Honda Hydrogen Here

Honda has done what Detroit and the U.S. government
wouldn't do. Honda has a hydrogen only fully
efficient automobile coming off the assmbly lines
and being sent to the U.S.

It is the Honda Clarity. 200 will be sent to the
U.S. over the next three years and will only be
available in California, San Diego to be specific.

The car is silent running, non-polluting. It is
three times as efficient as our gasoline powered
cars. Moreover, the hydrogen power is equal to that
of the gasoline engines. The Clarity goes from
0 to 60 in 10 seconds, has a top speed of 100 mph,
and has a cruising range of 280 miles on a single
tank of hydrogen gas.

Without stating the cost of producing the cost, Honda
only says that right now because of the limited
number being produced it cost hundreds of thousands to
make just one. Honda forecasts that it will be a low
cost car. At present the car is only availiable under
a Honda lease agreement of $600 a month for three
years, which includes maintenance and insurance.

Hydrogen fuel technology has been available in the
U.S. since the 1960s. However, Texas(oil) and Michigan
(the Big Three Auto Makers) has prevented any development
of alternative energy automobiles. One would think that
Detroit would have learned back when VW, Toyota, Honda,
and Datsun entered the U.S. market with the compacts that
it had to change its production. But, no, they continued
to mass produce large cars and pick-ups and culminating
with the SUVs. The same is now true of the hydrogen car.
Here is the response to "drill, drill, drill." Much more
venting could be said here, but maybe we can do that in
the comments. Hydrogen is the source of the immediate
future in energy; it is available now, today. Cheap. Ah,
there you have it; it is too cheap. Greedy corporate
companies don't want cheap, fuel efficient energy anywhere.
They don't make money. They want coal gasification plants
and nuclear power plants that cost billions. Only one
entity can produce cheap energey for the 'general welfare'
of all the citizens of the U.S., the federal government.
Be it hydrogen of whatever the future power source is, it
should be owned and operated by the federal government.
Power is a necessity and a right, and, therefore, it ought
to be a government entity.

MS Fish Industry

The Mississippi fish industry is faltering. The
two main cash fishing products are shrimp and
catfish.

Catfish farming in MS supports some 10,000 workers.
On a 600 acre farm it takes about $500,000 on fed
alone. That same farmer is expected to spend twice
that amount this year. Catfish feed is made from
soybean, corn, and wheat. We know what has happened
to the price of those crops from what we see in the
grocery stores. However, as this shows the impact is
not just in the food stores. The price of these feed
crops is pushing many catfish farmers out. The farmers
are draining their ponds, drying them out, then
tilling to plant row crops that are paying more. What
is interesting is that many teachers left teaching to
be contract catfish farmers as it pays more than being
a teacher. Catfish are easy to raise, expecially in the
Deep South States like MS. Many homeowners have a little
pond, just as my folks use to have a small vegetable garden
in Toledo. MS catfish farming is also being impacted by
large importation of foreign catfish from Asia.

The Gulf Coast Shrimping industry is in dire straits as
well. In this industry the main problems are the runaway
gasoline prices for their shrimp boats and imports again.
Shrimp season recently open in all the pomp that is associated
with the bishop blessing the fleet. Despite the prayers
and the invocations of the bishop, the shrimpers are going
under. With diesel at $4 here it takes $10,000 to fill a
2,500 gallon fuel tank for a 20 day run. $3,500 for food
and other supplies. This shrimper "harvested" 6,100 pounds
of shrimp. He took it to the processor in Biloxi and
was paid enough to pay the above expenses plus expenses for
his boat(insurance,repairs), the crew workers, and share
owners. After all these deductions the shrimper took home
$550.00. Yep, thats it, $550.00! The processors are caught
too. They try to work with the shrimpers, but can't increase
prices to the shrimpers because of the imports. The leading
shrimp buyer and processor in Biloxi, Gollott of Golden Gulf
Seafood says, "we have raised prices as much as imports will
let us, but those imports are still right on top of us...The
Government is more interested in free trade than fair trade.
We are trying to help them out, because if they go, we're
next in line."

