No, not that kind of personal gas. I’m talking about gasoline.

This was the price of gasoline where I live yesterday evening. 6.1 pennies to go until it’s four dollars per gallon.

Is it affecting the way I live? Oh, you bet. An hour’s drive is now an exceptional luxury, not something to take unless I really need to. I’m walking, and I’m biking, and if I have to go a long distance where it’s available, I’m taking the bus - although bus fares will probably be going up too.

I have discovered the limit of how valuable gasoline is to me - it depends upon the trip. For day to day use, however, three dollars and ninety-three point four cents represents more value than is contained within a gallon of gas.

I have also joined an organic community supported agriculture about a mile down the road, which I can ride my bicycle to with a trailer hitched. The CSA is now the economical choice, at nineteen dollars per week, including eggs.

At the grocery store, the cost of a single bell pepper has risen to two and a half dollars. When I pay that $2.50, I’m mostly paying for transportation costs. Local food has become affordable food.

You can sit and grumble that nobody is doing anything to get American soldiers out of Iraq, or you can be the one to do something.

Tomorrow, there are 82 different protests that will be held across America as part of the Iraq Moratorium. Iraq Moratorium, now in the 9th month of its activism, is held on the third Friday of every month, with a simple goal - on that day, take some action to help bring an end to the American military occupation of Iraq.

If you’re not near one of the 82 protests taking place tomorrow, then there’s still something you can do. Get online - and write against war. Don’t have a blog to write on? Go on over to the Irregular Diaries and sign up there.

Our Green Man pointed out something yesterday that you won’t find written about in many other articles on the subject: When Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne announced that he had been finally forced to give protection to polar bears under the Endangered Species Act (because polar bears are actually, you know, endangered), that didn’t mean that polar bears would actually be receiving any protection. Kempthorne announced:

“While the legal standards under the ESA compel me to list the polar bear as threatened, I want to make clear that this listing will not stop global climate change or prevent any sea ice from melting. Any real solution requires action by all major economies for it to be effective. That is why I am taking administrative and regulatory action to make certain the ESA isn’t abused to make global warming policies.”

Polar bears are threatened by global warming, you see, and the Endangered Species Act requires the government to remove threats to endangered species whenever possible. Yet, Secretary Kempthorne says that nothing will be done about global warming, even though the Bush Administration has now grudgingly acknowledged that global warming exists, and admits with this listing that global warming is severe enough that it is likely to cause polar bears to go extinct in the wild if there is no intervention.

All that was noted by the Green Man. What I want to point out this morning is something in the tone of Dirk Kempthorne’s remarks. It’s his use of the word abuse.

“I am taking administrative and regulatory action to make certain the ESA isn’t abused to make global warming policies,” said Kempthorne. There are two meanings of the word abuse that Dirk Kempthorne might have intended with that statement:

1. That creating global warming policy under the authority of the Endangered Species Act might actually injure someone
2. That the act of creating global warming policy under the authority of the Endangered Species Act is a misuse of the Endangered Species Act that is contrary to the intended function of the Endangered Species Act

The first possibility is absurd. When a human-produced disaster is of such proportions that even powerful animals in areas far from human habitation could be wiped out by it, a policy to bring the disaster under control is not abusive. The policies that created the disaster are the abuse. Given that human habitat is as much under threat as polar bear habitat, it’s mind-boggling to consider that Republicans in the Bush Administration still consider taking action to deal with global warming would be abusive against human beings. Republicans have been saying that for over 20 years now. Do they still believe that they were right to fail to act in time to avert the tragic effects we are now suffering?

The second possibility is equally absurd. It is the intended purpose of the Endangered Species Act to trigger the creation of government policies that remove environmental threats that contribute to species extinction. Given that it’s global warming that threatens the extinction of polar bears, the creation of global warming policy is exactly what the listing of polar bears under the Endangered Species Act ought to result in.

That’s not abuse. It’s the law, and it’s in the interest of everyone involved - except for, perhaps, big oil and gas corporations. Under the Endangered Species Act, those corporate interests must give way to the interests of the actual human beings, and the animals, involved.

The following is a full text transcription of John Edwards’ speech on the evening of May 14, 2008, the speech in which he endorsed Barack Obama for President of the United States:

Thank you. So the question is, what am I doing here?

