The Jed Report is rockin' it!

You gotta check out the Jed Report. Americablog has been linking to them pretty consistently for a few months and the guy is completely rockin it. For example check out today's video -- A Google Earth tour of McCain's many homes. I particularly love the voice-over narration -- it reminds me a bit of Odd Todd:

Cranky one liners, tell your friends

John McCain = George Bush + dementia (which is kinda redundant but you get the point).

Note to Barack Obama: Most people don't care what position you take on an issue, they care that the process you use in making the decision is principled.

It seems that everyone is writing their analysis of what happened with the Clinton campaign so I thought I'd add my own: Clinton hired Mark Penn. The end.

Enough already with Buddhists finding ways to love Dick Cheney! The latest ridiculous example is Deborah Solomon's interview with Columbia University Buddhist studies professor Robert Thurman:

"DS: What do you think about when you meditate?
RT: Usually, some form of trying to excavate any kind of negative thing cycling in the mind and turn it toward the positive. For example, when I am annoyed with Dick Cheney, I meditate on how Dick Cheney was my mother in a previous life and nursed me at his breast.

DS: You mean you fantasize about being breast-fed by Dick Cheney?
RT: It’s a fantasy of releasing fear and developing affection. It’s a way of coming back to feeling grateful toward him and seeing his positive side, finding the mother in Dick Cheney."

Note to American Buddhists: Dick Cheney is a murderous thug. Over 4,000 Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are dead in part because of him. Stop trying to hump his leg and start working with the rest of humanity to put him in jail. There's a reason why Tibet isn't free -- Buddhists are so busy suppressing their anger that they are largely impotent when it comes to the political struggle.

Lilla Watson

I heard this quote for the first time tonight and it totally blew me away:

"If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is tied up with mine, then let us work together."
Lilla Watson, Aboriginal activist

I feel like that's it exactly.

The physical oppression of the coffee grower in Latin America it tied up with the mental colonization of the American mind that rushes to fuel up on $4 coffee without questioning where it came from nor why we have to be so amped up everyday.

The prisoner at Guantanamo is shackled by security forces but he is also tied to the shackles in our mind that fear to question and fear to throw our bodies against the machine that produces such horror.

So often we think of domination and oppression as out there, over there, other, without realizing, seeing, or feeling that its mirror image exists inside our own heads constraining what we think, feel, and do. I definitely DO NOT mean this in a postmodern, new age, The Secret, we-create our-own-reality-through-our-thoughts kind of way. What I'm saying is that in the first world, our bodies and minds are not as free as we think they are. We are often unable to see the chains that bind and limit us because we have internalized them and normalized them. But I think we feel the yearning for liberation pretty regularly.

14 people murdered in L.A. County over the weekend

The LA Times put the story on page B3.

I'll just repeat that -- 14 people murdered in Los Angeles County in one weekend and it doesn't even make the front page of the local section.

Nothing to see here people.

Sandra Day O'Connor wants more civics education

The NY Times today reports:

"Sandra Day O'Connor, the former Supreme Court justice, feels that civics education in American public school has become less of a priority in the era of standardized testing. So, in conjunction with two universities, she is developing an interactive Web Site with a civics curriculum for students called Our Courts. "Knowledge about our government is not handed down through the gene pool," she said. "Every generation has to learn it, and we have some work to do."

Dear Sandra Day O'Connor:

Just heard about the new civics education website. Congratulations. I'm wondering if your civics curriculum will include any lessons on how the SUPREME COURT SHOULD NOT PICK THE PRESIDENT AND SHOULD ALLOW ALL THE VOTES TO BE COUNTED. Just a thought.

All the best,
RFK Action Front

Stunning Excerpt from "Machiavelli's Shadow"

Salon is out today with a stunning excerpt from Paul Alexander's new book about Bush's response to Hurricane Katrina. (Hat tip to Melissa McEwan at Shakesville for flagging the following bombshell paragraphs:)

Of all of the stories and subplots, there would be one that, in many ways, symbolized the whole of Katrina, what it revealed about the Bush administration, and how it would affect the lives of so many people. On Friday, Mary Landrieu had been with Bush and Blanco as they toured the 17th Street Canal, where, at last, major work had commenced to repair the damage that had been caused when the levee broke. "Then, on Saturday," Landrieu says, "George Stephanopoulos called and asked to do an interview with me, and I said, 'George, I'm tired of doing interviews. I have to work. And nothing you are airing is accurately showing what's going on down here.' He wanted to go to the Superdome, and I said, 'We still have people stranded on their roofs. If you want to tell the right story, I will help you tell the right story. You get a helicopter and I'll go up and I will show you what is actually happening. It's awful what's happening at the Superdome, but the reason the people can't understand the story is because the entire region is under 20 feet of water. People can't get into the Superdome to help. They can't get out. People are drowning in their homes.'

"So George and I went up in the helicopter and for three hours his jaw was dropping. Then I said, 'George, before we finish I have to show you one positive thing because I can't send you back to Washington to produce a story that shows nothing but devastation and disaster.' So I told the pilot to tack right so I can show George the 17th Street Canal and the work that was going on there. I swear as my name is Mary Landrieu I thought that what I saw with the president was still there -- people working, trucks, sandbags, everything. Then I looked down and saw one little crane. It was like someone took a knife and stabbed me through my heart. I lost it." There, in the cabin of the helicopter, as they flew above the breached canal below them, Landrieu sat devastated.

"I could not believe that the president of the United States, staged by Karl Rove himself, had come down to the city of New Orleans and basically put up a stage prop. It was like you had gone to a studio in California and filmed a movie. They put the props up and the minute we were gone they took them down. All the dump trucks were gone. All the Coast Guard people were gone. It was an empty spot with one little crane. It was the saddest thing I have ever seen in my life. At that moment I knew what was going on and I've been a changed woman ever since. It truly changed my life."

