Cross-posted on Healthy Eating Healthy Planet

On June 11, 2008 I stopped eating meat.

Now I also abstain from fish and most eggs and dairy. After I posted a diary on Daily Kos on June 22 to update my progress on this vegetarian journey, I was referred by another vegetarian to the PETA website where I signed up for a free vegetarian starter kit. It hasn't yet arrived, but their emails have. Today they asked me to email the Smithfield ham people because of some absolutely terrible things some of their contract farmers do to the pigs and piglets they raise.

More after the jump.

Sorry for the short diary...

Early this morning I found an unusual email from Medea Benjamin waiting for me in my inbox. It seems that last week when she was arrested in Florida, they confiscated her Global Exchange press pass, and could I make her another one?

Ever since I figured out how to duplicate Medea's press pass for other members of CodePink, I have been doing so with her blessing. Since Medea is the founding director and CEO of Global Exchange as well as one of the founders of CodePink, how I implemented it may be a bit of a hack; but it is quite legitimate insofar that yes, these are valid press passes for a news organization, created with the full knowledge and permission of the company director.

Now, ironically, I was going to have to whip out a copy of the document that served as the original.

cross posted on Docudharma and Iran Thru Open Eyes

Last weekend, June 28 and 29, 2008, over 300 people representing anti-war groups including A.N.S.W.E.R, Troops Out Now Coalition, United for Peace and Justice, U.S. Labor Against the War, StopWarOnIran, American Friends Service Committee, and CASMII, the Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran, met in Cleveland, Ohio, under the auspices of the National Assembly to End the Iraq War and Occupation.

The main goal of the National Assembly Conference was to unify the various coalition members around common Resolutions and coordinated plans for Actions throughout the nation to demand the immediate withdrawal of all US forces from Iraq.

Rasmussen recently polled on wiretapping, finding that "Voters appear satisfied that a proper balance has been struck between individual rights and national security."

The vast majority--75%--also think that they never would be the target of a government phone wiretap. Of course, the problem with the Bush/Cheney administration's warrantless surveillance program is that there's apparently no real targeting, either of collected phone calls swept up, or other private data they've been collecting. That means just about anybody can get caught up in the massive vacuuming of data.

Consider the case of Stephen Sprouse and Kristin Douglas, highlighted last year in an episode of Frontline:

HEDRICK SMITH, Correspondent: [voice-over] Las Vegas. It was the week before New Year's 2004 when Stephen Sprouse and Kristin Douglas flew in from Kansas City to get married.

KRISTIN DOUGLAS, Las Vegas Tourist: Stephen always wanted to get married in Vegas. I mean, that was sort of a joke.

HEDRICK SMITH: Stephen and Kristin exchanged vows in front of friends, family-

"ELVIS": Ladies and gentlemen, it is show time!

HEDRICK SMITH: -and Elvis.

STEPHEN SPROUSE, Las Vegas Tourist: You come in and you're thinking, "OK, I'm going to get married." And you know, Elvis comes down the aisle. Then you're kind of up there, and all of a sudden, you're thinking, "Wow, I'm really getting married." Then they're doing the vows, and you're, like, "Oh, this is for real."

WEDDING OFFICIAL: You may kiss your bride.

KRISTIN DOUGLAS: And then you're singing "Viva Las Vegas."

STEPHEN SPROUSE: And then you're singing "Viva Las Vegas."

HEDRICK SMITH: But in fact, things in Vegas weren't looking so good. There was disturbing news.

BILL YOUNG, Fmr. Sheriff, Clark County, Nevada: Tom Ridge was on national TV, and you know, he said, "Hey, there's three cities that," you know, "we got to really pay attention to- Washington, D.C., New York and Las Vegas." And whew! You know, when that happens, then the whole eyes of the world come on you.
....
STEPHEN SPROUSE: When you were out there, that's when you kind of notice that you don't see any of the planes flying and you see helicopters off in the distance, kind of circling around. That's when it kind of seemed a little weird, a little odd.

KRISTIN DOUGLAS: Yeah. It was a little creepy.

STEPHEN SPROUSE: Yeah.

HEDRICK SMITH: [voice-over] The clock was ticking, just 11 days until New Year's. They needed to act fast.
....
HEDRICK SMITH: [voice-over] Long after the celebrations were over, Stephen Sprouse and Kristin Douglas received the disquieting news that they had been swept up in that FBI data dragnet.

