Author: Eternal Hope

While the first version had some good ideas, there were others that needed to be amended.

Any immigration policy should ensure that we can continue reaping the benefits that immigrants bring to this country. Any immigration policy should reduce illegal immigration to a minimum. And any immigration policy should be able to protect American jobs while giving people outside the country who wish to enter this country the opportunity to come here and live and work.
A few things are in order before we proceed. The first is that this is not a plan for open borders. There are procedures that have to be followed for anyone to come into this country. This is not an amnesty, either — immigrants who came here illegally or overstayed their visas would still have consequences.

Instead, what we are doing is eliminating the system of quotas, which is arbitrary and results in people who want to come here legally waiting for as many as 15 years before they can come here — or which encourages illegal immigration. Instead, what we would replace it with is a system of sponsorships. Families, employers, or relief agencies could sponsor immigrants into the country. People could come here as students or get a temporary visa and then obtain such a sponsorship to stay here.

People who came here legally or illegally for the purpose of working hard and playing by the rules would be subject to more lenient penalties. People who came here for the purpose of committing crimes would be deported after serving their prison time, although there would be limits to how that would be applied. People who came here illegally or who overstayed their visas would have to wait longer to get their citizenship papers.

Furthermore, in order to alleviate the potential problem of overcrowding, we would need to address and eliminate the root causes of immigration, both legal and illegal. Many people come here because of economic hardships and because their way of life has disappeared as a result of NAFTA, CAFTA, or the China Agreement.

Furthermore, no immigration policy would work unless we are able to create jobs not only for immigrants but for American citizens as well. That is why we will continue to push for policies that lead to more and more job creation which would end the cycle of cheap labor by pushing wages up. Some job creation policies are listed below.

Finally, no immigration policy will work unless we do it in conjunction with a concerted effort to unionize all workplaces. Many employers will refuse to hire American workers and then either hire illegal immigrants and pay them substandard wages or fire their high-paid American workers and then hire legal immigrants who will work for half their salary. Unions would act as a check on this kind of corporate abuse of power. Furthermore, there would be criminal penalties for people who fired someone and then turned around and hired someone else for less money to do the same work.

1. Renegotiate NAFTA, CAFTA, and the China Agreement.

All of these bills failed to adequately protect our workers from losing their jobs to outsourcing. All future trade agreements should have adequate protections for workers so that they can be retrained if they lose their jobs, there are tax incentives for companies to stay in this country instead of leave it, and adequate environmental protections as well. Not only did NAFTA result in the exporting of jobs overseas, it resulted in the impoverishment of millions of Mexican farmers, triggering the big increases in immigration that we see today. You can read more about my fair trade ideas here.

2. End the Occupation of Iraq, get out of the Middle East, and get off of foreign oil.

In order to do all this, we need to create jobs through the construction of Ethanol and Biofuel plants as well as Wind and Solar farms. This would create millions of new jobs and thus drive wages back up as businesses would compete to attract workers, not compete to undercut the competition.

3. Fully Fund the INS so that they can enforce immigration laws; fully fund the IRS to allow them to verify that employers are not hiring illegal immigrants.

The whole principle behind these policies is simple – the more jobs we create, the more wages will go up. The more people that come into this country, the more wages will go down. Our goal as a party should be to become as inclusive as possible while preventing insidious wage suppression that is disguised as “inclusion.” In addition, we should be able to enforce immigration laws fairly and equally and not hand out blanket punishments, but to take each individual situation into account. Immigrants are our guests and as such should be treated with the same standards that we treat our own people through our Constitution.

In addition, the IRS used to be diligent at cracking down on employers who would hire illegal immigrants for substandard wages before Ronald Reagan. But when Reagan took office, he abolished that practice, allowing Corporate America to drive down wages.

4. Laws against wage suppression.

If an employer “downsizes” an American worker and then turns around and hires a legal (H-1B, etc.) or illegal immigrant to perform the work for less money, they should be held liable for both civil and punitive damages.

5. Fair and reasonable penalties.

All people who overstay their visas should pay a fine, repay back taxes, and be placed on probation on condition that they obey all laws and make timely payments. Furthermore, they should wait 10 years before they can apply for their citizenship instead of the usual five-year waiting period. If they subsequently commit any crimes beyond a simple traffic violation, then they should be deported.

6. Children and Family members.

Many immigrants have children and come here to provide better lives for their children. Therefore, the above penalties are median penalties and judges should make their decisions with the best interest of the child in mind. The Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution requires that all children born in this country – even to two illegal immigrants – be considered US citizens.

7. Eliminate quotas and allow family and employer sponsorship.

The problem with the quota system is that it is too arbitrary. Instead of quotas, any employer with a valid tax ID number with the IRS should be able to sponsor an immigrant to work in this country and get them a Green Card (if they wish to work here) or temporary work permit (if not). Furthermore, anybody can sponsor an immediate family member (parent, grandparent, brother, sister, son, grandson) and children who are US citizens should be considered sponsors of their parents for purposes of these reforms.

Note that there should still be penalties for a sponsored immigrant if they came here illegally – but that they should still be legally be in here provided that they contribute to this country.

Requiring employers to prove that they tried to hire American workers but could not does not work. First of all, the Equal Protection Clause and the Equal Opportunity Employment Act require employers to give all job applicants equal opportunity employment opportunities. Such a clause would be discriminatory. Secondly of all, this is based on a faulty premise — Americans would not work in the fruit fields or the coal mines for $5 an hour, but they would for $50. Employers should be able to hire the most qualified people regardless of whether they are an American citizen or they are an immigrant.

What we would do instead is instead of the arbitrary quota system, which is outdated and is a relic of the Know Nothings of the turn of the 20th Century, we would allow families to sponsor members and employers to sponsor highly-qualified employees.

8. Benefits.

All immigrants who pay into the Social Security Trust Fund should be able to receive their benefits from it. The Equal Protection Clause requires that all people be treated equally in the eyes of the law.

9. Border entry.

People who enter at the border with Mexico or an airport or seaport illegally and are caught should be taken to deportation centers, directed to the proper applications so they can fill them out, and then sent home.

10. Unionization of Immigrants.

The INS and the NRLB should go to employers and hold regular information sessions and fairs educating immigrant employees about their rights to organize unions and advise them of their rights under our labor laws. Union reps could be at these fairs. Employers would be required to advise all non-supervisory employees of their rights to form a union and bargain for better wages.

11. Immigrants who commit felonies.

Immigrants who commit felonies should be deported after serving their time in prison. Immigrants who flee for the purpose of escaping crimes committed in their former country should be deported. Immigrants who violate the terms of their probations should be deported.

