10 things you should know about John McCain (but probably don’t)

1. John McCain voted against establishing a national holiday in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Now he says his position has “evolved,” yet he’s continued to oppose key civil rights laws.¹

2. According to Bloomberg News, McCain is more hawkish than Bush on Iraq, Russia and China. Conservative columnist Pat Buchanan says McCain “will make Cheney look like Gandhi.”²

3. His reputation is built on his opposition to torture, but McCain voted against a bill to ban waterboarding, and then applauded President Bush for vetoing that ban.³

4. McCain opposes a woman’s right to choose. He said, “I do not support Roe versus Wade. It should be overturned.”⁴

5. The Children’s Defense Fund rated McCain as the worst senator in Congress for children. He voted against the children’s health care bill last year, then defended Bush’s veto of the bill.⁵

6. He’s one of the richest people in a Senate filled with millionaires. The Associated Press reports he and his wife own at least eight homes! Yet McCain says the solution to the housing crisis is for people facing foreclosure to get a “second job” and skip their vacations.⁶

7. Many of McCain’s fellow Republican senators say he’s too reckless to be commander in chief. One Republican senator said: “The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine. He’s erratic. He’s hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me.”⁷

8. McCain talks a lot about taking on special interests, but his campaign manager and top advisers are actually lobbyists. The government watchdog group Public Citizen says McCain has 59 lobbyists raising money for his campaign, more than any of the other presidential candidates.⁸

9. McCain has sought closer ties to the extreme religious right in recent years. The pastor McCain calls his “spiritual guide,” Rod Parsley, believes America’s founding mission is to destroy Islam, which he calls a “false religion.” McCain sought the political support of right-wing preacher John Hagee, who believes Hurricane Katrina was God’s punishment for gay rights and called the Catholic Church “the Antichrist” and a “false cult.”⁹

10. He positions himself as pro-environment, but he scored a 0—yes, zero—from the League of Conservation Voters last year.¹⁰

Sources:

US Army purchasing 40-yr-old illegal ammunition for Afghanistan

Supplier Under Scrutiny on Arms for Afghans
“[...] to arm the Afghan forces that it hopes will lead this fight, the American military has relied since early last year on a fledgling company led by a 22-year-old man whose vice president was a licensed masseur. [...] the company has provided ammunition that is more than 40 years old and in decomposing packaging, according to an examination of the munitions by The New York Times and interviews with American and Afghan officials. Much of the ammunition comes from the aging stockpiles of the old Communist bloc, including stockpiles that the State Department and NATO have determined to be unreliable and obsolete, and have spent millions of dollars to have destroyed.”

Hillary Clinton’s Iraq Lies

Excerpt: “[...] In scholarly journals, in newspaper columns, in congressional testimony, on this web site, and elsewhere, there were ample warnings of just such disastrous consequences resulting from a U.S. invasion of Iraq. Regardless, Clinton apparently believed at the time that seizing control of that oil-rich country was worth the sacrifice. Only since public opinion polls indicated that she had no hope of winning the Democratic presidential nomination if she continued to support the war, did she start talking about the war’s negative consequences. [...]“

Hillary Clinton’s Iraq Lies at Antiwar.com

Demand the media stop spreading the FOX virus

Fox is a Republican mouthpiece, not a legitimate news organization. Real news organizations must reject Fox’s smears of Barack Obama, not parrot them.

http://foxattacks.com/virus

join the campaign to Downsize DC

Mission Statement:

“We believe the federal government has grown too large, too intrusive, and too expensive. We believe in constitutional limits, small government, civil liberties, federalism, and low taxes.

“We want to end laws and programs that don’t work, cause harm, and violate the Constitution. We want to restore the full force of the 9th and 10th amendments, which reserve most social functions to the people and the states.

“We intend to achieve these ambitious goals by petitioning Congress and the President to vote against or veto bad laws and programs, and to repeal old bad laws and programs.

“We intend to make this petitioning effective by recruiting every American who believes in small, Constitutional government, decentralized power, civil liberties, and low taxes.

“Our goal is to have millions of Americans emailing, writing, and calling their elected representatives to oppose bad laws, and to support laws that shrink the size, scope, intrusiveness, and cost of the federal government.”

Check it out: http://www.downsizedc.org/

beware…cantaloupes?

There’s a nationwide outbreak of salmonella connected to tainted cantaloupe. “The melons grow on the ground, where they are likely to be contaminated with fertilizers and other bacteria. [...] The rough cantaloupe rind [...] provides easy lodging places for salmonella and other bacteria.” I always preferred watermelon and honeydo to cantaloupe.

toilets of the future and other things I learned at the wastewater treatment plant

It’s only a matter of time before everyone will have replaced standard toilets with composting toilets. In fact, the IslandWood School on nearby Bainbridge Island, WA, uses only composting toilets. These devices would reduce the work a wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) has to do to the organic waste we flush away. At the WWTP, new organic waste is mixed with oxygen and older organic waste that now has a high bacteria content (called “sludge”). What happens when bacteria and organic waste meet? Remember Pac-Man? Water containing a mix of old and new sludge is sent to a tank where the solids separate from the water by either settling to the bottom (most) or floating on top (fewer). Long “arms” scrape the solids from the tank, and some is sent back into the cycle as old sludge and some is sent to a tank to continue being eaten by bacteria after more water is removed. After a month the volume of solids has been drastically reduced. It is now sent to farms as fertilizer. For use on home gardens and lawns it is further processed and mixed with sawdust.

The WWTP would like you to know that you should only be putting 4 things down the toilet, and they are biodegradeable and all start with “p”: poop, pee, paper, and puke. Everything else causes problems for pipe systems and needs to go in the trash. But even more importantly, do not put grease/fats/oil down the drain, nor hair, because they combine to form large grease-balls that will clog up the 4″ pipe leading out of your house.