Pat Political

Reply to Peter

Peter Stevenson of Illuminati Slayer posted a comment to which I would like to reply here.

Yes, Peter, I know that young people are becoming more active in political life. I met so many when I was out campaigning during the last election as I am sure you did also.

The Young Voters Protection Act should be a priority for any gubernatorial candidate to make sure that meaningful elections will always be there for our young people. Too many states have adopted faulty election software which cannot provide a verifiable paper trail And yet the very company that claims that a paper trail cannot be added to its election software also does ATM software. No ATM machine has any trouble producing both an individual receipt and a running tally of every transaction.

You spoke of a possible draft being a spur to action for many of them. I come to the idea of a draft from the perspective of WWII when the draft was clearly the way to have maximum participation of our citizenry. For instance, a draft would make the Bush twins, who to date have shown no inclination to help with daddy’s war, equally liable to be called along with anyone presently being bribed to join with promises of financial aid. Rumsfeld does not want a draft. The citizen army of WWII fed itself. Rumsfeld does not want the country to learn how many such usual army functions have been given to private contracts, so that the army he has created is far more expensive to us tax payers than it should be.

As far as whistle-blower protection is concerned, prayer is always good but a little legal protection would benefit those people in government or business who are willing to put their conscience before their personal well-being to perform this valuable service for us the general public. Bryan Prior, whose case you so vividly describe, could certainly use some such protection.

Sorry for the long time between posts.  Purely involuntary I assure you.  Just as I as about to post the above my phone went dead and I was without a phone for nearly a week while they tried to figure out what was wrong.  Which meant no internet.  I can't think of a fate worse for a blogger!

Bloggers' meeting

What a wonderful time we had!  Cathy Resmer of 802 Online organized it, and there were more than twenty of us there.  The internet is a very important part of my life these days, and I delight in the many bloggers I have got to know in this way.  That said, there is still nothing like the gathering together of live bodies and the sound of people talking....

I see that many who were there went home and blogged right after the meeting.  Others added their comments on Sunday.  But this old granny blogger had to rest up all day Sunday from all the excitement and am just getting caught up today!

Thanks again, Cathy, and to everyone who was there.  I loved every minute...!

Public Health

One of my sons and his wife just returned from a two week trip to Europe.  One thing that surprised them was that although they certainly ate well while they were away, they both lost weight.  They are sure that it was because they did so much walking.

And suddenly this got me to thinking about how much corporate business success has resulted in increasing public bad health.

TVs, for instance.  TVs first came on the market right after WWII.  My husband was against them, did not think they belonged in a household with growing children, and so we were just about the only family around which didn't get one.  Even my parents finally did, and I have to say honestly that one of the joys of visiting Grandma and Grandpa was that my children could watch TV.  My children were thoroughly rationed with their TV and it really shocked me to see how many hours their friends began to spend in front of it.  And today's children are even more sedentary in their habits...

And how about cars.  The tremendous success of the auto companies in marketing the personal auto to us has resulted in our abandoning walking.  We jump into our cars to do errands only a short walking distance away.  Walking has become one of the conscious forms of exercise and not the normal way of getting from one place to another.

But most shocking to me is the ease with which we have given our children over to the marketing efforts of corporate business.  Go down your super market aisles and count the number of sweetened cereals on the shelves.  And the snack beverages, the fruit juices and fruit flavored juices and the sodas with their high carbohydrate content.  The snack foods loaded with both high carbohydrates and fats.

And we are surprised that we have an epidemic of childhood obesity, not to mention so many heart attacks and  increasing diabetes among us elders.

We talk about the need for a public health system, and then worry about how we can pay for it.  Shouldn't all these corporations which make so much profit from tempting us away from good health habits help pay for their bad effects?  And I am not exempting individuals from their personal responsibility in consuming these snacks.  A health tax should be levied on all of them, say 10%, to begin to pay for the health problems which will follow/ 

Two comments

Iraqis are going to vote on a constitution Saturday, wnicn most of them will not get  to see before they vote, which is still changing even as one version is being printed.  This is a splendid exercize in democracy, according to our government.  Heavn proitect us from such democracy here!

Many of our more fundamentalist leaders, like Billy Graham's daughter Anne, have been saying that Katrina is God's judgment on us for not putting God into our schools.  As we hear even more of the horrors of the recent earthquake in Pakistan, do you suppose that some Muslim clerics will be telling their followers that this is Allah's judgment on us for supporting the Americans...?

Food Pyramid for Children

I am absolutely horrified by the new food pyramid for children which our government is suggesting should be the guide to children’s nutrition.

This food pyramid suggests low-fat milk for children.

Fat has become almost a dirty word today. But saturated fat and the fatty acids, the mono- and poly-unsaturated fats which are principally present in chicken and pork fat and oils like olive and sunflower are crucial to the body’s health.

Every cell wall of your body is made up of saturated fat. Every hormone your body produces is synthesized from saturated fat.

Children are growing. And they need a lot of saturated fat for their new cells and hormones to develop properly. And they need the good natural fats from whole milk and butter, not the artificial trans fats that are in margarine.

At this time of year when we are starting to worry about colds and flu, let me remind you that the best way to boost everyone’s good health is with real, old-fashioned chicken soup. Scientifically, real chicken soup contains all the fatty acids and minerals and protein your body needs for the health of your immune system in particular and your body in general.

Most Vermonters probably know what I mean by real chicken soup, but I offer the following instructions for the benefit of anyone who needs a refresher.

What is needed is a large pot with a cover and a whole chicken. Cut up chicken will do provided both the white meat and dark meat cuts have their bone. All of the cooking is to be done in the covered pot at a high simmer, that is, just below a boil. Never, ever boil a soup stock. Both the clarity and the flavor will be harmed.

