Goodbye Ned

People have been asking what's going on with me. I haven't updated the blog much and it's been mostly about politics in the last couple of months. In a way, I feel like I'm not doing anything newsworthy and on the other hand, who could think about anything else? There's been so much happening in the world – and so much that seems to be changing – that I can't keep up and also keep finding that everything I want to say is already being said. I commented to a friend a couple of months ago that the level of debate and discussion in this country has finally been ratcheted up. Everyone has been talking about the bailouts, the election, gay rights, the war and so many other important things. But there have been important changes happening in my life too. For one thing, I just turned 37 and I attend my 20th high school reunion next week so I'm thinking a lot about where I am in life. My mom was younger than me when she lost her mother to cancer and I am so grateful for this opportunity to spend this time with her. Time she never got with her mother. She's loving it too.

Yesterday, we had a sad day. One of our cats, Ned, had to be put down. He was almost 19 years old. My mom has already put down two 18 year old cats and has another one about to turn 17. She's lived in this house a long time and many neighborhood cats and kittens have found her to be adopted, she has never once chosen a cat herself. Ned was named after the band Ned's Atomic Dustbin in 1990 by my brother, and our cousins who visited from England that summer dubbed him "Little Chaps." He grew to be a big cat and was never the smartest one but he defended the yard for almost 20 years from intruders. In his last days, though, he couldn't hear other cats and didn't have the energy to chase them away. He was always a big teddy bear and loved affection; You could hold him, squeeze him and carry him around and he would purr and drool until you put him down.

His best friend was Jake, a fragile and beautiful cat a couple of years younger and much smaller, whom Ned protected fiercely. They slept together and washed each other, their gray fluffy bodies blending into one. Over the last few months, though, Ned began to waste away. His 20 lb. body went down to about 4 and his big head and feet looked funny on his smaller frame. He was skin and bones and even though we fed him well and treated his over-active thyroid, he continued to look more frail and become disoriented. He howled every night though we never knew why. Was it to try to hear himself speak? Was it a cry for help? Or maybe it was for his beloved Cricket, a gorgeous black and white cat that lived next door. He was madly in love with Cricket and used to follow her around and howl for her in the evenings until she disappeared one summer night a few years ago – perhaps taken away by marauding coyotes.

On the night before his last, Ned curled up with Jake for the first time in months and they washed each other. Ned spent the entire night sleeping in front of the fire he always loved, something he hadn't done in probably a year. He usually spent his days and night on the roof, we figured so he could see everything and no one could sneak up on him. But something did sneak up on him, a raccoon or maybe a coyote tore half of Ned's back foot off. Maybe he was trying to defend his Jake or maybe he just didn't hear his attacker, but my mom found him in a state of shock lying by the pool in the early morning. We took him to the vet and decided to euthanize him. Ned was a stubborn cat and would never have permitted himself to be kept indoors or get help taking a pee. He wouldn't have put up with bandages or opened his mouth for antibiotics, so there wasn't any point. And if it didn't heal, they'd have to amputate. He was already so weak and so fragile, it didn't seem right to risk him being eaten alive on another day or night or deprive him of his roof and his garden.

When the doctor gave him the shot, my mother and I were both holding and stroking Ned and even though she said it might take 15 seconds, he was gone in two. He was ready to go she said and we barely registered a change in him even though his heart had stopped. We took him home and buried him in the garden he loved so much and was his home for nearly two decades. My mom worked from home for the rest of the day and we both cried throughout the afternoon. We talked about what a long life Ned had, and what a great life all of her cats have had. Her yard is so full of trees and gardens that every cat on the block wants to live here. Since Ned's decline, we had about four neighbor cats who spent their days in the yard, something he never would have permitted before. We talked about what to plant over his grave and that we were glad we brought him home, where he belongs. I still am so sad today. I didn't expect to be so upset but I miss him, even in his distressed state, and it's hard to be responsible for taking a life away. Yet, we both feel it was the right thing and we think Ned did too. Dear Ned, rest in peace, you will be missed. (Photo is from July this year.)

The power of the people

Well folks, we did it! Almost two years ago I said that America would never elect a man named Barack Obama to be their president and I have never been happier to be wrong. And for the first time in almost a decade, it wasn't a squeaker. He won with a healthy victory of more than 7 million popular votes and trounced in electorate votes. I am so proud of and grateful to my friends who donated money, phonebanked, bakesaled, drove to Nevada, registered voters, knocked on doors, posted information, emailed information and made sure their friends and family knew what an Obama victory would mean to us and the world. THANK YOU.

Have you ever seen a headline like this? "Election Unleashes a Flood of Hope Worldwide." I have never seen this level of participation in politics and more people voted in this election than any since LBJ won by a landslide in 1964 when the nation was reeling from the Kennedy assassination. Beyond his own victory as an African-American, Obama inspired millions of previously disenfranchised voters to cast ballots and brought young people into the process in a way no candidate has before. This country has once again proven the power of the people, if only we will use it. I hope America keeps its eye on the prize for the next four years and pitches in to help this guy out, he's got his work cut out for him. Yes we can!

On the eve of election day

I woke up crying for no apparent reason. I'm on the tail end of a three-week cold and have felt my blood pressure rise on more occasions than I'd like to admit over the past few months. This is the first year that I've done a mail-in ballot (in anticipation of being a poll worker, that I never got to be) and I will miss going to the polls. Even though there are rumors of long lines and other wackiness, I love walking into that polling booth and exercising my right to vote. This race for the presidency is certainly one of the most exciting I've seen in my lifetime and the country seems to be divided into four parts (in descending order of popularity): Those who think Obama will usher in a new era in participatory politics, those who think he'll bring about the end of the world, those who think all politicians are crooks and liars and those who think Sarah Palin is the neatest thing since sliced bread.

I promised myself months ago that I would campaign for Obama if he got the nomination but I didn't end up doing it. Mostly because my life got a little bit complicated and I just didn't feel quite up to it honestly. I did, however, write letters and talk to friends and convince my mother about Obama - who in turn has convinced other people. The stubborn loyalty to the smear tactic by the McCain/Palin campaign and their fervently hateful supporters, however, has really disturbed me. I know this kind of division has happened in previous elections but it affected me more deeply this time. Every time Obama chose the high road, it seemed to make his competitor sink to an even deeper level of deceit, turning people off by the thousands. Eckhart Tolle talks about the collective human evolution that we're in the middle of, a process in which the ego and the insanity that it produces becomes apparent to us and once we turn our attention to it, it dissolves. I see the McCain campaign as embodying the insanity of the ego rallying against Obama's Zen-like acceptance and enthusiasm. It's why I believe his leadership is crucial right now. Tolle says if we do not complete this evolution, we will be destroyed by our collective ego. I believe the general unease with Bush, even by those who cannot articulate the reason, reflects our desire to do just that.

