7/2/2008 - General Wes Clark and Food Prices |
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Two things are bugging me this morning. First off, General Wes Clark (ret.) is being mauled by the press for saying about John McCain, "I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president." Well, that seems pretty unpolitical and it kinda pissed me off because I have always really liked Wes Clark and admire him greatly. He's well-known for not having the best political instincts in the world but when it comes to saying things as they are, I like him. And, let's face it, what he said is right. Getting shot down and being a POW are NOT things that necessarily qualify you to be president. But when you read it, it doesn't seem like the best approach, politically-speaking, if you're supporting Barack Obama.
But then I watched transcript of the CBS show where he said this and it turns out he was fed that line by the interviewer, Bob Shieffer. When you watch the video of the interview and put Clark's comment in context, you realize it wasn't this horrible nasty thing to say, it was a response to a direct question where he repeated part of the question in his answer. More good analysis on the complete over-reaction on this thing along with the vid HERE. Another thing that's got me cranky is all the blaming of high food prices on biofuels. If you believe the rhetoric being thrown around you'd think that the biodiesel and bioethanol makers were coming to your house and removing the corn and soy beans from your mouth and then sending you a bill. I have contended all along that high food prices are due mainly to the fact that gas costs so goddam much. We ship EVERYTHING in this country by diesel trucks. Have you seen the price of diesel lately???! Turns out I was right. Not only that, there's been smear campaign revealed where the Grocery Manufacturers Association was found to be intentionally spreading this lie around. More HERE. Big Oil is getting in on the act, too. More about that HERE. I understand being against biofuels (actually I don't but...) but at least play fair and don't twist the facts. Argue the thing on its merits and quit making shit up. I'm just rantin'... |
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6/30/2008 - McCain and the New G.I. Bill |
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I've been wanting to blog about this travesty from John McCain but never felt I had the time to do it justice. I suggest having a look at THIS PIECE to read some particularly astute commentary on the situation with some good links.
Senator Jim Webb's "New G.I. Bill" has been one of the most successful, bipartisan pieces of legislation to come along. It gives educational benefits to vets that most of probably presumed they already had. But, of course, John McCain and his buddy George W. Bush were against it. [Quick note to say that Paul Reichoff from Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America has been a tireless advocate for this legislation and one hopes that he has a nice long vacation somewhere nice once this bad boy is in the basket. Also, kudos to Air America for giving this issue LOTS of attention including weekly interviews with and updates from Paul Reichoff.] McCain was against it because he said it would make it too attractive for vets to leave the service. However, independent government studies showed that the rise in the numbers of people not re-upping their military service commitment would be matched and then some by the increase in recruitment that would result. McCain went so far as to offer his own bill, one that forced our military personnel to wait much longer to accrue the benefits. It went down in flames. Why on earth Bush and McCain thought this was a good battle to fight, I have no idea. This bill has the backing of more veterans groups than the original GI Bill did. It has almost unanimous support. In fact, on the last vote, it was 92-6. Only two senators didn't show up to vote. One was Ted Kennedy who is recovering from a malignant brain tumor. The other was McCain who was too busy campaigning. Senator Obama made time to vote however. Anyway, now that the Bush administration has backed down from the veto threat, McCain is jumping on the bandwagon and claiming a piece of this delicious pie that he's been fighting against all along. Read the piece and have a look a the video of him taking credit. Unreal. Truly unreal. This pathetic excuse for a presidential candidate is so not going to win in November. I'm just sayin'... |
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6/27/2008 - Open Water at the North Pole??? |
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Not to put too fine a point on it but HOLY SHIT!
That this could happen in my lifetime scares the crap out of me. But there's no such thing as global climate change. Uh-uh. Move along. Nothing to see here. What me worry? I'm just sayin'... |
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6/20/2008 - More on Drilling For USA Oil | ||
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My good friend, Aielman, made some astute comments about the price of gas and how increasing production in the USA is unlikely to decrease the price in any significant way. He is quite correct. One analysis, in fact, "suggests the effect on gasoline prices in 2025 [of drilling oil in the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge] will be a mere $0.02 a gallon. The immediate effect will be zero as we’ll have to wait a decade to see any oil from ANWR. If this is Bush’s and McCain’s answer to today’s high gasoline prices, it is no answer at all."
Doing a bit of digging, I read this fantastic bit of blog writing from 2 Dinar. Here are a few choice excerpts:
And the best part, in my opinion:
Both references nicked fromAndrew Sullivan's most excellent blog, The Daily Dish. Gonna have to start reading 2 Dinar regularly. Great writing and great analysis. I'm just sayin'... | ||
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6/7/2008 - Barack Obama and America's Standing in the World | ||
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In my travels around the world over the past few years (South America, China, Europe, Canada), I have encountered a great deal of "We love America but we hate your government" attitudes. It is refreshing that people in other countries can see that many Americans are NOT well represented by the Bush administration. Many people in this country do not return the favor and tend to lump everyone from a certain country or region into the same category as the worst of the members. That small-minded worldview is, thankfully, not shared by people in the countries that I have visited.
