Party of Tea

Food For Thought....

Who... Are... You?

The caterpillar had it right when he asked his question. We never really know who we are because it keeps on changing.

My dad once told me that when we are young and not a democrat, we are heartless; yet when we are old and not republican, we are stupid. Well as far as I can say, I am only young and I do associate myself more with the democratic party so I won't know about the latter portion of his statement until I get there.

As for the present day, I find myself continuously agreeing with the Democratic party on issues concerning the controversial subjects of gay marriage and abortion while still supporting their views concerning the protection of the environment (we desperately need to increase our efforts in this area). Even when it comes to our involvement in Africa, the 2004 Democratic platform stated:

"US engagement in Africa should reflect its vital significance to US interests. The HIV/AIDS pandemic in southern and eastern Africa is a massive human tragedy and a security risk of the highest order that threatens to plunge nations into chaos. Chronic and debilitating hunger also threatens the very survival of communities where investment in agriculture has suffered for over a decade. We are committed to bringing the full weight of American leadership to bear against this crisis"

showing that they care about more than just finances and instead would rather focus on moral issues that trap people into poverty, be it in the US or not. That is the kind of person that I would want to run my country.

The Situation with Democrats

So the thing about democrats that I like would be their acknowledgment that governments are meant to help their people. For example, their statement on gay marriage reads:

"We support full inclusion of gay and lesbian families in the life of our nation and seek equal responsibilities, benefits, and protections for these families. In our country, marriage has been defined at the state level for 200 years, and we believe it should continue to be defined there."

showing that instead of creating a federal definition of marriage, they would rather states create their own laws as each region of our country has different opinions.
Similarly, I strongly agree with the Democratic views on abortion. These words were spoken on their 2004 platform:

"Because we believe in the privacy and equality of women, we stand proudly for a woman’s right to choose, consistent with Roe v. Wade, and regardless of her ability to pay. We stand firmly against Republican efforts to undermine that right. At the same time, we strongly support family planning and adoption incentives. Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare." Source: The Democratic Platform for America, p.36 Jul 10, 2004

Democrats believe that it is a constitutional liberty for a woman to choose to do what she wants with her own body--a freedom which separates us from developing countries in which women are inferior.

Now despite my agreement with theirs on certain controversial issues, I do understand the frustration that the upper class feels when the democrats tell them to surrender hard-earned money (after all, who loves paying taxes?). Yet then again, how can a government run smoothly and efficiently without enough capitol? It is a sticky situation. However, I would not mind giving a portion of my income if I knew it was to go to universal health care for all of my fellow citizens.

The Lowdown on Republicans

So here is my deal with republicans: some of their policies are well thought out and can be effective, but as a whole, the republican party is plummeting.
Starting with their weaknesses, being conservative means being heartless about certain issues--in California, this means no gay marriage. If you look at the progression of marriage, interracial weddings were banned for many years until sensible reform came. This is the next step towards equality, but republicans are so traditional that they refuse to think of homosexuality as anything but "unnatural" and even "sinful". That leads to my next point: many republicans (not all, mind you) let their religion come into play with politics. In this country, we have a secular government--meaning that there is a separation of church and state. Even at the platform, republicans refuse to acknowledge homosexuals as compatible human beings:

"We affirm traditional military culture, and we affirm that homosexuality is incompatible with military service."

Source: 2004 Republican Party Platform, p. 18 Sep 7, 2004

Along with this goes the very complex and controversial subject of abortion (which I personally am in favor of), republicans seem to let their good Christianity be a deciding factor over what a woman does with her body. I stand under the fact that if men could get pregnant, abortion would not only be legal, but probably federally funded as well. I know that these aren't words spoken aloud, but there is something about the tradition of the republican party that makes me feel inferior as a woman who has no right over whether or not I would like to harvest a child in my uterus. These words were spoken on the platform regarding abortion:

"...we endorse legislation that the 14th Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children."

So basically, it is better for a child to be born in poverty with plenty of suffering rather than simply abort it when it still has not developed a central nervous system and therefore can not feel any pain. (I mean, is the fetus even human at this point? When does a clump of cells become a life that can actually be protected by the constitution?)

