Yet more Buckeye Back Road stumping… In Van Wert, Ohio, we stopped at old Bailey’s Restaurant downtown to put up a campaign flier. While having coffee there, I looked up to see a man who appeared to be in his early sixties, short and slight of build. He walked out of the kitchen in a white shirt, white pants, a yellow bow tie… It was as if he’d been transported through a 1950s time warp. During Campaign 2008, I told The Review newspaper in Alliance, Ohio, that we’d like to see the country go back, in part, to the 1950s in regard to: a slower pace of life, neighbors helping neighbors more, the streets being a lot safer for kids… In Gomer, Ohio (I resisted the distinct urge to say: “Shazaam!”), I put up a campaign flier at Uncle Al’s Pizza and Market, then spotted some kids heading off on their bicycles to play baseball at a sandlot field up the street. A world away in our major cities this day, some eight youth would be killed by gunfire — as they are every day in America now. Note: We have an extensive position paper on crime based on years of cross country research. At one point, we interviewed a Detroit police officer who said his department was using a Community Oriented Policing Model that included each officer being a mentor to six inner city youth for three year periods at a time. They, say, shoot hoops with the youth each week, help them with homework, take them to Detroit Tigers or Lions games… He said instead of the youth seeing them as “an enemy” encased in the metal and glass of the squad cars, some now saw them as, well, friends.
Joe the Painter; ‘About Time’; a degenerative disc; ‘…the answer is blowing in the wind.’
More from our “Buckeye Back Roads” stumping… In Cavett, Ohio (pop. a cluster of 10 houses), a guy with a paint brush in hand and paint stains on his jeans was standing in a doorway. I approached, smiled and said: “As coincidence would have it, meet: Joe the Painter.” …In Paulding, Ohio, at the Past Time Cafe, I gave the owner a flier with the inscription: “To Past Time, it’s ‘About Time’ to vote for Joe!” Clever, huh. (And we’re doing this all without paid political consultants.) I also hung up a flier at the West End Market in Paulding. Janie, the cashier who appeared to be in her late 40s, said she had a degenerative disc that was tremendously bothersome, but was having a hard time getting Social Security. “I paid into it all these years, isn’t it my money?” She lamented. Note: Paulding has recently installed the biggest wind turbine farm in Ohio. Our platform calls for more of these, as well as more business and residential wind turbine applications. For instance, at a stop in Mandan, North Dakota (a state that has the most “wind potential” in the country), a farmer there told us he had several Whisper 900 small wind turbines installed on top of his barn. Turbines that are now providing: half the power for both the barn and his home.
“John Booth”; Go vegan?; …a world for our children
Our “Buckeye Back Roads Tour” continues… The following are a couple vignettes from the past several weeks: In a park in Upper Sandusky, Ohio, during a Little League Baseball game, I was passing out campaign cards between innings when one middle aged man stopped me and said: “I killed Lincoln.” That’s right, it gave me pause too — especially because we haven’t been assigned a Secret Service detail yet. He then smiled, shook my hand and said his name was: “John Booth.” “Must have been a little rough at school,” I smiled back. As coincidence would have it, we traveled the Old Lincoln Highway later that afternoon passing out more cards and putting up fliers… Later in Port Clinton, Ohio, I noticed a bumper sticker on a car outside a coffee shop there. It read: “Factory farms are the biggest source of global warming. Go Vegan!” I went inside and asked. (I’m like that.) The woman who owned the car said because of the large number of cows’ combined flatulations (or, put another way…), big methane plumes are continually rising. And methane is way more toxic, global warming wise, than carbon dioxide. (I’d read that too.) And what’s more, there is concern because of global warming, that the Pacific sea bed will soon thaw enough to release massive amounts of methane trapped below — which could be catastrophic. So what do we do? We could stop putting beans in the cow feed, or, say, we could go to a sane, multi-dimensional approach to curbing global warming in general. That is, on the front end we could outlaw factory farms and we could initially sacrifice our energy use in general, even if that means energy rationing at first. I mean we rationed for the war effort in World War II, and this is another type of ‘war.’ A war on the environment. In addition, we could exponentially step up the development and use of clean, renewable energy (solar, wind, wave action…) Being good environmental stewards will ensure a world for our children — if it’s not already too late. For more, see our position paper on energy.