However, there should be a statue of limitations for three years for the above, except for probationary immigrants who commit felonies (Up to the discretion of the judge; decisions must be made in the best interest of children involved) or persons wanted in their former country for felonies (except in the case of refugees from countries listed as Not Free (see 12))

12. Asylum.

People of any country which is deemed to be Not Free, as defined by here. should get automatic refugee status. They should keep it until the political status of their home country becomes “Partially Free.” People from “Partially Free” countries could be considered on a case-by-case basis and people whose countries became Partially Free could apply on such basis.

In addition, people who get their Refugee status could get employer sponsorships. Refugees who committed felonies would be subject to the normal laws governing those offenses.

13. Immigrant Employers.

Many immigrants who come here start their own businesses. People who demonstrated their intent to start their own business in this country could come and would be subject to periodic inspections to ensure proper understanding of labor laws.

14. Legalization of Pot.

The legalization of Pot would create more jobs in this country and would thus bring up wages in this country.

15. Microcredit.

Many people come to this country due to economic hardship in their own countries. We should engage in Microcredit loans to residents of countries that have high numbers of immigrants per capita who immigrate here. This would bypass corrupt political systems and give people the resources they needed to survive in their own countries.

16. Peace Corps Expansion

In conjunction with (15), we should expand the Peace Corps and create projects that would develop impoverished countries whose people frequently immigrate here.

17. Hearings

People should have the right to have their cases appealed through the Court System. The courts should be just as open to immigrants as they are for any other person.

18. Extend the GI Bill to include recruitment and training of INS agents.
This would provide incentive for people concerned about immigration problems to provide a hand in the solution without taking the law into their own hands.

19. Aggressive enforcement of Labor Laws.
Fully fund the NLRB and appropriate agencies to investigate and prosecute any instances of labor law violations. There should be an emphasis on detecting instances of threats to close down plants in response to union organizing and threats to fire workers for organizing unions. Employers would be required to post a complaint hotline at their place of work which employees could call to report labor law violations. In addition, it should be a felony for any representative of an employer to make such threats against employees.

20. Create High-Speed Rail.
This would provide millions of jobs (and consequently drive up wages) as well as save energy. See this recommended diary for more information.

George Bush, in his weekly radio address, gave one of the whiniest speeches of his career when he pouted that the Democrats were micromanaging the conflict. The whole speech was nothing but the same tired old politics as usual from a President who cannot take no for an answer.

All of this reminds me more and more of a teenager defying his parents. “Johnny, you can’t go out with your friends because last time, you were out too late.” “NO!” “Johnny, you’re 16, but we can still tell you what to do.” “MOM, You’re so mean!! All you ever do anymore is tell me what to do!!”
So, what is the next logical step of this? Take away the keys. Bush, of course, is the whiney kid trying to pout his way into staying out later at night. The parent is us, trying to exercise our authority over that teenager. What will this parent choose?

The fact of the matter is that if you fail to take the keys away from your wayward teenager, that kid will not learn what his boundaries are. They will think you are just nagging and making suggestions and that you don’t really mean business.

And at some point in time, the Democrats will have to show Bush that they mean business. But the problem is that some of the Blue Dogs are like the permissive parent whose no really means that if you beg for it 10 times, the answer is yes. That is why, just like we need to get rid of overly permissive parenting, we need to get rid of the overly permissive “Democrats” who are afraid of being seen as “too mean” and “not bipartisan enough” when Bush turns to whining and pouting to get his way.

And Bush whines:

Bush said some lawmakers see a chance “to micromanage our military commanders, force a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq and spend billions on domestic projects that have nothing to do with the war on terror.”

Since when is spending for Global Warming not a tool against terror? His own Pentagon gave a sombering assessment of what would happen if the worst-case scenario were to happen in the event of global warming. Then, it would be a national security issue.

Or, what if we did not do enough to develop alternative fuels and Al-Qaeda were to take over Saudi Arabia? What would happen to our gas and our oil? How would we be expected to go to work every day?

Mr. Bush is weak on terrorism percisely because he does not want to be bothered with these questions. After all, government does not solve problems; government is the problem. Bush can talk all he wants to about how he is tough on terror. But when it comes down to actually supporting the things that would stop terrorism cold in its tracks, like getting us off of big oil, he opposes the steps that are necessary to do so.

In his weekly radio address, the president said, “Many in Congress say they support the troops, and I believe them. Now they have a chance to show that support in deed, as well as in word.”

Of course we support the troops. And we will support them in deed as well as word by getting them out of the Middle East and protecting our nation against terrorism by getting us off of big oil so that we can bankrupt Bin Laden so that he can never attack us on our soil again.

Bush repeated his promise that his spending request for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan must be approved “without strings and without delay” or he will veto it.

In other words, he whines, “Give me a blank check to do whatever I want, or I will veto it.”

Let’s go back to the parent-teen scenario. If the teen were to repeatedly get speeding ticket with the car, then they have abused that privilege and should not be trusted with the car keys again until they show that they have changed. Or they move out of the house at 18. We would not trust that teen with the car keys when they have violated that trust to such a degree. So, why should we trust Bush when he has violated that trust to such a degree by lying about the jusitification for the invasion and occupation of Iraq and hiring a crooked attorney general who cares about loyalty to party over loyalty to country?

Bush said all of those “arbitrary and restrictive conditions” are unacceptable.

“These restrictions would handcuff our generals in the field by denying them the flexibility they need to adjust their operations to the changing situation on the ground,” he said. “And these restrictions would substitute the mandates of Congress for the considered judgment of our military commanders.”

Well, that is what the Constitution says, not what I say or Congress says. The Constitution mandates congressional oversight of our warmaking and our foreign policy. If Bush has such a problem with the Constitution, then let him come on out and say what his huge problem with the Constitution is, so that we can have a proper debate about it.

And let it be noted that we have never summoned generals home from the battlefield now to explain their conduct of the war like we did with William Westmoreland during Vietnam. If Bush were really interested in seeing this war through to victory, then he would have called a draft, put this country on a war footing, and turned factories into warmaking plants 24/7 so that we could churn out weapons at a rapid rate so that we could have an overwhelming edge in the battlefield. But that is not what is happening. Bush whines about micromanagement on the one hand, but is unwilling to make the sacrifices necessary on the other hand to win the war.

People may give this war their knee-jerk support, but they do not see the urgency about why they should put aside their lives and make the sacrifices that are necessary to make this war succeed. Bush has not called on us to have shared sacrifice like we did when we were really confronted with a threat back in World War II. A just war must have one of two outcomes:

1. The war must be easily winnable by our current forces.
2. The urgency must be great enough that the whole country would be willing to make the sacrifices necessary to achieve victory.

As a corollary to #1, no military occupation can succeed without the consent of the governed. In fact, no occupation can qualify as #1. If the objective is occupation, then the urgency must be great enough that we as a country are willing to work as a country with a single-minded purpose to achieve this victory. Iraq, of course, never had that kind of urgency and never would have.

