Ask-Steve.com

TODAY: Dine for Darfur

You have to eat anyway. Please make it for a good cause today.

1 Cause, 1 Day, 1 Goal
Your neighborhood restaurants let you make a choice to make a difference

Each day you make decisions that affect your life—where you buy your coffee, your lunch, your dinner, your glass of wine. On March 4, 2008, we offer you the opportunity to make these same choices and have them make a difference in the world. Purchase your food and drink at a ‘Dine for Darfur’ establishment and 25% of that money will be generously donated to aid relief efforts in Darfur. By choosing to eat at participating restaurants on March 4th you are choosing to support your neighborhood restaurants in their effort to make a difference in the world. In its first year, operating solely in Seattle, Dine for Darfur raised $70,000 and brought thousands of people out of their homes to show their support for the cause. This year, with the participation of restaurants throughout Washington and Oregon the event is sure to grow exponentially. Please join the effort for Dine for Darfur and help us show the world what our community can do.

    * Learn more about where the money is going
    * Contact Naomi@chowfoods.com for more information in Washington
    * Contact jyilmaz@mhbco.com for more information in Oregon

Link:
Dine for Darfur.

The tragic fall of John McCain

Senator John McCain has just sold his soul to the devil and flushed a solid shot at the White House down the toilet. And the world is better off for it.

In a February 14th article entitled A declaration of independents, The Economist observes that independents are back from the wilderness and ready to determine the outcome of the presidential election. Apparently McCain didn't see the article.

"By a chapter of accidents the Republicans have ended up with their one presidential candidate ideally suited to attracting independents. The party's thumping in the 2006 mid-term election was almost entirely due to its waning fortunes among independent voters. Conservatives pulled the Republican lever in the usual numbers. But independents voted for Democrats by 57% to 39%. John McCain is thus a gift from heaven.

The very qualities of Mr McCain that infuriate Republican loyalists endear him to independents. He has frequently clashed with Mr Bush, a man whom independents loathe. He has wrestled with special interests in Washington, and repeatedly gone into battle with his own party, particularly over immigration reform."

The independents and lefties I've talked with have, almost without exception, said that while they disagree with McCain on many points of policy, they admire his heroic military service and his unwavering opposition to torture. I have shared that sentiment—but of course quickly remind them of his hard-right views and damaging voting history on many other important issues. That said, I've felt from the start that if by some cruel knife twist of fate the world couldn't be spared another Republican in the White House, McCain seemed the lesser of all evils willing to run. What a difference a day makes.

Derrick Jackson summed it up well in the first two sentences of his piece entitled McCain drops the ball on torture in The Boston Globe.

John McCain last week had a choice between his principles and propping up a failed president. He chose the latter.

Mark Silva of the Baltimore Sun elaborates:

Sen. John McCain, a former prisoner of war who suffered torture at the hands of his North Vietnamese captors, said today that President Bush should veto a bill that would prohibit the CIA from using waterboarding and other harsh interrorgation techniques on prisoners.

McCain, an outspoken opponent of waterboarding, voted against the bill, which would limit the CIA to using only 19 interrogation techniques listed in the Army field manual. He maintains that waterboarding is already illegal, but that the CIA should not be precluded from using other legal measures in its interrogation of suspected terrorists...

Bush has said he will veto the legislation, which bars the CIA from using waterboarding, sensory deprivation or other harsh coercive methods to break a prisoner who refuses to answer questions. Those practices were banned by the military in 2006. The bill cleared the House in December, and the Senate approved it last week.

One of the measure's supporters, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) maintains that if the president vetoes the measure "he will be voting in favor of waterboarding."

McCain, however, was in trouble even without this shocking abdication of the moral high ground on torture. Some people, including moderates on both sides and independents, seemed to want to paint McCain as the Obama of the right. Someone willing to reach across the aisle to get things done. A uniter, not a divider. It just ain’t so. On a lot of issues that matter, he’s just as far right as the other neoconservative nut jobs. Worse, he’ll have to pick a running mate who will appeal to the hard right and evangelicals if he's to have any hope of energizing the more radical elements within his base and winning the general election. So we could end up with another Dick Cheney in the White House; though I can’t imagine McCain would give his VP the kind of long leash that Bush has. (Or is it that Cheney has had Bush on a short leash?) Bush is an eager puppet. McCain is a seasoned fighter. But that's all moot now.

Today McCain is nothing more than the fading last hope of a collapsing right-wing power grab that went terribly wrong.

