If your youngest daughter were to become sexually active when she gets into high school, would you rather she did or did not practice birth control?

Do you think that the ten commandments should be written into the constitution?

Are Jews going to hell?

Do you believe that all American literature should be censored for moral content?

If you had to make an executive decision where proven science and religion were at odds, would you lean towards proven science or religion in making your decision?

Is there anything a person should be executed for besides first degree murder?

If Elk and Moose were considered an endangered species, would you support a law against hunting them?

To continue the war in Iraq, do you support raising taxes on the wealthy or continuing to barrow and raise the national debt? If you have another way to pay for the war, what is it?

Should America be declared a Christian country with Christianity being the official American religion?

Do you think the rapture is coming soon and is it possible that God will use mans ability to self destruct to bring it about? Could an American president be the catalyst of the second coming?

Do you think it is unpatriotic to question a sitting president?

How do you feel about labor unions?

Do you believe in global warming, and if so, does mankind have anything to do with it?

Did you not accept earmarks to build the road to get to the bridge to nowhere?

Did you read what your future son in law wrote on "my space", and if so, do you still accept him as a future member of your family?

Do you believe a nanny should raise a woman's children?

How many hours a week are you prepared to spend working as vice president?

Do you think that animals suffer? If so, is their sufering justified so they can be hunted for sport and not for meat?

OK, I know that many of these are very personal questions and will never be asked of her, nor should they be. I'm just saying that if I could ask her anything, these are the questions that would tell me what I need to know about where her she is coming from.

The republicans speak in code. The sound bites sound great, but the truth behind the sound bites are a different story. When they speak of less government in our lives, that is code for deregulating large industry. When they speak of school choice, that is code for public support of Christian schools. They say that the democrats want to raise your taxes but fail to mention those tax raises only apply if you make over $250,000 a year. They talk about tax and spend liberals but fail to mention that their policy has been one of barrow and spend which has gotten us into this nine trillion dollar national debt. They talk about winning the war but fail to say how you win a war against a country that never attacked you, a country that we invaded. They talk about the democrats wanting to inflate government when Bush and the republican congress gave us the biggest most over inflated government in our history. They talk about cutting ear marks when it was the republican congress under George Bush that took pork barrel spending to heights never seen before.

Sarah Palin says she is pro life but how can you be pro life when you promote the slaughter of wolves and bears. Sarah is for teaching creationism along with evolution in public schools but isn't that about like teaching astrology along with astronomy, numerology along with mathematic, or alchemy along with science? Does Sarah Palin even believe in evolution?

John McCain says he wants to bring change to Washington and that's great, however, John is going to have some explaining to do about his voting record. He has separated himself from the status quo a couple of times, however, I believe that most of his voting record will show that he has pretty much been in lock step with the same status quo that has gotten us into many of the problems we are dealing with today. I hope that Barak calls him out on this during the debates.

The democrats employ their fair share of sound bites that are meant to distort the truth. Barak and Biden both will have some explaining to do about their voting records as well. Myself, I would like to see all the facts laid out on the table. Let the American people have the opportunity to know who the candidates really are and what they really stand for. But most of all, lets have a fair election. No more Karl Rove tricks that were employed in the last election. John Kerry won that election fair and square, but that's another blog.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Sept. 3) - Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin told ministry students at her former church that the United States sent troops to fight in the Iraq war on a "task that is from God."
In an address last June, the Republican vice presidential candidate also urged ministry students to pray for a plan to build a $30 billion natural gas pipeline in the state, calling it "God's will."
Palin asked students to pray for the troops in Iraq, and noted that her eldest son, Track, was expected to be deployed there.
"Our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God," she said. "That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that plan is God's plan."
A video of the speech was posted at the Wasilla Assembly of God's Web site before finding its way on to other sites on the Internet.
Palin told graduating students of the church's School of Ministry, "What I need to do is strike a deal with you guys." As they preached the love of Jesus throughout Alaska, she said, she'd work to implement God's will from the governor's office, including creating jobs by building a pipeline to bring North Slope natural gas to North American markets.
"God's will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that," she said.
"I can do my job there in developing our natural resources and doing things like getting the roads paved and making sure our troopers have their cop cars and their uniforms and their guns, and making sure our public schools are funded," she added. "But really all of that stuff doesn't do any good if the people of Alaska's heart isn't right with God."

