California High Speed Rail

The proposed California High Speed rail would completely revolutionize travel in my lovely Sunshine State. As someone who spends 7 hours and probably almost $200 in gas driving (and thats just one way) from Southern California to Northern California, this issue is close to my heart. Taking a train is much easier than flying, especially for luggage reasons, and is much easier for small children or people who don't like flying. Essentially this train could completely change the way we travel around the state.

Here is what the website, CA High-Speed Rail, says about the proposal,

The proposed system stretches from San Francisco, Oakland and Sacramento in the north -- with service to the Central Valley -- to Los Angeles and San Diego in the south. With bullet trains operating at speeds up to 220 mph, the express travel time from downtown San Francisco to Los Angeles is just under 2 ½ hours. Intercity travelers (trips between metropolitan regions) along with longer-distance commuters would enjoy the benefits of a system designed to connect with existing rail, air and highway systems.

According to another website, Students for California High Speed Rail, these are some of the other benefits to the project:

* it could create 450,000 jobs across the state
* prevent 10,000 auto accidents every year
* reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions equivalent to taking 1.4 million cars off the road
* generate enough revenue to pay for its cost in the long run
* reduce CO2 emissions by up to 17.6 billion pounds/year
* reduce California’s oil consumption by up to 22 million barrels/year
* cost half that of expanding freeways and airports to meet future needs

This high-speed rail would be like the TGV, Eurostar, or the SNCF that I've used in Europe. These types of trains are used in many countries in Europe, Japan, as well as Australia. If you want more information on it, check out this website, CA High-Speed Rail Authority. Somehow the US has slipped behind with our transportation.

This video provides a bit more information on the proposal, although it is very commercial-like.


The proposal is still in the forming stages, and there are opportunities to go to meetings and voice your suggestions or comments.
There is a meeting in San Jose on August 24, 2007 (4:00 pm – 6:00 pm) — San Jose City Hall, City Council Chambers, 200 East Santa Clara Street. Or for the Orange County crowd, there's a meeting in Anaheim on April 11, 2007, from 3:00 PM to 5:00 PM and from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM in Gordon Hoyt Conference Room, City Hall West, 201 S. Anaheim Boulevard, Anaheim, CA.

One way to help this project to continue is to Vote YES on the Bond Measure for CAHSR in November 2008. And of course, please Register to Vote if you aren't already!

Poll

The first ever Liberal Bluestocking Poll is up and running! Please vote! The polls close in exactly a week, so don't waste time! And if I didn't include your "primary TV news source", leave me a comment telling me what it is.

And in other news, a new blog is soon arriving, it just needs a little bit more tweaking. So keep checking back! And get ready for the results of this weeks poll to be up next week!

Pennsylvania Primary!!

Who knew primaries could be this exciting? Honestly in the 2004 election I don't think I fully understood what a primary WAS, or why it was even important. I consciously remember thinking "yeah, but its not THE election." Oh how time and education changes things. But back to the primary...

So the news media was having a frenzy with this primary, saying that Clinton was estimated to win, but in order to really win, she had to win "big". Although there was a bit of a disparity about how "big" is "big". To get a better idea of this "frenzy" watch the Daily Show clip from tonight.

So if we're rounding (and looking at the statistics on CNN.com), Hillary won 55% of the votes, and Obama won 45% of the votes, giving her 85 delegates and him 73. Unfortunately I think this was a bit of a bittersweet victory for the Clinton camp tonight.

I do enjoy that 27% of the PA Republicans support not-McCain (ie Paul/Huckabee), I hope this split within the party continues, taking some votes away from McCain.

Welcome to the Candidates Circus!

Come one, come all, to the Greatest Show on Earth!!! Hear the spectacle for yourself! In the center ring this evening is the one and only, Barack Obama. He will be doing the daring, the unthinkable, and the unhoped for...alienating voters!!!

That's right ladies and gentleman, I promised that you could hear the spectacle for yourself and *drum roll please...* here it IS!!!!

