JUST FOR THE HEALTH OF IT: Public Health Radio Show on WAKT 106.1 FM Toledo

March 26th, 2019   Filed under:

JUST FOR THE HEALTH OF IT: Public Health Radio Show on WAKT 106.1 FM Toledo

Just for the Health of It - The Science of Health for ALL - PUBLIC HEALTH radio show, WAKT 106.1 FM ToledoJust for the Health of It is my weekly half-hour public health show on WAKT, 106.1 FM Toledo. You can listen at 9:00 AM Tuesdays and Thursdays (after Democracy NOW) on-air or on-line ToledoRadio.org.  To listen anytime you want online, below are links to the latest shows.

Just for the Health of It brings you new perspectives on the science of health for all; plus local, state, national, and global health news, as well as local guests for home-grown perspectives and connections to local resources. Just for the Health brings you the best of both social justice and personal health.WAKT Toledo 106.1 FM -- Just for the Health of It - Public health radio show

Just for the Health focuses on putting the JUST in Just for the Health of It. 

My aim is to equip you to live healthily in a healthy community on a just planet.

For you of those folks who are perhaps too busy to catch a whole show, or just want to sample my sense of humor, here are a few of my parody PSAs:

Parody PSA: Pla-ce-bo Pharmaceuticals’ Elimin-all

Parody PSA: PR Medica and Merciless Health Systems

Parody PSA: Health Care for ALL

HERE ARE LINKS TO THE LATEST SHOWS:

Week of January 27, 2020:

Featuring in opioid racketeering trial, pharmaceutical executive John Kapoor sentenced to 5.5 years (2:19); report finds most states lack crucial highway safety laws, with Ohio in bottom tier (5:17); the USDA never gives up on favoring corporate interests over kids’ health, in rolling back school food rules (8:38); new study debunks argument for weakening health school lunch rules (12:16); sepsis associated with 1 in 5 deaths globally, double previous estimate (14:34); Physicians for a National Health Program public letter on Medicare for All (16;49); The American College of Physicians’ endorsement of single-payer reform is a sea change for the medical profession (18:55); how non-compete clauses shackle physicians and hurt patients (22:01); the false promise of natural gas, aka, methane (25:21); world consumption of natural materials hits record 13 tons per earthling per year (35:02).

Week of January 20, 2020:

Featuring why drinking diet soda makes you crave sugar (1:44); slow carbs over low carbs – fiber matters (5:00); FDA and NIH let clinical trial sponsors keep results secret against regulations (9:02); putting air filters in classrooms could give student performance a serious boost (12:42); between 2005 and 2016, the shift away from coal saved an estimated 26,610 lives and 570 million bushels of crops (14:07); why Black doctors like me are leaving faculty positions in academic medical centers (16:42); McDonald’s in Black America (23:18); millions of “outdated” tests being performed on healthy females 15-20 years old (26:00); Kansas leaders announce breakthrough bipartisan deal to expand Medicaid (26:58); the most expensive health care option of all — do nothing (27:36); more Americans dying at home rather than in hospitals (33:17); helping patients prep mind and body for surgery pays off (34:35).

Week of January 13, 2020:

Featuring alcohol-related deaths have doubled since 1999, here’s why (2:18); 40% of gun owners reported not locking all guns, even around kids (6:25); Coca-Cola internal documents reveal efforts to sell to teens, despite obesity crisis (8:52); half of America will be obese within 10 years, unless we work together (10:48); more than one in three low- and middle-income countries face both extremes of malnutrition (13:48); Medicaid expansion linked to 6% decline in opioid overdose deaths (18:10); U.S. health care bureaucracy costs unnecessary $600 billion yearly (19:02); every American family basically pays a yearly $8,000 “poll tax” under U.S. health system (20:25); nurses get under 7 hours of sleep before a work shift — 83 minutes fewer than days off (25;40); health care providers are unrecognized victims of mass killings, and we are doing little to support them (28:26); U.S. cancer rate drops by largest annual margin ever (30:58); ecopsychology — how immersion in nature benefits your health (33:12).

Week of January 6, 2020:

Featuring Trump abandons sweeping vape ban with weak new rules (2:21); 7 women’s health topics we need to talk about in 2020 (5:48); advocates hopeful gun violence research funding will lead to prevention (12:16); long work hours linked to both regular and hidden high blood pressure (15:28); processed meat recalls rise dramatically as consumers bite down in metal, plastic and glass (16:48); animal agriculture cost more in health damage than it contributes to the economy (20:08); “completely unsustainable” — how streaming and other data demands take a toll on the environment (21:38); The IRS sent a letter to 3.9 million people and it saved some of their lives (22:32); “Medicare for All” ignores a bigger problem of community-level factors impacting health (25:22); Toledo needs to fix access to drug treatment centers (29:32); your DNA is not your destiny — or a good predictor of your health (33:04); huge drop in cholera cases worldwide as key endemic countries achieve gains in cholera control (35:10).

Week of December 30, 2019:

Featuring a special episode on conflicts of interest in health science research with: why scientists defend dangerous industries (2:32); scientists’ failure to disclose hundreds of millions by of dollars in conflicts of interest in federally funded health research (9:12); and how even public universities do a poor job of reporting their professors’ conflicts of interest (20:46).

Week of December 23, 2019:

Featuring context and broader perspective on Toledo’s reported ranking as #2 in mental health among American midsize cities, with wide look at Toledo health indicators compared to the U.S. as a whole (1:45), and how Ohio ranks compared to other states within another set of health indicators(10:00); and for Toledoans to feel relatively better, an in-depth report on the extraordinary danger of being pregnant and uninsured in Texas (15:44).

Week of December 16, 2019:

Featuring the latest Romaine lettuce outbreak — Just say NO (2:18); labeling foods with the amount and type of exercise needed to burn off the calories may encourage people to make healthier dietary choices (5:46); dramatic health benefits following air pollution reductions (8:03); climate change impact of hot temperatures shortening pregnancies (12:17); mental health and addiction care are poorly covered by insurance networks, even with parity law (13:42); half of homeless people may have experienced a head injury in their lifetime (17:04); large pharma companies don’t really provide drug development innovation (18:38); another generic drug company admits to price-fixing (23:31); how “Indian relocation” created a public health crisis (25:23); scientists take action to prevent sexual harassment and bias in STEM workplace (24:34).

Week of December 9, 2019:

Featuring no need for extra protein unless losing weight or gaining muscle (2:21); access to online grocery shopping can vastly reduce “food deserts” (3:47); Trump administration plays perfect Grinch with its new food stamp rules (5:31); red states expanding Medicaid points to its widespread political popularity (10:18); tobacco use among kids jumps from 3.6 million to 6.2 million in one year (14:48); the e-cigarette ingredient to really fear is nicotine (17:07); Ohio to test state drinking water supplies for “forever chemical” contamination (20:15); 1.9 million Michigan residents drink some PFAS as evidence mounts about its dangers (21:58); breast cancer linked to permanent hair dye and chemical hair straighteners, especially among black women (27:32); police killings of unarmed black Americans may effect health of black infants (29:39); how racism ripples through rural California pipes (35:08).

Week of December 2, 2019:

Featuring short-term air pollution linked to growing list of health problems (2:14); Americans’ drinking, drug use, despair wiping life expectancy gains (5:05); health care, mass shootings, 2020 election causing Americans significant stress (9:09); hospital alarms prove a noisy misery for patients (12:24); the $11 million Medicare tool that gives seniors the wrong insurance information (16:50); Mississippi forfeits a million dollars daily in Medicaid funds, severely affecting mentally ill (20:49); mental health studies limp transgender teens under one umbrella, missing clues to help them in the process (25:23); shooting victims have increased risk of mental harm long after physical injuries have healed (30:24); feeling loved in everyday life linked with improved well-being (32:24).

Week of November 25:

Featuring holiday commentary on eating for quality of life, and tips on mindful eating (1:43); public health case study — why the FDA was unable to prevent a crisis of vaping among youth (10:53); large health coverage expansions do not increase overall health care utilization (26:40); employees spending greater share of income on health insurance (28:58); Georgia waivers more costly and cover far fewer people than Medicaid expansion (31:10); Ohio Medicaid still hemorrhaging money to pharmacy middlemen (33:28); with half of brain removed, it still works pretty well (36:52).

Week of November 18:

Featuring new data-driven definitions of unhealthy yet persuasive ‘hyper-palatable’ foods (2:16); adult cigarette smoking rates hit all-time low in U.S. (5;37); e-cigarettes take serious toll on heart health, not safer than traditional cigarettes (7:18); High proportion of youth report using prescription opioids (8:51); vaping and prescription opioids — limbic capitalism in action (10:49); childhood trauma as a public health issue (18:47); getting a handle on self-harm (23:07); 35,000 Americans die of antibiotic-resistant infection each year (30:16); groundbreaking HIV vaccine design strategy shows promise in proof-of-principle tests (31:47); in a notoriously polluted area of the country, massive new chemical plants are still moving in (34:16); Delhi is engulfed by toxic pollution — why isn’t anyone wearing masks? (34:55)

Week of November 11:

Featuring how in health care so-called market competition and the “public option” is a poison pill (1:43); number of uninsured children rises for second year, topping 4 million (22:50); widely used algorithm for follow-up care in hospitals is racially biased (25:26); women scientists author fewer invited commentaries in medical journals than men (28:15); dementia impacts women more and new approaches are needed (29:03); tap water at Trump National Golf Course contaminated with toxic “forever chemical” (31:57); restoring native vegetation could cut air pollution and costs (34:22).

Week of November 4:

Featuring thousands of doctors paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by drug and medical device companies (2:20); pharma money paid to doctors is the cancer growing in cancer medicine (6:06); massive marketing muscle pushes more expensive 3D mammograms despite no evidence they save more lives (19:11); proposed opioid settlement could cost drugmaker only pennies on the dollar (14;12); Trump has already hired 4 times the former lobbyists than Obama had six years into office (15:13); wasted health care spending in U.S. tops annual defense budget (15:48); to treat chronic ailments, fix diet first (17;36); nutritious foods have lower environmental impact than unhealthy foods (20:42); study finds focusing on patient value and goals instead of problems yields better outcomes (23:02); in longer run, drugs and talk therapy offer similar value for people with depression (27:42); mentally ill die many years earlier than others (30:46); sleeps connection to gut microbiome reinforces overall good health (31:42); racial inequities in hospital admissions for heart failure (34:29).

Week of October 28:

Featuring the connection between pipelines and sexual violence (2:21); taking the cops out of mental health-related 911 rescues (5:42); when medical debt collectors decide who get arrested (7;22); children’s risk of dying before age 5 varies more than 40-fold (11:23); 7 million people receive record level of lifesaving TB treatment but 3 million still miss out (14:27); 2 out of 3 wild poliovirus strains eradicated (16;44); fear of falling — how hospitals do even more harm by keeping patients in bed (18:30); exercise can reduce artery stiffness even in those with heart failure (20:41); largest study finds greater reduction in cardiovascular disease and death from taking high blood pressure medication at bedtime rather than in morning (21;21); doctors argue for term limits to diversify medical school leadership (23:58); U.S. air quality was improving but is no getting worse (28:26); replacement flame retardants pose serious risks (31:07).

Week of October 21:

Featuring a call to eliminate all flavored cigarettes, not just the electric kind (2:18); JUUL announcement on certain flavored e-cigarettes is way too little way to late (6:32); Doctors are more likely to prescribe opioids later in the day, or if appointments run late (7:23); every hospital needs recovery coaches for patients with substance use problems (9:46); cultivating joy through mindfulness — an antidote to opioid misuse, the disease of despair (15:13); INVESTIGATIVE REPORT – inside the drug industry’s plan to defeat the DEA (19:03).

Week of October 14:

Featuring: lead scientist of controversial meat guidelines didn’t report ties to food industry front group (1:43); noise pollution as an emerging public health crisis (7:37); update on vaping recommendations (12:41); upcoming flu season may be fairly severe (14:33); STD rates hit record high in U.S. (16:22); global report on vision impairment (18:38); NIH funding disparity between black and white scientists (19:29); sheriffs avoid paying their hospital bills by foisting “medical bond” on sick inmates (21:33); unjustified drug price hikes cost Americans billions (25:31); antibiotic resistance in food animals nearly tripled since 1000 (27:20); EPA about-face lets emissions soar at some coal plants (28:24); PFAS levels rise in Michigan drinking water from Lake Erie (30:30); environmental and health harms are downshifting America’s obsession with the lawn (31:33).

Week of October 7:

Featuring the recent confusion around meat consumption research — a case study on nutritional science research (1:43); lack of sleep has detrimental effects on hunger and fat metabolism (19:00); smartphone dependency predicts depressive symptoms and loneliness (20:07); handgun purchasers with a prior DUI have a greater risk for serious violence (21:50); FDA refuses to classify ‘forever chemical” PFAS as hazardous substance (23:15); safe drinking water violations are higher for communities of color (27:50); role of racial stereotypes in assumptions that African-Americans are more violent (28:58); special series of articles in the American Journal of Public Health documenting role of slavery and racism in health inequalities that persist today (31:06).

Week of September 30:

Featuring American Heart Association statement condemning JUUL’s executive leadership change to long-time tobacco exec (1:45); how active shooter drills in schools are traumatizing our children (4:33); the Surgeon General’s deafening silence on gun violence (10:42); investigative journalist reveals startling flaws in generic drug industry, with FDA missing in action (14:20); World Health Organization calls for urgent action to reduce patient harm in healthcare (18:03); stressed out — Americans making themselves sick over politics (23:19); heart-healthy forager-farmers in lowland Bolivia are changing diets and gaining weight (25:35); many schools are putting brakes on making meals healthier for kids (27:52); some tea bags may shed billions of microplastics per cup (31:02); in continuing trend, S.C. Johnson joins Coca-Cola and PepsiCo in ditching ties to Plastics Industry Association (34:34).

Week of September 23:

Featuring Ohio initiatives to fight youth vaping (2:18); sexual trauma as a global public health issue (5:57); Defense Department as single biggest polluter on planet (12:00); 15 governors lobby for provisions in defense bill to limit toxic chemicals (17:10); deforestation is getting worse, five years after countries and companies vowed to stop it (19:12); Man vs. mosquito – at the front lines of a public health war (20:57); the connection between residential segregation and health (23:48); national support for “red-flag: gun laws could prevent many suicides (25;47); obesity epidemic grows and disparities persist (28:39); despite growing burden of diet-related diseases, medical education does not equip students to provide quality nutritional care to patients (29:52); House panel investigating private equity firms’ role in surprise medical billing (32:16); more women and children survive today than ever before — U.N. report (33:29).

Week of September 16:

Featuring suicide prevention awareness month info (1:43); lifestyle, not genetics, explain most premature heart disease, and multiple risk factors raise risk exponentially (7:23); flu vaccination linked to lower risk of early death in people with high blood pressure (8:43); it matters that Detroit broke federal law when it razed asbestos-laden building (11:25); Juul illegally marketed e-cigarettes (13:26); if Ohio can’t pass the simplest health care price transparency laws, how will Congress curb surprise bills (15:59); Physicians for a National Health Program diagnose politicians and pundits with Corporate Talking-Pointitis (23:06); only a fraction of costs of excessive drinking are paid for by alcohol taxes (30:12); STAT wins long legal fight clearing way for release of Purdue OxyContin files (32:50).

Week of September 9:

Featuring a case study in nutritional fads — vitamin D — with a study of high doses of vitamin D resulting in decreased bone density (1:43); emails show Monsanto orchestrated GOP effort to intimidate cancer researchers (8:24); how Ohio’s Chamber of Commerce killed the Lake Erie Bill of Rights (11:14); EPA to roll back regulations on methane, a potent greenhouse gas (12:41); sexism in health care — in men, it’s Parkinson’s, in women, it’s hysteria (14:53); overeating wastes far more food then we throw away (18:33); big pharma sinks to bottom of U.S. industry rankings (21:14); advocates sound alarm as uninsured rates rise under Trump (22:02); Obamacare health insurance exchange prices to drop in Ohio for first time (23:46); opioid treatment is used vastly more in states that expanded Medicaid (26:23); plant-based fire retardants may offer less toxic way to tame flames (27:43); water treatment cuts parasitic roundworm infections affection 800 million people (28:26); a quarter of the world’s population at risk of developing tuberculosis (29:45); FDA approves TB pill that cures more hard-to-treat patients (30:15); for the first time, clinical trial results show Ebola drugs improve survival rates (32:01).

Week of September 2:

Featuring an in-depth investigative report into industry influence of the U.S. Dietary Guidelines development process (1:47); and Ohio drug deaths plunge in Ohio, but up in Lucas County (29:50).

Week of August 26:

Featuring the two largest health factors in your personal health: smoking and diet (1:44); nearly 200,000 trans people have been exposed to conversion therapy (16:02); toxic furniture flame retardants may not stifle deadliest home fires (18:35); Health panel tells doctors to screen all adults for illicit drug use (20:31); spending on illicit drugs nears $150 billion annually, similar to alcohol (21:17); American Medical Association leaves coalition opposing single-payer Medicare for All (22:50); and programs work from within to prevent black maternal deaths: workers targeting root cause — racism (24:56).

Week of August 19:

Featuring Brazil’s Bolsonaro administration approving 290 new pesticide products for use (2:20); in echo of Flint lead crisis, Newark offers bottled water (4:31); summer in the city is hot, but some neighborhoods suffer more (5:32); up to half of patients withhold life-threatening issues from doctors (9:18); how #MeToo is changing sex ed policies – even in red states (10:04); 140,000 women could lose clinical abortion access in 1st year if Roe v. Wade were overturned (14:55); 250,000 fewer Ohioans on Medicaid, but even the experts don’t know why (15:38); Half-a-million years of Ohioans’ life expectancy lost to gun deaths (19:13); review of 33 years worth of medical studies reveals key areas for new research to explore concerning gun deaths (23:13); the dangers of the mental health narrative when it comes to gun violence (25:17); racist words and acts, like El Paso shooting, harm children’s health (29:46).

Week of August 12:

Featuring lower weight bias among physicians who regard obesity as a disease; BPA substitutes linked to obesity; call for radical reform to address 3.5 billion people worldwide with poor dental health; Coca-Cola pushing to get FDA let it add vitamins to drinks; amid teen vaping epidemic, Juul taps addiction expert as medical director; high radiation levels found near U.S. nuclear dump from weapons testing in Marshall Islands; moral injury and burnout in medicine requires collective action; and how judges added to the grim toll of opioids.

Week of August 5:

Featuring growing PCB claims adding to Bayer’s legal woes for Roundup; floods and fires stir up toxic stew posing long-term dangers; new tool for Michigan officials to use to remedy environmental injustice; Florida sugarcane burning could switch to green harvesting saving lives and boosting economy; U.S. could have averted 15,600 deaths if every state expanded Medicaid; Trump proposal to push 3 million Americans off food assistance; one-third of food grown never makes it out of fields; relatively low-dose radiation from CT scans and x-rays favor cancer growth; fitbits and other wearables may not accurately track heart rates in people of color; and seeing greenery linked to less intense and frequent cravings.

Week of July 29:

Featuring the corrupting influence of conflicts of interest in medical research; UT exhibit on protest and social change includes “Condoms STOP AIDS” poster developed by your humble host; widespread aspirin use despite few benefits, high risks; child drowning rates dropping two-thirds driven by better building codes concerning pools; vaccinating dogs for rabies worldwide could save the lives 59,000 people yearly; nations with strong women’s rights have better population health and faster economic growth; Medicare for All unlikely to raise hospitalization rates much, if at all; climate shocks, conflict and economic slumps drive rising world hunger; taps run dry for half of Zimbabwe’s capital city affecting millions.

