Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

No one could possibly have a better grip on peace than this octopus, with its strong yet flexible tentacles stretching forward, presenting eight peace symbols. Look to the fluid motion of an octopus, with its ability to change its skin to suit its environment wherever it goes. If our own foreign policy had that versatility, we wouldn’t resort to violence.

The peace octopus spreads word about the alternative vision of a world without war, while at the same time keeping its fundamental groove on. A great shirt looking for a new way to represent a nonviolent identity.

There’s a powerful bill in the U.S. House of Representatives right now that deals with the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling crisis in a clear, direct way. H.R. 5248, the No New Drilling Act, looks at the damage caused by the gigantic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and proposes a restoration of the moratorium on the expansion of offshore drilling.

U.S. Representative Danny Davis has not signed on as as a cosponsor to the No New Drilling Act. Why? He’s been busy.

Busy doing what? Busy supporting another piece of legislation: H. Res. 1297.

What would H. Res. 1297 do? It would recognize the importance of American Craft Beer Week.

The resolution, supported by Congressman Davis, notes the serious contributions of American craft beers, observing that, “American craft brewers increase awareness of the differences in the flavor, aroma, color, alcohol content, body, and other complex variables of beer.”

Come on, Representative Davis. If you have time to sit in your office, noting the differences in the complex variables of beer, you have time to sign your name to H.R. 5248, and take on the serious offshore drilling crisis. Please – cosponsor the No New Drilling Act.

On Friday, Barry C. Black, the official government-paid Chaplain of the Senate, stood up on Capitol Hill to give a speech in which he called for a religious revolution in the Senate, targeting U.S. senators, with a mission to “purge their thoughts and speech”.

American fatwa?

NASA released this satellite photograph of the rapidly expanding oil slick coming from the site of the wrecked Deepwater Horizon. As you can see, when this photograph was taken, the oil slick was clearly larger than the city of New Orleans. I was astonished by that. Now, that’s small potatoes. The oil slick is at 28,600 square miles, larger than the state of West Virgina.

So far, all efforts by BP to stop oil from surging up from the wellhead and riser on the sea floor have failed, and the slick is getting closer to shore day by day, threatening fisheries, shrimping grounds, oyster beds, tourist beaches, and the mangroves that protect the delta from being washed away by hurricanes. The slick is now just 30 miles from shore and should hit the Breton National Wildlife Refuge and the Delta National Wildlife Refuge first.

The Obama Administration says that it will continue pushing ahead with its policy to expand offshore oil drilling, unchanged, despite this offshore drilling disaster. How is that different from the approach the Bush Administration took? Is that what we voted for in 2008?

Hey, na na, ho, na na, hey, na na! The Earth is our Mother, we must take care of her…

But hold on – if the Earth is our mother, then who is Mars? Personally, I nominate him for crazy uncle… always rushing off to war, can’t maintain life, in a weird relationship with Phobos… rusty…

Irregular Movie Rumor:

The makers of the remake of The Clash of the Titans have added in a backstory for the giant vulture that carries off the princess Andromeda to her accursed suitor’s swampy lair every night: The vulture is girl, and her name is Elizabeth. She likes to be known as Elizabeth The Giant Vulture of Doom, but when she’s not transporting prisoners in magical cages through the darkness, she works as an apprentice to Homer, and hopes to become the poet laureate of the swamp some day.

At the end of the movie, as Perseus and Andromeda ride Pegasus off into the sunset, Elizabeth The Giant Vulture sings a torch song written just for the movie, entitled, How Can I Carrion? The song may only make it into the director’s cut, however.

Of course, it’s just a rumor.

It’s disturbing to me to see that there are still a huge number of people who believe that the only way they can feel secure is to have their government aim thousands of nuclear missiles, ready to strike at a moment’s notice, at foreign cities filled with millions of civilian human beings. Still others say that the only way that we can reduce America’s nuclear weapons arsenal is to make a new generation of nuclear weapons that are even deadlier than before.

It’s time for us to end this insanity. With Barack Obama in the White House, we finally have the chance for an American President to end the policy of Mutually Assured Destruction, and clear our nation’s stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.

We can have a world free of nuclear weapons, but we have to be willing to speak out for what we believe in. Do you part, spreading the message of an end to nuclear weapons wherever you go, wearing this tshirt: Nuclear weapons? This is not security!

There’s a new logo for the Blue Dog Democrats being used by U.S. Representative Jim Costa, and others from the right wing coalition.

It’s got an extra squiggle to it: “Conservative”, it reads. That’s just in case you hadn’t paid attention to the way that U.S. Representatives like Costa have sabotaged the Democratic majority in Congress over the last year.

It’s a not very subtle hint for Republican voters. This Democrat won’t support any of that progressive stuff. Democratic voters, on the other hand, are just supposed to see the word “Democrat” and fall in line.

Hint, hint: There’s no “fiscal” in front of “conservative”. These Blue Dogs are just plain conservative.

Last year, our irregular writer Green Man had a fun time teasing wealthy heir David de Rothschild for hanging around in a San Francisco garage, playing with plastics, and expecting to get fawning media attention, calling himself an “Adventure Ecologist”. De Rothschild has spent the last several years promising that, one of these days, he’s going to take his yacht, the Plastiki, on a cruise across Pacific Ocean. The most he’s accomplished, however, is to take his craft on a few fun little day trips. He calls them “sea trials” to give a sense of drama to his little skitterings about.

Why on earth can’t a wealthy heir to the Rothschild fortune, who doesn’t have the distraction of having to work for a living, or go to school, get out of port? Abby Sunderland is getting out to sea just fine, without most of the huge resources that David de Rothschild commands. Sunderland is a 16 year-old girl, and she’s not just going to be crossing the Pacific Ocean. She will be circumnavigating the globe in her boat without any assistance.

David de Rothschild, beaten by a teenage girl. I guess what they say is true: Money isn’t everything.

This t-shirt speaks the truth that huge numbers of Americans still aren’t ready to accept, 7 generations after its discovery: Evolution happens.

2009 was the 150th anniversary of the publication of the Origin of Species. Still, huge numbers of Americans, including the Republicans’ recent Vice Presidential candidate, expressed an inability to understand how biological evolution through natural selection could possibly happen.

This year, the great idea of Charles Darwin still needs defending. Celebrate Darwin Day on February 12.