Musings of a Liberal Texan

This is what keeping campaign promises looks like: Healthcare reform Education reform US/Russia arms treaty Wall St reform Tobacco regulation. Credit card reform. Public lands bill Restores U.S./Russia relations SCHIP expansion (children's health insurance) Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. 2 Justices to the Supreme Court Stem cell research expansion $20 Billion from BP for businesses harmed by oil spill Restored critical protections under the Endangered Species Act The largest tax cut in the history of the United States (for the middle class) Billions in restoration of U.S. infrastructure 600,000 (private sector) jobs created since January Positive GDP growth for four straight quarters... 119 promises kept, with 245 in the works

So why do I care? Why do I care about that calf ripped from its dairy producing mother a couple of hours after its birth? Why do tears spring to my eyes as I watch a dolphin desperately leap from its tiny pool onto the concrete as the audience gasps and the other dolphins race to the glass to see the fate of their compatriot? Why does a grip sweep my heart as I cycle past the dog chained 24/7/365 as it wags its tail hoping I will stop and release him or at least offer comfort? Why does my throat contract and dry out as I see tiny chicks thrown into a dumpster, atop thousands of others struggling to survive an inevitable doom? Why do I toss and turn as images of tiny piglets being slammed against the pavement over and over and over again, thwarting peaceful slumber? How does it affect me personally? It has no bearing on my life… Except that it does. For every animal, for every child, for every senior, for every mentally or physically handicapped abused, neglected, tossed, struck, brutal...

Immigration Musings TOPICS Immigration Right-wing extremism Arizona's immigration battle becomes a major nexus for white supremacists and the 'mainstream' By David Neiwert Thursday Jun 10, 2010 12:00pm Referenced video can be found here: Videographer Dennis Gilman attended last weekend's "Phoenix Rising" rally in Phoenix last weekend and made this amazing video. You really have to watch it to believe it. My favorite moment is the woman who believes there is a "radical Islamic Mexican Catholic movement" that "has been taking over our nation and getting rid of and killing American citizens". But notice: There are a number of familiar faces here, most notably Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Russell Pearce. These are guys who show up on Fox News, CNN and MSNBC as spokesmen for SB1070, presented nominally as the "mainstream conservatives" who championed the law that they're all defending as having garnered so much popular support, etc. etc....

Slick Musings Nigeria's agony dwarfs the Gulf oil spill. The US and Europe ignore it John Vidal, environment editor The Observer, Sunday 30 May 2010 Article history We reached the edge of the oil spill near the Nigerian village of Otuegwe after a long hike through cassava plantations. Ahead of us lay swamp. We waded into the warm tropical water and began swimming, cameras and notebooks held above our heads. We could smell the oil long before we saw it – the stench of garage forecourts and rotting vegetation hanging thickly in the air. The farther we travelled, the more nauseous it became. Soon we were swimming in pools of light Nigerian crude, the best-quality oil in the world. One of the many hundreds of 40-year-old pipelines that crisscross the Niger delta had corroded and spewed oil for several months. Forest and farmland were now covered in a sheen of greasy oil. Drinking wells were polluted and people were distraught. No one knew how much oil had leaked. "We lost our nets...

Rand Musings There has been a lot of swirling around the most recent Tea Party candidate, Rand Paul and his comments regarding the Civil Rights Act and the American Disability Act. Rand is a pure libertarian. His dad is libertarian lite by comparison. Why do I say this? Let's take a look at just a couple of his views. ADA The Americans with Disabilities Act. This was a long time coming. I think about how much the image of those with disabilities has changed, just in my lifetime, I see it as being intrinsically tied to this particular Act. Prior to the ADA, those with disabilities where ferried off to institutions. Not all of them, but a crazy majority. Tucked away, out of sight, as the prevailing mentality was that disabled people - physically, mentally, etc. have nothing to offer society. Those that didn't fit into the established mold of what was deemed "normal" by the establishment had no avenue to enter into society. Unless they had the family, community, and fina...

I thought this was a great story. Shannyn Moore Just a girl from Homer Posted: April 25, 2010 05:26 PM Palin's Pinnacle of Hypocrisy Sarah Palin took the stand Friday in the trial of Former University of Tennessee student David Kernell. Kernell is charged with hacking Palin's Yahoo! e-mail account while Palin campaigned in the 2008 presidential campaign. Kernell is facing 50 years in prison over this incident. He would be 72 years old when he gets out of prison. According to the Anchorage Daily News, Palin was asked if she thought the charges against Kernell were excessive: Palin said, "I don't know, but I do think there should be consequences for bad behavior." Hmmm...consequences for BAD BEHAVIOR??? This coming from the Quitter Governor of Alaska who: • used state resources to relentlessly pursue a family vendetta • took per diem as governor while sleeping in her own bed • took her kids at state expense on official State of Alaska business trips • lashed ...

FASCINATING READ There's A Method to Republican 'Madness' by Robert Parry | April 1, 2010 - 10:11am Washington’s conventional wisdom for explaining the intensity of Republican obstructionism toward President Barack Obama breaks down one of two ways: either it’s a philosophical disagreement over the role of government or a desperate need to stay in line with a radicalized right-wing base. But there is another way to view the GOP political strategy, as neither principled nor reactive to the rantings of Tea Partiers, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. It is that the Republicans are following a playbook that has evolved over more than four decades, to regain power by sabotaging Democratic presidents. In this analysis, the Republicans believe they can reclaim the lucrative levers of national authority by making the country as ungovernable as possible while a Democrat is in the White House, essentially holding governance hostage until they are restored to power. Then, the Democrats ar...

