Political

Much to my surprise, there is not a world record for mocking listed at Guinness World Record's website.   I think that the following posting from  Represenative Pete Hoekstra, might warrant being the entry point for the 1st mocking world record.

http://twitter.com/petehoekstra
"Iranian twitter activity similar to what we did in House last year when Republicans were shut down in the House."
8:56 AM Jun 17th from TwitterBerry

The part I find particularly funny is he made this posting from his Blackberry (TwitterBerry is a Blackberry application).  Just imagine, you are sitting in some meeting room, either waiting for a meeting to start or bored in a meeting that ran a bit too long and you have a thought that you wanted share.   The problems are

1. you also have been living in a bubble that is Washington DC
2. the GOP has become so practiced at taking umbrage at basically anything and
3. the GOP’s ability to generate fauxrage so pronounced that your ability to accurately compare events has long since slipped your grasp.
   

Along comes the building revolution in Iran, combined with a very emotionally drawn-in community encompassing much of the twitter user base and one stray twitter post from a previously unknown represenative....  The post that launched a thousand mocks within hours now sports a website (http://hoekstraisameme.com) devoted to the best mocking replies to the honorable representative from Michigan.

If you’re curious, here is the search page to see anyone replying to @petehoekstra - http://search.twitter.com/search?q=petehoekstra  

The following was written by Michael Pollan and the single best article I have ever read about modern industrial agriculture and have pulled out a few passages that I found to be particularly important.

"After cars, the food system uses more fossil fuel than any other sector of the economy -- 19 percent.  And while the experts disagree about the exact amount, the way we feed ourselves contributes more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than anything else we do -- as much as 37 percent, according to one study."

Regarding the massive problems associated with relying on cheap oil and no longer using animal poo as a fertilizer source.

"But if taking the animals off farms made a certain kind of economic sense, it made no ecological sense whatever: their waste, formerly regarded as a precious source of fertility on the farm, became a pollutant -- factory farms are now one of America's biggest sources of pollution. As Wendell Berry has tartly observed, to take animals off farms and put them on feedlots is to take an elegant solution -- animals replenishing the fertility that crops deplete -- and neatly divide it into two problems: a fertility problem on the farm and a pollution problem on the feedlot. The former problem is remedied with fossil-fuel fertilizer; the latter is remedied not at all."

 As for what to do now.

"It will be argued that sun-food agriculture will generally yield less food than fossil-fuel agriculture. This is debatable. The key question you must be prepared to answer is simply this: Can the sort of sustainable agriculture you're proposing feed the world?

There are a couple of ways to answer this question. The simplest and most honest answer is that we don't know, because we haven't tried. But in the same way we now need to learn how to run an industrial economy without cheap fossil fuel, we have no choice but to find out whether sustainable agriculture can produce enough food."

Also, if you want to improve health care, we need to change in a big way what as a county we are eating.

"In addition to the problems of climate change and America's oil addiction, you have spoken at length on the campaign trail of the health care crisis. Spending on health care has risen from 5 percent of national income in 1960 to 16 percent today, putting a significant drag on the economy. The goal of ensuring the health of all Americans depends on getting those costs under control. There are several reasons health care has gotten so expensive, but one of the biggest, and perhaps most tractable, is the cost to the system of preventable chronic diseases. Four of the top 10 killers in America today are chronic diseases linked to diet: heart disease, stroke, Type 2 diabetes and cancer. It is no coincidence that in the years national spending on health care went from 5 percent to 16 percent of national income, spending on food has fallen by a comparable amount -- from 18 percent of household income to less than 10 percent. While the surfeit of cheap calories that the U.S. food system has produced since the late 1970s may have taken food prices off the political agenda, this has come at a steep cost to public health. You cannot expect to reform the health care system, much less expand coverage, without confronting the public-health catastrophe that is the modern American diet."

  The above does not do the article justice by any means and would strongly encourage folks to read the whole article. 

http://www.michaelpollan.com/article.php?id=97 

It is very interesting to note that because of the very high turn out for the democratic caucuses (nearly double that of 2004), that even the 3rd place finisher (Clinton), handily beat Huckabee. So if you add up the estimate turnout (356,000), you end up with results something like....

Percentage of total vote

• 24.5% Obama
• 20.5% Edwards
• 19.8% Clinton
• 11.4% Huckabee (R)

In light of Eric Sten resigning from Portland City Council it seemed like a good idea to mention two folks who have spoke to Portland Peak Oil who are running for City Council, Chris Smith and Amanda Fritz.  The last time spoke with them the were running for the same seat (the one Sam Adams is vacating to run for Mayor) but I'm hoping with Eric Sten's resignation that either Chris or Amanda will switch over to the other seat.

Either way,  both are seeking contributions under Portland's Voter Owned Elections system.  Basically your $5 donation to one or both candidates will help ensure that mitigating the effects of peak oil will be part of the City Coucil's agenda.

Amanda Fritz  -  www.amandafritzforcitycouncil.com 

Amanda is a registered nurse and mother of three who served on the Portland Planning Commission for seven years, championing environmental and neighborhood concerns.  Amanda grew up in Portland.... after arriving here 7 months pregnant at the age of 28, in 1986.  Volunteering in Portland's schools, neighborhoods, parks/greenspaces, social justice and land use planning systems has made Amanda Fritz the woman she is.  

If Portland is to continue to be at the forefront of enlightened environmental sustainability and progressive social leadership in Oregon, the City Council must pay more attention to equity and justice in prioritizing City spending and actions.  Economic equity and justice. Environmental equity and justice. Social equity and justice.

Chris Smith  -  www.citizensmith.us/donate 

Chris Smith is a Citizen Activist with 10 years of experience working on neighborhood livability, transportation and civic engagement. His public policy knowledge, ability to connect diverse groups, and management skills developed over a 20-year career in high technology make him an ideal leader for Portland City Council.

Chris helped design Voter Owned Elections so we can take big money out of politics and create open dialogue between voters and candidates.

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