Calhouns Can(n)ons

Sewer Reminder

Wednesday at the SLO Botanical Gardens, the Sierra Club, the San Luis Bay chaper of the Surfrider Foundation and San Luis Obispo Green Bild, will be hosting a presentation of John Todd of John Todd Ecological Designs "ECO Machine," a wastewater treatment system that may or may not be added to the County's Consideration List. The Botanical Garden's presentation is Wed, Feb 6 at 6 pm ($20 donation). There will be another presentation at the Los Osos Community Center, Thursday, Feb 7 at 6 pm. ($5 donation).

Reason #4,308,293,1002.50 to be a Vegan

Better put down that Big Mac and step away from the counter. a slaughterhouse in Chino was stopped after it was discovered they were using "downer cattle" i.e. cows so sick they can't walk to their deaths so had to be fork-lifted to the killing machine, or had to suffer getting water blasted up their nostrils (waterboarding for cattle now?) to get them to their feet so they could be killed and ground up into hamburgers which were then sent to our public schools for their lunch program.

Eeeeuuuuuu? Not only eeeuuuuu for the sheer inhumanity of it all, but "downer" cattle may well carry not only whatever is "downing" them but may be suffering from mad cow disease. Eeeuuuuu? You betcha. You wanna eat that meat? Feed it to our kids? And that's just one slaughterhouse. Funding for the USDA inspector programs has consistently been cut, there simply aren't good mechanisims in place to oversee this sort of thing, plus under the "conservative" Republican Mantra of NO GOVERNMENT REGULATIONS, this kind of stuff is par for the course, because profit takes prescedence over public health -- downer cattle are cheap; making sure there are no downer cattle is expensive -- expensive eats into profits. Sick or dead kids don't. Case closed. Eat up!

Vote Early, Vote Often, Get Your Dead Uncle To Vote, Cousin Mazey, Too

It is always a supreme irony to me to hear people whining and sniveling about how awful "Washington" is. When you ask them, did you vote for this or so Representative or Senator (you know, the people who are actually writing the laws the person's whining about,) too often I'm told, "Uh, no, why bother?"

Duh. The collective wailing by the country about how awful George Bush is or how the country's going in the wrong direction is just plain silly. The voters had an opportunity to not only vote Bush out of office, they had an opportunity to vote INTO office, a veto-proof Congress and/or a congress bent on accountability and setting things right by doing their Constitutionally mandated job of oversight. The voters chose to keep the status quo: same Prez, a veto-able Congress still filled with Kool-Aide drinkers on both sides of the aisle, people with a vested interest in CYA and maintining the status quo until the clock runs out and they can dump the whole mess on whoever gets elected next time.

Is this any way to run a country? Apparently.