Iraq war cost us $712,616,300,000 as I typed this sentence and has already gone above that—way above that in normal people budgets. The Afghanistan war cost us $260,099,900,000 as I typed this sentence and has already gone above that—again, way above that. So the total cost of these two wars is nearly one trillion dollars, which looks like this: $1,000,000,000,000.00.

So, was it a good value? Did we get our money's worth?

Well, I don't know what we really bought for all of that insane amount of money except a HUGE national debt.

What would we buy for the reported $940,000,000,000.00 health care plan in congress right now? Well, millions more Americans, not all, sad to say, would get some health coverage. The insurance industry will probably make a killing. Maybe thousands of Americans lives will be saved or they will live in better health or less pain.

So is it a good value? Well, at least I have some sense that we are buying something that will help people and not kill them. At least I have some sense that this money will aid people in living healthier lives and not maim people for the rest of their lives. At least I have some sense that I am purchasing something for my tax dollars that I believe has a moral value.

Spending a trillion dollars to learn that Saddam never had any weapons of mass destruction was a complete waste of money. Spending about the same amount to give our own citizens a higher quality of life isn't.

Why did we ever destroy the national trust on these two meaningless wars? Why is killing people more important to our government that helping our own citizens?

The extreme, religious right-wing conservatives have won yet another significant victory in their efforts to force their world view down the throats of unsuspecting Americans. I personally don't care what they choose to believe. But I take HUGE issue with their feverish evangelical approach to forcing everyone else in the nation live by their narrow belief system. In fact, I resent the hell out of anyone, right or left, forcing their beliefs on me, let alone forcing them on unsuspecting children to whom they didn't give birth!

Knowing they could never pull this off in California, the conservative movement targeted Texas, the state that gave the nation George W. Bush. In a 10 - 5 vote along party lines, the Texas Board of Education voted to approve the following conservative tenets being taught in their state's Social Studies curriculum and supported by the state-adopted textbooks:

• stress the superiority of American capitalism
• question the founding fathers commitment to a purely secular government
• present Republican political ideologies in a more positive light

Make no mistake, this is a carefully planned, well executed strategy by the ultra conservative think tanks. They have turned their initial claims of their own personal religious persecution into the wholesale religious persecution of the entire nation.  The end result will be religious tyranny, a return to the middle ages.

This decision in Texas has enormous ramifications for the entire nation—hence why it was targeted. The school textbook industry sells more textbooks in California, but too many people here have diverse thinking. But Texas is ripe for the picking. The good people of Texas think conservatively—very, ultra conservatively. Texas has the second largest textbook purchasing power in the nation. This is significant.

Now, the textbook industry will rewrite the Social Studies textbooks so they can sell them in Texas. This means the remainder of the nation will be forced to buy the drivel with which the ultra conservatives want their children in Texas indoctrinated. Mark my words:  This is a political victory of the highest order with long term ramifications of the most serious kind.

The extreme right-wing conservative think tanks have taken the minds of many unsuspecting Americans with their ownership of FOX so-called "news."  They have taken ownership of the conservative Republican party of which I was once a part. They have manipulated to control the highest court in the land. Now they are seeking the minds of the nation's children.  This is serious!  My country is actually under assault!

These extremists have quietly and patiently executed their strategy well under the banner of traditional values, heritage, and the homeland for decades.  The only way I think Americans can fight this momentous trend to force the nation to live by a narrowly-defined, prescriptive set of religious values that divest diversity, deep thinking, critical analysis, social justice, economic opportunity for all, open mindedness, tolerance, freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of faith practice, et. al., is to support countervailing strategies that are just as well planned and executed.  As I've said, people who have divergent opinions and thoughts are the carefully selected target.

And as I've said before, I've become increasingly disgusted with what my nation is rapidly becoming, where the will of the few is increasingly being inflicted on the many in wealth aggregation, religious practice, legal policy, and now school curriculum. The extremist conservatives are well funded and organized at the grassroots level. It's time to stand up to them in an equally well funded grass roots effort.  The problem:  unlike the radical conservative thinkers of their movement who can manipulate their masses with a highly defined, carefully crafted agenda of fear, open minded people who think critically lack a central focus around which to organize.

We have lacked a motivating rallying cry around which to centralize our efforts.  Let this be it:  preserving our true American heritage from those extremist conservatives who are rapidly redefining it and marginalizing everyone who thinks differently from them!

Where are all of the libertarians that want the freedom to live their lives as they personally define the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness?!

Tim is so not happy!

Related articles

• Texas Textbook MASSACRE: 'Ultraconservatives' Approve Radical Changes To State Education Curriculum (huffingtonpost.com)
• Texas Approves Conservative Curriculum (politics.slashdot.org)
• Texas conservatives rewrite history | Richard Adams (guardian.co.uk)
• Texas Becomes Laughingstock Once Again: State Board of Ed Determines History Is a Liberal Conspiracy (schoolsmatter.info)
• Texas Conservatives Win Vote on Textbook Standards (nytimes.com)
• Texas ed board adopts social studies standards (sfgate.com)

I've never been much of a coffee drinker.  I don't like the aftertaste.  However, I love the smell of coffee.  I'll go to Starbucks and order an Earl Grey Tazo Tea just to savor the smell of the coffee while drinking my tea!  I'm crazy, I know.