Come home, USA. Enough of these free trade agreements of the
Clintons, the Democrats and the Republicans. You'll have to
excuse me, I'm looking for my spade to go out back and dig a
hole to fill with our polluted city water and "plant" it with
catfish fingerlings. If we have a good "crop" ya'll will have
to come to Jackson and we'll do the "harvest" and the ladies
can fry them up as we sit on the patio with our beers.....

Heal the Warrior Before He Returns Home

Today I read with sadness that a soldier, recently deployed to Iraq, is being charged with the murder of his 3-year-old stepson. The Blade story begins:

FINDLAY - Displaying little emotion, the decorated Iraq war veteran stood before Judge Robert Fry in Findlay Municipal Court yesterday and agreed to be returned to central Ohio's Licking County to face charges that he killed his 3-year-old stepson.

Corey S. Flugga, 22, of Newark, Ohio, and formerly of Findlay, is charged with murder in the death Saturday of Carson Hanson at the apartment Mr. Flugga shared with his stepson; his wife, Heather, and the couple's 1-year-old son, Hunter. An autopsy concluded Carson died from blunt-force trauma to the abdomen.

I suspect that this man is one of many thousands of soldiers suffering from PTDS. I think I saw the number of estimated numbers suspected of that to be 250,000. Colateral damage from war trauma.

Joseph Campbell, writer and mythology professor, often wrote about The Warrior. In the book and TV series with Bill Moyers, The Power of Myth, Campbell often referred to the 'wounded warrior' that resides within men. He spoke of rituals in past times that were performed on returning warriors, fresh from the battles. He cautioned that these rituals were necessary for these men to make a healthy return to society. Sadly, the United States does not perform such healing rituals; that is why we see such distress and violence in many returning Iraq and Afghansistan warriors.

Heal the Warrior, Heal the Country is an article by Edward Tick in Yes! Magazine. Here is a paragraph which speaks to the theme:

Our troops do not enlist because they want to destroy or kill. No matter the political climate, most troops seek to serve traditional warrior values: to protect the country they love, its ideals, and especially their families, communities, and each other. If they must kill or be killed, they need transcendent reasons to do so. Throughout history, the only reason for fighting that has survived moral scrutiny is a direct attack with real, immediate threat to one’s people. PTSD is, in part, the tortured conscience of good people who did their best under conditions that would dehumanize anyone.

So many war hawks speak of victory, winning in Iraq. That matters little in the scheme of things. It was a war of choice, not necessity. Perhaps that realization adds to the PTSD of these returning soldiers. Whatever, the problem is severe and needs to be addressed and not swept under the carpet. Our society is greatly impacted by our returning warriors.

Will Has It Right

We have commented on the Supreme Court decision
concerning the Fourth Amendment, Habeas Corpus,
and Guantanamo. A decision that John McCain
said was "one of the worst decisions in the
history of this country." George Will responded
to McCain in his recent Op Ed.

Will asks, "Does it rank with Dred Scott...which
concocted a constitutional right, unmentioned in
the document, to own slaves and held that black
people have no rights that white people are bound
to respect? With Plessy v. Ferguson..which
affirmed the constitutionality of legally enforced
racial segregation?.....

"More likely, some clever ignoramus convinced him
that this decision could make the Supreme Court a
campaign issue." I suppose that this is the idea
that only a Republican can make the country safe
from terrorists.

Referring to McCain, Will continues, "He who wants
to reassure constitutionalist conservatives that he
understands the importance of limited government
should be reminded why the habeas right has long
been known as 'the great writ of liberty.' No state
power is more fearsome than the power to imprison.
Hence the habeas right has been at the heart of
the centuries-long struggle to constrain governments..."
The executive " cannot be the only judge of its own
judgment."

Will concludes his column, "In Marbury v. Madison..
which launched and validated judicial supervision of
America's democratic government, Chief Justice John
Marshall asked: 'To what purpose are powers limited,
and to what purpose is that limitation committed to
writing, if these limits may, at any time, be passed
by those intended to be restrained?' These are
pertinent questions for McCain, who aspires to take
the presidential oath to defend the Constitution."

