Economically speaking, this also means that you are what you consume.
Since consumer spending makes up over 70% of our national eonomy, logic dictates that the smarter, healthier and more sustainable our purchasing is as individuals, the more sustainable and strong our national economy will become.
The simple ripples in the water can have drastic effects, in the long run.
So, here’s what we do.
If Americans ate less meat, less fast food and manufactured food and instead ate more locally grown fruits and vegetables, as well as whatever food you can grow yourself, we could bring about the change we need without having to wait for anyone to take the lead.
Simple changes to your daily diet, even if done in moderation, combined with enough people doing the same thing can literally change the world.
HMO’s, Big Pharma and other special interests have made America a place where getting sick equals getting poor for the massive majority of our citizens. While we struggle to pay for prescription medicine and health insurance that does not cover our needs, the wealth CEO’s and their political allies are fighting harder than ever to deny us the most basic of human rights, the right to see a doctor.
After an extremely intense Torture News, (link to emptywheel’s Document Dump Timeline) week prior to this, these past few days have quieted down a bit. However, the noise makers continue to try to justify torture and we find ourselves sometimes in debates. I hope to take this week’s Action Diary to stress how important it is that we continue having conversations and yelling louder about the realities of the crimes that have been carried out in our names. And, if we must argue, can we please try to keep it civil, amongst ourselves, in the “progressive” sphere…? Please?
Like most of the others, I was a seeker, a mover, a malcontent, and at times a stupid hell-raiser. I was never idle long enough to do much thinking, but I felt somehow that my instincts were right. I shared a vagrant optimism that some of us were making real progress, that we had taken an honest road, and that the best of us would inevitably make it over the top. At the same time, I shared a dark suspicion that the life we were leading was a lost cause, that we were all actors, kidding ourselves along on a senseless odyssey. It was the tension between these two poles – a restless idealism on one hand and a sense of impending doom on the other – that kept me going.
There are 49 people presently facing the federal death penalty. If we want to, we might be able to spare them. We might be able to get the new Attorney General, Eric Holder, to review the decisions by the three Bush Administration Attorney Generals to pursue the death penalty in these cases, and if the new Attorney General thought, if there were convictions, that the defendants shouldn’t be killed, he could require prosecutors not to seek the death penalty, to be satisfied with a maximum sentence of life without parole. This would be a remarkable development. It would save lives. The United States would join the civilized world that has stopped state killing. The essential hypocrisy of an eye for an eye would be abandoned. It would be a new era. We would not have these people’s blood on our hands.
Not Chimera in the first sense – “a fire-breathing she-monster” – ouch – but the second sense: “an impossible or foolish fantasy.” Double-ouch.
Is the dream of an “Obama” more than reality can bear? Is fundamental and decisive change impossible in a rigid State system riddled with both the desperate bureaucratic mind-set which views change as Al Qaeda and the corruption, cronyism and secrecy meant to combat reform at every turn?
I think some the angst I’m feeling comes from my fear that, even with our historic victory, that too little will change in time to make a difference. Generals always want to fight the last war, while politicians want to wage the last campaign. It’s easy to look backward and hard to look forward, and far too few seem to realize the extent to which the stakes have been raised. Our circumstances have really become quite dire. That doesn’t sink in easily for the many who want to pretend that the world is always going to be the way it’s always been.
The politics of yesterday are not going to serve us any longer. We need more than change. We need more than a mid-course correction. We need the crazy to stop.
And I don’t mean just slow down a little, or be a little less crazy. I mean it has to stop. We have to reverse course in this damned country, not just modify it somewhat.
Could this be part of the ‘Change’ we’re not only looking for but this Country needs?
Just caught a short report on Charlotte’s local news at WCNC 36, not up on the site yet, about the firing of a Conservative Radio talk show host, one Jeff Katz.
Don’t know him and never listened to him, frankly conservative radio and tv news shows give me a freakin headache, and I don’t get headaches, no news just blathering opinion, which we find way too much all over the span of the mainstream outlets now, as they say “like assholes, everyones got one!”.
Can you feel it in the air? It’s there everywhere. Change is here.
Things are moving fast. Or at least are seeming to, after eight long years of stagnation and oppression.
From the highest levels of the world geo-political stage where the Iraqis are feeling the change….by saying the can now trust America to abide by our word, in our dealings with them, down to a new crop of babies named Obama.
Immigrant groups are planning marches, assuming they will now be listened to…and after a regime where you had to be pasty white, straight, AND a Republican to get a job, we get this…
In what is being viewed as a strong signal to activists nationwide, the transition office of President-elect Barack Obama has issued a non-discrimination policy including sexual orientation and gender identity.
“The Obama-Biden Transition Project does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, or any other basis of discrimination prohibited by law,” says the website of the Office of the President-elect…
And not only are Republicans imploding (a quick chorus of Ding Dong the Witch is Dead y’all!) but their Ninja-punditry-reframing-fictional narrative of the election in which Obama was elected because America loves Conservatism, just not any of the schmucks that actually practice it……is apparently failing in the face of hard cold reality. Long the Republicans most potent foe.
In a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Tuesday, 59 percent of those questioned think that Democratic control of both the executive and legislative branches will be good for the country, with 38 percent saying that such one-party control will be bad.
“That much good will from the public opens a window of opportunity for the Democrats,” CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said. “But the public expects results and may not listen to excuses for very long if a Democratic Congress and a Democratic White House can’t get their act together in time.”
The poll also suggests that the public has a positive view of the Democratic Party, with 62 percent having a favorable opinion and 31 percent an unfavorable opinion.
That is not the case for the Republicans, with a majority, 54 percent, having an unfavorable view of the GOP and 38 percent holding a positive view.
Those are just a few examples, if you raise your antenna, if you raise your finger, you can feel the wind blowing.
We all know we have a change coming, and it would be great if it happened yesterday, but it will be happening soon enough. That change is in a New President and His Administration who ran on “Change” and bringing along with him a change in the Peoples Representation in both houses of Congress.
The new President, Barack Obama, was not brought into this job of the Countries President by a political parties leaders but by The People who rallied behind him, from the primaries to the Nov 8th National Election Day, and those people, Us, have to continue in what happens, for just one person and the administration nor the peoples representatives can bring about the “Change” that is so desperately needed now after these detructive years on so many fronts by themselves, we must stay engaged!
Tuesday night we were all fixated to the polls. We all cried (or at least I know I did – it was John Lewis that broke my dam on that front). I even cried yesterday, and I wasn’t the only one. Here in Blue Connecticut there were many tear stained faces, many relieved looks, even a pervasive, genuine happiness.
I bought the paper with Obama’s picture on it and the caption, “Mr. President” at the grocery store. The young woman ringing me up said, “I’m really glad he won yesterday.”
Obama’s remade the electoral map. Now it is time for us to remake our ideological maps – or specifically, I would advocate, completely rip those maps into shreds and start over.
