President Obama has just signed legislation outlawing torture of “enemy combatants,” which I agree with. And at the same time, he is starting to open the door for more and more “innocent babies” to be dismembered in their mothers’ wombs. Is there something wrong with this picture?
1/26/09
I was on the St. Ignatius High School campus this morning and talked with youth minister Augi Pacetti. He said this week that some of the students were doing “The Great Garbage Challenge.” For five days, students will carry around a plastic bag (everywhere) that they fill up with the garbage they generate. This is to make one’s waste visible and bring it to the forefront of one’s consciousness, Mr. Pacetti explained. It should be eye opening for most of the students… I couldn’t help but think how helpful it would be for many of us to be able to also carry around a ‘bag’ for five days of all the carbon dioxide each of us emits from our vehicles, our home heating, our consumer purchases (it takes the burning of fossil fuels to produce most items). Note: The Obama Administration is moving swiftly on applications by California and 13 other states for much stricter automobile emissions and fuel efficiency, the New York Times reported today. While this is, indeed, a step in the right direction, our environmental policy on global warming would be much more agressive than the Obama Administration’s, across the board. Much of the global warming data now indicates that these gradual, incremental shifts in policy — “…is like re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic,” I just told the Ashtabula Star Beacon newspaper.
1/23/09
Something’s gone a bit awry with our capitalistic system. Greed… Author Fr. Dom Rembert Sorg writes that the village shoemaker should receive compensation, not by how many shoes he fixes, but by how many children he has. Yet many of us in America are trying to hold on to every dime, tight. Talking about this the other night with my wife Liz, she said that if the government regulates this to make it so for the shoemaker, then that’s “socialism.” However, if the consumer — of their own free will — decides to pay more than, say, the going rate, because they know the shoemaker has a lot of kids — then this represents “capitalism for the common good as opposed to capitalism for the profit of just a few,” said Liz.
1/21/09
Our daughter Sarah, son Joseph and myself went to a Public Hearing tonight on a zoning variance for the addition of a cremation machine at the funeral home around the corner. The hearing room was full. Neighborhood people were concerned about the mercury emissions. Seems when people are creamated who have mercury fillings in their teeth (which is a whole lot of people), the mercury is emitted through a smoke stack and deposits, well, wherever the wind is blowing, or not blowing… A professor from Case Western Reserve University, Kathleen Fagan, MD, said mercury causes damage to the developing brains of unborn children and babies less than one year old. “Health effects can range from decreases in IQ and developmental delays to muscle weakness, seizures and mental retardation.” During the question and answer period, our Sarah stood and said she has spent a good deal of time with two autistic children. And if there is any possibility the mercury could cause this type of condition (or others), then why would anybody want to risk it? Good question… A representative from the cremation machine company said the EPA assures people that the mercury release from crematoriums is minimal and well within it’s standards for safe emissions. Shortly after, a man rose and said during the Vietnam War the government told military people that handling “agent orange” wasn’t cancer causing. Yet they found out later that it was. The man wondered: Do we want to find out the same thing about mercury emissions — after the fact? Good point. Note: During one juncture in the hearing on the cremation machine, the moderator asked if there was any: “burning questions.” No pun intended, but I had to laugh.
1/20/09
I hate to be a party pooper, but… I was talking to a political science professor over the weekend who said that $24 million had been raised just the Inaugural Ball activity, etc. What’s more, some five million people have come to D.C. to, simply put: be part of this week’s party. They will spend billions on plane flights, lodging, food… During one of our campaign tours several years ago, I interviewed a woman in Cortez, Colorado, who was recently back from a missions trip to Uganda. She said emaciated children slept atop burlap bags on the dirt floors of huts as their parents, and many of them, died of starvation and AIDS. We also stopped at Habitat for Humanity headquarters in Americus, Georgia, where we learned millions of families living in the abject poverty of Third World slums could be put in Habitat Homes for prices ranging from $2,000 to $4,000 a home. Question: How far could the billions of dollars being spent on all the ‘party goers’ in D.C. this week go toward building these homes and helping these starving children? Our priorities are getting so out of whack.
1/19/09
In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day today, we read the kids some passages from the book: Let My People Go, which is about slavery in early America… During our campaign tours we have retraced the Civil Rights March from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, and followed an Underground Railroad Route from Georgia to Ohio. On another Martin Luther King Jr. Day during Campaign 2004, I told the Range News in Arizona that even though we’ve made significant strides in civil rights for Blacks, there are still many Blacks (Hispanics, Asians, Whites…) who are ‘slaves’ to things like transgenerational poverty loops in metropolitan and rural America — not to mention around the world.
