Lubbock Left

Inauguration Day is finally here! Eight nightmare years of Bush are ending and we have a chance to turn our country in a positive direction.

It’s time to cut loose!

So, how will you celebrate? There’s a great email going around about ringing a bell on Inauguration Day. I think I will do that while I am at the Lubbock Juneteenth Committee’s Inaugural Ball tonight:

Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Civic Center Ballroom
7:00 PM - 11:00 PM
Cash Bar - beginning at 6:00 PM
Attire - Formal/After Five
Tickets Available at Democratic Headquarters:
2809 74th Street from 1:00-5:00 PM, M-F
$25/person - $40/couple

edit: Democratic HQ may be closed today for renovations. Tickets are also available at Caviels Pharmacy, Kings Cash and First Class Tuxedos. (Thanks, apopheniac!)

Other than that I will try to catch the actual swearing-in ceremony on TV or online.

What about you?

For when you can’t seem to focus enough to make a proper post, there’s always links…

• Abortion Doughnuts — Possibly the most provocative headline ever, but it’s really just a pro-life group overreacting to an innocent Krispy Kreme “free donut of choice” on Inauguration Day promo…
• Miss Caroline — A Lil’ Abner style comic starring Caroline Kennedy when her father was in the White House. The sad truth is that family has never really been off-limits in politics.
• Houston Mayor Bill White will run for the U.S. Senate in 2010. Here’s his YouTube channel as well.
• TPM’s Day in 100 Seconds videos are the perfect way to digest TV mass media and stay informed.

Ah, good old links!

And hey, have a bonus pic right here:

Happy 3-day weekend, everybody!

The New York Times Magazine has a great photo gallery of 52 of Obama’s People, including most of his White House staff along with prominent political allies in the House and Senate. The whole thing is worth a look and gives a very “West Wing” feeling.

Here are some of my favorites among the lesser-known staffers…

(more…)

It’s easy to spend a whole day reading Daily Kos, so on most days I limit myself to only their front-page articles. Today, an article about an EqualityMaine press release caught my eye:

EqualityMaine Announces Bill for Civil Marriage Equality

At a State House press conference today, EqualityMaine and several coalition partners unveiled a bill that would extend civil marriage rights to same-sex couples in Maine.

The bill, titled “An Act to Prevent Discrimination in Civil Marriage and Affirm Religious Freedom,” is sponsored by Sen. Dennis Damon (D-Hancock).

Not only are the folks at EqualityMaine framing this important issue correctly, they are also cutting to the truth of what the commonly-referred-to “gay marriage debate” is all about.

The good framing of the issue is made clear in the title of the bill before the Maine Legislature. “An Act to Prevent Discrimination in Civil Marriage and Affirm Religious Freedom,” does two important things. First, it asserts that one or more groups of citizens are being discriminated against (gays and lesbians, for example). Second, it asserts that the dominant group in this power relationship (i.e. straight people with church marriages) is not going to lose anything as a result of this new law. It’s win-win.

The cutting-to-the-truth is suggested by the bill’s title as well. “Gay marriage” is not about gays or lesbians. It’s not even about marriage. It’s about equal access to the law.

From the EqualityMaine FAQ:

How would marriage equality affect my church?

That’s entirely up to your church. Remember, the issue is civil marriage, not religious marriage ceremonies. Religious institutions are not required to perform civil marriages, and may set their own boundaries for marriage. Some faith leaders will not perform marriages for people who have been divorced, for example, or for people of different religions.

Marriage equality does not challenge the autonomy of religious institutions in any way. Advocates of marriage equality focus strictly on civil marriage, and leave decisions about religious marriage ceremonies to faith leaders.

And that’s the way it oughta be. It’s already the case in America that marriage in the eyes of the law and marriage of the eyes of the church are not the same. To assert that all persons have access to marriage under the law does not threaten any church’s definition of marriage.

I have a hunch that I’ll get some comments about this one. What are your thoughts about the struggle for civil marriage equality in the United States?

The internet is unable to, uh, contain its enthusiasm regarding the forthcoming change of power, giving rise to certain retrospectives, so…

Right-click ⇒ Set as Desktop Wallpaper ⇒ Tiled

You’re welcome.

Our ocean is turning into plastic soup.

Circular Pacific gyre subsurface currents are creating two continent-sized floating dumps of mostly plastic (80% of 3.5 million tons according to this article). These plastic soups don’t quite float and don’t quite sink either. Wind and sun break the plastic down into smaller bits that continue to hang around near the surface. Within these floating continents of trash, plastic particles are more prevalent than plankton. Oxygen levels are too low to support most ocean life.

Brave New Leaf offers some facts about ocean plastic:

1. Plastic is made of oil, a diminishing resource.
2. It *never* goes away. It just breaks into smaller and smaller plastic pieces.
3. 20% of the plastic in the ocean fell off boats. The rest washed in from land.
4. Much of the ocean’s plastic is the little pellets that plastic things eventually get made out of. When you buy plastic things, you support these pellets being shipped across oceans, and dropped into them.
5. When you throw plastic away, some will seep out of the landfill and find its way back to the ocean.
6. The average sea-bird has thirty pieces of plastic in their stomach.
7. Plastic cups have been found scattered amongst the wreck of the Titanic.

We’ve known about the effects of plastic trash on ocean life for years; what is less obvious but becoming more apparent is the effect of oceanic plastic waste on us. As all this plastic breaks down (it never goes away), one wonders what effect it’s having on human health. Little bits of plastic enter our food chain starting with the birds and fish that eat this stuff. Over time, human bodies will contain more and more plastic, possibly leading to obesity, infertility, and worse.

Our throwaway lifestyle is to blame for this mess.

So, what can be done? There’s no realistic way to clean up all this trash right now. What we can do is each do our part to prevent these trash continents from growing. Use less plastic in your life; for starters, take reusable bags with you when you shop. If you end up with plastic bags around the house, you can find ways to reuse them without throwing them away as well.

Just as important as our individual efforts to reduce our reliance on disposable plastics is a society-wide effort to reduce disposable plastics. This will require social pressure as well as supply-side regulations. In other words, disposable plastic has to become uncool before it becomes illegal.

Let’s do our part.

I just want to share some good news with y’all: The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal online division has approached me about cross-posting my blog at LubbockOnline.com, and I have accepted. This means that from here on out you will see the same content here reproduced at blogs.lubbockonline.com/lubbockleft. The comment threads will be unique to each site, however.

Thanks to all of my readers, especially those who have been with me since I started this project a year and a half ago. Your interest in this site made the leap to LubbockOnline.com possible.

Watch some highlights and judge for yourself:

The full 45 minute video is available from C-SPAN.

Drunk or not, he’s clearly flustered.

“Things didn’t go according to plan, that’s for sure.”

Yup.

Want to hang out with a bunch of Lubbock progressives to unwind and talk politics? Lubbock Democracy for America is starting a monthly casual coffee get-together called Coffee for Progressives. They will take place every second Tuesday. The kick-off coffee is tomorrow (Tuesday) at Sugar Brown’s Coffee:

Type: Social Event
Event Date: Jan 13, 2009
Event Time: 5:30 PM
Venue Name: Sugar Brown’s Coffee
Address: 4818 50th
City: Lubbock
State: TX
Zip Code: 79414
Phone: (806) 687-4951‎
Website: myspace.com/sugarbrownscoffee
Hosted by: Lubbock Democracy for America

See you there!

More for posterity than anything else, here’s another exhasutive list of 125+ failures of the Bush Administration.

In the future, copies of these lists will be folded into origami shoes and thrown at GWB’s presidential library.