I was happy to report the good environmental news about British songbirds earlier this morning. Sadly, not everything that flies brings such good tidings.

The Environmental News Network reports that an unpublished study by pollution researchers has concluded that commercial airlines are releasing 20 percent more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than previously believed. Carbon dioxide is, of course, one of the most significant greenhouse gases that contributes to global warming.

This report offers yet one more reason for the abandonment of airplanes as a significant means of intracontinental travel, in favor of more efficient methods of long distance travel, such as trains. Over a hundred years after the Wright Brothers went hop, skip and jump, it’s time for us to get over the gee whiz reaction to the invention of the airplane. Yes, we can fly, but to fly as much as we do is profoundly unwise.

According to ABC News, Barack Obama has taken over the lead in superdelegates for the Democratic presidential nomination. Peter DeFazio of Oregon is endorsing Barack Obama today, and Donald Payne of New Jersey has switched his support from Hillary Clinton to Obama.

I fail to see what argument Hillary Clinton can make now about why she is the real Democratic choice. What? Is she ahead in the secret bloc of fairy delegates?

CBS News reports that on May 20, 2008 Barack Obama will declare victory in the race to the Democratic presidential nomination. It is a fitting day for him to do so, since on that day he will have gained a majority of all the pledged delegates to be gained from all the Democratic Party primaries and caucuses. By that day he will also have gained a majority of committed superdelegates as well.

I don’t exactly know what to call it. Victory Day? Literally so, but a bit sportish, like it was a game. How about Nomination Day? I know it’s not literally the day he will be nominated, but it is the day he will have secured the nomination.

If you have a better idea for the name of the day, share it in the comments!

Whatever you call it, 5-20-08 will be a historic day.

Not only is Republican Congressman Vito Fossella a convicted drunk driver - he’s also an admitted unfaithful husband. Confronted with evidence that he has been keeping two families, one with his wife and children in New York, and one with his mistress and child in Virginia, Representative Fossella admitted that it’s true.

Does it matter?

Fossella’s rampant disregard for his own family (uh, families) does indicate the hypocrisy of the Republican Party’s so-called “family values” agenda. The Republicans use the idea of family values to attack the freedoms guaranteed all Americans by the Bill of Rights, but don’t really give families the resources they need to prosper. Then, they go around and cheat against their own families.

Still, it’s the legislative infidelity that I’m worried about. Vito Fossella’s drunken, philandering way of life hurts his wife and kids (and his mistress and her child too), but that’s his own personal dirty business to take care of.

Vito Fossella should indeed resign from office - but do so because he extremist legislative agenda is bad for America, not because his personal life is falling apart.

I’m sorry. I couldn’t resist. Note to porn hunters: I’m talking about birds, and not the Benny Hill kind of “birds”.

The bird is actually named the great tit, and it’s common in England, where a new study gives some reassurance that some animals with short generation spans, like songbirds, may be able to adjust well to global warming.

A team led by Anne Charmantier of Oxford found that a population of great tits has shifted the timing of its egg laying by two weeks. The change was made to match the timing of a caterpillar hatch. The caterpillars are fed to the baby great tits, but have been hatching earlier because of climate change.

The best news in the study is that there appears to have been not very much chick death during the period of adjustment.

That represents the best hope we have as global warming accelerates: Life is flexible.

“When I was coming up, it was a dangerous world, and you knew exactly who they were. It was us vs. them, and it was clear who them was. Today, we are not so sure who the they are, but we know they’re there.” — George W. Bush, January 21, 2000

Sometimes it’s nice to pull an old classic out and sniff it. Piquant. But sometimes a fresh one has more zing:

“And so, General, I want to thank you for your service. And I appreciate the fact that you really snatched defeat out of the jaws of those who are trying to defeat us in Iraq.” — George W. Bush, March 3, 2008

Yesterday, I wrote an article with the goal of helping Republicans release the poison of anti-Obama hatred from their veins, engaging in a cathartic release so that they could then begin the task of reacquainting themselves with reality. I imagined the worst that the Republicans could say about Barack Obama: Barack Obama Exposed As A Muslim Giraffe From France Whose Secret Brother Is A Stockbroker for Satan!

I was trying to be outrageous, to go so far that even Republicans would recognize how bizarre their anti-Obama rhetoric has become. It turns out, however, that the Republicans were already ahead of me, imagining scenarios just as outrageous as the fantasy I had cooked up.

Take, for example, W.B.B. Johnson, who says that if Barack Obama is elected President, “we revert back into the dark ages and slavery, dictatorship’s and rule. If you won’t stand up and fight now…before they sink their teeth in for the final time…we ALL LOSE!”