The whole point is that Bush forfeited the privilege of being able to whine about how our commanders are not given enough flexibility when he refused to call on this nation to make the sacrifices necessary to see this occupation through. By failing to call on this country to develop a sense of shared sacrifice — including sending Barbara and Jenna into the Armed Forces — he pronounced judgement on himself when he whined that the Democrats were not going to give his commanders the resources they needed.

“Congress must not allow debate on domestic spending to delay funds for our troops on the front lines,” the president said. “And members should not use funding our troops as leverage to pass special interest spending for their districts.”

Well, what is this invasion and occupation of Iraq, if not putting special interests of the Neocons over the interests of the American people? He is even putting the special interests of a cabal of nationalistic extremists over the priority of fighting and catching terrorists. If he were really as against special interests as he says he is, then he would not have called off the pursuit of Bin Laden, outsourced the job to Afghan warlords, and gone to Iraq at the behest of the Neocons. This whole invasion and occupation is the same kind of pandering to special interests that he says he’s against.

As I have talked about before, right-wing political thought is segregation repackaged for modern consumption. It is the merger of Republicanism with the dying segregationist ideology revived under the banned of “Law and Order” and “States Rights.”

Since it is no longer acceptable to smear Jews or Blacks in political discourse, the right has turned to groups that are more acceptable to smear, such as Muslims. Smears against Muslims are much more believable than smears against Blacks because of the 911 attacks. This MO is necessary because the political right needs scapegoats to survive, and Islam fits the bill for them.
Today’s New York Times scrutinizes the scapegoating of the CAIR from the right. The Council of Islamic-American relations is one of the biggest civil rights groups for Muslims in this country. Their services are important because people have the instinctive reaction of blaming Muslims in the event of terrorist attacks on American soil. There was a drastic level of anti-Muslim violence in the days after the 911 attacks.

Yesterday, the CAIR held a panel discussion on Islam and the West in the Capitol, prompting Republicans to call them “terrorist apologists.” Never mind that on the front page of their website, they have links to a fatwa against terrorism and links to numerous Muslim groups that have signed on. “Terrorist Apologists” is the newest version of an acceptable racial slur from Republicans.

Such slurs by Republicans are nothing new, but part of the same tired old politics as usual from the reconstituted segregationists. This slur illustrates how racism is repackaged from what it was in the 1960’s. Back before racism became unacceptable, it was common for racists to attack the person, such as in “nigger.” There were elaborate theories that the Blacks were cursed by God because of the curse of Noah or Cain or that they were somehow born inferior. But the more it became established that it was simply not the case, racists shifted their focus. Instead of attacking the person, modern racism now attacks the moral character of the group being targeted.

Ronald Reagan was the architecht of the New Racism. Instead of calling Blacks “niggers,” he attacked their moral character by calling them “welfare queens.” In other words, the goal was to get people to look down on Blacks not because of their race, but because of their supposed moral characteristics. So that whenever a White saw a Black on the street, the first thing that would come to mind was not “nigger,” but “welfare cheat.”

The same tactic can be seen in operation against Latinos. Instead of pointing at a Lation and making fun of their skin, people rant at the problem of “illegal immigration.” For racists like John Tanton and the Minutemen and Tancredo, the goal is clear — the goal is for a White to look at a Latino and have the first thing come to mind be, “illegals.”

We now see this tactic in operation by the Republicans today. Whenever you see a Muslim walking down the street, the first thing that the Republicans want you to think is, “Oh, my god, a terrorist!” The next thing that they want you to think is, “Call the police!” Some people have actually gotten Muslims kicked off of planes and thus allowed themselves to be played by racists and hatemongers. This is what the Republicans were doing when they used the word “terrorist.”

Never mind that there are Progressive Muslim communities out there such as Eteraz which have nothing to do with terrorism. Republicans do not want to be confused with the facts when it comes to people. This tactic is old and worn, with the Nazis accusing the Jews of being the cause of their own problems because of their filthy sanitation habits or people in both England blaming Irish “popery” for the cause of their famine or decrying their lifestyles and claiming that to be the cause.

This, then, is the essence of the New Morality among Republicans — use morality as a tool to keep other races or religions out of the loop. Of course it never applies when you are a Republican. This is an attractive tool for fundamentalists because they can rationalize that they have plenty of friends who are Muslim or Black or whatever; all they have a problem with is their morality.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi is to be commended for allowing CAIR to have dialogue with Democrats in the Capitol. The fact that the Republicans could not be bothered to attend the meeting or even to address the merits of the dialogue places them outside the mainstream of American political thought. They have completely isolated themselves from the rest of the country and are becoming increasingly less relevant as they do so.

And what we would like to see less of is people like Senator Boxer cave into their fears like this:

Last fall, Senator Barbara Boxer of California issued a routine Certificate of Appreciation to the organization representative in Sacramento, but she quickly revoked it when critics assailed her on the Web under headlines like “Senators for Terror.”

“There are things there I don’t want to be associated with,” Ms. Boxer said later of the revocation, explaining that her California office had not vetted the group sufficiently.

CAIR and its supporters say its accusers are a small band of people who hate Muslims and deal in half-truths. Ms. Boxer’s decision to revoke the Sacramento commendation provoked an outcry from organizations that vouch for the group’s advocacy, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the California Council of Churches.

“They have been a leading organization that has advocated for civil rights and civil liberties in the face of fear and intolerance, in the face of religious and ethnic profiling,” said Maya Harris, the executive director of the A.C.L.U. of Northern California.

It can be intimidating to have to deal with the pressure from such groups. But the fact of the matter is that we cannot make any headway against the forces of fear until we demand that our elected officials not cave into them. The reason the Democrats lost elections for the previous three elections before this one is because too many of them acted like Republicans and caved into their fears instead of acting out of their hopes.

Hunter wrote one of the most pessimistic diaries that I have seen on Iraq. Basicly, he outlines a grim future for Iraq in which there will be American troops there for a good long time, although the numbers would be greatly reduced from this year’s figures.

But this is all about a matter of priorities for this country — should we be taking care of someone else’s problems, or should we be taking care of our own first?

Case in point — A McClachty investigation found that over 16 million Americans are living in severe poverty.
Hunter, in his diary, gives three possible grim outcomes that he fears might happen in Iraq:

1) There are going to be American troops in Iraq for the next ten years, though the numbers will be substantially reduced.

2. There are going to be permanent American bases in Iraq, just as the neoconservatives had desired.
3. Iraq is going to continue to be in a period of instability for years, and become a true haven for terrorism and religious strife, and there is very little we can do about it.

He continues:

To this day — to this very day — I would support leaving American forces in Iraq if there were any credible possibility of stabilizing the country.

This reasoning is based on a totally faulty premise — the premise that we are somehow still in control of the situation at any level. The posturing of the Bush administration and their massive phony offensives, including the so-called “surge,” has had its effect — it is widely believed, even in Democratic circles, that we somehow have some kind of control over the situation. But with the massive bombings taking place all over Iraq with ever-increasing sophistication and intensity, all of this shows that we in fact have no control anymore whatsoever over the situation.