If McCain is suffering from early stages of dementia, that would mean four more years of God knows who is running the government, and that scares me. If McCain would lend himself to testing for dementia by a group of doctors, choosen by a neutral 3rd party, he would lay to rest many fears as well as gain respect, and perhaps votes, by many middle of the road undecided's. If his mental faculties are fine, he's got nothing to loose. If there is a problem, the American people deserve to know about it.

Posted by Steve Benen, The Carpetbagger Report at 8:14 AM on August 13, 2008.

Stuart Shepard's video asked everyone to pray for God to smite Denver with "abundant rain, torrential rain ... flood-advisory rain."

As reported here over the weekend, James Dobson's Focus on the Family employs Stuart Shepard to make short, "clever" religious-right videos for the evangelical powerhouse. Shepard creates these videos regularly, and most of them are entirely forgettable.

Last week, however, Focus unveiled a new video, asking politically-conservative Christians to pray for rain on Aug. 28, in order to disrupt Barack Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention.

Shepard called for "abundant rain, torrential rain ... flood-advisory rain." He adds, "I'm talking about umbrella-ain't-gonna-help-you rain ... swamp-the-intersections rain." Explaining why he wants everyone to pray for rain, Shepard explains, without a hint of humor, "I'm still pro-life, and I'm still in favor or marriage being between one man and one woman. And I would like the next president who will select justices for the next Supreme Court to agree."

In other words, Obama disagrees with the religious right on culture-war issues, so Focus on the Family wants God to smite Obama with rain. Got it.

Yesterday, some Colorado reporters picked up on this, last night, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann featured Shepard as the "worst person in the world," and today, Focus is a little humiliated. (via my friends at Right Wing Watch)

Focus on the Family Action pulled a video from its Web site today that asked people to pray for "rain of biblical proportions" during Barack Obama's Aug. 28 appearance at Invesco Field in Denver to accept the Democratic nomination for president.

Stuart Shepard, director of digital media at Focus Action, the political arm of Focus on the Family, said the video he wrote and starred in was meant to be "mildly humorous."

But complaints from about a dozen Focus members convinced the organization to pull the video, said Tom Minnery, Focus Action vice president of public policy.

"If people took it seriously, we regret it," Minnery said Monday.

Um, Tom? People took it seriously because Focus took it seriously.

Joe's reply....Looks like their going to get the rain they prayed for, but their timing is a little off. But seriously, these are the people McCain is reaching out to with his VP pick, a devout evangelist. God help us all if they win.

Either way, the northern area is a completely different world from the south in every respect. My two main concerns are water and how we spend our state and gasoline taxes. I tried to find a web site that would show how the tax monies are dibbied up around the state, but I couldn't find one. I suspect that most of the gasoline taxes we pay, the part of them that is supposed to go to highways, is and has forever, been disproportionately spent on freeways in the south as well as the bay area (although lately I believe they are being siphoned off to compensate for deficits in other areas of state spending, probably helping to cover health care expenses for retired state workers).

If Northern California were a reality, we would have that freeway or at least a four lane highway between Chico and Sacramento. Imagine if all of the taxes we pay to the state were spent in our area? Not only that, we could sell water to the south. And there lies the catch 22 as to why we will never be allowed to split off. The south needs our water and the south would have to be on board for any kind of movement to split the state. I suspect that when the mega pumps are installed around Butte county to siphon our ground water for the south, the idea of dividing the state will start to get some momentum, but of course it will be too late by then.

My friend Dean had a good idea the other day. Since Russia was "supposedly" aiding the region of Ossetia which was trying to succeed from Georgia, perhaps we Northern Californians could get the Russians on board to help us break away from the south. I don't think were going to need the Russians myself. When those big pumps start sucking our life force right out from underneath us....we will be motivated enough.

