Save money, energy and pollute less. . . welcome to the New World

Welcome to the New World. I've been saying that a lot lately. Since the election of O-Man, I feel like we really are living in a New World. Imagine what it would be like right now if we'd been relegated to the hell of looking forward to a McCain-Palin administration? What would be different except there would be so many more of us who felt desperate and hopeless. So yes, we really have entered into a New World, but that new world has broader ramifications than just having a liberal, intellectual, person of color in the White House. The two biggest things I see in our future, on a personal basis, is that each and every one of us is going to have to learn to behave in two new and different ways.

1. We've got to start working in a personal way to protect our environment. Each of us can do things in our daily life to make a difference. We can cut nack on the amount of electricity we use. We can cut back on our gas consumption. We can cut back on the amount of trash we send to landfills. We can eat more wisely which will benefit the Earth and our bodies. There are so many things we can do and if everyone does, it will change the world. Welcome to the New World.

2. We've got to quit spending money like mad idiots and riding the merry-go-round of consumerism. Yea, it will fuck up the economy for a while. A lot of rich people will lose their asses and a lot of not so rich people will lose even more than their asses, but we've got to stop this insanity. We don't need all the bullshit we're buying.
We also don't need our government to fund all the bullshit they're funding. These motherfuckers are spending 100s of billions of dollars like my granddaddy used to spend nickles on his grandkids.

Here are some of the things I'm doing:
I'm driving less. I'm consolidating trips. I'm just not making a lot of trips I used to. It's difficult to do when you live 2 miles off the hard road and over ten miles from the nearest convenience store and 20 miles from the nearest town, but then again, if I can cut out one or two trips a week, it really mkes a difference.
i've got a light fixture in my dining room and another in my bedroom that have six bulbs in each of them. When I'm home just doing regular stuff, I don't need six, sixty watt bulbs burning over my ass, so I've unscrewed all but one of them in each fixture and replaced that one with one of those newfangled flourescent screw in bulbs. So instead of burning six sixty watt bulbs, I'm burning one 40 watt flourescent. When folks come over for dinner I screw them all in. . . the lightbulbs. I've done the same thing with the light over my bathroom vanity. I don't need all six of them burning so I've unscrewed four of them. That will not only use a lot less electricity, it will cost me a lot less on my electric bill. See, all this works both ways.

The less bullshit I buy, the less industrial pollution is occurring. The less electricity I pay for, the less pollution occurs.

There are lots of things I really need to do. I need to quit using so many plastic bag and use more of those cheap reusable plastic containers. I need to put some more insulation around my front door. I need to change the air filter in my truck. I need to quit buying gallon jugs of drinking water and start using reusable containers (my well sucks).

Other things I've done. . . turned down the temperature of my hot water heater. Nobody needs scalding hot water coming out of their faucet. Close off rooms that aren't in use. I've got two rooms that don't need to be heated since nobody uses them regularly and no water lines run through or under them. Turn down the heat at night.

Bottom line: There are lots of things we can all do to save energy, cut pollution and spend less money.

If you've got any good ideas, please let me know.

[Hat tip to Hawa at Frackintruth.typepad.com for the seed of this post. Go see her.]

Horrible lives

So some dude was killed in a mad rush of people breaking down the door to get at the bargains at a Wal-Mart in Valley Stream, NY. That's Long Island, Naasau County which is not a poor working class or hillbilly neighborhood.

I'd like to say that this is an isolated incident and doesn't represent America as a whole especially since I've been feeling so good about my fellow Americans since Nov. 4, but can we? Does the quest for cheap flat screen TVs, low priced DVDs, digital cameras and similar products not represent the norm? Couldn't what happened in Valley Stream have happened anywhere in America? I dunno, I'd like to think that people around here would have been much too courteous to their fellow human being to let one get trampled under-foot. . . but I digress.