[on camera] You found out afterwards that all the hotel records were collected. What went through your head when you heard that?

KRISTIN DOUGLAS: They have no reason to be looking at me. I don't think that I've done anything to raise any suspicion. So I mean, just being in Las Vegas on New Year's shouldn't be enough for them to say, "Well, you know, she might be a terrorist."

ELLEN KNOWLTON, FBI Chief, Las Vegas, 2002-06: I just tell people that we made every effort to safeguard the privacy of everyone whose records were accessed. There was no breach. The information was closely safeguarded.

HEDRICK SMITH: [voice-over] The FBI says it held all the data from Vegas for more than two years but has now destroyed it all.

STEPHEN SPROUSE: I work with data. I mean, you know, if it's on the computer, it's not really ever gone. It's on a tape. It's on a back-up. It's on a drive somewhere.

HEDRICK SMITH: A more fundamental question confronts all of us. The 4th Amendment protects us against unreasonable search and seizure without probable cause. So does the strategy of prevention collide with the Constitution?

[on camera] When the government is doing this kind of data mining, has it moved from individualized suspicion, getting an individual warrant, to generalized suspicion, to check everybody to find out who are the bad guys?

PETER SWIRE, White House Privacy Counsel, 1999-01: Yeah. Check everybody. Everybody's a suspect. Everybody's phone records, everybody's email is subject to government scrutiny. And if you're good, we won't bother you, and if you look a little strange, then you might get on a watch list.

HEDRICK SMITH: Isn't that a huge change in Anglo-Saxon law? I mean, Anglo-Saxon law is based on "Get a warrant." The 4th Amendment is based on individual suspicion.

PETER SWIRE: Right. General warrants was part of the reason for the American Revolution. It was that the king's agent could go in and search a house everywhere, search a whole neighborhood with one warrant. And the Boston people said, "We don't like that. We'll have a tea party. We'll fight you." We said no.

"We said no."

Say no now. Blue America has set up two great tools for you to use to do just that. The first is a "Whip Count" tool that  

allows you to directly contact Senators to tell them to stand up for the rule of law and vote in favor of the Dodd-Feingold-Leahy amendment.  (That's S.A.5064 to H.R. 6304 which will come up for a vote on July 8th, 2008.)  Not only will this tool help you phone your Senators -- including connecting your call -- but it also gives us the ability to track positions on FISA given your input on what you ascertain during your conversations.

The second will help you find out where your Senators are during this recess, so that you can use it to find out if they're near you to set up a meeting or attend a public event. Talk to your Senators. Ask them to read the bill, and use the Blue America tools to track responses and events.

Celebrate the 4th of July in a manner that would make our founders proud.

This spring, I was asked by an officer of my county's Democratic Party to organize and head up a team of letter writers for our state's primary campaign, a team that would continue its work supporting the Democratic nominee (as well as Democratic candidates in downticket races) this fall during the general election campaign.

Necessary to this task was the creation of a primer for the aspiring letter writer, some ground rules for the uninitiated, which follow after the break.

I'm not expecting many readers, and without guilt you may back-click to the diary list if uninterested. My intention in posting this is to benefit DK readers wishing to become more active in writing letters to the editor, or interested in heading up letter writing teams.

Or, perhaps the link to this diary could simply be passed along to those friends and relatives we all have who we've heard at one time or another to say: I've always thought about writing a letter. Here goes:

cross-posted at Bleeding Heartland

If you're not going out of town for the holiday weekend, I highly recommend that you march or ride with fellow Democrats in your local Independence Day parade.

These events are fantastic outreach opportunities for campaigns and a great way for you to meet like-minded neighbors.

It's not too late to volunteer. Just contact your county Democratic Party, or the campaign of a local candidate, or the Obama campaign office if there is one in your city. Ask where and when you should show up if you want to help out during the July 4 parades. (Keep in mind that some communities have parades on the evening of July 3.)

A few more tips to help you enjoy the parade are after the jump.

Proving that you can both support a candidate and hold him or her accountable, a major effort by grassroots activists within the Obama campaign is asking for his support in opposing the bad FISA Amendments Act, and particularly, telco amnesty.

