After watching Gore's TED lecture (ted.com), a then global-warming-depressed student e-mailed me today to ask what I thought we could do to fight global warming. He's in Iceland right now and he said he could imagine the disappearance of the small islands surrounding the mainland. He said he's recycling, planting trees, and riding his bike, but it all seems so little compared to the magnitude of the problem. Johnnyrook's book review (Right and Wrong in a Warming World) reminded me of the moral dimensions of the issue, so it seemed worth repeating here what I wrote to him...

Note: This is my first diary entry on DailyKos and is not directly related to the politics du jour (primaries in KY and OR), but I thought I would take this opportunity to post something that interests me and learn more about the system before I dive right into deep political theory and debate. As well as provide a nice diversion from the politics to discuss an issue that I feel is ignored far too much, the minimum drinking age.

Recently, the BBC had a very interesting documentary about food and how people respond to it called the Truth About Food. In one of the episodes, they examined how children behave when certain foods are forbidden from them. For the experiment, they determined two foods that the children were equally fond of at the beginning of the experiment, dried mangoes and raisins. After determining this through a quick survey, they experimentally established that both were liked equally by providing it to the children twice a day and measuring the percentage of fruit eaten during the snack times.

FYI.  This started as a comment on a previous diary on the subject, and I started to run long so I figured I would just write it up in a diary.  For more information on what Barack said, and what some of the response have been, I defer you the diarist who originally posted on this, marypickford.

http://www.dailykos.com/...

Let's face it, what Barack said wasn't the smart thing to say politically.  But I think the reason so many of us like Barack is because he's not the typical politician.  What he said is the truth.  People may call it elitist, whatever the hell that means, but its the truth.  I used to live in a small town where NAFTA and the Chinese sent good jobs overseas.  But God they love George Bush.  Guns, gays and God.  That's what Republicans have been running on since before I was born, and it works.

In a nation that gets very poor marks on the environment, it's not the states, nor the venture capitalist but our federal government that gets credit for America scoring 39th out of 149 countries and coming in dead last in the Group of 8 industrialized nations.

Of course either Democratic candidate will bring about vast improvements but in my extensive diary on Congressional drawbacks I listed the corporate media as another shoe in the works.

This morning there was a sign of improvement in both the corporate media and corporate America. Harry Smith had a guest on The Early Show to discuss some of the good news.

While the interview was nowhere near as impressive as yesterday's feature in The New York Times when the question CAN Silicon Valley become a world leader in cheap and ubiquitous solar panels for the masses? was explored The Early Show reaches a very different audience.

With the primaries right around the corner, things have been getting contentious around here (I have a knack for understatements).  For good reason, too.  I don’t necessarily decry the arguments or criticisms against the candidate of my choice, just as I don’t detest the praise I read for the candidates I don’t care for.  I think it is important to be critical as well as open-minded; to me, that is the beauty of being a liberal.  We don’t just follow the herd, and we don’t resist new ideas or opinions.  
   
    Yes, right now we are divided in the name of the candidates we support, but we all have at least one thing in common: we know that getting a Democratic nominee elected to the White House is the most important end goal.

    Why is that?  Why is that so important?  More importantly, why do YOU, dear reader, call yourself a Democrat and feel so strongly about that?

As many of you already know, and as nearly as many suspect with cause, this Diarist is a person with a diagnosed mental illness.  Now, I'm not the official site lunatic, 'cause I don't have a mascot's costume or a cute nickname, but allow me to take the podium this fine morning to briefly talk about the one shining light in the black abyss of affective mood disorder.

Now, I've described at length the crushing anxiety and depression associated with mood disorder, and the alternate reality we inhabit side-by-side with our fellow human beings, but I've never addressed the one thing that allows me to simultaneously lament my difference from the majority of humanity, yet to avow that I shall accept death before changing one thing about myself...

Because, the agony of Type-One Manic-Depression is simply the price I must pay to inhabit the most splenderous Oasis in the Hellish Desert of Humankind - That is, my Fantastical Mind...

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This is incredibly painful...too god-damned bad...

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I believe there's a difference between being a survivor and a victim.

Take cancer.  If you can "beat it" for a period of time, you will be known as someone who has "survived" the disease.  If you don't "beat it," you are now another "victim" of cancer...

So, are you a survivor of child abuse, or its victim?

Believe me, it makes a huge difference how you view it...

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There's often this impression that "moral issues" are quite literally carved in stone.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Like issues of resources or technology, moral issues are always moving forward, and with the exception of policies of fear spread by the current administration, the arrow of that movement has been an almost unbroken path toward greater individual freedoms.

So here's the good news: gay marriage is a shoe-in.  It fits perfectly the model of previous civil rights victories in which one group of people are being denied a right available to other groups.  Within a decade, if not sooner, the barriers that block gay marriage will fall, and within another ten years most Americans will look back on the idea that such marriage was once illegal with the kind of bemused embarrassment with which we now regard rules against interracial unions.

