far to the left of Obama.....

It is really quite simple in some ways i suppose. I am, for lack of any better description: tribally and socially cooperativist; a pragmatically, psychedelically, and hermeneutically conscious cognitive libertarian; an economically and geo-politically anarchist; and a deep ecology radical. In all practicality, i think that it is extraordinarily difficult to classify most citizens of the US under the simple polarizing taxonomy of liberal/conservative. Even the sub-labels such as socially conservative liberal or socially liberal conservative speak little of the vast diversity of the self aware citizen. But to reflect upon the 2008 election and the necessary work that must be done, i openly state my conception of my position along the spectrum from which i advocate the change i seek.

Over the next few posts i will try to highlight some insights into my conceptualization and construction of my semantic intent of these categorical descriptions. Together they comprise a composite reflection of axioms upon which i base my choices to produce responses to the world around me. My political actions are necessitated by my principles of cognitive liberty; my cooperativist direct actions to promote social justice for all, grow both from my economic anarchy as well as my commitment to deep ecology. Thus i hold that we as a nation (one comprised solely of one species that seems to revere the capacity to destroy all other species) must radically alter all of our institutions and behaviors in order to insure that the greatest diversity of all surviving species have an equal chance of participating in the future. To achieve this goal, we need to allow our infrastructures to collapse, both into disrepair and into un-usability. The construct infrastructures connotes all aspects of systems that encourage humans to maintain their profound disconnection from the real and natural world around them: transportation routes and mechanisms, electric power grid, internets and IT, industrialized food production and distribution, all education, all governmental entities and operations, health care provision, etc.

James Lovelock postulates that the actual sustainability ratio for the planet among all species indicates that there can be no more than 500 million humans living upon it (he suggests the number may be as low as 250 million). This number, less than ten percent of the current total, cannot live as the vast bulk of them do now, utilizing technological advancements that require the ongoing destruction of all other lifeforms and the planet's carrying capacity to endure. We can either make a substantive choice to actually facilitate our own future multi-generations in some balance/harmony with the greatest possible diversity of other species, or, we let the planet do it to us.

Over the next few days, i will post up some comments and quotations regarding each of these self-referential descriptors:tribally and socially cooperativist; a pragmatically, psychedelically, and hermeneutically conscious cognitive libertarian; an economically and geo-politically anarchist; and a deep ecology radical. I hope that by doing so i encourage others to do the same for themselves. We all need to very seriously consider who we are in relation to all around us. I am not proposing argumentation nor other forms of dysphemistic commentary; i am asking that each of us take some time to reappraise our own lives and thoughts about our role as a member of the Homo sapiens sapiens.

she follows her marching orders well:

If one were to ask why McMo-Ro continues to spew a steady stream of falsehoods and lies, in order to garner support for her own campaign, and for those of the GOP/Rethuglicans nationally and within the state, one need only pay attention to the party super-boss Karl Rove:

This week, non-partisan fact-checking organizations like PolitiFact and FactCheck.org
have called Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) out for lies in his attack ads against Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL). But on Fox News Sunday today, former Bush political adviser Karl Rove dismissed the organizations, claiming that “they’ve got their own biases built in there.” “You can’t trust the fact-check organizations,”

(h/t to Thinkprogress)

here is one example; and yes the misspeaking by Herr Karl is intentional below:

"Well, first of all, I do think that the lipstick remark was an inappropriate and maybe it was unconscious, but it was a deliberate slap at Governor Palin. The only time this word has intruded in recent months in the campaign was in her, you know, self-deprecating remark at the convention. For her to use the lipstick remark less than two weeks after she used it struck me as too much of a coincidence not to have been a deliberate attack."

