Some of us can remember when you could hitch a ride with a sign that read Yipee and it was pretty easy to predict that the LHHCRF that was about to pick you up would offer you some weed, turn the protest songs playing on the radio up loud and know where to drop you off so you could get to the demonstration.

Who would pick you up if you were out there next week hitching rides to Colorado with Obama signs.

Maybe the topic of conversation would be the war, maybe another issue, like single payer healthcare. It doesn't seem to matter if you do it in a barbershop or in front of vets in a primary care facility, or at the farmers market or hitching a ride. The response is always "Do you think Obama can pull it off against all those !@#$%^& lobbiests?".

Somehow there is just something about knowing another person has their head the exact same place yours is that gets you feeling all is right with the world.

As has been mentioned before here there are now dead zones off the coasts of California, the east coast of the US, the Gulf Coast, Mexico, Venezuala, Portugaul, Britain, the channel islands, Scandinavia, the Adriatic, the Black Sea, the Caspian, Taiwan, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

Dead zones – areas of oxygen-depleted bottom waters – are spreading at an alarming rate in coastal waters, killing off huge amounts of marine life, a new study has found.

The number of dead zones has doubled every decade since the sixties. Thats 2^5 times as many areas where the reefs are barren, the fish are floating belly up and the fisherman are watching their boats and gear rot and their families starve.

For those of us who have been following Hamdan's experience with our System of Justice, Obama's statement on the results may be of interest, as may those of Amnesty International.

My sense is that this goes along with Obama's FISA vote and embrace of offshore drilling as a package that essentially tells us lefties to get lost. When Obama says

"I commend the military officers who presided over this trial and served on the hearing panel under difficult and unprecedented circumstances.

It isn't them my heart goes out to.

Seven years of unlawful detention, a not quilty of terrorism verdict, a quilty verdict for a crime that wasn't passed into law for for another several years after he was taken captive by bounty hunters and the kid may end up doing life.

What they will be drilling for is methane hydrates.

Recent mapping conducted by the USGS off North Carolina and South Carolina shows large accumulations of methane hydrate.

We all hear a lot about Corporate Profits and assume that Bush has made the world
look rosy for US corporations at our expense. US Corporations may see it differently

One reason the Republican brand may be failing is that since 2006 annual corporate profits have dropped from 1708.8 billion a year (BDY) to 1637.6 BDY, and on top of that since 2000 the value of the dollar has dropped 20%.

Is it possible that what passes for our common knowledge about our chances
for having a future just does not compute when it comes to the average voter.

Most of us have been absorbing facts like the list of 35 counts of impeachment Dennis read off the other night for years.

We know the facts about the wars in Iraq, and Afganistan, the covert actions elsewhere, the war crimes, neglect of global warming, peak oil, alternative energy, healthcare, social security, education, we have researched the corruption, the facts on the interfearence with elections and voting, the facts about the appointment of right wing, judges, attorneys and staff, the disemination of pro war propaganda, the warrentless wiretaping, kidnapping, torture, murder and holding without rendition.

What would happen if the media had made available those facts to be used in the decision making process of the average voter.

I'm beginning to wonder how much of both the Obama and Clinton strategy we witnessed this year comes out of professional analysis of the effectiveness of the behind the scenes tactics exposed in the made for TV movie "Recount"

Start with the MSM manipulation, add in the necessity to do a little street fighting when the situation requires it, and wash it all down with a liberal appetite for historic levels of inclusion in the decision making process.

For many of us our experience with the consequences of selecting rather than electing a president has been mind altering. Keeping in mind we are all Democrats here, the turnouts have been more than just enthusiastic, and the energy drawn by both campaigns have left what remains of the Republican party aging, withered, crippled, halt and lame by comparison.

I just stumbled on Link TV

Its sort of like discovering that Dubai owns Vegas.

Running on Murdoch owned Direct TV today there is a continual progression of informative programs; "Propaganda", "Orwell Rolls in his Grave", "The Innocent", "The Planet", "Blackwater: Army for Hire", "Politics of War", Burning the Future"-Coal in America", Amy Goodman Speaking Out for Justice" and "Democracy Now" I never realized were there.

