True, 5% isn’t exactly shooting for the stars, but Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney explains how garnering just five percent of the national vote can help the Green Party “Return power to the people”:

The goal of this effort is to put another seat at the table. Right now public policy is made at a real table. In 1992 when I was running for Congress, the slogan was ‘we want our seat at the table’ because that was the year of the woman. Women all over the country were running for the Congress and we wanted our seat at the table. When I got to Washington, D.C., I saw that there really is a table and that table is inside a room and that room has a door and a window. The window is for the people. They can look in and they can see public policy being made. The door however has a lock on it, and so not everybody can come and go at will. Somebody is already in that room and there are only two entities in that room, Democrats and Republicans. They gave the special interests (groups) a key so that they could come inside that room anytime they wanted. As a result of the special interest (groups) being able to lobby and press their wishes at will, the American people can vote for peace and get war and occupation. [...] By receiving five percent of the national vote, the Green Party can pull a seat up at that table of public policymaking. We can put a chair in that room that reflects our values and I can guarantee you that the public policy resulting because we are there will be more reflective of the values of those who actually go to the polls and vote. Five percent.

Of her split with the Democratic Party, McKinney says:

The reason that I am no longer a Democrat is because the leadership of the Democratic Party has pressed the Democratic Party in ways that are not consistent, nor reflective any longer of my values. So for example, the Democratic majority in Congress presented an agenda for its first 100 days. Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita were nowhere on that agenda. They also pressed for the continuation of spending for war and occupation. Peace is my value not complicity in war crimes, crimes against humanity, crimes of torture and crimes against the peace.

Also one of the values that I think that is important for us to protect is the Bill of Rights. We must be able to live in a society that both claims itself to be a free one, it really ought to be free. The recent demonstration of the Democratic leadership, no longer reflecting the value of protecting human rights at home, is the fact that now, telecommunication companies get retroactive immunity granted to them by the Democratic majority in the Congress to spy illegally on innocent Americans. This is outrageous, aside from the fact that it’s well past time that we stop spending $720,000,000 every day for war; that we ought to have a budget for this country that reflects human needs. That we ought to provide a single payer health care system for people in this country and a livable wage for workers in this country. It is insufficient for the Democratic majority to merely talk about raising the minimum wage. People must go to work now and when they go to work they should not remain beneath the poverty level.

While I don’t have any illusions that McKinney/Clemente will take office in ’09 (just as I didn’t expect Kucinich to sweep the primaries), neither Obama’s seemingly impending victory nor the specter of a McCain presidency can compel me to vote against my fundamental values. A vote for McKinney (and, in the grander scheme of things, the Green Party; grander still, an end to the two-party system) is not a waste of my vote. Quite the contrary – my vote would be truly be wasted if I allowed those who feel that they are entitled to it to take it without actually earning it.

So if you’re a Democrat, a liberal, or a progressive; are less than thrilled with Obama; and/or would like to stick it to the Democratic Party, consider the Green Party. Since the Democratic establishment considers the Green Party candidates “spoilers” – and a vote for a Green the same as a vote for the Republicans – don’t violate your values by casting a vote in favor of McCain. You can have your tree and hug it, too.

Cast a vote against Obama, against McCain, against the Democrats and Republicans, against the two party system, against politics as usual. Vote for McKinney and Clemente. Or, hell, any third party for that matter. But just as you won’t vote for the lesser of two evils (Obama), please don’t vote for the worse of the pair (McCain). Because, really, the Democratic Party isn’t fixin’ to change any time soon. So the question becomes, just how sustainable is this strategy of voting Republican?

Seriously, people, five percent. Surely there are more marginalized voters angry with the Democratic Party (and the “democratic” process) than that?

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Tagged: 2008 elections two party system Cynthia McKinney Green Party Rosa Clemente Barack Obama John McCain Democrats Republicans politics

Speaking of commercials that raise my hackles:

Obviously, that’s a not the real ad, but rather a version made by a film student. (Betty Crocker features the real spot on their website, but with no option to embed; you can view it here.) I’ve yet to decide whether said film student is poking fun at the product, or if this is a genuine attempt at marketing useless merchandise to lazy, wasteful Americans.