I can't help but think about this when I listen to Rush Hannity slam everything about the democrats convention speeches as they back McCains weak choice for VP. It's easy to assume that everybody is aware of this spin thing and how it works, how you can use logic to back anything you want to say. Because I understand this stuff, I have a hard time taking anything serious that any candidate says about any other candidate or anything anybody says about a candidate for that matter. However, there are obviously a ton of folks out there who have no idea what I'm talking about or else negative campaigning and all these cheap shots from the side lines would not work so well.

I prefer to look at the facts, not the spin. Here's a fun fact....Americans are worse off in every way now than we were seven years ago. Enough said.

If socialized health care is a far left idea then there are sure alot of far left leaning countries out there. almost all of the industrialized/modern countries have some sort of socialized medicine. I guess my point is that definitions have been changed.
The right has done a very good job of changing "liberal" to "far left". A liberal position on say religion would allow anybody to practice any religion or not, a far left position would outlaw religion. A liberal position on say abortion would allow for personal choice, a far left postion might force abortion, i.e. china.
I would agree there are some liberal ideas being expressed in this election cycle. Liberal is not always bad, women voting, social security, many other liberal/progressive ideas have been positive for the United States. Other liberal ideas have not been so good.
If you were to look at the political spectrum of the world, I think you would find the US is right of center. So when the right says "far left" they really mean centrist.If a majority of americans want socialized medicine, is it really a far left idea?
I would like to know what you, or some of the responders to your blog, think what far left means.
To be fair and balanced I also do not think there are alot of "far right" ideas out there, like accepting torture.
Fox news has obviously been very successful.

Joe's reply....I see your point. This is basically why I am a liberal and a democrat because I believe that most of what the party stands for are sound and reasonable issues. The right has been trying, and with much success, to turn "liberal" into a bad word and this is how they do it, by making their issues sound like they are way out in left field. Wanting to protect the environment, animal rights, helping the poor, womens rights to abortion, medical marijuana, euthanasia....these are all issues that really belong in the middle or maybe to the slight left of the middle, definitely not out in far left. Im sure the right see's their issues the same way although the liberals do not try to make you into a right wing nut case because you believe in your right to own a gun.

By pushing the liberal agenda to the far left, it makes the right wing agenda seem very centrist, and I do believe that there has been a perpetrated effort on their part to do this. They are smarter than the liberals when it comes to being devious and misleading. This is why they keep winning the white house and why they will probably do it again this year. They've already got Barak painted as the most left wing liberal in the senate.

The left has made many mistakes, some of their agenda has gone too far. Most liberals do not condone pulling a screaming fetus from a mother and then killing it. Most liberals do not support hiring minorities over better qualified white people just because they are a minority. We have screwed up in some areas and I think we need to come clean and admit that and fix it. It is because of our few far left ideas that we have promoted that the right has been so successful in making our whole agenda appear to be far left.

In His Home State, Biden is a Regular Joe
Sunday 24 August 2008
by: Noam N. Levey, The Los Angeles Times

Washington - The personification of the white-haired Washington insider,
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. has spent
more than half his life in the Senate, seemingly so in love with his own
voice that his colleagues must fight to be heard at his hearings.

A hundred miles away from Capitol Hill, however, is another Joe Biden -
more a character in Mister Rogers' neighborhood than a globe-trotting
statesman or a pontificating fixture on the Sunday talk shows.

He is a putterer who plants bushes in his backyard and designed his own
house, including space for his elderly parents. He's a man quick to find a
doctor for someone's sick grandmother or hold a fundraiser for a local
firefighter battling cancer.

This Joe Biden is the son of a car salesman who lost nearly all his
money and moved his family from Scranton, Pa., to a hardscrabble
neighborhood in Delaware. As a boy, Biden struggled to overcome a bad
stutter and the nickname Joe Impedimenta.

As a 29-year-old freshman senator-elect, he lost his wife and infant
daughter in a car crash that also severely injured his two young sons. The
tragedy almost caused Biden to abandon his political career. And for years
afterward, he took the train home almost every night from Washington to
Delaware to be with the boys as they grew up.

"I tell people that you get to know Joe Biden the closer you get to
Wilmington, Del. And when you see him with his family, then you know the
man," said John Marttila, a longtime friend and advisor who worked on
Biden's first Senate campaign in 1972.