John McCain on Arizona's New Law

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Arizona's New "Reform"

Would you call the subject of immigration "reformed" if the idea has already been used before? I would not. It's more of a backwards step. Arizona's new law incorporates methods used by oppressive governments when they needed to round up a certain ethnic group for safety purposes. A prime example is the obligation of Jews during World War 2 to wear arm bands identifying their religion. Now immigrants must carry identification of their citizenship on them at all times while being subject to a law that no whites have to comply with. Of course, we aren't sticking our immigrants in ovens and rooms of poison gas, but the requirement is the same: if you can not prove that you are who you say you are, you will be taken into our custody.
So now the question is, is this really a reform? Or just citizens making an angry statement at the expense of darker skin and the constitutionality of our country.

Community Service: Going Beyond People

Part I. The Issue

Did you know that every day shelters around the country are putting down cats and dogs because no one will adopt them and space is very limited? The first ones to go are the hostile animals who have been mistreated by abuse and/or neglect. There are only a few reasons to abuse an animal, the most common being displacement of anger. This means that when a person gets upset at either himself or another person he takes out the blame—and unfortunately, the violence—on the one thing that can not fight back: their animal. Next in line on this list of reasons is entertainment. Some twisted minds actually get pleasure from seeing two dogs rip each other apart fighting—to the point of death. Of course, occurrences like these are illegal and fall under the category of animal abuse, but that doesn’t stop them. Ask yourself this: if your neighbor held dog fights in his or her basement late at night, do you think you would know about it? In most cases, the answer is no. So how does the police find these criminals? The truth is, I have no idea. Maybe if I spoke with an expert…but however the investigation goes, I think the police should, somehow, step up their game. Animal cruelty has been around for centuries, and it isn’t going away any time soon. Perhaps one of the main reasons is that the public is not as involved as they should be. Granted, there are many issues to be concerned about in the modern world, but because the issue of animal cruelty is not staring most citizens in the face, it primarily goes unnoticed.

Unfortunately, the government is in the same position as the public. There is virtually no attention focused on the subject by people with a political stature. In fact, the laws related to the welfare of animals only include domestic pets, allowing the widespread mistreatment of livestock to continue. The only real media attention received by defenseless animals comes from celebrities like Brigitte Bardot, who played a big part in the production of synthetic fur, and films like Fast Food Nation, who’s main focus was taking action against the treatment of animals in the food industry. However, there are organizations like PETA and the Humane Society that, although they can be extreme, help the situation by focusing on animal abuse and torture within industries such as fast food and cosmetics. One such extreme case would be a situation concerning the ALF (animal liberation front). This small group of extremist vegans was determined to end animal testing, but made the mistake of fighting fire with fire and went to different universities bombing their testing centers and even sent a bomb by mail to one of the instructors at UC Santa Cruz. Of course, there are radicals on every issue, but those fighting for animal equality tend to get more bad press. Fortunately, there are organizations like the Humane Society focus their attention on building animal shelters and taking care of stray, abused, and neglected animals.

My main concern with the well being of animals, besides the obvious reason that they don’t deserve to be in pain, is the moral center of humanity as a whole. I know not everyone is a “bunny terrorist”, but if this is the way that we treat defenseless beings who are prone to pain, how will we treat other people, for example, prisoners of war?

Part II. Government Response

As I mentioned above, there is not a whole lot that the people in Washington are doing to help the situation at hand. However, a few of the states have taken some form of action to help the situation. Last year in California, there was a proposition on the ballot that changed the required size of chicken cages to give hens more room to lay eggs and to live. This is but a minor victory in the land of livestock where the door to a chicken’s cage only has to be open 15 minutes each day for it to be considered free-range.

While the federal government is taking any change regarding animal welfare very slowly, more and more animals are being born to suffer continuously as future food. Now, I’m not trying to turn the entire population vegetarian, but I do believe that reducing consumption of meat would in turn decrease the amount of animal suffering in the merciless food industry.

To put things into perspective, one of the main fast food chains in the country, Kentucky Fried Chicken, has been maliciously mistreating their livestock (mainly chickens) for as long as they have been in business. Their chickens are delivered to them in cages (often broken or dented) on the back of a truck that then tips the entire contents of itself backwards and all the cages come crashing down to the ground, injuring many of the chickens. The next step in the process is to bloat the chickens so full of food that their legs literally cripple beneath them, leaving them immobile. As these chickens come closer to the end of their miserable lives, they are shackled upside down to be beheaded and cooked. Faulty machinery causes some of the chickens to not be properly beheaded, keeping them alive during the cooking process. This gruesome occurrence is called a “red birds.” The issue here is not only the fact that flagrant abuse is occurring, but the fact that in order to save some cash here and there on new, working machinery, executives at KFC are letting almost one third of their livestock die before it gets to their consumers. In addition to this, multiple protests are constantly going on, but nothing can be done as this is not technically classified as animal abuse since it pertains to chickens.

