Is Obama our best hope?

Well, he's not the best but he's the best we have left. Why can't we find another Lincoln? Sure, Edwards and Kucinich both had very good things to say but now that the pack has thinned to 2+1, Obama is our best hope toward moving this country forward. He can speak to both corporations and individuals, conservatives and progressives, Muslims and Christians and atheists too. He has broad support across race, gender, and economic lines. He can lead -- he can inspire -- he can promote peace.

He's a little too "preachy" for me but here are a couple of quotes that show how well he can unite disparate groups, keeping a foot solidly in each camp ... and here are a couple of other useful links.

Moreover, given the increasing diversity of America's population, the dangers of sectarianism have never been greater. Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.

And even if we did have only Christians in our midst... which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is ok and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith?

Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God's will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.

Social Security for Dummies

I knew that Bush was stealing us blind and selling us all out to the highest bidder, but I thought that it would stop once he's out of office. Unfortunately, since he's been gutting our Social Security Trust Fund to the tune of HUNDREDS of BILLIONS of dollars, I guess we'll all be paying for this debacle for several generations!

More here.

Here Come More Toll Roads

Peters is the Bush administration's transportation secretary, and her main objective seems to be blocking any increase of public contributions to the public infrastructure. The main reason you are sitting in traffic, she believes, is not that the purchasing power of Highway Trust Fund revenue has been dwindling for the past decade, not that population and freight traffic have been soaring with no government response -- but that you are not being asked to pay enough to use the road you are on.

Apparently, the Bush Administration continues to gut the public interests by clinging to their ideology that privitization is the solution to everything. As the Post quote above shows, our public transportation is the next in line to be "Halliburtonized" or is it "Black Watered?" -- you know, since that's proven so successful so far!

To be fair, it has been successful at siphoning BILLIONS from public coffers and giving them to the wealthy elite who just happen to be the friends and family of our elected officials -- all without any bidding, oversight, or accountability. Hell, it's hard to imagine a worse way to run it.

How to fix the mess we're in.

We've experienced a leveraged buyout of the national economy.

Finally, someone offering well-reasoned analysis on how the economy got so bad and what we can do to fix it. Now if we could just get our politicians to listen -- too bad Edwards is out because he was our best hope (Kucinich was better still but scared too many folks). The middle class is getting fleeced and it's about time someone spoke up about it. The insightful Lou Dobbs also seems to have a good book about this very subject.

The subprime crisis, the housing bubble, whatever you want to call it, is not the problem. It's a symptom of pumping in money with no place to go. Other symptoms are no job growth, no business growth, no stock market growth, falling median incomes, disappearing pensions and health plans, and the fall of the dollar.

Are Colleges Becoming Too PC?

Fortunately, this public college is not representative of US colleges (yet, anyway) but still, THIS is coming from the president of an institution who purports to promote intellectual pursuits??

President Ryan is apparently blind to the fact that in America, and at public colleges like BCC, people enjoy freedom of speech and conscience, which means that they cannot be compelled to respect each other or to refrain from expressing their disrespect. Besides, it’s hard to imagine this code being enforced indiscriminately. Would students be punished for disrespecting the views of neo-Nazis, or even neo-conservatives who mock affirmative action?

If President Ryan actually believes what this code implies -- that students should be taught that all political ideologies, creeds and “lifestyle orientations” are equal, and demand equal respect – then his “vision” of higher education is stupefying. Students are supposed to be taught that all ideas are not equal; they’re supposed to learn how to judge the merits of different and conflicting ideas and how to back up their judgments with reason. Mindless respect for all points of view is not an element of critical thinking.

The biggest threat to America?

No, not the terrorists; they can only claim a few lives and this will never destroy our country -- it would just make us stronger. What could destroy the country? Well, giving up our ideals -- as this candidate is not only willing to do but actually advocating:

"I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution," Huckabee told a Michigan audience on Monday. "But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that's what we need to do -- to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view."

Who is more moral?

From NYT:
Which of the following people would you say is the most admirable: Mother Teresa, Bill Gates or Norman Borlaug? And which do you think is the least admirable? For most people, it’s an easy question. Mother Teresa, famous for ministering to the poor in Calcutta, has been beatified by the Vatican, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and ranked in an American poll as the most admired person of the 20th century. Bill Gates, infamous for giving us the Microsoft dancing paper clip and the blue screen of death, has been decapitated in effigy in “I Hate Gates” Web sites and hit with a pie in the face. As for Norman Borlaug . . . who the heck is Norman Borlaug? Yet a deeper look might lead you to rethink your answers. Borlaug, father of the “Green Revolution” that used agricultural science to reduce world hunger, has been credited with saving a billion lives, more than anyone else in history. Gates, in deciding what to do with his fortune, crunched the numbers and determined that he could alleviate the most misery by fighting everyday scourges in the developing world like malaria, diarrhea and parasites. Mother Teresa, for her part, extolled the virtue of suffering and ran her well-financed missions accordingly: their sick patrons were offered plenty of prayer but harsh conditions, few analgesics and dangerously primitive medical care.

