Stupidity Wins Over Statesmanship

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Much like our neighbors in Minnesota, Wisconsin has a proud history of progressive senators with names like LaFollette, Proxmire and Nelson; but every once in a while a right-wing nut-job with piles of corporate money comes along to derail a distinguished career.

After many years away, I came back to Wisconsin in 1992, just as Russ Feingold was campaigning to reclaim the senate seat that Gaylord Nelson had lost some years earlier. His commercials consisted of grainy film of this young lawyer giving a tour of his house. The folksiness resonated and Feingold became our senator.

In 2001, George Bush railroaded the euphemistically named “Patriot” Act thru Congress. It was riddled with provisions designed to turn America into a fascist police state with warrantless searches, electronic monitoring of citizens, defining “terrorist” to include organizers of consumer boycotts, and arbitrary detainment.

But in those days fear reigned supreme, and the bill was rushed thru the Senate on a 99-1 vote. We were in Europe at the time, and people we met understood how insane this law was. But we could proudly say that the one “no” vote came from OUR senator, Russ Feingold.

This year, he got challenged by a guy named Ron Johnson. He runs a plastics factory in Oshkosh where he is not well-liked by his employees. But he had piles of his own money to throw into the race, and he knew how to con tea-bagger types.

Even the most conservative newspapers in the state would not endorse him. If he didn’t refuse outright to meet with editorial boards, he only spoke in vague sound bytes when he did. Every time he opened his mouth, stupid bullslop would come out, so his handlers had him shut up and bombard the state with tv ads, mailers, and robocalls instead. Never mind that it was all the same stupid bullslop in slick packaging.

I predict that Ron Johnson will be the least distinguished Wisconsin senator since Joe McCarthy (interestingly, they both come from the same general area of the state). Maybe in six years, the state will be so nauseated by Johnson’s antics that Feingold can win his seat back.

Russ Feingold is too good a guy to retire from public life at such a young age. I hope he finds a way to stick around and be a champion of all that is good and decent.

It is very rare that I am impressed with anyone who works in the dark realm of politics, but I was proud to have Russ Feingold as my senator. Tonight, I am ashamed of my state for not re-electing him.

Whirling Rainbow – Halloween 2010

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We have a tasty Halloween treat for all of you tricksters out there: two hours of non-stop music from here, there and everywhere… something old, something new, something weird and something blue.

Many Celtic traditions recognized this holiday as the beginning of the new year, so we end the show with the countdown from the Grateful Dead’s New Year show in 1990-91. This is not to be missed.

Use this music for your party, or to just get into the spirit of the night preceding the Day of the Dead. For more information about Halloween, also known as Samhain (Sow-in), check out this website.

Whirling Rainbow is produced by RoZ and engineered by Obbie. We hope you enjoy the show and we appreciate your comments and feedback.

Listen here.

The playlist is here.

Happy Halloween!


An Open Letter to the Tea Party

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As a progressive, I share a lot of fundamental beliefs that you Tea Partiers promote.

You say you want your country back. I’d like my country back, too, and I think we’re talking about the same country. It was the country we knew as kids, where families made a comfortable living on one salary, where there was plenty of honest work for good wages, and where people helped out their neighbors in a time of need.

But now it takes two salaries to support a family (if you’re lucky) while the wealth we produce is hoarded by greedy Wall Street investors who think nothing of dismissing thousands of workers to gain 1% in profit margin.

I’ve been victimized by the same economic injustices that you have, so I can understand the frustrations behind your anger. What I can’t understand is why you are supporting Republicans.

Don’t you know that Republicans are the party of Big Business? They’re sponsored by the same fat cats who trashed our economy, and if elected they will continue to do the bidding of this uber-rich elite. There are no true advocates for working people in the GOP.

Check out the front groups sponsoring your Tea Party rallies. The people paying for those expensive stage sets, tour buses, sound systems and promotion are the same oil billionaires, Wall Street banksters and job exporters who’ve ripped off our country.

If elected, they will resume their orgy of casino capitalism, and they’re tricking you into endorsing it.

Bumping Up the Oldies

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There are some gems buried in the depths of this blog… posts discussing topics that still come up often.

  • Many years ago, I wrote a rant about the influence of money in politics. Today, it seems more important than ever, so go read Gold-plated Bullslop.
  • We still get asked whether we’re on Facebook. This should explain why we’re not.
  • Finally, this was one of our most popular posts for many years. It succinctly explains how a big-box store selling cheap stuff can destroy an economy.

