Pig in a poke

My grandmother used to say, "I ain't buying no pig in a poke." She had a lot of other colorful expressions that got much more colorful the older she got. The license of age. This one puzzled me because I didn't know what a poke was. 

I don't remember who explained to me that a poke is a sack, in this case a burlap bag. You wouldn't want to buy it because you couldn't really tell what you were buying. You could see if it were shaped like a pig and how big it was, but beyond that, your imagination had to fill in the details. I guess you might buy it if you really, really trusted the seller. But in any economy a whole hog has been an expensive investment.

Now, I'm not calling Sarah Palin a pig, but it surely looks like Karl Rove, and the rest of the rogues' gallery that's run the government for the past eight years, are the ones holding the poke. They're keeping that string drawn taut. They've tied all kinds of pretty bows on it and built some really lovely pedestals to set the poke on. They're traveling the country showing off the package. But there's a velvet rope they're calling a media blackout around the pedestal and they aren't letting anyone in to peek at the contents. They aren't even letting anyone but the shills on the payroll ask questions about what's in there. 

They've made movies reportedly outlining what's in the poke. They change the ribbons and bows and paint a face on her every day. They put a mike up next to the whole package and it sounds like whatever is inside is speaking. But who can tell? 

We can, however, look at where that package has been and what it left in its wake. With Palin, the wake is weak and what is there doesn't look very good and it doesn't match at all the picture that's being painted on the outside of that poke. I hope people in this nation who cast ballots in this race have the good common sense my Nanny had and demand that McCain and crew open up that poke or move on to Barack Obama, the man standing out in the sunshine, dodging the rocks and explaining his plan for the country.

Palin nominated for worst mom

With all the power vested in me as a political blogger and mother who raised two smart, kind, involved, beautiful daughters in the Great State, the Lone Star State, the Friendship State, the Longhorn or Armadillo State, I do hereby nominate Sarah Palin the worst mother of the latter half of 2008. I would have picked her for the whole year, but there's that mom who microwaved her infant and even Palin isn't THAT bad: She only threw her teen into a whirlwind and under the campaign bus with the whole world watching.

I think, and have lived my whole life with this credo, that women who have children should be with those children, as much and as long as she can. She should be close enough to feed them problems to solve as they gain the skills and information to solve them. For example, at 2, they should be able to choose between two outfits and whether it's OK to wear them inside out. They learn from consequences if they scream and lay on the floor at pre-K because they don't want to wear their coats outside, they get cold on the playground. They learn the stove is hot by a little touch on the outside of the oven. They don't learn to dress warmly by running naked in a blizzard or that fire burns by sticking their hands in the fireplace.

When they mess up, say, get a grasp on the physical principle of gravity by jumping off the porch and spraining an ankle, a mom should be close enough to dry their tears and apply ice and hugs. When they start taking on the bumps and bashes of social interaction, get snubbed by the popular kids or pinched or punched by a bully; when they just give up on ever learning algebra; when she starts her period and needs a change of clothes; when that first crush breaks his heart, Mom needs to be there to listen to those huge problems. And they are huge. They are earth-shattering, because that's all the world they know and that's how they learn to cope with life. That's the second wave of their core concepts of whether the world is a basically good place they can trust or whether life is hard and punishing and its them alone against it all.

All of us mothers in the latter part of the 20th century and the first part of the 21st understand the reality that we must work and we are going to miss many of those moments in our children's lives. We have to deal with them when we get home from work. And in this horrible economic time, more and more women are forced into the workplace who would choose to be at home with their kids, a choice less advantaged women have never had.

There are so many wonderful fathers out there; single fathers, we can just plug into those lines above as Dad in place of Mom; so many terrific guys who are choosing to be the primary caregiver to his children to allow his families needs to be met immediately with Mom coming in to reinforce that as soon as she in from work. We have Joe Biden as a role model of how a loving, nurturing father can go to work in a powerful office, with the support of family members and great caregivers, and come home every night and listen to their stories and problems. Biden, however, did not seek the vice presidency, the heart-beat away position, when he was performing the vital role of Mr. Mom.

BUT, Sarah Palin's story is vastly different from any of that. She has five children, one going off to war, a young teenager, one who looks about 8, a special needs infant and a teenager who is about to become a mother herself. I don't know much about Mr. Palin, but he doesn't appear to be much of a Mr. Mom. I don't think he stayed home from his commercial fishing business to take care of the newborn baby with Down Syndrome when Sarah Palin went back to work three days after the baby's birth. And in the tragic case that she does become president, she could be locked in a war room for days at a time; in her office conferring with economic advisors past their bedtime and too late for talking for weeks at a time.