Links:
A declaration on independents | The Economist
McCain drops the ball on torture | Seattle Post-Intelligencer
John McCain: Bush should veto CIA fifth-degree bill | The Baltimore Sun

Christian Science Monitor screws up big time

The Christian Science Monitor is a fine publication - but they got it all wrong in a piece out today entitled, "What YouTube doesn't show." I would have thought CS Monitor above this kind of if-you-can't-beat-em'-smear-em tactic, but I can't say I'm surprised. YouTube is emerging as the remedy to corporate media's complete failure to ask the tough questions and speak for the people - and that is bound to rattle some cages. Especially when it starts putting a dent in the power and pocketbooks of the 800 pound gorillas kicking back in those cages.

The subtitle of the piece reads:

YouTube spread news of Florida's Taser incident fast. But instant media doesn't always tell the whole story.

That's rich. As though Fox, USA Today or any other corporate media outlet always tells the whole story. That's such a laughably flawed statement that I'm surprised it made it past the editor. Instant media (which every news outlet on the planet seems to be trying to emulate in terms of speed these days) doesn't try or intend to tell the whole story. They're video clips for crying out loud! Unlike the mainstream media outlets that often do claim to be telling the whole story - and in an unbiased way at that. It's an absurd comparison.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many are conveyed by a video tape? Whatever the number, it is not always enough to understand the situation.

So we're to be prevailed upon to believe that YouTube, with its virtually unlimited capacity for the number of videos it can hold and much less constrained length of those videos - uploaded mostly by average folks like you and me at the scene - are going to provide a less complete picture of things compared to broadcast media? How many amateur videos of that University of Florida incident are there? If only we'd had a Fox News camera crew there we'd know God's own truth of exactly what happened there that fateful day!

That will not stop many people from rushing to judgment based on what they think they know.

Sage words, Mr. Jett. Good thing you're above ever doing anything like that and, say, publishing it in the Christian Science Monitor. If only people would rush to judgment based on what they think they don't know. Or crawl slowly toward judgment based on what they do know, but don't realize they know. Now that would be ideal. At exactly what point did you deem it appropriate to form the opinions you're expressing here? And exactly how much information did you feel you had to accumulate and process before what you thought you knew became what you truly know - in your estimation?

Their views are formed more by the media stampede and their own biases than by what really happened. And that says a lot about how people react and how information is used today.

And this phenomenon of the human race is suddenly unique to YouTube how? This has no doubt been the case since the first prehistoric news hack painted his first big story on a cave wall during the Upper Paleolithic. I don't know how you manage to be a first-hand witness to all events that you form an opinion about, but folks like me are constrained by our physical bodies and things called time and space. Therefore we glean what we can from what we have determined to be reliable sources and then form our opinions based on that.

As the story spread, many people formed a firmly held opinion.

Damn those pesky many people! How dare they form an opinion - let alone a firmly held one! - as the story is still spreading!

I also had an opinion on the event...

You don't say?

...but my perspective was unique.

Well of course it was! Do you really think any of us lowly many people would think that our rushed, firmly-held opinions could possibly have been formed on as solid a basis as your omniscient, omnipresent perspective would allow? Perish the thought!

I was the moderator of Sen. Kerry's talk and the only other person on stage with him.

Oh, sweet! I'm glad I kept reading! So the key is that simple. I'll just be sure to land a stage role at the heart of every world event so that I don't have to rely on spurious media coverage and eyewitness accounts. Especially accounts caught on video tape. I'd rather have someone interpret for me what happened than be forced to rely on live video footage. Who knows what kind of judgments I might make if I actually saw what happened myself?

Take the case of Andrew Meyer, the University of Florida student who had a Taser used against him by campus police at a speech by Sen. John Kerry (D) of Massachusetts last month. Videotapes of the incident made the evening television news and immediately found their way onto YouTube.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement was called in to investigate whether the actions of the officers were appropriate. Their 300-page report was recently turned over to university officials. (A summary of it is at www.president.ufl.edu/incident/.) The report concluded the officers acted "well within" their guidelines and also pointed out that the student had provoked an earlier disturbance on campus.

Wow - what complete idiots all we gullible many people have been! Why didn't we wait until the completely unbiased, 300-page report came to us via university officials from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement rather than rush to judgment based on eyewitness accounts and multiple video clips of what happened? So that kid wasn't actually being knocked down, sat on and roughed up by four cops and Tased repeatedly while screaming and pleading for mercy and help. Obviously those video clips and all those eyewitnesses must have gotten it wrong somehow. No seriously! The report says so!