A grassroots group of activists has been organizing on MyBo, Obama's official social networking portal, to protest the Senator's recent decision to back controversial legislation granting the President more spying powers. The effort hit a big milestone on Tuesday afternoon: It is now the largest self-organized group on Obama's website, topping networks that were launched over a year ago. The spying protest, "Senator Obama - Please Vote NO on Telecom Immunity – Get FISA Right," launched last week. (See Obama Network Organizes and Revolts Over Spying, The Nation.)

Membership spiked to about 8,900 people on Tuesday, edging out a student group with roughly 8,600 members, and one organizer estimated that the growth rate reached a rapid four percent during the daytime. The group initially spread through the Obama network, since the site's platform instantly connects members through a dedicated email listserve. On Monday, for example, over 200 emails shot across the wire, reaching the roughly 2,300 members who opted to receive individual messages. The exchanges ranged from policy debates, like whether immunity was acceptable if the telephone companies acted in good faith, to organizing strategies, such as promoting the group on sharing sites like Digg. Then some activists open-sourced the project, creating a wiki-hub for additional actions -- from calling Obama's office to urging Keith Olbermann to promote the group -- and launched partner groups on other sites like Facebook.

The group's effort has also hit the NYT.

This effort shows two things: the always-expanding power of the Internet for organizing. We knew at the outset what a powerful tool the tubes were going to present, but the new iterations that people create on a daily basis is fantastic (and another reason for the Net Neutrality fight to be rejoined full force when we have our new president and Congress).

It also shows that you can fully support Barack Obama and still disagree with him on issues. That being a supporter, particularly a netroots supporter, doesn't mean setting aside your own beliefs and principles. We're not supposed to just shut up when we disagree--if we do, we're setting a very bad precedent for our role in a potential Obama presidency. I keep going back to the Louis Brandeis quote:

The most important political office is that of private citizen.
-Louis D. Brandeis

You can support a candidate and fulfill your political office of a private citizen at the same time. A huge number of Barack Obama's supporters on his site are doing just that.

The last two days have been unbelievable.

Last week, after Senator Obama went public with his decision regarding the new FISA legislation, most of us took the news with varying degrees of disappointment.  A few people vowed they’d never lift a finger (or reach for their checkbook) ever again.  Others expressed outrage, but recognized a conundrum:  electing Barack Obama is probably every bit as important as electing John Kerry was in 2004.  These people couldn’t fathom the idea of rebelling against the candidate or charting any course (of action or inaction) that would hurt his chances of victory.  They got over their anger in a hurry.  Finally, there were some who, inexplicably, seemed unbothered by the whole mess; to them the fact that people were decrying Obama’s decision seemed to be the real problem.

I’m not here to applaud or decry any of the aforementioned reactions; instead, I hope you’ll let me tell you about my own response and what it’s spawned.

Getting college kids to vote can be a real bitch.  Just like with everything else, it takes some elbow grease to overcome the inherent obstacles involved.  With any luck, this year will be easier than most but I thought I would offer a few tips for increasing the turnout in your area.

College kids move around a lot.  Nearly every freshman moves into a residence hall, frequently from outside the area, and nearly every sophomore moves off campus.  The vagaries of roommate and housing situations take care of the rest right up to the people who have graduated and moved away.  In addition to making voter rolls near universities notoriously unreliable, actually reaching these people to get them registered and to the polls can just plain suck.

Tonight I and several others celebrated a friend's 82 birthday.  Now I know most people would consider it unlikely that at age 82 a person might still be out there making a difference, but this person is, and she serves as an inspiration for me.

I first met Rosa in early 2004.  At that time I was nearing age 44, nervously approaching public speaking in my first real community battle.  Some of that I have diaried about in the past, but essentially the community battle was one that pitted those of us fighting against the then Governor of Florida, Jeb Bush.  

My first introduction to Rosa was at a public meeting, where she went to the podium and literally gave a verbal tongue lashing to the same elected officials that I was still somewhat afraid of....