This is an article that should be read by every student
in high school or college. There is much more in the
entire opinion. It is good to see a major conservative
journalist speak up and write to the traditional rights
found in the Constitution. This is a vindication of the
stand that the creator of this blog has taken on many
occasions that the Republican Party has been hijacked by
reactionaries and fundamentalists who cannot accept a
limited and secularist federal government as established
by the Founding Fathers in the Consititution. These
usurpers try to say now that they are traditional Republicans
and conservatives. The usurpers are the ones campaigning
against Consitutional, separation of powers, federal
government. They want to blur that line between what is a
legally written limited government and an authoritarian
government which would base its operation under some
supernatural power. There are very few traditional conservative
Republican Party members remaining. Spector of PA is one, and
he recently voted against the recent Surveillance Bill.
Hagel of NB would be another. No one else jumps out to me
at the moment. McCain has capitulated to the right wing and has
flip-flopped on most, if not all, of his pre-presidential
positions. BTW, Will entitled his opinion,"Don't flip over
habeas."

The Democrats Capitulation

Again. The Democrats stand again with the
Republicans in opposition to Constitutional
protection. The Democratic House voted
overwhelmingly, forced by the leadership of
Pelosi, to grant Bush-Cheney and Intelligence
Bill that grants immunity to telecom companies,
mainly AT&T(Big Blue, Big Dollars, Big Campaign
Donations), from law suits for warrantless phone
and computer lines eavesdropping. Pelosi and
the Democrats now say that the President can
spy on U.S. citizens.

And, not unsurprisingly to me as I have had doubts
about Obama being a non-elitist, Obama will vote
for the measure as written by House-Senate
conferees.

As I count, this is the third strike for Obama
since he became the "presumptive nominee":
STRIKE ONE: His bellicose speech to AIPAC;
STRIKE TWO: "I may delay rollback of the Bush
tax cuts to the wealthy."
STRIKE THREE: Supports amnesty for warrantless
Presidential wiretapping.

What was that Obama campaign slogan? "Change You
Can Believe In"? So much for 'real change.'

Here is the heart of the elitist conspiracy. It
is to keep the U.S. occupied overseas and build
the imperial presidency, while at home reducing
constitutional protections and enabling the
decline of the working classes.

This Democratic Compromise Intelligence Bill which
passed the House yesterday and the Senate next
week is another frontal assault on the Constitution
of the United States by people sworn to uphold
the Constitution. So much for the Fourth Amendment.
As Paul said recently, the Democrats and Republicans
are 'irrelevant'. There is no difference in the over
all distinction between them......

I'm Voting Republican in the Fall

YouTube

One Group of Americans Unconcerned with Oil Prices

My wife and I toured east-central Ohio yesterday- an area often referred to as 'Amish Country.' The Amish and Mennonites are a simple people whose carbon footprint on the land is next to nothing. This couple moved down the same highway as we, but our car's impact was enormous.




They lead the 'simple life' and, to us in the 21st century, it seems odd. Surely we appear odd to them as well. The Amish use no electricity nor gasoline, content with horses and lanterns. Many of the men were out in the fields cutting their hay while the children tended their strawberry stands aside of the road. We could not help stopping for two brothers who held up a 'strawberrys' sign as we passed by. We turned around went back. The older boy, about 9, said in choppy English, 'Three dollars quart.' As he approached our car with the berries, our two wrlds collided. Bare feet, blue shirt and dark blue pants and straw hat, he handed me the berries and I, sitting in my rented '08 sleek and air-conditioned car, sunglasses on, handed him the money. He stared at us as if we were visitors from outer space, not even smiling when he took the money. He just turned and went back to his brother and grabbed his sign once again. We sped off. Close encounters of the third kind.










Later we stopped at an Amish house that had a sign outside, "Honey, eggs, baskets for sale." Interestingly, we were invited inside the house. The only sound was the clock ticking away in the other room. The milky blue enameled paint of the woodwork enhansed the otherwise stark interior. It was strawberry canning time and an older woman was canning them in the kitchen. I asked permission to snap a photo and she obliged, quickly ducking to the corner of the room.





We purchased a basket and some strawberry preserves from the younger woman, a smile fixed upon her face. While my wife was going through the baskets, I said, in high-German dialect, " My wife has to pick out the basket." The young lady smiled and said, "I like languages." I asked her to say the same sentence in her Swiss-German, aka Pennsylvania Dutch. There were a few minor differences and we both smiled at the outcome.



