Enough!

A friend of mine recently told me that she was worried that Obama may be "another Carter", which is better than the more recent McGovern nonsense that's being spread now. I don't really know what she meant by it. My first thought was Obama is certainly not the pacifist President Carter is, nor is he a southern baptist peanut farmer from the south. There is, however, a comparison that does seem analogous. When President Carter ran for a second term in 1980, he had a challenger that fought him all the way to the convention, Ted Kennedy. Senator Kennedy was down and just about out mathematically when... he won Pennsylvania. He still didn't have a real mathematical chance, but the race went on. Some say the divided bitter primary was a factor in Jimmy Carter's loss. Others say the State of the Union at the time, coupled with ronald raygun's "optimism" were insurmountable obstacles. So yeah, if Obama is Carter circa 1980 then Clinton is Kennedy, except for one thing. The deck was stacked, the establishment lined up, and the clear front runner/"imminent" nominee was not Obama, as was the case with then incumbent President Carter. This time around it was Senator Clinton.

Candidate Clinton has run as change, while allowing people to believe it'll be Bill Clinton's third term. And we all remember how good it was back then, right? She was supposed to be unstoppable, with her coronation taking place on Super Tuesday. But an, in Hillary's vernacular, "inexperienced" Junior Senator from Illinois is not only giving her a run for her money, but is beating her. She still claims that she would have an easier time with, the candidate that stands up for full disclosure and campaign finance reform as he breaks campaign finance laws and withholds the tax returns of the woman who's family Fortune he married into, media darling Grandpa McSame. If that's the case then why can't she beat this political novice from Lincoln's Home State (Please note the 16th President's experience in National Politics prior to election)

The Junior Senator from New York has every right to run and continue to run for President, as does any American. She does not have to leave the race because mathematically it's almost impossible for her to win (See Ralph Nader). Her campaign's recent spin to quiet their growing math problem was truly something to behold. Her campaign made the following statement the day after the Pennsylvania primary. "More people have voted for Hillary than any other candidate". Why is this so misleading, because it counts Florida whose delegates were discounted because they did not abide by the DNC's path to hillary's victory. Because it counted Michigan, who's delegates were discounted for the same reason and didn't even have Barack on the ballot. And finally, the piece de resistance, they didn't count the caucuses at all. The Clinton Campaign is being dishonest. Maybe that's why Hillary's Campaign manager and former DNC Chairman terry mccauliffe is in this ad for fox news. Don't get me started on the republicans for hillary. They may be there for the primaries, but to be sure they won't be in the general.

All that being said, the primaries are going to go on at least until June, despite the fact that Clinton's "Great Victory" (by just shy of 10%) in PA only netted her 10 of the 160+ delegates she needed to catch Barack and 200,000+ of the 700,000+ votes she needed in the popular vote. Even loud mouth matthews is starting to realize that the media is keeping this horse race alive. He, of course, isn't a media outlet that has "jumped ship on obama". In the Hope that my head doesn't explode prematurely and I don't turn into the very thing that makes me so nauseous when it comes to Hillary Clinton's campaign since Feb. 5th, I'm gonna try my damnedest to make this my last anti-Clinton/Democratic Primary blog.

Candidate mccain will be the target of my bile (I mean blog) from here on out. Perhaps a rant about mchypocrite's "honored to have his endorsement" pastor hagee, who thinks god damned America with Katrina, because of gay pride and that Catholicism is "the great whore". Maybe one about the flip flops of the hundred year old candidate between his campaign in 1999, when rover was out telling South Carolina that mcold fathered an illegitimate child of color, and Campaign 2008, where he panders as much as he can to those he once called "the agents of tolerance". But I'll save some of those guns for later.

There are some other NEWS stories out there to shake my fists at the air about. The Pentagon's propaganda machine has officially infiltrated almost all of the Mainstream Media. US contracted ships fired eleven "warning shots" at Iranian boats causing oil to jump $3. There's the admitted criminal activities of both the FBI and the CIA, some of which are ongoing. Foreclosures are Still on the rise. Rice and food rationing are causing riots around the world. A recent verdict in New York shows once again we are a "shoot first, and ask questions later" Nation, as long as you're a cop. For the rest of Us it's "guilty until proven innocent". There are some fun stories out there too, like bush's disapproval rating is the highest in Gallup history or the new images of colliding galaxies shot by the Hubble telescope.

And in bushco.'s war on a noun/tactic news... Our man in Afghanistan, President Karzai, escaped a "well-coordinated assasination attempt" at the Afghan National Day Military Parade. Afghanistan is the country george conquered before moving Our forces to Iraq. And, of course, there's THE WAR IN IRAQ. The war candidate mcthird term of bush is still all for, and said would be easy.