A few weeks ago I wrote a diary based on my actions involving the channel switch from Fox News to the Weather channel in my breakroom at work.  I'm sorry to say, but the change only lasted a mere 4 days and the ugly Faux News has been restored uninterrupted and unitelligible as before.  I wrote the diary on a Friday and had rethug trolls on it within hours fishing for info.  I put too many obvious details about what company I worked for,and did not hide my email which was my name in reverse.  Although I did not get fired, a strange thing happened on the following Tuesday and stranger things since that Daily Kos post which I deleted out of fear for my job.

After Senator Obama's decision to forego public financing came the FISA mess, then the Supreme Court decisions on the death penalty and handguns, then his comments on General Clark's criticism of Senator McCain, and now his statement to evangelicals that he will not only preserve but expand the Faith-Based Initiatives program instituted by President Bush.

Each of these positions has upset many progressives, who see these acts as proof that Senator Obama is "just another politician," "betraying his base," "caving in to Republicans," "Republican-Lite," and the like.  Most of Senator Obama's defenders, echoing the prevailing media narrative, say Senator Obama is following the usual general election strategy of "moving to the center."

While I disagree with some of the positions Senator Obama has taken in the past few weeks, I also disagree with both his detractors and many of his defenders.  Please follow me over the fold for an explanation of why Senator Obama is not, in fact, "moving to the center."

Two days before the June 3 Democratic primary in Iowa, I received an automated push-poll, followed the next day by a second robocall containing "important information" for me. Both calls were hit jobs on Jerry Sullivan, the leading Democratic candidate in Iowa House district 59.

Many of us will receive similar calls between now and November. We need to be prepared to help the Democrats who will be targeted in this way.

My number one piece of advice is do not hang up the phone.

Do not hang up the moment you hear an automated voice on the other end.

Do not hang up the moment you are asked to participate in a brief survey.

Do not hang up the moment you realize that this is not a legitimate opinion poll.

Stay on the line and grab a pen and paper for taking notes.

Follow me after the jump for further instructions.

Hey All. I'm a fellow at the Roosevelt Institution this summer, and I have a question for you:

What are you up to this July 11th? Still recovering from crazy 4th of July parties? Feverishly packing for Netroots Nation? Trying to whip Democratic Senators into shape vis-a-vis FISA?

I have an idea that's way more fun.

I interviewed (YouTube) the Freeway Blogger today after videoing him posting antiwar signs on San Francisco freeway overpasses. He posted over 6,000 such signs and has thus gotten the message out to millions of drivers.

In the interview, in addition to giving useful tips about how to make the signs, he discusses the Left in general. We organize too much and do to little, he says, something most of us have no doubt thought after yet another interminable meeting.

There's six idiots like O'Reilly out there, he says, and they can reach 50 million. So we of the Left need to find ways to reach that many people too. Freedom of Speech may be all we have left.

Energy has become an ever-more central part of my life: personal, intellectual, and professional. This ranges from working with the Energize America team, to serving on the Board of The Energy Consensus (a non-profit working to change the discussion of energy in DC), being trained by The Climate Project, blogging, giving lectures, writing letters to the editor and OPEDs on energy/environmental issues, advising organizations as to energy options, to efforts to foster local initiatives re renewables and energy efficiency patterned on San Francisco's Vote Solar to advising friends/neighbors re home energy efficiency, to spending a few minutes at the end of the day (especially before weekends) turning off lights and computers in many offices at the end of the work day, to working to change the energy patterns in my own home ...

RE the home: a question from a Congressional staffer helped me realize something about the implications of these efforts.

Until late last week, Exxon-Mobil was the sponsor of the seventh-inning stretch at the Washington Nationals' stadium. The incongruity of a company that has poured $10s of millions into trying to undermine understanding of global warming having a prominent role in the greenest stadium in professional baseball sparked a movement to "Strike Out Exxon at Nationals Park!"

Friday, the first day of protests, the announcer announced Exxon-Mobil's sponsorship of the Seventh-Inning Stretch but Exxon-Mobil's name didn't appear on the main scoreboard(even as Exxon-Mobil advertising did show up on banner ads around the stadium).  At Sunday's game, the billboard simply said "Seventh Inning Stretch" and there wasn't a syllable from the announcer about any form of Exxon-Mobil sponsorship.  One has to wonder, is there an impact from public embarassment?  Is Exxon-Mobil being sent to the dugout step-by-step?

Want to help turn Texas Blue?

Want to spend an afternoon with fellow Kossacks and local volunteers  making a real difference?