Welcome to the revolution. This is the future. This is why "We are the ones we have been waiting for."
And yes, it really is about that phrase and those computers, as I have noted in the past. See "Why the End of Groundhog Day is the Beginning of Hope" to get the rest of that story. Somewhere out there in the ether, the Marquis de Condorcet is smiling. And so too is June Jordan.
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It turns out that John McCain and I have more in common that I thought.
This might be a little closer to true than the "uncut" version. And yes, this mashup had "a little work done to it." But not too much. Which is why it's so good.
Reality really is about as funny as comedy. Sometimes it's actually funnier.
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I am happy to say Al Gore took a pass on this nonsense, but John Kerry did not, and so we have him shooting a few geese to show his bonafides. Mitt Romney figured he could claim the mantle of a "lifelong hunter" because he shot a few rats with a pellet gun back when he was 15. Two weeks ago up in Wisconsin, Hillary Clinton claimed she once went duck hunting with her father "100 years ago."
I think it safe to say you won't find Barack Obama or John McCain standing in a field clutching a borrowed shotgun. Obama is not a hunter, and he has never claimed to be one. Neither is John McCain. Neither one of these guys is going to pretend to be something they are not.
Some would count that as a liability; I count that as integrity.
OK, but what about guns? What about them?
Both Obama and McCain believe in the Second Amendment, and both John McCain and Barack Obama believe the Second Amendment is an individual right.
Neither one thinks guns are just about hunting. But neither John McCain nor Barack Obama are oblivious to the kind of world we live in, and so both quite reasonably believe that insane people should not have guns, and criminals should not have guns.
Both politicians think terrorists should not be allowed to walk through airports with loaded bazookas on their shoulders.
Do these common-sense positions endear either candidate to the National Rifle Association? No, they do not.
But so what? The National Rifle Association is a direct mail fear factory of the same stripe (albeit catering to a different demographic) as the Humane Society and PETA.
Most gun owners see them for what they are; a useful wrench to grab and twist the gun-grabbing nuts on the far left, but not the kind of organization they actually care to support with membership dues.
More than 85 percent of hunters are not NRA members, and the percentage of personal-protection gun owners that are NRA members is even lower.
Besides, name one time in your entire life when a President's position on gun legislation, one way or another, mattered a damn. Guns are not a presidential issue; they are a state issue and a legislative issue and a litigation issue, but the influence of the Chief Executive is pretty minimal.
If Sarah Brady were made President of the United States, we would have the same gun laws eight years from now as we do today.
What do John McCain and Barack Obama think about conservation and environmental issues?
John McCain likes to beat the Teddy Roosevelt drum, but in truth his interest in environmental issues is generally weaker than Barack Obama's, and this is reflected in the rather anemic amount of environmental material on his campaign's web site. Obama's web site has over 20-pages of single spaced position papers on energy and the environment. McCain's has zero.
Having said that, John McCain and Barack Obama agree on quite a lot.
For example, both think the U.S. should have signed the Kyoto Treaty, and both support capping greenhouse gases to fight global warming, which they both think is real and man-made.
Both oppose drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Both support expansion of nuclear power as a way to generate more electricity with little greenhouse gas pollution, and both support expansion of liquefied coal and ethanol energy technology.
Of course, there are some differences. While McCain supports greenhouse gas reductions, his proposal is far weaker than Barack Obama's, calling for only a 30 percent reduction by 2050 (from a 1990 baseline), rather than the 80 percent reduction called for in the Obama plan.
McCain is also weaker when it comes to energy conservation. For example, McCain opposes mandating improved vehicle fuel economy standards by 2020, while Obama supports such measures.
Now stop there for a minute.
Think about that in the context of the current world in which we live.
How can anyone oppose mandating fuel economy standards on car manufacturers (who are capable of making a good 90-mile-per-gallon car right now with existing technology) while being FOR waging a 100-year war in Iraq that will inexorably result in more kids dying, more terrorists coming to our shores, and many more trillions of our tax dollars going down a rat hole in the sand?
