New Blog in Town

The Alameda Journal (which I sometimes snarkily think of as "Contra Costa Times, Island Edition") has a blog. It's run by Eve Pearlman, whom you may recognize from printed Journal articles. Welcome to the blogosphere, Eve!

Check it out here.

I'm Still Voting Edwards (with bonus topic: Measure A)

Tomorrow is Election Day, and I will be casting my vote for John Edwards for President.

Obviously he doesn't stand a chance to win; the Media had picked either Obama or Clinton long ago — but votes for Edwards will count, and it will help award him delegates, which can be used as leverage.

Many have asked me to support either "Barack" or "Clinton". I cannot really get behind either of them at this stage. Both are highly corporate-powered, neither are very strong leaders. I have no confidence that with them at the helm, there will be any improvement to the Iraq occupation or the climate crisis. I don't believe that either of them stand a very strong chance to be elected, and that we will be inaugurating a Republican in 2009. Of course Obama and Clinton are better choices than John McBush or whoever is chosen on that side, but that's not too hard to do.

So maybe it's tilting at windmills, but I am not ready to compromise my principles for the Primary Election. I'll wait until November to do that.

One thing I haven't mentioned is Measure A. No, not the one with the red signs all over Alameda, but the one that is actually on the ballot. While I admire Children's Hospital, and I am all for using our tax money to invest in our infrastructure, the fact is that Children's Hospital is a private corporation. I am not comfortable with using our tax money to help a private corporation grow. So I'm voting No on this.

Still Voting for Edwards

A few random notes. With two videos -- one short and funny, the other long and serious.

I'm more than a little sad that Edwards wasn't able to stay in the race ... but considering that his main opponents were propped up by a corporate-owned media, I'm not surprised at all. On Tuesday, though, I'm still voting wiith my heart, and casting a vote for Edwards. Hey may pick up some more delegates at the convention, especially considering that many people have already voted absentee.

All this talk of change, by both Democrats and (surprisingly) Republicans, has been lampooned so well in this short video. Be sure to turn up the volume and watch the whole thing to get the full effect!



All this talk of "change" made me think of "spare change," and the issue of Poverty that only Edwards made into an issue for this campaign. We'll see if Clinton or Obama actually bring that issue into their campaigns as they pledged they would do.

Here's another "change" variation -- if we can't get a leader who will effectively lead, we need to bring down the criminals who are in power now ... not just replace them in office, but investigate and prosecute them. Have the neocons really done anything wrong? Well, here's a documentary (two hours long!) that I can recommend, but be sure to set your left brain on "skeptical" (of what you see here and of what you have already been told by the corporate media) and your right brain on "open minded" --then form your own conclusions. It's called Loose Change.