And if you'd rather not listen to the clip yourself, here's what it says!

You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, a lot of them — like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they’ve gone through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, and they cling to guns, or religion, or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment, or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

(all of that is care of http://www.zombietime.com)

I would like to point out that Obama made similar comments on Charlie Rose 4 years ago, here's a link to the entire 58 minute segment if anyone is interested. Or if you're like me and prefer short, sweet, and to the point, that can be found here.

The Charlie Rose version says kind of the same thing, less harshly, and better explained.

Did Obama make that now famous "bitter" comment because he was speaking to the millionaires/billionaires of the Bay Area and thought that no press were in attendance? Most likely... Does he alienate a large portion of middle America with comments like these? Most likely... Is any of it true? Most definitely.
I think that is my biggest problem with this whole "scandal", I absolutely agree with him. When times get hard for people, whether they live in Ohio or California, people stick to what they know.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like the huge immigration issue only came up because Americans feel like their jobs are threatened by immigrants. I don't remember anyone touting "Build the Fence" when we needed low-wage workers to work minimum-wage jobs, at best. And certainly no one was calling out for more stringent visa and green card regulations when our families immigrated to the United States. Who are we fooling? Unless you're 100% Native American, someone in your family HAD to immigrate to the United States. Some people argue that the fence will also help keep out terrorists, help "Keep America Safe!", but if that was really the big issue here we'd be building a fence on the Canadian border, not the Mexican border.

But I digress...

Did Obama slip up by saying that comment? Yes. Does it really show that he is elitist and has been pretending and lying throughout his campaign, as many people have said? No. I think it shows that he's a realist. He has accepted the cold hard facts, sees them for what they truly are, and can hopefully ameliorate the issue.

Big Issue: the Environment

First, a look at how American's feel about the environment, according to a Gallup Poll:

Here is a look at the 3 candidates' views on the environment:

Clinton: Would develop a new treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which is set to expire in 2012. Would focus on international attention to solve the problem of global deforestation. Would focus the mission of the Department of Energy on moving toward energy independence with a new approach to solar, wind, biofuels, hydropower, geothermal and other sources of renewable energy. Would place a market-based cap and trade system to reduce carbon pollution. …In combination with efficiency, fuel economy standards and other proposals, she states the system will ensure the goal of reducing U.S. contribution to global warming below 1990 levels by 80 percent. Would oppose drilling in the Arctic National Wildfire Refuge. - CNN
Here is Hillary herself speaking about her plans for the environment. I do like the phrase "green-collared jobs", kudos to whoever came up with that.

Obama: Would implement an economy-wide cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to the level recommended by top scientists. Would make the United States a leader in the global effort to combat climate change by leading anew international global warming partnership. Would establish a National Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) to speed the introduction of low-carbon non-petroleum fuels. Would create a Technology Transfer program within the Department of Energy dedicated to exporting climate-friendly technologies to developing countries. Would offer incentives to maintain forests globally and manage them sustainably. Would develop domestic incentives that reward forest owners, farmers and ranchers when they plant trees, restore grasslands or undertake farming practices that capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. - CNN
Here is also a link to a great video of Obama himself talking about his environment plan. Essentially he says he wants a cap, which will create a market that allows people to make money by saving the environment, and losing money by harming it. Also he wants to increase fuel efficiency standards on cars, which would help the environment and also make the US less reliable on some Middle Eastern countries for oil. (Does Obama realize that the US gets a majority of its oil from Canada and Mexico? Thank you NAFTA...)

McCain: Introduced the Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act of 2007 with Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT). The legislation is designed to significantly reduce the nation's greenhouse gases, accomplished through a combination of trading markets and the deployment of advanced technologies. Would propose use of alternative energy sources, including nuclear. - CNN
Also for McCain watch this youtube clip from the Republican debates at Northeastern University back in October of 2007. (McCain is the second speaker, although watch the whole clip if you want a reminder of all the buffoons that were running for President a few months ago.)

McCains big point: to reduce greenhouse gases, use NUCLEAR POWER.