There is no good answer there.
McCain is similarly out of touch, and politically shifty, when it comes to wildlife issues. For example he has run television ads mocking a $3 million appropriation to study the DNA of bears in Montana, suggesting Uncle Sam is running some kind of weird Yogi Bear paternity test. In fact, the U.S. Geological Survey is engaged in classic rub-pad hair-sample research of the kind usually used to determine grizzly bear population densities.
And though McCain mocked the research in a political ad, he actually voted to fund it. I will let others figure out what that means; loveable lying maverick, insane megalomaniac, or teachable ignorant -- your choice.
McCain shows more shaky logic when it comes to National Forest issues. For example, he would repeal the Clinton Administration's executive order banning new road construction in more than 58 million acres of National Forest. McCain's argument is that such things should not be done by executive order, which sounds good until you realize he is simply ignoring the more than 3 million public comments received during the rule-making period, 99 percent of which were were in favor of forest protection. How much more public input does he want? Who other than the public would he have decide the future of America's public forests?
It turns out that John McCain is also a little shaky as to what a National Forest really is; he thinks timber harvest issues should be decided by local residents. Never mind that forest service personnel, road maintenance, campgrounds, hiking trails, and docks are paid for by ALL of America's taxpayers. Never mind that the the U.S. Forest Service loses more than $400 million dollars a year selling National Forest timber off of public lands. He wants the locals to decide what happens, and never mind if America's taxpayers get sacked with financial, as well as environmental, loss while a few thick-thumbed dropouts get the world's biggest subsidy to run a skidder or feller-buncher ripping down our national heritage.
OK, what about Barack Obama? How does he do on these same issues?
Unlike John McCain, Obama supports the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which would keep 58 million acres of National Forest lands in pristine condition.
Obama also supports strengthening the Conservation Reserve Program and the Conservation Security Program which would create additional incentives for private landowners to protect and restore wetlands, grasslands, forests, and other wildlife habitat.
Much of this land is now open to hunting.
The rest of Obama's environmental positions can be read on the rather impressive Energy & Environment section of his campaign web site which features a 9-page single-spaced backgrounder on the environment (sections include: climate change, clean water, clean air, healthier communities, encouraging organic and sustainable agriculture, support for local family farmers, partnerships with landowners to conserve private lands, and protecting national parks and forests).
Be sure to also check out his 11-page single-spaced backgrounder on energy (sections include: cap-and-trade greenhouse gas emissions, investing in clean energy technology, investing in biofuels research, investing in developing clean coal technology, safe and secure nuclear energy, renewable energy goals, making the federal government an energy conservation leader, creating incentives to improve building energy efficiency, investments in developing advanced vehicle technology, and increased investment and incentives for public transportation).
OK, fine. But isn't all this just Washington gobbley-gook? I mean, what evidence is there that Obama or McCain really care about the environment at all?
Good question.
To tell the truth, there is not much evidence to suggest John McCain cares about public lands, energy issues, or wildlife.
This is not to blame him; born on an airbase to a military family, he was often uprooted as a child, and raised in the concrete-and-lawn world of naval bases enclosed by guarded perimeter wire fences.
Barack Obama's childhood was quite a bit different. Though he was raised by his apartment-living grandparents in Hawaii, he spent a few early formative years in Indonesia where he learned that the chickens in the backyard were destined for the family meal pot, where he had a monkey and a pond full of small alligators as pets, and where wild and domestic animals of every type were sold as food and were sampled by a curious youth from America.
Later, fresh out of college, Barack worked as an organizer at a public housing development in Chicago that had a sewage treatment center on one side, the City landfill on the other, and a toxic-poisoned river running across the back. The development itself was shot through with asbestos contamination -- a situation he helped correct, and which left him a firm believer in the value of clean water, clean air, and recreational space for youth -- and not just because one of his own young daughters has asthma herself.
