Pages

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor is a jackass!

Courtesy of Sarah Hodgdon  Sierra Club, Conservation Director 
I don't say this lightly: if House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) gets his way this fall by passing his TRAIN Act, there could be up to 657,000 more asthma attacks next year.1 Majority Leader Cantor and his GOP allies are blinded by corporate polluter funders who have made destroying basic, life-saving protections their number one priority. 
Eric Cantor has raised $214,250 from dirty energy companies in the 2009-2010 fundraising cycle alone -- Dominion, a coal company, and Koch Industries, the oil brothers who have funded the political mess in Wisconsin, were the highest contributers.2
These dirty companies put destroying our clean air at the top of their to-do list -- not the health of our families. Send a message to your representatives letting them know that they represent us, not corporate polluters.
According to a Cantor memo that has recently been revealed, he and his colleagues will target 12 clean air common sense safeguards through the TRAIN Act and other methods.3  
Based on that memo, this what Cantor's plan to assault our air and water might look like in the first month of Congress's fall session :
Step 1: Gut health standards for smog, soot, and toxic air pollution from power plants.
Price Tag: 25,300 lives lost a year. 
Step 2:  Dismantle health standards for mercury and other toxic air pollution from incinerators and industrial boilers
Price Tag: 22,750 more premature deaths a year.
Step 3: Disable health standards for smog, soot, mercury, and toxic air pollution from cement plants
Price Tag: 2,500 premature deaths and 100,000 missed work days.
Our lungs depend on it.
Sarah Hodgdon Signature
Sarah Hodgdon
Sierra Club, Conservation Director 
[1]"Public Health Protections Save Lives, Create Jobs," http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/09/blocking_safeguards.html Center for American Progress, September 2011.


Thursday, September 15, 2011

Nobel Laureates ask President Obama to Stop the Pipeline!

Dear President Obama,

We—a group of Nobel Peace Laureates— are writing today to ask you to do the right thing for our environment and reject the proposal to build the Keystone XL, a 1700-mile pipeline that would stretch from Canada’s Alberta tar sands to the Texas Gulf Coast.

It is your decision to make.

The night you were nominated for president, you told the world that under your leadership—and working together—the rise of the oceans will begin to slow and the planet will begin to heal. You spoke of creating a clean energy economy. This is a critical moment to make good on that pledge, and make a lasting contribution to the health and well being of everyone of this planet.

In asking you to make this decision, we recognize the more than 1200 Americans who risked arrest to protest in front of the White House between August 20th and September 3rd. These brave individuals have spoken movingly about experiencing the power of nonviolence in facing authority. They represent millions of people whose lives and livelihoods will be affected by construction and operation of the pipeline in Alberta, Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.

All along its prospective route, the pipeline endangers farms, wildlife and precious water aquifers—including the Ogallala Aquifer, the US’ main source of freshwater for America’s heartland. We are aware that Nebraska’s Governor Dave Heineman—as well as two Nebraska Senators—has urged you to reconsider the pathway of the pipeline. In his letter
to you he clearly stated his concern about the threat to this crucial water source for Nebraska’s farmers and ranchers. The aquifer supplies drinking water to two million people in Nebraska and seven other states.

We know that another pipeline that covers some of the same route as the proposed pipeline, and built by the same company proposing to build Keystone XL, already leaked 14 times over its first year of operation.

Like you, we understand that strip-mining and drilling tar sands from under Alberta’s Boreal forests and then transporting thousands of barrels of oil a day from Canada through to Texas will not only hurt people in the US—but will also endanger the entire planet. After the oil fields of Saudi Arabia, the full development of the Alberta tar sands will create the world’s second largest potential source of global warming gases. As NASA climatologist James Hansen has said, this is “essentially game over for the climate.”

There is a better way.

Your rejection of the pipeline provides a tremendous opportunity to begin transition away from our dependence on oil, coal and gas and instead increase investments in renewable energies and energy efficiency.

We urge you to say ‘no’ to the plan proposed by the Canadian-based company TransCanada to build the Keystone XL, and to turn your attention back to supporting renewable sources of energy and clean transportation solutions. This will be your legacy to Americans and the global community: energy that sustains the lives and livelihoods of future generations.

Sincerely,

Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate (1976) – Ireland 
Betty Williams, Nobel Peace Laureate (1976) – Ireland

Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Nobel Peace Laureate (1980) – Argentina 
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Laureate (1984) – South Africa

His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Nobel Peace Laureate (1989)  – Tibet 
Rigoberta Menchú Tum, Nobel Peace Laureate (1992)  – Guatemala 
President José Ramos-Horta, Nobel Peace Laureate (1996) – East Timor 
Jody Williams, Nobel Peace Laureate (1997) – USA 
Shirin Ebadi, Nobel Peace Laureate (2003) – Iran

ADD YOUR VOICE TO THEIRS: 

Tell President Obama to Stop the Pipeline! 
Go to www.StopTar.org

Saturday, September 3, 2011

Males who wear pants around their thighs are idiots!

I am thrilled that Green Day front man Billie Joe Armstrong got booted from an airplane for refusing to hike up his low slung pants.  About time somebody started calling boys on this practice.  I say "boys" because I can't believe a REAL man would care to wear his waistband around this thighs.  It is one of the STUPIDEST practices I've ever seen and, since I worked in Hollywood for over twenty years, I've seen a lot.  I don't care if your white, black or green, pull up your damned pants.  I'd rather you walk around in no pants then to wear them like that.  What does it symbolize?  What does it accomplish?  Do you think you're going to score so quickly with a girl (can't believe a REAL woman would be attracted to that) that there is no time to unbutton your pants and pull them down?  


I think we should all step on the hems of all pants that are worn around someone's thighs or the bottom of their ass (not sure which they're trying to adhere to) when we walk behind them.  That way, their pants would fall and they would have to pull them back up.  A day of that would have them wearing them the way they were intended.


Who finds this attractive?  It looks like you can't manage to dress yourself.  It's amazing that guys spend all that money on clothes and shoes just to wear them half-assed.  Why bother to wear pants at all.  There's some guy in New York that stands on the corner in his BVDs.  Why not try that, at least it makes a commitment - on or off.  If I wanted to see your tidy-whities or your boxers - I'd date you.  But I wouldn't be seen, let alone go out - with a guy who couldn't manage to pull up his pants.  What's a matter?  Too many moving parts?  I'm just saying...