I am excited that the environment is an issue, that hopefully in 2008 we get a President who realizes that global warming is real, and finding real solutions to our real problems.

Art Project Under Fire

I saw this article and thought it was pretty interesting.

The premise is essentially that this art student at the University of Maine placed hundreds of American Flags in an almost maze-like pattern on the ground of the schools Student Center and videotaped to see if her classmates would step on the flags. She reports that about 95% of the people did not step on the flags.

The article discusses the girls art project, but also discusses the uprising that it caused, with Vietnam veterans protesting the project.

Here is a video, I understand that it is a home movie and not from any reputable news sources, but he shares a lot of facts that are interesting and generally presents the side of the case that would be against this art project. He argues that this girl, Susan Crane, desecrated the American flag, which is strictly against the Constitution.


Now I support Susan Cranes First Amendment right to free speech, as well as the rights of the protesters, but I think that a much bigger deal has been made out of this, than should really have occurred. The point of this art piece was to see the reaction of her fellow students, to see if they would desecrate the flag by walking on it.

Although this reminds me of another "Art" Project that has received a lot of media backlash, I apologize for this aside from politics for just one moment. Please bear with me.

This article goes into much better detail, and I believe at this point just about everyone in the wired world has received some sort of email or notification about this.
Here is a link by the artist to pictures of the show, his blog is titled "The Little Dog Lives". Cute. [DISCLAIMER: Contains images of Animal Cruelty. That means mom, don't click. It won't make you happy.]

The gist of the issue is that this man, Guillermo Vargas Habacuc, got a stray dog, chained it up in a gallery in Costa Rica, where it supposedly starved to death. On a wall, written in dog food was the phrase "eres lo que lees", which translates to "you are what you read".

The artist has said:

"The name of the dog was Natividad (which means Birth), and I let him die of hunger in the sight of everyone, as if the death of a poor dog was a shameless media show in which nobody does anything but to applaud or to watch disturbed. In the place that the dog was exposed remain a metal cable and a cord. The dog was extremely ill and did not want to eat, so in natural surroundings it would have died anyway; thus they are all poor stray dogs: sooner or later they die or are killed."

I guess he's taken the big elephant in the room and turned it into a starving, chained-up, street dog. I should also point out that the artist has also claimed that the dog escaped and did not actually die in the museum. So the ultimate fate of the dog is a bit disputed, but either way, this was a clear animal rights violation, no?

There has been a big outcry recently about this, including a petition Boycotting the Artist from showing the same piece again in Honduras. (I assume this would mean another dog would fall victim to the art show).

Artists are always trying to be daring and different, but when the artist begins to break laws, those that are codified, and those that are just deemed "natural rights", that is when the public takes issue. Both of these projects beg the question, How far is too far, for the sake of art?

Casualties of War

Senator Hiram Warren Johnson supposedly said in 1918, "The first casualty when war comes is truth." I disagree, truth may be the second casualty, but truly the first casualty is loved ones. Friends, family, brothers, sisters, uncles, wives, husbands, children, parents, and so on. With each statistic I read about about the death of a soldier I think about all the people who must have known and truly loved that person, and what a horrible thing it is to lose someone.

The New York Times is amazing. It is extremely heart wrenching.

This is a look at the real cost of "Operation Iraqi Liberation" (OIL), er, I mean "Operation Iraqi Freedom" (OIF). It is a constantly updating chart showing the deaths by each military branch, and a look at each individual fallen soldier. You can even search by last name, state, or hometown of a United States service member who has died in Iraq.

Update:
Professor showed today in class that the LA Times has made a very similar thing, but only with the deceased from California, and they have written obituaries.
It is called California's War Dead and it includes everyone who has died in the Iraq and Afghanistan War since 2001.

I don't mean to sound like a hippie but I would think that this sort of thing would show people that war is not the answer, that diplomacy and discussion does not include as many deaths.

I'm Johm McCain, and I approved this message.