IT MATTERS WHAT CANDIDATES THINK

While I do care about candidate pandering and worse, stupidity, in denying that they don't "believe in evolution," there's even a bigger issue at stake. Quick sidenote, however; I'm aghast that we have thousands of scientists with possibly billions of data points that ALL AGREE that evolution is not only possible but perhaps the only rational explanation of how life has reached its current stage of development -- but they don't "believe" it?? WTF!? I take it that they are instead choosing to believe something that they heard from their parents when they were a child that some special book interpreted metaphorically suggests that maybe life evolved some other way -- without any concrete supporting data points.

So this type of non-thinking is much more informative of the type of thinking that we can expect from our leaders -- and this is the crucial point, from this article at Reason.com:

A larger question is whether a candidate's belief about the validity of evolutionary biology has anything to say about his or her ability to evaluate evidence. A January 4, 2008, editorial by Science editor Donald Kennedy correctly argues, "The candidates should be asked hard questions about science policy, including questions about how those positions reflect belief. What is your view about stem cell research, and does it relate to a view of the time at which human life begins? Have you examined the scientific evidence regarding the age of Earth? Can the process of organic evolution lead to the production of new species, and how? Are you able to look at data on past climates in search of inferences about the future of climate change?" Kennedy concludes, "I don't need them to describe their faith; that's their business and not mine. But I do care about their scientific knowledge and how it will inform their leadership." Since science and technology policy issues are only going to become more important as the 21st century unfolds, we should all care how scientific knowledge informs a president's leadership.

How is this political choice?

We can choose from corporate Republicans or corporate Democrats, each beholden to their parties, their donors and the lobbyists. So who then is supposed to be beholden to the people?
Thanks.

France Best? US Worst? Unfortunately, yes.

And not just in cheese eating, but something much more important (and I love cheese!). According to a recent study, France, Japan and Australia rated best and the United States worst in new rankings focusing on preventable deaths due to treatable conditions in 19 leading industrialized nations. And ironically, we pay more!

Bush Must Go - by George McGovern

Why I Believe Bush Must Go
Nixon Was Bad. These Guys Are Worse
by George McGovern

A President, any President, who maintains that he is above the law — and repeatedly violates the law — thereby commits high crimes and misdemeanors.

Steal This Film

StealThisFilm2 has a great summary of how the flow and copying of information has developed through history. It's important that people understand that copyright is intended as a PUBLIC BENEFIT by providing LIMITED short-term rights to the author in order to encourage innovation. It's NOT intended to provide a perpetual mechanism for the few to make a profit by restricting these items from the public domain. Watch it.

This version is much better than the orginal Steal This Film, which covered the brief shutdown of PirateBay.

We need an attitude adjustment

Never forget, businesses exists to the extent that they benefit the public and what they are allowed to do is controlled by laws enacted by the public.

When it comes to governance the only voice we should listen to is that of individuals who want to suggest ways in which certain policies can help insure that business benefits the country. What is good for business is not always good for the country in spite of what Republicans and Corporate Democrats may say. We need to separate the what is good for the country from the what is good for the amoral often immoral best interests of a legal structure that defines how a business operates. Jon Edwards understands this, I'm not sure the others do. Many corporations are stealing what is good about the United States. They must be stopped.

Thanks 1gm.

Belief in Belief

A question that interests me very much (and always has) is this: I know that I do not believe in either any god or any religion, and I can give my reasons in a manner that the other side can at least understand, but can the same be said for those who claim that they do believe? A shorter way of putting this is to ask whether our antagonists in this ancient argument truly mean what they appear to say.

It's sad how many people jump to the conclusion that faith automatically elevates our morality, even when there are so many separate points of strong evidence to the contrary.

Rocky, Nader call on Demos to stop Clinton

Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson joined Ralph Nader on Monday in lambasting Hillary Clinton as a stooge for big business who should be stopped from capturing the Democratic nomination for president. "Do you really believe if we replace a bunch of corporate Republicans with a bunch of corporate Democrats, that anything meaningful is going to change?" the statement asks. "This has to stop. It's that simple."

It's true, coporate giants and political greed have reached new heights and will consume the planet. If concerned minds don't speak up soon, it will be too late.

You may not be able to find the original article any longer but Google has a cached copy (for now).

GW Scandals & F-Ups

Real Time with Bill Maher -- funny AND educational:

Thanks 1Gm

For the USA Today Crowd...