not watching television

MOST HAPPY FELLA

(Oops. Somehow the pic didn't post first time around. Oh, and if you click the image you can read a bit o' campaign gossip from the NY Post.)

I'm pretty much a policy-based person when it comes to supporting politicians, but there's something about how a candidate carries him/herself -- the degree of comfortableness in one's own skin -- that speaks to me, too. From the time I started watching Kerry more closely, I've been drawn to the way he uses his body. I like the way he the way he stretches out his arms to suggest the sweep, magnitude of an issue, then gathers them in to channel issues into choices, policies and results; the ease with which he meanders across the stage, the relaxed and balanced way he stands as he speaks.

I was lucky to go see Kerry up in Cleveland right after he announced Edwards as his running mate. And it was there that I felt I was watching someone genuine, who'd experienced the events and ideas that shaped my generation, and had followed the path toward wisdom and good humor as he passed through them.

John Kerry is going to be my president. It feels good to know I trust him as a politician and like him as a man.

Feelin' non-verbal . . .

I'm not sure why, but I'm having trouble stringing the words together of late. For now I'll let this song from WISECONSUMAZ/Catastrophic Success do the talkin' . . .

Crimes against reason

350 metric tons of explosives left unsecured . . .

Click pic for more from Get Your War On . . .

Back . . .

Yes, I'm back after being off-blog for two weeks for a number of reasons, one of them pecuniary. Thanks to those of you who sent emails in the interim. I'm fine and hope to be posting here and commenting around the Land of Blogs on a regular basis again soon . . . .

Action Alert!!!!!!!!!

I came upon this post in the comments section over at Atrios place this morning and am bound and determined to spread the word . . .

Senator John Warner, who owns a vacation home in Cape Cod, has slipped an amendment into a bill in conference committee that would halt development of the Nantucket Sound Wind Farm and other off-shore wind-based renewable energy initiatives in the US.

Here's the press release from Alternative-Energy.net where you can learn all about Senator Warner's amendment, slyly inserted at the last minute in to the Defence Authorization Bill.

Think about this: Here we are, in the middle of a war that we all know is about oil; we're clearly facing environmental crises and energy shortages based on our continued dependence on an ever-deminishing oil supply (read all of Deep Blade Journal's oil-depletion posts and then start reading DBJ daily to keep abreast); and this fool of a senator wants to cut off development of off-shore wind energy without debate!

Indeed, as the scenes about the Patriot Act in Michael Moore's film, Fahrenheit 9/11, demonstrated, shoving legislation through Congress without due deliberation is one of the Republicans' favorite tactics. As a matter of fact, you can read the first article in the Boston Globe's extremely important 3-part series on this very subject here.

Now, most of the above is background, but here's what you need to do:

1. Call the House and Senate chairs of the conference committee and tell them you specifically oppose Senator Warner's amendment and that you oppose, in general, tactics used to get legislation passed without informed debate -- especially legislation dealing with such an important issue as our country's energy future.

2. Also let the chairs know that you are calling your own senators and congressmen to let them know about the amendment and to tell them you object to these tactics. You can even ask the person you're talking to in the committee chair's office to transfer you to the office of your state's senator or representative.

3. Pass this information on to everyone you know and ask them to make their calls as soon as possible, and to get in the habit of calling Congress to let folks there know they're being watched by the electorate.

4. Finally, learn more about wind energy. I've found a site that provides an educational exercise for learning more, not just about wind power, but about the interests and concerns of various stakesholders in the issue. I've only scanned the exercise so far, but I think I may learn a lot from it; I'll let you know.

In the meantime, just google "off-shore wind" or "wind energy" to start learning more. There, you have your assignments. Now, go . . .

Oooh, He's Upper . . .

The AP's latest poll says Kerry is leads Bush by 4% among likely voters. The tally -- 50% Kerry v. 46% Bush -- puts Kerry's lead outside the 3-point margin of error.

Plus, the poll was taken before the Cheney-Edwards debate, before Bremer's comments and the latest news on Saddam Hussein's non-existent weapons programs from the Iraq survey group.

Americans are paying attention now. And if we fight like hell, we just might do ourselves proud . . .

I didn' know . . .

. . . that October is Halliburton Awareness Month until I followed this link from Cyndi at mousemusings. Seems Rev. Billy of the Church of Stop Shopping was doing his part to spread the word by proselytizing to Halliburton employees at -- where else? -- the mall . . .

Deep Blade cuts to the heart of the matter . . .

Yesterday I recommended three long stories -- two from the mainstream press and one from blogger David Neiwert. I held off on a fourth recommendation -- these two posts at Deep Blade Journal -- because I wanted more time to re-read and reflect on them myself.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, both here and in the comments sections at some of the blogs I visit, DB is my go-to guy for following energy developments, particularly the growing speculation/evidence that we are entering the era of peak oil. I frequently think about taking time off from my own blogging just to settle at DB's site and read all he has written about in such depth on this subject. And one of these days I will . . . For now, you can get a sense of what's happening by reading the two posts about IMF/G7 meetings linked to above.

In the past DB has referred to John Kerry's positions on energy and the environment as "anti-war". I like that. Energy and the enviroment are the over-arching issues of this new millenium, within which all others are subsumed. We can build a more peaceful, progressive, productive, creative, healthy, just and egalitarian world community if we abandon old-century thinking about power and wealth and oil.

UPDATE: Take a breather, then go read Deep Blades update on how the Saudis, Iran, and yes, even the US in Iraq, may be permanently damaging oil fields by mismanaging well production. I have some basic understanding about oil wells since we heat our farmhouse from one, but the explanations in DB's post are things we all need to know more about . . .

The Goss Gang . . .

As if our intelligence community didn't have enough problems, Porter Goss, Bush's choice to head the CIA, seems to be channeling Fagin.

In his first week on the job Goss appointed four staffers from the House Intelligence Committee to senior positions at the CIA. Two of the positions didn't even exist before Goss made the appointments, and he filled the agency's third-highest position with a House committee staffer who'd already been fired from the CIA after being busted for shoplifting!

Democrats who went along with Bush's choice say they are quite perturbed by Goss's actions, especially since he reassured them time and again during nomination hearings that he'd eschew the kind of partisanship he'd show so often in the past. (After all, this is the guy who, as head of the Intelligence Committe, said he'd investigate the Plame outing when someone brought him a semen-stained dress.)

Come on Dems, give me a fuckin' break. You asked a former spook from the days of the Cold War and the anti-Castro operations run out of JM/WAVE to make you a promise, and you believed him?

Hey, I had a college professor I knew worked at The Rand Corporation, studied languages at the Army school in Monterey, and did post-grad work at Montreal's McGill University. So, naturally, I asked him if he was a CIA agent. He looked taken aback, then laughed and said, "No. But then, if I was, I wouldn't admit it, would I?" These guys are trained to not tell the truth . . .

For Pete's sake, Ray McGovern told you Goss was Cheney's cat's paw. What more does it take?

Destroying the antidotes . . .

Shari at An Old Soul has a post about BushCo's latest effort to undermine public education by freezing funding that helps pay for internet access in libraries and schools.

In the comments section CmdrSue has posted two quotes from letters by Thomas Jefferson that speak to the elemental importance of education as "the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power."

Go read the entire post to learn more about how this administration appears to be dissembling about the true motives and processes for interrupting the flow of aid to our libraries and our schools.