Obama sees environmental issues as a thread which can tie us together as a people. As he noted in a recent speech:
"Environmentalism is not an upper-income issue, it's not a white issue, it's not a black issue, it's not a South or a North or an East or a West issue. It's an issue that all of us have a stake in. And if I can do anything to make sure that not just my daughter but every child in America has green pastures to run in and clean air to breathe and clean water to swim in, then that is something I'm going to work my hardest to make happen."
Steven Pearlstein, a business page columnist for The Washington Post has written a rock-solid piece on Barack Obama entitled: "Here's the Beef"."During the course of our endless presidential campaigns, lots of silly things are said by the candidates and the press. But few are more ridiculous than the idea that Barack Obama is just an empty suit.
"We're talking here about a former president of the Harvard Law Review. Have you ever met the people who get into Harvard Law School? You might not choose them as friends or lovers or godparents to your children, but -- trust me on this -- there aren't many lightweights there. And Obama was chosen by all the other overachievers as top dog. Compared with the current leader of the free world, this guy is Albert Einstein."
This is a repost. Originally from August 2004.
The map, above, is fairly illuminating, as it graphically represents where working judges sanctioned by the Jack Russell Terrier Club of America live.
The states in white are those that have any JRTCA working judges at all. The states that are muddy-grey colored have no JRTCA working judges. A pin (see a larger version of the map by clicking on it) represents the zip code of every JRTCA working judge in the U.S. in the current edition of True Grit magazine.
To get a "bronze medallion" for special merit in the field from the JRTCA, a dog has to work at least three types of quarry underground (fox, raccoon, groundhog, badger or an aggressive possum) operating as if it were out alone, and with the owner doing the digging, and a JRTCA judge has to be in attendance as witness the work. To get a certificate, a dog cannot work quarry in a barn, brush pile, artificial earth or man-made location (such as the crawlspace of an outbuilding).
Jack Russell Terriers are, far and away, the most commonly worked terrier in America. There are very few Fell Terriers in this country, and almost no working Border Terriers at all. Patterdale terriers in the U.S. are still relatively rare, and though some very good dogs are being bred by a handful of reputable breeders, too many over-large dogs are being produced -- many of them cross-bred in the not-too-distant past with small pit bulls in order to get a larger dog that can work game above-ground game -- barn raccoons and feral hogs in particular. There are some excellent Patterdales and a few good Fells in the US, but most of these seem to be owned by people that have had Jack Russell terriers at one time or another -- the dogs they started with before there were any Patterdales or Fells in the U.S.
In short, most working terriers in the U.S. are Jack Russell Terriers, and the map above tells a story.
Why does this JRTCA map look this way?
Some of it has to do with a population bias -- there are more people per square mile in the East and Midwest, and as a consequence associations are easier to maintain.
Another factor is that there are only about 50 pins on the map at all. This paucity of pins is partly a reflection of how few people actually work terriers in the U.S. beyond two-or-three time a year digs, and in part a reflection of the fact that being a working judge is truly a thankless task.
Of course there are more than 50 serious diggers in the U.S. Some of these diggers are ex-JRTCA working judges, some are people that dig a lot but have no desire to sign up for the thankless job of being a working judge, a very few diggers have Kennel Club registered dogs, some folks dig their dogs but have no club affiliation at all. And of course there are the patterdale-only owners, some of whom have joined the new UKC working terrier program or are members of the Patterdale Terrier Club of America.
That said, while this map is clearly not inclusive of everyone that digs their terriers, it is more-or-less geographically representative of the broad TREND of those that that do -- they tend to be in the East and in the Midwest, rather than in the Western United States. For example, of the 15 UKC working judges, as of August 2004, six are not in America, two are in California and come East to hunt, and the rest are in New Jersey, Kentucky, Virginia or Georgia -- states well-represented on the map above.