A few bills on the California ballot also address the commitment to our own evolution, as a society and as individuals. Prop 2 calls for more humane treatment of the animals we eat for food. Enormous sums of money have been donated by companies that have violated existing laws on waste, food safety and animal welfare to run ads using the same McCain scare tactics about what will happen if people vote YES. Many intelligent and reasonable people, already committed to their family's health, have been unsure how to vote. Even though the bigger issue is our responsibility to not cause needless suffering in the world, people still want to be assured that the price of eggs isn't going to go up. They don't yet have the space in their heart to weigh a few pennies against the suffering of a chicken. Not yet. This is just one of a series of measures that have been passing all over the country in the last few years that demonstrate a growing concern for the welfare of animals - a concern that I believe to be part of our overall consciousness. Religious leaders are finally joining the discussion and reminding their followers (for lack of a better word) of their God given responsibility to all creatures great and small.

Another bill, Prop 8, wants to limit the right of marriage to straight people. The folks pushing it say they want to protect marriage. I started out on this one thinking it was just laughable. I mean it's obvious that people are losing interest in marriage just as they are losing interest in religion, but what do the gays have to do with it? I have many friends who are married but I also have quite a few who have had children without getting married or who are well past middle age and show no signs of ever getting married. So when gays started getting married it really didn't matter to me. Then I saw Prop 8 ad on TV that made me stop in my tracks. It was so bizarre and freaky that I couldn't believe it was on, I think during The Daily Show! When I moved to the suburbs, I encountered mobs of white teenagers with their milquetoast parents holding signs on street corners that called Prop 8 "free speech" while signs were posted in yards all over the neighborhood. It galvanized me to find out what exactly it was all about.

I went to their ridiculous website, I read articles, I studied the Wikipedia entry on marriage and learned that this is nothing more than a group of people who believe that their discomfort with someone else's behavior warrants a law being passed to prohibit it. I thought of a dozen things that irritate me like people sawing down mature trees to make room for more concrete, those car stereos that boom really loud and shake my car when I'm at a stop light, baggy pants that guys have to hold up to walk across the street, or really strong perfume on a woman that burns my nose when I'm in a store. They derisively refer to the "four activist judges" who overturned their last attempt to infringe on our civil rights as if we should live by mob rule and condemn judges who don't agree. Then, on a Catholic website, I read an article by a Deacon urging his constituents to vote for Prop 8 but nearly every comment was in opposition! Catholics wrote to say they were voting AGAINST Prop 8 and were offended that the church thinks they have a right to tell people how to vote. One woman posted a fantastic article about the (aforementioned "activist") Republican moderate judge who led the majority opinion in the case and the journey he took to make a decision that respects the people's will as expressed by the Constitution.

Ironically, I think this bill has forced people to take a stand on an issue they may have been ambivalent about. Teachers and school administrators were furious to learn that proponents were lying in their ads, saying that schools would be forced to teach about gay marriage. Proponents outraged parents when they stole footage from the San Francisco Chronicle of children attending a gay wedding and used it without permission in their ads. My mother, whose gay boss and his partner are raising two special needs children they adopted, was horrified when I explained the bill to her. She then had a conversation with a woman in the neighborhood with a NO on Prop 8 sign who told her that her young daughter has a friend with gay parents but has never once asked why the girl has two daddies. Kids aren't confused or concerned; nearly every child these days has a complicated parental situation and I say a child with two parents is lucky! That same week, the band of propagandists picketed in front of an elementary school prompting kids to ask their parents what it was all about. The proponents of Prop 8 aren't defending marriage, they're just teaching their kids to hate people who are different.

I say that the chorus of hate and intolerance that echos around the country is the sound of our collective ego dying as we increasingly respect the earth, each other and all the other creatures on the planet. I also see Obama as focusing our attention inward in so many ways. He focuses on how we can take better care of each other, not how we can exercise control over the rest of the globe. Similarly, consciousness happens when we focus our attention inward and stop trying to control everything and everyone around us. I bet that the people who are afraid of Obama are really afraid of what happens when we start looking inward. That fear has been intentionally stoked but it isn't working as much as it used to. There is less and less room in our collective consciousness for the negative rhetoric of the ego, desperate for control. I say it's part of our evolution, and like the better treatment of animals and the acceptance of a broader definition of marriage and family, there's no stopping it. So vote and bring it on!

Why Sarah Palin won't be our Vice President

"I have a question for the women in the audience," the Alaska governor began, "Are you willing to break the highest, hardest glass ceiling in America?"
What a cruel joke for a woman who is against everything I believe in – environmental reform, animal rights, a woman’s right to choose, the importance of education, peace, and freedom from persecution – to surround herself with feminists and ask me to help her break the glass ceiling.

It took women 50 years to get the right to vote after freed slaves did. Fifty years! These were women married to politicians, raising their children and running their homes and yet it was easier for white men to view a black man – whom only a few years was considered property – as a citizen than the women they shared a bed with. I bring this up because it’s vital to understand the deep-seated fear and resentment men had for women wanting the vote (and by proxy, full citizenship). They must have viewed us as children, demanding something that we could neither understand nor be trusted with. But in 1917, Montana (who had given women the right to vote) elected the first woman into Congress, three years before the Constitution was amended.

Nearly a hundred years later, there are still far too few women in Congress. Out of 535 members, only 90 are women: 16 of 100 senators are women (two of them are from California, Senators Feinstein and Boxer, both of whom I’ve met!) and 74 of 435 representatives are women. So it really irks me when I read about "Palinmania" in The New York Times, describing how popular Sarah is with the "dudes." They paint their chests and shout Maverick and "marry me" at her rallies. They say they prefer Palin over both Obama and McCain as if she’s running for president! A few are quoted as saying men have screwed things up enough, maybe it’s time to let a woman run the country for a while. While I couldn't agree more, I find it difficult to believe that these dudes felt this way when Hilary was running or that they’ve ever spent a minute in their lives thinking about the gender inequality in politics. No, because the Joe Six-Packs say Sarah's different, she's "their kind of woman."

The feminists have always said that in order to be regarded by men, a woman has to be sexually appealing, non-threatening and assume, in some way, the role model of wife and mother. But if she wants to be taken seriously, she can't be seen as using her sexuality. Maybe that explains the glasses? They say "I know I'm hot but I want you to take me seriously, okay? [wink, wink].” She certainly has that over Clinton who, as formidable as any man, didn't advertise her role as mother and was more concerned about being seen as qualified instead of sexually appealing. Many of these men said they came to the rally just to look at Palin, because she's so beautiful. I'd like to point out that this is not sexism by the other candidates or by the media, this is pure unadulterated sexism from the American public. What could be more dismissive than supporting a candidate because she's a VPILF?