Week of July 22:

Featuring keto diets and other diets that severely restrict carbohydrates, how there is little evidence for their effectiveness, especially considering their potential risks and sustainability issues both individually and ecologically, and how massive carbohydrate restriction hamstrings consumption of health-producing carbohydrates like beans, fruits, vegetables and unrefined grains; capping medical residency training hours does not hamper doctor quality; primary care needs to be encouraged; patients provide input for first time in mental health definitions; how to deal with anxiety about climate change; and protecting forests and watersheds to treat water cost-effectively and sustainably.

Week of July 15:

Featuring why there is so much commercial corruption in nutrition; fiber and health and fiber as a good marker for intake of whole foods; indoor carbon dioxide levels could be a health hazard; most kids on public coverage have parents who work for big companies; international drug development processes are irresponsible and must be reformed; the burgeoning benzo crisis; psychiatric diagnosis “scientifically meaningless”; and environmental activists declare victory after Detroit incinerator closes.

Week of July 8:

Featuring alcohol and cancer; bullying and weight bias; the Veterans Crisis Line; austerity and inequality fueling mental illness; EPA moves to phase out animal experiments which could mean end to toxics regulations; mini-biographies help clinicians connect with patients; new guidelines aim to enlist primary care physicians in transgender care; poll: most Americans favor Medicare for All if they can keep their doctors; and children’s cardiac care dangerous when mixed with corporatized health care.

Week of July 1:

Featuring the continuing public health case study that is the obesity epidemic, with a call to move beyond individual behavior and focus on social determinants driving obesity such as fat shaming and bias, and access to culturally-competent health services; plus, medical groups declare climate change as greatest public health challenge of the 21st century; Agriculture Department buries studies showing dangers of climate change; dangerous DDT levels 50 years after banning; and how banning dangerous chemicals could save the U.S. billions.

Week of June 24:

Featuring the question: Is public health in America so bad among the young, supposedly healthier people, that the U.S. may eventually not be able to defend itself militarily? Plus, the National Domestic Violence Hotline’s busiest year; childhood adversity’s link to mental illness, sexually transmitted infections continue unabated; world’s rivers awash with dangerous levels of antibiotics, the U.S. continuing to use pesticides banned in other countries; and Ohio River moves to voluntary pollution standards in face of massive petrochemical plant build-out.

Week of June 17:

Featuring the importance of happiness and purpose in driving health and well-being, and the epidemic of meaninglessness in work life; the role of sleep in health; the celebration of Men’s Health Month through using male privilege to help bring about gender justice and defeat patriarchy; the secret to Latino longevity; and how skyrocketing out-of-pocket health expenses, particularly among employer-based and private health insurance is costing health and lives.

Week of June 10:

Featuring a public health case study offering several perspectives on the many factors which form the perfect storm of the obesity epidemic — with a few tips for weathering the storm; and a series of articles regarding racism and racial disparities in health — with some good news.

Week of June 3:

Featuring continued coverage of the health effects of processed foods, including two new major studies; concerns about the potential risks of the exponential growth of nanoparticles in food processing; toxic chemicals used in food packaging and how to avoid them; and why cutting down on salt is health promoting,even if your blood pressure is fine.

Week of May 27:

Featuring continuing Mental Health Awareness Month coverage including suicide, supposed mental health parity, and appealing health coverage denials, and another in a series of mental health poems by local poet, Justin Samson, with this week’s poem on PTSD, Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome; Media Watch segment on MercyHealth claiming that nurses mean the world ironically while their nurses strike; landmark study on processed foods and overeating, and a series of stories on air pollution as a public health emergency.

Week of May 20:

Featuring Mental Health Awareness Month coverage including the debut in a series of mental health poems by local poet, Justin Samson, with this week’s poem on major depression; public health news and research roundup coverage of dementia prevention recommendations, childhood cancer prevention, and basic sanitation as a critical public health issue in the U.S. and globally.

Week of May 13:

Featuring Mental Health Awareness Month coverage, public health news and research roundup coverage of the ongoing Monsanto Roundup™ saga plus other herbicide/pesticide/plastics toxins, prescription drug prices, and the debut of another parody PSA.

Week of May 6:

A whole show about vaccine-preventable infectious diseases.  SPOILER ALERT: immunizations profoundly improve the public health of our planet!

Week of April 29:

Featuring tips on cutting back on salt and sugar, and getting more whole grains into your diet. This episode debuts two new segments, Media Watch, looking at how public health is portrayed in the media, and Health Observances, April as minority health month, examining racism as the driving force in the so-called mystery of stubbornly high black infant mortality. The Public Health News and Research Roundup includes the health effects of fracking, and the effect of food waste on climate change.

Week of April 22:

Featuring “The three most dangerous food additives,” and good news in the Public Health News and Research Roundup. And look out for that parody PSA!

Week of April 15:

Featuring Public Health News and Research Roundup and a noncommercial break highlighting blood donation.

Week of April 8:

Featuring environmental health news and the question: Can you be a serious environmentalist without cutting down drastically on animal-foods, that is, cutting way down on meat, eggs, and dairy?

Week of April 1:

Featuring a far-reaching riff on epidemiology, the science of the distribution of health, disease and their determinants in populations; in laypersons’ terms, what are the most important things to consider in our community’s health. Regarding personal health, the show closes with a quick summary of evidence-based eating for health.

Week of May 25:

Featuring Public Health News and Research Roundup [not affiliated with Roundup™, the infamous human carcinogen].

Week of May 18: 

Featuring Medicare for all testimony and Toledo Democracy Day coverage, plus conferring the award for the MOST CONSTIPATED View of DEMOCRACY.

PILOT Show from December 2015: 

This is the original pilot show that started it all! This full hour show features an interview with local guest, Johnathon Ross, M.D., M.P.H., a local public health physician and former president of Physicians for a National Health Program.



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FREE Environmental POSTER: EPA Under NEW Mismanagement – Scott Pruitt Swamp Monster OUT Andrew Wheeler Coal Lobbyist IN

July 6th, 2018   Filed under: Free Stuff, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

Fossil Fuels, Fossil Fools (Pollution) - POLITICAL BUTTONAs EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, resigns under a snowballing avalanche of ethics violations, the Trump regime doesn’t have to reach far into its deep bench of political hacks to find another swamp monster to clog up democracy, evidence-based policies respecting science, let alone clean water, clean air, or clean soil. Andrew Wheeler, former coal lobbyist, will carry on the polluted policies of Scott Pruitt, his boss, Donald Trump, and co-conspirators, congressional Republicans.

In tribute to the EPA under new mismanagement, I give you this FREE Environmental POSTER: EPA Under NEW Mismanagement – Scott Pruitt Swamp Monster OUT Andrew Wheeler Coal Lobbyist IN. Please feel free to share or print out.

FREE Environmental POSTER: EPA Under NEW Mismanagement - Scott Pruitt Swamp Monster OUT Andrew Wheeler Coal Lobbyist IN

As the Washington Post succinctly stated, the new EPA boss is the same as the old boss:

The change at the top of the Environmental Protection Agency won’t mean a dramatic shift in policy. If anything, President Donald Trump’s EPA could become even more effective at undoing Obama-era environmental policies under its new boss.

At Least The War on the Environment is Going Well POLITICAL BUTTONThat’s because the incoming acting administrator Andrew Wheeler, who’s set take over Monday following the resignation of Scott Pruitt, is a politically savvy former Senate staffer, wise in the ways of Washington — and getting things done. Wheeler, 53, has crusaded behind the scenes for decades to quash climate What Exactly Are Conservatives Conserving (Earth) POLITICAL BUTTONchange legislation and promote coal.

Wheeler, who was confirmed to be the EPA’s No. 2 official in April, could bring a quiet effectiveness to the top job that some environmentalists say will make him a more formidable opponent than Pruitt.

“There is no time for celebration,” said Tom Pelton, with the Environmental Integrity Project. Wheeler, he said, “has a background just as biased toward industry as Scott Pruitt, so we and other environmental advocates are going to have to watch Wheeler just as closely as we did his former boss.”

he Environment Is Over-Raided - FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTONWheeler shares Trump and Pruitt’s environmental agenda, including proposals to roll back regulations addressing climate change and pollution. And in a June 27 interview, Wheeler said he’s proud of his lobbying past. Although he said being called a “coal lobbyist” wasn’t derogatory, it irritates him because his advocacy on energy and environmental issues was broader than any single issue.

The replacement of Pruitt may mean a change in style at the EPA, but it won’t mean a change in substance, said Jeff Holmstead, a former deputy EPA administrator.

“Pruitt had never worked in a regulatory agency and didn’t fully understand the rulemaking process. He was certainly engaged in the politics of environmental issues, but he wasn’t always engaged in the substance,” Holmstead added. “In many ways, Wheeler is the polar opposite.”

Please feel free to browse my designs on the environment, climate change slogans, and green energy politics.

There Are No Jobs On A Dead Planet POLITICAL BUTTONTrue Wealth Is Built on Environmental Stewardship POLITICAL BUTTONIf you think the economy is more important than the environment, try holding your breath while counting your money POLITICAL BUTTON

Earth First - We'll Rape the Other Planets Later - FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTONClean Up Your Mess, Love, Mom [Earth] POLITICAL BUTTON



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FREE POLITICAL POSTER: Donald Trump Swamped With Taxing Situations, Declares MOST UNDRAINING EVER!

December 11th, 2017   Filed under: Free Stuff, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

Donald Trump’s promise to “Drain the swamp” from Washington, DC, is perhaps his most surreal promise of all. Today, President Donald Trump is campaigning for Senate candidate Roy Moore, who has been facing mounting credible evidence of his predatory sexual behavior, especially against teen girls. Roy Moore has proven himself a liar, not that The Don has a problem with that.  With Roy Moore, Donald Trump wants to fill the swamp, officially bringing pedophilia to the Senate. Of course, Trump’s cabinet and advisers are replete with long-time corporate and political insiders. Trumpcare and the Republican tax scam were literally written by corporate tools and lobbyists.  To top it off, the Trump administration is on course to be the most corrupt Washington administration in history.  The Don may make Richard “Tricky Dick” Nixon look like an amateur criminal.  As Prez Donald Trump becomes increasingly unhinged, swamped with taxing situations, he arrogantly declares, “MOST UNDRAINING. EVER.” Thus, I have created a free political poster: Donald Trump Swamped With Taxing Situations, Declares MOST UNDRAINING EVER!  Please enjoy and feel free to share with friends and enemies.FREE POLITICAL POSTER: Donald Trump Swamped With Taxing Situations, Declares MOST UNDRAINING EVER!

For another perspective on the “drain the swamp” landscape, try this commentary, Trump Made the Swamp Worse. Here’s How to Drain It:

Donald Trump’s pledges to “drain the swamp” of corruption in Washington attest to his genius for unintentional irony. Nepotism, egregious conflicts of interest, flights on the public dime to see Wimbledon and the eclipse — the Beltway wetlands are now wilder and murkier than ever.

It would be a mistake, though, to dismiss the swamp metaphor on account of Mr. Trump’s hypocrisy. You can’t make sense of his shocking victory last year without reference to the downward spiral of public faith in governing elites and established institutions. Years of stagnating incomes, combined with dimming prospects for the future, have primed voters for the message that the system is “rigged” and that only an outsider not beholden to the corrupt establishment can clean it up.

In other words, one key to this populist moment in American politics is the link in the public mind between dysfunction in Washington and the economic malaise of the 21st century. An effective political response to this perilous moment begins with the recognition that this link is real — and that key changes in the policymaking process, supported by a major push from organized philanthropy, will be needed to turn things around.

The image of the swamp conveys a profound truth about the American economy. Our predicament of slow growth and sky-high inequality has many causes, but one important factor is the capture of the American political system by powerful insiders — big businesses, elite professionals, wealthy homeowners — that use it to entrench their own economic power. In so doing, they protect themselves from competition, fatten their bank accounts with diverted wealth and slow the creative destruction that drives economic growth.

Four key policy areas shed light on the growth of this political-economic swamp — financial regulation, intellectual property, occupational licensing and zoning. They show that the swamp isn’t confined to Washington; it can also be found in 50 state capitals and countless local jurisdictions.

Continue reading the main story
In the financial sector, a web of regulatory subsidies sustains financial institutions’ unhealthy reliance on extremely high levels of debt. These subsidies, including policies that strongly encourage mortgage securitization as well as the implicit promise to bail out “too big to fail” institutions, swell profits in the near term while increasing the systemic risk of a catastrophic meltdown in the long run. The result is a financial sector much bigger than the economy needs, chronic misallocation of capital and the diversion of some of the country’s top talent into counterproductive work. Luring people into excessive debt, draining their savings with hidden fees, inflating the next asset bubble — these and other dubious “contributions” by finance to the economy need to be curtailed.

Intellectual property laws are supposed to encourage innovation by granting temporary monopolies to copyright and patent holders. But if those monopolies get too broad and too onerous, innovation takes a hit — and that is precisely what has happened, at the urging and for the benefit of Hollywood, Big Pharma and some interests in Silicon Valley.

Occupational licensing rules at the state level help explain why professionals in the United States are paid so much more than their peers in other countries. Primary care physicians, for example, make 50 percent more in the United States than in other advanced countries, and specialists do even better. State regulations protect the incomes of doctors, dentists, undertakers and optometrists — not to mention makeup artists and auctioneers — while also stifling innovation.

Increasingly severe constraints on building in high-income coastal cities inflate the asset values of affluent homeowners, contributing significantly to rising disparities in wealth. And by making housing unaffordable, they prevent the less well-off from moving to where the good-paying jobs are, reducing geographic and social mobility.

This regressive regulatory swamp isn’t a natural landscape; it grows because of forces in our political environment. The beneficiaries of upward redistribution are always far more organized than those who pay the costs. They can divert some of their artificially high profits into lobbying and policy research that bestow a patina of the public interest on schemes that are, in practice, legalized robbery. Drugmakers, for example, portray even the most modest retrenchment of patent law as catastrophic for American innovation, while financiers warn that any restraint on subsidized risk-taking (through higher capital requirements, for example) will starve American industry of the capital it needs to invest and grow.

This unequal battle for the minds of policymakers is particularly damaging at a time when the resources that Congress and the bureaucracy have for independent research have been systematically dismantled. In finance, in particular, Congress has a difficult time hiring and retaining staff with the technical knowledge and experience to assess the impact of new regulations, leaving them dependent on the abundant resources of the industry itself.

In addition, many regressive regulations are made in obscure places with limited participation, such as state licensing boards and town councils in charge of approving new housing. Insiders with narrow interests, whether self-serving professional groups or Nimby neighbors, have the motivation and resources to show up at poorly attended meetings and work the system, often at odds with the general public’s interest in low prices and economic opportunity.

Really draining the swamp means changing the policymaking process to shield it against insider takeover and manipulation. For starters, congressional staffs need to be expanded, upgraded and professionalized. Legislators would then be better able to make their own assessments of complex regulatory issues without having to depend on the biased expertise of industry lobbyists.

Philanthropists need to put their dollars behind a network of organizations to counter the organizational presence of the forces of upward redistribution. The Ford Foundation did this in the 1970s by investing in a network of environmental law firms like the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Defense Fund. More recently, the Eli and Edythe Broad, Walton Family, Robertson and other charitable foundations have made similar investments in educational reforms.

Whatever you think of the merits of these causes, the new interest groups funded by sustained philanthropy changed the political landscape in these issue areas, forcing policymakers to recognize that there were, in fact, two sides to be considered. A network of new organizations with the resources and expertise to compete with big banks, the medical lobby and other industry groups could have a similar impact today. Activist groups could show up regularly in all the obscure places where rules are set and make sure that someone speaks up for the public interest.

State and local governments need to institute regulatory review procedures that expose back-room deals to objective scrutiny. While cost-benefit analysis by the Office of Management and Budget is standard for new federal regulations, no such reviews are conducted when states propose to license new occupations or cities stymie new housing construction.

Courts at all levels need to be less deferential to regulatory schemes that — in contrast to environmental or labor regulation — have no justification other than the protection of incumbent interests. For example, courts could force legislatures to explicitly approve expansions in the scope of occupational licensing, depriving licensing boards of the power to do so in shadowy obscurity.

In the political arena, the issues of regressive regulation cut across the usual partisan and ideological battle lines, and so tend to be kept off the agenda by legislative leaders who emphasize issues that hold their caucus together. Libertarian-leaning conservatives and egalitarian liberals need to forge strange-bedfellows coalitions to tackle policies that are simultaneously bad for growth and inequality. In recent years, cross-party coalitions in the states have started to make progress on criminal justice reform. Opposition to upward redistribution can galvanize support for similar alliances on regulatory issues.

The administration of Donald Trump has shown no interest in draining the real swamp that is drowning America’s economy and corrupting its politics. If public-spirited Democrats and Republicans fail to do so, trust in democracy will continue to erode. And the next demagogue who cashes in by saying he alone can fix things is likely to be more disciplined and focused than Mr. Trump — and hence even more dangerous.



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CLIMATE CHANGE POSTER: Mother Earth – Houston, We Have a Problem – Can You Hear Me Now?

August 29th, 2017   Filed under: Free Stuff, News Add Comment

As Houston endures that largest rainfall in American history, climate change deniers have a chance to get their feet wet in reality.  Please feel free to share this free poster: “Mother Earth – Houston, We Have a Problem – Can You Hear Me Now?”

CLIMATE CHANGE POSTER: Mother Earth - Houston, We Have a Problem - Can You Hear Me Now?

Feel free to browse climate change and environmental designs here.



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CLIMATE CHANGE POEM: Donald Trump Has Gone Buggy

June 2nd, 2017   Filed under: Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

Donald Trump has gone buggy
As in big ass hoarse drawn carriage
Making hay and whips
With great industry
As unbelievable
As nuclear-powered Amish
A trial balloon
Only to be led
By nothing butt
A horse’s ass

There Are No Jobs On A Dead Planet POLITICAL BUTTONHere is another poem in honor of President Donald Trump’s continuing climate change buggery.  One way or another, his way of thinking will become extinct.

 

 

 

 

Fossil Fuel Is Dead POLITICAL BUTTONToday, humanity faces a stark choice: save the planet and ditch capitalism, or save capitalism and ditch the planet --Fawzi Ibrahim quote POLITICAL BUTTONWestern Civilization Is A Loaded Gun Pointed At The Head Of This Planet -- Terrence McKenna quote POLITICAL BUTTON

Man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself --Rachel Carson quote POLITICAL BUTTONGot Ice Caps POLITICAL BUTTON I Don't Want My Country Back, I Want My Country Forward POLITICAL BUTTON

 



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POLITICAL POEM: Trump Pulls Out As Partners Dumb Found

June 1st, 2017   Filed under: News, Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

Trump Pulls Out As Partners Dumb Found

Sow culpable
Too due nothing
President Trump pulls out
What little hand
He had in Mother Earth’s
Safe guarding
His oily and gassy mates
Coal for everyone!
It’s like Christmas!!
And stocks sore
In the after math
Of this unbelievable savior
As he
Really nailed this won
Portending every faux
In ascension into heavin’
His big short
His wee altitude toward clime
Single digit approval
Or not
As what gives
Chump change
In loo of climate change

At Least The War on the Environment is Going Well POLITICAL BUTTONThis poem is in response to President (sic) Donald Trump’s pulling out of the Paris climate change accord.  For badder or worse, this clear signal of climate insanity may provide the best united front yet for international resistance to American hegemony; plus, American abdication of global leadership offers opportunities to forge more sane efforts at worldwide solidarity.