Because that plastic? Um, it’s not really reusable like the bowl and utensils you’d normally use to mix your pancake ingredients. Even if you recycle it (assuming it’s recyclable; I wouldn’t have any idea, since I’ve never so much as ladyhandled the bottle in the grocery store), the recycling process itself consumes energy.

So take the extra five minutes to mix your own damn pancake batter. And if you happen to use Bisquick, recycle the box please.

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Tagged: environment commercial betty crocker bisquick plastic recycle reuse shake and pour pancakes wasteful consumption video

Every time I spot this commercial from Discover Card on the teevee, I throw up in my mouth a little.

“We are a nation of consumers. And there’s nothing wrong with that.”

OK, Discover Card marketing peoples, I’ll bite. Yes, ’tis true, we are a nation of consumers. But this isn’t something we should boast about, so much as be ashamed of. Rather than brag about our astounding levels of consumption, we should be striving to reduce the amount we consume. The last thing we need is a bank encouraging us to buy more, more, more. (But encouraging us to save money by – gasp! – not spending money wouldn’t much help fatten Discover’s pocketbooks, would it?)

We’re a nation of consumers. And if we continue on our current path, we’ll consume the earth – as in, all of it – in less than 50 years:

Let’s put this in perspective. Earth has about 22 billion acres of ecologically productive land. This is comprised of about 3.3 billion acres of arable and crop land, 8.4 billion acres of pasture land, and 10.1 billion acres of forest land. Not all of the arable land is of high quality, and improving agricultural productivity by use of fertilizers and insecticides, or shifting to monocultural forestry, affects ecosystems in other, often deleterious, ways. Expansion of land use in any of those categories can only be done at the expense of one of the other categories, and development of the land for human structures of all kinds competes for this same area. Not only that, but we have to share this land with the other organisms on Earth who might not be able to tolerate our land use ‘improvement’ measures, or to survive as a group as environmental fragmentation becomes extensive.

If we maintain our current footprint and the human population of 2050 (estimated at 9 billion) reaches consumption levels similar to ours, which is a practical goal for the developing world, humanity would need 13.5 billion acres of land for food production and 14.4 billion acres for wood products on a steady-state basis to be sustainable, and we would have degraded about 3.6 billion acres for human structures. For humans alone, excluding the needs of other organisms, there is not that much land available simply by considering these three computable sorts of personal footprints!

Furthermore, the food footprint calculations cited above used U.S. yields, which are significantly higher than average global yields. If global yields were used in those calculations, our food footprints would be closer to 3 acres. Earth’s carrying capacity for a population with 3-acre food footprints might be no more than about 4 billion people (12 billion acres of arable, crop and pasture land ÷ 3). Each year more of our most productive farmland is buried under human structures, and both good and marginal farmland becomes unusable due to poor farming practices, so even the estimate of a sustainable carrying capacity of 4 billion people eating and living as we do may be high.

So yeah, there’s something seriously fucking wrong with that.

By the by, is “saving by spending” the private sector’s version of “sacrificing by consuming”?

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Tagged: discover card consumption credit card capitalism environment ecological footprint video

The Green Party.

Just sayin’.

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Tagged: naral 2008 elections green party democratic party platform pro-choice

The most shocking revelation to come out of the mini-kerfluffle over Toby “we’ll put a boot in your ass / it’s the American way” Keith’s ode to lynching? Not that a man who prides himself on being “White Trash With Money” is, at best, an ignorant fuckwit (or, at worst, a racist fuckwit); nor that he managed to pull Willie Nelson (!) down into the muck too; but rather, that Keith “holds the distinction of being the only musical artist to have received a five star rating from Stephen Colbert on I-Tunes.”

Suffering through Stephen’s fanboy drooling over Keith was bad enough, but imagining him air guitaring along to racist and misogynist ditties like Getcha Some, The Taliban Song and – of course – Courtesy of the Red, White, & Blue? Well, that just breaks my heart. Or puts a boot in my ass. Whichever is more painful, I guess.

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Tagged: the colbert report stephen colbert toby keith willie nelson racism lynching beer for my horses

This is part four in a nine-part series on Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. A full TOC, complete with links for easy navigation, is included at the bottom of each post.

