Attention, Democrats--This Is How You Do It!

The Big Oil power that be in the Republicans have almost taken over the Democrats as well, but in Venezuela, it looks like there's some real progressives still! We learn from CNN.com:

President Hugo Chavez's government took over Venezuela's last remaining privately run oil fields Tuesday, intensifying a decisive struggle with Big Oil over one of the world's most lucrative deposits.

Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez declared that the oil fields had reverted to state control just after midnight. Television footage showed workers in hard hats raising the flags of Venezuela and the national oil company at a refinery and four drilling fields in the oil-rich Orinoco River basin. Chavez planned a more elaborate celebration Tuesday afternoon with red-clad oil workers, soldiers and a fly over by Russian-made fighter jets.

The companies ceding control include BP Plc (Charts), ConocoPhillips (Charts, Fortune 500), Exxon Mobil (Charts, Fortune 500)., Chevron (Charts, Fortune 500), France's Total SA (Charts) and Norway's Statoil ASA (Charts).

I guess there are governments out there that care about their people, after all, not just shoveling heaps of profit to rich oil executives and other corporate masters. In Venezuela, Hugo Chavez uses power for the people and stands up to the Big Oil interests. It's time to give back to the community, here too, and maybe if we had a Chavez style candidate in the Democrats there'd be more hope for it. Hillary and Obama are great but they are still a little weak in the face of big oil.

This is a victory for the people of Venezuela! No more greed over need over there. Good for them! But shouldn't we support free enterprise? Sure, great idea. Just look how well that works out now with Bush and all the tax money and American lives going to a war for oil that doesn't even give us cheaper oil.

Children's Tooth Decay Crisis

First we find out that a free market in junk food and no effective progressive medical system has given us a horrible epidemic of childhood obesity, and now this.

This is what happens when a country puts profit ahead of sensible health care policy.

Tooth decay in young children's baby teeth is on the rise, a worrying trend that signals the preschool crowd is eating too much sugar, according to the largest government study of the nation's dental health in more than 25 years.

The study also noted a drop in the proportion of non-elderly adults who have visited a dentist in the past year -- a possible indicator of declining dental insurance.

Gee, I wonder what could be the cause of this declining insurance. Could it be... putting greed ahead of need? No, surely not, that would mean the rightwing would have to be wrong about something.

Paging Dr. Hillary! We can use some serious reformer efforts here. Some call it "socialized medicine" (as if there's something wrong with anything "socialist!") but I call single-payer health care what it is: common sense.

Perhaps the epidemic of childhood tooth decay will make Americans begin to wonder. If we care about having healthy and attractive teeth, perhaps it's time we take a cue from our more progressive cousins, the British.

Global Warming on Mars?

Some wacko global warming denialist sent me this ho-hum article in National Geographic about how global warming is also happening on Mars. He thinks this means there's no global warming here, because humans aren't on Mars, so how'd we cause it there?What he failed to tell me is that as the article points out (you actually have to read down past a few sentences):

By studying fluctuations in the warmth of the sun, Abdussamatov believes he can see a pattern that fits with the ups and downs in climate we see on Earth and Mars.

Abdussamatov's work, however, has not been well received by other climate scientists.(Bold added)

Uh huh. Try to pull a fast one on me, just so you can keep driving your gas guzzling SUV and hurt American honor and troops in a war for oil in Iraq instead of where the real threats are.

Well, I'm not buying it. As Naomi Oreskes, a director of science studies at the University of California put it: "There is a scientific consensus on the fact that Earth's climate is heating up and human activities are part of the reason." (Bold added)

So maybe Mars is warming for a different reason... Or maybe we really all have polluted the earth that much. Is it so hard to believe our driving around all the time to the malls and to our big corporate workplaces might have had an effect beyond just our atmosphere?Besides, there's not reason it is hard to believe that just because some of the Earth's temperature is caused by non-human reasons doesn't means there's not human ones as well.

Despite the rightwing and corporate America, I continue to stand shoulder and shoulder with the scientific consensus, thank you very much.

More Lies About Hillary and Obama

The rightwing just can't stand the idea of the establishment bending a little to a breath of fresh air in politics, like a Hillary or Obama. So they lie. Rich Galen, the Republican strategist, is no exception, unfortunately. Media Matters sets things straight:

In an April 27 New York Post article on the previous day's Democratic presidential candidates debate, Republican strategist Rich Galen, who served as communications director for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA), falsely suggested that, in contrast with Gov. Bill Richardson (D-NM), Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) and Barack Obama (D-IL) did not mention using military force when asked "how [each would] change the U.S. military stance overseas" in the event of an Al Qaeda attack in the United States.

Galen wrote:

The clear winner between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama was Bill Richardson.

He won me over by giving by far the strongest answer on confronting terrorism - he would use military force.

Bravo!

