And no rational person can deny that there is ample cause.

Yesterday, Dennis Kucinich asked the House of Representatives to consider a resolution to impeach Bush.

This is not about petty, left-wing revenge.

Impeachment with removal from office won’t happen. Democrats are too spineless. However, impeachment of Bush for his reckless abuse of presidential power may be just what is needed to keep McCain in check if he should win in November.

Otherwise there will be no holding him back.

If you think there’s even a slight possibility McCain could win (and you’re naïve if you don’t), you should contact your representative and tell him or her that you support Kucinich’s proposal.

Tick tock.

P.S. Information is only meaningful if you do something with it. However when your major media DON’T EVEN MENTION news like this, how are you supposed to know, much less act? As Vincent points out, it was front-page news in France…

And no rational person can deny that there is ample cause. Yesterday, Dennis Kucinich asked the House of Representatives to consider a resolution to impeach Bush. This is not about petty, left-wing revenge. Impeachment with removal from office won't happen. Democrats are too spineless. However, impeachment of Bush for his reckless abuse of presidential power may be just what is needed to keep McCain in check if he should win in November. Otherwise there will be no holding him back. If you think there's even a slight possibility McCain could win (and you're naïve if you don't), you should contact your representative and tell him or her that you support Kucinich's proposal. Tick tock. P.S. Information is only meaningful if you do something with it. However when your major media DON'T EVEN MENTION news like this, how are you supposed to know, much less act? As Vincent points out, it was front-page news in France...

The best job I ever had was working for a nonprofit organization that trained medical professionals from developing countries in the benefits of breastfeeding. The organization was funded by USAID, and the courses offered at the little clinic/campus in San Diego ranged from the microbiology of breastmilk to how to run social marketing campaigns, with a little nipple confusion in between (yes, that’s a technical term). The organization was trying to combat the negative and even deadly effects of formula-industry marketing, particularly that of Nestlé, on mothers and babies. It was a noble cause.

Funding dried up when WHO officially announced that AIDS could be transmitted through breastmilk.

Four times a year, teams of health professionals—from village midwives to ministry of health officials—arrived in San Diego for a month. My fabulous job, as a program assistant, was to help the participants with their needs. I got to pick them up from the airport and take them to their hotel. I gave them orientation presentations, walked them to the grocery store the first day, took them shopping in Mexico, went with them to Disneyland… I got to help them find toys for their kids and hair extensions for themselves. Tough job, huh? I dragged my eight-year-old along with me because I was a single mom. He has fond memories of the time he drove an Autopia car with Edwin, a Cameroonian obstetrician, as his passenger.

My favorites were the teams from Africa and, of those, I really bonded with the teams from Burkina Faso. They loved my son and called him my petit mari (little husband). I still want to go to Burkina Faso.

So I was thrilled when I read an article on Springwise that described what the design firm LJ Urban is doing for masons there:

LJ Urban has designed a new eco-urban community of 35 LEED ND Certified homes in the urban core of Sacramento, its home town. The community is suggestively named Good, and for each home within it that gets sold, LJ Urban has committed to funding the complete training of a West African mason to build sustainable homes for families in Burkina Faso. By partnering with the Association La Voûte Nubienne (AVN), which has already trained about 60 local masons to build durable homes out of earth bricks and mortar, LJ Urban aims to go beyond just providing homes to impart enduring skills and jobs to the local community. Taking the notion a step further, LJ Urban has also opted to skip the expensive marketing campaign to promote its Good community, and to use that money to train more African masons instead. So, for every 100,000 people who visit LJ Urban’s new, dedicated website by July 1st, the company will fund the complete training of another local Burkina Faso mason—up to 20 in all through this viral approach.

I don’t know why they picked Burkina Faso. Maybe they met some Burkina natives and fell in love the way I did.

If you can’t buy one of LJ Urban’s “Good” houses at the moment, you can still help. Go to the LJ Urban site and click the Good-O-Meter. No money, no registration, just a click.

You can do it! And please tell your friends.