So here are the wherefores I would attach to my nomination:

-- Whereas Sarah Palin knowingly brought her daughter and her daughter's baby daddy into a political maelstrom at the most painful, scary and stressful time of their lives;

-- Whereas Bristol and Levi, living in that fishbowl, must make decisions that they and their baby will have to live with the rest of their lives;

-- Whereas she has three other children who, if she should get her wish to be vice president and becomes president, will know for the remainder of the next four years that they come second to every other person in America;

--- Whereas they will have no Mom there -- to dry their eyes, dream of their futures, put it all in perspective, tell them to get over it, look at their great art and put it on the refrigerator, help them to learn from their mistakes without being crushed -- until after all the people's work is done in war and in peace;

-- Whereas Bristol will pretty much be on her own to plan her wedding, learn how to be a Mother and wife and deal with the public stress (oh, Bristol, here carry Trig in front of your belly and spread the blanket out so no one can see that pooch you got going. Stop whining, that baby's going to be the first grandbaby of the first Republican woman nominated vice president)

-- Whereas Mr. Palin is not Michelle Obama, who is willing and able to be the primary parent 25 hours a day;

-- And Whereas Sarah Palin will be spending much of her first year in office learning to define the borders of Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq (special tutors must be employed because her boss doesn't know it) and studying what this economics thing is about in a country that is not oil rich and has more than 600,000 people within its borders;

I do hereby nominate Sarah Palin the worst mother of the last half of 2008 and, in an unimaginable nightmare, the next four years.

You can cast your vote here or e-mail me at kismetacres@hotmail.com

The tardy blogger

OK, It's been more than a month since I've filled this space. But when the juiciest stuff happens to detail here, the workload at the HD escalates as well. And to get anything in for the general public, I have to cover it, which leaves me with little time to blog.

 Obama's speech was magnificent. I can't remember a better political and cultural speech, and I saw Dr. King speak in person in 1967. So that's quite an endorsement.

 Case in point of the speeded up nature of life, I just learned we are opening the comfort station for hurricane evacuees today and not tomorrow and we are opening the shelter today and not Wednesday or Thursday. We already have 25 people who need shelter in Whitewright.

 So, off I go to find people to do activities with the kids and sign poles for directions to lead people to the shelters and respite care.

 One parting shot at all of our "good friend." McCain, you have watched "Gypsy" far too many times. Remember the scene where the strippers are giving Momma advice? "You Gotta have a Gimmick" is the song. Well, that seems to be advice that Rove and the rat f^*&^* Republican machine evidently gave McCain. Palin is a gimmick, looks like family values on the outside. I'm betting she's all Alaskan hillbilly on the inside. Oh, and did anyone catch that they're crediting her with something like 15 years political experience. That would seem to count her PTA creds. If that's experience that qualifies for the highest office in the land, my Mom could be Empress of the Milky Way. She has five kids and about 20 years in PTA.

 Case in point with this post. I began it Sunday and now I'm posting it on Wednesday. Many people helped by our Disaster Relief Group.

T. Boone Pickens and the Barnett Shale

Well dog my cat. There he was: T. Boone Pickens, legendary oil man robber baron, right there on the television, telling us the current gasoline crisis is not something we can drill our way out of. Not only was he saying something that might seem contrary to his personal interest, he reportedly was spending $10 million on the advertisements encouraging U.S. policymakers and general folks to invest in wind and solar.

Can an old cur really learn such new, forward-thinking and selfless tricks? Polyanna that I am, I was ready to believe it. Now I knew Pickens had been building some of the biggest wind farms on the planet in West Texas and that some arm of the Texas government had just agreed to wire that farm into the ERCOT, Texas' independent energy grid. That can only be a good thing, right? I mean, how can a green hearted, left slanted person such as myself dis a broad advance in renewable energy?

Mind you, I've been just vaguely watching this, letting it creep into my consciousness as I spend professional time examining school funding and tax rollback elections, the city of Sherman's dismantling its day care program and privately working on shoring up North Texas Youth Connections push toward providing transitional living programs for youth aging out of CPS. But somewhere last week, I saw a headline questioning T. Boone's motives, with a subhead about water. I mentally filed that brief. Then I saw another Pickens' ad showing solar panels, more good news; broader approach to renewables. That matches my thinking pretty well. And then I saw another on the use of natural gas in vehicles, an early 1990s solution championed by then Texas Land Commissioner Garry Mauro. The trend died down.

