Kriss Perras Running Waters of Malibu Arts Reviews Magazine reports that Lord of the Rings Star Viggo Mortensen Joins Forum on Impeachment This Evening Online and in New Hampshire.

Excerpt: “Online participants can watch the panelists and email questions at http://www.kucinichtv.com from 8:30 to 10:30 p.m ET.” (read article)

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Update 7:25 PM
Unfortunately it appeared the Kucinich team had technical difficulties, so the video wasn’t available.

The article linked above mentioned this piece by George McGovern today in The Washington Post: Why I Believe Bush Must Go, in support of impeachment. (more…)

According to the Associated Press, ABC has cut 3 candidates from its upcoming Presidential Debates. The Seattle Times reports that Dennis Kucinich is contesting this decision:

NEW YORK — Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Friday after ABC News excluded him, fellow Democrat Mike Gravel and Republican Duncan Hunter from today’s debates. (read article)

Kucinich is contesting his and the other candidates’ exclusion, and he’s filing a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

Consider that a few weeks ago, Republican Mike Huckabee was nearly as far behind in the polls as some of those now being excluded. It’s not up to ABC or any other network to decide for us how we should vote, or who is a viable candidate at this point in the process, when only one state has chosen its nominees in the two major parties. The American people own the US airwaves, not ABC or any other network. What good is the free press if that press won’t provide us fair, objective, and balanced coverage of something as important as a presidential election? If you wish to let ABC know what you think of this decision, they have a contact page here.

Last night Bill Moyers interviewed Dennis Kucinich on his PBS show, Bill Moyers Journal. If you missed it, you can watch the video or read the transcript here. You can also read the blog entry, Media and the Presidential Election, with viewer comments.

Thank you, Bill Moyers and PBS, for giving this important candidate some of the media coverage he deserves.

Americans voted for a Democratic majority in Congress in 2006, and the message I thought we sent when we did that — just as the media seemed to think — was that most of us wanted out of the Iraq War and wanted to see Cheney and Bush impeached, or at least some true ass-kicking in Washington over the lies they used to get us into the war and the torture and other atrocities committed since. (Both Clinton and Nixon were impeached for far less.)

Yet the candidate who’s taken the most action toward that end, Dennis Kucinich, is BEHIND in the polls.

So my question is, when are Americans going to figure it out? You can have the candidate who appears on TV the most and visits your town, so you get a little thrill before you vote for him or her, and they can have that expensive campaign backed by the very people (wealthy corporatists) who want the opposite of what you want from them, or you can pay more attention to those who don’t have wealthy backers or the nod from mass corporate media, and are actually doing their jobs and campaigning at the same time, at least one of whom wants a true universal healthcare system rather than a corporate health insurance system, and is continuing to take action on behalf of you, who are ignoring them.

Does big business run the country? Or do we, the people?

It’s none of my business how you vote, and it’s as easy for me as for anyone to be fooled by the wrong politicians, or to be under-impressed by the right ones. I remember voting against one man basically because he wasn’t a good enough public speaker to get his ideas across in a way that impressed me that year. I didn’t like his voice either. But I later regretted not voting for him. So when I read about Oprah Winfrey promoting a presidential candidate, I find it disturbing. I have nothing against Oprah, or any other celebrity who might back a particular candidate. In fact I’d rather see celebrities in the news for this reason than for some of the seedier reasons we’re forced to hear about them on the nightly news. I admire a lot that Oprah has done, and especially that she promotes important issues, though I don’t know whether she’s made clear all her positions on the issues our next president will face, or why I should listen to her over anyone else about who should be president. (more…)

I’m surprised and disappointed at the response by some progressives to Dennis Kucinich’s insistence that the State Children’s Healthcare Insurance Program (SCHIP) bill should cover legal immigrant children. If a child’s parents are here legally, and working in the US, which means they very likely pay taxes, why should their child, who has no control over where his or her parents decide to live, not benefit from this program? (more…)

While I mulled over various blog topics, including the essay I planned on honeybees, my husband sent me a link to an environmental article about pollinators and the recent scares regarding disappearing bees, Are the Bees Dying off Because They’re Too Busy? The article offers a slightly different answer to the puzzle than that of GM crops, but one every bit as indicative of our artificial modern food production methods. It surmises that bee colony exhaustion, due to overuse as pollinators on factory farms, is the cause of disappearing bees. Small beekeepers who let their bees live a more natural life cycle don’t seem to have the same problems as commercial beekeepers who lease hives to one large monoculture farm after another, almost year round.