The thing that baffles me is that the federal government has consistently not done anything to help situations like these concerning living beings that do not have the ability to stand up for themselves. Now if we as a nation are not willing to help those who are most defenseless, will we be willing to treat those who have a voice similarly? This brings up the concept of morality and where we are willing to draw the line on issues like these.

If you look at some horrible instances such as what happened at the prison Abu Ghraib, you see how our own American soldiers—our “heroes”—treated those who were defenseless. Yes, those servicemen were perhaps just a few bad apples, but the way they treated Iraqi men was not too much better than the way that KFC treats their chickens. It’s all on the same playing field. Yet the government intervened as soon as they got word of the atrocities that went on in the Iraqi prison, but they do not treat the defenseless in our own country with the same respect. You are probably now thinking that this is irrelevant because a chicken and a human being are nowhere near equal. Yet, I believe that we were blessed with large brains and a conscience to be able realize that purposely inflicting pain is wrong; be it on another human or a rabbit. If only animals could talk…there would be a huge increase in lawsuits.

Part III. Help wanted

Throughout the course of this year, I chose to help these poor creatures in any way I could. As you can see by my signed letter of service, I have spent time working in an art gallery in order to raise money to help cats through the Kitty Foundation. In addition to this, I spent some time working in the Kitty Corner at a shelter in Pleasant Hill to help socialize cats so they could be adopted. I have a cat at home, and so this work was familiar to me, and I felt a connection to the animals I was working with. Unfortunately it took me an extended amount of time to be able to help an organization such as the shelter in Pleasant Hill. After waiting a month to be able to attend an orientation at the Humane Society establishment in Berkeley, I was locked out of the building and unable to offer my help. Another long process took place for my acceptance to work in Pleasant Hill. Because of this, I haven’t been able to do as much hands-on work as I would have liked, but I did raise a good amount of money that I know will go to good use. Of course, one person can not do too much to help the situation by just volunteering or donating, but there are many steps the government could take to help resolve the issue at hand.

Funding is critical for shelters to be able to provide more paying jobs to those willing to help. Without proper capital, shelters can not supply an adequate amount of food for all the animals that they don’t even have enough space for. In addition to the shortage of food and space, shelters have to perform medical procedures on certain animals and cuts in funding can result in the death of an animal that would have only needed a small amount of medical attention. Donations can help tremendously for needs such as these, but ultimately what animal shelters need is a steady flow of money which could be provided by government funding. These are only a few of the things that would help in animal shelters, but there are even more steps to protect animals in other areas.

The food industry is in dire need of better regulation and inspection to ensure that livestock is being treated humanely. In the fast food industry, cows are packed into such confined spaces that they are constantly standing knee-deep in feces. Not only is this both disgusting and very uncomfortable, but it poses health issues for the cows as well. Now that’s just one example of a wide array of things that are wrong in the food manufacturing, but there are many other problems dealing mainly with pigs and chickens. As I have mentioned above, a proposition on California’s 2009 ballot passed a law that establishes a new regulation for the dimension of a chicken’s cage. I believe this is a good step forward; however, we still have a long ways to go in order to get everything up to a level at which we will not be appalled to see how our meat is prepared.

Most noticeable in dog fighting, in-home abuse and neglect has become an unfortunate circumstance in the issue of animal welfare. I know that the government can not solve all of the predicaments that animals face, but the police department should have a sector of investigation dedicated to finding flagrant animal abusers just as they have workers dedicated to finding online predators. Of course this would take lots of extra funding which we can definitely not afford with today’s economy, but ideally, this would be large improvement on exposing criminals.

Lastly, animal testing needs immediate reform. Most animals are discarded or dead after being used for testing—technically classified as animal abuse, only we don’t use that term when there is an off chance of making a scientific or cosmetic break-through. I understand testing in order to find cures for cancer, but to genetically modify a mouse to hold so much excess skin that it can not see just to test an anti-wrinkle cream does not make sense to me. There are four hundred alternatives to testing on animals and even so, no more than twenty five percent of the data gathered is compatible with human results. So why do we continue to use living, breathing, feeling creatures that will never benefit as test subjects? It simply does not make any sense, financially as well as morally.