Yes, we can!

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Twenty-one quarts of tomatoes from the 2010 canning season

The first twenty-one quarts of tomatoes from the 2010 canning season rest on the shelf of our storage cellar.

We like tomatoes. During the summer, we eat tomatoes from our back yard and from local market gardeners.

If we want organic tomatoes during the off-season, we have the choice of fresh tomatoes from California, Mexico, or South America; or canned tomatoes from corporate “organic” farms in mysterious unknown locations.

(Fun fact: When you see those canned organic tomatoes with the “Muir Glen” brand, remember that Muir Glen is owned by General Mills, who proudly claim to be the world’s sixth-largest food company. These are the same people who brought you Lucky Charms, Hamburger Helper, and the Pillsbury Dough-boy.)

There comes a time in the summer when our garden is producing tomatoes faster than we can eat them. That’s when we round up the surplus, stuff them into sterilized jars, and pressure cook them for 15 minutes. Sometimes our farmers at the market have excess or “seconds” (tomatoes that’re not cosmetically perfect) for a good price, so we buy a whole bunch and can those, too.

We found ourselves using about one quart-sized can of tomatoes each week for things like salsa, pasta sauce, and casseroles. Rather than buy these corporate mystery tomatoes, we much prefer to have tomatoes from our cellar.

We know where they came from.

Good News for a Change

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One by one, 33 Chilean miners are riding to daylight on the most claustrophobic elevator in the world. They’ve been buried a half-mile underground for over two months, and after all this time, a successful rescue is in progress. As I write, it’s 22 up and 11 to go (plus some rescuers who rode the elevator down to help).

MSNBC is supplying a live video stream of the scene at the mine, and it’s hard not to be riveted by this video. They even have a camera down in the mine, where you can see this little tiny capsule with a guy in it rise up thru the roof of the room.

Then we go to the scene at the top. The camera zooms in on the hole, where a pulley holds the moving cable to the center of the hole. We see the wife of the miner in the capsule waiting for her husband to arrive into daylight for the first time in months, and it’s hard not to feel the tense anticipation.

For 69 days, her mate was buried half-a-mile underground, and for many of those days, there was no contact, and no way of knowing whether they would ever see each other again at all. And now she’s watching the cable rising from within the hole (how strong is that cable?), but she cannot rest until the capsule rises up out of the hole, he is out of that capsule and they are in each other’s arms.

It’s hard not to cry watching these reunions, one after another, as the afternoon goes on.

And then the harness is stashed into the capsule, it’s lowered into the hole to fetch the next guy, and the cycle repeats itself.

Even though The Rescue is going well, it isn’t over until every one of those 33 miners – and equally importantly, the handful of rescuers who volunteered to go DOWN into that hole to help them – are safely back up on the surface.

And when that time comes, Chile: enjoy your time in the sun. You’ve done something to make your country proud and happy.

UPDATE: Everybody is out of the mine, including rescuers. Apparently, everybody is in good shape, considering what they’ve been thru.

Welcome to our New Server!

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If you’re reading this, that means the DNS transfer to our new site is complete.

This new server enables us to do some new and exciting things that weren’t possible with our old host –  the one we signed up with in 2001, and which hasn’t updated its software since.

Our new hosts have been much more responsive to our support inquiries, and their support people speak the same American English dialect that we do, i.e. THEY’RE NOT IN INDIA!!

Browse around and make sure everything is still where you expect it to be, and let us know if you find any potholes in this new road.

What They Tell Us vs. What We Want To Know

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I’ve been reading up a lot lately on web usability, which is the art and science of making web sites user-friendly. Most of the literature deals with presentation (fonts, colors, layout, etc.) and programming elements (pop-up info boxes, dialog boxes, etc.). This diagram (hat tip to Jeffrey Zeldman) deals with actual content:

A venn diagram of what they tell us vs. what we need to know

Of course, this example illustrates a university website, but it could easily be adapted to the sites of  government agencies, non-profits, and even many businesses and corporations of all sizes.

When I showed this to RoZ, she had an immediate reaction to its humor and astute accuracy, even though I introduced it as “kinda geeky.” She made remarks about “publicity vs. useful information.”

It vividly illustrates a disconnect in modern communication where our major institutions have fallen completely out-of-touch with the people they serve.