But, after reading this CNN article, I will no longer give my business to Starbucks.  I don't know if California is one of the 43 states that allow people to tote guns around with them.  But the last thing I want is to be in a Starbucks, which allows their patrons to bring their guns into their stores if state law permits it, with patrons drinking their new 31 ounce coffee!

Now some hair-trigger, gun-toting, chip-on-his-shoulder nitwit with the caffein jitters can pretend he's back in the wild, wild west when he gets in an argument with the barista over the temperature of his grande mocha latte.  No thanks.

If people feel the need to have guns in their homes to protect them, that's their business.  If people feel the need to have guns for the sport of hunting, that's their business.  But I've worked with the public too long to trust most people's spur of the moment judgement.  Put a gun in their hands at the Starbucks?! No, I won't be around to see how this turns out.

Starbucks, you just lost a customer.

Good grief!

[Image via Wikipedia]

Government of the corporations, by the corporations, and for the corporations. Today the Supreme Court (5-4) just handed the Republicans (and a lot of Democrats too) a huge bonus: unfettered access to corporate funding, effectively making a broken political system completely unaccountable the to will of the people.

The legacy of George W. Bush lives on to feast on the soul of democracy for profit.

At least Larry Lessig has a more reasoned view. Me, I'm just disgusted.

I've actually been thinking more and more about leaving the US. I mean: for good. I find myself so disillusioned with what is happening in my native land.

My country forces education reform that is destroying creativity, problem solving, deep thinking, and analysis of knowledge to inform carefully considered long term solution-making for the immediacy of factionalized curriculum memorization. My country will not move beyond prejudice and discrimination. My country is squandering our national (as well as international) resources. My country is flinging privacy and personal freedom as fast as it escalates fear. My country cares more about greed, money, and possessing things than it does about people and their basic wellbeing. My country is removing the separation of church and state and forcing people to live by tenets of religion in which they may not personally believe. My country allows business, built on greed and outsourcing, to become so large they can not fail and must receive tax payer's money to keep the executes rolling in fat bonuses with shameless abandon. My nation's government is bought and sold by transglobal corporations and makes divisiveness its core ethic.

I can do little of nothing to stop or change any of this.

I wonder if this is a natural part of getting older--seeing the world through more jaded eyes. But I see other nations, not without their faults to be sure, at least maintaining some more moderate and productive sense of balance. I just think the US government is fundamentally broken and inept.

I shared last night at dinner that I actually don't think the US will be able to move to a better place within my lifetime. This saddens me greatly.

I've supported Lawrence Lessig's work for some time. I've had his "Change Congress" link on my site for some time. In this video he sums up things, and, unlike my dismal state of disillusion, offers a ray of hope. He doesn't frame the problem as conservative versus liberal or Republican versus Democrat. He is insightful and brilliant.

This causes me grave concerns! Once again I ask, "How much of our privacy and freedom are we willing to surrender?!"

I've kept asking where the ridiculous amount of money I pay in taxes is going. And then we can't balance local, state, and federal budgets?! Is it because those agencies are spending vast sums of money on tools such as these that are never approved by the voters. In fact, it is obvious from this newscast that the police department never wanted voters to know anything about this!

How can this be happening? Government is increasingly becoming less accountable to the people it is to serve.

The title, from the question at the end of the quoted material below, is a sickening wake up call we need to all feel in our national collective stomach. We are flushing our civil liberties down the toilet for an invisible threat that some are speculating was killed several years ago.

You know those airport scanners that can see through your clothes, offering an intimate look at your junk and your love handles and every other part of you that you keep between you, your spouse, your doctor and the bathroom mirror? You know how the TSA swore up and down that these machines didn't store and couldn't transmit the compromising photos of your buck-naked self?

They lied.

The documents, which include technical specifications and vendor contracts, indicate that the TSA requires vendors to provide equipment that can store and send images of screened passengers when in testing mode, according to CNN.

The TSA has stated publicly on its website, in videos and in statements to the press that images cannot be stored on the machines and that images are deleted from the scanners once an airport operator has examined them. The administration has also insisted that the machines are incapable of sending images. Source: Airport Scanners Can Store, Transmit Images via: Digg

Just more US government employees doing Al Qaeda's business: undermining the quality of life in the "free" world. Osama's still free, how about you?"

[Source: TSA lied: naked-scanners can store and transmit images.]

For me, this case has always been about civil rights. It harkens back to the civil rights era and to women's suffrage. No majority vote should ever be allowed to remove civil rights for non-criminal conduct. Whatever the outcome, this case could be of a similar magnitude to Brown vs. Board of Education and will probably be appealed by either party all the way to the US Supreme Court.

Sponsors of California's gay marriage ban want a delay in the trial over its constitutionality so they can appeal a judge's decision to allow videotaped testimony on YouTube.

The trial is scheduled to start Monday.

Earlier this week, U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker decided to allow daily video recordings of the trial on YouTube, a first for a federal courtroom in the West."

[Source: Gay marriage foes want delay in Calif. trial to appeal allowing video testimony on YouTube - latimes.com.]

U.S. District Court Chief Judge Vaughn Walker, a Republican named to the bench in 1989 by the first President Bush. Walker, who has a reputation as an independent thinker, was randomly assigned the lawsuit will preside over the case. He has gone on record for admonishing Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger for remaining neutral "on an issue of this magnitude and importance."

Over vigorous objections by supporters of Prop 8, the judge is allowing the case to be placed on YouTube, another thing I find interesting. I have always thought democracy functions well only when it is public.