The best job I ever had was working for a nonprofit organization that trained medical professionals from developing countries in the benefits of breastfeeding. The organization was funded by USAID, and the courses offered at the little clinic/campus in San Diego ranged from the microbiology of breastmilk to how to run social marketing campaigns, with a little nipple confusion in between (yes, that's a technical term). The organization was trying to combat the negative and even deadly effects of formula-industry marketing, particularly that of Nestlé, on mothers and babies. It was a noble cause. Funding dried up when WHO officially announced that AIDS could be transmitted through breastmilk. Four times a year, teams of health professionals—from village midwives to ministry of health officials—arrived in San Diego for a month. My fabulous job, as a program assistant, was to help the participants with their needs. I got to pick them up from the airport and take them to their hotel. I gave them ori

When I was a kid, my friends and I had many lively discussions about which super power would be the best one to have. The winners were usually invisibility and flying. I generally leaned towards invisibility.

George Bush has super powers. He waved a wand and gave them to himself on May 9th, with his new presidential directive (NSPD51/HSPD20). This directive basically gives him dictatorial power in the event of a “catastrophic emergency.” Which he gets to declare, of course and, evidently, without asking Congress.

If that alone doesn’t scare you, the definition of “catastrophic emergency” for purposes of this directive should: “any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions.”

So if, say, the stock market crashed, Bush could say it was a catastrophic emergency, and he, alone, would be the decider. He’d be the boss of Congress, state governments, tribal governments, and even some private sector organizations….

That’s super powers. Super Emergency Powers. You can read the text of the directive here, or watch this video of the author of this article.

Evidently, the media haven’t paid this any attention. Maybe you should.

Just a thought.

Find your representatives.

When I was a kid, my friends and I had many lively discussions about which super power would be the best one to have. The winners were usually invisibility and flying. I generally leaned towards invisibility. George Bush has super powers. He waved a wand and gave them to himself on May 9th, with his new presidential directive (NSPD51/HSPD20). This directive basically gives him dictatorial power in the event of a "catastrophic emergency." Which he gets to declare, of course and, evidently, without asking Congress. If that alone doesn't scare you, the definition of "catastrophic emergency" for purposes of this directive should: "any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions." So if, say, the stock market crashed, Bush could say it was a catastrophic emergency, and he, alone, would be the decider. He'd be the boss of Congress, st

Ever wonder what your tax dollars are paying politicians to do? I’m not talking about call girls and interns. That we know about. You probably know more about that kind of thing than you do about what’s going on in Congress.

So I’ll give you a couple of examples.

There’s H CON RES 27, which is about:

Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that James Brown, also known as the “God Father of Soul”, should be recognized for his contributions to American music as one of the greatest and most influential entertainers of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s as an American cultural icon.

I’ve got nothing against James Brown, but I think our government has better things to do, don’t you?

Then there’s H CON RES 12, “Requiring the Display of the Ten Commandments in the United States Capitol”:

The Ten Commandments are a declaration of the fundamental principles that are the cornerstone of a fair and just society. Requires a copy of them to be prominently displayed in the U.S. Capitol at such place and in such manner as the Architect of the Capitol shall designate.

Separation of church and state, anyone? Anyone?

So how do you tell Congress to get a life? Or to get real? Or to get their heads out of their asses?

Easy. Go to GovIt. It’s a brand new site where you can see all the legislation that they’re “working” on and vote for or against each bill.

Then you have the option to click a button and send a message directly to your representatives telling them what you think. (Once you register and provide your zip code, they provide the representatives. In case you don’t know who they are…)

You can also see a little vote-ometer under each of your reps’ pictures to tell you how they’re voting on the legislation in question. You can see how the House and Senate as a whole are voting too.

And you can leave comments under each bill. Heh heh heh.

I recommend it highly. It’s an entertaining way to get informed. And you know how Americans like to be entertained.

There’s another new site called called SexyPolitics, which is designed to encourage young Americans to get political. On this site, you take quizzes on current political events and, with every answer you get right, you get to see somebody strip. (You pick a character from the selection they offer. None I would want to see without clothes, but I’m not in their target demographic.) I say whatever gets oblivious American youth to take out their earbuds or tear their faces away from World of Warcraft and pay attention to politics is a good thing, even if it does so by way of their lower brains.