1/16/09
An Ashtabula Star Beacon story about our 2012 campaign for president ran today. Lifestyle Editor Carl Feather wrote that there would be no gas guzzling motorcade to our inaugaration, we’d bicycle. He noted that during the speech I would include a slide show of pictures of aborted babies and a plea for America to stop the Holocaust. There would be no gala balls, just a simple rice and beans dinner for a few — in solidarity with the poor. “Joe would direct the folks who sponsor those soirees to use that money to feed people in a Third World country.” At the end of this part of the story, Mr. Feathers wrote: “We’re talking real change here…” Note: To view the entire story: http://www.starbeacon.com/archivesearch/local_story_014191755.html
1/12/09
I was interviewed by reporter Carl Feathers from the Ashtabula Star Beacon today. During the interview, I mentioned that National Public Radio last night carried a piece saying the Israelis would probably end their incursion into Gaza just before Obama took office next week. The rationale, the NPR reporter said, was that Obama would probably be more opposed to the Israeli action than President Bush is. And they wouldn’t want to get off on the wrong foot with the Obama Administration, especially because they are so reliant on the U.S. for arms, etc. I posed this to Mr. Feathers: If Barack Obama is indeed opposed to the extent of this Israeli action, why doesn’t he do something about it: now? Reports are that more than 1,000 Palestinians have now been killed in Gaza, a good number of them innocent men, women and children. If you wanted this to stop, wouldn’t you — as “president-elect” — go to Gaza and, in solidarity, move in with a Palestinian family right in the middle of the war zone? The bet is, this would end that war. Instead, Mr. Obama was staying at a $7 million beach house and playing golf at a country club in Hawaii. He is now in D.C., in part, readying for a series of lavish Inaugaral Balls. Meanwhile children cower in terror, others are having their arms and legs blown off with shrapnel from bombs… I told Mr. Feathers that if I was “president-elect,” I’d already be in that home in Palestine, not working on my golf swing.
1/9/09
We’re back in Cleveland for part of the winter and Liz and I coached in an indoor soccer league at the neighborhood Rec. Center. The kids, as usual, were spirited, competetive and several of them we’re awful good to boot (pun intended). The latter are youth referred to as: “the Africans.” They are recently here from Burundi by way of refugee camps in Tanzania, where they fled from the fighting. A boy on my team continually talks about a brother who is still in harms way in Burundi. Another boy said the poverty is so pervasive in Burundi the kids would often practice soccer with — an orange. Yet we think nothing here of buying the top of the line soccer balls (shin pads, goalie gloves, expensive soccer clothes…) for our kids. Wouldn’t it make sense, common sense, for many us in America to halve our expenses on these items — and so many others — and send the savings to Burundi where the fighting is primarily about people not having the minimum in adequate food, housing, medicine… not to mention soccer balls for the kids. Note: If we want world peace, we have to do stuff to significantly impact what’s causing the discord.
12/31/08
New Year’s Eve: Bombs fall on the Gaza Strip. As I write this, reports indicate there are already some 400 Palestinians dead, 1,400 injured. A picture in our Plain Dealer newspaper showed a bomb exploding in a building just beyond one, of many, refugee camps in Gaza. Meanwhile, we sit back comfortably in America and watch this unfold in an antiseptic way on the nightly news. Bombs exploding, innocent civilians (Moms, Dads, little children) being killed, maimed, cowering in darkened hallways as more jets zoom overhead… And even with all this, few Americans really care. Or they’d show it. That simple. They’d enter into solidarity with the innocent poor and oppressed in Palestine, for instance, and sacrifice all over the place to generate all kinds of funds to get those people in Gaza out of the slum conditions of the refugee camps, for one. The overeating we’ll do New Year’s Day alone tomorrow — all the non-nutritional junk food and beverages we spoil ourselves with — while people live in terror, in squalor, is absolutely unconscienable. If I were president… I’d adamantly confront the American public about this and challenge them to sacrifice intensely for a massive fundraising drive to get as much humanitarian help to Palestine as possible. Common sense says that by easing some of the poverty, you’d significantly ease some of the tension over there. This would be a component of my ‘Road Map for Peace’ between Israel and Palestine. Peace often comes with a price. But is the American public really willing to pay it? Or are we going to go on forever supreflously lamenting about it — at half time of the Bowl games? Meanwhile Barrack Obama plays golf at a country club in Hawaii. The greens fee alone for one round, I imagine, would be enough to get, say, 10 families out of a refugee camp in Gaza. What kind of example is this for the nation? Note: We are readying for our first tour of Campaign 2012 to get our message of peace, social justice, Life… out to as many more as possible. And we need donations to do that. If you can help, please consider it. Thanks. Schriner Presidential Election Committee, 2100 W. 38th St., Cleveland, Ohio 44113.