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Propaganda for the lame minded "ANWR Is Such an Ugly Piece of Wasteland There's No Reason Not To Let The Oil Companies Completely Screw It Up" So since the "Eco Nazis" misrepresent how ANWR really looks ( ugly! ) we should dismiss what they say about the environmental disaster drilling would cause and GET THOSE RIGS UP THERE PRONTO!! (And get our gasoline prices down, equally pronto.) That was the essence of the misleading, misquided piece o' drek that was forwarded to me. I looked at the pictures and read the idiotic text. My response: The coastal plains of ANWR: I never saw a more fragile, important ecosystem in my life. "Barren Wasteland" indeed. The author of that stupidity is obviously massively ignorant of anything about how nature works. Portraying the coastal plains of northern Alaska as "ugly" and not worth saving is exactly like saying the "Everglades are evil," and look what that got us. ANWR is one...

A Bunch of Students, Of Course ... More on that in a minute, but who else? Can you name even one legitimate, professional, scientifically credible group in favor of pot for people with painful prognoses? Here are just a few of the wacko ones: The AIDS Action Council, the Alaska Nurses Association, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Nurses Association, the American Preventive Medical Association, the American Public Health Association, the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care, the California Academy of Family Physicians, the California Medical Association, the California Pharmacists Association, the Connecticut Nurses Association, Cure AIDS Now, the Florida Medical Association, the Los Angeles County AIDS Commission, the Lymphoma Foundation of America, the Medical Society of the State of New York, the National Association for Public Health Policy, the National Association of People with AIDS, the National Nurses Society on Addictions, the New England Journal of Medici...

Note to Neighbors Remember I'm a four-cistern guy? Read all about it here . Anyway, here is sort of an update on that "cistern" story written about this time in '06. It's in the form of a "Discussion" entry on a new, trial-balloon neighborhood community website. Big lesson on water usage: We have four sisterns draining our metal roofs on house, garage and dog kennel; two 1600 galloners, one 1200 gals and one 600 gals (the kennel). We drip irrigate two vegetable plots, one 30' X 5' and one 15' X 3'. We water an hour a day during these early-growth days. We use about 150 gallons per watering. We also water our "courtyard" of flowers and trees, fenced off from our herd of big Airedales. About 100 gals a day\ Figger it out. That's about twenty day's worth. We are almost out of water and the Monsoons aren't here yet. I hate to...

Another End Run - This Time by the E.U. We all read about how the progress we made in The Americas has slipped badly during the W. Bush years. Really too bad. So now there is an opportunity to do some fix-up. With Fidel fading in Cuba, we could step in and encourage our island neighbor to move away from their failed communist orthodoxy. We could rejoin our old bonds (not the ones with American gangsters) and build a potential ally, trading partner and, eventually, friend. Heaven knows we need one. If there was ever a chance to open a new chapter in inter-American relations, this is it. But ... Nah, we will keep up our failed policy of an endless embargo, mainly to pander to all those Cuban immigrants (whose property was confiscated and who can never get it back until we have a legal relationship with Cuba. Huh?). Now the European Union is reestablishing a full relationship with Cuba. They will start reaping the benefits and influencing the direction Cuba will go. Of course the...

One Big Plan, Man Bollixed: The Current U.S. Health Care Situation: Our private, mostly unregulated, profit-driven insurance system guarantees by its very nature that millions of citizens, many who are highly productive workers, are either uninsured or under-insured. This situation cannot be improved significantly without eliminating private health insurance as the primary form of healthcare financing. Adding approximately 30% to the cost of healthcare (that's about $300 BILLION A YEAR!) private health insurance is parasitical in that it helps only the owners, stockholders and employees of the insurance companies and does essentially nothing to improve health care. Converting from private health insurance to Single Payer Government Insurance - "Medicare for All" (MFA) faces formidable hurdles, which are addressed in this plan. Hurdles. (I'm talking high hurdles, track fans.) The private health insurance companies are an immense po...

Two Thangs, 1. I am now DEFINITELY for the elimination of private health insurance companies. The good old "American Way" of profit-driven health insurance just ain't working, folks, for anybody but those companies, their executives and stockholders. The rest of us are getting regularly screwed, and the country is way worse off for it. When you hear "single payer," that's what they are talking about. The "single" part is a government insurance program that you purchase for a fair, non-profit price. The "payer" part means the bills actually get paid. No delays, no disqualifications, no cancellations, none of the bs the private insurance companies do every day. Here is a great article (and lots of great responses) on just how bad it really is. 2. Dennis Kucinich continues to be a hero of mine. He's got the guts to keep the impeachment of W on the table. To ignore his persistence is getting harder and harder for the "off ...