There are so many areas of animal welfare that could be improved with a few simple laws—yet, as we’ve seen with the health care reform, bills do not have the best survival rate in Washington D.C. It is rather distressing that a nation as great as ours is not available to help those most in need, but I suppose we can just wait for climate change to kill us all.

The Unfortunate Truth

Just because certain animals are cuter doesn't mean the other ones should get the shaft.

If you can't read what it says:
Deer are ruining your garden.
I can't stand hurting them.
You don't mind bashing squirrels, smashing slugs and trapping groundhogs.
But deer are sooo adorable!
Oh, great.
Survival of the cutest.

Testing at a Utah University

I know that a lot of the things that PETA does can be argued to be very one-sided, but things like this are just not okay.

Humane Society Wrong?

Mike Rowe from the Discovery Channel's hit TV show, Dirty Jobs, gives an insight to the castration of sheep.

How Big is Animal Cruelty, Really?

There are numerous forms of animal cruelty in the world. The most talked about are in-home abuse/neglect (like dog fighting), and animal testing. Not many people stop to think about all those animals that are harmed in the food industry(that link has some eye-opening information about slaughter).

Have you ever stopped to think about all those traditional bull-fights in Spain? Those bulls have a prolonged, agonizing death--and worst of all, it's public.

When was the last time you gave so much as a fleeting thought to all the animals that are purposefully raised for their skins? Yes, we have synthetic fur nowadays, but there are companies who claim their fur is fake while using the real deal because consumers of the fake stuff want something that looks and feels real. In China, even cats and dogs are abused for fur.

Did you ever go to the circus and wonder how they get the animals to jump through fiery hoops and balance on balls? Through a process that includes painful punishments if they do not perform as expected as well as throughout the training process.

What about the killer whales that are forced to live in confined spaces at different theme parks? They become so distressed that they actually attack their trainers--those who are closest to them.

There are animals that are abused and go without any attention every day. Think about it.

Just because I like cartoons...

Funny?

Bad Break-up Turns to Animal Abuse

Anthony Spindle, 21, broke up with his girlfriend several months ago. I know that break-ups can be hard, but this is the way you definitely do NOT react:
Spindle left his ex-girlfriend voice messages. On these messages, he would speak about how she did not love him anymore and he can be heard severely abusing her puppy. Two people who lived with Spindle at the time witnessed the abuse and told authorities

"[Spindle] grabbed the puppy by the legs, swung him around and threw him against the wall. He then beat the dog with a skateboard and tennis racket."

Spindle's ex-girlfriend explains that he took the dog because she was not able to keep it anymore and admits that the relationship was abusive at times, although she did not know what exactly initiated the attack, but Temma Martin, with the Utah Animal Adoption Center, was not surprised to hear this at all.

"It's the last piece of control the abuser has over that victim. It's been shown that this often happens when a victim gets out of a situation, then the pet takes the brunt of the violence."

In 2007, Spindle was charged with assault and later with domestic violence. Both of these cases were dismissed, but this latest one will not go unpunished.

Pet Abuse/Neglect in Massachusetts

On Thursday, March 11 of this year, two ten-week-old pitbull puppies were found with serious health conditions in a ditch by the side of the road in East Longmeadow, MA. Unfortunately, police have no leads as to who could have abandoned the two dogs and the case goes unsolved.

Things like this really get me upset. How could someone just abandon such an adorable, sweet little thing? At least give it to a shelter so that perhaps a child might adopt it and grow to love the dog as his or her pet. What happened to the old saying of dogs being man's best friend? Clearly the feelings are not reciprocated.

Poking a Bit of Fun...

I am not usually a big fan of TheYoungTurks on youtube, but I found this video to be quite funny. The sad part is, it's all true.

Did You Know?

Did you know that rats are genetically modified to have excess skin just to test your anti-aging creams?

Did you know that rabbits are constantly blinded by having a vast array of products inserted into their eyes? And did you know that this "test" does not even guarantee safety of a product? It is only used to prevent law suits.

Did you know that there are over 300,000,000 animals born to suffer each day? There are 400,000 human births every day.

Did you know that only 5 to 25% of the animal tests and human results are agreeable?

Did you know that scientifically speaking, there are 400 alternatives to animal experimentation?