Biden's family was at the core of his first run for office. His sister,
Valerie, ran that campaign, as she has each one since. His brother headed
the fundraising operation. His mother and father sat in on most of the
strategy meetings.

Biden was challenging a popular incumbent Republican who maintained a
huge lead in the polls in a year that would sweep Richard Nixon to his
second term in the White House.

The campaign had so little money to advertise, Marttila recalled, that
Biden's army of volunteers had to get mailers to voters by walking
neighborhoods around the state. But Biden eked out a victory.

A month later, as he was in Washington interviewing candidates for his
office staff, the fatal accident occurred. His wife and three children had
been out shopping for a Christmas tree.

Biden didn't want to take his Senate seat, said Ted Kaufman, another
longtime friend who worked on that campaign and would serve as Biden's chief
of staff for 22 years.

Waiting for his sons to recover in the hospital, Biden wrote in his 2007
memoir, "Promises to Keep," he would take long walks around the seedy
neighborhoods nearby. "I liked to go at night when I thought there was a
better chance of finding a fight," Biden wrote. "I was always looking for a
fight. I had not known I was capable of such rage."

The loss also shook his deep Catholic faith. "I felt God had played a
horrible trick on me," he wrote.

Montana Sen. Mike Mansfield, the Democratic leader at the time,
convinced Biden to stay in the Senate. (He was sworn in at one son's bedside
in the hospital.) But Biden resolved not to be separated from his family. He
gave up a house that he and his wife had planned to buy in the capital and
instead went back to Delaware every night.

"The rule in the office was if the boys called, he was to be interrupted
no matter what he was doing or who he was talking to," Kaufman said. "He was
never out of communication with them."

Biden's father, a proud man who had made his children talk about foreign
affairs around the dinner table, would frequently come down to the Capitol
to see the young senator, sitting in on his son's hearings and other
meetings. "His dad loved it," Kaufman recalled.

Under the tutelage of Mansfield and other senior senators such as
Minnesota's Hubert H. Humphrey, Biden quickly landed plum committee
assignments.

The ambitious young senator showed an early affection for the limelight.
After traveling with five other senators to Moscow in 1979, Biden emerged
from a meeting with Premier Alexei Kosygin to tell reporters of the arms
control demands he had put to the Soviet leader.

By the late 1980s, Biden was chairman of the Judiciary Committee, a post
from which he presided over the controversial Supreme Court confirmation
hearings of Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas, both of whom Biden opposed.

Biden was accused of mismanaging the 1991 Thomas hearings, which erupted
into a dramatic examination of Thomas' alleged sexual harassment of Anita
Hill.

But Biden had burnished his image as a Capitol Hill eminence. He would
push through major legislation to combat domestic violence and the
drug-fueled crime wave.

From his position on the Foreign Relations Committee, he cooperated
extensively with several Republicans, including the late conservative Sen.
Jesse Helms, with whom Biden worked on a major chemical weapons treaty.

The high-profile committee hearings and television appearances that
Biden sought so assiduously never seemed to help his political fortunes
nationally. He was crushed in both his presidential bids, in 1988 and this
year.

And Biden never really became a Washington insider. He is not a major
fundraiser in the Beltway and gets relatively little money from political
action committees. Among his biggest supporters have been employees of MBNA,
a Delaware-based credit card giant recently bought by Bank of America.

Biden doesn't move in the Washington cocktail circuit. And when he
remarried and started a family with his second wife, Jill, he still returned
home to Delaware nearly every night.

"He knew every conductor on the train," said Mark Gitenstein, who worked
for Biden for 13 years and remains close to him.

To this day, Gitenstein and others who know him say, Biden keeps up with
the people back home.

One is J.D. Howell, a former chief at the Mill Creek volunteer fire
company outside Wilmington.

In 1988, Biden suffered a brain aneurysm. Howell was a member of the
ambulance crew that rushed him from Delaware to a Washington hospital, where
doctors performed lifesaving surgery.

Fifteen years later, long after Biden had bounced back, Howell was
diagnosed with advanced stage lymphoma. Biden called immediately.