In the meantime, think of what we could be doing instead — finding ways of addressing the poverty situation and keeping the poor from becoming hungry or homeless. With all the hundreds of billions of dollars that we are spending on the occupation of Iraq, think of all the solar and wind power plants we could build. We could get out of the Middle East, build a solar or wind farm in every county of the country, and bring in massive new revenues for schools and local governments, which could turn around and spend the money on anti-poverty programs. Not only that, we could get an ethanol or biofuel plant in every town that has over 10,000 people. In addition, we spend money for research and design so that we could find ever-more efficient ways of producing alternative fuels so that we could lower our carbon footprint on this earth.

The fact of the matter is that we are much more effective when we live by moral example than we do by military might. We spent billions of dollars in unnecessary nuclear weapons and brought the world to the brink of nuclear war in the 1980’s. On more than one occasion, we almost died. Yet what brought down the Soviet Union was not our military might, but the moral example of our country, which was a living example to the rest of the world about what a country could accomplish for its people through a liberal democracy.

And the same could be accomplished in the Middle East. The best way to bring down extreme Islamism is not through military prowess, but through the example of our democracy, showing the rest of the world the way forward. Iran has a disproportionate number of young people. They all love everything about American culture and our way of life. If we could back off from our militaristic ways and work on leading by example, these people would be the vanguard of a movement to overthrow the dictators of Iran and restore democracy to that country for the first time since 1953.

Hunter then goes on to talk in apocalyptic language about what might happen should we leave:

If leaving the current troop levels in place could truly prevent another 100,000 Iraqi deaths, then it would be our duty to do it. If Petraeus’ plan had a reasonable chance of working, it would be our obligation to try. A miserable truth, yes, but a moral truth nonetheless.

Because some of the possible outcomes, here — civil war, genocide, religious radicalization leading to possible regional war — are nearly unthinkable and yet, thanks to the bungling, almost incomprehensible incompetence of the Bush administration, we’re thinking them. The odds continue to be extremely high that one of those worst case scenarios — and you know you are truly and deeply sunk when there are multiple worst case scenarios vying for prominence — may indeed happen.

But the fact of the matter is that the Iraqi people have to want to build a better country for themselves. If they wish to split up into three different countries, then who are we to tell them no? Unless our handover was nothing more than a charade. No amount of military force will prevent the situation from spiraling out of control if the Iraqi people are not willing to accept our authority or the authority of the people that we put into place. The Iraqi people have to solve their own problems.

If there is to be a genocide in Iraq, it will happen regardless of anything that we ever do about it. Note that I said above that the situation has spiraled completely out of our control. That includes genocide.

And Hunter misses another basic point. No occupation will ever work unless we have the consent of the governed. No reasonable person can argue that we have the support of the Iraqi people. We did not have the consent of the governed in Vietnam, and the British did not have the consent of the governed back in 1776. And the opposition to our presence in Iraq is a lot stronger than the opposition to the other two occupations.

And Hunter labors under another false premise:

But a Vietnam-style abandonment of the country seems extraordinarily unlikely.

But Hunter, right above that statement, admits:

the best case scenario is a slow bleed if we stay, and a slow bleed if we go.

In other words, our presence there is having no effect on the situation. But as for the faulty premise of withdrawal meaning abandonment, no, I would never advocate that we abandon Iraq. We should take John Kerry’s advice and convene a regional conference between the neighboring powers over the future of Iraq. In other words, help them develop a plan to stabilize the violence in Iraq and handle the inevitable refugee crisis that will result. We should take in a sizable number of refugees from Iraq like we did Vietnamese refugees after that war was over. We should have talks with other countries about taking in refugees as well. In that event, at least a few will be able to start new lives again and get away from the horror of their homeland.

And it is a known fact that immigrants create jobs — many of these refugees could create jobs for which they could hire some of the people here in this country who are extremely poor. Established businesses would create new jobs to handle the new arrivals and fill the new demand.

The fact of the matter is that the situation there is a slow bleed if we stay and a slow bleed if we go. If we go, we can at least begin to address our own problems here at home and free up the money that was used for Iraq to be used to rescue people from poverty. If we stay, we will have an even bigger problem on our hands — taking care of the Iraqi people and taking care of our own people as well.

The right-wingers would love to have you think that it was the markets that gave you all of the advances in technology that we have enjoyed over the last 50 years. But a new report from the Longview Institute completely debunks that notion. In fact, it was government programs and government funding that led to all the advances that make Bill Gates and his people happy.
Bill Gates:

With research support from the Army, Navy, and Air Force, Ivan Sutherland of MIT, made what was arguably the seminal breakthrough in the development of HCI. He created in 1962 a program called Sketchpad which was the first to use a monitor and a mouse-like pointing device. Sutherland became director of the Information Technology project at the Defense Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). He provided funding to establish the computer science departments at Stanford, Carnegie-Mellon, Utah and MIT, and he pushed them to develop the work he had begun with Sketchpad.

The Laser:

The principles behind the laser came from a theory of Einstein’s, but its story, like many other post-war inventions, began with the military. In 1948, the Pentagon provided Columbia University with the funds to hire a new team of physicists and directed them to work on microwave radar technology. One of the physicists hired was Charles Townes. Three years later, Townes completed work on what he called a maser (Microwave Amplification by the Stimulated Emission of Radiation).

These discoveries would lead to the invention of the laser.

The Microchip:

While U.S. chipmakers produced incremental improvements in size and speed, the Japanese government spent hundreds of millions of dollars on entirely new chip designs, so that by the mid-1980’s, Japanese companies captured the majority of the market and the U.S. industry seemed to be on its way out. The U.S. government responded with three initiatives. The first two, the Very High Speed Integrated Circuit (VHSIC) program and Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI), were funded by the Department of Defense and DARPA respectively, and helped U.S. companies catch up to Japanese technology. The third, Sematech, represented one of the most successful government-industry collaborations. With joint funding from ARPA and many leading chipmakers, Sematech advanced U.S. chipmakers past Japanese competition and saved a $150 billion dollar industry. Both the private sector and the government contributed to the development of the microchip, but the continued existence of a U.S. industry owes a great debt to the federal government.

And no less an apostle of Small Government than Ronald Reagan was the President at that time; it is really interesting how Reagan didn’t believe his own rhetoric about government being the problem. And the charming fellows at Red State and Free Republic have Ronald Reagan to thank for the ability to get on the Internet and spew their right-wing garbage in their spare time.

The Internet:

The idea for the Internet, like the personal computer, came from the heads of the information technology department of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), J.C.R. Licklider and Robert Taylor. The actual mechanism, however, was conceived of by a researcher at RAND, the think tank of the U.S. Army. Paul Baran imagined an alternative to the phone network in which, instead of a central switchboard routing callers to their destinations, each user would be connected to its neighbors and they to theirs, forming a decentralized network. RAND pitched the idea to the Air Force, which then asked AT&T to build the network. AT&T, however, refused to build it because they did not want to share the circuit maps the network would require. This was only the first instance where a private firm hindered the Internet’s development because the new technology threatened its existing business.