Of course we know from FactCheck that John McCain used the phrase "putting lipstick on a pig" way back on May 2nd. Herr Rove just wants to make sure that fact checking is simply just not appropriate at any time during this campaign.

she really is a GOP talking point piglet

Yesterday i mentioned how abysmal and idiotic the CongresswoMan from Eastern Washington makes herself appear to be. For a little substantive reference background on that, i offer this (keeping in mind that she sure knows what she knows--nada):

Yesterday, the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources held a Bipartisan Energy Summit featuring experts from MIT, Google, Shell, and others. At one point in the hearing, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) tore into the energy protest House Republicans have been holding for the past several weeks. This political stunt was meant to demand a vote on oil drilling and “attack Democrats for leaving town” in August “without doing something to lower gas prices.”

After listening all the problems currently facing the country, Whitehouse asked the experts whether anyone thought drilling was the “number one issue” right now. Almost nine seconds went by with complete silence:

SEN WHITEHOUSE: Gentlemen, we’re in the middle of a near total mortgage system meltdown in this country. We have a health care system that burns 16 percent of our GDP, in which the Medicare liability alone has been estimated at $34 trillion. We’re burning $10 billion a month in Iraq.

This administration has run up $7.7 trillion in national debt, by our calculation. And there is worsening evidence every day of global warming, with worsening environmental and national security ramifications. In light of those conditions, do any of you seriously contend that drilling for more oil is the number one issue facing the American people today?

[NINE-SECOND SILENCE]

SEN WHITEHOUSE: No, it doesn’t seem so.

(H/T to ThinkProgess and GetSmart)

But of course, HR McMo-Ro regurgitates her given talking points without the least bit of trepidation, failing to even begin to recognize how idiotic it makes her seem. And this is not the first time, nor will it be the last time during this campaign cycle. More to come i am sure.

she knows how to put lipstick on oily pigs

September 12, 2008 Energy Update
Energy Pledge
Today, I signed the Energy Rally for American Pledge. I pledge to the American people that I will vote in favor of the American Energy Act, add no earmarks to the legislation and send it to the President for signing, before Congress adjourns prior to the November elections. To find out more about this effort please visit this website.

Lifting the Off Shore Drilling Moratorium
This week I signed a letter to the President requesting he veto any spending bills that include the moratorium on Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) oil and natural gas exploration. To read the entire letter click here. The American people support increasing our American energy resources by opening up the OCS to oil and natural gas exploration, and we should let the current moratorium expire on September 30th.

In Case You Missed It
I wanted to draw your attention to this article by John Stossel. He makes a good argument that it shouldn't be up to the government to create jobs, specifically "green jobs." Instead, it should be up to small businesses and entrepreneurs. Instead, the government should make it easier to create jobs.

McMorris Rodgers

This will only take a quick fisking of her insanity.

The American Energy Act is the Big Oil bill designed to destroy the planet, especially the oceans around North America, for the purpose of short term (80 year) solution to how to keep the highest profits and smallest lifestyle changes while global climate change trashes all of us. But she doesn't care at all about the people, she only cares that her financial contributors continue to support her and her lifestyle to which she has grown accustomed. Or: have you not heard about the problems in Denver that are costing "the people" tens of billions of dollars not being paid by Big Oil????

Asking Bush to veto such legislation by signing a letter written by lobbyists for her GOP Congressional bosses (you remember she worked directly for Ney, Foley, Pombo, Doolittle, and Hastert before she didn't). Like she has always done, she is the little school girl dutifully obeying her elders and teachers.

John Stossel???? John Stossel???? Need i say more. The man is the embodiment of fabricating lies and misinformation for whomever will pay him the best for such services. His record of untruths and deceit is long, yet on he goes in the best Fox News/ABC-Disney kisses lipstick on a pig's ass tradition.

bring forth the drinking gourd.....

mmmm… This national debate on lowering the drinking age is an interesting discourse, especially reviewing the muddled mumblings of those of the law and order crowd. For example:

Health and safety experts have reacted with dismay, because raising the drinking age has saved many lives. In 2001, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reviewed 49 studies published in scientific journals and concluded that alcohol-related traffic crashes involving young people increased 10 percent when the drinking age was lowered in the 1970s and decreased 16 percent when the drinking age was raised. The retreat from a lower drinking age translates into some 900 lives saved each year among 16- to 20-year-olds. Those who would argue that other factors, such as safer cars, are responsible should take a good look at numbers posted by Mothers Against Drunk Driving showing alcohol-related traffic fatalities among 16- to 20-year-olds decreasing 60 percent between 1982 and 2006 while non-alcohol-related fatalities increased 34 percent

.

