Worldwide Humanitarian Aid needs help

A small group of very dedicated volunteers in central Ohio work every Thursday morning, 8:30am-12 noon at the Worldwide Humanitarian Aid warehouse to collect, organize and pack up equipment and supplies for people who need help all over the world. You could help by donating your time just once a week, or once a month.

Worldwide Humanitarian Aid has delivered truckloads of goods to El Salvador, Chiapas, New Orleans, Native American reservations, the Ukraine and many other places in the past ten years. They have supported medical clinics, donated ambulances, and provided training for doctors in Third World countries. They have provided computers and school supplies for schoolchildren in central America, and are now collecting money for uniforms for kids in El Salvador so they can attend school. They are planting moringa trees in communities to help them become self-sufficient.

Hey board members, leave our kids alone!

Radically conservative Christians are attempting to shove a “Wedge” down the collective throats of Kansans, but some of us are not opening up and saying “Ahhhh”. As a parent of a sixth grader at a Kansas public school, I assert that the six conservative members of the Kansas State School Board are abysmal failures at ensuring the intellectual growth of our children and have grossly violated a sacred parental right.

In opening the door to introducing “Intelligent Design” into Kansas classrooms, the Kansas Board has advanced the “Wedge Strategy” of the Discovery Institute, which originated “Intelligent Design”. “Intelligent Design” is a “theory” which rests solely on the observation that the complexity of the world “proves” the existence of a Creator.

Per Discovery’s own internal document called The Wedge Strategy:

Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions.

Criminal trial related to California energy crisis may start soon

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is expected to issue a ruling soon on a key piece of evidence that will help kick-start the long awaited criminal trial involving Houston-based Reliant Energy and the company's alleged scheme to boost its profits by shutting down power plants in California during the height of the state's energy crisis five years ago.

At issue are technical questions federal prosecutors have raised involving the definition of "market manipulation" as stated by California's grid operator, which US District Court Judge Vaughn Walker said could not be introduced as evidence by the prosecution.

The criminal trial - the first one related to state's two-year-old energy crisis - was scheduled to begin last month. It was postponed the day jury selection was set to begin, when prosecutors asked the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn Walker's ruling that market rules of the California Independent System Operator could not be used as evidence to establish what constitute normal wholesale power prices.

Precarious lives

"Advice to Retirees: Embrace the future," syndicated columnist Tad Bartimus recently wrote in my local Seattle paper. Sounds good, but for Bartimus the future was a layoff, in a corporate cutback, from a 25-year career at the Associated Press news service. Faced with the Hobson's choice of agreeing to it or losing all health care access and pension benefits, she suddenly had to find ways to reinvent herself and survive, with less than half of her previously promised pension. She explores how her situation echoes the predicament of more and more Americans, like those who took middle-class futures for granted at companies such as General Motors, Delta Airlines, and Ford, but who now scramble to get by at jobs paying a fraction of the wages they were used to. America's social contract is being ripped apart, she writes-then she backs off to counsel individual adaptation and seeing life as "a banquet," where we need to savor even the unexpected courses.

I know lots of people like Bartimus's friend Sue. Sue worked for United Airlines for 23 years, lost her savings when the company's stock crashed, may lose her pension in the current bankruptcy, and has to supplement her

Civil rights icon coming to Columbus

Dolores Huerta was a key advisor to civil rights activist Cesar Chavez.  She is co-founder of United Farm Workers of America and is one of the most successful and respected civil rights and labor movement leaders of the 20th and 21st centuries.  She will address the Central Ohio community December 8 at an event organized by the Columbus Council on World Affairs (CCWA) and International Institute for Democracy on the topic “Immigration Challenges: A Human Rights Perspective” and later in the evening will talk on “2006 Mexican Presidential Elections and its Impact on the U.S.” 

As a top civil rights leader, Dolores Huerta was invited by CCWA to provide a human rights perspective on international immigration issues that directly affect the U.S.  Her political expertise will fuel a discussion later in the day to address how the 2006 Mexican Presidential elections will impact U.S.–Mexico relations.