Ever wonder what your tax dollars are paying politicians to do? I'm not talking about call girls and interns. That we know about. You probably know more about that kind of thing than you do about what's going on in Congress. So I'll give you a couple of examples. There's H CON RES 27, which is about: Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that James Brown, also known as the "God Father of Soul", should be recognized for his contributions to American music as one of the greatest and most influential entertainers of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s as an American cultural icon. I've got nothing against James Brown, but I think our government has better things to do, don't you? Then there's H CON RES 12, "Requiring the Display of the Ten Commandments in the United States Capitol": The Ten Commandments are a declaration of the fundamental principles that are the cornerstone of a fair and just society. Requires a copy of them to be prominently displayed in the U.S. Capitol at such place a

Americans are painfully ignorant and they don’t like people who are smarter than they are.

Which explains Bush.

He certainly doesn’t want people to be smart. Remember Reading is FUNdamental? He just nuked the RIF program budget for 2009. Gone. To hell with those poor kids. Poor as in disadvantaged, to use that nauseating euphemism. Dubbya just disadvantaged them some more.

What a despicable human being.

What Americans do like is rich people. It’s the American Dream to be a rich person. I assume the saying “The dollar is king” was originally a reference to the currency’s (former) planet-wide supremacy, but these days it’s unquestionably a statement of the culture’s values.

Not only do Americans raise their kids to be good little consumers, they also raise ‘em to be good little capitalists:

Florida-based FranChild enables kids ages 5 to 15 to go way beyond lemonade stands and operate a “grownup-style” business instead. Parents and kids begin by picking a product to sell: beeswax candles, organic soap, jewelry or apparel. The initial startup cost is just USD 25, which gets the child a FranChild Company Certificate to acknowledge his or her business launch; business cards ready to print from FranChild’s ready-made templates; how-to instructions for marketing and selling products; access to the My First Franchise Resource Center, a USD 75,000 marketing system for creating customized packaging products; discount pricing on inventory and supplies; and access to newsletters, updates and a members-only forum. (Source)

FranChild promises “valuable business and life lessons” (like how calling something organic will help you sell it and feel less guilty about doing so, like self-worth and success should be measured by how much junk you can sell, like everybody needs more stuff, like making money is a desirable goal in and of itself…). Those lessons are valuable for American kids, I guess.

Please. I wouldn’t let my kid go around the neighborhood selling candy bars for school fundraisers because I didn’t want him to have doors slammed in his sweet little face or to feel inferior to his classmates if he sold less than they did. (I took ‘em to work and piled them up on the microwave with a ziploc for the money. I worked with 30 women. Supply rarely met demand.)

FranChild also claims it offers “an educational context in which parents and kids can spend time together.” Can you list a hundred better options for truly edifying quality time with your kid? I can.

Like reading to your kid, for instance. I couldn’t read The Velveteen Rabbit to my son without totally losing it. And I will never forget holding him when he was 13, my heart breaking as he cried because he’d just finished reading Of Mice and Men.

Life lessons and values.

Please take a moment to contact Congress on behalf of the RIF program. Children shouldn’t be taught the fundamentals of business. They should be taught that reading is fundamental.

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“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”

“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.

“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”

“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”

“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

Americans are painfully ignorant and they don't like people who are smarter than they are. Which explains Bush. He certainly doesn't want people to be smart. Remember Reading is FUNdamental? He just nuked the RIF program budget for 2009. Gone. To hell with those poor kids. Poor as in disadvantaged, to use that nauseating euphemism. Dubbya just disadvantaged them some more. What a despicable human being. What Americans do like is rich people. It's the American Dream to be a rich person. I assume the saying "The dollar is king" was originally a reference to the currency's (former) planet-wide supremacy, but these days it's unquestionably a statement of the culture's values. Not only do Americans raise their kids to be good little consumers, they also raise 'em to be good little capitalists: Florida-based FranChild enables kids ages 5 to 15 to go way beyond lemonade stands and operate a "grownup-style" business instead. Parents and kids begin by picking a product to sell: beeswax candles, org