Ideals to light the world

“As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience’s sake. And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.”

from President Barack Obama’s inauguration speech | Reuters

Fear

“If leaders exploit public fears to herd people in directions they might not otherwise choose, then fear itself can quickly become a self-perpetuating and freewheeling force that drains national will and weakens national character, diverting attention from real threats deserving of healthy and appropriate fear and sowing confusion about the essential choices the every nation must constantly make about is future.”

-Al Gore
from The Assault on Reason

Our country

“Our country, right or wrong. When right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be put right.”

-Carl Schurz

Taxing the Internet

clipped from news.com.com The era of tax-free e-mail, Internet shopping and broadband connections could end this fall, if recent proposals in the U.S. Congress prove successful. State and local governments this week resumed a push to lobby Congress for far-reaching changes on two different fronts: gaining the ability to impose sales taxes on Net shopping, and being able to levy new monthly taxes on DSL and other Internet-service connections. One senator is even predicting taxes on e-mail.

Monday Melee 5/07

The Monday Melee is a Fracas project. You’re invited to participate. Get details and see the participant list here.

The Misanthropic: Name something you absolutely hate.
Laziness and apathy. Why vote? It won’t matter. Why recycle or conserve energy? I’m only one person. Why donate? I can only spare $5. Well, I say: It matters. One person is a start. Every little bit helps. If we all get it in gear and do something, it’ll make a big difference.

The Meretricious: Expose something or someone that’s phony, fraudulent, or bogus.
“…since September of last year – when Congress wrongly, foolishly, passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 – the president has the power to call any US citizen an ‘enemy combatant’. He has the power to define what ‘enemy combatant’ means. The president can also delegate to anyone he chooses in the executive branch the right to define ‘enemy combatant’ any way he or she wants and then seize Americans accordingly.”
source: Guardian Unlimited

The Malcontent: Name something you’re unhappy with.
I’m not as efficient as I’d like to be. There’s so much I want to accomplish, and I often get to the end of the day with too many items left undone.

The Meritorious: Give someone credit for something and name it if you can.
My bold and adventurous sister is embarking on a summer internship in a foreign country. I admire the way she goes after her dreams with spirit and determination.

The Mirror: See something good about yourself and name it.
I have a quick mind and a good sense of humor. I think a hearty laugh is downright good for you, and I look for opportunities to brighten someone’s day.

The Make-Believe: Name something you wish for.
I fervently wish that, one day, my kids will love reading as much as I do. It’s on my make-believe list because I’m beginning to fear it isn’t going to happen. I wouldn’t be the person I am without the insights and knowledge gained from books. I hate to see them miss out.

Fascist America?

“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”

-James Madison

I’ve clipped a small bit of a very interesting article by Naomi Wolf. Click through via the Guardian link to read the entire article.

clipped from www.guardian.co.uk Because Americans like me were born in freedom, we have a hard time even considering that it is possible for us to become as unfree – domestically – as many other nations. Because we no longer learn much about our rights or our system of government – the task of being aware of the constitution has been outsourced from citizens’ ownership to being the domain of professionals such as lawyers and professors – we scarcely recognise the checks and balances that the founders put in place, even as they are being systematically dismantled. We still have the choice to stop going down this road; we can stand our ground and fight for our nation, and take up the banner the founders asked us to carry. It is my argument that, beneath our very noses, George Bush and his administration are using time-tested tactics to close down an open society. It is time for us to be willing to think the unthinkable – as the author and political journalist Joe Conason, has put it, that it can happen here.

Monday Melee 4/02

The Monday Melee is a Fracas project. You’re invited to participate. Get details and see the participant list here.

The Misanthropic: Name something you absolutely hate.
Cutthroat competition. Don’t get me wrong: I think competition is often beneficial, and it has certainly been at the root of quite of lot of innovation and progress. What I object to is the practice of winning by ruthless and unjust means; e.g., stepping on, defaming, using, stealing from, scheming against, and otherwise abusing others in order to come out on top. I would prefer to see people compete and achieve success in positive ways.

The Meretricious: Expose something or someone that’s phony, fraudulent, or bogus.
Once again, the President wants to put a person with clear industry allegiances in charge of a government body intended to safeguard the public interest. On March 1, 2007, Bush nominated Michael Baroody as chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). Baroody is a senior executive with the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), a trade group that regularly opposes product safety regulation and pollution prevention laws. NAM has gone so far as to call for weakening the CPSC, an organization that exists to keep manufacturers from selling products that put us and our families at risk. During his tenure at NAM, Baroody has led opposition to laws that protect children and the public from unsafe products and toxic health threats. source: Organic Consumers Association

The Malcontent: Name something you’re unhappy with.
Clutter. It’s annoying and hard to tame.

The Meritorious: Give someone credit for something and name it if you can.
Our local food bank distributed over 21 million pounds of food last year to needy families and individuals.

The Mirror: See something good about yourself and name it.
‘Dependable’ is my middle name. Well, not literally, although it would have demonstrated uncanny perception and a keen sense of humor on my parents’ part. I can always be counted on to follow through on commitments and to get things done in a competent and timely fashion.

