Day: May 25, 2008

Labor Dogs McCain

This is an article from the People’s Weekly World:

Wherever John McCain goes, despite efforts to keep his schedule under wraps, labor is there letting everyone know that his election would be a third term for President Bush.

On May 19, the Republican presidential candidate slipped into Chicago where he spoke to a gathering of the National Restaurant Association. On 24 hours notice leading activists from seven different AFL-CIO and Change to Win unions showed up. They urged people coming into the event at the city’s McCormick Place to ask McCain why he didn’t support health care for restaurant workers and to ask him why he thought a 100 year war in Iraq was a good idea.

In St. Albans, W.Va. on May 17, also on very short notice, the West Virginia AFL-CIO organized a rally that drew 75 activists to a gun shop where McCain had stopped for a visit. Union members gathered outside the gun shop and demanded to know why he is proposing a health care plan that would create a new tax on working families and would end up with millions getting less coverage than they do now.

McCain operatives whisked him away from the site when they saw the trade unionists gathering. They took the candidate to an invitation-only meeting with local Republican leaders.

Avoiding union members on his tail is rapidly becoming an every-day task for the GOP candidate.

Only hours after he ducked the union crowd at the gun shop McCain attended the National Rifle Association convention in Louisville, Ky. He was confronted by more than 20 union volunteers who came out to tell people that McCain isn’t “on target” when it comes to solutions for health care and other economic issues. The Kentucky state AFL-CIO organized that event.

Pacific Is Becoming More Acidic

Waters along North America’s Pacific coast are becoming more acidic, posing a threat to marine life, federal scientists reported Friday — adding that while that fits global warming scenarios, no one had expected the acidification to happen so soon.

Acidification describes the process, natural or manmade, of ocean water becoming corrosive as a result of carbon dioxide being absorbed from the atmosphere.

The researchers said anthropogenic, or manmade, emissions of carbon dioxide are likely to blame since the acidified water that is being “upwelled” seasonally from the deeper ocean is from the last 50 years, a period when the burning of fossil fuels raised CO2 levels dramatically.Ocean acidification may be seriously impacting marine life on our continental shelf right now,” study co-author Richard Feely said in a statement released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which co-sponsored the study along with NASA and the National Science Foundation.

Feely, a NOAA oceanographer, noted that while the ability of oceans to absorb carbon dioxide helps mitigate warming, “the change in the ocean chemistry affects marine life, particularly organisms with calcium carbonate shells, such as corals, mussels, mollusks, and small creatures in the early stages of the food chain.”

NOAA echoed the experts’ findings. “Acidification of the Earth’s ocean water could have far-reaching impacts on the health of our near-shore environment, and on the sustainability of ecosystems that support human populations,” said NOAA assistant administrator Richard Spinrad.

Oh great!  Just the news we need and a president that thinks it is from cow farts.

Nader’s Serious Campaign

The Nation magazine will have a great article about Nader and his campaign in ’08.  Whether you hate hime or not, his issues are truly progressive, not some tame line to garner votes.

Ralph Nader is making every effort to be the most serious candidate for president this year, and he is succeeding despite the dismissals of the political class and the media that sustains it.

The notion that Nader is serious runs against the narrative that has developed in regard to the pioneering consumer activist who in recent years has turned his attention toward presidential politics. Nader has not run enough time for president to be treated with the respect that was accorded Norman Thomas, the Socialist Party stalwart who after six runs for the nation’s top job was ultimately accorded a the respectful “elder-statesman” status that the political class bestows upon candidates who are seen as thoughtful but harmless.

Nader is thoughtful. But he does not choose to be harmless. And that leads to dismissals of his candidacy by journalists and political commentators who can’t stand the notion that America politics is something other than a narrow two-party duopoly.

For his trouble, Nader will be portrayed as unduly radical or, worse yet, out of touch with the political zeitgeist of a moment in which we are supposed to be talking about candidates and their pastors.

But Nader will still be heard by enough Americans — thanks to his current campaign’s dramatically more media-savvy approach than those of his 1996, 2000 and 2004 efforts as a Green and independent presidential contender.

A good many voters will find themselves to be more in tune with Nader’s Constitutional urgency than with the more cautious constructions of Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton or Republican John McCain. And, despite the dismissals of his candidacy by most of the media, a decent number of those voters appear to be considering casting a ballot for the independent candidate.

I suggest before one condemns Nader, go to his site and read what he is proposing…..if u be a progressive…then he is saying all the right things…and proposing the right solutions.

Clinton And Obama Struggle For Power

This is a piece written by Sheldon Richman for the Future Of Freedom Foundation is an interesting perspective on the process of the Democrat presidential candidates

Many Americans are spellbound by the historic contest for the Democratic presidential nomination between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Forgetting the political context, it is indeed something spectacular, even inspiring. A woman and a black man have reached a pinnacle that just a few years ago seemed impossibly far off.

If it were happening outside politics, it would be something to appreciate.

But we can’t forget the political context, and it’s the nature of that context that should keep us from truly rejoicing in Clinton’s and Obama’s achievements.

When we strip away from the process they are engaged in the democratic mythology and red, white, and blue bunting, we are left with the spectacle of two people vying for raw power. They say they want to lead and inspire. What they really want to do is rule — us.

This is a contest to determine who will decide how to spend a significant part of our incomes, who will make war or peace, and who will achieve his or her “vision” by manipulating us with carrots and sticks.