Now here's the bad news: that won't happen with abortion.

Or Why I Lean Left

The feeling of utter desperation came over her as she set on the bench waiting for the bus to arrive.  In one hand she held an expired bus transfer, in her arms, her 6 week old baby.   She had spent her last dollar to make the trip down to DHHS and now, after a futile day, she wasn't sure she would be able to get home.  

With her savings gone and now no money coming in, she didn't know how she was going to feed her baby. She was running out of formula, and there was barely any food in the cabinets for herself.  DHHS told her there would be a six week processing, they had to file for child support against her husband.  They directed her to the unemployment office, but she couldn't file until she had a doctor's release.  "How do I get to the doctor when I have no money to get there".  She'll never forget the shrug from the man behind the desk.  So here she sat on the bench, waiting for the bus, hoping the driver will have compassion on her and let her ride, biting back the tears that threatened to flow.

As the GOP candidates gear up to discuss abortion and terrorism again, and American's contemplate whether Paris Hilton will do her full time or not...

This past week, and it isn't even over, has been one of bewilderment and awe for the likes of yours truly... I have seriously had, on more than one occasion, to blink my eyes very hard to establish that, yes indeed, I was wide awake and not in the throes of some hallucinagenic spell...

Announcement: People, we are now through the looking-glass...

I don't even know where to begin, so let's just recap this incredible week from my vantage point:

I'm wondering if any of you know someone with or suspect that someone you know has a mental disorder or illness.

Those of you who follow celebrities, by the way, probably have a front-row seat to an A-List meltdown in progress, notably that of Britney Spears.  I don't know her, was never a fan, but someone with my personal experience with mental illness can smell smoke a mile away, and Britney's a five-alarm blaze...

"She’s acting like a child," addiction specialist Clare Waismann — who doesn’t treat  Spears — told ITW.  "This is not normal behavior. Her whole demeanor is strange. She’s not doing well."

No freakin' kidding...

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Update: I wish to thank everyone who responded to my Diary, both in agreement and disagreement, and I'm absolutely touched to the point of tears by your well wishes...it is why I love dKos...because of the people, not the things.  Bless you all, see you again soon, I hope.

TMWNP

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• Not by the massacre at Virginia Tech, where a suspected disgruntled student went on a murderous rampage, wiping out the equivalent of a large classroom in a matter of minutes.  That is not sickening, but tragic and horrifyingly incomprehensible.

• I am not sickened by the thought of inconsolable parents, siblings and friends.  They are shattered, and should be in the wake of this event.  That is natural, or so I hope it should be...

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John Samples, in an article entitled In Search of the Libertarian Democrat at Cato-at-Liberty, writes that a libertarian-liberal coalition is not possible. Andrew Sullivan agrees, considering this a fantasy. Samples repeats the same fallacy which has been cited by other libertarians who feel closer to the Republicans in only looking at certain issues, and concentrating on the rhetoric as opposed to the actual policies of the GOP.

Samples quotes polls showing that Democrats are more likely to support increased government spending for services such as education and health care. The problem is that some libertarians dwell so much on size of government and amount of government spending that they forget about basic issues of liberty. They also ignore the fact that government spending in recent years has grown more under Republicans than Democrats despite Republican rhetoric. It was Bill Clinton who left office with a budget surplus. If reduced government spending is the major goal, then libertarians will be disappointed in both parties, but should still back Democrats over Republicans.

...We have been 'at war' with those who supply illicit drugs to our population for more than two generations, failing to admit that drug-addiction is mainly a demand problem, not supply. Again, just like the illicit drugs issue, immigration should not be treated as criminality...

Mr. President, I know you will be in Santa Barbara this week to pick up the Attenborough award from the Santa Barbara International Film Festival at the screening of An Inconvenient Truth. Congrats. But, I was wondering if....

In less than two years, Illinois Senator Barack Obama has become the soup du jour of many a grassroots Democrat. His message is laden with passionate rhetoric—A reclaiming of the American Dream. What’s behind his oratory is devoid of any meaningful transformation to the status quo.

Obama fails to mention, for example, that the demise of the public square is a consequence of the social isolationism caused by mass corporatism. It creates a culture of hedonist consumerism. Also, social cohesion is anathema to a society where communities are transitional way stations as most are today.

This article, one of the last by the recently-deceased Ellen Willis, is one of the more articulate, accurate, and biting critiques I've come across of Thomas Frank and What's the Matter With Kansas?, a book many pundits make reference to and few do justice.

I was so preoccupied with the Change to Win survey yesterday that I totally missed the report released by the PewResearch Center titled "American Work Life is Worsening, But Most Workers Still Content."