The really great part?

In a letter released October 29, Mr. Meyer publicly apologized for his "failure to act calmly" during the speech and admitted he had "stepped out of line" and was truly sorry for tarnishing the university's image.

That doesn't begin to portray the tone and content of Meyer's letter. It was an abject, groveling plea for mercy. I wasn't halfway through it when I couldn't have been persuaded to believe other than that this kid was blackmailed into writing this letter. Why should the authorities deal with repeat offenders when you can make an example of a kid like this, have your thugs beat the shit out of him, threaten him with who knows what afterward, get him to write a prostrate mea culpa - and then get the Christian Science Monitor to put out a piece like Mr. Jett's here. It's a complete coup for the Cheney/Rove/Bush/Kristol regime and their fear-mongering tactics of frightening U.S. citizens - especially those who might dare to engage their brains, ethics or morals - into self-censorship and trembling complicity in its tyranny.

I almost wonder if John P. Philbin didn't coach Karl Rove on writing this piece with the help of Bill Kristol.

****************

What YouTube doesn't show  |  Christian Science Monitor

Katrina Recovery: This image says it all

A Google search brought up the official U.S. government page for their Katrina Recovery efforts. The page is housed within the DisasterHelp.gov site run by the Department of Homeland Security. Having attended a Katrina benefit recently, I decided to click over to see what the government is doing to help the tens of thousands of victims and remedy the nightmarish conditions that remain in many areas of the Gulf Coast.

The top page of the site summed up perfectly everything I've heard and learned about the Bush administration's complete failure around mitigating damage and then helping those suffering in the wake of Katrina.

Click on the image here to see a full-size screenshot that I grabbed on Saturday, June 2 at 3:51 PM.

The page headline reads, "Prepare Now for 2006 Hurricane Season." Hmmm... Probably just a typo. (An enormous, very embarrassing mistake, to be sure, but then that's the hallmark of this administration.) So I read further. The first sentence in the main paragraph reads, "With the latest predictions indicating another active hurricane season in 2006, now is the time for Gulf Coast residents to prepare for the potential threat of hurricanes."

I just about fell out of my chair. Not from surprise, though, but from another wave of disgust and anger at the complete, unrepentant neglect and incompetence shown by the Bush administration.

[Let's see how long it takes them to update the site.]

UPDATE - October 15, 2007: The site hasn't changed a bit! Unbelievable!

Katrina Recovery | DisasterHelp.gov

Technorati Tags: Bush, politics, Hurricane Katrina

Sexist remark from an anti-sexism campaign

Did you know that yesterday was Blog Against Sexism Day? Neither did I. I learned of it from a post on Eric Stoller's blog.

I consider myself a strong advocate for social justice and decided to learn more about this event. I clicked from Eric's post over to the official Blog Against Sexism Day site, planning to learn a bit more and then grab a graphic that I could include in a post here. I was disappointed to find a completely sexist remark in the opening paragraph of the site! (See the screen grab with the highlighted text)

Whether this is a Freudian slip on the part of the author or simply an innocent mistake, it's a good reminder that even those with the best of intentions and convictions can screw up. In this case, they managed to insult men in the same sentence in which they were asking for their support. Why is it more of a challenge for men to write about this topic than women? I know a lot of men who are as passionate feminists as any women I know. And that's saying something.

I think Blog Against Sexism Day, which falls on International Women’s Day, is a great idea. It's also a good time to remember that it's not all black and white, and that none of us is perfect. We're all works in progress and need to remember that change happens in steps.

Technorati Tags: gender discrimination, sexism, social justice

More info on telephone directory waste

Lelo in Nopo posted another great comment on my blog, this time on my January 6th entry entitled, Qwest DEX telephone directories: 2,162 pages of waste.

Hey, I just came across this information and thought you'd be interested. It sounds like there's some good effort towards stopping this incredible waste.

