Boulder Belt Endorses Obama

I am taking an interest in the Ohio primary coming up next Tuesday. I believe I will be voting for Barak Obama. Unless I register as a republican to vote for Ron Paul and a whole host of local officials. I can make this choice when I go to the evangelical church where I get to vote. Whatever happened to the separation of church and state? Why do they not use schools, which are government buildings for polling places in Preble County instead of churches?

I remember when I was a kid that periodically the gym would be transformed into a polling place and we kids got out of gym class (yay!!!). It was even better that the gym/polling place housed the precincts that my elder family members used so I would get to see my mother, father and step mother at school. this experience helped to turn me into a life long dedicated voter. I wonder if putting polling places into churches away from where the kids can see democracy in action is teaching them the patriotic duty of voting is simply unimportant?

Okay, So I really like Barak Obama. He is the only person running who is offering up hope. I do not care about his lack of experience (who really has such experience except a sitting president). I like the fact he is young (just 2 years older than me) that he has traveled all over the world, that he has a religious background that includes Islam, That he is well read and incredibly intelligent (what a nice change from the moron we have as leader currently), that he has chosen to be a civil servant instead of working for a corporation for decades and than getting into politics. Most of all he is lighting a real fire and getting the masses excited. The guy is a natural born leader and I believe he will lead us out of the mess that has been made over the past 7 years.

On the issues. I agree with about 75% of his platform. But in my years as a political pundit I have come to realize that most of the platforms of any national candidate is just so much rhetoric. They can say what they want but when elected they have to work with several thousand people and most of the promises are either broken outright or changed so much they are no longer recognizable. Also, the president does not have nearly the power most people think he does. Yes he gets veto power but he does not write laws. Yes he can appoint all sorts of people to all sorts of positions but generally once appointed the POTUS has very little control over what they do. The president either gets blamed or given credit for the USA's economic standing and yet has virtually zero control over our economics other than maybe appointing people to the federal reserve or something.

So it comes down to the president being a figurehead who can either choose to lead or not. Bush has chosen not to be a great leader and what leading he does he does through fear. I think Obama is a great leader and will inspire us all with a message of hope and an erosion of fear.

Oh, and I am enjoying the fear he is instilling in the evangelical right. If they fear him than, in my mind, he has got to be good for the country

Before You Vote for Hillary Read This.

Check out this open letter to Ms Hillary Clinton and her relationship with industrial ag, Monsanto, biotech. Scary stuff. I was not intending on voting for her in either the Ohio Primary or the national election (if she is nominated) but this does it for me.

Damn I am disappointed that Kucinich is out of the race. At least he was not sullied by such corporate ties. The best we have now is Ron Paul

An Open Letter to Hillary Clinton from Another Wellesley College Alumna

Dear Hillary,

By polling logic, I should be your supporter - Democrat, older woman, white, liberal. I was even in a dorm with you in college. I have pulled for you for years. But something this past summer fundamentally changed my responsibility to my children and grandchildren. In the time I have left in my life to protect them and others, I need to speak out.

I saw a News Hour piece on Maharastra, India, about farmers committing suicide. Monsanto, a US agricultural giant, hired Bollywood actors for ads telling illiterate farmers they could get rich (by their standards) from big yields with Monsanto's Bt (genetically engineered) cotton seeds. The expensive seeds needed expensive fertilizer and pesticides (Monsanto, again) and irrigation. There is no irrigation there. Crops failed. Farmers had larger debt than they'd ever experienced

And farmers couldn't collect seeds from their own fields to try again (true since time immemorial). Monsanto "patents" their DNA-altered seeds as "intellectual property." They have a $10 million budget and a staff of 75 devoted solely to prosecuting farmers. http://www.grist.org/comments/food/2008/01/17./). Since the late 1990s (about when industrial agriculture took hold in India),166,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide and 8 million have left the land.