Wow, lives saved. No!! That is the first of many fallacies buried within this stereotypical editorial. No lives are ever saved; it is a philosophical absurdity to suggest one can save a life. We can merely prolong the inevitable death. Death surrounds us all the time, although here in the US we do our best to hide it. And one of the ways we hide it, is to send our 18 to 21 years old kids off to foreign wars where they are killed and maimed by the tens of thousands, invisible to the public eye. And to help them survive, our lovely government and its contractors, provide endless amounts of un-"controlled substances" to the troops, from steroids to amphetamines, from painkillers to mood elevators, etc., et al, along with copious quantities of tobacco and alcohol, to “encourage” the kids (I have been interviewing Afghan/Iraq war veterans, some with multiple tours in-country, all of whom have mentioned the constant, insisted upon, use of drugs, tobacco, and alcohol).

So, let's get this right shall we? Some in this country, especially among those who support the war and the use of our "children" between the ages of 18-21 to sacrifice their lives for others profits, think that lowering the drinking age to the same mark as that by which we say it is okay for our sons and daughters to destroy their lives (and the lives of a million others) is simply not okay. They are glaringly hypocritical and dangerously evil. Ignore them until they offer a more sane and reasonable thesis.

A, B, C,... okay, repeat after me.. A, B, C. got it??

Even a kitten stuck in a paper bag could follow these three stories (from today's news) to their logical earth-destroying conclusion (thanks to Think Progress):

1) Today, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is touring an oil rig off the coast of Louisiana in order “to highlight his support for increased domestic offshore drilling.” Although he will not join McCain today, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) promoted McCain’s oil rig visit in an appearance on Fox and Friends this morning. Making sure to note that the drilling platform McCain will visit is owned and run by Chevron, Jindal oddly suggested that the photo-op will “emphasize that drilling alone is not enough” to address America’s energy needs. It should come as no surprise that the McCain chose to visit a Chevron-owned drilling platform, considering that lobbyists for Chevron both fundraise and work for his campaign. The Chevron oil rig McCain is visiting is a joint venture with Exxon, which owns 38.38 percent of the project. Lobbyists for Exxon also work and fundraise for McCain's campaign. McCain's plan to cut the corporate tax rate would result in a $480 million per-year tax break for Chevron and $1.2 billion per-year tax break for Exxon.

2) F. Chase Hutto, a senior Cheney advisor, is the leading candidate to be appointed assistant secretary for policy and international affairs at the Energy Department, the Washington Post reports. Former EPA official Jason Burnett said Hutto is “naturally and philosophically opposed to regulation,” adding, “I can’t think of a case where Chase advocated more environmental or health protections.” Hutto is also deeply opposed to regulating greenhouse gas emissions from cars. As one energy official described in July: “He [Hutto] would talk, for example, about not wanting greenhouse gas controls to do away with the large American automobile. Last month, a U.S. House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming report found that Hutto, "along with unidentified individuals from Exxon Mobil Corp. and the American Petroleum Institute," played a key role in the Bush administration's decision not to allow the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act.

3) The oil industry is spending record amounts of money this year to protect its interests as Congress considers a barrage of energy bills. According to recent data the industry has spent $55 million on lobbying so far in 2008. In what may be surprising to some, the most recent figures from the Center for Responsive Politics show that the oil industry gives a relatively small sum to individual political campaigns - it's 16th on a list of top 50 industries. When it comes to lobbying - and spending money that goes toward researching, writing and convincing lawmakers to vote its way - the industry ranks fifth. If the spending continues at the current pace, the industry is set to break last year's $83 million record. The amount spent on lobbying by the industry, along with lobbying money in general, has been setting records since 2005. With record gas prices, a contentious fight over energy legislation and a huge election on the horizon it's not surprising the industry spent so much on lobbying this year.