You know, I was promised a jet-ski, and I haven’t gotten it yet.

I am proud to be here with all of you. Proud to be in Michigan. Proud to be in Grand Rapids. During the course of this presidential campaign, I’ve gotten to know the candidates, and the top candidates very very well. We have all been out speaking about the causes that are so near and dear to our hearts as Democrats, and now we’re here down to two amazing candidates. And before I get too far I want to just take a minute and say a word about my friend and your friend, Senator Hillary Clinton.

[Crowd boos.]

In the past few months and past few weeks I’ve gotten to know Senator Clinton very well. We’ve talked. We’ve met in North Carolina. We’ve talked about the things that she cares about and every single one of you care about, about the men and women in this country who don’t have health care, about the children who don’t have health care, about the men and women in America who just want to have a decent job and go to work. We’ve talked about our own children, our own families, and what I’ve learned about her during that time (and I’ve gotten to know her very well) is that she believes with every fiber of her being that America can be a better place, and that we need change to make America a better place, what it’s capable of being.

And I want to tell you, and I know this is hard to understand sometimes, but it is very very hard to get up every day and do what she’s done. It is hard to go up there and fight and speak up when the odds turn against you. And what she has shown, what she has shown is strength and character and what drives her is something that every single one of us can and should appreciate. She cares deeply about the working people in this country, cares about the families who are losing everything because somebody got sick. She cares about the men and women who are putting their lives on the line in Iraq and Afghanistan. This tenacity has shown her strength and determination. She is a woman who in my judgment is made of steel. And she’s a leader in this country not because of her husband but because of what she has done, speaking out, because of standing up.

And we, when this nomination battle is over — and it will be over soon — brothers and sisters we must come together as Democrats and in the fall stand up for what matters in the future of America, to make America what it needs to be! And we are a stronger party because Hillary Clinton is a Democrat, we are a stronger country because of her years in public service, and we’re going to have a stronger presidential nominee in the fall because of her work.

Now, what brought all of us here is the profound belief that we can change this country. That there are service men and women in Iraq who can come home starting today. That our kids deserve to go to better schools than we went to. That we can run our cars on something other than oil. That we can have good jobs that can fill these empty factories. And that the anxiety that all of our people face every day can change when we finally make two Americas one America for every single one of us.

This is why you are here. You are here because of the hope that you carry in your heart that will make this country better. And we have so much work to do in America, because all across America there are walls. There are walls dividing the way things are and the one America we want to see.

And in fact there’s a wall around Washington DC. The American people today are on the outside of that wall. And on the inside are the big corporations and the lobbyists working to protect a system that takes care of them. And guess who struggles every single day? Working men and women see that wall when they have to split their bills into two piles. One: pay now, and one: pay later. When they get bullied at work because they want to join a union. When they see disappointment on the face of their son or daughter because they can no longer pay for that child to go to college. When their CEO who gets a golden parachute and their job gets shipped overseas — and you know something about that here in Michigan. When their wages drop and their kids go hungry. And guess who’s doing just fine? The insiders. The lobbyists. The special interests. Our job come January of next year is to tear that wall down and give this government back to the American people.

There is another wall that divides us. It’s the moral shame of 37 million of our own people who wake up in poverty every single day. In a nation of our wealth, to have millions of Americans who work every single day and still can’t pay their electric bill and pay for their food at the same time? There are mothers out there, working two jobs every day to try to keep their kids from going to bed hungry. There are men and women who have worked hard all their lives so that they can try to buy a home, and they’re living in a tent city because they’ve got nowhere to go. This is not okay, and for eight long long years, this wall has gotten taller.

Yesterday I was in Philadelphia and I was announcing an initiative to cut poverty in half in the next ten years, and I am proud to say today that Barack Obama stands with me in this cause. We also have a wall that divides our two public school systems in America. It is not okay that a child born into a wealthy family gets the best education in the world, and a child born in a small town or the inner city barely gets by. Their education is our education. We’re going to fix that system for them and make these schools good for everybody.

How about health care, right? The big drug companies, insurance companies, HMOs, the politicians who take their money, they’re getting their way. They love that wall just the way it is today. Well, it’s going to be gone as soon as we create real and meaningful health care for every man, woman and child in America.