Once again, right-wingers are the beneficiary of the very thing they say they are against — Big Government.

The MRI:

Government support for MRI began with its predecessor technology, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, a tool used to determine the composition and structure of matter. NMR spectroscopy uses almost the same technique as MRI; a machine produces a magnetic field around an object and aims radio waves at a particular location on the object. The magnetic field causes the nuclei of certain atoms in the object to move in the direction of the field, and the radio waves cause those nuclei to revolve at a certain frequency. By measuring that frequency and the time the nuclei take to return to normal when the magnetic field is turned off, scientists can determine the type and location of the atoms in the object.

Over the course of its development, scientists working on NMR spectroscopy received $90 million in grants from the National Science Foundation, the government’s fund for scientific research. But, with the successful commercialization of the technology by the 1960’s, the government and university researchers turned their attentions to its possible applications. Raymond Damadian, a scientist at the State University of New York (SUNY) Medical Center, was the first to use NMR for medical purposes. He began by examining a cancerous rat using the technique and soon discovered that diseased cells produced different readings than healthy cells, allowing him to detect cancer without an invasive procedure.

So, once again, the right-wingers have Big Government to thank for living their comfortable lifestyle, which allows them to spend thousands of dollars to keep themselves cancer-free.

Taxol:

Taxol is a complex compound found in the bark of the Pacific yew tree. The bark was first collected in 1962 and its potential for killing cells was demonstrated in 1964 as part of the National Cancer Institute (NCI)-United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) plant screening program. In 1971, chemists at the Research Triangle Institute in North Carolina, a nonprofit research organization created in 1958 by leaders in academia, business and government, first isolated the compound. The NCI selected Taxol as a development candidate in 1977 and clinical trials began in 1984. The yew bark was supplied by the Natural Products Branch of the NCI, sourced from trees located on National Forest lands. In 1989, the Johns Hopkins University Oncology Group reported that Taxol produced a very high response rate in women with ovarian cancer whose cancer had been unresponsive to other chemotherapeutic agents.

So, the notion that the Free Markets are reponsible for all the advances in science and technology in the last 50 years has been debunked. And it is really interesting to observe the self-loathing of right-wingers and their political opportunism. Clarence Thomas, for instance, grew up benefiting from affirmative action and now works to undermine the very programs that got him where he is today. There are plenty of homophobic Republican politicians and religious leaders who are secretly gay themselves.

And this is yet another example — Republicans benefiting from the very programs that they say they are against.

The fact of the matter is that we all have a mutual responsibility to make this a better place to live. The more resources one has, the more one has to better the lives of those less fortunate than us. Thus, Bill Gates has much more of a responsibility to make lives better for others than you or I would, although we must do our part. But since the government has the most resources of anyone and since the government is the representative of people, the government has the most responsibility to provide for the well-being of others.

27 Democratic Congressmen have sent a letter to new Defense Secretary Robert Gates regarding the Pentagon’s use of contractors at places like Guantanamo who torture prisoners. The letter was triggered by an FBI finding documenting new instances of torture at Guantanamo.
The letter begins by stating that there is a lack of proper oversight of military contractors which results in wasted funds and missions. It also creates a lack of accountability; elsewhere, it has resulted in the overcharging of billions of taxpayer dollars.

The FBI reports in question were based on eyewitness accounts of contractors directing military personnel to torture prisoners to obtain information even though evidence obtained by torture is not reliable because people will tell their captors what they want to hear in order to escape torture. Not only that, this is similar to other instances such as Abu Girhab, where contractors were used to torture people.

The letter then goes on to ask Mr. Gates the following questions:

-Why does the DOD use contractors for interrogation?
-Do they have the resources they need to perform interrogation without the use of contractors? If not, why not?
-What measures are in place to ensure DOD control over interrogators?
-What laws are the contractors subject to?
-Under what authority do the contractors have to order active military personnel?
-What rules are in place to ensure that contractors do not disclose classified information?
-In what other places beyond Abu Girhab and Guantanamo has the DOD used contractors for interrogation?
-How many contractors are there, what companies are used, and what percentage of interrogators are contractors?
-What type of training do contractors receive?
-What actions does the DOD take if they abuse their duties as interrogators?
-How can the DOD insure that there will be no future abuses by contractors?

The following Congressmen have signed the letter:
Jan Schakowsky
David Price
George Miller
Barney Frank
James McGovern
Betty McCollum
Keith Ellison
Pete Stark
Edward Markey
Tammy Baldwin
Luis Gutierrez
Danny Davis
Steve Rothman
Jerrold Nadler
Steve Cohen
Robert Brady
Darlene Hooley
Zoe Lofgren
Elijah Cummings
Raul Grijalva
Lynn Woolsey
Dennis Kucinich
Carolyn Maloney
Bill Pascrell
Maurice Hinchey
Gwen Moore
Lloyd Doggett

This is typical MO for the Bush administration – hire contractors to do the dirty work, so that when Bush is confronted with allegations of torture, he can say that we do not torture. Of course not – Bush passes the buck so that he can escape responsibility. But don’t expect too much from Gates. He is a veteran of Iran-Contra and is a veteran of making shallow excuses for the conduct of his department.

This disgraceful spending of taxpayer money to torture people is simply an irresponsible attempt by the Bush administration to feed their sense of entitlement. The whole structure of the Rovian machine is about power – grabbing and maintaining power. We see this with their bizzare unitary executive theory; we see this with their radical attempts to control people’s bodies; and we see this in their sick and pathetic attempts to cover up their own insecurity by torturing other people.

All this has created an urgent crisis, as other people and countries are no longer looking up to us as an example of peace and freedom. We win the war on terror by the same way we won the Cold War – by winning the hearts and minds of people. And when people see for themselves that we are torturing people thanks to our twisted sense of entitlement that we can do whatever we want, they will no longer see us as the example of liberty that they did in the weeks after 9/11. Instead of that, they are now starting to see us as a country which abuses its power and which is completely insensitive to the urgent concerns of the rest of the world.

In order to change this, we need to have people like these 29 Congressmen who have the moral courage to stand up to the President and firmly tell him no. Whenever the President gets the destructive urge to cut our social programs, destroy our jobs, undermine our families through abolishing the Minimum Wage, advocate the appeasement of Bin Laden, or radically reinterpret the law and the Constitution, we need more and more people to do the same thing – politely, but firmly tell him no.

And it is telling that all of these Congressmen are Democrats. Not one single Republican has publicly spoken out against torture or Halliburton since McCain’s sham torture bill was passed in Congress and Bush issued a signing statement saying that he didn’t have to obey the law. And even though they lost the election, we see more of the same tired old politics as usual from the Republicans – follow George Bush right or wrong.