"The man was practically at my doorstep," Howell recalled Saturday
before reading a letter the senator sent him at the time. "You wouldn't let
me quit on that fateful night ... ," Biden wrote. "Now it is my turn."

When his fellow firefighters held a benefit for Howell, Biden and his
wife came to preside.

"It was kind of an emotional thing," Howell said, "because Joe knows
what it's like to be down and out."
- Laura

I can't believe that McCain actually has a chance to win this election! How can this be? The republicans couldn't mess things up any worse than they have in the last eight years, and the democrats are still having trouble taking back the white house. The American people have gotten screwed left and right, and it seems that were ready for more.

So I've been wondering what life would be like if the conservatives had complete control over all levels of government from now on, if everything went their way. Here's what I come up with....

There would be a constitutional amendment to incorporate the ten commandments. This of course would lead to a theocratic type government and soon it would be hard to tell the difference between our so called democracy and Islamic governments.

All major corporations would soon take over and control the election process. Public voting would be a sham, just to let the people think they were still in control. Drug and oil companies, financial institutions, insurance companies, war profiteers, they would basically be writing their own legislation, much as they do now whenever the republicans are in charge.

Environmental protection and animal rights would be scrapped altogether because they would interfere with corporate profits.

Anybody speaking out against the government would be labeled as unpatriotic which would be a felony punishable by either prison or being expelled from the country...."America, love it or leave it" would become law.

Minimum wage would be abolished. Taxes would be raised on lower income families and erased altogether on the super rich because, after all, it's the super rich who give us our jobs and the better off they are, the better off we all are.

The oil companies would immediately put the brakes on any and all alternative energy programs (via their bought and owned right wing congressmen of course). In time, all coast lines on the western and eastern seaboard would be polluted and unusable because of oil spills and accidents. But it will be justified because that is a small price to pay for the energy we need.

There would be no regulation of industry.

Our national debt will peak out in 20 years at about 20 trillion dollars. We will have no more borrowing power. This is when we start looking at expanding our boarders.

Women would be forced to carry all pregnancies to term, regardless.

Everybody gets a gun.

Soon the middle class disappears altogether. Two percent of the people will own 98% of all the wealth and property and the other 98% of the people will live in poverty and share the remaining 2% of property and wealth.

All movies and entertainment will be rated G, PG or PG 13. R and X rated will not be tolerated under religious law.

In time the religious faction and the corporate factions of the government will bump heads. When they do....all hell will break out. Religions will realize that they were only allowed to have the power they did because it served the corporate's purpose by keeping the masses under control.

In 50 years from now....every semblance of what America now is and all that it has ever stood for, is history.
We can make this a reality. Just keep voting republican.

These elections are getting harder to watch all the time. Just when you think the republicans couldn't get any lower, they find new ways to insult intelligent voters. They are trying to discredit Obama by calling him the messiah for God's sake! Their going after his wife, his preacher, his name, his lapel buttons....talk about desperate. Problem is, this stuff works. It works because they are not going after thinking rational voters, they know those voters already have their minds made up, they are going after the double digit IQ crowd who tend to over-react to feel good cliches. Country western music, evangelist preachers, corporate advertising....they all use the same gimmicks with the same crowd. Oh yes, it works.

I was talking to a republican the other day who mentioned...."Looks like Moonbeam is going to be our next governor." I asked why he was holding onto an old phrase that most republicans, at least the more mature ones, don't even use anymore. I asked if it was because Jerry Brown decided not to move into the expensive governors mansion that Reagan had built for future governors and instead lived in a one bedroom apartment downtown and rode a bike to work, or was it the fact that he was a vegetarian, or maybe because he dated Linda Ronstadt? He admitted that it was all of that. Governor Moonbeam....the guy who lowered Ronald Reagan's largest tax increase in the history of the state and still left office with a surplus of cash....so much money as I recall that the state didn't know what to do with it. Yea, he was a flake alright.

I expect if Barak wins, were going to be hearing about what a terrible president he is because his wife is wearing checks with stripes, or he keeps talking about hope, or he didn't bow his head at the pledge of allegiance, or maybe they'll dig up some kind of Whitewater scandal they can spend 125 million on and come up empty handed, but at least it will keep the public thinking the guy must have done something wrong because, hey, he's being investigated isn't he?