The public is invited to attend the two events and can contact Diana Pagan to RSVP at 614-229-4599, ext. 401.  Prices are set up differently for lunch and evening events.

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Inconvenient journalists

"Our goal . . . is to help others find their own voice, attain their own freedom, and make their own way."

Dig up an old lie from one of George Bush's forgotten speeches and the stench is asphyxiating, as though it's coming from the rotting corpse of democracy itself. The words quoted above are from the president's inaugural address in January - the odor intensified by recent news that the president allegedly wanted to bomb the headquarters of al-Jazeera, the Arab-language TV station with 50 million viewers, during our first bloody assault on Fallujah a year and a half ago.

If you aren't familiar with this outrageous little glimpse inside the war effort (and if you expose yourself only to mainstream American media, you probably aren't), here's a quick summation of the controversy, which is currently wreaking havoc on freedom of the press in Great Britain:

In April 2004, the president told Prime Minister Tony Blair he was concerned about the reporting that al-Jazeera, known for its graphic, uncensored footage of the Iraq war, was doing from the city then being leveled.

Talking for God, taking for personal gain

AUSTIN, Texas -- The Lord Impersonator is back again. This fella reappears every couple of years and causes no end of trouble. The jokester goes around persuading feeble-minded persons he is the Lord Almighty and that they are to do or say some perfectly idiotic thing under his instructions.

One of the worst cases we've had in Texas was the time the Lord Impersonator convinced 20 people in Floydada to git nekked, get into a GTO and drive to Vinton, La., where they ran into a tree. Seein' 20 nekkid people, including five children, come out of a GTO startled the Vinton cops. The nekkid citizens all said God told them to do it.

Quite a few people have been mishearing the Lord lately. The Rev. Pat Robertson thinks the Lord told the people of Dover, Pa., they shouldn't ask for His help anymore because they elected a school board Robertson doesn't like. And Rep. Richard Baker of Louisiana said right after Hurricane Katrina that "we finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did it."

Strickland wins 18th, 19th, 20th county party endorsements

Jackson, Washington, Harrison County Democratic Parties Endorse Strickland for Governor

Columbus, Ohio - The Strickland for Governor campaign today announced that Ted Strickland has won the endorsements of county Democratic Party organizations in Jackson, Washington and Harrison counties.

"We fully support Ted Strickland because he's always been there for us," said Rodney Smith, chair of the Jackson County Democratic Party.  "We know Ted's heart; we know what he stands for and that his integrity is impeccable. We can count on Ted's values and leadership to return Ohio to its rightful stature as a great state."

"Ted Strickland is the best man to lead Ohio," said Samuel Davis, Washington County Democratic Party Chair. "Ted has represented this area well for a long time. He has always done a good job and we know he'll do the same as governor. He's as honest and as hard working as they come."

A Congressman for impeachment

"What's more moderate than exploring the truth?  Is there really partisanship in truth?...We don't need to be afraid to use the word impeachment.  It is the process that was set up.  It's not a bad word.  It stands for accountability.  It is the system of justice in our political system…There's nothing radical in that." -- TONY TRUPIANO

While no congressional incumbent has yet introduced articles of impeachment or a resolution of inquiry into grounds for impeachment of Bush and Cheney, numerous 2006 candidates are committed to doing so.  I know because they're contacting ImpeachPAC, a political action committee I work for which was recently created to support pro-impeachment candidates.

Today ImpeachPAC announced its first endorsement, that of Tony Trupiano, Democratic candidate for Congress in Michigan's 11th District.  Tony has already been endorsed by Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) and by the Michigan Teamsters Union Joint Council 43.  He'll be challenging Republican incumbent Thaddeus McCotter, a pro-Bush, pro-war, pro-wealth Republican who seems to spend much of his time on such substantive matters as "defending the Pledge of Allegiance."

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