Who’s holding up the Global AIDS bill?

My email today included an alert from the ELCA Advocacy center urging phone calls to our senators to unblock the Global AIDS bill.   I confess, I was not up to speed, so I hunted Google news and read that it is currently being stalled by “seven socially conservative senators“ who are worried about what kinds of programs the money will be spent on.  They don’t want to spend money on prevention if that means encouraging people to use condoms.

No surprises, there.  But one of the Seven Socially Conservative Senators is — ready? – Louisiana Republican David Vitter, staunch defender of Family Values and occasional patron of call girls.  OK, semi-habitual patron of call girls.  As an amusing aside, I must note that Vitter is also defending marriage and Family Values by co-sponsoring an anti-gay marriage amendment with… (if you have liquid in your mouth, swallow now)(seriously) – Idaho Senator Larry “I have a wide stance” Craig.  What is with these conservatives?  Do they swear a Hypocritic Oath on taking office?

But I digress.  Now that you know what Vitter is up to, please call your senator (even if it’s one of the Seven Socially Conservative ones).  Here’s what the ELCA alert advises:

Take action today! Call your Senators and urge their support of the S. 2731, the Global AIDS Reauthorization Act of 2008.

Step 1: Call the Capitol switchboard at 202. 224. 3121 and ask to be connected to your Senator’s office. (If you don’t know who your Senators are, you can look them up at www.senate.gov)

Step 2: The receptionist will answer. Introduce yourself as (your name) a constituent from (city, state).

Here is a helpful script:

“I am calling today to urge Senator________ to support immediate Senate consideration of S. 2731, the 2008 Global AIDS reauthorization bill. Our Government’s effort to fight deadly disease in the world through PEPFAR is saving lives and is helping to restore America’s image throughout the world. I urge Senator ___________ to support the $50 billion reauthorization of the Global AIDS bill. Do you know the Senator’s position on this bill?”

Request a written response from the Senator on his/her position on the bill. Be sure to leave your full name and address with the receptionist and thank him or her when you are finished.

Step 3: Let us know how the call went. E-mail kim.stietz@elca.org with an update so that we can follow up with your Senator’s staff in Washington if necessary.

Dancing fool

 And I mean that in the nicest way.  This is great (but his moves are pretty dorky).  Story here.  Have your speakers/headphones on.

Why is this man smiling?

G-8 photo, NYT 7/9/08

Because the rest of the G-8 joined him in stupidity and intransigence this week, offering a spineless and vague “pledge” to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by… 2050.  Oh, the courage!  The leadership!  The vision!

No wonder ”the White House painted the document as a victory.”

I wonder if Cheney got his hands on it first.

Update: Makes you so proud, doesn’t he?

$4.99/gallon

That’s what we paid for gasoline at a stop on the way back from a weekend wedding in Pasadena.  Next time you consider stopping at a Petro station, think twice.  I was so disgusted, I would gladly have driven on and taken our chances.  But we compromised and bought a few gallons, so that the engine wouldn’t begin sucking grit and grime off the walls of the fuel tank while we drove to the next station.  There was absolutely no reason for charging $4.99; they did it because they could.  Just a few miles north on Interstate 5, gas was about 40 cents cheaper.  At the most far-flung, “last gas for 40 miles” stations on the highway, gas was cheaper.  But Petro is a big truck and  travel stop at the northern foot of The Grapevine, and they simply took the opportunity to gouge.  Talk about highway robbery.  Next time you see this sign, drive on.

On further reflection: By the way, I have always been one of those party-poopers arguing that Americans have long paid too little for gasoline, and I am not averse to my own medicine.  I’ve already paid over $5.00/gallon for biodiesel (made from recycled veggie oil, not the virgin stuff).  But gouging for the simple sake of gouging is another matter.  Considering the prices in the area around that Petro station, gouging is exactly what they were doing.  Maybe they’ll be plowing the weekend profits into the development of alternative energy sources and flex-fuel technologies.

I crack myself up.

I like this guy’s plan for his DIY electric car:

Lefteris now wants to cover his roof in solar panels and recharge his car batteries from the sun.

“We have so much energy falling on our heads,” he said “and we are not doing anything with it.”

What’s my beef with meat?

Here I go again.  You may be wondering, perhaps with increasing irritability, why I keep posting about meat.  Short version: The bottomless American appetite for cheap and abundant meat is starving much of the world and contributing to global environmental destruction.  And the economies of scale that yield cheap meat are based on warehousing and slaughtering methods that are cruel and abusive to living animals, and that endanger our food supply.

If you prefer a longer version of the story, go read these links:

• Carnivores Like Us (the source of that great photo above)  (Aside: I follow this stuff fairly closely, but was stunned to read in a sidebar in ”Carnivores Like Us” that “70% of the total antibiotics consumed in the US are used to enhance growth and promote weight gain in livestock.”)
• Face it, we aren’t all going to become vegetarians
• Bad Cow Disease
• Health Risks Outweight Farming Cost Cuts

If you don’t want to think about ethics or economy at all, but still want to reduce your meat consumption, perhaps just for health reasons, read Mark Bittman’s tips, “Putting Meat in its Place.”

And if you prefer the cartoon version of this whole discussion, check out the Simpson’s episode, “Apocalypse Cow,” free on Hulu.  (Deep and grateful bow to The Ethicurean for calling that to our attention.  If you have any interest at all in food ethics and economics, you should be reading that blog.)

Getting back on track

I know, I know…  It’s been nearly a month since I updated this thing.  But the semester is over, my program coursework is officially DONE, and I just might get my blogging muscles moving again!