It's the end of the world and we know it, part a-deux

Dead zones where fish and most marine life can no longer survive are spreading across the continental shelves of the world's oceans at an alarming rate as oxygen vanishes from coastal waters, scientists reported Thursday. The scientists place the problem on runoff of chemical fertilizers in rivers and fallout from burning fossil fuels, and they estimate there are now more than 400 dead zones along 95,000 square miles of the seas - an area more than half the size of California.

The number of those areas has nearly doubled every decade since the 1960s, said Robert J. Diaz, a biological oceanographer at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science.

"Dead zones were once rare, but now they're commonplace, and there are more of them in more places," he said.

Diaz and Rutger Rosenberg, a marine ecologist at Sweden's Göteborg University, have just completed a global survey of the imperiled areas, and their report appears today in the journal Science.

So... oceans dying, teachers carry guns, US Constitution shredded--as Aaron Sorkin wrote for Jed Bartlett: "What's next?"

It's the end of the world and we know it, and i feel...

After extensive research and discussion with state officials, a small school district in Texas has approved a policy that allows certain faculty members to carry guns on school property at any time. It's the first time such a policy has been approved.

But it gets weirder (of course): In order for teachers and staff to carry a pistol, they must have a Texas license to carry a concealed handgun; must be authorized to carry by the district; must receive training in crisis management and hostile situations and have to use ammunition that is designed to minimize the risk of ricochet in school halls.

My first question: Who will die first, a student, a parent, or a teacher????

This just really pisses me off.

I have been extraordinarily busy and not able to blog, but this caught my eye. It represents everything that is wrong with our consumer capitalist system in the US. The hidden agendas buried within the article are vile and evil. They can not be allowed to reach our children and grandchildren.

When you review the following online article you discover that there are three very sick and perverted underlying messages being presented.
First, that only young women are of important and meaningful to our society and culture, old women are useless and damaged.
Second, that hippies are dangerous, old, and ugly.
Third, that only through spending hundreds of dollars a month on her image, can a woman be considered of value to her family, husband, and community.

If one were to calculate the glaring insustainability of these make-overs during this recession, where does the donning of faux persona (masks of makeup, dresses to hide bodies, hair helmets requiring monthly maintenance) come in relation to the priorities of gas, food, energy?????

If the one woman truly were an authentic hippie she never would have agreed to this change.

http://www.stylelist.com/style-guide/make-overs-makeover-look-five-years-younger

One of my heroes and mentor has moved beyond this event horizon

~~for Rim Fay, PhD UCLA Marine Biology, who died on December 31, 2007.

Motivated by the work of one of his mentors, Rachel Carson, Rimmon Fay went on to study the Santa Monica Bay in Southern California. His work in the late 1960s and early 1970s, aligned with his service as an Ocean Lifeguard for the City of Los Angeles, suggested that the Bay was becoming toxified by the increased development, sewage disposal, industrial pollution (poured down storm drains), and other human causes. In Rim's lifetime, the Bay has died for the most part. He watched that happen, observing it every single day, and teaching those of us around him to pay attention to all of those signs and symptoms of a sick ecosystem. He was more than a mentor and hero to me; he lifted 60s environmentalism into the forefront of my 70s activism as i began to become more vocal for other sick and unwell ecosystems around CA and the West. Rim was a patient teacher; one who could stand with you (lifeguarding side-by-side) in a shallow littoral inshore hole along a public beach and point out so many details in the layers upon layers of what could have been, what should have been dense life. "See this... See that" were watchwords that inspired paying even greater attention. Along with Frank Hotchkiss (one of the first regional planners to suggest that thermal and CO2 pollution was going to become our greatest problem), Rim Fay brought education about the preciousness of the ocean environment, and the fragileness of the planet, to the living everyday classroom of a day at the beach. I have been enormously blessed to have had the chance to be taught so well, so early on. Rim will be missed by many, and only in years to come, will others discover how fundamentally important he was to all of our lives in his efforts to protect the Earth. ~~ spyder

From the LA Times January 4, 2008 obituary:

Rimmon C. Fay, a marine scientist and longtime Venice Beach lifeguard who devoted his life to saving the Santa Monica Bay from pollution and other assaults, has died.