What in the world is W.B.B. Johnson talking about? Why does he think that Barack Obama as President would bring about slavery and dictatorship, when Barack Obama has actually spoken out strongly against both?

The answers are not easy to find, given the convoluted nature of W.B.B. Johnson’s conspiracy theories. However, the answer seems to come back to the Bible. Instead of evaluating Barack Obama according to what Barack Obama actually says and does, W.B.B. starts his political analysis from a much more ancient source: The Christian Bible.

W.B.B. Johnson looks first and fundamentally at the words of the Bible, assuming them to be literally true, and seeks guidance in understanding today’s presidential campaign from those words, even though they are almost two thousand years out of date.

So, in W.B.B. Johnson’s mind, whatever the Bible suggests about Barack Obama’s character must be true, even if that is contradicted by everything that Barack Obama actually says and does. Given the plain fact that the Bible never mentions Barack Obama, there’s a wide opening for creative interpretation, and W.B.B. does indeed get quite creative.

His conclusion is that Barack Obama will bring about biblical prophecies of Armageddon if elected President. How will Barack Obama bring about a satanic one world government that will spark the End Times? W.B.B. explains, “The governments of the world are doing in concert, that which only individual kingdom’s had tried in years past. RULE the world and ALL of the people in it! Why do you think they want a hybrid that won’t be patriotic in office?”

Yes, you read that right. W.B.B. calls Barack Obama a “hybrid”. A hybrid, of course, is the result of interbreeding between two species - as when a horse and a donkey create a mule.

What W.B.B. Johnson means to suggest is that Europeans and Africans are not just people of different ethnicities, but actually are two separate species. W.B.B. believes that a “hybrid” like Barack Obama is somehow more likely to lead Satan into power over all the world than purebloods.

So, racism, libertarianism and bizarre religious prophecies all get tied together into a single psychological Gordian Knot that W.B.B. and his ilk cannot break free from once it begins to wind its way around their minds. No facts or logic is needed to support this conception of Barack Obama as the ultimate evil - only fear is necessary, and the fear of Barack Obama seems to support itself.

As I remarked yesterday, Hillary Clinton can no longer win the Democratic Presidential nomination unless Barack Obama either is assassinated or reveals himself to be the son of Satan. She has every right to continue her completely pointless presidential campaign, but she does not have the right to my respect. To the extent that Hillary Clinton continues her pointless presidential campaign while doing no damage to the political discourse, I’ll just ignore her except in her capacity as a Senator and move on to the consideration of the fall campaign in which she won’t play a role. Unfortunately, Hillary Clinton seems to be intent on pursuing her presidential fantasy by injecting so much venom into politics that she is the only candidate left standing. I can’t ignore that.

Over the last day, Hillary Clinton and her senior staff have made it clear that they intend to try to win by appealing to, accentuating and encouraging racial and intellectual resentment in America. Hillary Clinton’s senior strategic adviser, Paul Begala, started it off by declaring on national television that Democrats “cannot win with eggheads and African-Americans.” And just in case you didn’t get it, Hillary Clinton declared to a USA reporter today that:

Senator Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans is weakening again…. I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on.

“There’s a pattern emerging here,” Clinton said.

Yes, there is a pattern emerging here, and it started long before today, long before Hillary Clinton declared that she didn’t need any pointy-headed experts telling her that her gas tax plan was no good. For months now, Hillary Clinton and her staffers have been telling the world that some states just don’t matter, that people with the wrong skin tone just don’t matter, that people of certain religions just don’t matter, and that people with high levels of education don’t matter. Now she’s even moving beyond that to tell us all that “hard-working people” equals “white people,” and that the people who support Barack Obama are somehow not “hard-working people.”

You know, if I wanted to vote for a racist, anti-intellectual bigot, I’d vote Republican.

Barack Obama calls on us to embrace our better natures.
Hillary Clinton calls on us to crank up the hatred for people who are different than ourselves.

Hillary Clinton and her campaign may be able to provoke people in the short term, but they’ll discover that hate is a difficult emotion to sustain when it isn’t justified. Sooner or later, even Hillary Clinton’s most die hard supporters are going to realize that the divisive, angry vision of America their candidate espouses just doesn’t match reality.

They’ll realize that “eggheads” are intelligent people our President ought to be listening to, and that African-Americans are neighbors they need to get along with. As Hillary Clinton turns her desperate volume up one more notch, they’ll realize they’ve been tempted too far down a dark road that they never intended to take in the first place. For the sake of common decency, they’ll realize that they cannot in good conscience support the campaign of Hillary Clinton any more.

