RantWorld

Worst Environmental President

"George W. Bush will go down in history as America's worst environmental president."

So begins a scathing editorial by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in the latest issue of Rolling Stone. This is one of the best condemnations of Bush's anti-environmental campaign that I have read.

Divisive Demos Might Hand It to Bush

Once again yesterday Joe Lieberman raised the tired but headline-grabbing Confederate flag issue (reported here, Nov. 17th entry) to try to deal the Dean for President campaign another blow. Lieberman, Kerry, Gephardt, and the other candidates attacked Dean with such vigor over that Confederate flag statement that you would think Dean's a bigger enemy to them than Bush.

Sadly, these divisive tactics by the other Democrats will almost certainly put Bush right back into the White House in 2004. There's recent research by Professor Larry Sabato and the University of Virginia Center for Politics that backs that up.

Bush War on California

Here's a quote yesterday from Florida Governor Jeb Bush:

"It looks like the people of San Francisco are an endangered species, which may not be a bad thing. That's probably good news for the country."

Jeb's little joke was in the context of talking about "environmental land" apparently (which is somehow different from non-environmental land I assume). It's another example of the callousness so common in Republican politics these days. But it also shows how the Bushes and the Republicans are becoming more open about their hositility toward the people of California.

It's been apparent for years that the Republicans and the Bush administration in particular are waging a political and economic war against the State of California.

The rolling-blackout energy scam of 2000/2001 was an early foray in this war...

I Could'a Been a Contendah!

I own a small software/consulting company so every other phone call I get is someone trying to sell me personalized pens or unsecured lines of credit.

I got a call a few minutes ago from a new kind of vendor: the office of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas (or so they claimed).

The gentleman on the phone asked me in a fine Texas drawl to join the national Business Advisory Council, a group sponsored by the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC). He even offered to make me the Honorary Chairman from California! Imagine how honored I felt...

A Green Vote for Dean

I'm a registered Green Party member, and I voted for Nader in 2000.

I am unapologetic about that Nader vote, and I would vote Green for President again too...if Howard Dean wasn't in the picture. Here's why.

1) The two-party system of American politics is fundamentally broken.

It's a repressive oligarchy that's fixed to prevent third-party challengers. The evidence is all over the place: from the nigh-impossible signature-gathering burdens to get on the ballots in each state, to the two-party-controlled debate committee that keeps third-party candidates out. In 2000, as soon as Nader was approaching 10% in the national polls, the debate committee changed the rules and increased the inclusion threshold from 10% to 15%. Because it looked like Nader might qualify, they locked him out with just a few weeks to go. Talk about fixing the rules...

A New RantWorld Order

I'm usually a very well-mannered guy. Considerate, helpful, and easy to please. But corruption and the abuse of power by public officials really get me riled up.

In U.S. politics today corruption and the abuse of power are more like rules than exceptions.

That's the reason for this blog: to address in some small way those things that threaten our freedom, our land, and our civility. In the past I might have just hanrangued my friends and family about these topics. Now I can harangue readers at random. (And since you visited this site voluntarily, it's "opt-in" haranguing!) And perhaps in some small way this can have an impact on the public discourse...

There's never been a more important time to speak out!

Just a few of the topics that fire me up are...