What You Can Accomplish With Talking

Israel and Hamas reach Gaza truce deal.

Okay, no one is naive enough to assume that there will never be confrontations in Gaza again. But Egypt -- an Islamic country -- managed to at least get both sides to sit down and consider ending the violence, even briefly.

And that's what you can accomplish, if you're willing to talk to both sides, instead of flying over the "enemy nation" and bombing the crap out of them.

~C~

Letter to John McCain

Dear Senator McCain:

At a time when the average Joe who isn't living in the lap of luxury off his wife's multi-million dollar inheritance is paying nearly $5 a gallon for gas, while oil companies have posted record high earnings, do you really think it's a wise idea to be seen protecting those gigantic oil company profit margins with such fervor and passion? Don't you think that might be political suicide, come November, when gas prices will no doubt have jumped the $5 per gallon shark?

Oh, wait. On second thought, never mind. You go on ahead and protect your buddies in the oil biz just as hard as you need to to keep those campaign contributions coming in. And, please, by all means, do it as publicly as you can. In fact, why don't you talk your other GOP pals into doing the same thing.

Golly, I'm looking forward to November. I'm making out my birthday gift list right now. Anybody want to guess what I'm wishing for?

Besides the pony, I mean?

~C~

The 35 Articles

YeahBuddy...

~A~

HEY, L.A. -- ARE YOU VOTING TODAY?

In case you were so caught up in national interests that y'all forgot, there's an election TODAY in L.A. County. Judges, our state assemblyman and two EXCEEDINGLY important state measures are up. The state measures were rammed through by lovers of eminent domain and corporate tyranny, in hopes that you guys would be so busy packing for your summer vacations, you'd completely miss it.

The answer is NO on Measure 98, which is a way to screw over renters (seems kind of like a measure that favors renters, until you get to the part where it abolishes rent control!), and YES on measure 99, which would prevent local politicians from exercising eminent domain laws in order to assist their real estate developer cronies in stealing your property to build strip malls and other private property investments.

If you don't vote for a single judge or the state assemblyman (Bob Blumenfield, in case you were available to be swayed), get out and vote on the state measures. I'm so tired of special interests using our own laziness and apathy against us, particularly when it comes to the roof over our collective heads.

In case you don't know where your polling place in LA is, here's a handy Polling Place locator, that will show you exactly where you vote (based on your house number and street), and will provide you with a .pdf version of your sample ballot.

VOTE, LOS ANGELES. Think of it as "stylus practice" for November.

~C~