Wednesday's wash hung out to dry throughout the countryside. Letting nature dry clothes surely beats an electric or gas dryer with added fabric softener. The washing was done without the aid of electricity as well. The simplicity of it all boggles the modern mind. Many of our modern suburbs have rules and regulations banning clotheslines. Unsightly they say.















We would prefer to burn coal in our electric plants and spew out CO2 and SO2 into the atmosphere. After all, we have grown accustomed to the 'good lifestyle' that we can afford.


Wednesday was auction day in Mount Hope and the Amish came to sell and buy livestock and feed. Well behaved children found simple pleasures in looking at a few toys that the English [non-Amish] brought to sell at the flea market on the other side of the barns. They seemed happy although I did not talk to any about their life. No MP3 players, no text-messaging, no hand-held electronic games, these youngsters stayed close to their parents as they wandered through the displays of 'goods' offered by the English. There were no temper tantrums for items not bought, no display of anger at the parents. Just children being children sans the modern gadgets.






We English were the odd ones that day with our desire to have the best, the latest, the most convenient. Fat English men and women sat behing their trucks offering trinkets- not unlike what occured in this very place 250 years ago. Only the names were different: Shawnee, Potawatomie, Ottawa. English offering trinkets to the 'savages.' English devowering the land, burning the forests, modernizing the area.



Look at the mess we have created in an attempt to make the 'good life' for us. Maybe we deserve the 'oil plague' now ravaging our economy. The gluttons are paying the price.

Rockefeller Intelligence Report

Chairman Rockefeller of the Senate Intelligence
Committee reported the Committee's bi-partisan
conclusions to the Senate. With two Republican
Senators joining in the Report, the Committee
concluded that the President of the United States
lied to Congress and the people so as to justify
a pre-emptive, first strike war on Iraq.

Rockefeller: "...in making the case for war,
Administration officials distorted the facts, or
said things that were not supported by the facts,
said thngs that they knew or should have known
were not true." What word comes to mind to sum
up what he said?

Couple this report with McClelland's book and what he
calls a constant stream of propaganda to justify war
on Iraq. Just remember how the various neo-cons became
talking heads for war, the Cheney and Rice interviews and
speeches, and Colin Powell at the UN told the lies that
Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, nuclear weapons and
a means of delivering them, and was involved as a conspirator
with al-Quaeda in the destruction of the Twin Towers. None
of it is true! What the Report demonstrates is that the lies
were obvious from the beginning, but Congress ignored the
truth and the media fanned the flames for war.

What is so tragic is that the Democrats went along with it.
There were a few exceptions like Sen. Graham of Florida who was
Chairmen of this same Committee prior to the war and took the
floor of the Senate, after studying and reviewing the same
intelligence, and stated the facts did not meet the standard for
attacking Iraq. Sadly, the majority of Democrats refused over-
sight, in violation of their responsibilites as Senators under
the Constitution. They are to be excused for this, right?

Democrats and Republicans want to pretend now that the loss of
U.S. military lives, the injured, and the trillions of dollars
should just be allowed to disappear. Why should Democrats and
Republicans walk away free from the damages they caused? Their
illegal decisions must be dealt with in some way also. On the
one hand we have a lying Bush Administration, and on the other
there is a negligent Congress of Democrats and Republicans which
facilitated this travesty on so many people.

Just the past two days the Democratic leaders in Congress have
stepped in again to protest the President and themselves by shelving
Kucinich's impeachment call to burial in the Judiciary Committee.
After all this, why would one want to remain identified as a Democrat?
Hell, they are co-conspirators.

If no impeachment, what can be done? Much can be done outside of
impeachment, it seems to me. On leaving office, Congress could cut
the Bush Cabal off at the knees. Obviously, 'could' is the operative
word. Congress may want to duck and hide, but if the election sends
more progressived people to Congress who believe in restoring the
Constitution, maybe something can be done. The can have their pensions
revoked, be prevented from sitting on company boards, getting speaking
fees. What happened just in Iraq is close to treason it seems to me,
especially with the conclusions of Rockefeller's Report. There are ways
to do this, so say Constitutional authorities. Will we allow the Bush
Cabal to walk away scott free? It seems to me, for Constituional
preservation, they cannot be permitted to do so. To do so is to
establish Constitutional authority for another president. This could
be a real make or break time for the Constitution.