Instead of sharing in an opportunity to restore the rule of law, the Republicans irrationally cling to the decaying Bush Presidency. Instead of working to reform our government so that it is accountable to all three branches and the people, we see permissive indifference and excuses from the Republicans. Instead of vision, we see the Republicans defending a status quo that is collapsing into irrelevance. Instead of having a debate over the issues and doing the hard work to hold Bush accountable, we see Republicans in a warm spiderhole of denial. For them, it is as if they had never left power.

And don’t ask Dr. Dobson or any of the fundies to come and talk about moral values. We never see them talk about moral values when it comes to Republican failings. The only time we see them in action is over supposed moral failings of the left. Instead of working together with us in a bipartisan manner to end the torture scandal, they say absolutely nothing about this pathetic disgrace. They are no longer a moral voice reflecting the sense of national conscience. Instead, what we see from them is a selfish attempt to grab as much power as possible, including the power to control people’s minds and bodies. We see them endangering the lives of women through overturning Roe instead of working to save lives by showing a voice of moral outrage against the taking of lives and souls through torture. This is the sad situation of America today – Bush thinking that he can do whatever he wants while too many people are hearing only what they want to hear and people who are supposed to be moral leaders telling them only what they want them to hear.

John McCain is whining about the Warner/Levin amendment that opposes Bush’s plan to send more troops to shore up the occupation of Iraq. McCain made his remarks on today’s “This Week.” With his performance today, along with his vote to abolish the Federal Minimum Wage, he has placed himself out of the mainstream of American political thought and into the political fringe.
John McCain’s opposition to any kind of Minimum Wage and his support of sending more troops to Iraq to shore up the occupation amount to a demoralizing vote of no confidence for the judgement of the American people, whose support for these positions are even lower than their approval of Dick Cheney. His support of sending more troops to Iraq is a vote of no confidence in the judgement of our troops, who themselves want out of Iraq. And his support of sending more troops to occupy Iraq is a vote of no confidence in the judgement of the Iraqi people, 90% of whom want us out of Iraq.

Back in 2005, John McCain’s exact words when asked about how many more troops were needed for Iraq were, “I’m not that knowledgeable.” Not only is John McCain not knowledgeable about how many more troops are needed, he is not knowledgeable about what the American people want. So, if John McCain is not knowledgeable, then what the hell does he think he is doing polluting the TV airwaves every Sunday morning whining about the plans that people who are more knowledgeable than him are pushing?

McCain used the right-wing extremist tactic of conflating opposition to the President’s plan to opposition to the troops. This is revealing – this shows that for the right, they are using Iraq as a do-over. One of the most common complaints that the right has about Vietnam was that we lost because we did not try hard enough. Now, they are using Iraq to “prove” that they were right.

If John McCain wants to fight the battles of the past, then let him steal electrical transformers from a local electric company like a group of teenagers once did (for real!) and build himself a time machine and go back to the 1970’s and bring the “Straight Talk Express” to that time. Go and tell people to “stop the bullshit” back then and let those of us who are more knowledgeable about this conflict to sit down and figure out a way to end this conflict.

We have an alternative plan for Iraq – it is called the Murtha Plan. Redeploy our troops from Iraq to places where they are more needed to stop the real terrorists responsible for 9/11 – Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. We have done our job in Iraq – we toppled and executed Saddam and we killed Zarqawi. Now, it is time to let the Iraqi people decide what their future is going to be and bring all the leading players together to prevent this from turning into a regional conflict and turn to the question of how to capture Bin Laden and bring him to justice for the crimes that he has committed.

The one thing that I agree with McCain about is when he said that if we believe that this is doomed to failure, then we should do what is necessary to prevent it from happening. That is exactly what Senator Feingold is doing, pushing for the defunding of the occupation and forcing its end rather than just merely throwing up resolutions that accomplish nothing.

McCain also seeks to pander to the Left Behind crowd when he engages in more apocalyptic language about the consequences of failure. But it is clear that John McCain does not believe his own rhetoric. If this were really the disaster that he says that it is, then he would have been pushing for a restoration of the draft and pushing for placing this country on a WW2 footing to make the Middle East safe for democracy. That is what FDR did when we were faced with a real crisis back in World War II. He foresaw our involvement and did everything he could to get us ready for it. It is easy to tell that Iraq is not nearly the type of crisis that World War II was, given the refusal of the right to do the hard work to place us on a similar war footing.

John McCain is so transparently dishonest with his Left Behind apocalypitcism that Chuck Hagel, on the same show with him, called him out:

He called McCain’s proposal meaningless because it offers benchmarks but does not spell out what the U.S. government will do if the Iraqi officials fail to meet them.
“What are the consequences? Are we then going to pull out?” Hagel asked. “Are we going to cut funding? Now, that falls more in the intellectually dishonest category.”

This shows that the divisions within the Republican Party are becoming poisonous. They have gotten to the point where people like Hagel are starting to question the intellectual honesty of people like McCain. These divisions are only likely to magnify in the coming weeks as the situation continues to spiral out of control.

But it is not merely a matter of there being a personality conflict between McCain and Hagel. The problem is that they are both clinging to a dead ideology that is becoming more and more out of the mainstream of American political thought. Conservatism is inherently rigid and dogmatic, meaning that anyone who does not hold your views on a certain topic becomes automatically suspect. McCain and Hagel may be friends in public, but in private, they seem to be seething with rage at the other’s refusal to see the light. Hagel’s question of McCain’s honesty is strong evidence of that. At the rank and file level, we see that at such places as Red State and Free Republic, where people who express dissenting views can be banned immediately.

This sort of intolerance and political correctness among the Republicans is par for the course. If you do not support my plan (which I am not knowledgeable about), you do not support the troops. If you do not agree with me, you are intellectually dishonest. Of course, they are simply carrying out the wishes of their lord and master, who said you are for us or against us. The problem is that now, Republicans are applying this sort of intolerance to themselves. The Republican Party is as divided as it has ever been since Reagan took over.

All of the media attention was focused on Bush’s address to the nation where he continued to justify the occupation of Iraq. But as Guardian writer Alan Wolfe points out, Bush’s address the next day to soldiers at Fort Benning is just as significant because of the way in which he blames the American people for the occupation turning into the quagmire that it has.

In his speech, Bush unveiled a Neoplatonic worldview in which the soldiers are seen as the guardians of liberty while the American people are too stupid to know what is going on:

“You know, I knew that right after the attacks, the American psyche being what it is, people would tend to forget the grave threat posed by these people. I knew that. As a matter of fact, I was hoping that would happen so that life would go on. But the fortunate thing for this country is that those who wear the uniform have never forgotten the threat. You understand the stakes.”