Cook the chicken until the meat is tender. Remove the meat and keep it refrigerated. The skin and bones are to be cooked for an additional 48 hours so that all of the fatty acids and minerals will be in the broth. The soup is made ready to eat at the end of the 48 hours by removing the cooked out skin and bones from the broth and adding back in the meat and any seasonings desired.

Just thinking about it makes my mouth water. Good health and bon appetit to you as you enjoy yours!

Comet update

The comet will definitely not hit us in 2029.  But it will in 2036 unless it can be deflected.  Check out Celestial Update on Living on Earth.

Blame game

Let’s go to the first cause of all the problems with local efforts for New Orleans relief that “shocked” the thoroughly Bush Republican Dr./Senator Frist, who said among other things “There were no communications with the command and control center.”

And why was the entire local communication network disrupted? All of the Louisiana National Guard’s emergency generators, which could have provided immediate power for email at least, are in Iraq.

And why are these generators all in Iraq?

Because Rumsfeld has chosen to fight the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq with Army Reservists, the National Guards, and volunteer recruitment by financial incentives into both the Guard and the Army.

We went to war with Afghanistan, which was housing Osama bin Laden, after his attack on us on 9/11, four years ago today. But we did not take the first and most obvious action for the country in the time of all out war, to re-institute the draft. The draft to my generation’s mind is the only way to ensure the democratic participation of all citizenry in the defense of our country.

But a draft call would reveal to the country the extent to which Secretary Rumsfeld has privatized so many functions the army used to perform for itself. His privatization has made maintaining our army far more expensive for the citizenry it is charged to protect while at the same time taking more and more control of our army away from us all.

And it may be there is another concern for Bush Republicans in starting up the draft again. I have no idea how many other young people there are in the various administration families. But certainly the Bush twins come immediately to mind. They are healthy young women, the ideal age for sending into active combat in Iraq or anywhere else our army needs to go.

More on Katrina

Living on Earth's program this week begins with an excellent assessment of the chemical soup that is presently flooding New Orleans.  This is not a prediction that I like to make, but because I am a biologist I believe that we will see not only immediate higher disease levels in anyone who has been exposed to the toxic waters in the city but also a higher incidence of the immune system failure cancers and other illnesses such as MS, lupus, and rheumatoid arthritis. 

Will our govenment be ready to do anything to clean up all of the toxic waste anywhere this hurricane has hit?  Not as long as the quarterly profit report remains a priority higher than the ecological health of our country.

More on Katrina

An absolutely great show in celebration of New Orleans has been put together for us by Harry Shearer. He, who is theoretically a comedian generally provides me with some of the best perspectives on the news that I can find.

It’s too soon to tell whether we are watching the death struggle of a great city or its rebirth. We may be witnessing the murder of New Orleans by the past sixty years of our polluting chemicals/petroleum economy. They are beginning now to pump out flood waters and send them back to Lake Pontchartrain. ABC news quoted a microbiologist’s report that flood waters in New Orleans tested 4500 X higher than the “safe” level for bacteria. Georgette (barely surviving in the Biloxi area), who is a nurse, is wondering about the possible spread of disease all over the country from the many New Orleans refugees, since the incubation period for illnesses from such bacterial levels is two weeks or more. To an inquiry whether pumping back the pollution of the flooded city would not be bad for the lake, an optimistic engineer stated that Mother Nature has great restorative powers. Well, maybe, but lakes have been killed before by human pollution. The color of the water the pumps are sending back to the lake is not the color of the water that arrived.

After one heartwarming telephone call from Mississippi Monday, I was getting “all circuits are busy” Tuesday and Wednesday until close to 7 pm last evening. I was told that not only had they got supplies from the convoy sent down to the Gulfport area but that one truckload had arrived from Lyndon. God bless Vermonters! The four of them are surviving, but barely. All of them are in bad shape emotionally and physically from their nightmare.

Katrina

Like pretty much everybody else this past week my mind has been on Katrina, but for very personal reasons.  I had four family members in the Biloxi area.  From Saturday, when I knew they had ben ordered to evacuate and go to a shelter, until Tuesday when I received an email telling me that they were all right and that miraculously their two houses had suffered only minimal damage, I could not think about anything else.  Once I knew they were safe, I began to worry about how they would survive.  But now I have heard that supplies are beginning to reach them and the daughter has even sent some pictures she took during the storm.

So now I can begin to think about some of the broader aspects of this nightmare.

Two things I have heard that I found very disturbing.  One was from someone saying that it was far better for New Orleans that the flooding was coming from the lake north of the city than if it had been from the southern marshes.  This was, he said, because the mud at the bottom of the lake had far less pollution than the mud from the south which was full of oil and chemical pollutants which had been dumped there by oil and chemical companies over the years.

The second was from an English biologist, and I, being also a biologist, take this very seriously.  She reminded us that the Missippi delta, on which New Orleans was built. was created by the yearly flooking of the Missippi River.  And she reminded us also that for the past three hundred years we have increasingly worked to prevent the renewing deposits of upriver silt from reaching the delta.  Today's levee system can be called an engineering success, but it is also an ecological disaster because the marsh of the delta is dying and sinking gradually into the gulf.

We have been looking at Katrina as causing a human catastrophe and an economic problem the ramifications of which we can only uneasily fear.

But perhaps we should also be looking at it as a warning to deal with this ecological disaster which we ourselves have created by the way in which we have used the delta.  It would seem that we should not be thinking about rebuilding the city on this dying and shrinking land base, but rather abandon the whole delta to the healing flooding of the river.