A McCain Campaign Plan

As I have remarked a few times, the shortest
nerve in the human body is that nerve which
runs from the hip pocket or purse to the
brain. With gasoline at $4 now and very likely
$5 for regular by Fall, that nerve is really
stressed. It's a perfect opportunity for some
one to step in and massage it.

Watching 'Morning Joe' this morning, he was
yaking about a McCain energy program and was
stressing nuclear. I'm not all that confident
McCain could sell a nuclear program as a relief
to prices at the pump. However, McCain could
come out with a no-holds bared U.S. oil production
gimmick, that is, open up Alaska, open up the
continental shelves, open up the Great Lakes,
open up the Rocky Mountain West(Teapot Dome area
would be dwarfed), and go after oil shale rock
which until now has been economically unfeasible
to exploit. He 'might could' sell this to the U.S.
voter. We are 'dumbed-down', you know.

While we know the objections to such a program, it might
have enough appeal to swing votes. The appeal, of
course, is that this would be domestically produced
oil. People may just be willing to "damn the torpedoes,
full speed ahead". "I want oil, find me oil, give me
oil." Sure it's a play on people's fears, but desperate
people, do desperate things.

The Weald

Weald is related to the German Wald meaning woods and related to the British 'wold' as in the name of the Cotswold tourist town, Stow-on-the-Wold. I've always been enchanted by the woods, even as a kid. There were several 'woods' in my growing-up neighborhood that I explored and played in. My friends and I would often think of them as jungles, like the ones we saw in Tarzan films. Always cool and moist, these were places of great wonder and adventure.

To the Neolithic, the weald must have seemed enchanted as well. Fog and mist, odd tangles of vines, enormous tree trunks like elephant legs rising up to the canopy of green. Filtered sunlight and even more mysterious moon light created shadows on the forest floor, opening the imagination of those early humans.

Many wealds became sacred: a divine power contained within. Special trees themselves were venerated. The famous Germanic sacred Irmensul tree was chopped down in the 8th century by Charles the Great so as to end the 'pagan' worship of trees. What a shame; what ignorance. One famous weald in England is the Andredsweald.

Andredsweald was part of a vast forest, "bringing forth thorns and thistles unbid," the resort of wild animals, and of deer and swine, and rarely trodden by the foot of man. This woody tract was one of the largest, if not the largest, British forests. In Cæsar's time it formed part of three kingdoms, Cantii (Kent), Regni (Sussex and Surrey), and Belgae (Hants, Wilts, and Somerset). It had a city and station during the occupation of Britain by the Romans.

"In Saxon times this district extended over the south-western extremity of the Kentish kingdom, and parts of the South Saxon and West Saxon kingdoms. It was in King Alfred's time, according to the Saxon Chronicle, 120 miles or longer from east to west, and 30 miles broad. The Limen or Rother flowed out of it, and its western confines were near Privett in Hampshire. Many places now bear very different names from those they once bore. What is now known to us as the Weald, which signifies in Saxon a woody country or forest, was known to the Britons as Coed-Andred, Coed being the British word for wood. The Romans called it Silva-Anderida. The Saxons called it Andred, Andredsley, and Andredsweald, and it retained the name of Andred for
centuries after the Romans abandoned Britain."





Today the rainforests are being cut down with abandon. Just this week, the President of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, created three nature reserves in the Amazon on while warning foreigners they lack the "moral authority" to tell Brazilians how to preserve the rain forest.

"The territory is ours, but we want to share with humanity the benefits we are creating through preservation, because we want everybody to breathe the green air created by our forests," Silva said.


The temperate forests of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois were wiped out in the 1800's by ambitious immigrants looking to tap the soil for farming. Today a few nature preserves protect the original woods spared by the axe of the woodsmen. Yet trees are felled each day in the southern pine forests and the western rainforests of Oregon and Washington. The sounds of the chainsaw bounce through the weald, driving out whatever spirit resided there. What a shame; what ignorance.