Donut bait; counter conversation; “wooly bears”; and, euthanasia
We’ve been doing some ‘Buckeye Back Roads Stumping’ throughout Ohio of late, putting up fliers and passing out campaign cards. It’s our answer to the Super PAC ads and multi-million dollar big Party budgets. This week… I stumped in The Donut Shop in Huron where, that’s right, they sell donuts. (What’s more, they even have a big walleye mounted on the wall with a chocolate donut between it’s teeth. “Bait” in these parts, I’m told.) There were about 12 regulars sitting around the counter and the conversation got quite animated. The common theme was most of the guys were getting fed up with the negative campaign ads and millions (and millions, and millions…) of dollars being spent on the presidential election. “Then I would be your guy,” I smiled, while trying to decide whether to spend the extra money on a large coffee, or not. We then headed east to Vermillion, where I put up a flier at the Wooly Bear Restaurant. A “wooly bear” is slang for catepiller here. (As coincidence would have it, my wife Liz was teaching our Jonathan about catepillers and butterflies during a ‘motorhome school’ lesson this day.)… In Fremont, Ohio, we interviewed Scott Heidlebaugh who is the Northwest Ohio Field Director for the “60 Plus Association.” He explained this is a consortium of lobbying groups of seniors who believe AARP is too liberal now. 60-Plus is working behind the scenes to get as many Republicans elected as possible this election. Note: To stay with the 60-Plus theme, I was also talking to a woman earlier in the week who said with the Baby Boomers moving into retirment (10,000 a day), she’s concerned public opinion for more and more euthanasia is building like a silent tsunami. In our earlier campaign travels, we stopped in northern Texas where we toured the Loredo House. Local money and local volunteers helped build this facility which is a hospice for the disadvantaged, and others. The directors told us they were adamantly opposed to euthanasia and the ethos of this place was: “death with dignity” — in God’s time.
Mars, solar ovens, “smarter way”?
To much hoopla, we just landed another vehicle on Mars in the early morning hours today — to the tune of $2.5 billion. Meanwhile on this planet, one billion people don’t have access to clean drinking water. Many die each year because of this. During a campaign swing through the Midwest several years ago, we stopped at an Alternative Energy Festival in Custer, Wisconsin. During one of the seminars, I learned a simple solar oven (costing about $25) can easily make water hot enough to kill all the pathogens, so, for instance, a bunch of little children in the Third World don’t have to die. Now if you divide $25 into $2.5 billion dollars, what you get is scores, and scores, and scores… of villages with a whole lot more little children laughing, and playing, and… A couple years ago, President Obama, in laying out his plans to go to Mars, and beyond, said we had to go into space in a “smarter way.” I bet all these Moms and Dads, day in and day out, watching their little children painfully dying of water born disease don’t think, oh, this is a ‘smart way,’ period. Note: While we were in Wisconsin, I also interviewed University of Wisconsin Environmental Science Professor George Kraft. He said the world is running out of fresh water at an alarming rate because man has been massively: over using it, polluting it and diverting it. Our foreign policy looks at this as a major issue. (See our foreign policy paper.)
eagles, pesticides, and common sense
For a school lesson yesterday, my son Jonathan, 9, and I looked up “eagles” in our World Book Encyclopedia. That’s right, we didn’t ‘Google’ it, we looked it up. And there it was, with big pictures of eagles and everything. One of the things the section noted was that some types of eagles were becoming endangered because the animals they eat are eating crops sprayed with toxic pesticides… In our campaign travels several years ago, I met with author David Orr who is also the head of the Environmental Studies Department at Oberlin College. He believes these toxic pesticides (herbicides, fertilizers…) are not only disrupting the food chain, they are entering our systems and creating “chemical cocktails” that are exploding into things like: cancer. In the face of this, our administration would lobby for a return to growing most food organically. It just makes sense, common sense. Note: While campaigning in Wisconsin awhile back, I told some potential supporters there that when I get to D.C. I’m also going to lobby to get the national symbol changed from the eagle to, that’s right: the badger. My wife keeps telling me I’ve got to quit saying that kind of stuff.
Batman …and addicted to violence
Some thoughts in the aftermath of the movie theatre shooting in Aurora, Colorado, early this morning… It happened at a Batman movie titled: Dark Knight Rises. The real shooting erupted during a shooting scene in the movie. As of late this morning, 12 people had been killed, and 50 injured. Among the victims were some youth (ages 9, 11, 13…). President Obama’s response, in part, was: “…confronted by moments of darkness and challenge, we must now come together as one American family.” Acually in my estimation, the moments of ‘darkness’ have been coming for quite some time. These movies have been becoming more violent, and more violent, and yet even more violent… During a radio show on a campaign swing through northern California several years ago, I said we as a general viewing population have become addicted to the violence. And just like an alcoholic, the tolerance for more and more keeps increasing. Consequently, we become more and more conditioned by the violence, with more and more people these days now acting it out. (All you have to do is read the newspapers, daily.) And if that isn’t bad enough, we are now regularly allowing youth to be exposed to it — without hardly a spiritual thought. I’m also a former addictions counselor and know that when someone(s) is addicted they are also generally in denial and rationalize what they do. This often works until someone, well, hits bottom. You gotta wonder what the bottom is going to be on this violence thing, huh?