This article says it well, In praise of Trump pulling out of the Paris climate pact:

“To the dismay of our allies, the White House could any day announce the U.S. will withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. But as a patriot and climate activist, I’m not dismayed. I actually want to pull out.Do Not Worry About The Environment - It Will Go Away POLITICAL BUTTON

The value of the Paris Agreement is in its aspirational goal of limiting temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius, not in its implementation mechanisms, which are voluntary, insufficient, and impossible to monitor. But that modest goal will be breached shortly, which makes the agreement a kind of fig leaf, offering political cover to those who would soft-pedal the runaway climate crisis a while longer.

The U.N. Conference of the Parties is certainly not the organization to constrain powerful, retrenched fossil fuel interests and other bad climate actors and rogue climate states. The Paris agreement affords oil, gas and coal companies a globally visible platform through which to peddle influence and appear engaged on climate change while lobbying for business as usual. That won’t save the climate.
At what point do we give up wishful, incremental thinking — that reason will prevail, the free market will adjust, the president’s daughter and son-in-law will dissuade him from the worst climaticide, the Democratic Party will do something, or prior policies which tinker on the margins like the Clean Power Plan won’t be totally obliterated?

I’d argue we’ve reached that point. If Trump withdraws from the Paris Agreement, at least we will have clarity instead of false hope.

Who wanted to keep the U.S. in the Paris agreement anyway? People around the world, a majority of Americans, environmentalists and other coastal elites — constituencies for which Trump has shown indifference and/or contempt. Staying in was also favored by Exxon Mobil, Chevron, BP, Peabody coal, eBay, HP, General Mills, Kellogg, Tesla and other multinationals the Trump administration would have preferred to keep happy. But let’s face it, they won’t be all that mad the U.S. is pulling out, and the political impact won’t be all that great.

Neither will the environmental impact. In fact, since the agreement lacks teeth, breaking it won’t have any effect on the climate in the short term. But in the longer term, the shock and rethinking it will cause in some circles just might precipitate political and cultural changes we need to stave off climate cataclysm.

Pulling out of Paris will also give the president a political boost. It gives Breitbart and Fox something to crow about and The New York Times, Washington Post and CNN something that’s not Russia-gate to fret over.

Earth First - We'll Rape the Other Planets Later - FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTONDon’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to justify or abet Trump and his supporters in climate denial, and I’m not thinking climate activists and the Trump administration will end up in some the kind of strange-bedfellows embrace. Personally, I loathe this administration and find the president’s actions mean, maleficent, and mendacious, though it’s nothing personal. On my very best days I can eke out a couple minutes of meta loving-kindness meditation for the president as a person, but it’s a struggle.

I welcome pulling out of the Paris agreement because it will disrupt our complacency and strengthen the most vigorous avenues of climate action left to us, which are through the courts and direct citizen action. It lends much more credence to the Our Children’s Trust legal argument that the federal government has utterly failed in its responsibility to consider the long-term impact of carbon emissions. It advances the arguments of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund in their federal lawsuit for the right to a livable climate. And it strengthens the case for climate activists attempting to raise the “necessity defense” as a justification for citizen climate action, as I and my fellow “valve turners” are doing as we face criminal charges for shutting off emergency valves on oil sands pipelines.

I Can't Afford To Be a Republican (neither can the planet!) POLITICAL BUTTONIt’s also true that withdrawal from Paris deprives mainstream environmental organizations and the foundations and funders that guide them of a key deliverable, and that could risk eroding support for them. Perhaps that’s not such a bad thing. Many of them have pursued an utterly bankrupt strategy of understating the climate problem, negotiating with the fossil fuel industry, and cherry-picking small victories to showcase organizational accomplishments at the expense of a functional movement strategy.

Pulling out of Paris takes false hopes off the table, and opens the way for building an effective climate movement. So as committed climate activist who knows we’re running out of time, I say, let’s get on with it.”

The false propriety of incremental change is being smashed.  Let’s join together as one planet, one humanity, to build a lasting consensus that Mother Earth deserves our love and undying respect.



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Friendly Rant: Voting FOR Jill Stein NOT Wielding “Privilege”

November 4th, 2016   Filed under: Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

Oddly, with the presidential candidates from the two dominant and domineering political parties setting new records for low approval, voting for anyone else is met with bafflingly high contempt.  My friend, local activist, and Green Party Jill Stein supporter, Shannon Frye, nailed it with this recent facebook post:

Facebook friends, I don’t think I’ve been shy expressing my views on our current election cycle, but I have tried very hard to remain respectful of the decisions you might make when you step into the ballot box. Even if we have sparred, I have still maintained your ability to elect the candidate of your choice. Know that this prerogative is not born of some feigned Victorian politeness, but rather out of desire to see each of you better articulate your realpolitik and claim your stake in the building of a better future for us all.

That being said, I have not, nor will I ever, tolerate the erasure of my person, my experiences or my conviction in order to capitulate to terror, be it tangible or intangible. I will not bend my moral arc in order that you may rest easy. And if you attack my position based on any difference between us under the false assertion that in that difference lies weakness, I will turn your blunt argument into a pointy reckoning.

One such example lies below. A person, who shall henceforth be known as Mr. Charlie, asserted on Jill Stein’s Dank Meme Stash that white privilege was the driver behind her surge in popularity and would be thusly responsible should Drumpf win the presidency. He erroneously held that the Green Party was the enemy, luring POCs, LGBTQ people and the socioeconomically disadvantaged away from their true salvation, Hillary Clinton.

I lost my cool…

“Mr. Charlie, what particular variety of White Savior Complex do you suffer from to make such an ignorant and ill-informed statement?

I am a queer feminist of color and I fully endorse Jill Stein for president precisely because self-righteous idealogues like yourself have absolutely no clue as to the remedy my people desperately need in order to set in motion our uplift.

It boggles my mind how the ONLY political party willing to stand up for racial, gender, socioeconomic and environmental justice has been so maligned by white neoliberalism under the supposed banner of care. How dare you attempt to whitewash the contributions of Green POCs motivated by the grassroots organizing and solution-oriented policies that would bring us into a new era of justice based not on our social capital – of which we have very little – but upon the mettle of our conviction?

You are speaking from a place of fear. Fear of a mango-faced minstrel who shouts deplorable things. Fear of an imagined confrontation with the rage born of over 400 years of oppression reigning. Fear of losing the mask of white indignation that threatens to reveal the fragility of your baseless, store-bought identity. Fear that causes a paralysis of logic and compassion. Fear.

On the social justice platform alone I’d vote Green for life.

The Green Party advocates for the continual challenging of racism, sexism, Homo/bi/transphobia, ableism, ageism, classism and religious persecution. The DNC has at no point in this election cycle or in its history committed itself to fighting inequality on every front in the manner in which the Green Party has fearlessly undertaken. What we, the underrepresented and oft voiceless, have instead received is a piecemeal equality, which is no equality at all. Hillary Clinton and the current incarnation of the DNC has done nothing but pay lip service to creating a level playing field. Clinton’s support for her husband’s 1996 Crime Bill, which contributed to the largest surge in prison populations since the Reagan Administration , has done nothing but ensure the institutionalization and disenfranchisement of scores of POCs – this did us no favor. Clinton’s silence during her tenure as senator amid the growing body of research that proved the inherent bias and disparate impact of stop-and-frisk police tactics on communities of color perfectly ensconced her ambivalence toward the further destruction of the Black and Latinx family. Had she desired more than the occasional Harlem photo op, she would have used her considerable privilege in service to the people she so shamelessly panders to every few years.

On the subject of LGBTQ people, Clinton supported the Defense of Marriage Act and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell as First Lady; as a senator, Clinton could have been the alky she pretends to be and challenged her fellow New Yorkers to expand their definition of marriage, or at least advocate for the inclusion of domestic partnerships in benefit programs for state employees. She didn’t do this. In fact, as recently as April 2013, Clinton went onto CNN with Wolf Blitzer to assert her belief that marriage was an institution between a man and a woman; she didn’t throw her support behind marriage equality until the conclusion of several SCOTUS cases were completely forgone.

As for sexism, which the Clinton campaign loves to cry each time a reasonable critique of her ability to govern justly occurs, there is no better political organization than the Greens to address the systemic oppression of women in the US and beyond. Why would I support a white feminism that capitalizes on the rape of our natural resources, a gross, self-indulgent imposition of Western cultural norms across the globe, and the plundering of our social security net budget in order to fund an imperialist military force that does nothing but wreak havoc in Black and Brown nations in service not to democracy or liberation, but rather in service the corporate master class? Either your feminism is intersectional or its shit: And straight up, if you’re running for office and posturing aggressively against 2 nuclear powers and continuing to take money from and politically ally yourself with nations we know have direct ties to ISIS, then you are not a feminist.

Mr. Charlie, have you any idea what war DOES to women?

1. It kills the civilian population, namely women and children

2. War increases the aggressive violence against women: gang rape, genital mutilation & forced childbirth are all methods used by occupying forces to demoralize a people .

3. War restricts women’s freedom of movement: women, who wind up bearing the burden of being the sole provider for their families and often are hindered by curfews and checkpoints from gaining access to food, medicine, work opportunities and building effective social supports.

4. War forces civilian populations to flee from their homes: this displacement causes refugee surges all over the world, which only seems to respond with more aggression to those already traumatized. For the unwelcome refugee, war continues, as their labor and sexuality are often exploited due to lack of legal protections. Yes, war is a huge contributor to sex trafficking and modern human slavery.

6. War and imperialistic culture prioritizes weaponry over human services:The war machine makes victims all around. Me? I’ve gotten kicked off of Medicaid 4 times this year. But at least our military can afford to bomb the hell out of brown people in 7 nations right now.

As a feminist, I have no country. As a feminist, I want no country. As a feminist, my country is the world and I will do everything in my power to protect her. My question is, how can any woman look at Clinton’s trigger happy approach to foreign policy, her dogged pursuit of profit over the safety and well-being of our planet, and the furtherance of the destabilization of the 3rd world and actually vote to keep it going?

So again I ask, who in this conversation is wielding privilege? Certainly not my brothers and sisters in Green, who care enough about me and my continued existence to vote for the one candidate, the one party, that could help free me from this state of perpetual subjugation. Surely not Dr. Stein, whose mettle has been tested time and again and stills shines brilliantly, compassionately and with the strength of truth on her side. Surely it is not me.

Must be you.

Now take several seats, STFU, and let the grown folks discuss strategy. Your petty semantic games and sanctimonious neoliberal lies will not stop our revolution or my liberation.”

THIS.  Enough said.



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REAL POLITICS, REAL CANDIDATE: Jill Stein 2016 Platform

August 3rd, 2016   Filed under: Health, News, Peace, Political Action, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

IF you want a progressive presidential candidate that you can get excited about voting FOR, then Jill Stein, the Green Party presidential candidate is worth serious consideration.  Jill Stein has selected her Green Party running mate, Vice President choice, Ajamu Baraka.  Mr. Baraka is an internationally recognized human rights activist, organizer and geo-political analyst with a deeply progressive resume.  Here is their platform:

Jill Stein 2016 Platform

Our Power to the People Plan

Climate Action: Protecting Mother Earth and Humanity

  • Enact an emergency Green New Deal to turn the tide on climate change, revive the economy and make wars for oil obsolete. Initiate a WWII-scale national mobilization to halt climate change, the greatest threat to humanity in our history. Create 20 million jobs by transitioning to 100% clean renewable energy by 2030, and investing in public transit, sustainable agriculture, conservation and restoration of critical infrastructure, including ecosystems.
  • Implement a Just Transition that empowers those communities and workers most impacted by climate change and the transition to a green economy. Ensure that any worker displaced by the shift away from fossil fuels will receive full income and benefits as they transition to alternative work.
  • Enact energy democracy based on public, community and worker ownership of our energy system. Treat energy as a human right.
  • Redirect research funds from fossil fuels into renewable energy and conservation.  Build a nationwide smart electricity grid that can pool and store power from a diversity of renewable sources, giving the nation clean, democratically-controlled, energy.
  • End destructive energy extraction and associated infrastructure: fracking, tar sands, offshore drilling, oil trains, mountaintop removal, natural gas pipelines, and uranium mines. Halt any investment in fossil fuel infrastructure, including natural gas, and phase out all fossil fuel power plants. Phase out nuclear power and end nuclear subsidies.  End all subsidies for fossil fuels and impose a greenhouse gas fee / tax to charge polluters for the damage they have created.
  • Protect our public lands, water supplies, biological diversity, parks, and pollinators. Ban neonicotinoids and other pesticides that threaten the survival of bees, butterflies, and other pollinators.
  • Support a strong enforceable global climate treaty that limits global warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius and provides just financial compensation to developing countries.
  • Label GMOs, and put a moratorium on GMOs and pesticides until they are proven safe.
  • Support organic and regenerative agriculture, permaculture, and sustainable forestry.
  • Protect the rights of future generations. Adopt the Precautionary Principle. When an activity poses threats of harm to human health or the environment, in the absence of objective scientific consensus that it is safe, precautionary measures should be taken. The proponent of an activity, rather than the public, should bear the burden of proof.
  • Invest in clean air, water, food  and soil for everyone. Clean up America.
  • Enact stronger environmental justice laws and measures to ensure that low-income and communities of color are not disproportionately impacted by harmful pollution and other negative environmental and health effects.
  • Support conversion to sustainable, nontoxic materials and the use of closed-loop, zero waste processes.

 Jobs as a Right, and Key Support for Labor

  • Create living-wage jobs for every American who needs work, replacing unemployment offices with employment offices. Government would be the employer of last resort, and the unemployed would have an enforceable right to make government provide work. Create direct public employment, as the Works Progress Administration did,  in public services and public works for those who can’t find private employment.
  • Advance workers’ rights to form unions, achieve workplace democracy, and keep a fair share of the wealth they create.
  • Enact the Green Deal full employment program to create 20 million green jobs in sustainable energy, mass transit, sustainable organic agriculture, clean manufacturing and improved infrastructure, as well as social work, teaching, health care, after school and home care, drug rehabilitation and other service jobs.
  • Provide grants and low-interest loans to green businesses and cooperatives, with an emphasis on small, locally-based companies that keep the wealth created by local labor circulating in the community, rather than being drained off to enrich absentee investors.
  • Replace NAFTA and other corporate free trade agreements that export American jobs, depress wages, and undermine the sovereign right of Americans and citizens of other countries to control their own economy and political choices. Enact fair trade laws that benefits local workers and communities.
  • Repeal  the Taft-Hartley Act which banned secondary boycotts and permitted state “right-to-work” laws. Enact a federal just cause law (to prohibit firing without just cause,) and outlaw scabbing on striking workers.

 End Poverty:

  • Guarantee economic human rights, including access to food, water, housing, and utilities, with effective anti-poverty programs to ensure every American a life of dignity.
  • Establish a guaranteed minimum income.
  • Reform public assistance to be a true safety net that empowers participants and provides a decent standard of living.
  • Free universal child care.

 Health Care as a Right:

  • Establish an improved “Medicare for All” single-payer public health program to provide everyone with quality health care, at huge savings by eliminating the $400 billion annually spent on  the paperwork and bureaucracy of health insurance. No co-pays, premiums or deductibles. Access to all health care services, including mental health, dental, and vision. Include everyone, period. No restrictions based on pre-existing illness, employment, immigration status, age, or any other category.
  • Eliminate the cancer of health insurance, which adds costs while reducing access to health care.
  • End overcharging for prescription drugs by using bulk purchasing negotiations.
  • Eliminate health disparities in communities of color and low-income communities. Ensure easy access to health care in communities of color, including community health centers.
  • Allow full access to contraceptive and reproductive care.
  • Expand women’s access to “morning after” contraception by lifting the Obama Administration’s ban.
  • Avoid chronic diseases by investing in essential community health infrastructure such as local, fresh, organic food systems, pollution-free renewable energy, phasing out toxic chemicals, and active transportation such as bike paths and safe sidewalks that dovetail with public transit.
  • Ensure that consumers have essential information for making informed food choices by expanding product labeling requirements for country of origin, GMO content, toxic chemical ingredients, and fair trade practices.
  • Prioritize preventive health care, including physical activity, healthy nutrition and pollution prevention.

 Education as a Right:

  • Guarantee tuition-free, world-class public education from pre-school through university.
  • Abolish student debt to free a generation of Americans from debt servitude.
  • Protect our public school systems from privatization.
  • Use restorative justice to address conflicts before they occur, and involve students in the process.
  • Evaluate teacher performance through assessment by fellow professionals. Do not rely on high stakes tests that reflect economic status of the community, and punish teachers working in low income communities of color.
  • Replace Common Core with curriculum developed by educators, not corporations, with input from parents and communities.
  • Stop denying students diplomas based on high stakes tests.
  • Stop using merit pay to punish teachers who work with the most challenging student populations.
  • Restore arts, music and recreation to school curriculums.
  • Ensure racially inclusive, sensitive and relevant curriculums.
  • Use Department of Education powers to offer grants and funding to encourage metropolitan desegregation plans based on socioeconomically balanced schools.
  • Recognize poverty as the key obstacle to learning. Ensure that kids come to school ready to learn: healthy, nourished, secure and free from violence.
  • Increase federal funding of public schools to equalize public school funding.

 A Just Economy:

  • Guarantee a living wage job for all.
  • Set a $15/hour federal minimum wage, with indexing.
  • Break up “too-big-to-fail” banks and democratize the Federal Reserve.
  • Support development of worker and community cooperatives and small businesses.
  • Make Wall Street, big corporations, and the rich pay their fair share of taxes.
  • Create democratically-run public banks and utilities.
  • Provide full protection for workplace rights, including the right to a safe workplace and the right to organize a union without fear of firing or reprisal by passing the Employee Free Choice Act.
  • Ensure equal pay for equal work, ending discrimination based on race, gender, or generation.
  • Enact paid sick leave and family leave, strong overtime protections.
  • Take action against wage theft.
  • Oppose two-tier wage systems (e.g., for young people and individuals with disabilities).

 Freedom and Equality:

  • Expand women’s rights, including equal pay and reproductive freedom. Pass the ERA (Equal Rights Amendment).
  • Protect LGBTQIA+ people from discrimination.
  • Defend indigenous rights,  lands and treaties.
  • Support immigrants’ rights. Create a welcoming path to citizenship for immigrants.
  • Halt deportations and detentions of law-abiding undocumented immigrants, including the shameful practice of night raids being used to terrorize refugee families.
  • Improve economic and social conditions abroad to reduce the flow of immigrant refugees, in part by repealing NAFTA, ending the failed drug wars, and halting CIA and military interventions against democratically elected governments.
  • Demilitarize border crossings throughout North America.
  • Protect the free Internet. Oppose the Online Piracy Act and all other legislation that would undermine freedom and equality on the Internet.

 Criminal Justice Reforms

  • End the failed war on drugs. Replace drug prohibition with harm reduction. Legalize marijuana/hemp. Treat substance abuse as a health problem, not a criminal offense.
  • Release nonviolent drug offenders from prison, removing such offenses from their records, and provide them with both pre- and post-release support.
  • End police brutality, mass incarceration and institutional racism within our justice system. Support the Black Lives Matter Movement.
  • Demilitarize police. End use of SWAT teams and no-knock raids for drugs and serving papers.
  • Repair our communities rather than dump resources into the prison-industrial complex.
  • Establish police review boards so that communities control their police, and not the other way around. Appoint dedicated investigators to investigate every death or serious injury at the hands of police.
  • Enact laws to require independent outside legal representatives to investigate and prosecute any killing or brutality  by the police rather than prosecutors involved in the local criminal justice system.
  • Eliminate harsh  mandatory sentencing requirements which often result in unjustified sentences.