But they, almost unanimously dislike the Bush administration. One of the things that excites me so much about getting him out of office and getting someone like Barack Obama in charge is that we can then begin restoring how America is perceived around the globe. We can begin to, once again, live up to our well-earned but recently-sullied reputation for being tough but fair and having the moral authority that justifies being a "superpower". It appears that Senator Obama is already doing that. From Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish (a truly great blog):
THAT is the kind of thing that makes me very happy. Sullivan also posted this fantastic image from Tim Sloan of AFP/Getty Images: 
Brilliant. I'm just sayin'... | ||
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5/29/2008 - Cluster Bomb Ban |
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Well, at least some countries get it right.
Unlike the USA, Russia and China. Perhaps, with a bit of luck, we can be world LEADERS again someday. I'm just sayin'... |
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5/22/2008 - Misplaced Courage |
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"The most alarming sign of the state of our society now is that our leaders have the courage to sacrifice the lives of young people in war but not the courage to tell us that we must be less greedy and wasteful."
-- Wendell Berry |
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5/15/2008 - Love is Love is Love... |
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I saw this over at Bob Cesca's blog who nicked it from Andrew Sullivan's blog..
I just think this is such a great photo, one that captures the moment exquisitely. 
Gay American Lee Moulton reacts to a California Supreme Court decision to overturn the ban on same-sex marriage at the California Supreme Court May 15, 2008 in San Francisco, California. Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty I'm just sayin'... |
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5/10/2008 - Al Gore: Punk'd!!! |
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I guess you if ya can't beat 'em, you do the audio version of Photoshop on 'em!
Al Gore did an interview with NPR recently. Now a right-wing media shill organization has taken bits of the interview and literally spliced them together out of order to make it sound like Gore is blaming the cyclone in southeast Asia on global climate change (which he, of course, did not.) Not only that, Drudge and Fox News picked up on the clip and are replaying it for their loyal followers. And, of course, this "fair and balanced" "reporting" is swallowed hook, line and sinker by them since they hate Gore so, so much. It's a pathetic statement of the weakness of your side of the argument when you have to resort to these types of bullshit tactics. You'd think Al Gore was personally responsible for global climate change or something. Sheesh... I'm just sayin'... |
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4/24/2008 - I Just Can NOT Believe It | |
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Our government lied to us. Really. Told an untruth to the American people.
Can you believe it? I mean, Jesus, what are the odds? Uh, these days? Pretty damn good. An email exchange between honchos at the Department of Veteran Affairs confirm that that, rather than the roughly 800 suicide attempts by veterans per year that they had been reporting, the number is actually more along the lines of, get this, 12,000 per year. Yup, that's right. 1,000 men and women that have served in our military PER MONTH are attempting to commit suicide. And the VA lied to cover it up.
Link to a .pdf file of the email transcript via CBS News HERE. Some Senators are calling for the resignation of the VA official involved Seems like the LEAST they should do. Lied to by members of the Bush administration. Man, I just can NOT believe it. < /sarcasm> Fuckers. 12,000 vets a year trying to kill themselves. It's almost unreal. Remind me again why we're over there right now? Remind me why it's worth it to destroy the lives of any more good men and women. 'Cause I can't recall why this is fucking worth it. And, you know what? I don't fucking feel safer. I'm just sayin'... | |
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4/22/2008 - Byrd. Turd. Hummmm??? | |
 Un-fucking-believable. Truly. You just don't think people in this country, much less the clergy, are this fucking moronic. But clearly they are.
This man is clearly a complete fool. No, a tool. No, a douchebag. No, all three. The worst part is that he's a community leader and, thus, has the ability to sway opinions. Some days, honestly, I think this country is so fucked. Absolutely fucked. I'm just sayin'... | |
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4/10/2008 - It's Time to Bring our Boys & Girls Home | |
Really. It's time. The Bush adminstration has said all along that we're in Iraq at the invitation of the Iraqis. Now, it appears, they feel our work is done:
Now there's no excuse. Staying beyond our invitation defines it as a pure-blood occupation and nothing more. I actually see this as a VERY good sign. I'm just sayin'... | |
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4/1/2008 - Oh, ZING! |
'Zactly...