One of the reasons the map is skewed has to do with quarry availability. In the U.S., the bread-and-butter quarry of the working terrier is the groundhog. Raccoons cannot dig their own dens, and neither can possums. If dirt dens are not available, they will seek other alternatives -- hay lofts, brush piles, hollow trees, farm outbuildings, hay stacks, rock crevices, or old squirrel nests. With the exception of rock dens, these are not locations where a small dog follows quarry to ground and is then dug to. In short, it is not earthwork.
Red fox will dig dens on their own, of course, but in the American west they face real on-the-ground competition in the form of the coyote. A coyote will generally kill a red fox if given half a chance, and they directly compete with red fox for food.
In addition, the red fox is not native to most of the U.S., and its dispersal in the West is uneven as a consequence. While red fox are common in some areas (such as the prairie pothole region) they are quite rare in other areas (such as western Oklahoma).
Weather and time are another important reason fewer people hunt in the West. Fox will not den in warm weather unless they have kits, and in the U.S. we will not put a dog on a vixen with young. Without hounds to drive fox to ground, our fox-digging season is very short -- generally only 10 weeks long, and for most people with jobs this presents a very short period of time to get out into the field.
When people do get out into the field, of course, they have to find your fox! This is easier said than done, and is very hard job for a novice hunter with a novice dog. Red fox densities are variable, but settlement is generally much thinner in the West where there is less food than in the East, and where the fox faces direct competition with coyotes for food and den sites.
Raccoons are not native to the West, though they have spread with humans during the last 50 years, helped immeasurably by the creation of denning shelters in the form of barns, out buildings, road culverts, abandoned cars, and brush piles. A raccoon can expand a ground den a little bit, but it is not really made for digging. A skunk can and will dig its own hole, which is suitable for possum, but too small for anything but the smallest of adolescent raccoons.
Due to the absence of natural forage, raccoons are rarely found above 5,000 feet in the Rocky Mountain, unless they are living in close proximity to humans, though they have been reported at elevations as high as 10,000 feet if a steady food source is available.
Marmots and prairie dogs are found in some locations in the West, but the prairie dog is far too small for a dog to work, while the various species of rock marmots tend to gravitate towards areas with large boulders and talus slopes -- areas very hard to dig. Marmots are also absent from larger parts of the West outside of the Rockie Mountains. That said, if found in the right location, marmots are excellent quarry for working terriers in the Mountain States.
Some states -- notably California -- have very diverse geography and wildlife but also have very restrictive game laws which make working terriers difficult.
The American badger is common in some parts of the West, but more often than not its population is numerically thin on the ground. Badger are also hard to locate, as they will move every few days or so as they eat out, or chase out, a local rodent population (rats, mice, ground squirrels, and prairie dogs). Once the food is gone, so too is the badger. Unlike in Europe, the presence of a badger hole in the U.S. does not mean you have actually found a badger. More likely you have found a blank hole or, in some areas, worse -- a skunk, porcupine or snake.
Porcupines, rattlesnakes and skunks are fairly common in many parts of the West, and all three animals are a very serious threat to a dog. A dog sprayed underground by a skunk can be overpowered and die from anemia if not gotten out of the ground in pretty short order. A porcupine's defense system are barbed quills which can leave a dog wrecked in short order (and the owner's wallet drained after a visit to the vet). A dog bitten by a rattlesnake rarely lives, as the venom from even a small rattler is more than enough to kill a terrier.
In the South there are tens of millions of nutria, but they do not seem to be worked very often. In part this is due to the fact that in many Southern locations where nutria are numerous alligators also tend to be present. Another factor is that neither the American Working Terrier Association nor the JRTCA will give a working certificate to nutria as the holes are too big and shallow to qualify as real earth work. In addition the nutria, like the possum, is an animal whose primary defensive mechanism is bluffing. While AWTA will not give a certificate to possum, and the JRTCA will provided it is an "aggressive" possum, both seem to think the nutria is less than fomidable quarry for a working terrier.