The strategists that picked Palin specifically wanted a good-looking woman because they intended to play the gender card. People tend to be more sympathetic to an attractive woman and they're less likely to rip her apart (or expose her flimsy credentials). Despite what her supporters think, the reaction to her has been quite kind compared to the way Hilary Clinton was treated or even the way Nancy Pelosi is talked about these days. Women are crucified for being tough and attacked for being soft, but less so if they're pretty. I'm so tired of reading the public's comments about how Palin is being "picked on," a phrase that is decidedly sexist in its assumption that she can't take it. The charge that the media has unfairly focused on her appearance and clothing is completely unfounded. No one cared about her wardrobe until they discovered how much it cost and her attractiveness has been made an issue because the more we learn about her, the more we believe it's the reason she's a candidate. She thinks her family life has been delved into more because she's a woman. Really? We haven't heard about Obama's interracial parents, his mother leaving him with his grandparents, getting food stamps while going to medical school? We haven't heard about McCain's affair and leaving his crippled wife for another woman who just happens to be filthy rich?

A female supporter remarked at the same rally that she trusts Palin because she’s a mom. In any corporation in the country, the fact that she has five kids including a disabled newborn, would subject her to possible discrimination over a fear that she wouldn't have enough time for her job. When most women take six months to a year getting their full energy back after having a baby, Palin's running all over the country like Superwoman. No one's afraid she might exhaust herself or neglect her baby or her husband or her job? Such a curious exception to what is practically a rule in the working world. I met a woman who, while presenting her thesis for business school, was asked how she planned to start a business with a baby (she was pregnant at the time). If Palin were truly getting the sexist treatment, questions like this would be asked without impunity. While I have the utmost respect for the job of mother - and most of my girlfriends are mothers - I hardly think it is an automatic qualification. Andrea Yates, Deanna Laney and Dena Schlosser, all God-fearing Christian mothers, killed their children. I'm just saying, think before you speak people.

What bothers me most though is simply that Palin is the first female nominee on a presidential ticket. How utterly unfair that after all these years (the first serious female contender for president was in 1964) we should get a woman like her. Hilary Clinton was a serious candidate – smart, savvy, experienced, well spoken – and she deserved it as much as anyone. I would have been proud to call her my president but not this woman. She sounds like a third grade teacher who hasn’t spent a lot of time speaking to adults and if she doesn't have an answer to a question, she blames the question! She’s either as dumb as she appears or she’s feigning it in that “math is haaaaard” way that girls do when they first discover that boys are threatened by girls that are smarter than they are. Either way, it’s behavior unbecoming a woman promising to break the glass ceiling for all women. Men are threatened by women who are smarter than them which means the only woman capable of breaking the ceiling is as smart as the men around her and isn’t afraid to show it.

When I watched John McCain announce her as his running mate during the Republican convention, I thought it was a stroke of genius. I imagined all of his advisers in a room after the Democratic convention thinking that they didn’t have a chance in hell. How could McCain possibly compete against the youth, optimism, intelligence and charisma of Obama? We all heard that sucking sound when Hilary was pulled out of the race, though, and in that vacuum they decided to bring in a woman of their own. But unlike Hilary, this woman would be pretty and approachable in a fifties housewife kind of way and she’d be a real woman with a lot of kids and strong views against abortion. They also imagined, I’m sure, that if she literally had never been to Washington, she wouldn’t have any enemies there or anyone who really knew her background. Plus, they thought she’d be easy to manipulate.

The Republicans don’t give a shit about women. Oh sure, they’re happy to use the fire of pro-life conservative women to get elected but once in office, they don’t do a damn thing about it. The irony is, Roe v. Wade would probably have a better chance of being overturned if there were more women in office, or in the courts, because women care about this issue. Pro or against, it affects us profoundly. Out of 110 Supreme Court Justices that have sat on the bench in our history, only two have been women. Plus, since 1990, the number of female Republican representatives has been dropping. While women in state and U.S. congresses were split evenly then, now Democrats make up 69% of the women in state legislatures and 70% of the women in the U.S. Congress. When the Democrats had a black man and white woman as their top contenders for President this year, the Republicans had a bunch of white men. They weren’t looking for the candidate that would make the best Vice President; they were looking for someone that could help them win. They’re using Sarah Palin, exploiting her "aw shucks" ignorance and her bald-faced ambition, to try to win an election as if what happens after that is meaningless.

The flip-flopping that Palin's doing right now on whether or not she's a feminist further demonstrates that the strategy isn't working. The Republicans don't know how to position her and because of it we haven't a clue who she really is. At a rally a few days ago, Palin appeared onstage with a number of high-powered feminists who previously supported Clinton. The fact that NOW (National Organization of Women) has already endorsed Obama hasn’t stopped these women from aligning themselves with a candidate whose most fervent supporters want to take us back into the dark ages. So they too prove to be sexist by backing a candidate simply because of her gender and basically reversing their support on every major issue. During her Katie Couric interview, she answered the question about whether she's a feminist with a decisive "yes" but now she doesn't want to be labeled. The public thinks she's being asked the question only because she's a female and isn't that sexist?

Yes, she's absolutely being asked the question because she's a woman, but no, it's not sexist. Let's not pretend that gender neutrality is possible in this highly critical and personal arena. Equality is being treated with the same respect and being offered the same opportunities without rewards or punishment based on race, gender, etc. I think it's a perfectly legitimate question. We women are being asked to consider her despite her shortcomings, which can only mean that she intends to represent us in a way that a man can't. Besides, if she were really an intelligent leader, she would jump at the opportunity to educate us on what being a feminist means to her. She could say that being a feminist does not mean subscribing to a single political doctrine because that would be saying that all women are the same. (Clearly, we are not.)

She could say that being a feminist means taking the women's role as creator very seriously and that is why she cannot condone abortion. I would respect her if she could articulate a position, any position, even if I didn't agree with it. She could outline for us how she has promoted and stood up for women's rights – in the same way that she exposed corruption in the government and negotiated a pipeline in her state, which I also haven't heard her speak cohesively about. She wants to break the glass ceiling, so what's wrong with asking her how she's going to help me do it too? One editorial suggests that we haven't heard anything intelligent from Palin because the Democrats haven't asked her any real questions and suggests that they're being sexist by not engaging her. I say bullshit. I say she's had plenty of opportunities to say something worth listening to and has failed miserably. While sexism definitely contributes to the gender gap in political representation, it isn't the reason Sarah Palin won't be our Vice President.

That isn't to say this has been easy for me. I'm a dyed in the wool feminist who would probably draw blood to defend Palin if I saw some of the crap she's putting up with in person, but I also cringe at everything that comes out of her mouth. Clearly, we need more women in politics to choose from for these roles. One theory for the inequality is a lack of candidates. If nothing else, Sarah Palin has shown us that being a gutsy and attractive woman and mother are enough to run for office. So perhaps she will inspire women all over the country to get their names on the ballot. I'm planning for a woman president in 2016 but let me make one final note. People forget that we've already had quite a few women in the White House, the First Ladies. Many of these women have worked just as tirelessly for our country as their husbands and some have made enormous contributions. While it's not an elected position and they don't get paid, they also get very little credit for their efforts so I'd like to thank them now.