It's shows once again that this White House is only a marketing operation. There is no governing team, no policy team, just the political team spinning the gullible Washington press corp 24/7.

It seems to me that Bush's failed response to hurricane Katrina is an impeachable offense by any reasonable definition of the term.

Obama's basic goal as stated by a 9-year-old

There's a brilliant diary over at DailyKos where a father shares his 9-year-old daughter's take on Barack Obama:

Barack Obama wants everybody to work together and make things better, instead of getting angry because things are bad.

Can I ask another question?

Isn't the great historical struggle -- the task facing humanity through the ages -- to build a system based on love rather than domination? Love rather than domination in our relationships, love rather than domination in our economics, love rather than domination in our politics.

You can have a system (indeed we do have a system) based on domination. It will function, it will have its own internal logic, it will be able to perpetuate itself.

But every once in a while little glimpses of a system based on love peak through -- in our relationships, in our economics, in our politics. Isn't that what draws people to religious figures -- the hope for a world based on love rather than domination (only to be disillusioned when religion perpetuates domination, ahem Pope Benedict, in the name of love). Isn't that why people literally weep at the thought of Robert Kennedy -- the realization that a leader embodied the possibility of a world system based on love. Isn't that the struggle of all religious movements and political revolutions -- to move from a system based on domination to one based on love? Isn't that the defining struggle of our time and the defining struggle indeed of the human race?

Can I ask a question?

Yeah, it's a provocative question. That's what we do around here.

Is it possible that perhaps everything we learn in school -- music lessons and all the homework and sports and SAT tests and grades and getting in to "good colleges" -- is all just a tool to teach us domination (domination over our own bodies and domination over others)?

Isn't that what kids rebel against in school -- the fact they are being taught domination? Isn't that the point of the alienated kid in the John Hughes movie hating the jock -- the alienated kid doesn't hate sports -- he hates the fact that the jock is participating in and perpetuating a system of domination and yet isn't smart enough to realize it or own up to his participation in it. (Isn't that what the insult, "Tool!" is all about -- telling someone they are just a tool of a system of domination?) But of course the alienated kid doesn't have the words to really describe what's going on so he's just pissed all the time and doesn't know why.

Now I get that there are some schools which are really quite extraordinary and really do teach music for a love of music and really do teach history and math and all that for a love of learning. I get that there may be some schools and some teachers who really do love life and teach others how to live and love fully. But I gotta figure there aren't many of those kinds of schools.

Also to be fair (that's gonna be my new phrase for a while) life requires a fair amount of domination. Just think of how much domination needs to happen just to create a single nail -- the ore that has to be mined, the huge furnace to melt and process it, the factory equipment to press out this little piece of metal, the trucks to get that nail to the hardware store. And then think of all the nails that go into building a single simple little house. It seems that life just requires a fair amount of domination in order to survive.

And again to be fair, a world where people lack agency (which is kinda related to domination but not exactly the same thing) I imagine might be awful. Maybe it'd lead to famine and widespread suffering. Or maybe not.

Related question: Is it possible that in fact, students aren't being taught domination but rather submission to a system that requires them to dominate others?

Criminal negligence

Continuing our occasional word of the day series here at RFK Action Front... our word of the day is --

Criminal negligence: (law) recklessly acting without reasonable caution and putting another person at risk of injury or death (or failing to do something with the same consequences)

Rachel's Democracy & Health News links to an article from Science Daily, titled, "Autism Risk Linked to Distance from [Coal-Fired] Power Plants, Other Mercury-Releasing Sources." From the article:

A newly published study of Texas school district data and industrial mercury-release data, conducted by researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, indeed shows a statistically significant link between pounds of industrial release of mercury and increased autism rates. It also shows—for the first time in scientific literature—a statistically significant association between autism risk and distance from the mercury source...

Dr. Palmer, Stephen Blanchard, Ph.D., of Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio and Robert Wood of the UT Health Science Center found that community autism prevalence is reduced by 1 percent to 2 percent with each 10 miles of distance from the pollution source....

Most exposures were said to come from coal-fired utility plants (33 percent of exposures), municipal/medical waste incinerators (29 percent) and commercial/industrial boilers (18 percent). Cement plants also release mercury.

Okay, so now we know there is a direct link between mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants and autism. And we know that the closer one lives to the source the worse the problem -- as the study says, "autism prevalence diminished 1 to 2 percent for every 10 miles from the source." It's a small but statistically significant effect.

So here's my question: now that we know this information, aren't any legislators who vote in favor of building a new coal-fired power plant guilty of criminal negligence? Not just in the moral sense, but also in a practical sense -- isn't it possible that a criminal prosecutor will at some point bring a case against legislators who voted in favor of coal-fired power plants even though they knew, with statistical certainty, that there is a direct link between coal-fired power and autism? Given that this scientific research in now in the public domain, by definition, isn't any vote in favor of new coal-fired power plants in fact a prosecutable case of criminal negligence?

Now it may be a tough case to prove. Heaven knows big corporations have gone to great lengths to obtain liability protection and some legislatures might even be protected against lawsuits by shield laws. And just like in the court cases against the tobacco industry -- it'll be tough to prove that this particular coal plant was the sole reason that this particular child developed autism -- maybe it was the cement factory down the street or the vaccines given to the child. But still, I gotta figure on a class action basis, given this evidence, some attorney might want to take this on.

So, if you're a legislator such as Bill Otto in Kansas, do you really want to vote for a new coal-fired power plan when in fact you KNOW that it will cause huge adverse health impacts on the residents in your community and you face the possibility that you, personally, will be sued for criminal negligence?