And there’s also a wall that’s divided our image in the world: the America as the beacon of hope is behind that wall. And all the world sees now is a bully. They see Iraq, Guantanamo, secret prisons and a government that argues waterboarding is not torture.

[Crowd boos]

This is not okay. That wall has to come down for the sake of our ideals and our security. We can change this. We can change it. Yes we can. If we stand together, we can change it.

And the reason that I am here tonight is that the Democratic voters in America have made their choice and so have I.

There is one man who knows and understands that this is a time for bold leadership. There is one man that knows how to create the lasting change that you have to create from the ground up. There is one man who knows in his heart that it is time to create one America, not two. And that man is Barack Obama.

This is not going to be easy. It’s going to be the fight of our lives. But we’re ready because we know this election is about something bigger than the tired, old, hateful politics of the past. This election is about taking down these walls that divide us so we can see what’s possible, what’s possible, that one America that we can build together.

Barack Obama understands that to his core. You know, as I have traveled this country, as I’ve learned traveling this country from talking to people like the students we took to New Orleans, who volunteered their Spring Break to go to New Orleans to work to help rebuild the city. A former Army captain that I met who served two tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, even after he was badly injured in a grenade attack. And I’ll never forget a man I met named James Lowe. He was born with a cleft palate and it kept him from being able to speak. And he had no health care coverage, and he lived for fifty years in America not able to speak because he had no health care. What I’ve learned, and what Barack Obama has learned? It is about them. It is about you. It is about the people. It is not about us. And that is what we are fighting for.

And it’s about the one America we’re going to build for them. One America where Main Street is strong. One America where struggling towns come back to life because we’ve finally transformed our economy by ending our dependence on foreign oil. One America where the men and women who work the late shift, who get up at dawn to drive a two hour commute, and the young person who closes the store to pay for college. They will actually be honored for that work. One America where no child goes to bed hungry, when we finally end the moral shame of 37 million Americans who wake up every day in poverty. One America where we finally start tackling the real health care crisis in America. One America with one public school system, where a boy in the city and a girl in the suburbs will wake up every day with an equal chance for a quality education. One America that rebuilds our moral authority in the world, not just with our strength but with our soul.

One America where the walls will fall when the war in Iraq ends in 2009 and our service men and women will come home to the hero’s welcome that they deserve. And we will take care of our veterans. We are going to get this part of the war right. We will never again stand by while men and women who have worn the uniform of the United States of America stand in line and have to wait for health care. We will never stand by while 150,000 men and women who wore our uniform go to sleep every night on grates and under bridges. Not in our America! Not in our America! Not in our America when Barack Obama is President of the United States of America!

You know, we’ve been in this kind of place before. In times of war, great depression, deep divisions that tore at the soul of this nation, we came together. We went to work to make sure we passed on a better and stronger country to our children. We will meet this challenge again. This is who we are. This is our moment. This is our time to take down these walls, to close our divide and to build one America that we all believe in. If you want that, if you believe in that, then join me in helping to send Barack Obama to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue because we believe that in our America that we love so much, no matter who you are, no matter who your family is, and no matter what the color of your skin, none of those things will control your destiny, and that that one America that I’ve talked about is not only possible but it will be achieved under President Barack Obama starting in January of 2009.

Thank you. God bless you. I’m honored to be with you all. Thank you.

The speech reminds me why John Edwards used to grate on my nerves when he was still running for president. What is this idea to “build one America that we all believe in”? Americans believe different things, and you know, that’s not only all right, it’s what our founding fathers had in mind. And do we have to hear about everybody he’s met and everywhere he’s gone? Does he have to take so long to deliver what was really a pretty simple message?

The answer to that is no, of course. Here’s John Edwards’ endorsement speech, the condensed version:

1. Hi.
2. I like Hillary Clinton. Please don’t diss her.
3. But hey, fall in line behind our nominee who will be Barack Obama.
4. There’s inequality in opportunity and the delivery of social services and health care and education in America. Too many people are poor, even though they work their asses off.
5. Too people including veterans who have served this country are dumped like some pieces of trash.
6. The world outside America sees us when we detain without charges and torture and engage in stupid wars of choice.
7. This is happening in part because corporate lobbyists and their politician cronies sit nice and comfy in their symbiotic relationship of mutual protection. Americans who don’t have a lot of money or power are shut out of a real role in the political system.
8. We can change that if you vote for Barack Obama.