 Justice for All:

  • Enforce the Bill of Rights by protecting the right to free speech and protest, to be secure from unwarranted search and seizure and invasion of privacy, as well as our other Constitutional rights.
  • Terminate unconstitutional surveillance and unwarranted spying, close Guantanamo, and repeal indefinite detention without charge or trial. Repeal the unconstitutional provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act that give the president the power to indefinitely imprison and even assassinate American citizens without due process.
  • America’s youth should not be put in jail for offenses they commit.
  • End discrimination against former offenders who have paid for their crimes and should get a fresh start.
  • Abolish the death penalty.
  • End persecution of government, corporate  and media whistleblowers.
  • Issue an Executive Order prohibiting Federal agencies from conspiring with local police to infringe upon right of assembly and peaceful protest.
  • Repeal the Patriot Act that violates our constitutional right to privacy and protection against unreasonable search and seizure.


Peace and Human Rights:

  • Establish a foreign policy based on diplomacy, international law, human rights, and nonviolent support for democratic movements around the world.
  • Cut military spending by at least 50% and close the 700+ foreign military bases. Ensure a just transition that replaces reductions in  military jobs with jobs in renewable energy, transportation and green infrastructure development.
  • Stop U.S. financial and military support to human rights abusers. Barring substantial changes in their policies, this would include Saudi Arabia, Israel and Egypt.
  • End the US’ role as the world’s arm supplier.
  • End use of assassination as an instrument of U.S. foreign policy, including collaborative assassination through intermediaries.
  • End the destructive US economic and military intervention into the affairs of sovereign nations. Such intervention serve the interests of multinational corporations and  global capitalism over the interests of the vast majority of the citizens of those nations.
  • Freeze the bank accounts of countries that are funding terrorism, including the Saudi royal family.
  • US policy regarding Israel and Palestine must be revised to prioritize international law, peace and human rights for all people, no matter their religion or nationality. End US policies that have supported the worst tendencies of the Israeli government in its treatment of the people of Palestine.
  • Restore the National Guard as the centerpiece of our defense.
  • Ban use of drone aircraft for assassination, bombing, and other offensive purposes.
  • End the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, withdrawing troops and military contractors.
  • Join 159 other nations in signing the Ottawa treaty banning the use of anti-personnel land mines.
  • Lead on global nuclear disarmament:
  • Rejoin the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which the US dropped out of in 2002 when it installed missiles and missile bases in Turkey, Romania, and Poland.
  • Agree to Russia’s proposal to jointly reduce US and Russian nuclear arsenals to 1,000 nuclear weapons each. Also call for all countries to the table to negotiate a treaty for the complete elimination of nuclear weapons.
  • Remove US nuclear weapons in Germany, Belgium, Turkey, Italy and the Netherlands.
  •  Support Russia and China’s joint effort to open negotiations on a treaty to ban weapons in space.
  •  Pledge to end any further laboratory or sub-critical nuclear tests at the Nevada and Novaya Zemlya test sites, and end all nuclear weapons research, design, and modernization at the weapons laboratories.
  • The US must take the lead in nuclear disarmament by itself starting to disarm. We should create a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East region and require all nations in the area to join.

Empower the People: Fix our Broken Elections with Real Democracy

  • Eliminate the doctrine of corporate personhood that among other things has been used to justify unlimited corporate spending in elections with a constitutional amendment to clarify that only human beings have constitutional rights.
  • Enact electoral reforms that break the big money stranglehold and create truly representative democracy: full public election financing, ranked-choice voting, proportional representation, and open debates.
  • Protect voters’ rights by enforcing and expanding the constitutional right to vote (including a new amendment if necessary). Enact the full Voter’s Bill of Rights guaranteeing each person’s right to vote, the right to have our votes counted on hand-marked paper ballots, and the right to vote within systems that give each vote meaning. Make voter registration the responsibility of government, not a voluntary opt-in for citizens.
  • Restore Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, requiring preclearance by the Attorney General or federal district court of DC to election law changes in areas previously found to limit voting rights.
  • Abolish the Electoral College and directly elect the President using a national popular vote with ranked-choice voting..
  • Restore the right to run for office and eliminate unopposed races by removing ballot access barriers.
  • Guarantee equal access to the debates to all ballot-qualified candidates.
  • Provide equal and free access to the airways for all ballot-qualified candidates, not just those with big campaign war chests.
  • Eliminate “winner take all / first past the post” elections in which the “winner” may not have the support of most of the voters. Replace that system with ranked choice voting and proportional representation.
  • Enact statehood for the District of Columbia to ensure the region has full representation in Congress, and full powers of democratic self-rule.
  • Restore voting rights to offenders, including while in prison.
  • Replace partisan oversight of elections with non-partisan election commissions.
  • Reduce barriers to voting by making Election Day a national holiday.
  • Enact simplified, safe same-day voter registration to the nation so that no qualified voter is barred from the polls.
  • Protect local democracy by making clear that acts of Congress establish a floor, and not a ceiling, on laws relating to economic regulation, workers’ rights, human rights, and the environment.

A Humane Federal Budget with Fair Taxes

  • Increase government revenues for social needs by restoring full employment, cutting the bloated, dangerous military budget, and cutting private health insurance waste.
  • Require full disclosure of corporate subsidies in the budget and stop hiding subsidies in complicated tax code.
  • Rewrite the entire tax code to be truly progressive with tax cuts for working families, the poor and middle class, and higher taxes for the richest Americans.
  • Strengthen rather than cut Medicare and Social Security. Remove the cap on social security taxes above a certain level of income.
  • Maintain and upgrade our nation’s essential public infrastructure, including highways, railways, electrical grids, water systems, schools, libraries, and the Internet, resisting privatization or policy manipulation by for-profit interests.

Financial Reform

  • Establish federal, state, and municipal publicly-owned banks that function as non-profit utilities and focus on helping people, not enriching themselves.
  • Create a Corporation for Economic Democracy, a new federal corporation (like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting) to provide publicity, training, education, and direct financing for cooperative development and for democratic reforms to make government agencies, private associations, and business enterprises more participatory.
  • Democratize monetary policy to bring about public control of the money supply and credit creation. This means nationalizing the private bank-dominated Federal Reserve Banks and placing them under a Federal Monetary Authority within the Treasury Department.   Prohibit private banks from creating money, thus restoring government’s Constitutional authority.
  • Manage pension funds by boards controlled by workers, not corporate managers.
  • Regulate all financial derivatives and require them to be traded on open exchanges.
  • Restore the Glass-Steagall separation of depository commercial banks from speculative investment banks.

Housing   

  • Impose an immediate moratorium on foreclosures and evictions.
  • Offer capital grants to non-profit developers of affordable housing until all people can obtain decent housing at no more than 25% of their income.
  • Create a federal bank with local branches to take over homes with distressed mortgages, and either restructure the mortgages to affordable levels, or if the occupants cannot afford a mortgage, rent homes to the occupants.
  • Expand rental and home ownership assistance and increase funding for public housing.
  • Use Department of Housing and Urban Development authority to grant or withhold funds in order to encourage state and local governments to take positive steps to desegregate housing, including ending zoning laws that effectively prohibit multi-family housing, prohibiting landlords from refusing to accept Section 8 vouchers, increasing Section 8 voucher amounts so that poor people can move into middle income neighborhoods, prohibiting the use of Low Income Housing Tax Credits to increase low income housing in already segregated neighborhoods, and building new public housing in middle income communities that is high quality and mixed income.

We can build a better future together.



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POEM: A Boner Fide Off Her

June 24th, 2016   Filed under: Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

Things are heating up in America
As round the earth
Flatlanders are in a whirled
Of applausable deniability
As their scholar ship sales
Off any known atlas
Of shrugging turtles
And histrionic elephants
Lording over mice and men
In the name of
Republic and mulishness unleashing
Wretched blaming
Artless prey
And blame ideologies
In quakes of human faults
Indifferent in effect
To reason
Snatched
In a phallus logic
As in is capable
With mother earth getting hotter every day
Only asking for it
Her plea to cool it
Only be lying
A girl tempting
To think too hard
Effacing such a boner fide off her

This poem is about macho braggadocio and an abiding disrespect for nature and human kind.  Power Thinks Doing God's Service When Violating All God's Laws--PEACE QUOTE BUTTONWhen such hubris enters politics, both Mother Earth and the body politic get screwed.  Scientific illiteracy in general, and climate change denial specifically, are arenas where greedy ideologies are conveniently engorged on fact-free rations.  Patriarchy and hyper-masculinity give a big hand to victim blaming, outwardly their natural outgrowth.  Earth First - We'll Rape the Other Planets Later - FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTONSuch masturbatory ideologies lead to blindness of natural consequences.  That power is as power does masquerades as scientific acumen, as fore juggernaut of perverse cause-and-effect.  In such phallus logic, the invisible hand magnanimously despoils the hole fecund planet.  Meet market, free market, proving worth wile in every victim it volunteers.  Such virulent virility vivisects Mother Earth and her children.  And what remains, who could resist?

What Exactly Are Conservatives Conserving (Earth) POLITICAL BUTTONDo Not Worry About The Environment - It Will Go Away POLITICAL BUTTONHow About Securing This Homeland (Planet Earth) - POLITICAL BUTTON

Western Civilization Is A Loaded Gun Pointed At The Head Of This Planet -- Terrence McKenna quote POLITICAL BUTTONToday, humanity faces a stark choice: save the planet and ditch capitalism, or save capitalism and ditch the planet --Fawzi Ibrahim quote POLITICAL BUTTONGlobalize THIS - ENVIRONMENTAL RESPONSIBILITY [earth graphic] POLITICAL BUTTON

Feel free to browse more environmental and Mother Earth designs.



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POEM: Plodding Vivacious Nature

May 19th, 2016   Filed under: Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

While I was busy
Doing my busyness
Over taking
My competition
Nature was successively
Undertaking my previous busyness done
Supplanting my decomposing legacy
With crop worth feasting on
In treating me
As patience heel
Going
Won better
Nature calls
Barely distinguished from my sorry solicitations
Yet as summon to love
Plodding nature never climaxes
Nevertheless, it will undoubtedly come for me
In my ruin us substitute for vivaciousness

This poem was inspired by working in my backyard this Spring and being struck by how much nature marches on, particularly if you haven’t been paying that much attention to it for a while.  The bulk of nature seems painfully slow compared to the fast-paced lives of highly evolved, huffing and puffing mammals that we call humans.  Man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself --Rachel Carson quote POLITICAL BUTTONNature has a plodding patience that meekly, yet overwhelmingly, with grate irregularity to many, surmounts our well-kept yards and fields of concrete.  There is a gentle awesomeness as nature unassumingly yields our very lives.  Though, if we are too attached to sow called civilization, nature may creep up and out like that proverbial monster painstakingly slow but steadfastly only a step behind and foreboding.  The veneer of our suppository importance is made bear as we do our busyness in the woulds of life.  As we routinely pooh-pooh nature, nature brushes aside, as over bearing, such inattentive buy products.  As nature’s patients, such hospitality and heeling is often times not welcome.  Wile we unwittingly billed our own creation, nature rejuvenates with an irrepressible vivaciousness.  Without won assent, nature secedes in making us hole.  Perhaps it’s time to buy avowal or a singular consonant, that which would be, a whole.

Feel free to browse my nature and environmental designs here:

The Environment Is Over-Raided - FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTONA Savage Is Not The One Who Lives In The Forest, But The One Who Destroys It POLITICAL BUTTONDo Not Worry About The Environment - It Will Go Away POLITICAL BUTTON

LOVE MOTHER Earth POLITICAL BUTTONEvery Day Is Earth Day - POLITICAL BUTTONMay The Forest Be With You - POLITICAL BUTTON



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POEM: Another Martyr Bides The Dust

May 2nd, 2016   Filed under: Anti-War, News, Peace, Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

Another martyr bides the dust
And I was a stray
Beside myself
In the fog
Of yet another mourning
The missed over my heart
Feeling only that ephemeral beaten
The wait on my brain
Fueled into thinking of the dread only
And the little I no
Of what remains
As the truth is bared
In ash holes with names
Temping to soil
Won an other’s life work
Un-till arising from hour grounding
Ready ourselves for a human race
Wear blood is thicker then water
Tearing at our soles
And water thicker than heir
The salt of the earth bides
It’s time
Too clear the weigh
Of what thou dust
Ahead razed for awe
As be holding the sons rays
Bringing a bout of sunshine
An enduring lightness
Out shining
Any faux
How ever clan destine
In efface of such shrouding allowed
In countering any illicit clout
Ever looming
Whatever we’ve
Got together
With standing any in thralling strayin’
Rapping up awe that is frayed
For whatever may seam
Know longer

I wrote this poem a while back, but I’m publishing it now to honor the passing of Father Daniel Berrigan who died over the weekend at age 94.  Father Daniel Berrigan was the first priest arrested for peace and anti-war civil disobedience — or holy obedience.  As recounted in the National Catholic Review:

Berrigan undoubtedly stands among the most influential American Jesuits of the past century…

A literary giant in his own right, Berrigan was best known for his dramatic acts of civil disobedience against the Vietnam War and nuclear weapons. He burned draft files with homemade napalm and later hammered on nuclear weapons to enact the Isaiah prophecy to “beat swords into plowshares.” His actions challenged Americans and Catholics to reexamine their relationship with the state and reject militarism. He constantly asked himself and others: What does the Gospel demand of us?

“For me, Father Daniel Berrigan is Jesus as a poet,” Kurt Vonnegut wrote. “If this be heresy, make the most of it.”

“Dorothy Day taught me more than all the theologians,” Berrigan told The Nation in 2008. “She awakened me to connections I had not thought of or been instructed in—the equation of human misery and poverty with warmaking. She had a basic hope that God created the world with enough for everyone, but there was not enough for everyone and warmaking.”

In 1963, Berrigan embarked on a year of travel, spending time in France, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rome, South Africa and the Soviet Union. He encountered despair among French Jesuits related to the situation of Indochina, as the United States ramped up military involvement in Vietnam.

Berrigan returned home in 1964 convinced that the war in Vietnam “could only grow worse.” So he began, he later wrote, “as loudly as I could, to say ‘no’ to the war…. There would be simply no turning back.”

He co-founded the Catholic Peace Fellowship and the interfaith group Clergy and Laity Concerned about Vietnam…

In Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (1966), Merton described Berrigan as “an altogether winning and warm intelligence and a man who, I think, has more than anyone I have ever met the true wide-ranging and simple heart of the Jesuit: zeal, compassion, understanding, and uninhibited religious freedom. Just seeing him restores one’s hope in the Church.”

A dramatic year of assassinations and protests that shook the conscience of America, 1968 also proved to be a watershed year for Berrigan. In February, he flew to Hanoi, North Vietnam, with the historian Howard Zinn and assisted in the release of three captured U.S. pilots. On their first night in Hanoi, they awoke to an air-raid siren and U.S. bombs and had to find shelter.

As the United States continued to escalate the war, Berrigan worried that conventional protests had little chance of influencing government policy. His brother, Philip, then a Josephite priest, had already taken a much greater risk: In October 1967, he broke into a draft board office in Baltimore and poured blood on the draft files.

Undeterred at the looming legal consequences, Philip planned another draft board action and invited his younger brother to join him. Daniel agreed.

On May 17, 1968, the Berrigan brothers joined seven other Catholic peace activists in Catonsville, Md., where they took several hundreds of draft files from the local draft board and set them on fire in a nearby parking lot, using homemade napalm. Napalm is a flammable liquid that was used extensively by the United States in Vietnam.

Daniel said in a statement, “Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children, the angering of the orderlies in the front parlor of the charnel house. We could not, so help us God, do otherwise.”

Berrigan was tried and convicted for the action. When it came time for sentencing, however, he went underground and evaded the Federal Bureau of Investigation for four months.

“I knew I would be apprehended eventually,” he told America in an interview in 2009, “but I wanted to draw attention for as long as possible to the Vietnam War and to Nixon’s ordering military action in Cambodia.”

The F.B.I. finally apprehended him on Block Island, R.I., at the home of theologian William Stringfellow, in August 1970. He spent 18 months in Danbury federal prison, during which he and Philip appeared on the cover of Time magazine.

The brothers, lifelong recidivists, were far from finished.

Swords Into Plowshares, Isaiah 2:4 PEACE BUTTONOn Sept. 9, 1980, Daniel and Philip joined seven others in busting into the General Electric missile plant in King of Prussia, Pa., where they hammered on an unarmed nuclear weapon—the first Plowshares action. They faced 10 years in prison for the action but were sentenced to time served.

In his courtroom testimony at the Plowshares trial, Berrigan described his daily confrontation with death as he accompanied the dying at St. Rose Cancer Home in New York City. He said the Plowshares action was connected with this ministry of facing death and struggling against it. In 1984, he began working at St. Vincent’s Hospital, New York City, where he ministered to men and women with H.I.V.-AIDS.

“It’s terrible for me to live in a time where I have nothing to say to human beings except, ‘Stop killing,’” he explained at the Plowshares trial. “There are other beautiful things that I would love to be saying to people.”

In 1997 he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Berrigan’s later years were devoted to Scripture study, writing, giving retreats, correspondence with friends and admirers, mentorship of young Jesuits and peace activists, and being an uncle to two generations of Berrigans. He published several biblical commentaries that blended scholarship with pastoral reflection and poetic wit.

“Berrigan is evidently incapable of writing a prosaic sentence,” biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann wrote in a review of Berrigan’s Genesis (2006). “He imitates his creator with his generative word that calls forth linkages and incongruities and opens spaces that bewilder and dazzle and summon the reader.”

Even as an octogenarian, Berrigan continued to protest, turning his attention to the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the prison in Guantánamo Bay and the Occupy Wall Street movement. Friends remember Berrigan as courageous and creative in love, a person of integrity who was willing to pay the price, a beacon of hope and a sensitive and caring friend.

While technically, Fr. Berrigan is not a martyr, he sacrificed much and lived courageously in the belly of the beast called the United States of America of which he called its militarism and imperialism.

While I wrote this poem with a male character, this may not be truly representative of the martyrs in this world.  Soon after penning this poem, Berta Caceres, whose activism reverberated around the world, was assassinated by a Honduran death squad, shot in her own home.  This poem is dedicated to her as well, a well of hope deeper than any dam corporations.  As recounted from Alternet:

On March 3, assassins entered the home of Berta Caceres, leader of Honduras’ environmental and indigenous movement. They shot her friend Gustavo Castro Soto, the director of Friends of the Earth Mexico. He pretended to be dead, and so is the only witness of what came next. The assassins found Berta Caceres in another room and shot her in the chest, the stomach and the arms. When the assassins left the house, Castro went to Berta Caceres, who died in his arms.

Investigation into the death of Berta Caceres is unlikely to be conducted with seriousness. The Honduran government suggested swiftly that it was likely that Castro had killed Berta Caceres and made false statements about assassins. That he had no motive to kill his friend and political ally seemed irrelevant. Castro has taken refuge in the Mexican embassy in Honduras’ capital, Tegucigalpa. He continues to fear for his life.

Berta Caceres led the Popular and Indigenous Organisations of Honduras (COPINH), one of the most important critics of government and corporate power in her country. Most recently, she and COPINH had taken a strong stand against the construction of the Agua Zarca dam on a river sacred to the indigenous Lenca community. This dam had occupied her work. It was not merely a fight against an energy company, it was a fight against the entire Honduran elite.