As I sit here they are advertising "GITMO" for Thursday, and a program on the South American Police called "Blood and Land" scheduled for Friday

Where the hell have I been?

Congressman Robert Wexler of Florida has been doing to me what I ought to be doing to him; filling my mailbox with calls for action regarding the efforts of the Bush administration to diminish the powers of Congress in favor of the powers of the Executive branch and demanding support for impeachment.

Federalists, the representatives of the haves and have mores, the Congressional lawyers of the corporations, have been working to diminish the powers of the Congress in favor of the Executive and Judicial Branches since 1798, but never before have they so blatently sought to give Congress a coup de gras. They now recognize that after a couple centuries of this brainwashing we have lost our ability to be outraged and devolved from revolutionaries into consumers.  

Tonight there is a total eclipse of the Moon starting 10:01 PM eastern standard time. The partial eclipse begins just after the polls close.

I'm not sure that its going to signify the end of mass media controlled corporate politics in America and the beginning of a new involvement for people who never felt they had any role in the decision making process, but its certainly a clear and starry night in which it may be worthwhile to step outside the smoke filled rooms for a breath of fresh air.

The Bush administration has attempted to set precedents that strip from the Congress all its powers and transfer them to the President. Through signing statements, executive orders and other attempts to assert that if the president does it then its legal, the Executive Branch has managed to create confusion as to who is responsible for the decision making process in this country.

It may be that in the planning stages where the Federalist Society worked out the details, it was assumed future presidents would naturally be of a Republican or Federalist orientation and simply keep their expanded powers, gradually reducing the power of the people to govern themselves through their representatives in Congress.

Recently things have changed. We now no longer have Republican control of all three branches. We no longer have the threat of a conservative and hawkish Clinton whitehouse matched with a Republican or Blue Dog Congress. Our leadership may no longer be desirous of joining in a decision making procress favoring the unitary executive over Congress. Barak Obama and a we rather than I perspective may indeed bring change of the most basic order.

Its a rainy day. I'm sitting in a house with no furniture, just a table with a computer on it and a chair waiting for the sun to return before I commit to taking the last truckload down east.

My wife doesn't want to take the sailboat, the refridgerator or the couch cause they are heavy. I'm hoping Al Gore will appear clutching a shiny nobel prize, the clouds will go away and all the heavy burdens will break down into pieces I can manage one sail at a time.

I just put a new metal roof on the barn. It occured to me that I could order it covered with a laminate that allows it to function as a photovoltaic collector and run my meter backward, I decided not to, because I couldn't afford either the time or the money to do it right.

Though I know I can't afford not to eventually, I don't believe its gonna be twenty years from now, when the warranty on the roof runs out, before my son inherits the energy problem.

What really bothers me is I know that if I let money influence my choices I have to expect others are likely to go the same route. I know that if I expect that what will make solar affordable and alternative energy feasible is more people using it, then I have some responsibility to walk the talk.

What follows is the illogic I was left with.

Is the rate of increase increasing at an increasing rate?

I'm watching Bill Myers Joural with Bruce Fein and John Nichols of the Nation discussing the impeachment of Bush and Cheney and explaining why its necessary in much the same terms we would use.

Why? Because it has occured to the hard right Fein represents that the precedent Bush and Cheney have set for contemptuous dismissal of Congress and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and the rule of law is almost certainly going to be placed in the hands of a Democrat in 2008.

Nichols agrees and expands upon what Fein has said by pointing out that the American people are the real decision maker and they are not happy with the way things are going. If there is no penalty then we have reinforced this behavior and the precedent will hold in the future.

Would a Democrat desire to use warrantless surveillence against Big Oil, Halliburton, the Military Industrial Complex, unscrupulous developers despoiling the environment or the people left over in government and its intelligence agencies that want to continue the erosion of civil liberties; kidnapping, torture, murder and holding without rendition?