You know, you can type in “Hillary Clinton button” into a google search engine box and three links to our pro-Clinton products — well over a thousand of them — appear on the first page of results. Pretty much the same thing happens when you search for “Hillary Clinton bumper sticker.” My point is that a good chunk of people who are looking to show their support for Hillary Clinton through the purchase of a piece of political gear are going to end up over here. Certainly they did last summer and last fall, when pro-Clinton items accounted for the largest share of our election 2008 sales.

If there had been a new wave of support for Hillary Clinton in the wake of her win in the West Virginia primary, we’d have caught it by now.

Percent of Election 2008 sales since WV polls closed yesterday evening:

Pro-Clinton bumper stickers, buttons, etc.: 5.8%
Pro-Obama bumper stickers, buttons, etc.: 94.2%

If there was any shred of doubt that Barack Obama would be the Democratic presidential candidate in 2008, that doubt was eliminated tonight, as former senator and Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards got off the fence and endorsed Barack Obama!

It was a surprise move, but it makes a lot of sense. Think about it, and you’ll see that John Edwards and Barack Obama have campaigned with essentially the same message and the same style of campaigning. They both stand for a unifying message - the project of bringing people together regardless of their apparent differences. Obama and Edwards have also both used a dignified campaigning style in which they take the high road, refusing to stoop to the level of those who attack them, and rely upon grassroots support, not money from lobbyist insiders (as John McCain does).

John Edwards and Barack Obama are such a good match that it now seems obvious sense that they run together for the White House, as an Obama-Edwards 2008 ticket. For that reason, we’ve gathered some campaign materials together - bumper stickers, buttons, and t-shirts, into an Obama-Edwards collection of campaign gear.

Here’s a sample:

Obama-Edwards 2008 Organic Cotton Tee

Obama-Edwards Flag bumper sticker

Obama-Edwards 2008 Button

Finally, after long months of plainly illegal delay, the Department of the Interior announced that the polar bear will be listed as a species due protection under the Endangered Species Act.

Will the Bush Administration now reconsider its lease of oil and gas drilling rights in the polar bear’s habitat in Chukchi Sea? That lease could surely have been blocked under the Endangered Species Act. Don’t hold your breath.

Dirk Kempthorne, the Secretary of the Interior, issued the following statement:

“While the legal standards under the ESA compel me to list the polar bear as threatened, I want to make clear that this listing will not stop global climate change or prevent any sea ice from melting. Any real solution requires action by all major economies for it to be effective. That is why I am taking administrative and regulatory action to make certain the ESA isn’t abused to make global warming policies.”

In other words, although the Bush Administration was finally forced to obey the law and list the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act, the Bush White House has no intention of following the law and providing the polar bear with any of the protections it is now legally due.

For the polar bear to be listed under the Endangered Species Act because of threats created by global warming requires that the United States federal government finally act to stop global climate change to the extent possible and prevent as much sea ice from melting as it can. Dirk Kempthorne doesn’t understand that, and that’s a very important reason why America needs to elect a progressive President in 2008 - a genuine environmentalist as only a progressive can be.

(Source: Department of the Interior, May 14, 2008)

Although Democrats claim to represent progressives and progressive interests, they’ve got other ties as well. Consider Hillary Clinton, who has received multiple campaign contributions from the Tan family of the Northern Marianas Islands. The Tan family is well-known for running garment factories with sweatshop working conditions and low levels of pay. Even though Hillary Clinton has been informed of the sweatshop labor problems of the Tans, she refuses to return their campaign contributions. The money Clinton received from the Tans is soaked in sweat and belongs with the hard-working people she claims to care about. Here’s a case in which the desire to win has trumped progressive ethical standards. Watch what Clinton does, not just what she says. (Sources: The Hill, March 16 2006, Dengre of Daily Kos at dengre.dailykos.com)

I often find myself disagreeing with what Seth Godin has to say, but I get a great deal out of reading his work anyway, because he has a knack for identifying the essential elements of an issue. So, even if I disagree with Godin’s conclusions, what he has to say often provokes further consideration on my part, so that I can approach ideas with a different perspective.