The Make-Believe: Name something you wish for.
Feasible, affordable, long-term alternative energy solutions available to everyone, the world over, right now.

Monday Melee 3/26

The Monday Melee is a Fracas project. You’re invited to participate. Get details and see the participant list here.

The Misanthropic: Name something you absolutely hate.
“Everyone else is doing it” justification. It is routinely employed to excuse all sorts of questionable behavior: lying, cheating, negative campaigning, racism, greed, bribes, double standards, driving gas guzzlers, taking unfair advantage, doing anything it takes to win, etc. If you have to make an excuse like this for doing something, you probably shouldn’t do it. Sadly, you don’t often encounter this phrase as a reason to do something good. I’d like to hear people say: I’m behaving ethically…standing up for what I believe in…donating to charity…spending quality time with my kids…doing volunteer work…honoring my commitments…because everyone else is doing it.

The Meretricious: Expose something or someone that’s phony, fraudulent, or bogus.
It seems to me that refusing to testify under oath is admitting that you don’t intend to tell the truth.

The Malcontent: Name something you’re unhappy with.
My memory isn’t nearly as sharp as it used to be. Back in the day (as my son would say) I was able to effortlessly remember just about everything: phone numbers, credit card and account numbers, names, birthdays, facts and trivia, song lyrics, and so on. Now, I rely heavily on note-taking and my trusty PDA.

The Meritorious: Give someone credit for something and name it if you can.
“Putting his money where his environmentalist mouth is, Prince Charles is swapping gas-guzzling private planes and helicopters for commercial flights, train journeys and biodiesel cars. A longtime champion of green causes, the heir to the throne says action is needed now to avoid leaving a ruined planet to the next generation.” source: CBS News

The Mirror: See something good about yourself and name it.
I don’t let the fact that I don’t know how to do something stop me; instead I view it as a good reason to learn. New technology, new ways of doing things, new theories? Bring it on.

The Make-Believe: Name something you wish for.
I wish I could enable my kids to clearly see the future consequences of their actions and decisions and act accordingly. Of course, if they could do this, they wouldn’t be kids, would they?

Monday Melee 2/26

The Monday Melee is a Fracas project. You’re invited to participate. Get details and see the participant list here.

The Misanthropic: Name something you absolutely hate.
War. Time and again, diplomacy fails (or is never attempted) and war erupts, blazing a trail of destruction, violence, and death. Why must we resort to killing each other?

The Meretricious: Expose something or someone that’s phony, fraudulent, or bogus.
At the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, political appointees, not researchers and scientists, have the last word on standards recommendations for air pollutants.

The Malcontent: Name something you’re unhappy with.
I am highly distressed by the situation in the Middle East.

The Meritorious: Give someone credit for something and name it if you can.
During a recent school-sponsored food drive, a student asked for canned goods as her only birthday presents so that she could donate them.

The Mirror: See something good about yourself and name it.
I am creative and resourceful.

The Make-Believe: Name something you wish for.
I’d like to be able to successfully divide my attention between two tasks; for example, read a book while having an interesting conversation. Multi-tasking on steroids.

Monday Melee 2/19

The Monday Melee is a Fracas project. You’re invited to participate. Get details and see the participant list here.

The Misanthropic: Name something you absolutely hate.
Partisanship and political wrangling too often get in the way of finding feasible solutions to pressing problems.

The Meretricious: Expose something or someone that’s phony, fraudulent, or bogus.
Proposed funding cuts for public television threaten the availability of age-appropriate educational programs for young children. Free alternatives to commercial programming are rare, and cutting nearly a quarter of the budget for public television puts these programs at risk.

The Malcontent: Name something you’re unhappy with.
I wish the grocery store in my neighborhood carried more organic products.

The Meritorious: Give someone credit for something and name it if you can.
The coach of my son’s basketball team is incredibly generous with his time.

The Mirror: See something good about yourself and name it.
I stand up for what I believe in.

The Make-Believe: Name something you wish for.
I’d like a magical, self-cleaning house.

Dubya’s United States of Whatever

A must see, people.

A slice of surveillance

Click the image to see what it might be like to order a pizza in the future. Yes, it’s a bit over the top (at least for now). But there’s no denying it’s thought-provoking.

I believe we need to speak out now to protect our privacy rights,
before it’s too late.

Injustice for all?

It has been five years since US authorities first transferred “war on terror” detainees to the detention camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Despite widespread international condemnation, hundreds of people of more than 30 nationalities are still there: without charge, and with little hope of obtaining a fair trial. Though US authorities have repeatedly called the detainees “terrorists” and “killers”, not a single person has been convicted of a crime.

Five years of lawlessness is enough. Join activists worldwide in showing solidarity with the detainees and their families, demanding once more, and louder than ever, that the detention facilities at Guantánamo be closed.

Visit the Amnesty International action center.

The year in green

It has been a busy year for environmental issues. Visit the Sierra Club online to review a collection of ‘green’ stories from 2006 and cast your vote for the most significant.

Contagious

“Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds
contempt for law.”

-Louis D. Brandeis