Earth Day, Every Day!

Green is the new black. It's hip to go hybrid. As Brad, Leo, and Ed Begley Jr. go, so goes a Nation. A Nation that up until about 8 years ago was on the forefront of the Environmental movement. A movement that started some 38 years ago. An important idea has come out of this resurgence/evolution of the environmental movement. The idea that the little things you do matter. If everyone decided to act, buy, and use with conscience, the "environment" (and the people in it) would be better off. Environmental options, products, and solutions are more abundant and easily accessed than ever before. There are even green options for you naughty adults "out there".

Switching your light bulbs to compact fluorescents, unplugging your chargers (or anything that has a little light on when it's "off"), wearing a sweater (instead of turning up the heat) and taking showers together all help reduce our consumption of energy, and the resources that give us that energy (i.e. oil, natural gas, coal and the small percentage that comes from "alternatives"). And to those who complain of the "horrible" light given off by Compact Fluorescent bulbs, I say buy a lampshade (and not a plastic one).

Buying items with less packaging and/or plastic, and bringing your own grocery bag to the supermarket reduces the amount of waste we create, as well as the amount of resources needed to make that packaging or those little plastic and paper bags. Aside from the nutritional benefits from cooking, or "processing", your own food, the more non-processed foods you buy, the less energy is used to process them. It also takes far less energy and resources to grow and harvest fruits and vegetables than it does to raise and harvest meat. I try to have one vegetarian day a week.

I don't do these things because Al Gore told me to. I do them because they save me money. I don't do them, because it's what a hippy is supposed to do. I do them, because Our reliance on foreign sources of energy is dangerous and deadly. I don't do what I do, because it's Earth Day or Earth Week. I do it to do my part as one of many human beings on a planet covered with life, so generations of humans will continue to have air to breathe, water to drink, and soil to farm.

I leave you with the Green Team. Happy Earth Week!

In the news (and in politics)

First, I guess we should get Campaign 2008 out of the way. "Third term of 28%" mccain has been out on, as John Stewart put it "an old man wants you to get on a bus so he can tell you stories about his life" tour. On the road, candidate mccain continues to make mistakes about his big, blue ribbon issue, the facts on the ground in Iraq. He continues to confuse the fact that Iraqi "law makers" called for the mahdi army's cease fire while they were meeting in Iran. It is understandable that most of the American public may not have the time, nor the inclination, to keep track of these kind of details, but He certainly should. The mccain "look how traditional my life has been" tour is a set up for his race against Senator Obama, though marrying into a billionaire beer distributing family may not be so "traditional". Maybe voting against Martin Luther King Day and standing by the Ariznona governor when he rescinded it was? For all his age and "experience", his confusion about the facts in Iraq, his "economics is not something I've understood as well as I should" confessions, and the flips his campaign has made since Campaign '99 are all very telling negatives.

In primary '08 news, The Clintons put out tax returns showing they earned more than $109,000,000 since President Clinton left office. I knew they were rich, but that's almost as much as some New York Yankees. Camp Clinton's head strategist mark penn resigned from the campaign. He didn't give any specific reasons. Maybe it was because of the recent surge in super delegates endorsing Obama. Or the fact that Senator Clinton's lead in the polls in PA is vanishing. The Obama campaign couldn't be reached for comment. They were out drinking Yuengling's, eatin' chili dogs, and joking about bowling.

And finally in important news that's blocked out by the Glow of Campaign 2008, Attorney General mukasey testified before Congress and said "And before 9/11, that's the call that we didn't know about. We knew that there has been a call from someplace that was known to be a safe house in Afghanistan and we knew that it came to the United States. We didn't know precisely where it went.". If he's not lying, this is a blunder of US intelligence that could have helped to stop the attacks of September 11th, while remaining within the laws as they stood at the time. In more disheartening news from Our government, two JUSTICE Department memos were released. One saying the Law doesn't matter when it comes to the torture and inhumane treatment of US captives. The other a memo explaining why the Constitution does not matter, when it comes to the US government spying on US Citizens. When the founding fathers, with all their faults, created this Country, they understood that We are a Nation of Law, and not of Men. No man, king, nor president should be held superior to the Law in the United States of America. What kind of Country are we when we torture? What kind of Country do we become when we treat Our citizenry as subjects of Our leader's whim and perusal? I guess, sadly, you could call it bush/mccain country. Let's hope that savior Petraeus will tell Congress today of the wonderful world of rainbows Our success in Iraq has created and is building for Iraq's "liberated".