Did you know that, on average, thirty-three animals die in a laboratory every second?

Did you know that most animals are only used in one experiment and are euthanized after their "contribution"?

When you buy a product, know the pain that goes into it.

We've Got a Long Ways to Go

This political cartoon is courtesy of Bob Al-Green's Cartoon Blog.

Michael Moore on Health Care

Michael Moore was on Larry King Live and spoke about the oh-so-famous Health Care Bill that has just recently been passed. As a radical, Moore's point of view will not be shared with a huge mass of people, but he does make some good points. He realizes that there is a ways to go and as a true progressive, he is not happy yet. However, the point he makes towards the end about giving a right to only part of the population is a bit...well wrong. He makes the point that not all people are currently covered and won't be until 2014, but when he makes the comparison to freeing the slaves or giving women voting rights, he forgot about a chunk of history. Moore suggests that it is not fair to leave out a portion of the population for the next four years and contrasts it with slavery. He states:

"When we decided to get rid of slavery, we didn't say 'well you know, we're going to free 32 million of the slaves, but 15 million of those slaves are still going to have to be in slavery.' "

In fact, we actually did do something very similar, which was to make one African American male the equivalent of three fifths of one White male. You gotta love Michael Moore's radicalism, but he needs to get all of his facts straight if he's going to argue it out.

Dog Fighting

This is a very toned down video of what is happening in the lives of literally millions of dogs.

One such case, is the case involving three men: Donaver Jones, Melvin Trent, and Timothy Norris from Chicago. Although it happened a in mid November 2008, these three men will appear in court this month. They are charged with holding a dog fight. Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart stated:

"What we interrupted Saturday night was both disgusting and disturbing. So many times, we hear about fights after the fact or find the discarded remains of a dog involved in one of these fights."

When officers came to intervene, they found a cowering dog that was so injured, it could barely stand in the middle of fighting ring covered in blood. There were about 50 people attending this spectacle. As the court update states:
Officers confiscated a tackle box filled with steroids, amphetamines, syringes and an IV drip.

"They also found a staple gun used to close wounds so the dogs could keep fighting, as well as thick wooden stakes used to drive apart the dogs' jaws after they had locked down on the other dog."

This is not only completely and utterly wrong, but it reaches a point of despicableness that can not even be described by the English language.

Where are Our Moral Centers?

Recently, I stumble upon a website dedicated to the education of people on animal cruelty. Although it is quite underdeveloped (I'm pretty sure it's a brand new website), it holds some quick facts that will easily leave an impression on someone. This made me think. Why would someone ever do such terrible things? Of course, there are many people who have done things that would astound others (Abu Ghraib, serial killers, genocides, etc.), but why would someone inflict pain upon a completely innocent being that is even incapable of communication? According to Kellert, S.R. and A.R. Felthous, there are nine reasons:

to control an animal

to retaliate against an animal

to retaliate against another person

to satisfy a prejudice against a species or breed

to express anger through an animal

to enhance one's own aggressiveness

to shock people for amusement

to displace hostility from a person to an animal

to perform non-specific sadism

Even so, it still manages to astound me how cruel people can be... How a person can actually retain pleasure from forcing two dogs to fight each other to the death... How a boy can giggle at a cat crying out while being burned to death... How a hunter can kill an endangered animal to make a fur coat... All of this is happening. It's all around us.

Bad Timing

We have all been at the wrong place at the wrong time, but hopefully none of us will ever walk in front of a camera during a presidential speech...

Gotta Love Fox News

In this video, news anchors on Fox talk about vice-president Biden's slip of the tongue. I think it's interesting how they mention how this is the only thing that everyone is talking about instead of the health care bill itself. To that I say, "Are you crazy?" Everyone is buzzing with the news that public health care is now being put into affect, and how they feel and what they think about it.

Even stranger is the fact that they rag on Biden so much for his use of language, although this doesn't matter when it comes to a man from their own party: Rush Limbaugh. During the whole drama-fest that happening between Palin, Emmanuel, and Limbaugh with the usage of the words "fucking retards", no one mentioned that Rush is being disrespectful and it is "embarrassing" for him to use such language (but that's what they said about Biden!).

Health Care Situation

I think that at this point, not too many people are sure what is going to happen with health care and if it will be any good. I know that I am not confident about the bill that is being debated over in the House of Representatives, and I know that under our current system there are too many people going without the treatment that they need. There will always be problems in any system that we have.