Check out the work of the Product Stewardship Institute and the project with King County in Washington:
Product Stewardship Institute > Phone Books

First of all, I have to say that I'm glad my home turf of King County (home to Seattle) is getting some good press. Federal Way, a giant strip mall of a town with a what-were-they-thinking name, situated between Seattle and Tacoma, garnered some rare national attention when a nut-case parent by the name of Frosty Hardison, a father of seven, successfully lobbied the school district to ban the film An Inconvenient Truth. Of course, he had a very sound argument:

"No you will not teach or show that propagandist Al Gore video to my child, blaming our nation -- the greatest nation ever to exist on this planet -- for global warming," Hardison wrote in an e-mail to the Federal Way School Board. The 43-year-old computer consultant is an evangelical Christian who says he believes that a warming planet is "one of the signs" of Jesus Christ's imminent return for Judgment Day.

(Uh oh, did I digress? Psychopath, delusional fathers of extremely unfortunate (and no doubt equally embarrassed) children will get me going every time... ANYWAY...)

Lelo pointed me to an organization that's doing more than just whine (like yours truly)—they're working "to develop a national solution to the problem of unwanted phone books."

Led by King County (Washington) and the National Waste Prevention Coalition, PSI successfully leveraged funding from over 10 federal, state, and local government agencies and began work on this issue in July 2006... This project is focused primarily on source reduction, and only secondarily on increasing the recycling infrastructure.

The Product Stewardship Institute page on the Phone Book Project has a few links to press coverage—including a video clip about phone book waste from the Far Out Extremist (FOX) right-wing propaganda machine.

Gore Film Sparks Parents' Anger | The Washington Post

Technorati Tags: birth control, evangelical, Federal Way, global warming, media, neoconservatism, overpopulation, politics, religion, science, recycling

Biodiesel is the right thing to do - but it's only the beginning

I borrowed a friend's car the other day and decided to put gas in the tank. I know that she uses biodiesel whenever she can so I went to Ray's Garage on the corner of SE 7th Ave. and Morrison in Portland, Oregon. It definitely wasn't cheap—$3.30/gallon compared to $2.69/gallon for super unleaded. But it made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Stumptown Girl has done a few excellent posts about biodiesel in Portland.

The New York Times ran a piece last July comparing ethanol, produced from corn, with biodiesel, produced from soy. Bush has been trumpeting ethanol, but biodiesel appears to be a far better way to go:

The study, done by researchers at the University of Minnesota and at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn., points to the environmental benefits of the biodiesel over ethanol made from corn, stating that ethanol provides 25 percent more energy a gallon than is required for its production, while soybean biodiesel generates 93 percent more energy.

The study’s authors also found that ethanol, in its production and consumption, reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 12 percent, compared with fossil fuels. Biodiesel, they said, reduces such emissions 41 percent, compared with fossil fuels.

Ethanol is far more efficient to produce, yielding 420 gallons of fuel per acre of corn compared to 60 gallons of biodiesel per acre of soybeans. That's seven times more ethanol per crop acre than biodiesel! But that efficiency comes at a cost.

The researchers in the latest study question ethanol’s environmental benefits, noting that despite the 12 percent reduction in greenhouse gases, ethanol has “greater environmental and human health impacts because of increased release of five air pollutants and nitrate, nitrite and pesticides.”

Biodiesel, on the other hand, "is much cleaner-burning fuel and much less harmful to the environment.”

Neither biodiesel nor ethanol are going to be the magic solution to our dependence on foreign oil, though:

Indeed, the study published by the National Academy of Sciences found that neither ethanol nor biodiesel can replace much petroleum without having an impact on food supply. If all American corn and soybean production were dedicated to biofuels, that fuel would replace only 12 percent of gas demand and 6 percent of diesel demand, the study notes.

So we cannot live by soy alone. Or even corn and soy combined. We need to dramatically cut back our consumption of fuel, not view the increasing availability of alternative fuels as carte blanche for all of us to run out and get SUV's. (Or for everyone in Lake Oswego and Beaverton to keep their SUV's). It's the thing that few Americans want to talk about: cutting back. Reduced consumption. I see it as the same tendency that has people lusting after a magical diet pill that will let them sit in front of the television all day stuffing their faces with potato chips without gaining any weight. It just isn't going to happen. Curing our addiction to foreign oil is going to have to happen the good old fashioned way: by simply enduring the initial pain of withdrawls, then following through with self control. If that doesn't work, it'll mean strict government controls. Unless there's a republican in the White House. Then it'll mean more hot air about alternative fuels while our dependence on foreign blood crude continues to skyrocket.