In other words, go to sleep. No need to worry. George Bush is watching you. Wolfe has this to say:

Here, in a nutshell, is the United States as George W Bush perceives it. No one I know has forgotten September 11; the horror of that day lives on in nightmares, agonizing thoughts of friends lost, horror at the evil of international terrorism, tears at the lives ripped apart. But to the president of the United States, the people he leads are too preoccupied with their personal lives, too frivolous in their daily pursuits, too ignorant of the Satanic forces unleashed in the world, to realize the dangers facing them. They need a strong leader, one who, unlike them, never forgets but spends night and day protecting them against their own ignorance.

Not only are the American people frivolous, the president believes, but he is glad that they are. He was hoping they would forget so that he could remember for them. Some leaders wish the people they lead will to be strong and resolute. Mr Bush wants them weak and complacent. That way, his strength can compensate for their weakness.

There is another angle that has to be looked at as well — the fundmentalist angle. Most fundamentalists are constantly schooled to always obey authority — “Render unto Caesar.” “Do not add or take away from the Bible, or the plagues therein will be added.” Therefore, it is not a difficult stretch at all for such people who hang on every literal word out of the Bible to blindly defer to George Bush.

This is the acid test to see if people automatically defer to authority and are subservient, or they question everything and think critically. People who do the former are still likely to believe in George Bush as the greatest man to arise since the Bible was completed. People who are doing the latter are likely to at least have a lot of questions about what went wrong.

And Bush understands this mentality perfectly. He has always claimed that he was on a mission from God to get rid of Saddam. The implication is clear — Bush sincerely believes that he has a personal hotline to God and that he is only answerable to him along — and that we are simply pond scum in the grand scheme of things.

Bush is now engaging in a game of diplomatic chicken with Iran, whom he views as part of the Axis of Evil in his conspiratorial worldview. His continuing occupation of Iraq, his sending of ships to the Persian Gulf, and his rounding up of people he believes to be Iranian agents are prime examples of this.

The whole point of this is first of all to pander to the Left Behind crowd. Obviously, they are hanging on every blow by blow account of this conflict and trying to reconcile these events with Armageddon. In their twisted worldview, the bigger the conflict becomes, the more likely Armageddon is likely to happen.

The second reason is that Bush wants war with Iran — but he wants them to do something stupid so that he can claim the political cover he needs to attack them.

The third reason is because of the way he views his critics. He is well aware of the rising tide of opposition to his failed policies in Iraq. He thinks that he is above such criticism, given that he sincerely believes he has a hotline to God. Therefore, I suggest that his game of chicken with Iran is his way of giving his critics the Middle Finger and doing these provocations just because they want him to do the opposite.

Bush knows quite well that he does not have the manpower to sustain an invasion of Iran, let alone occupy it. Therefore, I suggest that it is more likely that he would use nuclear blackmail or even use nuclear weapons on Iran’s nuclear facility than he would a conventional invasion.

Bush has repeatedly campaigned on the promise to do the right thing even though it was not very popular. This, translated, is his way of flipping off the American Public. I’m the Decider. I can do whatever I want. I’m going to keep Rummy just because my pop wants him gone asap. I’m gunna play chicken with Iran just because all these Democrats and peace activists and my father don’t want me to. Catch the drift?

Given the fact that Harold Ford nearly won in TN, a red state, I suggest that this country is ready for  a Black Vice Presidential candidate. I propose that John Lewis is the best person for this job. This is not merely a matter of him being Black, but a matter of him being well-qualified because of the fact that he was one of the main forces behind the Civil Rights Movement along with Martin Luther King as well as his service in the House as well.
First and most importantly, John Lewis is a Democrat who votes like a Democrat – not someone who votes like a Republican. That is the sort of thing that has cost us elections in the past.

Secondly, since he is from the South, places like Virginia, Georgia, and Tennessee would immediately be in play. Blacks would turn out in record numbers all over the nation, giving us a crucial edge in close states. We could take back Ohio, since we are back in power in that state and we will have a secretary of state, Jennifer Brunner, who can actually administer the elections properly. Georgia would be in play since it is a rapidly growing part of the country, especially in the Atlanta suburbs. We could see places similar to Fairfax, VA turn blue for the first time since Jimmy Carter was running.

Thirdly of all, as we have seen from the Virginia elections, racism is no longer effective as a political tactic – Allen lost the election over that. By appointing John Lewis as VP candidate, we could see these results replayed all over the country – people would get fed up with the backwards-looking views of the GOP and would see them for what they were – people who would be drunk with power and who would be out of touch with the 21st century.

As we have seen from the landslide victories of Obama and Deval Patrick, this country is ready for a Black Presidential or Vice Presidential candidate who acts like a Democrat and who can also appeal to the middle as well. The more the racism of the GOP is exposed, the more people outside the South will see them for what they are and decisively reject them and confine them to one small corner of the country – the Deep South – along with Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, and Alaska.

The GOP will be between a rock and a hard place. If they go with Guliani or McCain, they risk losing their base to Jim Gilchrist, who will certainly run for President if one of those two gets nominated. In addition, we could portray McCain as a shill for Bush and a serial flip-flopper and Guliani as a corrupt politician who would be incapable of reforming the country and cleaning up the mess of the Bush administration.

On the other hand, if they get a right-winger – Tom Tancredo, Sam Brownback or Newt Gingrich – they risk imploding like Katherine Harris did in Florida or the Illinois GOP did in 2004 or the Kansas GOP has done over the last few years. The Moderates – the Lincoln Chafees and the Charlie Evers and the Log Cabin Republicans of the world – will desert the GOP in droves like they did in those elections.

Not only would John Lewis as VP help us in the short term, it would help us in the long term. As one of the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, he would inspire many young Blacks and minorities to run for office similar to Barak Obama and like Paul Hackett would for Iraq War veterans. Like Wes Clark gives us credibility on national security issues even with FOX, Lewis would maintain credibility on equality and civil rights issues with the Black community and prove to them that we are not just pandering to civil rights issues on election day.

It could be argued that Lewis would set the Rovian dogs of war on us and there would be all sorts of negative attack ads which could sink this campaign. But Lewis would know how to handle these attacks because he has been through much worse during his days with the Civil Rights Movement.

Lewis would preach a brand of left-wing economic populism that would compliment Al Gore’s populism nicely. The problem with Al Gore the first time around is that the party sent out mixed messages – on the one hand, we had the populism of Al Gore, which appealed to a lot of people. But on the other hand, we had the dour Conservatism of Joe Lieberman which turned people completely off. But with Lewis as VP, we would not be sending mixed messages to the people. Instead, we could neutralize the 3-G issues – God, Guns, and Gays – by preaching the brand of economic populism and libertarianism that won us the elections in Ohio, Montana, and Virginia.

And as we have seen, climate change will become an increasingly big issue over the next few years. Ever since Inconvenient Truth was released, Al Gore has been training grassroots volunteers all over the world and here in this country to raise awareness of climate change as a major issue of this century. There are now increasing numbers of Evangelicals who are Republicans but who would break with the GOP over climate change that we could peel off. And given his improved emphasis on climate change, we could bring Nader’s ex-voters back into the fold and keep them there – Gore did not talk as much about Climate Change in 2000.