Yes, this does represent the sick and festering condition that is American consumerism. No one is ever satisfied. There is a constant need and craving for the next thing to acquire. It drives people away from their reality. They live for the future acquisition of material goods and as a result they're completely missing the only thing that is real. "But SagaciousOne, my 10.4 mega pixel large format extrasuperduper groovy digital camera IS real." Sorry Charlie, but the only thing that is real is where you stand right now and what you are doing right now. Your big screen TV, DVDs, game systems and all the other bullshit you use to transport yourself someplace else is all fantasy and illusion. The real world is passing by you without you even having a brief moment of consciousness about it.

We have a society that is fixated on creating for themselves a life (if you want to call it that) of illusion. It's so sad. I fear it will destroy the Earth. . . or at least western civilization.

What kind of holiday season will the family of the man who was trampled to death have this year and every year from now on?

Will justice be done? Will people be arrested for trampling another human being and tried for murder? Surely they have store video tape of the whole thing going down.

the horror

Walk in Beauty

[Yea, it's a retread, but I can't say anything better.]

Hello my friends. Here in America it's Thanksgiving. It's a time for families to gather, be grateful for their fortune, however large or small it may be, and feast. We should enjoy our family and celebrate our personal triumphs and tragedies. It is good to do so. It should also be a time to reflect upon what has happened between today and when people from Europe first set foot upon this great land. If you are of European descent, it's not YOUR fault that our ancestors raped, pillaged, stole and committed genocide against the native population, but it is your responsibility to recognize and be aware of what transpired before we came to be here. In that awareness, perhaps we can recognize the ongoing oppression perpetrated by those who find themselves in positions of authority and rule. Sometimes, it only takes one person to speak up and voice concern when injustice occurs. A single voice raised against injustice can sometimes make a difference. If we are grateful for what we have, and humbly accept our good fortune, we can also be a voice for reason and justice.
So be happy on this day of thanks and celebrate family, friends and good fortune, but never ever forget the past, because those who do are doomed to repeat it with all its horrors.

In the words of my friend Blair: "It's Thanks - for taking my fucking land - giving"


Bedagi (Big Thunder) late 19th century.
Wabanaki Algonquin writer

Give us hearts to understand;
Never to take from creation's beauty more than we give;
never to destroy wantonly for the furtherance of greed;

Never to deny to give our hands for the building of earth's beauty;
never to take from her what we cannot use.

Give us hearts to understand
That to destroy earth's music is to create confusion;
that to wreck her appearance is to blind us to beauty;

That to callously pollute her fragrance is to make a house of stench;
that as we care for her she will care for us.

We have forgotten who we are.
We have sought only our own security.
We have exploited simply for our own ends.
We have distorted our knowledge.
We have abused our power.

Great Spirit, whose dry lands thirst,
Help us to find the way to refresh your lands.
Great Spirit, whose waters are choked with debris and pollution,
help us to find the way to cleanse your waters.

Great Spirit, whose beautiful earth grows ugly with misuse,
help us to find the way to restore beauty to your handiwork.
Great Spirit, whose creatures are being destroyed, help us to find a way to replenish them.

Great Spirit, whose gifts to us are being lost in selfishness and corruption,
help us to find the way to restore our humanity.

Oh, Great Spirit, whose voice I hear in the wind, whose breath gives life to the world,
hear me; I need your strength and wisdom.
May I walk in Beauty.

Change? What can we believe in?

WTF? Uh Barry, you have a mandate. You best be gittin someone who can hand you a plan for immediate withdrawl on day-1. We didn't vote-up for no corpo-fascist Bush the Chimp regime lackey to continue running this war.
This is just bullshit.

Gates seen more likely to stay as Pentagon chief

WASHINGTON – What Robert Gates once called "inconceivable to me" — his remaining as defense secretary beyond Inauguration Day — is looking a bit more conceivable to the rest of Washington.

The 65-year-old former spymaster has turned publicly mum on the circumstances under which he would stay, even briefly, after President-elect Barack Obama takes office. But one of the leading scenarios for a wartime transition at the Pentagon has Gates holding the fort, at least for some months.

Fuck Joe Leiberman - throw his ass out NOW!