Laos, Iraq… aftermaths
There was an AP article today reporting that Hillary Clinton is in the country of Laos. In some foreign affairs research about Laos, I learned that we dropped two million tons of bombs on this country during the Vietnam War era. (Laos is a neighbor to Vietnam and was an ally to the North Vietnamese.) The amount of bombs we dropped on Laos was more than all the bombing we did throughout World War II! What’s more, with the cluster bombing, about one-third of the “bomblets” didn’t explode upon initial contact. But they have been exploding ever since. That is, when someone steps on one, or a hoe comes in contact with one… Some 20,000 people have been killed this way since the war ended, and scores of others have been seriously injured. For instance, one of the stories I read was about a little nine-year-old girl whose chest was seriously ripped open when her hoe struck one of the bomblets. Her brother and two friends had been recently killed by one of these as well… The AP article noted that Ms. Clinton was there to “…gauge whether a nation the U.S. pummeled, can evolve into a new foothold of American influence in Asia, to bolster the U.S. standing in a fast growing market.” Now the way I see it… Perhaps instead of worrying about gaining a foothold in the Laos market, we should be: DOING EVERYTHING WE CAN TO FIND AND DISPOSE OF THE REST OF THE BOMBLETTS SO OTHER LITTLE NINE-YEAR-OLDS DON’T HAVE TO DIE! I mean, we have the technology to find these things — oh yeah, and we have the moral obligation. Note: You know in a similar vein, I once went to a seminar where I learned we used depleted uranium munitions in Iraq. Uranium-tipped, bunker busting bombs and armor piercing bullets have left a significant amount of radiation behind. Cancer rates in that country have spiked tremendously, as have birth defects.
tornadoes, dorechos, warnings?
The year 2011 saw the most natural disasters worldwide in recorded history. And we’re on a tract to maybe best that this year… While record setting wildfires rage out in the West in this country, the Midwest and East Coast just got hit by a huge “derecho” storm, leaving a “massive trail of destruction,” according to the Washington Post. A storm originating in northern Illinois swept east with sustained wind gusts of 70 to 90 mph, “…one of the most destructive complexes of thunderstorms in memory,” noted the Post. Then there were the ‘huge’ (F-5) tornadoes that hit population centers like Joplin, Birmingham, Tuscaloosa… In our camapaign travels last year, we stopped in the small town of Cullman, Alabama. The tornado that hit Tuscaloosa, skipped across the state and also touched down in Cullman. The whole main street there looked like a completely bombed out war zone. Just before entering Alabama, we had sat in on a Wednesday night church service in Crestview, Florida. The pastor said he saw these massive tornadoes as God’s way of trying to get our attention. And the same could be said for this recent derecho storm. We in America have just crossed the 50 million abortion mark; we’re playing around with embryonic stem cell research and cloning; gay marriage is gaining significant traction, the disparity between the First World and the grinding poverty of the Third World is huge… Why wouldn’t God, conversely, send some ‘huge’ phenomenon to wake us up? Note: On the other hand (or in combination), our tremendously poor environmental stewardship could be part of the cause as well. After the derecho, a number of scientists said variations of: “This is what global warming looks like.”
new farm bill; corporate farms; organic growing…
The Senate is weighing a bill that would pull some subsidies from farmers, cutting about $5 billion from the Federal Budget annually. The genesis for farm subsidies came during the Great Depression and were safety nets for small farmers to help keep them on the land. Now a good deal of subsidies, under the same law, go to corporate mega-farms. We have traveled extensively looking at farming issues throughout the country over the years. With the pendulum swinging toward more and more of these huge farms, the small family farms are sadly diminishing in kind — as is a way of life that was once the backbone of our country, I told the Country Today News in Wisconsin during a previous campaign. Our agricultural policy proposes creating an environment that would make it favorable for the small family farm to make a big comeback. What’s more, we would also push to make it favorable for a return of organic growing, en mass. On a stop at Oberlin College several years ago to meet with David Orr, head of the Environmental Sciences Department there, he said modern toxic farm chemicals (pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers…) are creating “chemical cocktails” in our systems that are exploding into things like cancer. Note: Statistics show that one in three Americans now get cancer in a lifetime. Common sense says that instead of just “Racing for a Cure;” maybe we should be looking at stopping using: THE THINGS THAT CAUSE CANCER IN THE FIRST PLACE!