Arthur Delaney from the Huffington Post wrote an article on how the middle class is losing heath care the fastest. Seeing as how he does write for the Huffington Post, I think he has credible sources, but the fact that health care is eating away at the largest piece of the pie, we are not in a good situation so something has to change, though what, I am not sure.

Cyclone in Fiji

First a disaster in Haiti, then a violent earthquake in Chile, now a cyclone in Fiji. It seems as though the Earth is trying to tell us something.

Many scientists agree that natural disasters such as these are not getting more frequent, as some people are concerned, but instead they are becoming more destructive than ever before.

Think about the actions you take in your daily routines and how they affect our planet.

A Bit of Humor

This is actually a picture of Rahm saying hello to someone, but as all artists know, PERSPECTIVE is what makes art (or in this case, a funny picture).

The Truth Comes Out!

So we COULD have an excellent public health care, but... we don't deserve it.

Failing Economy

Even with a good education, jobs are hard to find.

Community Service Project

So I know that I have been talking about working at animal shelters and all the problems with animal cruelty (a subject a feel strongly about), but there has recently become available an opportunity to help students for two hours a week at the brand new library downtown. Helping students with homework will definitely be a serious help when all of our schools go down the drain and teachers are no longer available to give individual help. I have been thinking about changing my school project to this one since it seems to pertain more to economics and government issues instead of moral ones.

How will today's children be able to provide the solutions for tomorrow's dilemmas when are classrooms are this crowded?

Health Care Debate

Animal Cruelty Case

Video Courtesy of KSL.com

22-year-old Emilio Hoy was recently arrested on the account of animal cruelty. Police concluded the fact that Hoy held the dog by its tail while repeatedly shooting it at close-range with an Airsoft gun in the testicles. I'm sure many men can sympathize with this poor animal.

Occurrences like these are truly tragic and completely unnecessary. I don't understand how any person can be capable of harming a completely innocent being. What I don't comprehend even more, is why a person would adopt an animal to abuse it. Fortunately, these cases are being cracked one by one and i sincerely hope that less will occur in the future.

Sarah Palin vs Politically Incorrect Names... sort of

As you probably know, Rahm Emanuel recently used the phrase "fucking retarded" when referring to liberal extremists. Sarah Palin was instantly outraged at his incorrect use of the term. However, when Rush Limbaugh agreed with Emanuel and used the same offense multiple times to large audiences, Palin claims it to be satire and was completely at peace. Not only is this a double-standard for politicians that might help her versus other politicians, but Palin is indirectly insulting her own child by claiming it to be all right to call a person or a group of people a politically incorrect word if they "clearly [don't] mean it". So, by Palin's standards, we can all make as many sexist, racist, and homophobic jokes as we please.

My Community Service Project

As you may have seen on my recent post, I plan to volunteer at the SPCA in Berkeley, California. I received an email from the staff there and will be attending orientation tomorrow to plan out the rest of my service at this venue.

Today, upon hearing my plans, my mother asked me if this would count as community service because it has to do with animals. I simply replied that animal cruelty, abuse, and neglect is a serious ongoing problem. Just recently, a man skinned and cooked a live rat on camera to be on a reality TV show. Activists quickly reacted and the show was fined $3,000.

Funny Stuff

MENTAL HEALTH BREAK:

Popular rapper, Lil Wayne has been sentenced to prison because of felony gun charges. He requested that the date of imprisonment be moved so he can have some (much needed) dental work done. The judge accepted his claim and he is due to be in jail on March 2, 2010.

Michell Obama Speaks About Health Care

"Doing nothing is not an option." This is the first lady's argument and the title of CNN's recent news article. Michelle claims that we are spending billions of dollars on certain maladies when health care reform could help prevent them in the first place.

Reforming the health care does not only affect different illnesses, but hopefully will help general health, starting with eating right. As being, quite literally, the fattest country in the world, if we get to the root of such a huge epidemic, many medical conditions would not be an issue anymore; and the only way to do this is make sure that everyone has a doctor who can wisely advise them.

Mental Health Break

These are pretty funny. :)

Is the iPad a Restatement?

