jabmyeyes.com

I was in a conversation with a physician I work with the other night at the hospital.  He described me as “ubber liberal” and decided I needed to be reformed and informed.  He started printing up things for me to read from his Fox network and I told him I don’t care for Fox or MSNBC.  I mostly get my news from PBS and sometimes I like to listen to Wolf Blitzer.

This Physician is very very afraid of our government running anything.  I, on the other hand, feel that if you leave the government out of our lives then you end up with a place like Haiti.  Haiti is a graphic example of a  weak government.  Us worker bees need to be protected from corporate interests.  We aren’t the mover shaker money makers we’re the ones out here in the trenches doing the work.  We don’t mind, we’re happy.  I have amazing respect for our founding fathers’ plan for checks and balances and equal rights.  They were a bit hypocritical about equal rights, writing and signing the constitution while their slaves tended to their farms, but, their ultimate plan was ingenious.

The Physician and I are an example of check and balance.  His check is the need to be compensated for all the patients he fights hard to save.  Many of them are self abusers, over-eaters, smokers, alcoholics, prescription drug abusers.  They vary from uninsured, medicaid, Medicare as well as the insured.  Patients get better then try to sue him for some anomaly that is most often a result of their own self abuse.  Or they don’t get better and the family tries to sue.  The litigation involved is extremely expensive and is driving up healthcare costs.  Tort reform is his primary concern to improve our health care system.   I definitely get his point and I also am angry at the folks making a living out of being sick.

My balance is the waitress with a kidney stone, the restaurant owner with chest pain, the guy that builds kayaks by hand with diabetes, the lady with a shop full of locally made art.   To them insurance is a gamble; those without are gambling they won’t need it,  those with individual insurance pay dearly for a catastrophic plan.  How can we remain innovative Americans if we can’t leave Wal-mart to try our hand at Tilapia farming or growing bamboo or opening a breakfast joint.  We aren’t really free as long as we are locked in to a job because we need the insurance?

Please don’t let Dupont, ExxonMobile, and Monsanto buy our next President.

Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post wrote…

In opening the floodgates for corporate money in election campaigns, the Supreme Court did not simply engage in a brazen power grab. It did so in an opinion stunning in its intellectual dishonesty.

It was unnecessary for the court to go so far when there were several less-radical grounds available. It was audacious to seize the opportunity to overrule precedents when the parties had not pressed this issue and the lower courts had not considered it. It was the height of activism to usurp the judgments of Congress and state legislatures about how best to prevent corruption of the political process.

Nina Totenberg of NPR wrote…

“It will undoubtedly help Republican candidates since corporations have generally supported Republican candidates more.”

Freedom of Speech

No one would have followed Martin Luther King if he had said “I have a nightmare”, as mentioned by energy secretary Ed Miliband.

We have to be careful that we don’t scare off would be joiners with too much hyperbole.  Admittedly, I am an extreme advocate of climate change.  We need to unite in being good to this earth.  It has been so good to all of us.  I am  hopeful that the decision makers representing the world in Copenhagen are uniting in the dream — and not denying the nightmare.

Side note and a bit of irony –> more than 1200 limos are being called in from all over Europe to meet the delegates, officials and presidential demands of the Copenhagen climate summit.  Too cold to ride bikes I guess.  The “economic growth” advocates ie: Republicans for continued pollution, will be represented by US Senator, Jim Inhofe

We all know the nightmare –> So many pictures of people riding bikes in China through polluted air with face masks.  Stories of asthmatic children in the Bronx breathing diesel fumes.  Photos of decapitated mountains in West Virginia and the subsequent coal muck escaping in to small towns.  Growth was so big and so fast that sewage spilled in to drinking water in Florida.  Many fists pound many tables when you suggest that things need to change.

Polluters love muddling the facts, and making fun of the nightmarish scenarios.  Some scientists  actually feed the machine that is profiting currently.  The collaborative machine of industry, shipping, air flights, hospitals, manufacturers, and on and on are horrified by the idea of changing energy production and usage. We have evolved to need stuff, rather than just water, food, shelter and coffee.

Many of them don’t think of themselves as polluters but as providers of jobs.  Many of them simply don’t care as long as stock holder profits are improving.  No such thing as a sustainable status quo in the stock market.   We just need to make change less horrifying and point out the advantages to health and stocks.

So lets describe the dream… Andrew Gilligan wrote an article for the telegraph.co.uk…” Copenhagen is a city filled entirely with bicycles, stuffed with retrofitted, energy-efficient old buildings, and seems to embody the civilized pleasures of low-carbon living without any of the puritanism”.

Costa Rica produces 99% of its energy from renewable sources, reversed deforestation and is aiming to become a carbon-neutral country by 2021 by combining its ministries of energy and environment, and abolishing its army.  Ok abolishing armies will probably never happen world wide, there will always be bad guys to fight.  We can dream though.  Other small island nations such as the Dominican Republic and Jamaica are also fairing well in levels of health and a very low footprint.

There is evidence that a student of Aristotle noticed and documented how human activities disrupted the climate back in 300 BC. Now, I’m not sure how anyone is sure about what was said in 300 BC, but, I am sure that my fifth grade teacher taught us (many years ago) how human activity disrupts the climate.