Amazing how much happens when you don’t update a blog for a few weeks.  California’s Supreme Court upheld gay marriages (and licenses were granted starting yesterday; click those links to see all the great photos and profiles of happy people), Hillary Clinton finally “suspended“ her valiant effort to destroy the Democratic party, Tim Russert passed away (you’ll probably be able to find some gripes about him in the LATA archives, but it was clear that he loved politics, loved his job, and would have loved watching this historical election unfold)…

And there’s this breaking snooze news!  Al Gore pointedly failed to endorse John McCain yesterday!

Seriously, what the…?  I suppose he did find himself in an awkward position; perhaps it would have looked ungrateful or disloyal to endorse Obama instead of HC.  But it would also have meant something.  At this point, what IS the point?

By the way, I was in Ohio last week when Obama clinched the nomination.  I had decided it would be best for my health to not read paper formerly known as The Republican Courier (now just “The Courier”).  But I couldn’t resist looking at the editorial page after the HC farewell speech.  It was strikingly subdued - although they couldn’t resist invoking Jeremiah Wright’s name (yawn).  All they could muster up was a bleat about how the country must not be as racist as JW says.

A tornado passed the city to the north, but apparently didn’t touch down.  I took what I thought was a dramatic photo of the system as it advanced toward us (a little fuzzy; it was quite windy and starting to rain):

 

But then I saw this in the NY Times:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Someone actually stood still long enough to take that picture.  Amazing.

Hillary is staying in the race in case her opponent is assassinated?

From the Times’ version of the story that is everywhere:

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton defended staying in the Democratic nominating contest on Friday by pointing out that her husband had not wrapped up the nomination until June 1992, adding, “We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California.”

Her remarks were met with quick criticism from the campaign of Senator Barack Obama, and within hours of making them Mrs. Clinton expressed regret, saying, “The Kennedys have been much on my mind the last days because of Senator Kennedy,” referring to the recent diagnosis of Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s brain tumor. She added, “And I regret that if my referencing that moment of trauma for our entire nation and in particular the Kennedy family was in any way offensive.”

No apology to the Obamas, as Olbermann and others have pointed out.

Calculating and contemptible (which was my first reaction, and which I’ve edited and elaborated since), or merely outrageously, regrettably clumsy?  I have a hard time believing it was a mistake.  She is a professional politician who knows exactly what she is saying (and, as the AP version points out, it’s not the first time she’s made this “historical observation”).  If she was indeed simply trying to make a historical observation, and has “been around” as long as she says, she knows she could have chosen other Democratic contestants who ran longer than RFK and were not assassinated (as this otherwise forgiving blogger/columnist points out).  Was she letting slip that she intends to stick around long enough to see if something catastrophic happens to Obama?  Was she trying to cement those fears and doubts in voters’ heads - fears that are already very much on their minds?  Her explanation, that because of Ted Kennedy’s brain cancer diagnosis the Kennedy family has been on her mind, would have been a lot more plausible had she not - as noted above - invoked this very same “historical observation” in March.

As reprehensibly as she has been campaigning, she long ago forfeited the benefit of the doubt.

Hillary plots her revenge

For a fleeting moment last week, I thought I detected her tone softening - as if perhaps she was paving the way for a more graceful exit.  But no.  After sweeping the ”hard-working… white American” voters of WV last week and KY yesterday, she found a new low road to travel: comparing the DNC punishment of the Florida and Michigan primaries (and Sen. Obama’s agreement with those rules - rules she once agreed to, also) to the GOP’s theft of the 2000 election.  How does that work?  Florida and Michigan broke primary rules and forfeited their delegates.  HRC had no problem with those rules until it became clear that she desperately needed the delegates.  Now, FL and MI aren’t being punished for breaking the rules, they’re being “disenfranchised.”  And her efforts to have them seated, well, those efforts are just as brave as the efforts of the suffragists and abolitionists!

But wait!  There’s more!

“If we fail to do so, I worry that we will pay not only a moral cost, but a political cost as well,” she said. “We know the road to a Democratic White House runs right through Florida and Michigan. If we care about winning those states in November, we need to count your votes now. If Democrats send a message that we don’t fully value your votes, we know Sen. McCain and the Republicans will be more than happy to have them. The Republicans will make a simple and compelling argument: why should Florida and Michigan voters trust the Democratic Party to look out for you when they won’t even listen to you.”

As “Desperado” observes, that sounds rather like she’s telling her supporters to vote for John McCain if she loses this fight, doesn’t it?

Public Service Announcement

…courtesy of the May 2008 “Prevention” magazine (page 150):

The Worst Place For Your Toothbrush: ON THE BATHROOM SINK

There’s nothing wrong with the sink itself - but it’s awfully chummy with the toilet. There are 3.2 million microbes per square inch in the average toilet bowl, according to germ expert Church Gerba, PhD, a professor of environmental microbiology at the University of Arizona. When you flush, aerosolized toilet funk is propelled as far as 6 feet, settling on the flor, the sink, and your toothbrush. ‘Unless you like rinsing with toilet water, keep your toothbrush behind closed doors - in the medicine cabinet or a nearby cupboard,’ Gerba says.

“Aerosolized toilet funk”…

I simply couldn’t rest without warning you all.

OK, there’s so much more to blog - and I will! Probably even this weekend, when I’m supposed to be writing a term paper. The semester is wrapping up, and things will liven around here, I promise!

National Day of (Conservative Evangelical Christian) Prayer

A bill signed by Ronald Reagan in 1988 makes the first Thursday in May a National Day of Prayer.  Prayer coordinators for the event have to sign a statement that reads in part:

“I believe that the Holy Bible is the inerrant Word of The Living God. I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the only One by which I can obtain salvation and have an ongoing relationship with God.”

As you might imagine, Jews and Muslims have some issues with this.  Kudos to Interfaith Alliance and Jews on First for their call for a National Inclusive Day of Prayer.