Saturday, I caught part of a rerun of Pickens' testimony Tuesday before the U.S. Senate's Energy Committee. He was fleshing out his proposal on renewable energy. Replace 22 percent of the nation's natural gas-fired electricity with power produced from solar and wind. (Note to check Pickens' investments in solar tech). Then, accelerate the production of natural gas powered heavy duty trucks and other vehicles.

Wouldn't that raise the price of natural gas, queried Sen. Pete Dominici. Why yes of course, Pickens replied. The market is the market. But, we reached the half-way mark in the planets two trillion barrel supply of oil a couple of years ago, no matter how you go about separating it from the earth. Now natural gas is a different story altogether. It's a domestic product and, because of new natural gas extraction methods, we can cheaply produce as much of that product as we need, here in the United States. There are fields all over the place, a huge one called Barnett Shale.

Comes the dawn! That's Pickens' angle. Given, in my Polyanna way, that I believe he could still have some positive motives in turning the nation's attention toward renewables, I nonetheless see great danger in his proposal. I haven't done the research yet, but I'd bet my bottom dollar that T. Boone owns a hefty chunk of Barnett and the other East Texas shale fields. Not only that, but I bet his fingerprints are all over the legislation and regulatory paper that is forcing groundwater rules and regulation, because that's what he meant by the technology to extract gas from shale. You fracture shale with water; unthinkably massive amounts of water.

In Texas, for the past at least 40 years, we've talked about water being the next "gold". Some areas, like the Hill Country, already highly regulate groundwater, both that in aquifers and that in other sub-surface structures. The Legislature is forcing counties into groundwater districts. Grayson, Fannin and Cooke counties are fighting now to keep from being lumped in with larger counties to the south, in groundwater districts. Guess where Barnett Shale is? You got it: Tarrant, Parker, Denton, Wise and about seven other counties to the south and west of us. And, it also lines up neatly with the Woodbine and Trinity aquifers, subject of said groundwater districts. We've been building surface water sources to keep from draining the groundwater sources, but most small towns in this area and most rural areas rely on wells for drinking water and irrigation for agriculture.

Here's where my pinko background comes into the picture. Do you remember Barry Commoner? He's 90 something now and can rightly be called the founding father or the environmental movement. A cellular biologist, he gets his reasoning from the bottom up. Commoner ran for president in 1980 on the Citizen's Party ticket. He's written several books "The Poverty of Power" being the one that originally caught my attention. I would like to apply several of Commoner's key concepts to this discussion.

"The first law of ecology is that everything is related to everything else." "No action is without its side effects." and "Nothing ever goes away."

Take, for example, the beating plowshares into gasoline philosophy of ethanol, brought to you by Big Corn, also known as Archer-Daniels-Midland and other agri-giants. Grand idea, use a renewable product to
replace oil and boost the humble farmers income at the same time. After giving ADM and other giant, global corporations billions in subsidies, we've learned that it takes more energy to produce it than it delivers; it corrodes auto parts; and poor people in Central and South America no longer can afford to eat tortillas, their dietary staple. Right wing governments with whom we have "free trade agreements" are pushing poor people off land to grow more corn and are creating ever more poor people who cannot sustain their own lives because of the monoculture. The need to produce huge amounts of corn is bringing about ever more genetically engineered corn, which has infected domestic food crops and makes growing traditional, nutritional corn more challenging if not impossible. And, genetically engineered crops are one of the suspects in the disappearance of bees, a trend that endangers the entire world food supply.

Commoner's basic tenet is that the only way to control technology is at its source, to control the way it is produced. His credo is that the lowest technology is the best technology. The poverty of power comes from the nation's policy of investing in giving private corporations the opportunity to produce ever more profit from every unit of energy. The solution lies not in finding the best two or three big technologies that a handful of companies can replicate in scattered giant sites that make power and transmit it over huge distances to a multitude of customers. The answers lie in creating individual and small group generators that use a wide variety of sources. This would mean investing in tax credits or grants for neighborhoods to put arrays of solar panels or shingles on their rooftops and a windmill or two, to generate power for themselves, and the ability to feed the excess on the big grid to share with other neighborhoods. It means helping small communities in West Texas harness the power of cow manure. It means co-generatios among closely situated industries. It means communities getting together to use the methane their landfills and water treatment plans produce.

So T. Boone Pickens, thanks for the push toward renewables. It's certainly a direction we need to be looking. But Congress, recognize the self interest that lies behind that testimony and look for the lower technology, the greater good of common interest because "everything is related to everything else."