Spoiler alert: Danger ahead, oh the horra! Plot spoilers abound! If you haven’t yet read the book, consider yourself warned. In fact, back away from this blog asap, go borrow The Handmaid’s Tale from your local library, and come back when you’re done. We’ll still be on the internets, promise.

The Patriarchy Hurts Men, Too (or, “But What About Teh Menz!!!1!?”)

While the women of Gilead bear the greatest burden of living in a patriarchy built on a misogynistic religion – after all, they are property – most of Gileadean men don’t fare well, either. The patriarchy hurts men, too.

Like women, men are ranked according to Gilead’s rigid social structure: Commanders, Eyes, Angels, Guardians, common working men, and dissidents. Those who helped form Gilead, the original loyalists and its founding fathers, sit at the top of the social ladder. Next come the newly converted True Believers ™, and then down the line until you have the political dissidents, religious and ethnic minorities, and those who sinned in “the days before”. Some of the “troublemakers” are executed, while others may be sent to work in The Colonies alongside the Unwomen. Such an intractable hierarchy only benefits those few men lucky enough to sit atop the pyramid.

(Interestingly, Gilead does not have a corresponding term for men; there are no “Unmen”. Perhaps this can be attributed to Gilead’s cult of mother worship in a time of rampant infertility? Here, all women are expected to aspire to motherhood as their greatest, indeed their only goal. So the worst thing you can call a woman is not-a-woman, an Unwoman. What does this say about the value of men in Gilead?)

All men are expected to obey their superiors unquestioningly. Though they have greater access to knowledge than the women, their freedom is severely limited. The government controls the media: the television only broadcasts religious programming and propaganda-disguised-as-news. Printed material must also submit to government regulations. Subversive materials from “the days before” – books, magazines, CDs, VHS tapes, etc. – is banned by the government. Citizens were instructed to destroy these sinful possessions, and to ensure complicity, Gilead conducted house-to-house raids in which all “contraband” was confiscated and destroyed. Ditto for other insufficiently pious items such as unauthorized clothing, blasphemous knickknacks and any items with written words that the womenfolk might read on accident.

(More below the fold…)

Video via stuff white people do, by way of Bitch Ph.D.

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Tagged: john mccain 2008 elections war othering the g-word racism xenophobia video Irwin Tang

Lest y’all think I do nothing but hate on Obama, allow me the chance to give props where props are due:

At a town hall meeting in Berea, Ohio, [Tuesday], Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, pushed back against the GOP attack on his advice to a voter last week that having a tuned up car and fully inflated tires would help save energy.

“Let me make a point about efficiency, because my Republican opponents – they don’t like to talk about efficiency,” Obama said.

“You know the other day I was in a town hall meeting and I laid out my plans for investing $15 billion a year in energy efficient cars and a new electricity grid and somebody said, ‘well, what can I do? what can individuals do?’ Obama recalled.

“So I told them something simple,” Obama said. “I said, ‘You know what? You can inflate your tires to the proper levels…” [...]

“So now the Republicans are going around – this is the kind of thing they do. I don’t understand it! They’re going around, they’re sending like little tire gauges, making fun of this idea as if this is ‘Barack Obama’s energy plan.’

“Now two points, one, they know they’re lying about what my energy plan is, but the other thing is they’re making fun of a step that every expert says would absolutely reduce our oil consumption by 3 to 4 percent. It’s like these guys take pride in being ignorant.

“You know, they think it is funny that they are making fun of something that is actually true. They need to do their homework. Because this is serious business. Instead of running ads about Paris Hilton and Britney Spears they should go talk to some energy experts and actually make a difference.”

It’s also funny-yet-sad because McCain claims to support a comprehensive energy policy, i.e., one that includes conservation. You know, like keeping your tires properly inflated so you conserve gas and shit.

Obama touched on this point again today, and also took the opportunity to mock McCain for his undeserved “Maverick” moniker:

(More below the fold…)

This ep is playing on the teevee right now, and I just couldn’t resist.

By the by, when I think of the Democratic caucuses, this is almost exactly how I imagine they went down.

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Tagged: south park barack obama change 2008 elections video

As seen on the Kansas City Star’s home page, while checking early primary returns.

(More below the fold…)