 I'm just sayin'... |
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3/27/2008 - Standing in the Way of "Buying Local" |
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My good friend Carmen sent me THIS OP-ED from the New York Times which I am reprinting in full. Reading it was enough to make my blood boil. Basically it's the story of a small farmer who leased out a few acres from a neighbor to grow produce to sell locally. Because of rules regulating certain commodity crops like corn and soybeans, the farmers who leased the land faced ridiculous fines and subsidy losses because they converted land from corn to "watermelons, tomatoes and vegetables for natural-food stores and a community-supported agriculture program". After one year he was unable to continue.
The "Buy Local" movement may be the one most useful tool in our arsenal to combat global climate change. The carbon footprint of a locally-grown piece of fruit or vegetable is dramatically lower than that of one trucked thousands of miles to places like the east coast or the Midwest. But federal farming laws, swayed heavily by lobbyists from California and other farm industry states, put profits ahead of these concerns, severely limiting the expansion of locally-grown crops. And that pisses me off. I'm just sayin'... Op-Ed Contributor My Forbidden Fruits (and Vegetables) By JACK HEDIN Published: March 1, 2008 Rushford, Minn. - If you’ve stood in line at a farmers’ market recently, you know that the local food movement is thriving, to the point that small farmers are having a tough time keeping up with the demand. But consumers who would like to be able to buy local fruits and vegetables not just at farmers’ markets, but also in the produce aisle of their supermarket, will be dismayed to learn that the federal government works deliberately and forcefully to prevent the local food movement from expanding. And the barriers that the United States Department of Agriculture has put in place will be extended when the farm bill that House and Senate negotiators are working on now goes into effect. As a small organic vegetable producer in southern Minnesota, I know this because my efforts to expand production to meet regional demand have been severely hampered by the Agriculture Department’s commodity farm program. As I’ve looked into the politics behind those restrictions, I’ve come to understand that this is precisely the outcome that the program’s backers in California and Florida have in mind: they want to snuff out the local competition before it even gets started. Last year, knowing that my own 100 acres wouldn’t be enough to meet demand, I rented 25 acres on two nearby corn farms. I plowed under the alfalfa hay that was established there, and planted watermelons, tomatoes and vegetables for natural-food stores and a community-supported agriculture program. All went well until early July. That’s when the two landowners discovered that there was a problem with the local office of the Farm Service Administration, the Agriculture Department branch that runs the commodity farm program, and it was going to be expensive to fix. The commodity farm program effectively forbids farmers who usually grow corn or the other four federally subsidized commodity crops (soybeans, rice, wheat and cotton) from trying fruit and vegetables. Because my watermelons and tomatoes had been planted on “corn base” acres, the Farm Service said, my landlords were out of compliance with the commodity program. I’ve discovered that typically, a farmer who grows the forbidden fruits and vegetables on corn acreage not only has to give up his subsidy for the year on that acreage, he is also penalized the market value of the illicit crop, and runs the risk that those acres will be permanently ineligible for any subsidies in the future. (The penalties apply only to fruits and vegetables — if the farmer decides to grow another commodity crop, or even nothing at all, there’s no problem.) In my case, that meant I paid my landlords $8,771 — for one season alone! And this was in a year when the high price of grain meant that only one of the government’s three crop-support programs was in effect; the total bill might be much worse in the future. In addition, the bureaucratic entanglements that these two farmers faced at the Farm Service office were substantial. The federal farm program is making it next to impossible for farmers to rent land to me to grow fresh organic vegetables. Why? Because national fruit and vegetable growers based in California, Florida and Texas fear competition from regional producers like myself. Through their control of Congressional delegations from those states, they have been able to virtually monopolize the country’s fresh produce markets. That’s unfortunate, because small producers will have to expand on a significant scale across the nation if local foods are to continue to enter the mainstream as the public demands. My problems are just the tip of the iceberg. Last year, Midwestern lawmakers proposed an amendment to the farm bill that would provide some farmers, though only those who supply processors, with some relief from the penalties that I’ve faced — for example, a soybean farmer who wanted to grow tomatoes would give up his usual subsidy on those acres but suffer none of the other penalties. However, the Congressional delegations from the big produce states made the death of what is known as Farm Flex their highest farm bill priority, and so it appears to be going nowhere, except perhaps as a tiny pilot program. Who pays the price for this senselessness? Certainly I do, as a Midwestern vegetable farmer. But anyone trying to do what I do on, say, wheat acreage in the Dakotas, or rice acreage in Arkansas would face the same penalties. Local and regional fruit and vegetable production will languish anywhere that the commodity program has influence. Ultimately of course, it is the consumer who will pay the greatest price for this — whether it is in the form of higher prices I will have to charge to absorb the government’s fines, or in the form of less access to the kind of fresh, local produce that the country is crying out for. Farmers need the choice of what to plant on their farms, and consumers need more farms like mine producing high-quality fresh fruits and vegetables to meet increasing demand from local markets — without the federal government actively discouraging them. Jack Hedin is a farmer. |
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3/20/2008 - George W. Bush is No Gene Kelly | |
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Maureen Dowd (known, gaggingly, as MoDo to too many elitist liberals), apparently made comments about George Bush's dance routine and managed to compare him to Gene Kelly.
