Unconventional Sources

Increasing numbers of Democrats are growing disillusioned with the direction that President Obama and the Democratic Congress are taking. Progressive promises are being broken, and replaced with a decidedly non-progressive agenda that looks too much like the politics of Bush for comfort.

So, now is a time when the Green Party could be picking up a lot of new members - if they can take advantage of the political dynamics of the moment. There is no powerful central Green Party organization, so it’s up to Green Party members themselves to make it work, from the grassroots up.

One place Green Party members can start is by going to the Green Party Central discussion boards, introduce yourself, and find out a little bit about what’s going on in your neck of the woods.

If you’re looking for information about what’s going on in Green Party politics these days, you might go to the official Green Party web site, and find something useful there. You’re guaranteed to find useful information, however, day after day, at Green Party Watch. Pay attention, Green Party activists, to the way the creators of the site keep up the effort, day after day. That’s the way to make a change.

As Albert Einstein said, you’ve got to keep things moving in order to stay in balance… or something to that effect

In New York State, legislation has been proposed that would establish with certainty the legal ability of same-sex couples to have equal access to marriage rights. That’s something that’s guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States of America, which guarantees equal protection under the law. Still, even though New York State is a progressive state, it’s not certain that the marriage equality legislation will pass. Some backwards Democrats are joining Republicans in trying to deny equal rights.

The web site Marriage NY is working to organize citizens to mount a grassroots campaign to ensure marriage rights are respected, and all couples in New York, heterosexual and homosexual alike, have equal marriage rights.

It’s a project of the New York Civil Liberties Union. Thanks to them for their work on this subject.

In a quick survey of online activism in North Carolina, there are some worrying signs for those who work against war. Two groups, the North Carolina Peace Hub and the High Country Citizens for Peace and Justice, have abandoned their posts on the Internet over the last couple of years. The North Carolina groups Community for Peace and Duct Tape for Peace now also appear to be defunct. North Carolina Peace Action hasn’t put out a newsletter since March 2008. I wonder, do the people who once made up these organizations not care about peace so much when it ceases to be an easy campaign issue for the Democrats?

Is this a sign that North Carolina is less peace-loving today than it was just a few years ago? Not necessarily. Where these peace activist sites have faltered, two other activist sites have risen to take their place. The Charlotte Area Green Party and the Buncombe Greens are now online, and looking to support candidates for public office who will promote the politics of peace.

It always seemed unsustainable, the idea of a progressive voice for Irvine, California. If you’ve ever been to Irvine, you know what I mean.

Irvine isn’t so much a place as a collection of almost places. Glass towers are circled by streets that lead to streets that never really get to anywhere, and before you know it, you’re out of Irvine, and into another ill-defined Southern California Communitee(TM). There are places in Irvine where it’s actually illegal to cross the street.

Yet, while it lasted, IrvineProgressive.com was a strong voice for progressive interests, coming right out of Irvine, California.

IrvineProgressive is now gone. Although you can still visit the domain, it’s just a place filler that sells real estate and cosmetic dental services. The holder of the domain name is hoping to sell it at a premium price. I’m betting that they don’t have any takers for a long, long time.

Last month, I wrote about Bikely, a web service that helps people share their preferred bicycling route through Google Maps. Today, I found out about a similar service, Map My Ride. Map My Ride uses MapQuest instead of Google Maps, which means that the interface isn’t quite as pretty, but it’s easier to find nearby businesses. It seems that there are many more routes on Map My Ride as well.

A note that makes me wish I were in California - and that’s a rare thing:

May 11-15 is California Bike Commute Week this year. That means that you’ve got less than two weeks to prepare for that week of bike commuting, so maybe you want to get a bit of practice in - a day or two of bike commuting between then and now.

Map out you route, and take a bit of extra time, and enjoy yourself. You’ll be saving money and helping the clear the air in the process.

There’s bad news for bighorn sheep tonight, at least for the peninsular bighorn sheep that live to the south of Palm Springs in California. The Obama Administration just slashed their protected habitat to a third of its previous level.

Here are a few sources you can use to learn more about the peninsular bighorn sheep and the efforts to protect it:

- Bighorn Institute
- Center for Biological Diversity
- Desert Survivors
- Zip Code Zoo profile

I am in love with Bikely. It’s a simple web site with a simple idea that makes life for bicyclists a lot more interesting.

Imagine Google Maps, but on a site dedicated to the sharing of good bike routes all around the world. That’s Bikely. I’m trying to plan a bicycling trip out of London right now, for example, but I really don’t know the roads. Bikely has been extremely helpful in my efforts.

The bike paths are shown on the maps, but show are the little points along the way, with directions and sites worthy of remark showing up as you progress from point a to point b.

The only trick - I can’t imagine actually navigating while on a bicycle in this way. How can a service like Bikely be integrated with on the road needs? Perhaps that’s where an iPhone would come in handy.

Don’t believe the hype about the 2010 Pentagon budget. Right wing hawks are running around with their arms waving, panicking about how the military’s budget has been “slashed”. They remind me of Brer Rabbit, begging not to be thrown into a briar patch.

The truth is the proposed military budget for 2010 has a 4 percent increase - billions of extra dollars being spent. If that’s what a slashed budget looks like, I would very much like my personal household budget to be slashed, please.

If you want to understand what’s really going on with the military budget, for goodness sakes don’t listen to the party line talking points. Go read the Government Accountability Office Assessments of Selected Weapon Programs, released just at the end of March - and then go see how many of the bloated, overdue, malfunctioning programs have been maintained, or even expanded, in the proposed budget.