Of course, sometimes Godin also simply hits the nail on the head. That was the case in an entry he wrote on “Journalists” in his book Small Is The New Big. The article wasn’t really about journalism so much as it was about the choice any writer might make about what to write.

Godin worried about the ease with which many writers choose superficial and unoriginal topics, saying, “When you run a post accusing a politician of having no personality… you’re indulging the public’s desire to elect a dinner partner, not a president. When you chime in on the day’s talking points, you’re a tool, not a new voice.”

As I read these words, I thought about Google News, which I once thought of as a great source of information, but have come to use less frequently over the last year or so. The problem with Google News is that it offers too much repetition. The same story, often written by the Associated Press or Reuters, is published over and over again, and it’s often difficult, even upon a sharpened search, to find something other than a single, limited account of an event.

Just as often, I find that there’s no coverage of an event on Google News at all. If the AP doesn’t send a reporter to cover a story, then there’s often no story at all. So, I have come to question why the stories on Google News that are popular, and thus on the front page, are popular in the first place. Is it because they’re timely, or important, or interesting - or is it just that they’re well-promoted, and thus popular within the realm of what a few voices offer?

Google Blogsearch brings more varied information and perspectives, but Godin has an important point: Too many bloggers have become little more than elaborate bookmarking services, pointing the way to mainstream news and opinion articles that happen to pique their interest. Like newspapers that stuff their pages with wire service content, they, given the chance to create, merely repeat.

It’s easy to take this kind of thinking too far. There are some very good reasons for some news stories to be popular - such as that they’re genuinely important to people. For that reason, here at Irregular Times, we try to create a blend of articles about major news stories and stories about information we’ve come across on our own. Our goal is to find irregular eddies, but to locate them so that people can see how they relate to the mainstream flow, creating some difference, but with relevance.

So it is that you’ll find recent articles discuss the West Virginia primary, but also stories that have received little mainstream attention, such as the blockage of new rules to protect the North Atlantic right whale and an odd, incoherent piece of legislation trying to create a government-sponsored Year of the Bible.

Surrounded as we are with powerful megamedia communications, it can be difficult for us to learn to perceive anything but the standard stories of the day. For those who are interested in escaping the regularized voices of the world, an important first step is to cancel the cable TV subscription. But then what?

Here are a few tips for where to look for original information to write about:

The Library of Congress legislative site contains information about fascinating bills and political leaders you’ll never read about in a newspaper. This isn’t just political content. It’s also a reflection of the issues that people believe are important enough to be dealt with by the US Congress - a window on the way we live.

Hate mail is rarely welcome, but it brings us ideas that we would otherwise be reluctant to think about. Maybe you don’t get hate mail yourself, but there’s plenty circulating around anyway on blogs and by email - against political candidates, products, companies and countries. The medium of hate mail is raw and often amusing, revealing dimensions of meaning that often remain obscured in more refined forms of communication.

Writing about your writing can be overdone, but every now and then it’s useful for you to examine what your projects are, and the changes in your language and subject matter over time can reveal important stories that may lead you to revise your focus.

Telling the story of where you live is increasingly difficult, as homogenization of culture, and alienation from location are strong trends. Fight the trend. Swim upstream. Look at where you live and write about it. If you believe that where you live is not important, then what are you doing living there? If what you do day in and day out is not interesting, then why are you doing it?

Get out the map and find other places, if writing about your own locality feels too close to home. Choose something small and out of the way. Manhattan is overexposed. The town of Wann, Oklahoma is hardly ever in the news at all.

In West Virginia yesterday, among those voters who said that race (as in ethnicity) was the most important factor in their decision, 85 percent chose Hillary Clinton. Congratulations to the Clinton for President campaign - you’ve got the racist vote all wrapped up.

It’s a sign of how far the Clinton for President campaign has descended, to become dependent upon racist remnants within the Democratic Party. It’s also a sign of how far the Democratic Party in general has come since the 1950s, when Democrats defended racial segregation. Hillary Clinton’s campaign has been working, with increasing lack of subtlety, to drag the Democratic Party back to those days.