Desarrollos Energeticos, SA (DESA) is owned by the Atala family, whose most famous member is Camilo Atala, who heads Honduras’ largest bank, Banco Ficohsa. By all indications, the Atala family is very close to the government. When the military moved against the democratically elected government of Manuel Zelaya Rosales in 2009, the Atala family, among others, supported the coup with their means. They can cut all the flowers, but they can never stop the spring -- Pablo Neruda quote POLITICAL BUTTONThe Honduran sociologist Leticia Salomon listed this family among others as the enablers of the coup. They backed the conservative National Party, which now holds the reins of power alongside the military. Berta Caceres’ fight against the Agua Zarca dam, then, was not merely a fight against one dam. It was a battle against the entire Honduran oligarchy. Her assassination had, as her family contends, been long overdue.

May we be inspired and encouraged by the fearless lives of those who have gone before us.



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POEM: That Wholly Lessen

October 1st, 2015   Filed under: Health, Peace, Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

Kneeling before
Mother
Earth
Shattering
Knews
Buy sum mirror mortals
That scant except abundance
Farced too
Under stand
That wholly lessen
Taut
As awe for one
And won for all
And what too due
To be apprehended
Those borne too big for their breaches
Both yearning their keep
And wanting to cry like a baby
As partially dread
King Solomon’s wisdom
Discerning a real mom
From a ‘mother’ in name only
In every crook and nanny
Of awe that might be
Haunted by possessions
Those who cull out
For halve of everything
As if
Like some indivisible man
In a crowd
Stealing a weigh
Amidst a pound of flash
As a parent
As won
Divided buy too
Is not twice one peace
However disposed
Won is to give
Forbear
Meaning less labor
For priceless heir
And each arrival
Comes a bout
In his stork visit
That universal root
Digs ever deeper
Beyond belief
Yet sum people
Proffer a Roamin’ umpire
A tempting
A scuff-law-less Caesarean delivery
To buy pass
The belly of the best
Dilatorily a void
Mete cleave her
Where even moderation can be excessive
Only too grasp
After brooding over
In a so-so pregnant pause
And sow ill-conceived
Being a touch bankrupt
Morally in half-way hows
That irresistible fix
Working for you
And know won ails
Halve the weigh homme
Leaping twice across the chasm
Returning
To Mother
Earth
Won way or the other
Making a hole world
Of deference

Here is yet another poem about the ongoing crisis of Mother Earth’s destruction.  To portray the half-ass response by so-called developed nations and industrial powers that be, I employ the metaphors of King Solomon’s infamous wisdom in dealing with dispute over motherhood and that of crossing a chasm in two leaps.  To add another metaphor regarding our relationship with Mother Earth, we want to have our cake and eat it too!  In the case of the King Solomon judgment, two mothers living in the same household claimed a baby as their own.  After one of the mothers accidentally smothered her own child while they were sleeping in her bed (by the way, an ancient public health problem that persists today), she claimed the other mother’s baby was her own.  Without enough evidence to make a reasonable determination, King Solomon wisely and shrewdly ordered the baby cut in half, so each mother could have their “fair” share, to determine their reaction.  The true mother insisted the baby be given to the false mother to spare the baby’s life.  The false and jealous mother said go to it.  Of course, this revealed the true mother to which King Solomon ordered the whole baby as hers.  Our greed and jealous protection of our own unjust interests would rather halve the world we live in than deal with a whole new world.  Globalize THIS - ENVIRONMENTAL RESPONSIBILITY [earth graphic] POLITICAL BUTTONAs greed and envy continue unabated, we naively and vainly assume that things will “naturally” work themselves out.  As if the day after we can reassemble two halves of a baby and have a whole baby.  This is akin to jumping a chasm in two leaps.  It don’t work that way!  Our fundamental disrespect for motherhood is a parent to anyone who possesses the wisdom to differentiate between motherhood and smother-hood.  Of course, in the real world, there is no second baby to even attempt to appropriate.  And the chasm is too wide for even a long series of half-ass measures.  I’ll take a flying leap here: we either return to mothering Mother Earth or we will return to Mother Earth, as a specious not suited to evolve any further.



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POEM: A Re-View of a Plunk Rock Band, Tossing Watery Graves

July 17th, 2015   Filed under: About Top Pun, Peace, Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

I want it awe
Yet what do you no
What measures
Must we take
From emanate ripples
He helled the earth in his hand
Of what intimated
Of know consequence
A dinky mount
To sky ward heavin’
Hoping only to rock the whirled
Impelled to sea
In escapable gravity
Never in visioning
That there is
None boulder
In his pond-erous
And Sisyphean weigh
Casting all he once held dear
As flippin’ grovel
Into an unbroken mirror
As just
Hanging in
Con centric circles
Learning too a bridge lessen
As a bait
Waving less and less
To say good buy
As their reach is their largesse
Only to leave us
With an eerie qualm
And little
If any thing
To take
To the bank
Shoring up any pausible hope
Un-availed by the human I
Wither or not
As poetry
Reduced to pros
As awe things reckon
As precisely quota’d
A praising every angle
Bent on wane
Every thing
That is
Having fits
The scale
Leaving us
The lit-less
And immeasurable whoppers
The won with abacuses and slyed rule
Counting upon the inevitable apple
Fallen from trees on shore
Given too fruity beaches
With nothing
Better to do
A Newtonian uni-verse
As if
Dispatching
A lagoon squad
In sum kind of egression analysis
In a bounty us pool of data
Free from water
Fishing
In err
With out-land-ish loch
On learning
Of fall-ibility
Grounded in certitude
Agitated a bout
Tsunamis of certainty
And faintest freedom
Fueled agin
Too buy too
An arc
Reliant up on
Being largely stoned
And heading south
All the faster
To murky depths
Still
In this abyssal life
Wear there is
Every thing but
Life re-sides
In a soul place
For awe
As be-wilder-ed
Knot mirrorly a void
A stones throw aweigh
As be guiled
Cursory-ing like a sailor
Skimming the mirror surface
A mist watery solutions
Crying out
Over an abyss
All armed a bout
Drowning in what
We are trying
Too divine
What you can count on
Ripple™
In hitting one’s bottom
Throne down a well
As per cent
100 proof
Making a wish
Of scientific rigor
Sow rarefied
As iron out
Of awe that is mist
Worshipping statutes
That no copper can enforce
Nailing the truth to dead wood
Caskets and buckets
Lowered
Hung out too dry
Bailing out
Awe that is well
A tempting
Sow perverse
Amiss under stood
Plunk rock band
Billowing out
In con sequential
To sum
So poor tending
The easily fluttered
And shirking
That beneath us
Or sow a peer
Do be us
As it may seam
Take me littoral
And fathom deeply
The coast of freedom
Fore who knows
More of that which swells
Those who lead
Unfetid lives
Learning their keep
In this
Life unearth
Or those who undertake
Properly measured lives
In a dogma eat dogma whirled
Vainly exacting an incalculable prize
On each and every won
For in
The sweet by and by
It is
Better to be
Taken in
Than taking out
Rulers
And measuring cups
In the see of life

This poem goes out to my friend, Toby, who in a conversation a couple of evenings ago inspired and quasi-commissioned a poem (and blog entry) around the metaphor of fathoming the ripples from a stone being thrown in a body of water.  In our conversation this was about measuring the effects of our actions, specifically social justice actions, as to the effect they have on the world and its inhabitants.  The hope was to better harness this knowledge in order to parlay it into more effective actions.

This poem tackles a familiar theme of mine: how a fixation on scientific-reductionistic methods weigh too often rob us of access to deeper meanings.  So, here goes:

Most of my life, my working assumption has been that if other folks just knew what I knew that they would act congruently with me.  I don’t put much stock in this assumption anymore.  Hell, much of the time, I don’t even act congruently with the knowledge with which I have been blessed.  I have spent many moments and years projecting my sense of rationality onto others.  I have spent many moments and years projecting my favored modes of rationalization onto others.  Don’t get me wrong, I believe that reality is deeply ordered and that this order is accessible, even more so than we usually think.  I am still cursed with the double-edged sword of an abundance of right opinion.  Still, I have come to more deeply appreciate that we act more out of our emotional sensibilities, which are profoundly molded by our self-interest, whether that interest is privileged or disenfranchised.  I view our emotional sensibilities and the sum total in our life of our various privileges and disenfranchisements as the primary drivers of our actions, over and above our routine thinkings.  In fact, motivational and behavioral research shows that the primary causal direction of changed attitudes is from behavior, not knowledge.  In other words, our attitudes change more from changing behaviors than changing knowledge.  This is caught up in a matrix of cognitive dissonance, where we have a powerful need to make sense of our lives as it is at any given moment, and rationalizations supporting any given status quo are favored.  Changing what we do, voluntarily or involuntarily, shifts our attitudes much more robustly than even large changes in knowledge.  This undergirds the suggestion of “fake it til you make it,” recognizing the power of cognitive dissonance to drive our attitudes and thinking to match our behavior.  While this may seem inauthentic to some degree, simply compare it to the endemic hypocrisies represented by vastly incongruous knowledge and beliefs with our behavior.  This also gives a tip of the hat to the classical liberal paradigm of the importance of environmental conditions.  Our own personal collections of privileges and disenfranchisements, either personally or socially, are weigh more important to making sense of our behavior than cataloging, or even changing, our knowledge and beliefs. In sum, knowledge is routinely over-weighed in behavior change and social change.

My view is that plumbing the nature of our own privilege and disenfranchisement is a much firmer foundation upon which to build a life-affirming world.  This self-knowledge can generate powerful insights into others and is a prerequisite to empathy.  Reflecting on both grace (unmerited privilege) and unjust relationships (disenfranchisement) can leverage the attitudinal changes necessary for a better world for all.  Mustering the courage to let go of unmerited privilege when it perpetuates unjust relationships, and change our behavior accordingly, even if it feels uncomfortable and scary, will align our lives at a deeper level of comfort and peace.  Knowledge will follow.  Knowledge will catch up to our passions.  Life-affirming knowledge is wisdom.  All other knowledge is unnecessary clutter, actually confounding the manifestation of wisdom.  Where a whole heart rules, all is well.  Living in won’s head can foster a perversely dangerous idealism, disconnected from the world of the living.  If this strikes you as in any weigh anti-intellectual, you may want to delve into my blog — I speak from experience.

May you find a weigh in life that lifts up both yourself and others.

 



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PUCO Testimony – FirstEnergy Robbery of Ratepayers

January 16th, 2015   Filed under: About Top Pun, Health, News, Poems, Political Action, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

Below is my testimony at the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) hearing regarding the proposed corporate welfare for FirstEnergy.  There was an impressive show of force by the anti-nuclear and pro-environmental folks from the region.  There was a show of farce by the usual parade of brown-nosers whose employment is closely related to Davis-Besse nuclear plant operations.  Still, the greatest number of testifiers were opposed to the above-market rate hike to subsidize FirstEnergy’s uncompetitive and dangerous energy generation.  In an unusual move, PUCO literally made every testifier swear.  So, legally, this testimony is “the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”  May PUCO deny FirstEnergy’s application to rip off ratepayers for private profit.

Testimony at PUCO Public Hearing
Re: First Energy Robbery of Ratepayers
January 15, 2015

My name is Dan Rutt. I am a citizen of Toledo and this great planet. I have a B.S. in biology. I have a masters degree in public health. I am a breather of polluted air from coal-fired electric generators. I share with you a planet that is threatened by global climate instability, due to pollution from carbon dioxide and co-called “natural” gas, more accurately described as methane. I live in the deathly shadow of Davis-Besse, the aging nuclear power plant with the worst safety record in the U.S., thanks to a couple of nuclear plants which have been wisely closed recently for safety and economic reasons. It’s Davis-Besse’s turn — hopefully to be decommissioned, not blow up. To you who live outside the region, welcome to Davis-Besse’s kill zone.

I will take my precious few minutes to plead with PUCO, charged with protecting public health and economic sanity. Do not allow the building of a pipeline from the First Energy corporate board room to the public purse. The boondoggle that is the Davis-Besse nuclear plant drives this issue. Davis-Besse is a poor investment economically, a perilous venture environmentally, and a catastrophic threat to human life along the Great Lakes. The federal government already indemnifies the nuclear industry from accountability for catastrophic events. PUCO should not further this lack of accountability by forcing the public to invest in nuclear plants. If anything we should disinvest from nuclear power.

First Energy has lobbied to prop up coal and nuclear, the way of the past. We need change, not infrastructure and rate plans which will lock us into an unsustainable future. Still worse, First Energy has lobbied to block the transition to renewable energy, the way of the future. If First Energy is allowed to pass on most or all of the risk of its increasingly risky ventures to the public — that is, ratepayers and biological entities susceptible to lethal radiation catastrophes — then I suspect that this could trigger a rush of entrepreneurial types wanting to PUCO all over Ohio.

The energy industry is quite adept at playing the hodgepodge of regulatory agencies for its own profit. They are experts at leveraging the narrowness of regulatory agencies’ perspectives and authority, which, given time limitations here, may be summed up as: “It’s not my job” and “I’m only doing my job.” Ironically, this may leave us with somebody’s job, even a so-called “good” job, but no livable world. If your work leads to the destruction of the planet, then it is not a good job. Job one must be protecting the planet. This includes accountability for those who would “invest” (sic) in the destruction of our planet for profit.

There is little doubt that we are being gamed. And if we don’t get wise to this, there are likely to be many losers, and few winners. I wonder if perhaps this issue might be better served by a change of venue. Perhaps we should add to the mix oversight by the Lottery Commission or Casino Control Commission; it might be more honest. Perhaps we could turn that ole Besse into a cash cow. Convert it from a white elephant into a casino. We could call it “Chernobyl on the Lake — an Eerie Adventure.” We could feature Russian Roulette. Unfortunately, we, the public, are already subject to a game of Russian Roulette, playing with nuclear catastrophe and the steamroller of climate instability. Free us from this deadly game. Help us pave the way to a new and sustainable future. Disapprove this proposed rate plan, the robbery of the many to enrich the few, and a dangerous course for all. Thank you.

[Note: I didn’t read this poem at the hearing, but included it in my written testimony]

Good Job
by Dan Rutt, alias “Top Pun” (it’s just, my pun name)

It was early Monday mourning
When the Davis-Besse nuclear plant
Finally ruptured
At the base of Lake Eerie
Weeping poison
From the once-great lakes
Now a watery grave for both sellers
And consumers
Of atomic drivel
For what human remains
The event became known
Simply as “The rupture”
Leaving sleepy millions
In its wake
Sucked into a glowing sky
For who knows watt
Feudal to press release
Fore their heavenly reword
A paradise rolled
Entranced buy snake eyes
In charge of all that meters
Relegating us to hoarse power
Silent partners
Dealt a roil flush
In a conniving casino
Pain only in skullduggery
Forging height reason
And absolute faith in stonewall
As a bet
A dark wager
Echoing in the empty halls
Of unions and congress
“Good job”



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POEM: A Royal Buzzkill

October 22nd, 2014   Filed under: Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

Bee
The change
That you wish
In the whirled
Too see
O Mother Earth
Undertaking
Men o’ pause
In-fertility rite
As nature fecund wanes
A roil buzzkill
Soon with death teeming
Wear is thy sting
Extincting that human race
Soully certifiable reproductions
Unfit as a specious
Forerunners to know end
Yet today, this solitary caged bird sings
Like a canary
In a cold mine
With its deadly presents
Colorless and odious executioner
The lynch pin of anonymous hoods
Haunting all
That which is called “natural”
Sow fumes miasma
Till hour last breath

This poem is another mournful environmental poem, with the steady decline of bees as the proverbial canary in the coal mine for the deathly threat to the ecology of the earth.  Of course, the stoic denial and fatalism of human-induced climate change through fossil fuel consumption reaps a Mother Earth whose only defense may be to open a Pandora’s box capable of “naturally” selecting the human race from an internal combustion race to a mere foot race, where humans are no longer large enough scale to crash the entire planet’s ecological system.  If we don’t change course and evolve into an ecologically-sustainable species, we will be devolved into a much less dominant species.  Whether this would represent an evolution or devolution would have to be reflected upon by many fewer homo sapiens.

While we as a species are still living high on the fumes of burning fossil fuels, the buzzkill of bee genocide may lead the way to the end of agriculture as we know it, and the end of human culture as we know it.  Our unchecked industrialism, fueled by the burning of carbon-based energy forms, may very well lead to our checking out as the predominant species on earth.  Could this bee the end of the world? as so aptly asked in an article of the same title (with a now extinct link!):

Albert Einstein once said: “If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.”

Einstein wasn’t an insect expert but he had a point. The humble honeybee is an integral part of the global ecosystem. Honey is just one aspect of what this entomological wonder does. As a pollinator it ensures crops reproduce, so although a world without honey would be a poorer place, man would survive. But without plants, we’d become extinct.

…On a global scale, it is estimated a third of the food we eat is pollinated by bees…

…The introduction to the 2010 UNEP [United Nations Environment Programme] report into global bee colony disorders puts the insects’ plight in context. It states, “Current evidence demonstrates that a sixth major extinction of biological diversity event is under way. The Earth is losing between 1 and 10 per cent of biodiversity per decade, mostly due to habitat loss, pest invasion, pollution, over-harvesting and disease.” It asked, “Has a ‘pollinator crisis’ really been occurring during recent decades, or are these concerns just another sign of global biodiversity decline?”

Unchecked domination is not the nature of nature.  Either homo sapiens will learn to live in harmony with nature as a whole, or our ability to dominate will be cut down to scale.  As throughout countless generations, we are faced with choosing harmony or destruction.  Nature has patiently endured our penchant for destruction.  Nature cannot be violated forever.  Nature’s feedback is gentle and generous.  Only fools destroy the hand that feeds them.  Will we be fools in the largesse weigh?



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POEM: Rare Prayer

October 12th, 2014   Filed under: About Top Pun, Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

I found myself
In rare prayer
A genus reserved for
Mother’s ilk
Only doing what
Kin be done
In udder neglect
Of that long a go
Cached in
Fore more sensible weighs
Now wholly saved
For foxholes
The mass
Of desperate men
And occasional women
Re-sorting
In rare prayer
As raw flesh exposed
With feudal armor flailing miserably
In stoic winsome
God’s mourning dawns
As initiate
Such supplication
With a hesitant plea
Claiming how sow little requested
And sow far between
Only mildly disappointed with the crop received
In won’s life
With such scanty solicitations
The ground of my being
Like an ungraceful sludge hammer cleaving diamonds
Seaming as a sedimental journey at best
A grime scene at worst
A present cut to ribbons
Stairing into a box
Bound for eternity
And still
As I here, a response
An uncommon sense
A peel for more
In treat awe
Even the one
Who reveres coarse
And bars none
The less
The great
I am
Fooly in chanted
Soully to that call
Which cannot be herd
Accept bye
One’s self

This poem was inspired by a prayerful moment at a protest to stop the BP refinery in Oregon, Ohio, from investing 2.5 billion dollars to retool to process tar sands, the dirtiest source of petroleum yet sought after by oily men. Toward the end of the demonstration, I found myself at the fence reflecting on the unlikelihood that we would be able to stop this fuelish investment in an environmentally destructive infrastructure, a generations-long commitment of resources to a dirty energy future, an asphalt super-highway to perdition.