A UCLA-trained biochemist and professional diver who collected specimens for biomedical research, Fay focused public attention on industrial discharges of the pesticide DDT off the Palos Verdes peninsula that made fish too toxic to eat and nearly drove the California brown pelican to extinction. He was among the first to call for Los Angeles to halt dumping of sewage sludge, a once-quixotic quest that drew kindred souls in the 1980s who joined with him to launch the movement to clean up coastal waters.

He spent six years as a state coastal commissioner, until complaints to Sacramento leaders about his uncompromising anti-growth attitude and open outrage about damaging coastal wetlands and beachfront got him fired. He was replaced on the panel by a developer.

Admirers often likened Fay to John Steinbeck's friend and drinking companion, Edward F. Ricketts, a pioneer of marine ecology who inspired the character "Doc" in the novel "Cannery Row."

"He was so much like Doc Ricketts," said Dorothy Green, who joined with Fay and others to launch the nonprofit group Heal the Bay. "He earned his living collecting animals for research. He drank too much. He would go out diving at night -- alone."

Fay supplied sea creatures, aquarium tanks and advice during the production of the 1982 movie of "Cannery Row," starring Nick Nolte and Debra Winger. His son, Douglas, has a vivid recollection of his beaming father on the movie set: "He was puffing on his cigars. That was one of the best times."

Fay also spent much of his life, after his divorce in 1975, living and sleeping in his laboratory, located first in Venice, then in Inglewood and Port Hueneme.

Far more comfortable in a wetsuit than a dress shirt and jacket, Fay logged thousands of hours prowling the seafloor doing his own research and collecting specimens.

"He has probably spent more time underwater than any man on the planet," said Harold Dunnigan, a former Navy diver and retired Los Angeles County lifeguard who taught Fay how to dive in 1955. Dunnigan said he could easily out-compete Fay in swimming contests, but underwater, few could keep up with him. "He was at one with the ocean."

Over a span of 40 years, Fay made four to six dives a day, mostly collecting live sea animals for his business, Pacific Bio-Marine Labs. He would whisk the animals to meet planes departing nearby Los Angeles International Airport to biomedical researchers at universities worldwide.

His live specimens were used to study human nerve cell damage as well as to develop weapons against tumors and to concoct a non-addictive pain reliever.

Fay supplied sea hares, Aplysia californica, to Columbia University neuroscientist Eric Kandel, who shared the 2000 Nobel Prize for research on the physiological basis of memory storage in neurons, said Janet Fay, his ex-wife, who lives in Salinas, Calif.

Fay celebrated the contributions his marine creatures made to mankind, but often lamented the disservice that man had done in return to sea life and undersea habitat.

"They've dumped everything in this bay except radioactive waste," he once complained to a Times reporter.

Although he saw some improvement in recent years, Fay was disappointed at the long-term trends that had transformed Southern California waters from a major fishing area into an industrial dump.

He talked about the burden of knowing how the bay looked more than 40 years ago, and how it appears today.

"You spent your whole life around the ocean, you develop a sense of responsibility to the environment. If you don't respond to your convictions, then what kind of person are you?"

Born July 22, 1929, in Santa Monica and raised in Venice, Fay remembered his father, a recreational fisherman, reeling up barn-door-sized halibut from the bay at a time when boys wading into the surf at Venice Beach could still see both their feet and darting fish.