The West Virginia primary reminds us of the dirty roots of Bill and Hillary Clinton in the politics of Arkansas, where Democrats are ideologically more like Republicans than like Democrats elsewhere in the country. Arkansas is the land of Democratic Senators Mark Pryor and Blanche Lincoln, who vote with Senate Republicans to support George W. Bush more than they vote with progressive Democrats.

It didn’t start out this way, but the Democratic primary contest has become a fight over whether the Democrats will go backwards, to their racist, corrupt past, or forwards into a positive vision of America which welcomes all who support the traditional American civic values of liberty, justice and equality.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign has aligned itself with small-minded Democratic power brokers like Thomas Buffenbarger, who accused Obama supporters of being the “latte-drinking, Prius-driving, Birkenstock-wearing” kind of Democrats.

To the Buffenbargers of the Democratic Party, I say that if I have to choose between driving a Prius while wearing Birkenstocks, or living in an America where “white people’ cannot bring themselves ever to vote for any candidate who doesn’t have pure European ancestry, then I’m strapping on my sandals.

Those who suggest that Barack Obama is weakened because of Hillary Clinton’s strong victory in West Virginia need to remember that West Virginia has not awarded its Electoral College delegates to a Democratic presidential candidate in a very long time. The Democratic path to the White House will not go through West Virginia… unless we follow Hillary Clinton’s new Southern Strategy, and transform the Democratic Party into a party of hatred.

Clinton Democrats, if you can’t handle this harsh analysis, and you think that it’s unfair to accuse people who vote against Barack Obama because of his ancestry of being racists, then I have advice for you: Please go re-register as a Republican. I don’t want to see people like you in the Democratic Party. Besides, you can feel good about voting for John McCain. Remember that he voted against the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday - a position you can be comfortable with.

Last week, Barack Obama increased his lead in convention delegates by 11 on the night of the North Carolina and Indiana primaries.

Last night, Hillary Clinton won 9 more delegates than Barack Obama on the night of the West Virginia primaries.

Nice, big win, Hillary Clinton. Not as big a win as Barack Obama’s last week. And you still can’t possibly win the Democratic nomination unless Barack Obama gets shot.

Oh, right, and this morning… Barack Obama has already picked up another 3 superdelegates. Yesterday, Obama won the endorsement of 4 superdelegates. Hillary Clinton hasn’t picked up any superdelegates yesterday or today.

On May 13, 2008, with 85,000 documented dead among civilian Iraqis and 4,077 documented American soldiers killed, George W. Bush declared that the war in Iraq hadn’t been easy on him either. See, Mr. Bush has committed to not playing any golf until the war is over, and that’s been real hard.

(Sources: Iraq Body Count; Politico, May 13 2008; Department of Defense)

When a person goes on a diet, one of the first things to do is to gather accurate information about what that person’s diet has been, so that changes to the diet can be tracked and evaluated for their usefulness. The same thing needs to happen as we seek to put our automobiles on a fuel diet.

We all know that we’re driving too much, burning too much gasoline, pumping out too much carbon dioxide, and losing too much money in the process. But how much?

We can start to understand the scale of our problem - on a personal and societal level, by coming together and sharing information about our fuel consumption.

It just so happens that there is a new online project that enables people to do just that. It’s called Fuel Frog. It’s a free service that lets you track how much fuel you use, how far you drive, and how much you’re paying for it all. The information you enter will be combined with the information others provide to enable larger, society-wide analysis of trends in fuel use and trends in the fossil fuel economy.

The first step to cutting back on fossil fuels is to understand how much we’re using. Join this waste-watching movement on Fuel Frog today.

Are you on the fence, not sure whether you intend to vote for Barack Obama in the fall of 2008? Consider who you would cast your vote with otherwise. You’d be casting your vote with people like the Lackawanna, PA Clinton supporter who, pointing at a picture of Barack Obama, blurted out: “He’s a half-breed and he’s a Muslim. How can you trust that?”

Lines like that belong in a Harry Potter novel. Sadly, they linger in America as well. Ignorant bigots like that Clinton supporter exist, they vote, and their votes need to be balanced out if our nation is ever going to make progress.

(Source: Washington Post, May 12 2008)