Many of you have heard by now of apple's newest product called the iPad. It seems like an amazing, shiny, new toy except here's the catch: there already is an iPad. Fujitsu is the name of the game this time. It created an iPad that was sold primarily in the United States to "help shop clerks verify prices, check real-time inventory data and close sales on the go." The New York Times goes deeper into this report and the drama between the two companies. However, it is still known that the Fujitsu iPad was created in 2002 using Microsoft’s CE.NET operating system with a smaller, 3.5 inch touchscreen with the ability to use Wi-fi and Bluetooth and support the new Skype program. Just like Apple's new iPad, the Fujitsu iPad is extremely portable, and perhaps even more so than Apple's. The main attraction for Fujitsu's older product is that business owners would no longer have to tote a computer around with all this technology right at their fingertips.

In addition to the little accident that the iPad had already been invented, Apple faces a problem with it's products name. Many women have been associated the new iPad with feminine hygiene products and the New York Times reports:

people from Boston to Ireland are complaining that “iPad,” in their regional brogue, sounds almost indistinguishable from “iPod,” Apple’s music player.

So will Apple's iPad be as successful as it's other products? We will have to wait and see.

Rebuilding in Haiti: Taking a Wrong Turn?

Recently, CNN new reported that surviving citizens of Haiti are not waiting for international assistance, but instead attempting to reconstruct buildings. However, engineers are growing worrisome, and with good reason. The building itself is very informal and people are using torn pieces from the once-collapsed houses, which could easily fall apart.

CNN interviewed Jean-Fritznel St. Claire and three friends, reporting:

the group insists that they and others who stayed in the earthquake zone are eager to start clearing rubble and building what they can.

Yet this hastiness to rebuild concerns engineers that are working to help the Haitian people with the clean-up and reconstruction after the 7.0 earthquake. They claim that Haitians are only turning to the materials that are available to them instead of making safe buildings with nonhazardous materials.

The earthquake alone should have triggered a hasty response by the rest of the developed world, but this clearly shows that Haiti is not getting the help it needs ergo we need to step up our game.

Serving the Community

For my community service project, I was planning to volunteer with a SPCA center in the bay area. However, this plan is not set in stone yet, so my back up would be making lunches for the needy at Glide Memorial Church in San Fransisco as I have done before. Either way, I am happy to be able to make a difference in the my community to help the growing population of needy people and/or needy animals. When no one else will help, individuals are what makes the difference.

Laws Tighten Around Smog.

The Environmental Protection Agency proposed on Thursday to make laws concerning smog and pollution in cities much stricter in order to lead to better health for many US citizens. The Obama administration has done much to help the environment by changing the laws made during the Bush administration, but as a NY Times editorial puts it:

"[A] few bad rules linger on the books, among them an inadequate health standard governing harmful ozone, which most people call smog."

The environmental laws made during the Bush administration were considered by state officials as too weak to protect human health. Now, Obama wants there to be no more than 0.065 parts per million of ground-level ozone phasing in during the next 20 years. In addition to this, a seasonal law will be put into place to prevent the environment from continuous exposure to these malicious molecules.

Finding a way to cut out all the pollutants in the air will lead way to large, green businesses (provided they take the opportunity). Now all we have to do is find a large enough incentive...

Tanker and Special needs School Van Collide

Four dead and six injured was the result. I realize this isn't about the political scene, but a reminder to drive safely during the holidays.

Thought of the Past

I don't know if any of you remember the days when political figures in the Middle East were upset that our newspapers had cartoons containing them. I stumbled across this and it made me think of those days.

Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire (Literally)

How would you react if someone told you that a close family member was killed in a terrorist attack? Now how would you feel if you found out that it was completely preventable. Fortunately, no one was killed in the recent attempt of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to blow up a Northwest Airlines plane and 278 passengers only ended in his own injury. CNN reports the problems with security in this situation:

"First, the intelligence community knew that an al Qaeda affiliate in Yemen intended to strike the United States and was recruiting operatives for the task, the president said. But intelligence operatives "did not aggressively follow up on and prioritize particular streams of intelligence related to a possible attack against the homeland," he noted.

Second, there was a "larger failure of analysis, a failure to connect the dots of intelligence that existed across our intelligence community."

Third, the intelligence failure contributed to flaws in the country's watch-listing system that resulted in the alleged bomber not being added to the no-fly list."

I recently heard on the news that Umar's father had contacted the airline and warned them of his son, as he had doubts about his loyalty to America. Obama later said: "Rather than a failure to collect or share intelligence, this was a failure to connect and understand the intelligence that we already had." Here is a video of him speaking to the public: