http://www.jillsfloorcloths.com/index.html

Check out the natural themes in these great paintings that can withstand the rigors of family footwork!

And check out this letter to the editor that the artist wrote:

A friend recently asked me, "What is it you Democrats want?"  I had to stop and think a bit.  "Well," I said, "to grow the Party, to elect Democrats, to reverse the course George Bush and company have led us on."

In November, I showed up at a Party function wearing a campaign pin to which I had affixed a picture of my grandson.  I realized that I wasn't working for a particular candidate or party, so much as I was FIGHTING for this child, for all the generations to come, and more than that even, for this planet to which we all cling in fear and hope.

But to answer my friend, in concrete terms; this, in part, is what we want.

1)  Fairness.  Corporations and the wealthy should have to pay the same tax rate as the rest of us.  They don't.  Everyone knows this.  It is inexcusable.

2)  A health care system that includes everyone.

3)  Energy independence.  No more subsidies for oil companies.  That money should go to innovation in alternative energy.  Our idle factories could be producing wind and solar, and other systems, providing new technology and good jobs.

4)  New thinking in education.  Our kids aren't dropping out because they're stupid.  It's because they don't believe in the future.  Our society raises them to be mindless consumers instead of problem solvers.  We need to challenge them, involve them, invite them to participate politically and otherwise.  Education needs to be about ideas, innovation, meeting the challenges of an increasingly crowded and complicated world.  Education needs to be RELEVANT.

5)  A government of the people.  At the very least, average citizens deserve representation equal to that the corporations enjoy.  Until that happens, nothing will change.  They will just keep getting away with it.

6)  We need an acknowledgement from government and the private sector of our responsibility to the planet and all of its inhabitants.  We must accept our part in the degradation of our world and join the many nations already working to make changes, and we need to influence those who are not, to begin to do so.  This is not a political issue.  It's a matter of survival.

7)  We must demand a renewed commitment to international diplomacy.  America must lead by example, not by bullying.  We cannot afford the Neanderthal attitudes of the current occupants of the Whitehouse.  NEVER AGAIN should we allow our brave troops, our sons and daughters, to be sent into harm's way on the basis of faulty information or downright lies. 

8)  After 9/11, George Bush asked us to keep shopping, keep traveling.  For the challenges we face, we must ask more of ourselves and our leaders.  During Word War II, the public sacrificed proudly.  We need leadership that represents the best we can be.  Until that happens, we will continue to be ignored and exploited by the scoundrels in Washington. 

I will close with the words of Bob Marley, "Get up.  Stand up.  Stand up for your rights...."

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/2/13/17311/9218#3

"...lawmakers must also have the courage to promote safe climate-friendly nuclear energy."

Yep, that's the right word for the people who live or work near a nuclear plant.  Courage!!  

If there's an accident it might not be as bad as Chernobyl.  

Actually a government study found that each one of over 100 "swimming pool" used nuclear fuel rod storage facilities (located at nuclear plants all over the US, some on earthquake fault lines)could release 8 to 17 times the contamination of the Chernobyl incident.

Or it might be the deadly silent (covered up by nuclear contractors/regulators)contamination in your groundwater that gets you.  

Or the yellowcake dust in the air from uranium mining.

Or nuclear proliferation of weapons made possible by nuclear power plants, like those in Iran.  And N Korea, and Pakistan, and on and on.

Or nuclear winter caused by nuclear weapons "exchanges" in the middle east.

Let's take the chicken's way out instead.  Forget " the courage to promote safe climate-friendly nuclear energy".  

Wind power, wave power, solar power, conservation, plugin vehicles.... cowardly yes.  But a lot better for the planet.

Doom and gloom! Hard to maintain a sense of humor in the face of that figure.  It would take 7 million square miles of prairie grass to sequester all that!  Contrary to my optimistic estimates.

But a prairie national park and windfarm could still do the job.  If plugin hybrid drivetrains took over transportation energy and conservation in the form of geothermal heat pump heating/cooling took over from standard heating and air conditioning. 

Another promising source of GHG reversal is manure, sewage, garbage,and farm waste biogas digestion.  It would prevent the massive amount of natural gas released by nitrogen runnoff into wetlands, rivers, and lakes.  By both directly preventing the runoff and also providing organic fertilizer for farming.  This would stop fossil fuel fertilizer runoff.

This whole comprehensive plan is a very tall order though.  Political will to do this just does not exist at this time.  I fear that only a series of natural disasters, like huge icecap melting and/or several Katrina sized hurricanes in one hurricane season would galvanize the mass media and the public into forcing politicians to actually agree to a comprehensive plan.

Right now scientists are afraid themselves.  Afraid to even connect more severe storms and catastrophic ice melting with global climate change.  It could very well kill their careers if they come out and tell the truth.  The sad state of the IPCC report tells the tale.  Intimidation and censorship have us all waiting another two years for the next report to verify what we already know.

Meanwhile the ice proceeds to melt at an exponentially increasing rate.  And subsidies keep on going to fossil fuel, nuclear power, and fuel farming.  With huge kickbacks to political parties to keep the status quo cash flow going.

Only two areas provide very slight hope. 

First:  Wind power has been given the green light from The Audobon Society (as far as danger to birds) and a recent windfarm study confirms that wind could provide most of our baseload power without a lot of expensive storage or backup power plants.

Second:  there appears to be a race heating up between many automakers to produce plugin hybrid vehicles. 

These provide very little hope though since the resistance to actual capital for mass production for these efforts is very strong.  The really large investment funds and banks that hold  very large stakes in the status quo energy systems, fossil fuel, nuclear, and now fuel farming see only financial disaster in any energy revolution.

They don't see the much larger financial disaster coming from massive global climate disaster.  Bottomline corporate group think only considers the upcoming quarterly profits. So it goes.  It really is a hopeless fight.

But hopeless causes are the only ones worth fightinmg for.

Number one in the hood G!

http://www.gothamist.com/archives/2007/02/01/aqua_teen_hunge.php

Perhaps homeland security needs to hire at least a few people who watch cartoons, maybe that would be more helpful.

These packages were attached to a bridge for WEEKS before being discovered?  What does this tell US about the performance of homeland security?

Has it improved since Katrina or since that plane flew into the Manhattan building a few months ago?

How many 100 billion has Chertoff (the whitewater assistant prosecutor, great credentials to oversee homeland security?) squandered.  1.2 trillion doled out to Halliburton and friends in Iraq.

How is that going?

Better send those cartoon promotion guys to gitmo.  That'll secure the homeland.

And better hope that real teens don't get the idea that pranking homeland security is just good clean (whistleblowing) fun.  Exposing the sorry state of contract on america homeland security before Condi's mushroom clouds sprout.

Maybe the only way to get any of our country back from corporate kleptocracy is by waking up the public to the complete lack of any competence or honesty in the brand new homeland security agency.  It's like that police "academy"  in Baghdad.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/27/AR2006092702134.html 

Looks good from a satellite in geostationary orbit, but on closer inspection the whole structure has been gutted by looters and is dripping sewage.  And that's the police "academy"!  Imagine what the rest of the Halliburton Iraq reconstruction looks like?