INTERESTING TIMES

Fascism
should rightly be called
Corporatism,
as it is the merger
of corporate
and government power.
~Benito Mussolini

I'm not sure how they figured that I'm "pro-family". Probably because I support Ron Paul. Contrary to their assumption, I am capable of appreciating his positions without being a social conservative. The message behind the cut is stimulated by the Student Nondiscrimination Act which is before congress. They claim that this will be the last straw causing our descent into the vice of promiscuous sex, by way of indoctrinating our youth in "pro-homosexual" values from kindergarten on. I don't know about this being a significant law in the great scope of our cultural slide, but the writer is correct in his panic that all will be lost. What he does not see is that the new thing which arises from the ashes may well be an improvement. My personal position on homosexuality is as follows: May all people love who they love, no matter. Now, on to the ridiculous slant of this email:

Dear pro-family American,

The Radical Homosexuals infiltrating the United States Congress have a plan:
( behind the cut is the text of today's anti-homo spam email )

It would be our second Constitutional Convention. The first one happened back in 1774 when our government system was designed. I think we should do it. We're clearly not getting anywhere letting them have their way, and things are getting desperate.

A recently introduced bill--H.R. 1581--would eliminate protection for wilderness study areas and Forest Service roadless areas and allow industry to develop and extract resources from them. We need to do something other than this. We need to create broad migration zones along all riparian areas and connecting them, in order to allow species to survive during this time of climate change. This approach will facilitate our longterm survival in a way that short term extractive industry cannot, and should be built into law. Also, we need to end corporate personhood, such that when we do decide to allow our lands to be used for some purpose, the developer/extractor must be responsible for the end product...instead of raping the land for profit and then dumping the devastation back on the public for rehabilitation. But that's what I think. If you care about wilderness, go to the sierra club link and have your say.

http://sierraclub.typepad.com/michaelbrune/2011/09/wildlands-are-your-lands.html

Texas and the Republicans are dead set against requiring utilities to generate x power per y emissions, but it sounds like a good idea to me. I'd like to breathe good air, please. I don't want anyone else in my family to become asthmatic because of coal burning in their region. And as for global warming, well, it's not easy to pin down and it's hard for me to get as excited about it as some people do. I do think our climate is changing and that we have increased the rate of change by our burning of fossil fuels. I am not sure that we can change that rate of change now that it has been initiated. But I'm diverging from the subject, which is that the Obama administration, specifically the EPA, is moving forward to enforce the Clean Air Act after Congress has failed to take any action on the issue. They've begun to take on specific state officials in the state of Texas who refuse to enforce federal laws.

I am going to begin to make posts in defense of Obama. Somebody needs to.
( Notes from a 12/23/10 Wall St Journal article )

This is the so-called food safety bill. What it actually does is secure complete control of our food supply by the corporations. A companion bill (S.3767) was recently added into it, which criminalizes food production, meaning that you could be charged with a crime for eating what you or your neighbor grows in the yard. This is insane. Family farms and ranches, community and home gardens and farmers’ markets stand to lose big. The rules that would be imposed may be reasonable to control industrialized food production, but will rapidly destroy local/organic and community food production.

The corporate powers that be would like our current congress to push it through but Senator Coburn and a few others have held it up, because they realize that it needs their full attention. It probably won't be debated until the new congress is formed, after the election. Last year they passed the House version of this bill (HR 1279) in spite of considerable citizen action against it. We can allow the corporations to control and run our nation. It will take concerted citizen action to stop it. I am not sure enough people are awake yet to see what is happening, I'm not sure enough people care to stop it. And in the final reckoning, the government can no more stop people from growing tomatoes in their yards than they can stop people from growing and smoking pot. But they can make it illegal and inconvenient and underground. They can make us into criminals by passing laws that do not serve the people, they serve only big business. This is no democracy, as long as the people are lazy overfed sheep. This is a giant corporate farm and we are the product.

Bill Text:
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s111-510

Stop S. 510 Action Page: http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1057.php
http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=6719

S 510, the Food Safety Modernization Act, may be the most dangerous bill in the history of the US. It is to our food what the bailout was to our economy, only we can live without money.
http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/2010/04/24/s-510-is-hissing-in-the-grass/

Track the Bill:
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s111-510

He's gone, dead at the age of 92. We will miss him. While it is impossible to agree with every decision, his work revealed a man of great integrity, strength and resolve. May we soon begin to elect more senators and congressmen with spines and morals, in his honor.

The news is saying that he cast more votes than anybody, ever, in the senate, perhaps because he was elected in the 60's and served until today. He carried a copy of the constitution in his pocket and brandished it at people. He was a democrat, but the party did not rule him.

SOURCE
http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-byrd-20100628,0,3523904.story

She's running for congress. I met her today. I was downtown with a friend to go shoe shopping, and stopped by the festival in Heritage Square. It a marijuana legalization event and it was was fairly dead. ( She was trying to get my vote. )