In fact, in response to the question -- "[I]f, God forbid a thousand times, while we were gathered here tonight, we learned that two American cities had been hit simultaneously by terrorists, and we further learned, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that it had been the work of Al Qaeda, how would you change the U.S. military stance overseas as a result?" -- Clinton, Obama, and Richardson all expressed support for the use of military force.

Just because Progressives are antiwar doesn't mean we won't fight terrorists if we have to!!!! Hillary and Obama would do what's necessary to protect America and secure democracy. It's a LIE to say they wouldn't. What they wouldn't do, though, is hinder our good relationship with other allies and alienate the entire international community. We also wouldn't "contract out" the war and occupation to the free market, making it waste lots of money, or send our soldiers to Iraq without the body armor and tools they need to be safe. We would have won by now and could then work on fixing up America and spreading peace to other nations too not just the ones with oil.

Call me cynical. I say I just have my eyes opened.

China Needs A Progressive Era

This is interesting. Apparently, China actually is more laissez faire in some environmental and health regulations than the United States. Who would have thought it?

As we all could predict, this has caused tremendous problems.

101 years ago, Teddy Roosevelt set us on the way to cleaner consumer goods and environmental sanity.

Sounds like China needs its own Progressive Era.

Maybe some bold leader can lead China on its own path to collective social change. It's a gigantic country, but I think it's possible for it to have its own uniter; its own Teddy Roosevelt.

Toward a New Progressivism, Part 3: Reclaiming Teddy's Legacy

As with the case of Abe Lincoln, the rightwing loves to claim Teddy Roosevelt as one of their own.

Teddy Roosevelt was no laissez faire corporate shill, though. He saw himself as the "steward of the people" and left behind a bold, progressive legacy: the Pure Food and Drug Act and Meat Inspection Act (before 1906, it was perfectly legal to poison your customer with tainted meat and snake oil. Just read The Jungle and that's all you need to know), he negotiated with laborers, he gave us the "Square Deal" including the Hepurn Act, which began getting big businesses under control in an attempt to make them serve the people. He foreshadowed today's concerned enviornmentalist movement by starting the forest service. Every time you go to the Grand Canyon and feel thankful it hasn't been filled up with diapers and fast food wrappers, to say nothing of car parts, you have one person to thank: Theodore Roosevelt.

Roosevelt also started America's interest around the world as a humanitarian force, not an isolationist nation that fed off the wealth of poor peoples without giving a helping hand. He helped free the Filipinos from colonialism, too.

The Roosevelt Corollary was also important in establishing the United States as an internationally interested nation.

How far we've come, where we now have a Republican doing all he can do shrink down the public sector, and with a "Bush Doctrine" that puts unilitaral muscle-flexing above the thoughtful internationalism of Teddy Roosevelt!

Let us reclaim Teddy's legacy. We could use more another "Progressive Party" like the one he started in 1912, the Bull Moose Party, when he saw that William Howard Taft had sold the country and Progressives out for the purposes of giving big businesses favors through "laissez faire."

Now that both parties have becoem like President Taft, it's time for a new Bull Moose Party!

"The Most Dangerous Crisis We Have Ever Faced in our Civilization"

To think that if this man were president, like he should be, despite the rightwing which stole the election in 2000, we might have a sustainable system by now. I always thought Al Gore was too conservative, and also too concerned with "civil liberties" (negative rights) instead of civil rights (protecting the people through democratic empowerment) but he has been my champion, and the Earth's champion, on this issue, perhaps the most important issue ever to confront humans:

Al Gore, the 45th vice president of the United States, was the 15th lecturer in the Sacerdote Great Names Series at Hamilton College on Thursday, April 26, in the Margaret Bundy Scott Field House. Mr. Gore’s lecture on the threat of global warming, “An Inconvenient Truth,” was accompanied by the multi-media presentation on which his best-selling book and Academy Award-winning film of the same name are based. Gore asked those in attendance to take on global warming, calling it “the most dangerous crisis we have ever faced in our civilization.”

Yes, that's actually a former presidential candidate saying such bold words. I am impressed that a somewhat establishment figure would come out and speak the truth, despite how bad it must be for his career and his playing the games of politics. I am also impressed the establishment is letting him get away with it! Could it be that the powers that be see that if they don't stop ruining the Earth, they will have to pay one day? It happened in the first Progressive Era, when businessmen finally realized some of the democratic reforms were for the whole good of society, not just the poor and needy. Maybe we're seeing a shift.


I won't hold my breath, though. As great of a rogue hero that Al Gore can be, in 2008 the contest will likely be between a Republican and a Republican-lite, unless the Democrats appoint Hillary or Obama, but I don't see that as all too likely, despite the rightwing fear of it. I think the corporations that pull the strings of the Democrats would rather die than let them speak the truth about how their practices will kill us all, including them, and all too soon.