"Love ‘em when they’re here and love ‘em when they’re gone."
To all my friends in the service and all those fighting for freedom. Thank you and stay strong. Come home soon, we miss you.
[now that the executive branch tries to restrict the legislative which tries to circumvent the judicial which tries to establish its credibility.]
In the past week, Washington [D.C.] has been up in arms over the firing of eight U.S. attorneys. From what I have gathered, being somewhat politically uneducated by my own non-action, the white house is fighting for the executives right to remove any U.S. Attorneys with the consent of the DOJ [Dept. of Justice]. Congress has come to terms with the awkwardness of the attorneys expulsion but they are not satisfied with the explanation thereof. Because of inconsistencies between the white house explanation and the U.S. Attorney General Al Gonzalez’s statements, NY Sen. Chuck Schumer is heading the legislative investigation into the proceedings involved with the firing of those 8 attorneys.
This whole fiasco is a wonderful test of the stability and effectiveness of the U.S. system of checks and balances within government. However, with media as a form of impartial litigator upon government, we citizens and contributors to media [aka bloggers and the like] are doing the checking and balancing. Look how fast documents and news can be spread. The Dept. of Justice papers and emails were released at after midnight and by 130am there were over 200 posts regarding excerpts and interpretations of the documents.
I can see from various articles and speeches that the investigation is, at the core of it, made up of partisan drives. Some Democrats are continuing forth with the view that the republicans are trying to make a last stitch effort to get done what they want done before the President’s term is up. While some Republicans continue forth with the idea that the Democrats are out to remove and tarnish the Republicans name while the President is still in office. They [r] placate their motives behind a veil of protecting future president’s right to executive privilege. The President warns democrats to not take this further on their premise of partisan politics, but in making that statement he is protecting his own partisan motives. Dems want nothing more than to be in complete power, they are close, and so need to show they have weight. By criticizing the President at each and every turn they gain more and more supporters.
I’m sure my readers will fill me in soon enough. Let the conversation BEGIN!
[Edit -- if you would like a transcript of the wp.com articles, send me an email. Otherwise use Bugmenot.com a bypass of compulsory registration.]
So, what is really good about going green?
The green revolution, global effort to cut back on detrimental exhausts and byproducts by adopting eco-friendly technology, is coming into full swing. With Al Gore’s film, An Inconvient Truth, reaching critical acclaim and being honored with an oscar; much of the country and the world are proposing plans to reduce their "carbon-footprint". A Carbon Footprint is a term used to describe a certain groups negative impact on the environment in the form of carbon emissions resulting from the burning of fossil fuels. More and more business and corporations are promoting "green campaigns" within their business model.
This step is smart, considering the increasing concern for the environment on the parts of their customers. If customers are working to be more eco-friendly, they would LOVE to see the companies they invest in doing the same. In fact in some cases by promoting a brand as an eco-friendly brand, they draw in their original customer base as well as those who recognize that they should support a company who is supporting the environment. One downfall, which most cope with, is usually a slight rise in costs coming from the green transition. It is more expensive to don an environmentally friendly business but an investment now would prove to be smart considering the future of energy consumption.
I speak of energy consumption because I was looking through my BW.com feed and 6 out of 24 articles were about ethanol and other eco-friendly energy sources. Ethanol from corn is becoming quite the fiasco in Washington, as livestock farmers are protesting corn subsidies for ethanol producers. If corn is expensive for livestock farmers to acquire in order to feed their animals, the animals will be expensive for food producers which will in turn increase the prices on beef, chicken, pork, etc. that we buy from the grocery store. Another interesting twist in the ethanol story is that the government has put a tax on sugar ethanol produced in Brazil in order to corner the market in corn ethanol within the U.S. Why can’t we support our environment and energy concerns by buying some of our ethanol from Brazil? Buying from Brazil creates competition in an emerging market. It would force the corn ethanol producers to bottom out their prices and urge the public to transfer to their energy source as opposed to gasoline and other fossil fuels.
A couple quick questions for you all:
1. Should the U.S. follow through with subsidies for corn ethanol producers?
2. If so, how would this affect agriculture within the country?
3. If not, what could we do to promote alternative energy consumption?
Think GREEN!
Micah Sifry of the techPresident blog recounts an interesting panel on how internet media is changing political journalism. I want to specifically focus on these comments…
Jarvis:
So Hillary Clinton has called her campaign a conversation. Can a
campaign be one? Or are they necessarily propagandistic, getting a
message out? Even on the Dean blog that was what it was about.