Like Obama, I have hope. I have hope that someday this country will mature to the level that we can run an election based on ideas and facts.

To begin with we need three lanes downtown for obvious reasons, the delivery trucks. As far as backing into those diagonal parking spots at the park plaza, well....where do I begin. First of all I have to say that I was against the whole park plaza renovation. However, the end result isn't half bad and in time as the trees get bigger, it's going to keep getting better. So I am willing to eat a little crow on that one. But those back in parking spaces, I think they were a mistake and the city really should change them.

When you have to back in, that means you have to come to a complete stop, stopping any traffic behind you while you back in. If they were diagonal the opposite way, you could just pull in without disrupting traffic as much. When your ready to leave, you just wait until there's no cars coming and then back out. Plus, when you are backing in, the way they are now, you are maneuvering against the car parked next to you and if your under pressure because of the cars that are stopped waiting for you, there's a better chance of scrapping the car you are backing up against. If the parking spots were facing the other way so that you could just pull straight in, then when you are backing out, you are swinging the rear end of your car out into wide open space as opposed to somebodies side door.

Downtown is fine just the way it is. Granted, it needs more parking options but getting rid of the middle lane to create them makes no sense at all. Would it help the downtown merchants if cars started avoiding driving into and thru town because of the congested traffic? Automobiles could no longer flow with the timed traffic signals because of the congestion caused by delivery trucks. There would be more fender benders because of people's anxiety in trying to get around the stopped trucks. Even if you got rid of the delivery trucks, the traffic is still going to be stopped waiting on cars to back into the diagonal parking spots.

Chico only has two routes where traffic can flow relatively smooth. One is the freeway and the other is The Esplanade because of the timed traffic signals. Turn downtown into two lanes and you take away one of our two smooth traffic routes. In reality, you waste a bunch of money because the whole idea wouldn't work and it would only be a matter of time until the city would have to turn things back to the way they are now.

About two years ago, when I decided that I wanted to do this project, I started the long and expensive task of putting together a recording studio. Understand that a recording studio these days can be as simple as a Mac, a mixer, and a microphone and can be assembled anywhere in your house that you have room for a computer. But since my project was going to be a solo effort, I knew I needed to accumulate more instruments as well.

So two years later and armed with several guitars, a keyboard, a Mac quad, and several new songs, I'm just about ready to begin the long tedious task of laying out tracks. My plan is to play all of the instruments (I may use a drummer) and do all the vocals. I know this will not sound as good as using other musicians, but I am pretty much burned out on dealing with other musicians. Thirty five years of playing on rock and roll bands can do that to you. Besides, it's a project, not anything I would ever expect to market or make any money on.

If you've never written and recorded a song by yourself, I can tell you that it's a challenge. I've done it a couple of times years ago. You start by laying out the rhythm guitar (and drums if your using them). Then you add your lead vocal. Next I put what I have recorded on a cd and play it whenever I am driving. As I'm listening to it, I practice sing harmony in the spots where I want harmony. When I have the harmonies down, I record them. Then as I drive around and listen to those raw tracks, I imagine what the bass lines should sound like. I do the same for the keyboards and other guitar parts. As you layer on the instruments, the song starts to take shape, or as I like to say, it comes into focus.

To me, this process is the ultimate in creativity because your options of what to play and how to play it are literally unlimited. I find that if you listen carefully to the harmonics and overtones of what is recorded, the song will usually present to you what should be recorded next, the proper notes and such. The idea is that when the listener hears the song, they cannot imagine anything in the song sounding any different than it sounds. The challenge is to keep it simple and clean. Simple is not too much of a problem for me because of my limited abilities as a musician. I've just got to be careful not to overcrowd the songs with too many guitars and such.

Others have asked me what I would do with a cd if I record one. I really don't know. To tell you the truth, my fantasy is that one day about 50 years from now, one of my offspring would be rummaging thru some old stuff in their garage and find this cd. They would play it and once they figured out who it was, they would say, "Wow, that was my great grandpa? He wasn't half bad!"