Fay put himself through graduate school at UCLA in the mid-1950s by working as a lifeguard, a part-time occupation that he continued until 2001. He also paid for schooling by collecting sea urchins and other critters for researchers at UCLA, where he earned a doctorate in biochemistry in 1961, and later for colleagues at USC, where he did postdoctoral studies in chemical oceanography.

Fay and other marine scientists over the years noticed a retreat of Southern California's kelp forests and depletion of various types of fish and shellfish. They debated the reasons for the declines, ranging from poisoning, smothering by sediment, loss of coastal habitat to development, or excessive fishing and harvesting.

When government scientists found extraordinarily high levels of DDT in fish near Palos Verdes, they leaked the documents to Fay, who brought them to The Times and other media outlets, said Craig Barilotti, a marine ecologist who worked with Fay over the years.

The public splash was the first step in a campaign that eventually ended the dumping of DDT by Montrose Chemical Corp. in Torrance into the county sewer lines that discharged into the ocean near Palos Verdes.

Fay helped draft the California Coastal Plan, which was the basis for the law that governs the California Coastal Commission. "He was a rigorous, cantankerous guy who brought great scientific knowledge and integrity to the table, and I loved him for it," said Peter Douglas, the commission's executive director.

Over the years, Fay pointed an accusatory finger at Los Angeles for poor sewage treatment and at Southern California Edison's nuclear power plants at San Onofre and other industrial dischargers that were, as he saw it, choking sea life with pollutants.

"He was always breaking new ground, pointing out new problems," Barilotti said.

Fay often showed up to testify before public hearings carrying fish covered in tumors or toting other evidence from his underwater surveys.

"He was a whistle-blower," Barilotti said. "You make a lot of political enemies that way, and a lot of developers and others tried to discredit him. To myself and a lot of other people, Rim was an inspiration."

Concluding Remarks (2003 paper at UCSB)
by
Robert Roy van de Hoek
Marine Biologist, Field Biologist, Geographer, Naturalist

Rimmon Fay is a fine scientist that has enlightened the public about the valuable coast for marine life in southern California. He has blown the whistle about the danger of pollution and over-development in southern California. I have met him now five times in the last two years. I was fortunate to spend a day in the field at Ormond Beach looking at sand dunes, wetlands, lagoons, beach and seashore. He cares deeply about the coast and ocean. And he is concerned with our pollution of the environment.

There are so many observations that Rim Fay made in this 1972 paper that have a "seer" aspect and his predictions and concerns are ring clear today, 30 years after his report. For example, recommendation number 3 essentially calls for the removal of Rindge Dam on Malibu Creek.

In 1982, Rimmon Fay was asked to write a few words for a new book that has gone through several printings and a new second edition in 1996, called Common Wetland Plants of Coastal California. The author is a good friend of Phyllis Faber, who I also have met at several California Native Plant Society meetings and on a botanical field trip, where I had lunch with her on the Eureka Valley Dunes, located north of Death Valley. Rimmon Fay said the following words about Phyllis Faber's book, published by Pickleweed Press:
... a succinct, explicit, informative guide to an important subject. There is no question but what such a guide is needed, will be useful and will be well received." The book has other quotes by other notable scientists and environmentalist together with Rim Fay's words. Some of the these include Wilma Follette of the California Native Plant Society, Michael Fisher of the California Coastal Conservancy, and Susan Cochrane of the Department of Fish and Game. The title below Rim Fay's name reads: California Coastal Wetland Coalition [and] Former Coastal Commissioner.

I found an eclectic acknowledgement of Rimmon Fay, while he was student at UCLA, that was written and published by Dr. Richard Boolootian at UCLA, and appeared in the Bulletin of the Southern California Academy of Sciences (1958).
Specimens of Strongylocentrotus franciscanus collected from Malibu, California, by Mr. R.C. Fay, graduate student at the University of California at Los Angeles, included one with a single, relatively large barnacle, Balanus tintinabulum, attached directly to the test sample, and smaller barnacle of the same species attached to the larger one.