Joe Leiberman needs to pay for his political treason. Why are the democrats talking about letting him get away with speaking at the republican convention and going out on the campaign trail and daily attacking Barack Obama? The dems want to let there be no consequences for such low life behaviors. I don't give a damn about maintaining one more senate seat.
Let him go over to the republican side. He's a low life piece of shit and they shouldn't let him caucus with the dems just to save a seat. Remove him from all positions in the senate. . . . you gambled and lost Joe, now go fuck yourself.



42-13. Remember that number. That's the vote to give LIEberman a walk on the political treason he perpetrated against the democratic party.
This SOB tried to sabotage the campaign of Barack Obama and then the party leaders in the senate give him a fucking walk.
Change we can believe in???
This is the same ol same ol. Remember, most of these panty waisted senators are the same ones who have ogne along with the MoronMonkeyBoy Bush the Chimp agenda for the past eight years. These are the scum who voted FOR the fiasco in Iraq. Surprised they voted in favor of one of their own Bush lackeys no matter what the crime?

So LIEberman gets away with one of the most recreant political performances EVER.
WTF!

This is an insult to all the democrats who put their heart and soul into getting Barack Obama elected these past many months. Many of them will simply go back to their hard scrapple life of making ends meet. Joe LIEberman will go back to his senate seat and his committee chairmanship.

To the 42. . . your time will come.

Welcome to West Virginia

Home to a bunch of fat assed ignorant racist voters.

Huntington, WV. . . makin all WVians proud.

W. Virginia town shrugs at poorest health ranking

By MIKE STOBBE, AP Medical Writer Mike Stobbe, Ap Medical Writer – Sun Nov 16, 12:28 pm ET

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. – As a portly woman plodded ahead of him on the sidewalk, the obese mayor of America's fattest and unhealthiest city explained why health is not a big local issue.

"It doesn't come up," said David Felinton, 5-foot-9 and 233 pounds, as he walked toward City Hall one recent morning. "We've got a lot of economic challenges here in Huntington. That's usually the focus."

Huntington's economy has withered, its poverty rate is worse than the national average, and vagrants haunt a downtown riverfront park. But this city's financial woes are not nearly as bad as its health.

Nearly half the adults in Huntington's five-county metropolitan area are obese — an astounding percentage, far bigger than the national average in a country with a well-known weight problem.

Huntington leads in a half-dozen other illness measures, too, including heart disease and diabetes. It's even tops in the percentage of elderly people who have lost all their teeth (half of them have).

It's a sad situation, and a potential harbinger of what will happen to other U.S. communities, said Ken Thorpe, an Emory University health policy professor who is working with West Virginia officials on health reform legislation.

The Audacity of Dreams

I read the following this morning and began to ponder what the United States did 40 years ago.

India celebrates planting its flag on moon
By GAVIN RABINOWITZ, Associated Press Writer Gavin Rabinowitz, Associated Press Writer – Sat Nov 15, 10:16 am ET
NEW DELHI – India rejoiced Saturday at joining an elite club by planting its flag on the moon as the country's space agency released the first pictures of the cratered surface taken by its maiden lunar mission.

A probe sent late Friday from the orbiting mother spacecraft took pictures and gathered other data India needs for a future moon landing as it plummeted to a crash-landing at the moon's south pole, said Indian Space Research Organization spokesman B.R. Guruprasad.. . .

The Asian Age proclaimed "India is big cheese."

It will be 40 yrs ago this Christmas that American astronauts first orbited the moon. It's hard to believe that in a time when we didn't have personal computers or even handheld electronic calculators that a group of men (a group of thousands) could have done what they did.
Nine times they went to the moon and back. Six times they landed, explored and returned. . . 40 years ago.

No doubt the greatest technological achievement in human history. I got to watch it unfold and happen. I wouldn't trade anything for having witnessed that unbelievable accomplishment. Those who performed those superhuman feats were and always will be my heroes.


This is a picture of Buzz Aldrin walking on the moon, July 21, 1969.


So enjoy your crash landing of a square box on the Moon, India. . . not exactly a flag planting, but keep dreaming.