The “rare” prayer in this poem, not surprisingly has several meanings. While I quite easily, with great frequency, say a prayer of thanks, I rarely ask God for anything very specific.  I can’t help but experience a feeling of hubris in the notion that God is waiting to align the universe according to my requests.  Also, this is a personal spiritual practice and practical way for me to decouple from the many manipulative aspects of religion, as if God exists to serve my will.  I am quite thrilled with God’s creation and how magnificently convenient it serves my will and purposes.  In this sea of grace, any desire to bend the world to my will seems like disgruntlement.   Most any traditional prayer life has been leveled by my integration into my heart of the mystic Meister Eckhart quote, “If there were but one prayer, ‘Thanks,’ would suffice.”  However, there are the occasional moments when I feel particularly vulnerable or mournful.  This is where the “rare” is “As raw flesh exposed.”  The world is definitely a mournful place.  Discord and loss are everyday experiences.  Harmony-seekers must confront ignorance, apathy, and outright intransigence.

In the face of the powers that be at BP, I can fantasize about God sending down a pillar of fire to destroy such intransigent offenders.  Unfortunately, this perverse desire is in much too scary alignment with the very BP offenders I wish to see punished or expunged from our shared reality we call earth.  Such greedy and spiritually lazy offenders wish nothing more than to secure their own little world from its many vulnerabilities and impinging insecurities.  Well, my God is not a mighty fortress!  My God is the giver of life, unmerited as we turn out to be at times.  My God mourns with me as discord and destruction rains.  My God is present in “it all,” yearning and wooing us to live fully, not settling for lesser dreams, half-truths, and lives broken into pieces.  I got the answer to my prayer before I even finished it.  As I was engaging God with talk of how I ask for stuff so infrequently, and how I don’t ask for much, I was gently but firmly and unmistakenly reminded that God does not want me to make merely occasional, hesitant or apologetic pleas for incrementally better lives.  God’s will for our life is for whole lives, lived boldly, even in the face of seeming intractable brokenness.  God incessantly invites us to be people of hope, a living hope which becomes incarnate in the world by boldly living in consonance with that hope.  In case this bold sentiment might be doubted, my quick prayer and swift response was punctuated with the crowd of witnesses present that day boldly singing about how we will not compromise, neither our hopes nor our demands for a world full of harmony.  God works in strange in mysterious ways.  Sometimes not so mysterious — though perhaps somewhat strange to some.



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POEM: A Strange Gift From Smother Earth

September 25th, 2014   Filed under: Poems, Political and Philosophical Musings Add Comment

I awoke
Too the rumble
Of a river of cars
Getting the goods
Being trucked over and over
As fuming motorists
And fuelish consumers
Whirled wide
Tank up
With great import
As their gauges reach emptily
A diction
Beyond words
Feeding this uneconomic engine
Internally combusting
A humanity greased
Plunged into a vain artery
So so leading
To an err tight garage sail
N’air to see O2 again
Only lust C’ing a singular “O!”
To be
Fallowed buy
Cryptic silence
As nature returns
A strange gift from smother earth

This poem was inspired by awaking to the rumble of cars and trucks from I-75 about a mile from my house.  I am quite familiar with this noise pollution, a steady hum 24/7, though I usually only take notice of it at night or in the morning while lying in bed.  Noise (and light) pollution are on my short list of pet peeves and everyday side effects of so-called civilization.  However, this poem meditates on the constant stream of air pollution and inevitable environmental destruction from a carbon-based energy economy and transportation system.  The congested arteries of our highways and buy ways consternate both motorists and Mother Earth — not to mention pedestrians and bicyclists.  This poem also alludes to the military shenanigans (as we “tank up”) needed to assure a steady supply of a crude lifestyle.  The addiction to petroleum leads us to morally depraved measures of success, such as the accepted norm that destroying the environment is part and parcel to a good economy.  Such insanity brings to mind the wise aphorism: don’t shit where you eat.  The metaphor of drowning in our own waste is incarnated in this poem as the suicide of exhausted and fuming motorists in their garages, the final resting place of going nowhere fast.  This poem requires a certain knowledge of chemistry to be fully comprehended, specifically the chemical structure of carbon monoxide.  If you also know that carbon monoxide preferentially binds, in place of oxygen, on hemoglobin, then you can more fully appreciate the breathtaking nature of this poem.  The feedback of nature is neither random nor mean-spirited.  Nonetheless, if humans insist on living in unsustainable ways, then nature will weed us out or prune us down to size.  Perhaps this is poetic justice for smother earth…



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BP Tar Sands Refinery Expansion – PEOPLE’S HEARING Testimony

June 5th, 2013   Filed under: About Top Pun, Health, News, Political Action Add Comment

Below is my testimony at the PEOPLE’S HEARING to respond to the Ohio EPA’s sham public hearing on BP-Husky’ Draft Air Pollution Permit as part of their Oregon Ohio refinery re-tooling to process oil tar sands, the dirtiest oil on the planet.  This People’s Hearing was sponsored by the Toledo Coalition for Safe Energy.  I was speaking on behalf of Occupy Toledo and planetary citizens everywhere:

Welcome to Oregon, Ohio — now with 50% less stench!

My name is Dan Rutt.  I am a long-time resident of Toledo, a citizen of Ohio and these United States of America.  However, I have an over-arching allegiance; that allegiance is to our planet, which sustains our life and the life of all living beings from all nations and ecosystems.  I am a planetary citizen.  I am calling on all planetary citizens to rise above lesser allegiances and protect our planet from British Petroleum and other transnational corporations who stand against the interests of humanity and life on our planet.

I am standing outside the formal EPA hearing, so we the people can have our own hearing, a people’s hearing, that is not limited to narrow, technical matters, while BP and others are literally mining our planet in order to burn it.  BP wants to re-tool their refining to process tar sands, the dirtiest oil on the planet, the bottom of the barrel.  This is exactly the wrong direction we should be headed.  Spending billions on an infrastructure to process the most polluting, least economically viable and least sustainable fossil fuel will only lock us onto the wrong path for years — years that we and our planet cannot afford.  We need to switch to safe and renewable energy NOW — not next year, not next decade, not next generation, but TODAY, June 5th, 2013!

How about investing billions of dollars to switch to clean, safe, renewable, and sustainable energy?  Where is your plan for that BP?

Unfortunately, the Ohio EPA is powerless to stop BP from destroying Mother Earth.  The EPA may be able to regulate the lethal injection of Mother Earth while BP euthanizes her.  But I am here to say, that that is not good enough!  Merely deciding how we are going to destroy the planet is insanity of the highest order.  We need to end our addiction to fossil fuels or we will become fossils ourselves.  BP is a pusher, profiting from this deadly addiction, and should be treated as such. 

Real people suffer environmental destruction while corporate persons like BP are insulated from their crimes.   Three years ago, BP caused the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history.  This was not an “accident.”  It was a criminal act.  Now, they want us to entrust Mother Earth to them, again.  As the U.S. Department of Justice put it, “The explosion of the rig was a disaster that resulted from BP’s culture of privileging profit over prudence.”  BP has pled guilty of felony manslaughter, environmental crimes, and obstruction of Congress.  While no BP executives have gone to jail, planetary citizens resist their criminal behavior and fuelish business practices and these planetary citizens go to jail.

Inside, there will be a parade of people on the payroll of British Petroleum, some literally on the payroll, some just hoping to get some of the economic scraps from refining our planet into money.  This is on the heels of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, OSHA, which in 2010 cited Oregon’s BP-Husky refinery for 62 safety violations and fined the company nearly $3 million for “exposing workers to a variety of hazards.”  Then, this year, on March 10th, the BP-Husky refinery malfunctioned and released extremely dangerous hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide pollution into the air.

Should we trust BP?  Is BP a good corporate citizen?  In the years leading up to the BP gulf oil spill, on about an annual basis, BP pled guilty to criminal acts, each time saying that they were going to change their ways.  Mother Earth is a battered women, BP is a batterer, and it’s time to end the cycle of criminal abuse.  Buying her flowers and offering her gushing words have not stopped BP’s gushing oil in the past.  We don’t want your sweet talk.  We want you to stop raping the earth!

The only real question here today is whether or not we can avoid the Native American prophecy that “When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted; when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can’t eat money.”

BP will you fundamentally change your fossilized business practices and switch to clean, safe, renewable, and sustainable energy? 

I have in my hands 38 pages of documents from Ohio EPA regarding the draft Air Pollution Permit-to-Install for BP-Husky Refining, Limited Liability Corporation, with an accent on the “Limited Liability”!  I have a Bachelor’s Degree in biology, a Master’s Degree in Public Health; I’ve even had a graduate level course in environmental genetic toxicology.  I’ve spent years working in and with government bureaucracies.  How can one adequately address the issues raised in a few minutes?  What I conclude from this draft permit and tonight’s so-called public hearing is that they are a smokescreen.  Buried in this smokescreen of technocratic minutiae is our planet being buried; or perhaps more accurately: unburied and burned — literally, the cremation of our planet.  This Ohio EPA sham hearing today is lethal to democracy, thwarting the larger will of the people, as it stands by, impotent to protect our environment, the very environment it is sworn to protect.  Meanwhile, BP and others are destroying our planet.

Anybody who lives or passes through Oregon, Ohio, knows that BP doesn’t pass the stink test.  You don’t need a doctoral degree to know that our fossil fuels addiction threatens our planet and the life it sustains.  We can’t depend on British Petroleum or other fossilized corporations to protect our planet.  We can’t depend on politicians or bureaucrats to protect our planet.  If the planet is to be saved, then it depends on you and me, we the people.  Thank you for coming out to this people’s hearing.  Thank you for listening.

I will now conclude by reading a poem, entitled, O Children of Mother Earth, Arise!

Listen, O children of Mother Earth!
Hear, those who have ears
Hear the streams of clean water, our tributaries of life
Hear the streams of cars and trucks dirtying the air we breathe
See, O children of Mother Earth!
See, those who have eyes
See the beauty of fields and forests, mountains and meadows
See the scars of strip mines and cesspools of toxins
Smell, O children of Mother Earth!
Smell, those who have noses
Smell the fragrance of wildflowers and gardens
Smell the stench of oil and coal combustion, and chemical cocktails concocted
Reach out and touch, O children of Mother Earth!
Reach out and touch, those who have hands
Reach out and touch the soil and sun which fuels nature’s bounty
Reach out and touch the concrete and landfills, the Alpha and Omega of so-called “progress”
Taste, O children of Mother Earth!
Taste, those who have mouths
Taste the fruits of her plenty, enough for all
Taste the bitterness of her children’s petty scarcity, robbing brother and sister
Feel, O children of Mother Earth!
Feel, those who have hearts
Feel the call of nature
Feel the greed of those who would of nature relieve themselves
Speak, O children of Mother Earth!
Speak, those who have tongues
Speak of the splendor of a Mother’s care
Speak of the horror of an orphaned race
Arise, every living creature, O children of Mother Earth!
Return to her lap, and breast, and arms
Turn away from her desecration
Take your rightful place, to neither rule from above nor rule from below
Work side by side
Play together
Live neighborly
For we share the same fate
Whether we share or not
O children of Mother Earth

NOTE: There were an estimate 18 to 18,000 people at the People’s Hearing.  THANKS to all who showed up!

Here is the testimony of Kristina Moazed, Chair, Western Lake Erie Sierra Club:

The proposal that BP has revealed to the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and to us, the public, has been improperly piecemealed and made to appear as if it will be just fine for this refinery to accept tar sands.
We must begin at the very source of these oil bearing sands. Canada’s government, and the province of Alberta are massively destroying Alberta’s pristine, northern ancient forests, poisoning the water sources of their native wildlife, and natives and other Albertans for one generation’s profit and greed. The desecration of this form of extraction is seriously forever.

   >  This permitting decision is being made in ignorance of recognized scientific principles that do predict increasingly worse consequences of global warming.

   >  The decision to go forward with tar sands as a source of petroleum rejects the scientifically-grounded conclusion that to even begin to slow down the global warming and that our over-use of fossil fuels has put into motion, we must keep as much of the remaining carbon fuels as possible in the ground: they must never be extracted and burned!

   >  There is no consideration in this decision process of public health effects on human populations in our Toledo-Oregon-Lake Erie shore region as a consequence of the higher volumes of known carcinogenic and other pollutants which will be emitted!

    >  There is no consideration given to otheralternate mitigation activities, such as the building and promotion of mass transit, which would consume less petroleum, create far more permanent jobs, and cause much less pollution than perpetuating North America’s one-car, one-driver folly.

    >  There is no certainty that high volumes of petroleum coke will actually be generated by the proposed altered refinement process.   And if it is, that coke will not be sheltered from the elements and will accumulate less than a mile from Lake Erie and one of its estuaries.
Have any emergency plans been put in place in case of explosion or fire while processing these dirty bitumen fuels so close to our source of drinking water?
Have possible impacts to tourism and the maritime and fishing industries been considered?
I’m sure if we contact the Black Swamp Bird Observatory, the birding crowd will have plenty of objections to the increased pollution in and desecration of the surrounding habitat!

Just one example of tar sands refining immediately to our north, in Detroit will give us an example of what happens. Emissions of sulfur dioxide did decrease, but emissions of hydrogen sulfide increased as they do everywhere bitumen is refined. Hydrogen sulfide is known for its rotten egg odor and is potentially fatal in sufficient concentrations. Residents near this Marathon Refinery in Detroit participated in Air Sampling which was overseen by Global Community Monitor, an environmental group based in California. In 2010 they found high levels of benzene, a carcinogen, and hydrogen sulfide near the refinery. IN one case, more than 20 chemicals, including benzene were detected in a resident’s basement. An EPA investigation traced the contamination to Marathon’s dumping of wastewater into the city sewer system! “We were shocked to learn they did not have their own discharge pipe into a body of water like, I believe, every other refinery in the United States ,” said Denny Larson, Global Community Monitor’s executive director. How convenient that the BP Refinery is right on the shore of Lake Erie! I think we will need to watch their discharges very carefully!

   >  These production changes are being undertaken by a global corporation which has seriously poisoned the Gulf of Mexico through crass, careless and dangerous negligence and deliberately ignoring safety regulations causing the oil spill in 2010, and its still incomplete remediation.
Now that we know BP has gamed the regulators and the public into bring tar sands cracking here to Oregon, Ohio, exactly what basis is there for any trust that consideration of public health and avoidance of environmental destruction hold any priority for BP?

We must promote green, renewable and sustainable energy! We must conserve and become more efficient our usage!

THANKS Kristina!



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Occupy Wall Street Buttons

May 12th, 2012   Filed under: Health, News Add Comment

I am finally uploaded a new batch of Occupy Wall Street designs.  This batch of 125 political designs is mostly Occupy Wall Street designs, but there are also a large series of “stop socialism” designs, a large series of Fox news parodies, and a new line of designs: vegetarian.  I still have hundreds of other designs made that I still need to upload, so stay tuned.

The designs below are linked to button products, but each of these designs is available in all of Top Pun’s products such as T-shirts, bumper stickers, mugs, magnets, key chains, sticker sheets, posters, and caps.

If you like what you see, you can check out all of my political designs, which also include more Occupy Wall Street related designs.

Gandhi Quote: First Ignore, Then Laugh, Fight, Win - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Gandhi Quote: First Ignore, Then Laugh, Fight, Win – POLITICAL BUTTON

Gandhi Quote: First Ignore, Then Laugh, Fight, Win – POLITICAL BUTTON

I Can EXPLAIN It To You, But I Can't UNDERSTAND It For You - POLITICAL BUTTON

I Can EXPLAIN It To You, But I Can’t UNDERSTAND It For You – POLITICAL BUTTON

I Can EXPLAIN It To You, But I Can’t UNDERSTAND It For You – POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism - Dismantle Prisons (STOP Sign) - POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – Dismantle Prisons (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – Dismantle Prisons (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

99 to 1 - I Can Live With That - OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

99 to 1 – I Can Live With That – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

99 to 1 – I Can Live With That – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

I Don't Mind You Being Rich, I Mind You Buying My Government - POLITICAL BUTTON

I Don’t Mind You Being Rich, I Mind You Buying My Government – POLITICAL BUTTON

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Stop Socialism - Dismantle The CIA (STOP Sign) - POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – Dismantle The CIA (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – Dismantle The CIA (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

99 to One - I Stand With The Odds - Stand Together - OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

99 to One – I Stand With The Odds – Stand Together – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

99 to One – I Stand With The Odds – Stand Together – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

I Thought There Would Be Cake (Marie Antoinette Protester) - OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

I Thought There Would Be Cake (Marie Antoinette Protester) – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

I Thought There Would Be Cake (Marie Antoinette Protester) – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism - Dismantle The FBI (STOP Sign) - POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – Dismantle The FBI (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – Dismantle The FBI (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

A Nation of Sheep Soon Beget a Government of Wolves - Edward R. Murrow Quote - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

A Nation of Sheep Soon Beget a Government of Wolves – Edward R. Murrow Quote – POLITICAL BUTTON

A Nation of Sheep Soon Beget a Government of Wolves – Edward R. Murrow Quote – POLITICAL BUTTON

I Want A Future That Can't Be Bought (Heart Cloud) - POLITICAL BUTTON

I Want A Future That Can’t Be Bought (Heart Cloud) – POLITICAL BUTTON

I Want A Future That Can’t Be Bought (Heart Cloud) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism - Dismantle The Fire Dept (STOP Sign) - POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – Dismantle The Fire Dept (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – Dismantle The Fire Dept (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Abolish Corporate Personhood - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Abolish Corporate Personhood – POLITICAL BUTTON

Abolish Corporate Personhood – POLITICAL BUTTON

I WANT YOU To Support FREE SPEECH - Protect the Constitution (Uncle Sam) - POLITICAL BUTTON

I WANT YOU To Support FREE SPEECH – Protect the Constitution (Uncle Sam) – POLITICAL BUTTON

I WANT YOU To Support FREE SPEECH – Protect the Constitution (Uncle Sam) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism - Dismantle The Police Dept. (STOP Sign) - POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – Dismantle The Police Dept. (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – Dismantle The Police Dept. (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

America is Broke BrokeN - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

America is Broke BrokeN – POLITICAL BUTTON

America is Broke BrokeN – POLITICAL BUTTON

I WANT YOU To Support FREEDOM OF RELIGION Protect the Constitution (Uncle Sam) - POLITICAL BUTTON

I WANT YOU To Support FREEDOM OF RELIGION Protect the Constitution (Uncle Sam) – POLITICAL BUTTON

I WANT YOU To Support FREEDOM OF RELIGION Protect the Constitution (Uncle Sam) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism - End Border Patrols (STOP Sign) - POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – End Border Patrols (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – End Border Patrols (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

American AND Liberal (Flag) - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

American AND Liberal (Flag) – POLITICAL BUTTON

American AND Liberal (Flag) – POLITICAL BUTTON

I WANT YOU To Support FREEDOM OF THE PRESS - Protect the Constitution (Uncle Sam) - POLITICAL BUTTON

I WANT YOU To Support FREEDOM OF THE PRESS – Protect the Constitution (Uncle Sam) – POLITICAL BUTTON

I WANT YOU To Support FREEDOM OF THE PRESS – Protect the Constitution (Uncle Sam) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism - End Child Protective Services (STOP Sign) - POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – End Child Protective Services (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – End Child Protective Services (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Anarchy is Not What You See on TV - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Anarchy is Not What You See on TV – POLITICAL BUTTON

Anarchy is Not What You See on TV – POLITICAL BUTTON

I WANT YOU To Support PEACEABLE ASSEMBLY - Protect the Constitution (Uncle Sam) - POLITICAL BUTTON

I WANT YOU To Support PEACEABLE ASSEMBLY – Protect the Constitution (Uncle Sam) – POLITICAL BUTTON

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Stop Socialism - End Elections (STOP Sign) - POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – End Elections (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – End Elections (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Arrest Greed - OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Arrest Greed – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