It’s Corn vs. Soybeans in a Biofuels Debate | The New York Times

Technorati Tags: alternative fuels, biodiesel, biofuels, ethanol, global warming, greenhouse gas emissions, Oregon, Politics, soybeans, corn

Leaked military cockpit video of friendly fire incident in Iraq

This video clip has been out for a couple days at least, but I haven't seen much coverage so wanted to put it up for those who missed it. I found it pretty gut wrenching to watch. The pilots repeatedly told command that they saw orange armor and orange rockets, signs of allies, but were given the green light to fire on them anyway. Between the video and the audio of the pilots talking with command and to each other, it's almost like being in the plane with them...

Friendly-fire Video Putting the Squeeze on Blair

Five choppers down in Iraq in just over two weeks; 28 dead. Why?

Another helicopter was shot down in Iraq today, this time a CH-46 Sea Knight transport helicopter, killing all seven American troops on board. A BBC News article asks:

First, are there any indications that the insurgents in Iraq have decided to step up attacks on US aircraft?

Second, have they developed new techniques or acquired new equipment to make any attacks more successful? Both questions are hard to answer definitively.

It seems to me that these have to be largely rhetorical questions. Either that or—and I'm not making light of the situation here—the U.S. is having one hell of a streak of bad luck. According to the article, Al-Qaeda in Iraq claims to have brought it down, though the US military has indicated it may have been mechanical failure. I suppose either could be true. Just as the insurgents have been adapting quickly with better and more effectively placed IED's, they're no doubt getting better at targeting our aircraft, as well. As an article in TIME Magazine points out:

It's a sad fact of military aviation that helicopters flying in combat are accidents waiting to happen. Unlike their fixed-wing brethren, helicopters tend to be slow, which on the battlefield is another word for vulnerable. Beyond that, they tend to fly low, hugging the contours of the terrain in what pilots called nap-of-the-earth flight (that's what upsets unpracticed bellies). The tactic certainly reduces the helicopter's exposure to enemy fire from below, but it doesn't eliminate it. Helicopter pilots speak warily of "golden BBs" that can bring down their bird. There are a fair number of bulls-eyes on those spindly mechanical beasts — rotor blades, fuel systems, driveshafts, hydraulic lines — that, if hit, can doom a helicopter. Many of them don't exist on fixed-wing aircraft, or are better protected on the faster machines.

"To my knowledge, each of those was shot down by small arms, not by missiles," Marine General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, told a Senate panel Tuesday before the latest loss. Unfortunately, there is no shortage of AK-47s in greater Baghdad. Other Pentagon officials wonder if the insurgents have gotten hold of a fresh batch of SA-7 Grail shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles. While a primitive heat-seeker, its range of more than three miles is bound to find its target occasionally. Pace didn't have a quick solution.

Of course, given the strain that the Bush-regime's ill-planned war mongering has put on the military, mechanical failure is never out of the question. From a January 14 opinion piece in the Pensacola News Journal:

Top military officials are also concerned that the extended conflict is doing serious, long-term damage to the Army and Marines. They can't train properly, the troops are exhausted, equipment needs repair and replacement, and the entire military budget is strained.

The enemy in Iraq seems to be increasingly seasoned in battle and well armed.

Between a White House bent on world domination at any cost, a legislature too busy covering their political asses to intervene, and a populace too frightened of their government or too cozy in their lounge chairs to motivate, who is looking out for our troops?

BBC, Bush, casualties, Iraq, Politics, helicopter, war

Iraq: There are faces behind those numbers!

Photo courtesy grow-a-brain

I know that Bush and his fellow playground bullies go to visit injured soldiers. (So long as there are press cameras nearby to capture it.) But do these people really see the humanity behind these ever-increasing numbers of dead, wounded and maimed (both physically and mentally) children, siblings, parents, friends, neighbors? Our own and those of our allies? Do they really understand that these people are as real as their own family members? That they have lives, familes, careers, friends, communities, ambitions and so forth? Or are they simply troops? Game pieces? Pawns? A justifiable means to an oil-rich end?

Can Bush really know about people like Oregon's Dean Robert Bright (be sure to read the comments!) and still want to send 21,500 more young people just like him, many against their will? And put them in far more dangerous circumstances where the numbers of deaths and injuries are guaranteed to be much higher?

Bush's complete ignorance and ineptitude have cost us enough of our loved ones—along with our national pride, international reputation, humanity and so much more.

Bush and his cronies are playing what they seem to feel is a big board game or a gambling spree. Let's put a stop to this war. Let's not allow them to sacrifice any more of our loved ones as game pieces in their terribly perverse game of "War on Terror."

Bush, Iraq, Oregon, casualties, war