Do we really hate each other?

Holy mackerel, every time I’m about to post about what’s going on in the election, another ridiculous thing happens. Why just this week…
- Famous conservatives jump ship to endorse Obama.
- Colin Powell, the only man in the White House who didn’t want to invade Iraq, endorses Obama and is dismissed by McCain because he's got the support of plenty of other military folks.
- Joe the Plumber turns out to be a fraud in every way but Palin's still chanting his name at rallies.
- The McCain camp continues to call Obama a terrorist and supporters at a rally in Minnesota held signs comparing him to Charles Manson.
- Palin is suddenly a feminist and shows up at a rally with a cadre of Clinton supporters despite the fact that NOW and Hilary herself have endorsed Obama.
- A Republican club in California mails out a racist anti-Obama flyer and makes one of their members cry for 45 minutes.
- Palin makes an appearance on SNL and Alec Baldwin, who made fun of her on Bill Maher only a week before, tells her she’s hotter in person.

I mean, you can’t make up stuff like this! It’s juicier than any TV show. Once again, this election has brought out the worst behavior and the ugliest thoughts of the Americans. But here's what’s really disturbing to me. Last night I saw these videos from the Alfred E. Smith annual charity dinner that all these people were at: McCain, Obama, and Hilary Clinton. It's traditional during election years for the candidates to roast themselves/each other, so John McCain gets up there and makes jokes about replacing his staff with Joe the Plumber and hiring him to work on his seven houses while Barack Obama makes jokes about his middle name really being Steve and how he wasn't really born in a manger, and they both joke about Hilary voting for McCain. They make jokes about Acorn registering Mickey Mouse and are all cracking up at each other; they can barely contain themselves.

So here they are, really, making fun of all of us for getting sucked into the bullshit: Democrats versus Republicans, us versus them, everyone calling each other ignorant and stupid and even the candidates call us names. And all the while, this is just what they do to win. It doesn’t mean anything. McCain doesn't REALLY think Obama is a terrorist; it's just a campaign tactic and Obama knows it. They oh-so-casually make stuff up about themselves, relying on the fact that we'll use it to make assumptions about how they'll govern. But while Americans are hating each other and fighting over this stuff, these guys go to a fancy dinner and have a laugh about it. At the end of the day, they're all buddies and they’ll still be running our government no matter who ends up as president.

Noam Chomsky said in an interview that if anyone is undecided, they should just vote Democrat because most people’s lives improve when a Democrat is in office. It’s that simple. Unless, he says, your personal beliefs are more important, in which case, vote that way. Then he said something else, about how public policy isn’t based on what the people want anyway. Politicians don’t talk address issues that are important to us, they talk about issues that are important to business and sometimes they just happen to be the same thing. For example, he says, health care has been the number one issue for the voters for decades. It’s a horrific system, totally broken, and another embarrassment to the rest of the civilized world that has already socialized their medical system.

Here we are being brainwashed, repeating “socialism is bad” without most people even understanding what it means. We have already socialized parts of our government and taxes are a form of socialism that, in fact, enable the American Dream and McCain knows that as well as Obama. Socialism is a red herring, it's just a campaign strategy to get elected. The reason health care is on the agenda this year, says Chomsky, is because big business is finally complaining about it. When GM says it’s cheaper to make cars in Canada because of the outrageous cost of providing health care in this country, lawmakers start to listen. See, the fighting isn't real. They just pretend to fight and disrespect each other so they can get into office. The two parties, Chomsky says, are really two branches of the same party, the business party.

I just finished watching Why We Fight, which is totally excellent and I highly recommend it. One point made in the film – which was also discussed at length in Gore’s book, Assault on Reason – is where was the fighting when it really mattered, when our Congress was deciding whether to go to war? The truth is, there wasn’t any debate. Republicans largely voted for it and Democrats mostly voted against it but they didn’t convene for a week or two to hash out the details and make sure this was the right thing to do. Not only that, they gave Bush the power to decide all of that for himself! They totally circumvented the checks and balances and said “Sure, the President can do whatever he wants in Iraq with our permission,” and sent us war with no budget and no exit strategy.

See, here’s what I think. I think people are angry, and rightfully so. We inherently know we aren’t being represented. We can’t trust our government and frankly, we don’t know whom to trust. We’re seeing our lives get worse and don’t know how to make them better. We see other people’s lives getting much better and suspect massive corruption, but aren’t sure if laws have been broken or if those people are just smarter than we are. We might also understand, although it’s difficult to admit, that for the last fifty years this country has taken whatever its wanted from the rest of the world and we’ve prospered even as we’ve fallen behind in education, health care, industry and infrastructure. The anger, though, has mistakenly been directed at each other as if all of this is the fault of people who don’t believe in God, people who hate gays or Jews or blacks, people who abort babies, drug addicts, perverts, socialists, because it must be someone’s fault, right?

This is, I must admit, the main reason that I support Obama. It's been a very long time since a politician has been so positive. He has managed to keep his head above the negativity and continue to call for togetherness and understanding. It's also a major reason that Colin Powell endorsed him. He says this country can't afford to be torn apart and I agree completely. Of course, the internet amplifies the negativity with its continuous critique and rehashing of every moment. Now a negative event doesn't happen once, it happens thousands of times. And people don't seem to need much encouragement for joining in the fray. But it makes me wonder yet again, if we are as backward as we appear. After all, we're about to elect a black man as our president, so clearly we are a progressive society no matter what the candidates or the media lead us to believe.

I had to post this

It's too funny how easily situations reflect each other, further evidence that humans keep playing out the same dramas, just with different players.



Replace "hobnobbing with crooks" with "pallin' around with terrorists." I also love the reference to The Penguin's "enthusiastic fans." Tee hee.

A more humane president

I wish I could think of something else besides the election and the economy but I can't. Arriving at the Farmer's Market on Saturday, I noticed that the Republicans have now joined the Democrats in handing out buttons and flyers. The Democrat Club has had a presence the last few weeks, several white-haired ladies sitting behind a table of Obama-Biden buttons, but on Saturday there was a horde of young men, in suits, handing out Republican literature. They looked like stock brokers. I immediately had this feeling that I needed to be declaring my affiliation, something I normally keep somewhat private with people I don't know. I went over to the women and bought a button, affixing it to my bag. One lady handed me a flyer to vote YES on Prop 2. I already know all about it, I said, and added that the Humane Society has just endorsed Obama. They have never before endorsed a presidential candidate and posted a detail analysis of his voting record and support for animals:
"The board of directors—which is comprised of both Democrats and Republicans—has voted unanimously to endorse Barack Obama for President. The Obama-Biden ticket is the better choice on animal protection, and we urge all voters who care about the humane treatment of animals, no matter what their party affiliation, to vote for them."