I wasn’t a student as long ago as Aristotle, but, science has recognized and studied the problem for long enough. My weekly reader explained the effects burning coal and petroleum has on the atmosphere. I was apparently dismayed by this information because I remember it vividly. I remember feeling worried.

In 1965 U.S. President Lyndon Johnson told Congress: “This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through…a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.”

We know that this planet is pretty small as far as planets go and extremely unique as far as being inhabitable. Since we know good planets are hard to find, you would think the world would find that taking care of this one is much more important than pretty much anything else. Why then would senators boycott a meeting designed to protect the climate of our planet.

We heeded the advice of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher after she explained to the United Nations: “The problem of global climate change is one that affects us all and action will only be effective if it is taken at the international level. It is no good squabbling over who is responsible or who should pay;” The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was created in 1995.   They concluded that humans are causing global warming, saying: “the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate.”

The world is finally deciding we need to do something and our senators are boycotting meetings. Why!!

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee tried to overcome a Republican boycott of a major climate bill. Only one Republican senator even showed up for the meeting, and he stayed just long enough to ask for a five-week delay and more study. (I won’t go as far back as Aristotle, but, it’s been studied) Senator Bernie Sanders lamented the obstruction tactics by what he called “the party of no.” The stalling strategy has so far blocked action on critical issues ranging from health care to global warming. The country, Sanders added, has gone from electing a new president one year ago whose uplifting promise was “yes we can” to the spectacle of a small but stubborn rump group of senators whose motto is “no we won’t.”

http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/photos/gallery/?id=b862022d-95b1-4625-963d-34a3a69ac839

So in 2009 our President, along with the other – Group of Eight leaders agreed industrialized nations should cut emissions on average by 80 percent by 2050 and limit warming to a maximum of 2 Celsius above pre-industrial times. The 8 leaders went home to their various congresses and parliaments so we could get it together for our unique planet.

Our senators are so busy disliking our President that they are forgetting what their job is. I guess the citizens who vote for these senators are so busy disliking our President that they are ignoring scientific facts. I just want to jab my eyes out when I read about crap like this! What would happen to you or me if we didn’t go to work because we didn’t like our boss.  Come to think of it the American public is their boss and we should be outraged.

I turn on news, or tennis, or golf, or whatever is watched at home  for my patients and it quite often calms them better than any medication I can provide.  They are comforted by the various personalities confirming their beliefs.  A doctor I know said, he likes to go to the Methodist church every Sunday to be surrounded by “like minds”.  It is comforting.  My friend feels the same way about the Catholic church.  We form ourselves into groups of like minds and label ourselves as conservatives or liberals or Methodists or Catholics.  We like to be around people who think like we think.  Otherwise, you feel like a freak who doesn’t belong anywhere.  We think thoughts and find people who agree with our thoughts and we hang out.

Understanding “like minds” is important.  Learning from the mistakes of history is important.  Free-thinking is important.  Freedom of religion is important.  When too many like minds get together and blindly oppose contrary information than you have “mob rule”.  When you look up liberalism in Wikipedia, you’ll find the 17th century again and some names like Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Ben Franklin and John Adams. You’ll also find  George Washington argued that a strong federal government was necessary to prevent mob rule. (AKA: town hall meetings where folks show up with guns) .  It is hard to define liberalism in one sentence; it would seem intellectual liberty, including freedom of conscience, and economic liberty, the right to have and use property, and religious freedom are in the forefront. I like all those things so yeah, I guess I’m a liberal.

I had a Facebook member accuse me of being French when I stated that no one should show up at wars.  Accused me of being French? What does that mean?  I guess the French don’t like war either.  Are there groups of like minds that like war?

We all need to be careful that our innate desire to seek out like minds doesn’t lead us into blind opposition. Blind opposition is dangerous and gets people killed and countries bombed and religions hated.  TV is for entertainment; it isn’t really a good source for facts, although,  it is a great source for blind opposition.  Churches and news stations can be comforting and entertaining.  Leave it at that.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/23522703@N06/3896163201/

If you go to this website and read the comments on President Obama’s planned speech to the kids of America you might laugh.  I did.  You can also read the President’s planned speech.  These are some of my favorite parts…

…at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying.
Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.

Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, “I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

…you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/07/obama-speech-to-schoolchi_n_278763.html

An example of some of the comments…

But I’m sorry he is still the “other” guy. I would oppose anything he says.  (what makes him an “other”?  his blackness or his intelligence?)

Yet they lost. (right-wingers) And, inexplicably, continue to wallow in their loserosity

“Loserosity” what a great word.

I don’t want a crack head talking my kids.  (I think he meant “to” my kids)

Then don’t.

Geo.Bush isn’t giving the talk,  Ha

Well then put the pipe down and get into rehab ASAP.  Double Ha

I love to read about politics and religion and sometimes it makes me want to jab my eyes out. My daughter said that to me once many years ago “jab, jab, you make me want to jab my eyes out”. She is very confident and intelligent and somewhat unforgiving. My son, responds to my rambling, opinionated, rantings with “why do you let things bother you?”

Sometimes, you just want to write your thoughts down, get them on paper, or blog, or comment. So here I am, stumbling around and falling over some information that needs to be shared. The authors aren’t always available to me while stumbling; I’ll try to give credit to the sites and authors of information retrieved and commented on. Quotes are in black and my comments are blue.