What? You didn't see him dancing? While he was waiting for McCain to come and receive his esteemed and much-awaited annoiting as the Republican nominee for president? Well have a quick look (only the first 30 seconds is really worth watching): Anyway, Gene Kelly is dead and so isn't here to defend himself. His widowed wife, however IS still around. And she's not sitting on her hands when such an affront as this makes the news. To wit, her Letter to the Editor of the New York Times:
Thanks, Patricia, for setting things straight. I love MoDo and all. But that was just over the line, ya know? I'm just sayin'... | |
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3/19/2008 - California Gets it Right & Leads the Way - Again |
After Hurricane Katrina, tens of thousands of families from Louisiana and Mississippi, displaced by the storm that destroyed their homes, were placed in trailers provided by the federal government. Almost immediately calls began to come in to FEMA complaining about breathing problems and other maladies as a result of staying in the trailers.
 It turns out the building materials in the trailers, primarily the carpeting and wood paneling, were emitting formaldehyde at up to 75 times the legal limits. As usual, there was a government cover-up to downplay the negative health impacts of formaldehyde, a known cancer suspect agent and highly toxic gas.
But that's not what this blog entry is about. A couple of years ago, the state of California, through the California Air Resources Board (CARB), announced that it was moving toward new regulations dramatically limiting the emissions of formaldehyde by wood composite and engineered wood panels used in the manufacture of housing. The companies making the formaldehyde-emitting resins shrieked. The wood composite manufacturers freaked. An advertising blitz downplaying the problem was immediately launched. But, in the end, CARB prevailed and last year they passed the new legislation. Phase One goes into effect next year and Phase Two follows two years later. Because the California market is so huge and because they generally lead the way on health and environmental legislation, manufacturers of the types of materials that are polluting the Katrina trailers are having to make big changes across the board. In other words, they won't just make a product for California because it's not practical. They'll change ALL of their operations. So despite the hue and cry from industry and anti-regulatory forces, groups that condemned CARB's actions, the real winners are the consumers in the USA. We'll all be a bit safer after this thanks to California. Too bad it's too late for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Seems like they got screwed. Again. I'm just sayin'... |
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3/18/2008 - R.I.P. - Arthur C. Clarke |
 Awww...This makes me sad. I have such intense admiration for Sir Arthur. The Space Odyssey series could arguably be said to have changed my life and his many, many other books took me to places both mentally and psychically that I wouldn't have gone to otherwise.
A gentle man. A futurist. A dreamer. An amazing author. Rest in peace, good sir. (Did you know he first came up with the idea of the geostationary communications satellite??? He did.) I'm just sayin'... |
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3/14/2008 - Happy Pi Day! |
Have some pie, maybe at 3:14...
 I'm just sayin'... |
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3/6/2008 - A Question About Sex |
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Two part question:
Are you turned on or repulsed by the thought/sight of two attractive members of the (same) opposite sex (1) Kissing? (2) Having sex? I'm just askin'... |
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3/1/2008 - "One Thing We Should Change is Hate" |
 Ellen DeGeneres spoke out on her show this week about the killing of a 15 year-old boy named Lawrence King by Brian McInerney, a 14 year-old classmate. Brian killed him because Lawrence asked him to be his Valentine and was openly gay.
Read that again: A 14 year-old boy KILLED another boy for being gay. Both of these boys were in the 8th grade. And one of them took a gun to school and killed the other one. Because he was openly gay. You really have to ask yourself where Brian got the message that this was an appropriate response to Lawrence's presence in his life. And you really have to ask yourself what, in your life, you do that might help promote the idea that being gay is somehow shameful, threatening or evil. Not much worth adding to that. Ellen says it all and says it very eloquently. And, yes guys, gay jokes and gay insults really ARE NOT funny. And can be hurtful in unintended ways. I'm just sayin'... |
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Name: Mr. E (get it?) Location: Ann Arbor-ish, Michigan, USA, Earth EFx2Blogger since: September 19, 2007 |
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Some folks sleep on a problem, but you can camp on one as well. Camping is for the mind what a high-speed run on the highway is for a car. It tends to blow out all the sludge that accumulates in the type of urban driving most of us are forced to do in order to earn a living.-- Tim Cahill
To eat is a necessity, but to eat intelligently is an art.
-- Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The most alarming sign of the state of our society now is that our leaders have the courage to sacrifice the lives of young people in war but not the courage to tell us that we must be less greedy and wasteful.
-- Wendell Berry
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