Brady:
I think it’s more like a conversation that you have at a job
interview, not the kind that you have over a beer. I’m skeptical of
that. I’d love people sitting there answering straight questions
completely honestly. We go through this with each cycle, that we think
we are going to find out who these people really are, and then by
election day we say, why haven’t we talked about the issues? I think
the key thing in this campaign is going to be how do these people react
to being covered all the time.Rosen:
There’s a problem with this question, that we’re going to find out
who these people really are. I think that is a vain hope. We should
change that to, let’s force these people to be who they really are in
public. Instead of trying to strip away a false facade. One thing that
could change is this: in every campaign the candidate and his advisers
decide things that they don’t want to talk about. But these may be
things that the public wants to know about. We can try to get them to
talk about those things. We can try to get them to be realer in that
sense, in trying to get them to address the topics that people want to
hear about.
The speakers go on to entitle this concept of a candidate being "real" in front of the media and general public as "authenticity". I would like to explore authenticity on the side of the candidate. As Jarvis mentioned, Hillary Clinton has labeled her campaign as a "conversation". In many, many of her video conversations to the public she encourages the public to comment, argue, and to join the conversation. Is she authentic in requesting such feedback? Probably not. She is gunning for the highest political position in the entire country, and a top spot with the influencers of the western hemisphere. Propaganda is the name of the game. And she doesn’t play it all that well. By asking us, ordinary citizens, to talk with her she expects us to give her the answers. I would urge candidates to, rather than being "authentic" to be honest in how they plan on running this country. That is what matters.
The web brings a new atmosphere to campaigning such that the candidate is always being recorded and observed. The campaigns know this and now are able to control every outlet of information. Look at Obama, each of his videos show an energized and charismatic person with incredible enthusiasm and heart. In effect, authentic. But authenticity may appeal to some, what about others who wish to hear how this enthusiastic person will run a country? Indeed this race has gotten really hot really quick. And usually we begin asking issue questions very near the end of the race. With the internet asking all types of questions from all types of angles, what will the end of the race look like? Will we have run out of relevant questions to ask, will we have had our fill of information?
Now Giuliani is slowly getting into the web race. However, his ride is a slow and steady one atop a horse called "I was the hero of 9/11". His media coverage is less web-tastic than the potential democrat candidates but then again, strives within new york. The giuliani website is lacking, what many other candidates have adopted as prime media coverage and message dispersion, video. Albeit the website itself is lackluster at best. However I am not writing to quarrel with the design of candidate’s websites. This is to bring to light what we, as citizens and public media, understand as to the effects of web media on campaigns.
Summary: Web media is inevitable and inescapable. The public eye is always watching. Campaigns understand this and have adapted to control every outlet of information. We can draw new information from them by being persistent and unyielding in our coverage. We can demand honesty to skills less authenticity of person. The facade is there and we know it. Now tell us what we want to hear, be it through a facade or not.
We crabs in a barrel, you ain’t gettin out until I do first
And that’s why the guns burst
Whatever happened to strenght in numbers?
Some of the greatest minds on the planet are among us
But so many start on strugglin’ and never get saved
Man, Martin must be turnin’ in his grave
Like remind my soul – Akrobatik, Remind My Soul
"Some of the greatest minds on the planet are among us" So true. So very true.
The struggle for power is still ripe in many people. They yearn for the almighty dollar and would do almost anything to attain it. It is true that because of the struggle for power, violence towards other humans was born. Before the notion of violence was ever thought of, we used weapons to hunt for food to sustain our livelihood. Weapons were a tool for living, not a tool for killing. Akrobatik captures this in his inspirational lyrics, the pursuit of peace was lost as an agenda. Taking it back is key. Now with knowledge and community as the forefront of this battle. He says, "Martin must be turnin’ in his grave". Alluding to the peace keeper who tragically departed from this world before his vision was fully realized.
The community is here. We are gathering together, sharing information and ideas on a global scale. The key is in the content. Now that content is being generated by more and more people we can see a multitude of minds coming together to foster knowledge and progress. Blogging is the latest realization of this. Blogging is uniting the greatest thinkers in the world underneath their own unique umbrellas. Each niche is breaking the boundaries between the professional and the layman. Status is taking a bow and making way for content.
I am glad and fortunate to be able to share my ideas and notions with the world. What with the internet being such a perversely global agenda, we can decide its future as well as our own.