That made a nice segue into another topic I’ve planned to write about, the importance of family stories. A few weeks ago I came across a brief memoir my mom wrote of her childhood in San Diego during the Depression. When food luxuries were tough for my grandmother to come by, she would sometimes visit her father’s ranch in Potrero, just this side of the border from Tecate. She’d bring home fresh eggs and honey, and presumably milk and butter, since he also kept dairy cows. The trip took a vehicle and gasoline that were often scarce, so there were times that those trips didn’t happen as often as she would’ve liked.

The honey came from my great-grandfather’s bees. My mom recorded no details of the process, but mentioned watching her grandfather extract honey from his hives. My grandmother wrote that at one time he had “90 stands of honey bees” in his apiary. No doubt the bees kept his orchard and garden well pollinated, as well as those of his neighbors. My great-grandfather was from the Danish island of Læsø, famous for its Northern brown bees, among other things. I don’t know whether he learned about beekeeping as a boy. I know he used to herd geese, and he left home at fourteen to sail the seas for ten years, made three trips around Cape Horn, and once almost got stranded in Antwerp. I also remember Grandma telling how he’d hitch a team to a wagon and make the trip from Potrero down to the shore in San Diego, two days there, and two days back. He’d load up with kelp to use as mulch in his garden after washing the salt out. I wouldn’t be surprised if he learned that use of kelp back on his island home.

What should’ve remained a pleasant excursion into my family’s past is blighted by recent news. The tiny community of Potrero, with its valley’s quiet agricultural history (Potrero is Spanish for “pasturing place”) was once home to Kumeyaay tribes, who subsisted on acorns and game from its oak woods, and carved metates into the nearby granite hills to grind meal. Potrero’s pastoral peace remained intact even when Pancho Villa’s rebellion took place just across the border. But the valley’s serenity may be about to change.

Blackwater USA wants to build an 824 acre training facility in Potrero, called Blackwater West. People in the community, the county, and the entire state who know of this plan are horrified.

There’s already fierce debate in Illinois regarding Blackwater North, an 80-acre facility there, as well as troubling reports of its response to wrongful death suits by families of its employees who fell in Iraq.

One has to wonder what the impact would be of such a facility, near environmentally fragile oak tree stands already threatened by Sudden Oak Death, and to the golden eagles that nest there. What about the fire hazards and the noise? The quiet little communities and single outlying residences near Potrero are some of the last true countryside settings left in San Diego County. Will they soon be shaken by the sound of weapons fire and helicopters resonating off nearby granite boulders?

Blackwater in Potrero is a bad idea.

I found a couple of videos about Blackwater at YouTube (warning, these are disturbing):

Blackwater, America’s Private Army

Blackwater: Shadow Army

Here’s another video, Blackwater Invades Illinois, with Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army.

I’m finally sorting out my thoughts about the speech Senator Barack Obama gave, weeks ago, in which he talked about religion and politics. First I think it’s important to put the speech in context. That’s where some people seem to have a disconnect in their criticism of what he said. I did, too, when I first read about it, and I declined to read it. I’ve only since learned where he gave his speech. The occasion was Call to Renewal’s (whose stated purpose is, “A faith-based movement to overcome poverty”) Pentecost 2006: Building a Covenant for a New America. Senator Obama gave the a keynote address at the conference held in Washington, D. C., on Wednesday, June 28th, 2006. (more…)

Abortion won’t destroy the world for the human race, or any other species, but overpopulation will. According to some experts the world already contains three times as many people as it can reliably support. So if someone doesn’t want a child or doesn’t think she can support a child, or love a child, or is afraid, or thinks she can better care for the children she already has by not having another, why is there so much clamor against abortion and not for all the children of the world? The poor, the starving, the dying, the diseased, the war torn? Mother them, and then tell me how and when and whether to be a mother. Why are corporations allowed to rape the environment and the global economy on which the family depends for survival, while you try to deny a woman the chance to claim her own life before choosing to give birth? Of course she should use contraceptives, or abstinence. Sometimes she doesn’t have a choice. Sometimes those fail. Abortion isn’t the answer for everyone, and it’s a last resort at best. In a perfect world abortion would never be necessary. But show me that perfect world before you tell me it’s not an option.

I’m just going to provide a link to the excellent Bitch Ph.D. post about Blogging For Choice Month, and urge you to read it, including all the links.