As Senator John McCain and Senator Barack Obama compete for the presidency in the fall of 2008, there are many rhetorical and substantive points of division between them that will be drawn. This morning, however, I’ve decided to look for points of agreement between the two.

Looking through their records in the Senate from 2007-2008, I see 62 bills that the two Senators have jointly supported through cosponsorship. That sounds like a lot of points of agreement, but a majority of those bills are symbolic in nature, with no effect on policy. One example of a symbolic bill agreed to by both Barack Obama and John McCain is S. Res. 157, “A resolution extending the best wishes of the Senate to New Jersey Governor Jon S. Corzine and expressing the Senate’s hope for his speedy and complete recovery.” 28 substantive bills in the Senate have gained the joint sponsorship of both Obama and McCain. Click on the links below to read the text of the bills for yourself:

S. 65, To modify the age-60 standard for certain pilots…

S. 223, To require Senate candidates to file designations, statements, and reports in electronic form.

S. 242, To amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act with respect to the importation of prescription drugs…

S. 280, To provide for a program to accelerate the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States by establishing a market-driven system of greenhouse gas tradeable allowances…

S. 311, To amend the Horse Protection Act to prohibit the shipping, transporting, moving, delivering, receiving, possessing, purchasing, selling, or donation of horses and other equines to be slaughtered for human consumption…

S. 340, To improve agricultural job opportunities, benefits, and security for aliens in the United States…

S. 400, To amend the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 and the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to ensure that dependent students who take a medically necessary leave of absence do not lose health insurance coverage…

S. 431, To require convicted sex offenders to register online identifiers…

S. 500, To establish the Commission to Study the Potential Creation of the National Museum of the American Latino…

S. 579, To amend the Public Health Service Act to authorize the Director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences to make grants for the development and operation of research centers regarding environmental factors that may be related to the etiology of breast cancer.

S. 597, To extend the special postage stamp for breast cancer research for 4 years.

S. 625, To protect the public health by providing the Food and Drug Administration with certain authority to regulate tobacco products.

S. 694, To direct the Secretary of Transportation to issue regulations to reduce the incidence of child injury and death occurring inside or outside of light motor vehicles…

S. 774, To amend the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 to permit States to determine State residency for higher education purposes and to authorize the cancellation of removal and adjustment of status of certain alien students who are long-term United States residents and who entered the United States as children…

S. 970, To impose sanctions on Iran and on other countries for assisting Iran in developing a nuclear program…

S. 1051, To establish a memorial on Federal land in the District of Columbia at Constitution Gardens previously approved to honor free persons and slaves who fought for independence, liberty, and justice for all during the American Revolution.

S. 1606, To provide for the establishment of a comprehensive policy on the care and management of wounded warriors in order to facilitate and enhance their care, rehabilitation, physical evaluation, transition from care by the Department of Defense to care by the Department of Veterans Affairs, and transition from military service to civilian life…

S. 1675, To implement the recommendations of the Federal Communications Commission report to the Congress regarding low-power FM service…

S. 2829, To make technical corrections to section 1244 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008, which provides special immigrant status for certain Iraqis…

S. AMDT 30 to S. 1, To establish a Senate Office of Public Integrity.

S. AMDT 43 to S. 1, To require disclosure of earmark lobbying by lobbyists.

S. AMDT 2019 to H.R. 1585, To provide for the care and management of wounded warriors.

S.AMDT.2402 to H.R.1538, To improve the management of medical care, personnel actions, and quality of life issues for members of the Armed Forces who are receiving medical care in an outpatient status.

S.AMDT.3508 to H.R.2419, To provide for the continuation of agricultural programs [crop subsidies] through fiscal year 2012…

S.AMDT.3695 to H.R.2419, to provide for the continuation of agricultural programs [crop subsidies] through fiscal year 2012…

S.AMDT.4347 to S.CON.RES.70, To establish an earmark moratorium for fiscal year 2009.

S.AMDT.4538 to H.R.1195, To create a bipartisan, bicameral special committee to investigate the improper insertion of an earmark for Coconut Road into the conference report of the 2005 highway bill…

A reseeding annual, allowed to reseed, is an act of subversion. Corporate garden seeds are hybrids, crossed and crossed to provide one year’s robust growth, and then an astounding lack of fertility afterwards. They’re like a come on with nowhere to come to.

Last year, I broadcast California poppy seeds in a new garden bed in the front of my house. I got a few plants from those seeds, which then produced a huge number of new plants that are sprouting this spring - more than can actually grow in the space where they are growing.

If I had followed corporate garden advice, I would have “cleaned up” my flower bed in the autumn, and that would have resulted in removing a lot of poppy seeds from the bed, turning over the soil with no roots left in it to hold the earth together, thus allowing seeds and soil alike to be washed away. Would I have had so many California poppies growing this year?

I certainly wouldn’t have had enough seedlings to allow me to thin and redistribute them as I did yesterday, taking poppy seedlings back to this year’s new flower bed, a patch of hardy plants like mint, lily of the valley, Japanese iris, chives and yarrow that is growing where last year there was only lawn.

I will not need to cultivate this new bed. Perennials and self-seeding annuals will establish dominance quickly, and not allow more weeds than can be pulled by hand. Soon, I’ll be able to take more divisions and seedlings from that bed and put it in other areas, pushing the lawn back further.

My garden will expand without me needing to go to any garden center to buy overbred, pumped up annual flowers. As the years progress, those California poppies will become less and less like what’s available in the sealed seed packets. They’ll breed, and mix genes, and evolve locally.

No fertilizers. No pesticides. No mowing. No rototilling.

Yesterday afternoon it rained, right after I transplanted the California poppies. It was free water distilled at no charge from a puddle far away using solar energy. That may be bad for the garden supply corporations, and for Pepsi’s bottled water business, but it’s good for me.

We bring you the following shocking news headline: Barack Obama Exposed As A Muslim Giraffe From France Whose Secret Brother Is A Stockbroker for Satan!

Really, aren’t the attacks against Barack Obama getting about this silly? As if the Republicans hadn’t made big enough idiots out of themselves with their mountain of failures under George W. Bush, now they’re careening out of control with absurd claims about Barack Obama:

- Obama is a fundamentalist Islamic terrorist and a radical anti-religion Marxist at the same time
- Obama is involved in a secret conspiracy from Kenya to create a one world government
- Obama, a man who was raised by a single mother and needed to earn scholarships to go to college is an elitist, whereas John McCain, who owns eight houses and supports tax cuts for the rich, is a man of the people
- Obama is the antichrist

I feel genuine compassion for these Republicans. They’ve been told that certain things are true, and then seen those supposed truths discredited one by one. The people they’ve put their trust in have abused them.

It’s hard to let go of old ideas that just don’t work any more - even if those ideas hurt. That’s why these Republicans are becoming so extreme in their desperation to destroy Barack Obama. They just don’t want to give up their Republican vision of the world, no matter how out of touch it has become, so they need to go to the absolute extreme before they’ll be ready to admit they were wrong.

Let me help them. I’ve constructed the next step in the Republican conspiracy theory machine for them, to help them get to that ideological low point more quickly… and then we progressives will be there to help them pick up the pieces.

Are you ready, Republican dittoheads? Take notes - here’s your next talking point: Barack Obama is a Muslim giraffe from France whose secret brother is a stockbroker for Satan. Now you can go send out your emails to your husbands’ second cousins’ warning them about this new evil truth about Obama. Hop to it!

Four superdelegates have just formally announced their intention to support Barack Obama as the Democratic presidential nominee:

Jeannette Council of North Carolina
Inhola Henry of California
Jennifer McClellan of Virginia
Jerry Meek of North Carolina

One superdelegate has just announced his support for Hillary Clinton:

Heath Shule of North Carolina

This would seem to increase Barack Obama’s delegate lead by three. Actually, Obama’s delegate lead has just increased by four, since Jennifer McClellan was a Clinton-supporting superdelegate until today, so her switch not only added to the Obama column but also subtracted from the Clinton column.

Hillary Clinton just announced that she will not drop out, even though the only way she can now win the Democratic nomination is to take away superdelegates who have already declared support for Barack Obama. That isn’t happening. In fact, the reverse is happening. Superdelegates who had declared support for Hillary Clinton are now jumping ship and going over to support Barack Obama instead.

What is Hillary Clinton thinking?

I have a friend who supports Hillary Clinton, who told me a couple months ago that she has a deep dark secret about Barack Obama that she has been waiting to use. Honestly, though, the time for the release of that kind of information ended three or four weeks ago.

What’s Hillary Clinton going to do to turn things around? Keep scheduling speaking events for Jeremiah Wright like she did last week? Note to Clinton supporters: That didn’t work. Voters are tired of that non-story.

I am truly baffled. Someone explain to me how Hillary Clinton remaining in the race makes sense, because I don’t get it.

Did anyone else notice the construction of this sentence in Hillary Clinton’s speech last night?

“No matter what happens, I will work for the nominee of the Democratic Party, because we must win in November.”

In that construction, she’s set herself as the subject of the sentence apart from the object of the sentence, the nominee. I think Senator Clinton knows she’s not going to be the nominee. The question is, what will she do?