It may not mean much to some people but I say that you can tell a lot about a person by the way they treat animals (and the earth). And so does Obama. He said "I think how we treat our animals reflects how we treat each other, and it's very important that we have a president who is mindful of the cruelty that is perpetrated on animals." Humane Society and Amnesty International are my two charities, the ones I give the most money to and am the most active for. I realized this weekend that they essentially do the same thing, except one for animals and one for people. They fight to end suffering. What I like about both organizations is that they have excellent communications, informative websites and easily understood missions. They are surprisingly unsentimental, given the subject matter, and never condemn. Instead, they rely on the facts to speak for themselves. They understand that if suffering doesn't bother you, no amount of sensationalism is going to change that. If suffering does bother you, only the facts and an easy call-to-action are necessary. Amnesty International "neither supports nor opposes any political party or any candidate for public office and Amnesty does not seek to influence elections" but instead seeks to inform the public about their core issues and encourage them to influence policy. I have to say that the focus by these organizations on the welfare of people and animals is such a welcome respite from the hatred that infuses politics.

The recent behavior of Americans on the McCain-Palin campaign trail has really sickened me. I continue to find it sadly ironic that while we fight the Taliban in Afghanistan, people in this country are constantly trying to reverse our own progress and take us back into the dark ages as well. Had we not "waved the white flag of surrender" in Vietnam all those years ago, McCain might have died in a prison cell instead of coming back a war hero. Had radical women like Hillary Clinton not won out all those years ago, Palin would not be qualified to be a VP candidate because she would be denied the right to vote. Let's not forget how highly volatile these issues were when they were happening! So how is it possible that the people who support these two think they can deny gays the right to marriage, women the ability to terminate their own pregnancy and Obama the respect of a man running for The President of the United States? I refuse to believe that this country contains more hate and anger than it does hope and pride. The country I live in was founded on and has lead the world in many ways to becoming a more humane place and will continue to do so.

The real Joe Six-Pack

My mother, who usually doesn't care about politics at all and sighs when I get to talking about it, has become engrossed in the presidential race. She's never been accepted by her mother-in-law and when she heard her on the phone going on and on about how sweet Sarah Palin is, it galvanized her. "Did you see the debate?" she asked me? "What professional person talks like that?" My mom, who works for the Navy, says she'd be laughed at or fired if she conducted a meeting winking at people and talking like a hillbilly. Her in-laws support McCain because he's NRA even though "they don't own a gun and never have" but they live in rural Oregon and that's the kind of thing people there are into. "Do you know Palin didn't even graduate from college?" my mother asks. I tell her that I know she went to six colleges but didn't realize she never got a degree. "AND," my mom goes on, "She got a GED from high school. She's a drop out!

"They're finally getting into that business about she and her husband being part of that radical organization that wanted to secede" she continues. What an embarrassment this woman is. The Europeans were horrified when they saw the debate. All the Euro-cred we got in nominating Obama went right out the window when they saw the local yokel on the TEE-VEE talkin' straight, "you betcha!" And they thought Americans only talked that way on the Dukes of Hazzard, boy were they wrong.

During the last debate, my mom kept mimicking Palin saying "There you go, Joe, talkin' 'bout the past agin." "All McCain talks about is the past," she continues, "Vietnam and Reagan and PRESIDENT HOOVER?! Who was even alive when he was president?" She throws up her arms. "He has terminal cancer!" she says, "The doctors have only given him three years to live!" It does seem ludicrous that he would be seen as fit to serve, especially given the extreme stress and aging that even the youngest presidents endure. I couldn't help but cringe as McCain repeated every speech from the first debate, verbatim. On and on again about the war and his service in the military. It's literally all he has to talk about. Obama on the other hand, seemed like he was genuinely finding new words to answer each question, and he did actually answer the questions.

After the debate, we watched as everyone shook Obama's hand and snapped their photos with him. McCain was awkwardly walking around the room with his skeletal wife. Together, they look like the walking dead, he looks like he's been stuffed. "Oh, she's lovely," mom added when Michelle Obama started greeting audience members. When Obama went to shake McCain's hand, he pointed at his wife and Obama shook her hand. My mother gasped in horror, "He won't even shake his HAND," she says and continues about how we're going to find out just how racist this country is.

This, though, was the kicker. The next day, she read this news story about a 10-year old who crashed a van in Tennesee going about 90 mph. In the back of the van were his two siblings and parents who were popping pills, snorting coke and drinking. The dad, wore a T-shirt that said, "Buy this dad a beer." "That's Sarah Palin's Joe Six-Pack!" she said and laughed hysterically. "That's who's supporting Failin and McSame, ha ha ha."

Talking about an evolution

I’ve been thinking about religion lately, mulling it over for the last year or so. When I saw Bill Maher’s film Religulous on Saturday it inspired me to finally write about it. I enjoyed the film and while I think it was a bit unfocused and incomplete, it brings up an excellent point. Bill Maher makes a case that religion is an outmoded social structure based on myth and superstition that we can no longer afford. Al Gore says in his book The Assault on Reason: "We are currently faced with the urgent task of accelerating our own psychological, emotional, intellectual and spiritual evolution in order to see over the internal walls that may have served some useful purpose ages ago but are now merely obstacles that prevent us from securing the new path we must take." Eckhart Tolle, in A New Earth, says we must “evolve or die.” Watching, in Religulous, the way people defend their creation myths to the point of insisting that man lived with dinosaurs and refusing to believe the same myths had been repeated in civilizations for over 50,000 years before the Bible was written, makes me wonder if many wouldn’t rather die.

Religion, as a means of government, is an archaic idea that has been replaced by every advanced nation in the world with reason, law and social responsibility. Religion, as the quest for meaning, is not archaic – human beings will seek the answers to how we got here and what our purpose is for as long as we are in this world – but religion no longer satisfies the quest for these answers. Eckhart Tolle is one of the most popular new age writers of our time and while he frequently quotes Jesus in the book, he is clearly promoting an agnostic philosophy. The dictionary defines an agnostic as “one who believes it impossible to know anything about God or about the creation of the universe and refrains from commitment to any religious doctrine.” I love the use of the word ‘refrain’ here. It suggests that precisely because the desire to know about our origins is so strong, we may be tempted to accept easy answers as truth. Tolle cleverly uses the quotes of Jesus to illustrate that he and other spiritual leaders were ahead of their time, teaching a Zen philosophy, and because they were not understood have been misinterpreted and their words misused to further the careers of religious leaders. He no doubt also knows that many Christians are searching for answers beyond their religion and will find comfort in the references to Jesus.