Maternal Musings Every now and then I get this pang, this knot in my stomach, a wave of mixed love, sadness, joy. As I remember the feel of Josh's tiny hand in mine or Cody's little chubby arms around my neck. I remember their little voices, their little faces turned to me, their blissful, unfettered laughter. I see them as they sleep, the peaceful slumber of the innocent and the waves of unfathomable love for them as I smoothed their hair and kissed their beautiful faces. My boys are moving towards independence...running into to trouble, growing, stretching, falling, tumbling, rebounding, becoming. Every now and then, I get this rush of love and adoration for them. I miss the little them. Now, now they hug me so hard they pop my back as they lift me six inches off the ground. Now they wave and throw a kiss as they back their truck and SUV out of the driveway, thumping, pumping bass vibrating glass in every window within a block. Now, he texts “I miss you, mom” randomly from hi...

Animals in Entertainment Musings So, what is it going to take? What has to happen in our society that turns this around and sends us in a different direction? We had a woman, an innocent neighbor of a woman that decided she could keep a chimpanzee and treat it as a “child”...only it was locked in a cage and was several hundred pounds, that has her face removed . Ripped off her head. An elephant goes on a crazy rampage. Tigers attack the man that has spent his entire life training them causing irreparable damage. And now, a trainer is killed by an Orca at one of these godforsaken, animal entertainment for profit while pretending to be a rehab. What more has to happen? How many animals have to be incarcerated, driven mad and act accordingly? How many more animals are going to be kept in confinement, for a few moments of human entertainment before we strive for the next level of civility? Animals are traumatically gathered in the wild and hauled into completely incomprehensible and unnatu...

Memo to Dick Cheney: Ssshhhh, Use Your Indoor Voice Jeff Schweitzer. Marine Biologist and Former Clinton White House Science Advisor Posted: February 19, 2010 12:46 PM Former Vice President Dick Cheney appeared before a fawning crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) this week to promote his efforts to create an alternative universe in which truths about terrorism becomes lies and lies become truth. His daughter Liz also served as surrogate mouth piece. With daddy hanging on her shoulder, nodding approval, Liz had the following to say about the Christmas underwear bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab: "There's no polite way to put this, but that kind of incompetence gets people killed." Forgetting 9/11, she actually had the audacity to accuse the Obama administration of missing warnings from the intelligence community that an attack by Yemeni terrorists was imminent. In her haze of amnesia, she went on to decry the "incompetence, misjudgment and pre...

What to Say to Those Who Think Single Payer Advocates Are Wacko Published on Monday, February 8, 2010 by CommonDreams.org by Paul Hochfeld What do we say to our more conservative friends, who genuinely think that the Single Payer solution to our health care crisis would be a disaster? Try what follows. In the end, you may simply agree to disagree. That’s O.K., but what follows may give them pause to think. Already, 60% of all our health care dollars come directly or indirectly (because employers insurance premiums are tax deductible) from the taxpayer. The care of our oldest neighbors are financed by Medicare, i.e. the taxpayers. The care of our disabled neighbors is financed by Medicaid. Ditto the care of our poorest neighbors who, because health follows wealth, are also at greater risk of high expense. Fourteen hundred insurance companies, at significant expense, stratify the rest of the population by “risk”. Their top-secret formula results in them covering the employed people...

The Story That No One Will Tell by Rep. Alan Grayson. Congressman Alan Grayson represents Central Florida (FL-8). The story that everyone wants to tell is that the Democratic Party is disheartened and disintegrating. Teabagger Republicans are juiced up and on top. Or so the media says, over and over again. But the House candidate who raised the most money in the entire country during the last FEC reporting period -- $860,000 in three months -- is not a teabagger. He is not boosted relentlessly by Fox News. He's not even a Republican. He doesn't think that the Earth was created 6000 years ago, that President Obama was born in Kenya, or that global warming is a hoax. This House candidate also, remarkably, had the largest number of contributors. Over 15,000 individuals contributed, many of whom have given time after time, whatever they could. The House candidate who raised the most money did so without French-kissing lobbyists, without flattering the idle rich, and without reachin...

When the media is the disaster In the wake of the Haiti earthquake, false depictions of victims as criminals hinder the relief effort By Rebecca Solnit Soon after almost every disaster the crimes begin: ruthless, selfish, indifferent to human suffering, and generating far more suffering. The perpetrators go unpunished and live to commit further crimes against humanity. They care less for human life than for property. They act without regard for consequences. I'm talking, of course, about those members of the mass media whose misrepresentation of what goes on in disaster often abets and justifies a second wave of disaster. I'm talking about the treatment of sufferers as criminals, both on the ground and in the news, and the endorsement of a shift of resources from rescue to property patrol. They still have blood on their hands from Hurricane Katrina, and they are staining themselves anew in Haiti. Within days of the Haitian earthquake, for example, the Los Angeles Times ran a se...

My husband and I saw Food Inc. To me, it is “must” viewing for every American. Not because it glimpses the horror that is the life of the factory farm animal in the United States but because it shows how our food, our sustenance, our “fuel” has been hijacked by the corporate machine. It's not that I am anti-business. I am absolutely not. What I am against is a few owning most. Because when a few own most we get corruption, we get manipulation, we get monopoly. Which is what is happening in our food production. Farmers are literally indentured servants – forced to get loans to provide the required CAFOs for the giants like Tyson, and then continuous mandated to revise filtration systems and overhaul the feeding apparatus to company mandates, going further and further in debt. If they refuse, the corporate giants pull their contracts, and they are left with nothing. Monsanto has copyrights on seeds. Yes. That's right. Seeds. So when the farmers plant their crops, they are not all...