Texas looks at expanding disastrous TIERS program

This is a response to an Austin American-Statesman article Tuesday on the state administrator of the TIERS system to expand its used. TIERS (the automated registrations system for food stamps and other public assistance and health care) has not worked, suffers from being able to attract and train workers and from bugs in its programing. I posted this response to the AAS Web site:

Many of us in Texas believe that our tax dollars should be used as a collective expression of our values. Ever more often that means ensuring that all Texans have access to adequate food, shelter and health care. TIERS is an effort by the Republican Legislature and administration of the state to reduce the care we offer to individuals so they can continue their personal slush funds to deliver cash to private entities, foreign and domestic (economic development incentives, privatization and toll road contracts to name three vehicles). In the name of updating our technology and being more efficient, we have created the TIERS system to frustrate those applying for help so that more and more just give up or do without for months. How much money has the state "saved" and then delivered to private contractors hands in the name of this efficiency and how many Texans have suffered? To expand this program before the bugs are worked out simply extends the cold shoulder we started in 2003 giving Texans who need help with drastic budget cuts. It is unconscionable to expand implementation of this system before we can make it work for those it should serve.

What's up with this Barack?

Last night I sent a request to the Obama campaign for an interview to ask the senator about his change from vowing to filibuster against new FISA legislation to voting in favor of it Wednesday.

Some of his strongest supporters during the nomination campaign are dismayed about this vote, not just that it prevents us from having a day in court to challenge the erosion of our Constitutional rights. So far many of us are not satisfied with his statements and assurances. From what I understand at this point, the legislation was not necessary for national security reasons. We have operated without it for many years before the attack on 911 and for several years after it. A lack of the kind of information that can be obtained under the FISA law was not the reason the Bush Administration was caught unaware on 911. And the new law will give the government the right to listen or look in on any communication I might have with my children who travel widely around the world or that I might have with people here in the U.S when I travel outside the country and what previously has been confidential correspondence I might have had as a journalist with sources I have developed in other countries.

Last night Sen. Russ Feingold, who led the fight against the bill, said that although he was not happy with the result, it will not be so bad when Obama is president because he can lead the fight to change it. Well, what happens if Obama loses? Then we have a senile old guy, probably with an enthusiastic, far more conservative younger guy with all the tools he needs to complete the work begun during the Reagan era to establish an unstoppable, all powerful executive. And with the corrupting power of power, there certainly are no guarantees that Obama won't be seduced himself.

This simply is not acceptable and I hope Sen. Obama can offer a more satisfactory explanation of his change in policy. It's too late to change back on this issue, but some concrete assurances that his change philosophy has not been absorbed into the Beltway Borg are necessary for him to keep the kind of enthusiastic support he has enjoyed for more than a year.

The biggest flip flop

 After building its third cycle case for continuing the war in Iraq on the premise of democracy building and nurturing the spirit of Iraq' sovereignty, the Bush Administration and its heir apparent in the Republican Party, John McCain, now are pooh-poohing Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki statement that there needs to be a time table for withdrawing foreign troops. The matter came up as Maliki was working with U.S. to decide the rules of how the two countries will divide power there once the U.N. resolution that currently (ostensibly) governs the relationship ends Dec. 31.

 The New York Times carried a report from the pool reporter of McCain's response to Maliqi's statement, "Mr. McCain said it was the same as when Iraqi officials said recently that they doubted an agreement with the United States could be struck over the status of American forces. “Prime Minister Malki, is, has got his, he is a leader of a country,’’ Mr. McCain said, according to a pool report. “And I am confident that he will act, as the president and foreign minister have both told me in the last several days, that it will be directly related to the situation on the ground, just as they have always said. And since we are succeeding and then I am convinced, as I have said before, we can withdraw and withdraw with honor, not according to a set timetable. And I’m confident that is what Prime Minister Maliki is talking about since he has told me that for the many meetings we have had.”

 What an outrageous comment to continue to trumpet his experience over Obama in visiting with the Iraq leaders, and then whittling statements to peg them into his stance. McCain faces the prospect of flipping for a third or forth time on why we are in Iraq and why he supports a war against the Iraqi people or flopping over his insistence that he will react to the "situation on the ground." That by the way is my favorite silly expression that has come out of the war debate "Troops on the ground; commanders on the ground; conditions on the ground." Where else would they be? 

 The scariest part of this most recent exchange is that McCain once again, even as he is twisting agonizingly in the air, is promising by his actions to be another leader who cannot bring himself to say that he makes mistakes or finds new facts to change his view.

 This reluctance is partially our fault in the media because we are so punishing when we discover someone has changed his or her mind. And we do not discriminate between changing a stance based on new evidence or reformed thinking versus shifting and flipping for political expediency. 

 Voters and the media that serve them must all do a better job of educating ourselves on the difference between rethinking or better explaining old positions in the face of new information and morphing ever more often to capture a few extra votes.