A final obstacle to terrier work in the West is experienced people to show newcomers where to start. While the basics of terrier work are not overly complex, there are things to learn about locating quarry, digging, dispatch, and healthcare. To work any terrier in a safe manner requires several hundred dollars worth of equipment, as well as permissions from land owners. And then, of course, you have to have the desire to hunt, be in relatively sound physical shape, and be willing to devote the time to get out in the field in all kinds of wearther. It turns out all of this is a rare combination.
All of the factors above combine to create a "tipping effect" in much of the West where the chance of finding quarry is lower than in the East, and the chance of getting a dog injured is higher. When combined with a paucity of other working terrier owners, a very short working season, and the abundance of other kind of hunting opportunities, it is not surprising to find fewer working terriers in the Western United States than in the East and Midwest
Many of the western diggers that do exist actually come East to work their dogs, going to the trouble of loading themselves and their dogs into airplanes, trucks and cars for a week or two of hunting where quarry can be found on the ground.
This clearly takes a great deal of work and commitment, making these folks among the most dedicated working terrier enthusiasts in the U.S. A special hats off to them!
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I don't breed dogs and am not particularly enammored with those that do, as most have no idea of what they are doing, do not work their dogs at all, and essentially treat the whole thing as a lark -- or a way to move up in the "pecking order" of the show-ring community.
Q: How bad was Wisconsin for Clinton?
A: Very. Of the types of voters who usually support her, only older people —especially whites over age 65 — remained solidly loyal. She and Obama essentially split the votes of many groups she has carried easily in previous primaries, including white women, whites with no more than high school diplomas, white Democrats and whites earning under $50,000 annually. In one remarkable turnaround, white men without college degrees supported Clinton in previous primaries by a combined 52 percent to 37 percent, but in Wisconsin they backed Obama 60 percent to 38 percent. The Illinois senator also improved his usual healthy margins with the youngest, most liberal and best educated voters.
An ad mocking "slime tactic" 527 Committees. This one is from the tongue-in-cheek "Swift Boat Kids for Truth"
This morning I said be prepared for Hillary to start throwing mud and rocks.
Guess what? The ramp-up has already started. Say what you want, but I do know my vermin.
Word has it that the Clinton folks have tapped Pennsylvania attorney William A. K. Titelman (click here to call and email him) to organize a political committee organized under section 527 of the tax code.
These so-called 527 committees are free to get money from anywhere and say anything, as we all know from the "Swift Boating" of John Kerry.
The new pro-Hilllary Clinton 527 committee, says ABC News' Jake Tapper, is to be called the "American Leadership Project" and will be staffed by veterans of the Clinton White House.
Any questions as to why we don't want Hillary Clinton back in office?
Want to do something positive about this? 4 Join with me in donating to the Obama campaign.
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Free Obama policy policy papers (download for free).
In Wisconsin last night, Obama did not just win by 17 points, he got twice as many votes as McCain, Huckabee, Ron Paul and Romney combined. In fact, he got a higher percentage of Democratic voters (58%) than McCain did Republican voters (55%) even though McCain has no credible opposition at this point.
It's not just that Obama won; he gained double digit ground with white men, white females, independents, union workers, folks with incomes over $50,000, folks with incomes under $50,000, while Hillary lost ground in double digits with every single group.
In Hawai'i, things simply got unhinged, with 20,000 people showing up to vote in a caucus that normally has about 5,000 people voting. The results: Obama got 76 percent of the vote.
The push now is to end it in Ohio and Texas. Obama is tied in Texas, and rising in Ohio, but money is needed to push on to victory.
One thing is certain: the Clinton folks will say anything and do anything to win at this point. They have trashed things so badly up to now that there is not much of a political legacy to salvage, so they figure they might as well go down flinging mud and rocks as it's all they've got left.
No worries; we can expect the same thing from John McCain no doubt. This is kind of politics America is rejecting, and Hillary and McCain simply remind us of why we reject it.