Tolle says that we are in the midst of the great awakening and spends most of the book explaining that in order to evolve, humans will have to free themselves from the grip of the ego. To do it, we must become aware of the insanity of the ego and its control over our thoughts and actions. By being aware, we become present and no longer operate unconsciously. He describes how the ego, when it feels that threatened, grows in power and become increasingly insane. This is what I think is happening now. The religious institutions of the world, fueled by ego, are severely threatened by their declining relevancy in our global culture and are reacting in a fanatical way to survive. Bill Maher says in the film that 16% of Americans do not subscribe to a religious doctrine, the largest percentage in the history of one of the most religious nations on earth.

‘Unconscious’ is how Tolle describes the unenlightened. They are not bad or stupid or inferior, they simply have not yet awakened the part of themselves that is their true being. They are living through the mind and the ego. Unconscious might also be how Maher would describe faith – often referred to as “blind faith.” Religulous humorously demonstrates the absurdity of the “truths” accepted by followers, truths that not only vary from church to church but also contradict truths by other religions. The most frightening thing about faith is that it cannot be questioned without terse rigidity and suspicion. Maher says, once the word faith is spoken, conversation stops. I read, in one article about the film, that Americans would rather vote for a Jew, a black, a woman or a homosexual than an atheist. For all the prejudice in the world, Americans find a person without belief in the talking snake, the virgin birth and the second coming of the messiah, as anathema. Is it because people without “faith” are not likely to take anything at face value? Is because they question everything? Is it because it is assumed that their lack of belief in God means they a lack of belief in anything?

Atheist comes from the Greek word áthe, which means godless. The dictionary defines atheist as “a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a deity or divine beings” but defines godless as “wicked, evil and sinful.” How can anyone believe that a person who doesn’t believe in god is wicked? Both of my parents are atheist yet they went to church growing up. Their mothers were fairly devout as women of that generation tended to be. Half of the kids became atheists and the other half, became born again so I grew up in the conflict of religion as my father said it was stupid and my aunts told us we were going to hell. They tried to save my brother and me by leaving bibles in our rooms whenever they came to visit.

But despite the lack of god in our lives, we were raised in a very strict and moral way. There was no drinking, no swearing, no lying and no smoking in our house. We couldn’t watch television, eat junk food or have friends spend the night in our rooms. We lived on a steady diet of exercise, studying and health food. I have always been hardworking, honest and fair. My born-again relatives, on the other hand, were petty and judgmental, they home schooled their kids and restricted contact to only their church congregation, they lied and swindled money from my grandparents and fought amongst themselves about who was most worthy of their charity. They always appeared to me to be the worst kind of people, the kind that preach good but aren’t themselves.

It wasn’t difficult to see the hypocrisy of religion then and it isn’t difficult to see it now. Our President says God told him to run for office and has often used this religious calling to justify his actions which include an unprovoked invasion of a country (that some liken to a holy war and that has left more dead than the ruthless dictator we overthrew), unlawful detention (and alleged torture) of hundreds of innocent people and the erosion of civil liberties promised to us by our intentionally non-religious government. This President who claims to use God and religion as his guiding force is on track to become the least popular president in our history. Odd considering his devout beliefs!

It is easy to understand how 2,000 years ago a belief in god might have been requisite to establishing a set of rules but it seems to me an ancient idea that a person who doesn’t believe in god has no moral code! Religion has never succeeded in getting everyone to agree on a moral code. Nor has it ever succeeded in keeping people from committing sin. So it can be argued that it isn’t an effective method of social control, advancement or enlightenment at all. In addition, governments such as ours were crafted with a level of insight and lucidity not shown in any organized religion. Our founders specifically designed a government based on reason that protects the welfare of people by establishing universal beliefs that determined laws of fairness. As Bill Maher so aptly asks in the film, “Do we really need religion to tell us not to kill people?”

A friend of mine says that I’m not an atheist because atheists are certain that there is no mystery to the universe, no grand design, just a swirling mass of matter bumping into each other. Each of the major religions are also certain that their story is the right one and their way is the right way, making their followers equally rigid in their view of others. This is what makes religion so dangerous in today’s global culture. Religious followers have made it their purpose to judge others and decide who is deserving and who is not, who is sinful and who is not and who is good and who is not. There simply isn’t room on this planet for this kind of nonsense, for fighting over creation myths, gods, messiahs, promised lands, second comings, Armageddons and end times. Maher says his belief is “I don’t know!” but Tolle describes it more like “We couldn’t possibly know.” I wonder why we need to know. Clearly, the creation of the universe and everything in it is beyond our comprehension. We can't even comprehend what we don't know! Enlightenment, then, comes by becoming aware of the temptation to accept a limited truth and instead gain a greater acceptance of the unknown, become more patient with things we don’t understand and learn to appreciate the miracle of life as it manifests within us and around us at every moment.

The evolution has already begun. There are over a million organizations dedicated to positive change, fueled by believers, atheists, agnostics and seekers alike. Some religious leaders are breaking from the establishment to speak out against war, stand up for the welfare of animals and advocate for a better relationship with nature. Scientists and activists are starting to talk about the need for a spiritual aspect of the green movement and in the quest for human and animal rights. In online profiles, included in the list of religions that you could be is the choice “spiritual,” a broad term that says, “I don’t subscribe to a religious doctrine but I am on an individual quest for meaning.” I think the term will soon be broadened to also imply a desire to live in greater harmony with the environment and a need for peace.

The film, The 11th Hour, compares what is happening to our environment as a reflection of what is going on inside us. We have lost our connection to nature and have caused others and ourselves great suffering as a result. But nature is not just leaves and grass and the birds we sometimes get a glimpse of, nature is life. We are life. The life force, what people call god, manifests through all of us as a single being. To choke the life out of other living creatures, no matter how small, is to be truly unconscious and disconnected from the collective miracle of life. My mom just told me a story about her friend’s neighbor who bought the house next door and ripped out all the plants. The yard had been beautifully landscaped but was now just an expanse of dirt in the front. After about a year, my mom’s friend knocked on his neighbor’s door to find out what “his plan” was for it. The neighbor replied, “Nothing. My wife doesn’t like plants.”

When I was growing up, I attended many different churches with friends and relatives. I got to sample quite a few and as an adult found myself curious enough to keep going whenever an opportunity would arise. I went to Tibetan Buddhist services with a boyfriend, Catholic services with my dad and his second wife (I know, bizarre!), and when in D.C. as a college student, went to the oldest Baptist church there. Each time I remember thinking that what was being said was fairly unremarkable, but what was amazing was the energy in the room. Hundreds of people together, shaking hands and meeting their neighbor, bowing their head in silent contemplation, giving their full attention to another person. These were remarkable and uncommon experiences in my life. The other outlet for this kind of community gathering, the town hall, Al Gore says we've lost. Now instead of people getting together to discuss issues, the direction of our world is communicated to us as a one-way conversation. The first time I went to yoga, I recognized that a class contained the incredibly powerful elements of church, which I think explains the rapidly growing popularity of yoga. In each class I’ve taken in more than ten years of practice, the teacher asks us to be thankful for the privilege of being able to do yoga and for a full hour and a half we mindfully turn our attention inward.