Seriously? Seriously???
Let's hope America opts for a President who can read AND write. Although that may be asking too much. With the current president, oops I mean precedent, so low, a Democratic president may be TOO intelligent, the nation wouldn't be able to handle it.

Joint Ballot

On their "The Caucus" Blog the New York Times recently ran an article about a 22-year-old ex-Hillary staffer who is going to start his own campaign for a joint ballot. (As a Hillary supporter he's obviously advocating for Clinton/Obama '08, not Obama/Clinton '08.) Here's the link to the original article.

This could have been a good plan... possibly... maybe 9 months ago at least. But who is he kidding? This would be impossible now! How could they possibly come back from all the mudslinging that's been going on? Hillary would have to come out and say, "Ok, I said Obama doesn't have enough experience to lead this country, but what i MEANT to say is that he DOES have enough experience to lead this country, as long as I'M leading it with him." Right, that'll go over well.



It's a long video but it definitely shows one of the many times where the debate just dissolved into back and forth arguing. And poor Edwards is left out on the side (most of the time not even on camera) like the kid picked last for dodge ball.

Don't get me wrong, 9 months ago this was my dream ticket, Obama/Clinton that is. In my mind at least, they seemed to complete each others shortcomings. But instead of focusing on their REAL opponents, the not-so-Grand-Old-Party, they've been bringing each other down, creating a division within the party. It looks like this sibling rivalry for who will become mom's favorite will play out until the Indiana Primary, May 6th.

Let's hope that once all those votes are counted the Democratic Party can unite behind one candidate and put all their past differences behind them, or we face another 4 years like the 7 1/2 we've already endured.

Cape Wind

I first learned about the Cape Wind project on the Daily Show August of last year.


It seems ludicrous that Sen. Kennedy, a Democrat, who for the most part has supported alternative energy and further drilling in Alaska, would be so against this. It appears that he's only pro-environment as long as it does not directly effect him, or his view of the Cape.

According to Greenpeace, "The wind farm proposed for Nantucket Sound will provide 75 percent of the Cape and Island’s energy without emitting asthma-causing pollution, spilling oil in the water, or producing any of the greenhouse gasses that cause global warming. In addition to protecting the environment, the wind farm will benefit the Cape’s economy by creating jobs and attracting tourists."

** According to WBZ TV 4, "News Anchor Lisa Hughes announced the results of their new Fast Track statewide poll that found 86% support Cape Wind, 8% oppose it and 6% are not sure." Go Here to see the entire clip. ** With support like that this project should be flying through the stages of lawmaking, instead of plodding along at a tortoises pace.

The segment from WBZ, which covers the public hearings held in Massachusetts on the issue, make it seem as if this project is very close to getting approved, which is good to hear. Let's just hope that Kennedy and other opponents don't try some more crafty lawmaking like they did in 2006, to foil it.

McCain's Gaffe

Disclaimer: I'm currently re-adjusting from the heavily politically oriented life of a DC resident and Hill intern to the life I left behind last December, that of a UCI student striving for good grades and a little free time. We'll see how that goes.


With that aside, here's what's new on my political radar:

McCain's Foreign Policy Gaffe(youtube)

McCain refers to Iranian extremists as Al Qaeda. He recants after being corrected by Sen. Lieberman.
You know you've messed up when Lieberman is calling you out on it.
What's even worse, is that he continued to make the same mistake. According to the Washington Post, "The Arizona senator made this claim at least twice, first in an interview with conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt and then at a press briefing the following the day." Although we really should be more forgiving of these slips, it could be early stage dementia.

What I take issue with here is the fact that when Obama or Hillary "messes up", so to speak, (such as Obama's pastor fiasco, and Hillary claiming she avoided sniper fire in Bosnia) they both get tons of media attention. Yet when McCain shows that he is at best confused, at worst completely uninformed on issues of the Middle East and foreign relations, it never gets brought up in the press.

Although maybe I'm just making a bigger deal out of this than it really is. Afterall, McCain isn't really getting ANY press as of late. He's doing anything to get attention these days...