Friday, April 28, 2006

HAPPY FUN FRIDAY!

Come the end of the week and it is time to stop and not be so serious. It is time to enjoy the weekend with a little bit of humor.

Watch this, and see our fearless leader literally spiral out of control and fall.

More animated political cartoons can be found here and here.

If you are a self-loathing Boston Red Sox fan, you may want to see this. Game six of the 1986 world series re-enacted in RBI Baseball (Nintendo, 1988). All the drama, all the intrigue, all the heartbreak!

Other really fun stuff can be found here.

Enjoy!

Thursday, April 27, 2006

Hurricane Katrina turned FEMA into a "symbol of a bumbling bureaucracy" so far beyond repair that it should be scrapped, senators said Thursday. They called for creation of a new disaster relief agency as the next storm season looms on the horizon.
Senate Panel Says FEMA Is Beyond Repair

FEMA is an agency of the Department of Homeland Security. FEMA's purpose is to coordinate the response to a disaster which overwhelms the resources of local and municipal authorities.

While on-the-ground, logistical support for disaster recovery is a major part of FEMA's charter, the agency is also responsible for the disbursement of funds for rebuilding efforts and relief for citizens and businesses. FEMA also provides training of response personnel throughout the country as part of the agency's preparedness effort.

Before there was FEMA, there was the United States Civil Defense.

Civil Defense was an effort to prepare civilians for military attack. It uses the principles of emergency operations: prevention, mitigation, preparation, response, or evacuation, and recovery. Programs of this sort were initially discussed at least as early as the 1920s but it was only after the threat of nuclear weapons became realized that they became widespread. As the intensity of the Cold War waned emphasis shifted from military attack to emergencies and disasters in general.

With Civil Defense, individuals are empowered to protect and defend their own communities versus waiting for a response from the state or federal governments.

Civil Defense works from the bottom up, instead of top down. Civil Defense would be part of a city or town's responsibility in cooperation with the police, fire and school departments. Citizens would be encouraged to make up the all-volunteer Civil Defense Brigades. Proper training and funds can be provided by federal government. Units could be city-wide, ward-wide or even just block-wide. It would be a professional neighborhood watch community effort.

Imagine if this was in place during Hurricane Katrina...

Wednesday, April 26, 2006



This is one of my most favorite books and I highly recommend that you grab a copy for yourself. Months ago, I was killing time in a Chicago airport by walking around a bookstore. I was attracted by the cover, so I picked it up and started reading a few pages. I was hooked right away.

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies is a book by Jared Diamond, professor of physiology at UCLA. In 1998 it won a Pulitzer Prize and the Aventis Prize for best science book. A documentary based on the book was broadcast on PBS in July, 2005, produced by the National Geographic Society.

According to the author, an alternative title would be: "A short history about everyone for the last 13,000 years". But the book is not merely an account of the past; it attempts to explain why Western civilization, as a whole, has survived and conquered others, while refuting the belief that Western hegemony is due to any form of Western intellectual or moral superiority. Diamond argues that the gaps in power and technology between human societies do not reflect cultural or racial differences, but rather originate in environmental differences powerfully amplified by various positive feedback loops.

The basic theory of the book is that before anyone developed agriculture, people lived as hunter-gatherers, as some still do. The book argues that Western civilization is not so much a product of ingenuity, but of opportunity. That is, civilization is not created out of sheer will or intelligence, but is more like a house of cards, each level dependent upon the levels below it.

Click here for the PBS program based on the book.

Monday, April 24, 2006

Good evening,

I am still arranging the deck chairs on this ship. If you have any suggestions, I am all ears!

You can gather from my blog roll, where I stand. I do not like blogs that try to pretend that it is something when clearly it is not. Kind of like Fox News claiming to be "fair and balanced". A good motto to have is be true and always keep your sense of humor.

There is a City Council meeting tonight. Due to other priorities, I cannot attend this one.

If your calendar is free, mark this down - Democratic Party State Convention Monday, May 8, 2006 at 6:00 PM. To be held at the West Valley Inn 4 Blossom West Warwick, RI. If you can attend, email info@ridemocrats.org

I cannot attend due to a previous commitment. I am not getting off to a great start here, am I?

Down to business, there has been some anticipation for this blog site for quite a while now. Some of you may know me from my other contributions to the information super highway such as savehorton and ascensioncranston or my postings on Daily Kos or Clark Community Network.

What do I want to do with this site? Well, I am an idealist and I do believe that there are no problems that cannot be solved without enough people-power taking it on. I do not want to just regurgitate information and opinion that you can get from a million other sources but to inspire you to action for the good of all.

One of the biggest issues we have today is public apathy. Increasingly, Americans have become estranged from democracy and each other. Turnout has steadily fallen in every American election over the last 30 years, see the Vanishing Voter Project.

Why are Americans tuning out the democratic process and what can be done about it?

Sunday, April 23, 2006

Hello Everyone,

First thing is first, take this poll:

If you are voting in the Democratic primary, who are you voting for?
Cindy Fogarty
Mike Napolitano
Mike Pisaturo
Free polls from Pollhost.com