Earth Day Matters

April 22, 2010

Today celebrates the fortieth Earth Day.  Often given short shrift as a hippie/vegan indulgence, Earth Day is important, and should be celebrated — as one does the Fourth of July or Yom Kippur — properly and thoughtfully.

It’s no exaggeration to say that nothing is more important than the Earth.  We’d be SOL without it.  We need to treat it with the respect, verging on veneration, it deserves.  An holiday once a year in its honor is the least we can do.

We also need to stop treating our home like one giant paper plate.  Over at the Clinton Foundation, they have an Earth Day page with four interactive links: 1) a climate quiz; 2) a climate change primer; 3) info on local efforts to combat climate change; and 4) a one-day Q & A forum hosted by Bill Clinton.

The quiz is typical Clinton ingenuity/synergy: for each person taking the quiz, $2 will be donated toward supplying the people of Haiti with solar flashlights.  Not just today, but every day, the Clinton Foundation is engaged in concrete, pragmatic and eminently achievable efforts to stop climate change.

Preserving our Earth, our only home, is something we can do, and must start doing in earnest.  Keep that in mind today.

(c) 2010 by ‘tamerlane.’  All rights reserved.


It’s Decaf

April 14, 2010
– by ‘tamerlane’

Every dedicated java drinker has experienced a morning when, desperately needing that kick-start, a soothing wave comes over you as the aroma of fresh coffee caresses your nostrils.  The first impact of the elixir on your tongue instantly smoothes the edge of your irritability.  After a few more sips, though, you realize your jones has not dissipated.  You check the coffee can and discover … it’s decaf.

A similar arc of anticipation, initial satisfaction, and rapid disillusionment came when I learned of the Coffee Party (“CP”).  Formed in direct response to the anarchist Tea Party movement (“TP”), the Coffee Party proclaims “We recognize that the federal government is not the enemy of the people, but the expression of our collective will….” Amen to that!  But poking around its extensive and elaborate web site, filled with blog posts, forums, online organizing tools and PDF policy briefings, it’s hard to determine what the CP really advocates. A pledge “to conduct myself in a way that is civil, honest, and respectful toward people with whom I disagree” seems an awkward lunge at TP negativity and selfishness, while the promise of “expanding the influence of the People in America’s political arena” is calculated to deliver the caffeine that left-leaners might otherwise seek in tea.  The repeated calls to “value people from different cultures” and embrace “diversity” is played-out rainbow goo.  A blog exhortation to “paint or dance what you think to feel what you think.  Sing a thought!” is downright hippie.

It’s even harder, at first glance, to determine who’s producing all this material.  The CP claims to be “100% grassroots” and “made up of people acting independently of political parties, of corporations, and of political lobbying networks…. No lobbyists here.  No pundits.  And no hyper-partisan strategists calling the shots in this movement.” Which all sounds dreamy until you discover the hyper-partisan politico behind the curtain — Annabel Park: leftist radical, open borders activist, member of the Netroots/Kos crime gang, evangelical apostle of teh Messiah in 2008, current obama hack.

Frightened by the growing momentum of the TP, the obamalonians decided to fight astroturf with astroturf.  They turned to Park, an old hand at fabricating sham groundswells.  A maker of youtube “documentaries” that nobody outside of tribeca or Cole Valley has seen, Park had most recently created a mock grassroots org to promote passage of (the albeit laudable) HR 121, which demanded that Japan apologize for enslaving Koreans as “comfort women”.  In her home state of Virginia, Park cooked up a pro-immigration crusade, and a rainbow coalition for Jim Webb’s senate run.

Park also has serious bone fides as an obama operative.  Her Asian Americans for obama (one of the many ethnic “grassroots organizations” created & financed by the obama campaign) released a video of her imagining Hillary Clinton and the Lightbringer as rival applicants for CEO of a failing company.  Park’s comments are revealing:
“I think Hillary is a great manager, and she’s a technocrat, she understands the political machine in Washington ….  But she doesn’t have the kind of leadership that can really turn around a company that’s about to go bankrupt.

“… obama has the kind of leadership skills that can really inspire people to focus on the goal and to … transform themselves and the company.  We need someone to take over and really change morale, to change the culture of the company.

“And Hillary can’t do that.  She doesn’t have the capacity to inspire people, she doesn’t know how to talk to us in a way we need people to talk to us right now.  She’s a great manager but she’s not a collaborator.  I think obama is … gonna say, ‘look, I wanna collaborate with you on how to make these decisions’, and Hillary is … saying, ‘I know all the answers, hire me, I’m an expert, and I’m gonna manage it for you.’  I don’t want that.

“I feel like we’re culturally ahead of the political process … but … we’re so submissive and passive; we haven’t been participating.  People are hearing that from obama now: ‘get involved, this is your time.'”
This is the kind of magical unicorn mysticism behind the CP.  It’s crazy talk and it simply won’t do.

So here we are again, stuck in the middle, with fools to the left of us, and jokers to the right.  Fuck the Coffee Party.  Fuck the Tea Party.  We true liberals need to form a new party ourselves.

(c) 2010 by ‘tamerlane.’  All rights reserved.

Pope Nick

April 13, 2010

In an article in the Guardian UK, author Richard Dawkins calls for the arrest of Pope Benedict XVI during his upcoming visit to Britain in September. The charge, apparently, would be accessory to rape, based on the recent discovery that in 1985, the then Cardinal Ratzinger covered-up the torture-rapes by Father Stephen Kiesle. Ratzinger had Kiesle relocated to another parish, where he raped more altar boys.

Citing a recent precedent, Dawkins and fellow atheist writer, Christopher Hitchens, have asked human rights lawyers to prepare a case for the British government to issue an arrest warrant for the pontiff.

Visions of the Pope in nick will not come to fruition. The British government is unlikely to touch this hot potato. If it did issue a warrant, the Pope would simply cancel his trip, with some bull as an explanation.

Nevertheless, Dawkins’ and Hitchens’ gesture shouts out what needed to be said: by covering up — for decades — an epidemic of sexual assault by its priests, the Catholic Church has acted criminally. The church as a whole, and the individual perpetrators, who include Benedict, ought to face proscecution.

The complaint that Dawkins & Hitchens are atheists with an axe to grind is a non-sequitur. For decades, Catholics have been struck dumb and paralyzed when facing this issue. If they can’t do something about it, somebody has to.

(h/t Liberal in Paradise)


How to Save America in 250 Words or Less

April 7, 2010

– an essay contest

Let’s not pull punches: America is in peril.  The America we know — the one we envision when we see “USA”, see the flag — is moribund, on the verge of no return.

True liberals are the only hope of salvation for America.  Only we possess the strength, the ethics, and the clear understanding required to rescue the dream first conceived 250 years ago by the original American Liberals.

But what to do?

In the absence of any real leadership from the traditional sources, True Liberal Nexus will mount up and bravely lead the charge.  Hence this essay contest.  In no more than 250 words, tell us how to save America.  Give a broad outline of a plan, set a theme, or focus on one vital aspect of our salvation.

This is how it starts. Defining goals. Then realizing the imagined.  So submit your essay.  What, 250 words too few?  If you can’t express your vision in less, then it is not a true vision.

The best submissions will be posted here, and the best author of all will receive a really cheap prize. Submit to mailto:trueliberalnexus@yahoo.com

Jump!