Although Ralph Nader will not be a factor in the 2008 race, there will be another 3rd party that will be – the Unity 08 Party. They believe that the Democrats and the Republicans no longer represent the interests of Americans and that a new 3rd party that runs from the center is needed. They argue that us and the Republicans are trapped in a self-perpetuating cycle of bickering and partisanship and that we have lost touch with what people want. That could be a factor that could tip a close election to the Republicans much like Ralph Nader did.

The best way to coopt this message would be at the local level. Now, more than ever, we need to recruit and elect people for the 2008 elections that prove the Unity 08 people wrong – that we can and do listen to the needs of the people. We need people who will commit to holding regular listening sessions with constituents and incorporate what they say into legislation – in other words, people who are one of us. That way, when they hear on TV about how the Unity 08 people think we are out of touch with us, they will say, “That’s BS – of course the Democrats listen to us – look at my legislator.” We also need people who will share ideas about lobbying reform and campaign finance reform – Feingold himself admits that McCain-Feingold was not a cure-all for the system. The big advantage we hold over them is simple – we run candidates at the local level while they don’t.

Al Gore has taken his message of the need to stop climate change around the world, starting with Australia and New Zealand. He has been training volunteers to continue to spread the word that we need to work together to stop the accelerating trend of climate change before it is too late and many parts of the world become too hot to live in.
Even one year later, Al Gore’s movie, Inconvenient Truth is still relevant today as a UN conference on climate change in Africa shows:

A sampling of other findings coming from the conference:

• The snow-capped Rwenzori Mountains on the Uganda border will be snowcapped no more in a decade or two, thanks to rising temperatures. The same with Mount Kilimanjaro. Gone would be the rivers these snowcaps feed, also.

• If climate conditions are unchanged, sea levels could rise 34 inches by 2100, displacing millions of coastal dwellers.

• Warming ocean waters are suspected of stoking the power of hurricanes.

• Carbon dioxide particles falling from the sky are raising the acidity of oceans, killing off major coral reefs.

Gore mentions the last two – hurricanes and coral reefs – in his video update. Which tells you he’s right on top of the latest findings and compiled his update remarkably close to the release date of this video.

Even the political right in New Zealand agrees on the need to stop global warming. And even here in this country, many fundamentalists and right-wingers are breaking with the GOP over their pandering to the Black Helicopter Crowd and keeping their heads in the sand over global warming. When Al Gore showed his film in NZ, even the right was persuaded by the facts that it presented.

And in Australia, he trained 85 different volunteers to spread the word about the dangers of Global Warming and the need to make changes to stop it. Among the people he trained was this singer:

IT’S going to be a very long weekend for Felix Riebl. Over the next three days Riebl, a lead singer with Melbourne band The Cat Empire, will be lucky to snatch a few hours sleep in between playing late night gigs and spending his days in intensive training to become one of Australia’s first “climate messengers”.

The training’s drawcard is former US vice-president Al Gore, who is running his climate workshop in Sydney, outside the US for the first time.

The Australian Conservation Foundation chose 85 people from 1700 applications to learn how to spread Mr Gore’s message, based on the “global warming slide show” that featured in An Inconvenient Truth.

Riebl is not the only well-known trainee, with FM radio hosts Merrick Watts and Tim Ross also taking part. All the trainees have promised to deliver at least 10 presentations on climate change in the next year.

Since reading Tim Flannery’s book The Weather Makers a year ago, Riebl has grown increasingly concerned about global warming, the slow political response to it, and his own contribution to the problem. “We’re on a tour bus constantly and catching an enormous number of flights, and as a band we can’t take that for granted any more,” Riebl said.

Links:

Australian Conservation Foundation

Felix Riebl’s band. Note – click on the notes for links

Gore is as successful as he is because he has a big ally – reality:

“When someone says, ‘Thank you for changing people’s minds’, I say, ‘Well I have a big ally – reality’. Reality is knocking ever more loudly, ever more insistently on mankind’s door saying, ‘Wake up there. Your world is changing. You are changing it. You need to change’.”

This is a key difference between Democrats and Republicans – Democrats deal with reality; Republicans don’t. And because they cannot make any meaningful contributions and have no new ideas to add to the debate, they instead engage in pathetic smears like this smear (who cares if the leadership wanted their picture taken together and John Kerry was asked to step aside? I would not be embarrassed or humiliated?) or claiming that a Democratic victory was a victory for terrorists or giving chocolates or gameboys to 36 “Cuban dissident” groups whose people never worked an honest day in their lives.

Many Republicans believe that there is still a debate over Global Warming. Actually, according to the rest of the world, the debate has already been settled and it is now only a matter of how much global warming there will be. To show you how far the GOP will go to cling to the same old politics as usual, they elected Blunt and Boehner as their leaders as though they had actually won the election. Not surprisingly, the Republicans are brawling over at Red State over this issue.

The need for change in response to climate change shows why Conservatism is dead as an ideology. It is no longer relevant and does not address the problems the world is facing. Conservatism is inherently rigid as an ideology, assuming it has all the answers. Therefore, it assumes that things are just fine and dandy like they were 20 years ago and that we need not change – if there is acid rain, after all, go get an umbrella. Even if the Conservative accepts the reality of climate change, they may think government is the problem, not the solution. Therefore, they think that we should let the private sector lead the way on climate change. But that is an abdication of responsibility. It is a fact of life that the President of the US is a leader on this issue and that people will watch his cues. Therefore, if they see the President doing nothing on this issue, people will assume it is OK to do nothing as well. And for many corporations, the Bottom Line is the only language they understand – they see record profits and think everything is fine.

There is another brand of Conservatism – the head in the sand approach. It refuses to vote for Al Gore because, after all, he is for abortion, and human life is more important. But even if it could be shown that the fetus is a living being, we should still vote for Al Gore for life reasons – if we do not address the problem of climate change at all, none of us will be around in 100 years.

It could be argued that we’ve had the coldest winter on record – or variations of that argument; therefore, we should not worry. But weather can vary a lot within years. But the fact that there are individually cold winters somewhere in the world do not change the fact that as an average, the world temperature is rising and it can only be accounted for by carbon emissions.

Our key to our survival will be our adaptability – our ability to change in response to new realities. Therefore, if we do not adapt, we will not survive – as so many species before us have failed to adapt to changing conditions. Conservatism is dead as an ideology because it shows an inability to adapt to changing circumstances and changing times. The election of Blunt and Boehner is a good example.

In order to stop the menace of climate change, we must show the ability to work together as individuals, as businesses, and as governments. Already, business leaders, political leaders, and inventors are coming together at the Embedded Systems Conference in April 2007 to discuss the latest inventions in climate change. The solution involves us, as a world community, coming together to address and solve the problem.