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I WANT YOU To Support PETITION FOR REDRESS GRIEVANCES - Protect the Constitution Uncle Sam - POLITICAL BUTTON

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Stop Socialism --End Environmental Protection (STOP Sign) - POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism –End Environmental Protection (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

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At Least We Are Winning The War on Camping (Tent) - OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

At Least We Are Winning The War on Camping (Tent) – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

At Least We Are Winning The War on Camping (Tent) – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

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I WANT YOU To Support THE RIGHT TO PRIVACY – Protect the Constitution (Uncle Sam) – POLITICAL BUTTON

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Bigger Cages, Longer Chains – FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTON

Bigger Cages, Longer Chains – FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTON

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Stop Socialism - End Homeland Security (STOP Sign) - POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – End Homeland Security (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – End Homeland Security (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

BLAME AMERICA? It's Called Responsibility - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

BLAME AMERICA? It’s Called Responsibility – POLITICAL BUTTON

BLAME AMERICA? It’s Called Responsibility – POLITICAL BUTTON

If You Can't Beat 'em, Join 'em 99% (Riot Policeman) - OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

If You Can’t Beat ’em, Join ’em 99% (Riot Policeman) – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

If You Can’t Beat ’em, Join ’em 99% (Riot Policeman) – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism - End Medicare (STOP Sign) - POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – End Medicare (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – End Medicare (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Bull Shit Meter - FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Bull Shit Meter – FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTON

Bull Shit Meter – FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTON

If You Can't Join 'em, Beat 'em 99% (Riot Policeman) - OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

If You Can’t Join ’em, Beat ’em 99% (Riot Policeman) – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

If You Can’t Join ’em, Beat ’em 99% (Riot Policeman) – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism - End Money and Coins (STOP Sign) - POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – End Money and Coins (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – End Money and Coins (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Capitalism is Not in Crisis, Capitalism is the Crisis - OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Capitalism is Not in Crisis, Capitalism is the Crisis – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Capitalism is Not in Crisis, Capitalism is the Crisis – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

If You Think The System Is Working, Ask Someone Who Isn't - POLITICAL BUTTON

If You Think The System Is Working, Ask Someone Who Isn’t – POLITICAL BUTTON

If You Think The System Is Working, Ask Someone Who Isn’t – POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism - End Postal Service (STOP Sign) - POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – End Postal Service (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – End Postal Service (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Class, I Know Nothing of Class - OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Class, I Know Nothing of Class – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Class, I Know Nothing of Class – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

If You're Not Part of the Solution, You Must Be a Republican - FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTON

If You’re Not Part of the Solution, You Must Be a Republican – FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTON

If You’re Not Part of the Solution, You Must Be a Republican – FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism - End Public Education (STOP Sign) - POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – End Public Education (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – End Public Education (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Class War - I Thought We Won That When Corporations Were Declared People and That Money Is Free Speech - OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Class War – I Thought We Won That When Corporations Were Declared People and That Money Is Free Speech – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Class War – I Thought We Won That When Corporations Were Declared People and That Money Is Free Speech – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

I'm Not Anti-Corporation, I'm Anti-Corruption - POLITICAL BUTTON

I’m Not Anti-Corporation, I’m Anti-Corruption – POLITICAL BUTTON

I’m Not Anti-Corporation, I’m Anti-Corruption – POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism - End Public Libraries (STOP Sign) - POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – End Public Libraries (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – End Public Libraries (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

CLASS WARS (Star Wars Parody) - OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

CLASS WARS (Star Wars Parody) – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

CLASS WARS (Star Wars Parody) – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

IN PROTEST WE TRUST - OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

IN PROTEST WE TRUST – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

IN PROTEST WE TRUST – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism - End Public Sewer and Water Service (STOP Sign) - POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – End Public Sewer and Water Service (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – End Public Sewer and Water Service (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Clean Water is the Solution - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Clean Water is the Solution – POLITICAL BUTTON

Clean Water is the Solution – POLITICAL BUTTON

International NO Nuclear Power - POLITICAL BUTTON

International NO Nuclear Power – POLITICAL BUTTON

International NO Nuclear Power – POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism End Public Utilities (STOP Sign) - POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism End Public Utilities (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism End Public Utilities (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Corporate PAC Man Eating DEMOCRACY - OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Corporate PAC Man Eating DEMOCRACY – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Corporate PAC Man Eating DEMOCRACY – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

It's Called the American Dream Because You Have to be Asleep to Believe It - George Carlin Quote - POLITICAL BUTTON

It’s Called the American Dream Because You Have to be Asleep to Believe It – George Carlin Quote – POLITICAL BUTTON

It’s Called the American Dream Because You Have to be Asleep to Believe It – George Carlin Quote – POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism - End Social Security (STOP Sign) - POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – End Social Security (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – End Social Security (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Corporations Aren't People, We Are - OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Corporations Aren’t People, We Are – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Corporations Aren’t People, We Are – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

It's NOT Spelled Demo¢ra$y (Democracy) - POLITICAL BUTTON

It’s NOT Spelled Demo¢ra$y (Democracy) – POLITICAL BUTTON

It’s NOT Spelled Demo¢ra$y (Democracy) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism - End State Colleges and Universities (STOP Sign) - POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – End State Colleges and Universities (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – End State Colleges and Universities (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Corporations Lie - OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Corporations Lie – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Corporations Lie – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

It's Not WEE The People (Monopoly Man) - FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTON

It’s Not WEE The People (Monopoly Man) – FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTON

It’s Not WEE The People (Monopoly Man) – FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism - End the Court System (STOP Sign) - POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – End the Court System (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – End the Court System (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Debt Slavery - No Chains Necessary (Sisyphus) - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Debt Slavery – No Chains Necessary (Sisyphus) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Debt Slavery – No Chains Necessary (Sisyphus) – POLITICAL BUTTON

It's WE The People, Not WEE The People Founding Fathers - FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTON

It’s WE The People, Not WEE The People Founding Fathers – FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTON

It’s WE The People, Not WEE The People Founding Fathers – FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism - End The Federal Aviation Admin (STOP Sign) - POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – End The Federal Aviation Admin (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – End The Federal Aviation Admin (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Democrat, Republican, AWAKE (Checkbox) - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Democrat, Republican, AWAKE (Checkbox) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Democrat, Republican, AWAKE (Checkbox) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Keep Your Coins, I Want Change (Sign) - POLITICAL BUTTON

Keep Your Coins, I Want Change (Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Keep Your Coins, I Want Change (Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism - End The Military (STOP Sign) - POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – End The Military (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – End The Military (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Democrat, Republican, OTHER (Checkbox) - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Democrat, Republican, OTHER (Checkbox) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Democrat, Republican, OTHER (Checkbox) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Killer Coke - Buying Coke Products May Be Dangerous to Others - POLITICAL BUTTON

Killer Coke – Buying Coke Products May Be Dangerous to Others – POLITICAL BUTTON

Killer Coke – Buying Coke Products May Be Dangerous to Others – POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism - End The National Institutes of Health (STOP Sign) - POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – End The National Institutes of Health (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – End The National Institutes of Health (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Democrat, Republican, Pissed Off (Checkbox) - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Democrat, Republican, Pissed Off (Checkbox) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Democrat, Republican, Pissed Off (Checkbox) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Left, Right, Take Your Pick (Manacles) - POLITICAL BUTTON

Left, Right, Take Your Pick (Manacles) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Left, Right, Take Your Pick (Manacles) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism - End The National Park System (STOP Sign) - POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – End The National Park System (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – End The National Park System (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Democrats Think The Glass Is Half Full, Republicans Think The Glass Is Theirs - FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Democrats Think The Glass Is Half Full, Republicans Think The Glass Is Theirs – FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTON

Democrats Think The Glass Is Half Full, Republicans Think The Glass Is Theirs – FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTON

Let Them Eat Pasteurized Processed Imitation Cheese Food Product (Marie Antoinette) - FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTON

Let Them Eat Pasteurized Processed Imitation Cheese Food Product (Marie Antoinette) – FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTON

Let Them Eat Pasteurized Processed Imitation Cheese Food Product (Marie Antoinette) – FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism - End The State (STOP Sign) - POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – End The State (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – End The State (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Did Someone Say Class War (Monopoly Man Parody) - OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Did Someone Say Class War (Monopoly Man Parody) – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Did Someone Say Class War (Monopoly Man Parody) – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Listen And Obey (TV) - POLITICAL BUTTON

Listen And Obey (TV) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Listen And Obey (TV) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism - End Trash Pick up (STOP Sign) - POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – End Trash Pick up (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – End Trash Pick up (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Do You Think They Herd Us (Riot Police) - OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Do You Think They Herd Us (Riot Police) – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Do You Think They Herd Us (Riot Police) – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Looks Like You've Had A Bit Too Much To Think Today (Policeman) - OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Looks Like You’ve Had A Bit Too Much To Think Today (Policeman) – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Looks Like You’ve Had A Bit Too Much To Think Today (Policeman) – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism - Make Crime Legal (STOP Sign) - POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – Make Crime Legal (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – Make Crime Legal (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Dollar Statue Falling - Occupy Wall Street - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Dollar Statue Falling – Occupy Wall Street – POLITICAL BUTTON

Dollar Statue Falling – Occupy Wall Street – POLITICAL BUTTON

Love Greater Than Money (Heart) - POLITICAL BUTTON

Love Greater Than Money (Heart) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Love Greater Than Money (Heart) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialized Risk Privatized Profit (STOP Sign) - POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialized Risk Privatized Profit (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialized Risk Privatized Profit (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Don't Ask Me Why I'm A Vegetarian, Ask Yourself Why You're Not - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Don’t Ask Me Why I’m A Vegetarian, Ask Yourself Why You’re Not – POLITICAL BUTTON

Don’t Ask Me Why I’m A Vegetarian, Ask Yourself Why You’re Not – POLITICAL BUTTON

Make Every Day Earth Day - POLITICAL BUTTON

Make Every Day Earth Day – POLITICAL BUTTON

Make Every Day Earth Day – POLITICAL BUTTON

SUPERSIZE The Minimum Wage - POLITICAL BUTTON

SUPERSIZE The Minimum Wage – POLITICAL BUTTON

SUPERSIZE The Minimum Wage – POLITICAL BUTTON

Earth First - We'll Rape the Other Planets Later - FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Earth First – We’ll Rape the Other Planets Later – FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTON

Earth First – We’ll Rape the Other Planets Later – FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTON

May The Forest Be With You - POLITICAL BUTTON

May The Forest Be With You – POLITICAL BUTTON

May The Forest Be With You – POLITICAL BUTTON

Support Organized Crime - Vote Republican - FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTON

Support Organized Crime – Vote Republican – FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTON

Support Organized Crime – Vote Republican – FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTON

Eat Beans, Not Beings - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Eat Beans, Not Beings – POLITICAL BUTTON

Eat Beans, Not Beings – POLITICAL BUTTON

Money is Free Speech - SHUT UP! - POLITICAL BUTTON

Money is Free Speech – SHUT UP! – POLITICAL BUTTON

Money is Free Speech – SHUT UP! – POLITICAL BUTTON

That Stuff Trickling Down on You is NOT Money (Wall Street Bull Shit) - OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

That Stuff Trickling Down on You is NOT Money (Wall Street Bull Shit) – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

That Stuff Trickling Down on You is NOT Money (Wall Street Bull Shit) – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Elect Satan - Why Pick The Lesser Of Two Evils - FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Elect Satan – Why Pick The Lesser Of Two Evils – FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTON

Elect Satan – Why Pick The Lesser Of Two Evils – FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTON

Money is the Root of All Politics - POLITICAL BUTTON

Money is the Root of All Politics – POLITICAL BUTTON

Money is the Root of All Politics – POLITICAL BUTTON

The Audacity of Dopes - Wall Street - OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

The Audacity of Dopes – Wall Street – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

The Audacity of Dopes – Wall Street – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

End the Casino Economy (Dice) - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

End the Casino Economy (Dice) – POLITICAL BUTTON

End the Casino Economy (Dice) – POLITICAL BUTTON

NO Nuclear - POLITICAL BUTTON

NO Nuclear – POLITICAL BUTTON

NO Nuclear – POLITICAL BUTTON

The Death Penalty is Dead Wrong (Skull) - POLITICAL BUTTON

The Death Penalty is Dead Wrong (Skull) – POLITICAL BUTTON

The Death Penalty is Dead Wrong (Skull) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Every Day Is Earth Day - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Every Day Is Earth Day – POLITICAL BUTTON

Every Day Is Earth Day – POLITICAL BUTTON

Nuclear Waste - Pay as You Glow - POLITICAL BUTTON

Nuclear Waste – Pay as You Glow – POLITICAL BUTTON

Nuclear Waste – Pay as You Glow – POLITICAL BUTTON

The First Amendment IS Our Permit (US Constitution) - OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

The First Amendment IS Our Permit (US Constitution) – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

The First Amendment IS Our Permit (US Constitution) – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Evolve (LOVE) - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Evolve (LOVE) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Evolve (LOVE) – POLITICAL BUTTON

OCCUPY EVERYTHING (Heart) - OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

OCCUPY EVERYTHING (Heart) – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

OCCUPY EVERYTHING (Heart) – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

The First Illegal Immigrants Arrived in 1492 - POLITICAL BUTTON

The First Illegal Immigrants Arrived in 1492 – POLITICAL BUTTON

The First Illegal Immigrants Arrived in 1492 – POLITICAL BUTTON

Faux News - AGREE for FOX SAKE (FOX NEWS Parody) - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Faux News – AGREE for FOX SAKE (FOX NEWS Parody) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Faux News – AGREE for FOX SAKE (FOX NEWS Parody) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Occupy Everywhere - OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Occupy Everywhere – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Occupy Everywhere – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

The Left is Right - POLITICAL BUTTON

The Left is Right – POLITICAL BUTTON

The Left is Right – POLITICAL BUTTON

Faux News - BIG BROTHER'S Little Brother (FOX NEWS Parody) - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Faux News – BIG BROTHER’S Little Brother (FOX NEWS Parody) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Faux News – BIG BROTHER’S Little Brother (FOX NEWS Parody) – POLITICAL BUTTON

OCCUPY is Cool - REALLY COOL (Hell Freezing Over Sign) - OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

OCCUPY is Cool – REALLY COOL (Hell Freezing Over Sign) – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

OCCUPY is Cool – REALLY COOL (Hell Freezing Over Sign) – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

The Meek Are Getting Ready - POLITICAL BUTTON

The Meek Are Getting Ready – POLITICAL BUTTON

The Meek Are Getting Ready – POLITICAL BUTTON

Faux News - Chicken Coup Specialists (FOX NEWS Parody) - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Faux News – Chicken Coup Specialists (FOX NEWS Parody) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Faux News – Chicken Coup Specialists (FOX NEWS Parody) – POLITICAL BUTTON

OCCUPY Your HEAD With Your HEART - OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

OCCUPY Your HEAD With Your HEART – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

OCCUPY Your HEAD With Your HEART – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

The One Percent Have People And They Are Dressed For Success (Riot Police) - OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

The One Percent Have People And They Are Dressed For Success (Riot Police) – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

The One Percent Have People And They Are Dressed For Success (Riot Police) – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Faux News - FAIRLY UNBALANCED (FOX NEWS Parody) - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Faux News – FAIRLY UNBALANCED (FOX NEWS Parody) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Faux News – FAIRLY UNBALANCED (FOX NEWS Parody) – POLITICAL BUTTON

One Party System - Republicrats - POLITICAL BUTTON

One Party System – Republicrats – POLITICAL BUTTON

One Party System – Republicrats – POLITICAL BUTTON

The System Was Never Broken It Was BUILT That Way - POLITICAL BUTTON

The System Was Never Broken It Was BUILT That Way – POLITICAL BUTTON

The System Was Never Broken It Was BUILT That Way – POLITICAL BUTTON

FAUX NEWS - Making The World Safe For Stupidity (FOX NEWS Parody) - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

FAUX NEWS – Making The World Safe For Stupidity (FOX NEWS Parody) – POLITICAL BUTTON

FAUX NEWS – Making The World Safe For Stupidity (FOX NEWS Parody) – POLITICAL BUTTON

One Percent FED, 99 Percent FED UP - OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

One Percent FED, 99 Percent FED UP – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

One Percent FED, 99 Percent FED UP – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

There Is No Planet B - POLITICAL BUTTON

There Is No Planet B – POLITICAL BUTTON

There Is No Planet B – POLITICAL BUTTON

Faux News - NEO CON NEWS NETWORK (FOX NEWS Parody) - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Faux News – NEO CON NEWS NETWORK (FOX NEWS Parody) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Faux News – NEO CON NEWS NETWORK (FOX NEWS Parody) – POLITICAL BUTTON

One Percent, Ninety Nine Percent, Cash Rich versus Cash Poor - OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

One Percent, Ninety Nine Percent, Cash Rich versus Cash Poor – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

One Percent, Ninety Nine Percent, Cash Rich versus Cash Poor – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

These Are NOT The Green Jobs We Were Hoping For (CASH) - OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

These Are NOT The Green Jobs We Were Hoping For (CASH) – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

These Are NOT The Green Jobs We Were Hoping For (CASH) – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Faux News - NEWS at the Speed of Lies (FOX NEWS Parody) - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Faux News – NEWS at the Speed of Lies (FOX NEWS Parody) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Faux News – NEWS at the Speed of Lies (FOX NEWS Parody) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Please Pardon Our Peaceful Chaos As We Reboot Our Country's Operating System - OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Please Pardon Our Peaceful Chaos As We Reboot Our Country’s Operating System – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Please Pardon Our Peaceful Chaos As We Reboot Our Country’s Operating System – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

They Only Call It Class Warfare When We Fight Back - OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

They Only Call It Class Warfare When We Fight Back – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

They Only Call It Class Warfare When We Fight Back – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Faux News - Preferred by 5 Out of 4 Rednecks (FOX NEWS Parody) - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Faux News – Preferred by 5 Out of 4 Rednecks (FOX NEWS Parody) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Faux News – Preferred by 5 Out of 4 Rednecks (FOX NEWS Parody) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Political Prisoner In Training (Dove in Jail) - POLITICAL BUTTON

Political Prisoner In Training (Dove in Jail) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Political Prisoner In Training (Dove in Jail) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Think Green - POLITICAL BUTTON

Think Green – POLITICAL BUTTON

Think Green – POLITICAL BUTTON

FAUX NEWS - Rich People Paying Rich People To Tell Middle Class People To Blame Poor People (FOX NEWS Parody) - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

FAUX NEWS – Rich People Paying Rich People To Tell Middle Class People To Blame Poor People (FOX NEWS Parody) – POLITICAL BUTTON

FAUX NEWS – Rich People Paying Rich People To Tell Middle Class People To Blame Poor People (FOX NEWS Parody) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Pre-OCCUPIED and STUPIFIED (TV) - OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Pre-OCCUPIED and STUPIFIED (TV) – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Pre-OCCUPIED and STUPIFIED (TV) – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Think Outside the Box (TV) - POLITICAL BUTTON

Think Outside the Box (TV) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Think Outside the Box (TV) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Faux News - SO RIGHT WE'RE WRONG (FOX NEWS Parody) - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Faux News – SO RIGHT WE’RE WRONG (FOX NEWS Parody) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Faux News – SO RIGHT WE’RE WRONG (FOX NEWS Parody) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Pro Life - Unborn, GOOD - Born, BAD - Born Again, GOOD - POLITICAL BUTTON