The evolution of religion has taken us from god-fearing people who believed god was angry or happy with us based on the weather. We made ritual killings and other sacrifices to appease the gods. Later, that type of religion was considered barbaric. At another point in time, there were special priests who said that only they could speak to god and they would translate for us. Later, we came to regard that type of religion as elitist and a way to control the people. The Jews suggested that people could speak directly to god, that we didn’t need priests, and they were banished for it. Now, people gather in churches or pray in groups or home alone, believing that god is listening. Bill Maher says, isn’t it ridiculous to think there’s a guy somewhere listening to all of us murmur about our lives?

We’re certainly getting closer to the truth but I say, isn’t it time for another evolution? One in which we finally turn our focus inward and stop talking to an external god. Let us be released from the bondage of our collective insanity and recognize the life force in all of us. We are part of a whole that is much bigger than ourselves. We’re like the blood cells in a body sitting around trying to figure out how we got there and what we’re supposed to be doing. I'm not saying we should stop seeking answers but it seems to me that science, not religion, is doing that. And for everything that scientists say they have found an answer to, hundreds more things are revealed that they don't understand. The mystery only grows with exploration. That applies to our bodies and our brains as much as our planet and our universe. We’re trying to figure out what makes the universe tick instead of simply being a part of it. We’re busy launching wars and choking the life out of on various other parts of the whole because we don’t understand ourselves. Clearly, the answers are not out there, they’re in here.

A freedom-fighting power-grabbing maverick

A few thoughts on the debate last night:
1) The whole maverick thing is baffling to me. The dictionary defines a maverick as a lone dissenter, as an intellectual, an artist, or a politician, who takes an independent stand apart from his or her associates. Our current president is a maverick and look where that has landed us. McCain keeps talking about Obama's liberal voting record and wondering how he can possibly "reach across the aisle from that far left." I wonder, how does a maverick reach across the aisle? It would seem to me that a maverick doesn't give a fuck about the aisle at all, or about bridging differences. Palin said that she never compromised when she was governor, somehow things just worked out and she also said that McCain would give up nothing to accommodate the bailout plan. Both of those sound like statements made by a person who gets what they want (what THEY want) no matter what. No one likes compromising but we all know that to get anything done in politics (and in life), compromises have to be made. And with a nation as ideologically divided as we are right now, I sure don't want someone in office who is going to tell us all to fuck off while they get their way. Last but not least, let's have a chuckle over her description of herself, McCain and the rest of their camp as a "team of mavericks." Sounds like an oxymoron to me, a team of individualists? Interesting.

2) When she started the Reagan quote that "freedom is always just one generation away from extinction," it made me think about watching the mini-series John Adams, and how concerned our founders were about freedom. It's what our country was founded on, why people fought and died and why the constitution was so vital to establishing the new government. What they warned against and what our government is set up to prevent is a consolidation of power. They knew that unchecked power is the single biggest threat to freedom. We've seen that freedom eroded by the unchecked power of Bush and the most indicting examination into the record of Sarah Palin is how she has wielded power in ways that go beyond the boundaries of her office. But then she continued, saying that "We don't pass it to our children in the bloodstream" and there was something about the use of the word blood that made me think "yes, but we do pass it to them in a stream of blood." Her and McCain's rants about how we're WINNING in Iraq but those damn liberals want to pull us out waving "the white flag of surrender" before we've had a chance to really fully kick some ass made me queasy. Fighting for freedom to me means fighting against the corruption of power in our own government, not killing people thousands of miles away.

3) Speaking of power, did you catch this statement by Palin? "I'm thankful the Constitution would allow a bit more authority given to the vice president if that vice president so chose to exert it in working with the Senate and making sure that we are supportive of the president's policies and making sure too that our president understands what our strengths are." I don't know what the last half of that is supposed to mean but holy shit, the woman's already power-grabbing and she's not even there yet! Did you see the twinkle in her eye when she said it? They're combing the constitution looking for loopholes that extend the executive branch even farther into the other branches than Bush did. God help us. She's a shark in the skin of a kindergarten teacher (with the vernacular of Ned Flanders) determined to have history remember Dick Cheney as a pussycat.

4) Last but not least, Palin said many times said government should get out of our way and let us live our lives but still believes it has the authority to deny gays the right to marriage? Actually, I was pretty dismayed that this was one of the only issues both parties agreed upon. How does shrinking the role of government and defending freedom fit into a belief that people should be denied the legal right of union? She said "Ameerican peeople" eleven times in the debate but I still don't believe for a second that she cares one iota about me. And what about her confusion between government and Wall Street? She mentioned the greed and corruption on Wall Street every time she made reference to how government has failed us. Unbelievable that she still can't make sense of the issue. You can't say you stand for smaller government and bash the players running the deregulated markets at the same time, jeez!

Biden, I think, came across like a guy just as capable as Obama of being president, who has his own opinions but is also committed to supporting Obama's agenda. He seemed comfortable and natural while Palin was running on such a high level of adrenalin, I thought she might collapse at the end of it. Did anyone else notice how red her eyes were? I guess she's probably been practicing twelve hours a day for a week and hadn't had much sleep. About half-way through, the whole thing turned into a big love-in with those two swapping comments about how much they admired and respected each other. Biden was definitely under her spell. Did you see Palin's husband hovering over her shoulder at the end when she was chatting with Biden? Hilarious! He doesn't trust her any further than he can throw her and, I'm sure, rightfully so.

Bailout or power grab?

I've been swimming 2-3 times per week, trying to get back in shape. I love exercising but it doesn't happen unless I have an easy to maintain routine and for the moment I've found it. Lunchtime lap swim at the community pool. It takes me about an hour to go, swim and come back and I love swimming, I grew up swimming. One of the other joys is listening to NPR there and on the way back, even though I plan to someday ride my bike (it's about two miles). I was thinking last week about what an exciting time we're living in. For better or worse, this is truly an exciting millennium so far. It's easy to get dismayed by the widening gap in ideology, lifestyle and economic status between Americans, but at the same time, these are the conditions from which great change can come.