Farmers in Europe, Asia, Africa, Indonesia,South America, Central America and here, have protested Monsanto and genetic engineering for years.

What does this have to do with you?

You have connections to Monsanto through the Rose Law Firm where you worked and through Bill who hired Monsanto people for central food-related roles. Your Orwellian-named "Rural Americans for Hillary" was planned withTroutman Sanders, Monsanto's lobbyists.

Genetic engineering and industrialized food and animal production all come together at the Rose Law Firm, which represents the world's largest GE corporation (Monsanto), GE's most controversial project (DP&L's - now Monsanto's - terminator genes), the world's largest meat producer (Tyson), the world's largest retailer and a dominant food retailer (Walmart).

The inbred-ness of Rose's legal representation of corporations which own controlling interests in other corporations there and of corporate boards sharing members who are also shareholders of each other's corporations there, is so thorough that it is hard to capture. Jon Jacoby, senior executive of the Stephens Group - one of the largest institutional shareholders of Tyson Foods, Walmart, DP&L - is also Chairman of the Board of DP&L and arranged the Wal-Mart deal. Jackson Stephens' Stephens Group staked Sam Walton and financed Tyson Foods. Monsanto bought DP&L. All represented at Rose.

You didn't just work there, you made friends. That shows in the flow of favors then and since. You were invited onto Walmart's board, you were helped by a Tyson executive to make commodity trades (3 days before Bill became governor), netting you $100,000, Jackson Stephens strongly backed Bill for Governor, and then for President (donating $100,000). http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/engdahl/2006/0828.html

read the rest http://henwhisperer.blogspot.com/2008/02/before-you-vote-for-hillary-clinton.html

Web Politics

I am looking at the ElectionVine Polling Place widget on this blog and I am noticing that Kucinich is still on top but losing ground to Ron Paul quickly and that Hillary Clinton hasn't even made the cut.

This is not a reflection of non-Internet political reality which has Obama and Clinton going head to head whilst Kucinich is lagging far, far back in the pack. It also has Ron Paul at 28%, not the 10% he's garnered in one caucus and one primary.

I see why pollsters take the data from the web with a big grain of salt. It seems there are a lot of netizens who love voting in on-line polls but when it comes time to disconnect from one's computer, go outside, and get over to the polling place to cast a real, legit vote too few ever exercise their civic duty to vote in state, local and national elections.

What would happen if all these net voters got registered to vote in real elections and than actually did so and people like Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich won the race for President (or at least the nomination in their respective parties). I mean, what if 99% of the registered voters went out on election day (and there will be two national elections in every state-the primaries going on now until June and the national election in November) and voted for their favorite (not the person they feel can "win" based on who the corporations want to see in the Whitehouse-which ain't either Paul or Kooch). I believe we would see a much different political landscape in the country and a government that is closer to the ideal of by the people and for the people, instead of our reality; by the corporation and for the corporation.

FYI I like participating in on-line political polls and forums but I also am registered to vote and vote in most elections, even the local ones with only one issue or candidate on the ballot. This is a civic duty I take seriously and I wish far more people in the USA would too

Organic Pastures

This morning I got an email from Mark McAfee in response to the Ron Paul supports Raw Milk sales item I posted earlier this week here on this very blog and also sent out to various ag and foodie list servs I belong to. He just wanted me to know he will be supporting Ron Paul. I still don't know if Mr Paul will get my vote but at this point he looking better than anyone else, other than Dennis Kucinich.

Check out this website Organic Pastures. organic pastures is a raw milk dairy in California owned and operated by Mark McAfee, one of the biggest raw Milk advocates in the country. He has been run through flaming hoops for the past several years by the CDA and USDA because he provides a safe and nutritious product to his customers. California has tried to shut him down several times and did succeed for a couple of weeks this past spring. But Mark came back fighting. Remarkable, really.

AnyHoo you can read all about this man and his fight to keep raw dairy products legal on the Organic Pastures web site