Pro Life – Unborn, GOOD – Born, BAD – Born Again, GOOD – POLITICAL BUTTON

Pro Life – Unborn, GOOD – Born, BAD – Born Again, GOOD – POLITICAL BUTTON

This is the Only Bill Unanimously Passed in Congress (100 Dollar Bill) - POLITICAL BUTTON

This is the Only Bill Unanimously Passed in Congress (100 Dollar Bill) – POLITICAL BUTTON

This is the Only Bill Unanimously Passed in Congress (100 Dollar Bill) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Faux News - Spreading It Everywhere (FOX NEWS Parody) - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Faux News – Spreading It Everywhere (FOX NEWS Parody) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Faux News – Spreading It Everywhere (FOX NEWS Parody) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Proud Member of The Reality Based Community - POLITICAL BUTTON

Proud Member of The Reality Based Community – POLITICAL BUTTON

Proud Member of The Reality Based Community – POLITICAL BUTTON

This Is The Way Bankstas Roll (Pig Rolling in Cash Rolls) - OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

This Is The Way Bankstas Roll (Pig Rolling in Cash Rolls) – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

This Is The Way Bankstas Roll (Pig Rolling in Cash Rolls) – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Faux News - Take a Peak at Doublespeak (FOX NEWS Parody) - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Faux News – Take a Peak at Doublespeak (FOX NEWS Parody) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Faux News – Take a Peak at Doublespeak (FOX NEWS Parody) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Proud To Be Everything The Right Wing Hates - POLITICAL BUTTON

Proud To Be Everything The Right Wing Hates – POLITICAL BUTTON

Proud To Be Everything The Right Wing Hates – POLITICAL BUTTON

This Is The Way Bankstas Roll (Rolling Dice) - OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

This Is The Way Bankstas Roll (Rolling Dice) – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

This Is The Way Bankstas Roll (Rolling Dice) – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Faux News - Trust Our Klan of Reporters (FOX NEWS Parody) - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Faux News – Trust Our Klan of Reporters (FOX NEWS Parody) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Faux News – Trust Our Klan of Reporters (FOX NEWS Parody) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Question Consumption - POLITICAL BUTTON

Question Consumption – POLITICAL BUTTON

Question Consumption – POLITICAL BUTTON

This Is What Democracy Looks Like To the One Percent (Riot Police) - OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

This Is What Democracy Looks Like To the One Percent (Riot Police) – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

This Is What Democracy Looks Like To the One Percent (Riot Police) – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Faux News - Unencumbered by Truth (FOX NEWS Parody) - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Faux News – Unencumbered by Truth (FOX NEWS Parody) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Faux News – Unencumbered by Truth (FOX NEWS Parody) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Real Eyes, Realize, Real Lies - POLITICAL BUTTON

Real Eyes, Realize, Real Lies – POLITICAL BUTTON

Real Eyes, Realize, Real Lies – POLITICAL BUTTON

Throw Out The Money Changers (Jesus) - OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Throw Out The Money Changers (Jesus) – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Throw Out The Money Changers (Jesus) – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Faux News - We Have Half a Mind to Be Right (FOX NEWS Parody) - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Faux News – We Have Half a Mind to Be Right (FOX NEWS Parody) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Faux News – We Have Half a Mind to Be Right (FOX NEWS Parody) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Reality Has A Well Known Liberal Bias - Stephen Colbert - FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTON

Reality Has A Well Known Liberal Bias – Stephen Colbert – FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTON

Reality Has A Well Known Liberal Bias – Stephen Colbert – FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTON

Titanic - Too Big To Fail - OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Titanic – Too Big To Fail – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Titanic – Too Big To Fail – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Faux News - Where News Goes to Die (FOX NEWS Parody) - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Faux News – Where News Goes to Die (FOX NEWS Parody) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Faux News – Where News Goes to Die (FOX NEWS Parody) – POLITICAL BUTTON

REALITY Keep Left - REPUBLICAN PARTY Exit Right (Sign) - POLITICAL BUTTON

REALITY Keep Left – REPUBLICAN PARTY Exit Right (Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

REALITY Keep Left – REPUBLICAN PARTY Exit Right (Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

UNFUCK The World, It's Un-Fucking Believable - POLITICAL BUTTON

UNFUCK The World, It’s Un-Fucking Believable – POLITICAL BUTTON

UNFUCK The World, It’s Un-Fucking Believable – POLITICAL BUTTON

Faux News - Where The Wrong is Made Right (FOX NEWS Parody) - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Faux News – Where The Wrong is Made Right (FOX NEWS Parody) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Faux News – Where The Wrong is Made Right (FOX NEWS Parody) – POLITICAL BUTTON

REALITY Keep Left - TEA PARTY Exit Right (Sign) - POLITICAL BUTTON

REALITY Keep Left – TEA PARTY Exit Right (Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

REALITY Keep Left – TEA PARTY Exit Right (Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Urban Sprawl - Cut Down All the Trees and Name the Streets After Them - POLITICAL BUTTON

Urban Sprawl – Cut Down All the Trees and Name the Streets After Them – POLITICAL BUTTON

Urban Sprawl – Cut Down All the Trees and Name the Streets After Them – POLITICAL BUTTON

Faux News - Wise Guys Selling Lies (FOX NEWS Parody) - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Faux News – Wise Guys Selling Lies (FOX NEWS Parody) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Faux News – Wise Guys Selling Lies (FOX NEWS Parody) – POLITICAL BUTTON

REALITY Keep Left - WALL STREET Exit Right (Sign) - POLITICAL BUTTON

REALITY Keep Left – WALL STREET Exit Right (Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

REALITY Keep Left – WALL STREET Exit Right (Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

USS Economy (Titanic) - POLITICAL BUTTON

USS Economy (Titanic) – POLITICAL BUTTON

USS Economy (Titanic) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Flesh Colored Crayons - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Flesh Colored Crayons – POLITICAL BUTTON

Flesh Colored Crayons – POLITICAL BUTTON

REPRESENT YOURSELF - POLITICAL BUTTON

REPRESENT YOURSELF – POLITICAL BUTTON

REPRESENT YOURSELF – POLITICAL BUTTON

Vegetable Time - POLITICAL BUTTON

Vegetable Time – POLITICAL BUTTON

Vegetable Time – POLITICAL BUTTON

Follow Your Dreams - CANCELLED - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Follow Your Dreams – CANCELLED – POLITICAL BUTTON

Follow Your Dreams – CANCELLED – POLITICAL BUTTON

rEVOLution is the Solution (LOVE) - POLITICAL BUTTON

rEVOLution is the Solution (LOVE) – POLITICAL BUTTON

rEVOLution is the Solution (LOVE) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Vegetarian - Compassion Doesn't Leave A Bad Taste in Your Mouth - POLITICAL BUTTON

Vegetarian – Compassion Doesn’t Leave A Bad Taste in Your Mouth – POLITICAL BUTTON

Vegetarian – Compassion Doesn’t Leave A Bad Taste in Your Mouth – POLITICAL BUTTON

Fossil Fuels, Fossil Fools (Pollution) - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Fossil Fuels, Fossil Fools (Pollution) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Fossil Fuels, Fossil Fools (Pollution) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Screw Compassion, We're Full of Xenophobia - POLITICAL BUTTON

Screw Compassion, We’re Full of Xenophobia – POLITICAL BUTTON

Screw Compassion, We’re Full of Xenophobia – POLITICAL BUTTON

VEGETARIAN - Join The Evolution - POLITICAL BUTTON

VEGETARIAN – Join The Evolution – POLITICAL BUTTON

VEGETARIAN – Join The Evolution – POLITICAL BUTTON

Free Range Human Being - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Free Range Human Being – POLITICAL BUTTON

Free Range Human Being – POLITICAL BUTTON

Screw Us And We Multiply - OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Screw Us And We Multiply – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Screw Us And We Multiply – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Want Freedom From Government, Go Live in Somalia - POLITICAL BUTTON

Want Freedom From Government, Go Live in Somalia – POLITICAL BUTTON

Want Freedom From Government, Go Live in Somalia – POLITICAL BUTTON

Freedom Isn't Free - So Stop Whining and Pay Your Taxes - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Freedom Isn’t Free – So Stop Whining and Pay Your Taxes – POLITICAL BUTTON

Freedom Isn’t Free – So Stop Whining and Pay Your Taxes – POLITICAL BUTTON

Slower Minds Keep Right (Sign) - POLITICAL BUTTON

Slower Minds Keep Right (Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Slower Minds Keep Right (Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

WARNING: LACK of DEMOCRACY May Make Your Vision BLURRY - FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTON

WARNING: LACK of DEMOCRACY May Make Your Vision BLURRY – FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTON

WARNING: LACK of DEMOCRACY May Make Your Vision BLURRY – FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTON

Friends Don't Let Friends Vote Republican - FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Friends Don’t Let Friends Vote Republican – FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTON

Friends Don’t Let Friends Vote Republican – FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTON

SOCIAL CHANGE IS NOT SOCIALISM (Anarchism Symbol) - POLITICAL BUTTON

SOCIAL CHANGE IS NOT SOCIALISM (Anarchism Symbol) – POLITICAL BUTTON

SOCIAL CHANGE IS NOT SOCIALISM (Anarchism Symbol) – POLITICAL BUTTON

We Are The People We Have Been Waiting For - POLITICAL BUTTON

We Are The People We Have Been Waiting For – POLITICAL BUTTON

We Are The People We Have Been Waiting For – POLITICAL BUTTON

Fukushima, Chernobyl, 3 Mile Island - NO NUCLEAR POWER - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Fukushima, Chernobyl, 3 Mile Island – NO NUCLEAR POWER – POLITICAL BUTTON

Fukushima, Chernobyl, 3 Mile Island – NO NUCLEAR POWER – POLITICAL BUTTON

Sorry, Your OCCUPIED - OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Sorry, Your OCCUPIED – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Sorry, Your OCCUPIED – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

What About A MAXIMUM Wage - POLITICAL BUTTON

What About A MAXIMUM Wage – POLITICAL BUTTON

What About A MAXIMUM Wage – POLITICAL BUTTON

Gandhi Quote: Seven Social Sins - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Gandhi Quote: Seven Social Sins – POLITICAL BUTTON

Gandhi Quote: Seven Social Sins – POLITICAL BUTTON

SOS Earth - POLITICAL BUTTON

SOS Earth – POLITICAL BUTTON

SOS Earth – POLITICAL BUTTON

What Do You Call An Unprovoked Sexual Advance With No Intention But To Take Your Money: Advertising - POLITICAL BUTTON

What Do You Call An Unprovoked Sexual Advance With No Intention But To Take Your Money: Advertising – POLITICAL BUTTON

What Do You Call An Unprovoked Sexual Advance With No Intention But To Take Your Money: Advertising – POLITICAL BUTTON

Global Warming is Not Cool (Polar Bear) - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Global Warming is Not Cool (Polar Bear) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Global Warming is Not Cool (Polar Bear) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Spare Some Truth 2 (Homeless Man Sign) - POLITICAL BUTTON

Spare Some Truth 2 (Homeless Man Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Spare Some Truth 2 (Homeless Man Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

WHAT YOU DO MATTERS or Don't Do - POLITICAL BUTTON

WHAT YOU DO MATTERS or Don’t Do – POLITICAL BUTTON

WHAT YOU DO MATTERS or Don’t Do – POLITICAL BUTTON

Good Planets Are Hard To Find (Earth) - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Good Planets Are Hard To Find (Earth) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Good Planets Are Hard To Find (Earth) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Spare Some Truth (Sign) - POLITICAL BUTTON

Spare Some Truth (Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Spare Some Truth (Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

What Your Flag Stands For Is Up To You - POLITICAL BUTTON

What Your Flag Stands For Is Up To You – POLITICAL BUTTON

What Your Flag Stands For Is Up To You – POLITICAL BUTTON

Good Questions Outrank Easy Answers - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Good Questions Outrank Easy Answers – POLITICAL BUTTON

Good Questions Outrank Easy Answers – POLITICAL BUTTON

Spare Some Truth that leads to change (Sign) - POLITICAL BUTTON

Spare Some Truth that leads to change (Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Spare Some Truth that leads to change (Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

When The RICH Rob The POOR It's Called BUSINESS, When The POOR Fight Back It's Called VIOLENCE - POLITICAL BUTTON

When The RICH Rob The POOR It’s Called BUSINESS, When The POOR Fight Back It’s Called VIOLENCE – POLITICAL BUTTON

When The RICH Rob The POOR It’s Called BUSINESS, When The POOR Fight Back It’s Called VIOLENCE – POLITICAL BUTTON

GOP - Greed Over People - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

GOP – Greed Over People – POLITICAL BUTTON

GOP – Greed Over People – POLITICAL BUTTON

Speak The Truth Even If Your Voice Shakes (Candle Lit) - POLITICAL BUTTON

Speak The Truth Even If Your Voice Shakes (Candle Lit) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Speak The Truth Even If Your Voice Shakes (Candle Lit) – POLITICAL BUTTON

When You're In Riot Gear Everything Looks Like a Riot - OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

When You’re In Riot Gear Everything Looks Like a Riot – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

When You’re In Riot Gear Everything Looks Like a Riot – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

GOP - Greedy Old Perverts - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

GOP – Greedy Old Perverts – POLITICAL BUTTON

GOP – Greedy Old Perverts – POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Beating Protesters (STOP Sign) - OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Beating Protesters (STOP Sign) – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Beating Protesters (STOP Sign) – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Wimpy: I Will Gladly Pay You Never for a Billion Dollars Today - OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Wimpy: I Will Gladly Pay You Never for a Billion Dollars Today – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Wimpy: I Will Gladly Pay You Never for a Billion Dollars Today – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Got Bankstas - OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Got Bankstas – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Got Bankstas – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

STOP Buying Crap (Planet Earth) - POLITICAL BUTTON

STOP Buying Crap (Planet Earth) – POLITICAL BUTTON

STOP Buying Crap (Planet Earth) – POLITICAL BUTTON

With Democrats Like These, Who Needs Republicans - POLITICAL BUTTON

With Democrats Like These, Who Needs Republicans – POLITICAL BUTTON

With Democrats Like These, Who Needs Republicans – POLITICAL BUTTON

HEY STOP Going Banksta On Our Economy - OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

HEY STOP Going Banksta On Our Economy – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

HEY STOP Going Banksta On Our Economy – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

STOP Buying Crap - POLITICAL BUTTON

STOP Buying Crap – POLITICAL BUTTON

STOP Buying Crap – POLITICAL BUTTON

Work Harder, Your Corporate Masters Need A Tax Break (Sisyphus) - POLITICAL BUTTON

Work Harder, Your Corporate Masters Need A Tax Break (Sisyphus) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Work Harder, Your Corporate Masters Need A Tax Break (Sisyphus) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Homeless Maybe, Streetless Never, Hit The Streets - OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Homeless Maybe, Streetless Never, Hit The Streets – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Homeless Maybe, Streetless Never, Hit The Streets – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Corporate Greed (STOP Sign) - POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Corporate Greed (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Corporate Greed (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Work is the New Retirement - POLITICAL BUTTON

Work is the New Retirement – POLITICAL BUTTON

Work is the New Retirement – POLITICAL BUTTON

How About Securing This Homeland (Planet Earth) - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

How About Securing This Homeland (Planet Earth) – POLITICAL BUTTON

How About Securing This Homeland (Planet Earth) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Corporate Welfare (STOP Sign) - POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Corporate Welfare (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Corporate Welfare (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

YES I Can Eat Meat, I Choose Not To - POLITICAL BUTTON

YES I Can Eat Meat, I Choose Not To – POLITICAL BUTTON

YES I Can Eat Meat, I Choose Not To – POLITICAL BUTTON

Human Race, Asian, White, African American, Hispanic, Native American, HUMAN (Checklist) - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

Human Race, Asian, White, African American, Hispanic, Native American, HUMAN (Checklist) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Human Race, Asian, White, African American, Hispanic, Native American, HUMAN (Checklist) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Cutting Down Trees on My Property, signed God - POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Cutting Down Trees on My Property, signed God – POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Cutting Down Trees on My Property, signed God – POLITICAL BUTTON

You Are Entitled To Your Own Opinions, But Not Your Own Facts - POLITICAL BUTTON

You Are Entitled To Your Own Opinions, But Not Your Own Facts – POLITICAL BUTTON

You Are Entitled To Your Own Opinions, But Not Your Own Facts – POLITICAL BUTTON

I'm Not Weird. Everyone Else Is Just Too Normal - POLITICAL BUTTONwidth=172

I’m Not Weird. Everyone Else Is Just Too Normal – POLITICAL BUTTON

I’m Not Weird. Everyone Else Is Just Too Normal – POLITICAL BUTTON

STOP Nuclear - POLITICAL BUTTON

STOP Nuclear – POLITICAL BUTTON

STOP Nuclear – POLITICAL BUTTON

You Laugh at Me Because I'm Different, I Laugh at You Because You're All the Same - FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTON

You Laugh at Me Because I’m Different, I Laugh at You Because You’re All the Same – FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTON

You Laugh at Me Because I’m Different, I Laugh at You Because You’re All the Same – FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTON

I am the 99 percent - OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

I am the 99 percent – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

I am the 99 percent – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism - Decriminalize Drugs (STOP Sign) - POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – Decriminalize Drugs (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Stop Socialism – Decriminalize Drugs (STOP Sign) – POLITICAL BUTTON

Your Occupation Will Be a Success, Lucky Number 99 (Fortune Cookie) - OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Your Occupation Will Be a Success, Lucky Number 99 (Fortune Cookie) – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

Your Occupation Will Be a Success, Lucky Number 99 (Fortune Cookie) – OCCUPY WALL STREET POLITICAL BUTTON

If you like what you see, you can check out all of my political designs.



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DTE Shareholder Protest

May 3rd, 2012   Filed under: News, Peace Add Comment

Between 200 and 200,000 protesters gathered outside the DTE Energy headquarters in Detroit, Michigan.   This DTE Energy protest  was visited upon by two to 2,000 Occupy Toledo protesters.  One unidentified protester, with a striking resemblance to Homer Simpson, wearing a notorious rainbow colored peace hand designed by Top Pun, showed his anti-nuke colors.anti-nuke Homer SimpsonAnother Occupy Toledo protester was less well disguised.  Michael Leonardi, pictured below, to the left, of course, can be seen waving his Occupy Toledo colors and anti-nuclear banner.  Mr. Leonardi received some criticism from other protesters for leading the way, since the more numerous yet bland protesters may have missed their photo op.  Mr. Leonardi bore this burden of leadership well and led despite his numerous followers.Detroit Edison Shareholder ProtestAs Mr. Leonardi and the other alleged participant, a.k.a. Top Pun, came to this protest they made the obvious mistake of parking in the casino parking garage.  The collusion of the purveyors of our casino economy had rolled out the concrete carpet that was a largely empty casino parking garage.  This free parking was apparently not to be had by mere commoners or the general public.  When we were spotted walking out of the parking garage with our fluorescent yellow Occupy Toledo signs and in our radiation suits, the very astute security recognized that maybe we weren’t there to gamble away our hard earned dollars.  This special DTE Energy shareholder security made it clear that we were not welcome and told us that if we didn’t move the car that they would tow it.  They were even kind enough to follow us out (pictured below) to make sure that no empty parking spots were harmed in the making of this fiasco.  Hear, hear, the last thing any anti-nuclear protesters want to do is have anybody take any unwarranted risks, like, say, storing 550 tons of nuclear waste in a five-story building that can’t be offloaded as built without knocking the building over.



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