Every day, driving to the pool, there's someone on the radio talking about the current economic situation. Every single person has a different piece of the puzzle. There is honest-to-god debate going on. The war in Iraq has been reduced, over the years, to a couple of soundbites and a position of either being for the war, okay with torture and willing to forgo civil liberties or being against the war, not okay with torture and unwilling to forgo civil liberties. But this current crisis is fresh and this time people and are not falling for the alarm bells and just handing over the keys to the store. This morning in the New York Times, there was a graphic of the Dow falling and a headline about yet another big bank consolidation. Then, this afternoon, the Dow falls even more and is blamed on the house not passing the bailout bill.

Now I understand that the banks want this to sound confusing so that we don't really understand what's happening. It's funny because I've been watching episodes of Hercule Poirot (from BBC) every day since landing at my mom's house and I now figure out the mysteries in the first few minutes. Let's look at the facts the way Poirot would:
1) The current disaster was predicted by many people over the last several years which means that the stage was being set for a certain disaster and we can only assume, either intentionally set or intentionally not averted.
2) Several big banks fail because of years of high-risk practices that have made many people in the industry very wealthy, leaving homeowners and taxpayers, high and dry.
3) The former CEO of one of the failed banks works with the Federal Reserve (a central bank created with precisely this kind of situation in mind) to devise a plan in which the federal government bails out these failed banks. They predict a massive collapse if that does not happen.
4) Nothing is done to help or protect homeowners that are losing their homes.
4) Republicans vote against the bill and the stock market crashes at precisely that moment.

There are a couple of things about this situation that are very suspicious. Hercule Poirot, a fictional character, could himself arrive from the 1930's and ask these questions:

First, if the current disaster was predicted, why was nothing done about it? The Republicans favor deregulation and do not support government run businesses. This explains why they are voting against the bail out bill and it explains why no regulations were put in place. Their policy is to allow business to operate in a free market which means if a business fails - and that includes banks - it is not the government's job to bail them out. Poirot might speculate that nothing was done to allow certain people to get very rich. In his world, almost all crime is motivated by money.

Second, the fact that it is big banks failing – banks that indulged in risky practices – instead of an overall economic collapse seems to indicate that in fact the economy is not failing, it is just these banks that are failing. But what has their demise produced? A massive consolidation of banks, increasing their financial power. The bail out plan would further empower these banks by wiping out their bad debt and giving them a superior advantage over all the other banks that acted responsibly. And who devised this plan? The former CEO of one of these failed banks. Poirot would definitely be interviewing Henry Paulson right now.

Third, the government already bailed out several institutions, promising each time that it would stop the bleeding, but it didn't. So what are the chances that Wall Street would hang on, even performing well last week and wait until this day to crash, perfectly coinciding with the rejection of the bill? It would be easy to wonder if perhaps there are people who can pull strings to make things happen, kind of like how the gas prices rise and fall to perfectly coincide with certain political movements in this country. And if that is the case, then who is to say that this entire event isn't the product of certain strings being pulled so that it will happen this way? We all know that Bush's Iraq invasion was planned and on the table shortly after he took office. He only needed an inciting incident to put the plan in place. Couldn't it be argued that this collapse is merely an inciting incident to allow a massive consolidation of power by the banking industry?

Someone commented on the article about the Citigroup acquisition that bigger, fewer banks would be easier to regulate. Is that why it was so easy to regulate them to avoid this disaster? Let me repeat a story of how I was robbed by Bank of America. Although only $1,300, it perfectly illustrates how powerless the "little man" becomes against a big bank. In a nutshell, the money was taken from my account and BofA claimed no responsibility for it, nor did they show any interest in figuring out how it was stolen. I relentlessly campaigned to get it back and eventually did, immediately moving my account to a small credit union. In the end, it really isn't about regulation, it's about power. These banks are already incredibly powerful and have more power over our money than we do. A friend of mine wrote a very interesting blog post looking at the situation not from an economic standpoint but for what it is really is, a power grab. What do you think?

Learnin' 'bout bizness

My head is spinning from the crazy headlines in the paper yesterday, not just words on the screen but actual insanity in the world. There may or may not be a presidential debate, the government just seized WaMu in the biggest bank seizure in our history, the longest-running senator in the senate (from Alaska of course!) is being prosecuted for accepting $188,000 in home renovations as a gift, the U.S. troops and Pakistan are shooting at each other, the settlers in the West Bank have decided to crank up the violence, North Korea has basically put itself back at the top of the terrorist list (in an apparent attempt to get some f'ing attention around here), and Sarah Palin has managed to make herself look ten times more clueless this week than she was last week. And yet, the thing that horrified me the most was an article about a school program, in California of all places (god help us) where teenagers get to make ads for milk.

In a time when our country is fighting a war in two countries, our economy hovers on collapse, civil liberties are being curiously erased under our noses and we're two months away from one of the most critical presidential votes in decades, our kids are being taught "business" by learning how to sell milk to each other. Goodby, the ad agency behind this stroke of genius, will undoubtedly still collect their multimillion dollar fee while the kids do their work for free. The justification for this hideous waste of the student's time is that they're learning about business even though ad people are notoriously clueless in business matters. One teacher reports that her kids were "surprised to find that the executives they met this week are in the business world but 'had no business degrees.'" The "business world"? What is that, the place where people have jobs?

The milk board doesn't have any qualms about describing what they get out of the deal. They want more teenagers to drink milk and why not use our schools as a medium to disseminate product propoganda? The executive director explains that “They are a mysterious demographic and we want to reach them with an authentic voice in an authentic way.” And teach them about business, right?

Al Gore says in his book The Assault on Reason that since the prevalence of television over reading and the radio, in this country, the national debate has ceased to exist (although is arguably on the rise via the Internet). Communication now happens in one direction, from those who have millions of dollars to the rest of us, through the television. Watching on average over four hours a day of TV, Americans are stimulating the part of the brain that experiences instead of the part that processes, evalauates and interacts. Images flashing on the TV have a cumulative effect similar to brainwashing. Eckhart Tolle says when people watch TV they're still thinking but they're thinking the thoughts of the television. In Wall-e, we saw a futuristic version of people so focused on watching a world that didn't exist that they became obsolete. At the same time, the trend in advertising is for brands to be more interactive. The article calls it a move "from a top-down lecture into a two-way conversation." So the discourse about issues like war and economics and international relations is being replaced by 30-second ads while brands are managing to create conversations about their products?

In the film, The 11th Hour, a study is referenced that found college kids could identify 1,000 corporate logos but could not name 10 plants or animals native to their area. The film's interviewees all seem to agree on one seemingly radical idea. In a recent evaluation, it was determined that the earth provides goods and services worth $35 trillion a year, yet the combined economies of the world produced only half that at $18 trillion in 2006. That means the earth is twice as valuable to us as our economies and yet, every policy decision we make is to benefit the economy, not the earth. Even if it were possible to exist without nature or replace nature with technology, it would still cost us more than we have. Here's another radical idea. Wouldn't we be better off teaching our kids about how our planet works than blurring the lines between learning and selling, education and consumerism?