Heads up however: The press wants to sell newspapers and TV commercials, and they will invent a story if they have to. Look for contrived crisis and carefully edited video devoid of context. They will do this to Obama, and they will do this to McCain too. Do yourself the favor of researching the context of everything. and discount any "scandal" that breaks 36 hours or less before a vote in Ohio and Texas. I say this because I have danced (closely) with some of the folks on the Clinton team before, and I know how they operate.
This is how it is with political animals; they are most dangerous when they have nothing left to lose, and just before they die.
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"My life seems to be an increasing revelation of the intimate face of universal struggle. You begin with your family and the kids on the block, and next you open your eyes to what you call your people, and that leads you into land reform into Black English, into Angola, leads you back to your own bed where you lie by yourself, wondering if you deserve to be peaceful, or trusted or desired or left to the freedom of your own unfaltering heart. And the scale shrinks to the size of a skull: your own interior cage.
"And then if you’re lucky, and I have been lucky, everything comes back to you. And then you know why one of the freedom fighters in the sixties, a young Black woman interviewed shortly after she was beaten up for riding near the front of the interstate bus –– you know why she said, ‘We are all so very happy’? It’s because it’s on. All of us and me by myself: We’re on."
"It is the worst of times. It is the best of times. Try as I might I cannot find a more appropriate opening for this volume: it helps tremendously that these words have been spoken before and, thanks to Charles Dickens, written at the beginning of A Tale of Two Cities. Perhaps they have been spoken, written, thought, an endless number of times throughout human history.
"It is the worst of times because it feels as though the very Earth is being stolen from us, by us: the land and air poisoned, the water polluted, the animals disappeared, humans degraded and misguided. War is everywhere.
"It is the best of times because we have entered a period, if we can bring ourselves to pay attention, of great clarity as to cause and effect. A blessing when we consider how much suffering human beings have endured, in previous millennia, without a clue to its cause. Gods and Goddesses were no doubt created to fill this gap.
"Because we can now see into every crevice of the globe, and because we are free to explore previously unexplored crevices in our own hearts and minds, it is inevitable that everything we have needed to comprehend in order to survive, everything we have needed to understand in the most basic of ways, will be illuminated now. We have only to open our eyes, and awaken to our predicament. We see that we are, alas, a huge part of our problem. However: We live in a time of global enlightenment. This alone should make us shout for joy.
"[....] It was the poet June Jordan who wrote 'We are the ones we have been waiting for.'
"Sweet Honey in the Rock turned those words into a song. Hearing this song, I have witnessed thousands of people rise to their feet in joyful recognition and affirmation.
"We are the ones we’ve been waiting for because we are able to see what is happening with a much greater awareness than our parents or grandparents, our ancestors, could see.
"This does not mean we believe, having seen the greater truth of how all oppression is connected, how pervasive and unrelenting, that we can 'fix' things.
"But some of us are not content to have a gap in opportunity and income that drives a wedge between rich and poor, causing the rich to become ever more callous and complacent and the poor to become ever more wretched and humiliated. Not willing to ignore starving and brutalized children. Not willing to let women be stoned or mutilated without protest. Not willing to stand quietly by as farmers are destroyed by people who have never farmed, and plants are engineered to self-destruct. Not willing to disappear into our flower gardens, Mercedes Benzes or sylvan lawns.
"We have wanted all our lives to know that Earth, who has somehow obtained human beings as her custodians, was also capable of creating humans who could minister to her needs, and the needs of her creation. We are the ones."
"The progress of these peoples [folks in undeveloped countries overseas] is likely to be more rapid and certain than our own because they can receive from us everything that we have had to find out for ourselves, and in order to understand those simple truths and infallible methods which we have acquired only after long error, all that they need to do is to follow the expositions and proofs that appear in our speeches and writings."
"A very small amount of ground will be able to produce a great quantity of supplies of greater utility or higher quality; more goods will be obtained for a smaller outlay; the manufacture of articles will be achieved with less wastage in raw materials and will make better use of them.... So not only will the same amount of ground support more people, but everyone will have less work to do, will produce more, and satisfy his wants more fully."