To begin with, we are making the mistake of expecting our leaders to be different from the rest of us. It's not going to happen because they are us. We look for others to do the right thing when we aren't always willing to do the right thing ourselves. Change begins at home.

True change comes from within. True change starts at the core, the base, and works it's way outward. We the people are the core, the base, we are America. When we change as an individual, our world changes around us. When we become that which we are looking for in our leaders, our leaders will change.

Honest people do not tolerate dishonesty in their world. Clean people do not tolerate filth in their world. Energetic people do not like to be around lazy people. Change yourself and everything changes. If you want honesty in government, be an honest person. If you want a cleaner environment, start picking things up. If you are concerned about the welfare and treatment of animals that are raised for food, quit eating them. If you think we are too obese as a society, loose some weight. If you think we are too shallow, quit buying gossip magazines and get a real hobby. My point is, we must become the change we want to see take place around us.

The only real long term solution to improve our government and leadership, and indeed the only long term solution for any change, is by way of spiritual transformation, or awakening. A spiritual awakening is needed when certain aspects of who we are no longer serve us. Then, we either change or get stuck in a rut. The only real change, the only kind of change worth considering, is the kind where we shift our awareness to a higher point of view. We do it naturally just growing up. But too often we get stuck in a mental rut, and we just sit in these ruts and ferment into old age. How can we expect our leaders to be any different? For long term and permanent change, we need to change from within. However, that does not mean that we should ignore the short term solutions. There are always short term solutions....

I have decided that if our state legislature does not pass a budget by November, I am going to vote for every new challenger on the ticket running for state office, regardless of party line. Can you imagine the precedent the state of California would set, the power that we the people would be demonstrating if every politician running for re-election was voted out? This kind of power transends political parties. This is the true power of the people speaking up in one voice and rising above political party lines. The rest of the country would look at our state in awe. Maybe it would catch on. Just maybe we would do the same thing on a national scale if Washington sat on it's ass for the next two years or only served their own special interest groups. This would send a real message, a message that says "Were mad as hell and were not going to take it anymore!"

In order to do this, we would all have to get beyond the "our party is good and the other party is bad" mentality. Once we let the politicians know who's boss, to know that there really are consequences for not doing their job,we can go back to voting for our own respective political party.

So if your looking for real leadership, to have people in office who will demonstrate the best of what our country is all about, I say first, be the change you wish to see in the world around you and second....vote them all out!

We Americans like to consider ourselves as being an ethical and humane culture. And we are....mostly. However, there seem's to be two sides to our "humaneness". We have on one hand, the side that we like to think we are....ethical, humane, fair, and compassionate. On the other hand, there is the reality. We are not always as fair and compassionate as we like to think we are.

The industrial age has created at least as many problems as it has fixes. Corporations and large industry make our lives easier, no doubt. The downside is, they have no soul. Their whole motivation is profit. Profit is a good things, in fact, it's a necessary thing. But when we place profit above the welfare of other living creatures, we are acting contrary to being the humane and ethical society that we like to think we are.

No group has suffered more from being "industrialized" than have animals. And the thing is, we don't even try to justify it because there is no justifying the horrors these billions of animals go thru from birth to our dinner tables. So we just don't think about it. If we did, we would have to do something about it, and I believe we would because we are basically a descent, humane, and compassionate society.

I know there are many of us who can hunt and kill as well as clean and eat an animal. Some can even do it with animals they have raised. There's a certain honesty to that and I can respect that because at least those people are not living in total denial. They are doing what they do consciously and with intent. Hooray for them. Most of us could do that with a fruit or a vegetable, we could harvest our food and eat it, no problem. But how many of us could eat an animal, raised in an industrialized environment, if we knew the truth of what that animals experience has been?

I'm not harping about being a vegetarian here nor am I even saying we should eat any less meat. Were gonna do what were gonna do. But don't we have a moral duty to at least know what the truth is, to know what animals experience from birth to the slaughter houses, so that we can exercise our so called compassion, humaneness, and ethical behavior? If we knew, I believe we would act. Proposition 2 is a good start.