There was a time when the people saw a president as little more than a clerk. He saw that the laws passed by Congress were executed. Yes, he was commander in chief of the military, but that only meant he directed the army after Congress declared war. He certainly couldn’t take the country into war on his own. The express powers of the presidency described in the Constitution were seen as rather meager, and the people liked it that way.

Obviously, the idea of what a president should be has changed radically. How much so is the subject of Gene Healy’s new book, The Cult of the Presidency: America’s Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power (Cato Institute).

“The chief executive of the United States is no longer a mere constitutional officer charged with faithful execution of the laws,” Healy writes in a book excerpt reprinted in Reason.. “He is a soul nourisher, a hope giver, a living American talisman against hurricanes, terrorism, economic downturns, and spiritual malaise. He — or she — is the one who answers the phone at 3 a.m. to keep our children safe from harm. The modern president is America’s shrink, a social worker, our very own national talk show host. He’s also the Supreme Warlord of the Earth.”

Lots of presidents have encouraged this way of thinking of the office, especially Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin Roosevelt. But every man who held the office in the second half of the 20th century has done so. Maybe they thought it was necessary for the good for the country. If so, it shows only how little they understand the individual and social benefits of freedom and the free market. Some would say that society today is too complex for Jeffersonian notions about freedom. On the contrary, the more complex society is, the more it needs government to stay out of its way.

More likely, those who have worked to inflate the office were driven by pure ambition. They were determined to make their mark on history, and the hell with our freedom.

George W. Bush has taken this up a notch with his Unitary Executive Theory, under which he may on his own invade and occupy countries, ignore congressional restrictions on his power, wiretap without a warrant, authorize CIA torture, send suspected terrorists to other countries to be tortured, and hold the people he declares “enemy combatants” indefinitely without trial.

The presidency now is an office with virtually open-ended powers. All the officeholder needs is a crisis to justify new authority, and there’s never been a shortage of crises, whether economic or foreign in nature.

This is the backdrop to the historic power struggle between Clinton and Obama. Neither has condemned the blank-check presidency as a threat to the American people. Neither has pledged to forswear autocratic powers. On the contrary, both have indicated that they will be activist presidents on the domestic and foreign fronts. So has John McCain.

As the great political philosopher Peter Townshend said, “Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.”

Weekly News UpDate

The most worthless news anywhere on the cable news…or anywhere point! In the last week these stories have made up a significant part of the broadcasts…..why?

1–More bus, auto and plane crashes

2–Wild fires in Florida

3–Town in Vermont will no longer allow nudity…Brattleboro…I believe

4–Drag queen robs a New Orleans Burger King

5–Washington coffee shop uses women in bikinis or less to serve the java—-(my planes leaves at 0835 hrs.)

6–Guess what more fires in California

7–More really sh*tty weather across mid part of country

Ya happy? That is all the news you could never use….peace…..out!

New Survivalism?

We had a war with communism that scared a few, then there was the Y2K thing and now some are seeing the end approaching because of the energy crisis that is possibly approaching.

Convinced the planet’s oil supply is dwindling and the world’s economies are heading for a crash, some people around the country are moving onto homesteads, learning to live off their land, conserving fuel and, in some cases, stocking up on guns they expect to use to defend themselves and their supplies from desperate crowds of people who didn’t prepare.

The exact number of people taking such steps is impossible to determine, but anecdotal evidence suggests that the movement has been gaining momentum in the last few years.

These energy survivalists are not leading some sort of green revolution meant to save the planet. Many of them believe it is too late for that, seeing signs in soaring fuel and food prices and a faltering U.S. economy, and are largely focused on saving themselves.

Some are doing it quietly, giving few details of their preparations — afraid that revealing such information as the location of their supplies will endanger themselves and their loved ones. They envision a future in which the nation’s cities will be filled with hungry, desperate refugees forced to go looking for food, shelter and water.

These survivalists believe in “peak oil,” the idea that world oil production is set to hit a high point and then decline. Scientists who support idea say the amount of oil produced in the world each year has already or will soon begin a downward slide, even amid increased demand. But many scientists say such a scenario will be avoided as other sources of energy come in to fill the void.

So it may be time hoard your MREs left over from the last natural disaster.

Clinton Has Trouble

The news is all about her desperate continuation of he campaign for the Dem nomination, but there is afew things that most are not looking at right now. I realize that the possible run for the presidency is really important, but since does not look like she is gonna make it, some of the problems she will have if she tries to return to the Senate.

Even as she continues her longshot presidential bid, Hillary Rodham Clinton faces a political rift in New York, where black leaders say her standing has dropped due to racially charged comments by her and her husband during the campaign.

African American elected officials and clerics based in New York City say Clinton will need to defuse resentment over the campaign’s racial overtones if she returns to New York as U.S. senator.

As the campaign unfolded, both Clintons made comments that some black leaders deemed dismissive of Obama. There was Bill Clinton’s suggestion that Obama’s victory in South Carolina carried no more weight than Jesse Jackson’s success there in the 1980s. Other sore points were Hillary Clinton’s claim that she enjoys the support of “hard-working Americans, white Americans” and the credit she gave to President Lyndon Johnson — rather than the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. — on civil rights legislation.

African American leaders said she could repair frayed ties by visiting black churches, backing legislation that shows she is sensitive to conditions in black neighborhoods, and apologizing for comments she and her husband made that seemed to polarize voters and marginalize Obama.

Both she and her hubby may have some serious work to do after the convention and her only hope of not having to face black leaders is to be the Veep candidate…that could be her only saving grace.