This was offered to the Beachcomber today. I hope to be pardoned for tooting my horn on club time:

The oil in the Gulf of Mexico was not spilled. A spill can be boomed, which does not say that BP had booms ready. No, the oil in the gulf is a river of poison. Seen  that way it is something we cannot ignore as we ignore so many horrid things, the swindle, the war, Guantanimo, you know, all those things we Christians say we oppose. No, we cannot ignore the blowout. Please, now, hold the litany of helplessness and deniability also known as virtuous local interest that is trotted out at crunch times like recently when health care hit the fan of metastasized greed at which point we should have begun a local program. Instead consider that the proper response, the only feasible response Vashon can have is to get rid of gasoline driven cars and wean off of natural gas. The sun enables both goals. Spare me the reasons we cannot get started.

Repeated concern over the absence of prevention in US "health care", and its glaring absence in the debate over "reform", cannot be repeated often enough.  In the case of breast cancer this absence is particularly upsetting. Well, the reason has finally seen the light of publication in an established magazine. Hurrah for the following: The World's Wealthiest "Nonprofit" Institution Samuel S. Epstein M. D. Excerpt: The American Cancer Society is fixated on damage control— diagnosis and treatment— and basic molecular biology, with indifference or even hostility to cancer prevention. This myopic mindset is compounded by interlocking conflicts of interest...

Two pieces got my interest, the editor’s op-ed and the sincere but muddled letter from Twisdale. The dustup over the scuffle at Sporty’s was a lose-lose reporting obligation for the Beachcomber because political correctness and bigotry in the readership get in the way. Put differently, emotional conflict can’t be resolved in a newspaper. Instead and ideally, Vashon would have a degree of self-government that would include a forum for resolving disputes. Absent the Council’s dollar umbilical to the County, the Council would have had the witnesses and participants, all sober and presentable, line up in front of a full house at Bangasser Court and speak their pieces. Then the Beachcomber could weigh in, but not before. Dream on. Twisdale stresses the risk of vaccination with words I cannot summarize fairly. So I refer to her letter only to introduce the risk of vaccination using my own muddling. Here goes. The way to get a handle on current uneasiness regarding vaccination begins by partitioning vaccines into good...

Last evening a guest listened to his hostess tell about what King County is charging for a building permit to install a large tank. The guest put this information alongside the dip in the economy and reached the irrefutable conclusion that the county’s DDES palace on Oakesdale needed some new Turkish rugs. His mind crunched inexorably on to reach the conclusion that Vashon Island badly needed a touch of self-government. By that he meant a body that enabled consensus. Among the many issues on which consensus is long overdue, he thought, is the browbeating and exploiting we take from the DDES. It surprised the guest to realize this for he was in the habit of listing things like the commute, Glacier, health care, the homeless, drug use by youth, war, and so on. You know, the usual suspects for endangering our mental health. In the event, he not only realized this, but also was much encouraged by the newly current survey of opinion about having a credit union of our very own. Exclamation point implied. So how would...

Thanks to McClatchy News via Stand Up Seattle some details on cleanup and coverup efforts have finally emerged. Extreme depth and bad weather combine with EPA authorization of the wrong dispersant and Government irresponsibility to predict a bleak future. That last agent, the Government, is the most telling for it has been handing out environmental waivers as it hands out debt. We stand naked and unprepared in the coming confrontation with a Mexico in revolt and with police in riot gear herding us into detention. Grandstanding there, but here's the point: The Obama administration by its handling of the blowout has cast away what little faith we had in it. Who is in charge? Nobody.

Last Fall Vashon had a close encounter with money of a third kind when Bill Moyer entertained at a local sushi house. The combined result of speaker Tom Greco’s competence, John Browne Jr’s music and Bill’s enthusiasm was brisk sales of Greco’s latest book, The End of Money. Since then interest in his book has waned, in part because it is badly edited. The main reason though is that none of us wants to live on bread and water, wear sackcloth, or write everything by hand. Even so we would be well advised to compare those hardships with getting tear-gassed by Greek police. Contemplate over your sushi this excerpt via Lew Rockwell: The Euro Is Screwed by Kevin Brekke and David Galland “This is all just part and parcel of the secular trend that will lead to the end of the fiat currency experiment as the world wakes up to the full implications of the institutionalized monetary abuse engendered by a fiat system. As is so clearly evidenced in the drama now playing out in Greece, when a government is forced to solve...

This in from Public Citizen:

"Buried in the 1200-page Senate financial reregulation bill we found a sneaky provision that would undermine state-level insurance consumer protections if they conflict with trade agreements! Yup, the "Office of National Insurance" (ONI) proposal would empower the Treasury Department to unilaterally override existing state insurance regulations that it deems to be out of step with international agreements."

Although most menwomen of Vashon know that in nine-out-of-ten cases the national government acts for its funders, these same menwomen are content to leave Vashon's interests in the hands of that so-called "government". That's interests such as medical care, financial security, and social stability.

It's okay for these menwomen to think it's enough to celebrate our uniqueness, root for the Pirates, and vote for the school levies, but in acting that out they put the entire Island at risk. I know some of you personally and know why you do not think we should beef...

Yesterday was thin with only three emails of consequence, two ordinary ones of consequence followed the one from Alby Baker I’d then promptly forwarded to the Vashon Green Discuss list. For those off–island who may have missed his posting of that on the Standup Seattle list, it relayed an assessment of the oil spill that said the world’s oceans will die. Today my distress descends on those other two emails. Tell Congress: Break Up the Big Banks Now. (Democrats.com) Call Your Congress Member at (202) 224-3121 and tell them that you will vote against them if they vote to fund an escalation in Afghanistan. (After Downing Street.org) Finding these two generic pleas of the sort “Tell your congress …” on the same page with the poisoning of the oceans gave me a moment of futile rage. Menwomen, for the past six years we have been urged to call, prod, help, urge, or threaten Congress to do this or that with ninety percent failure. On no single issue of vital importance has the public will prevailed. And now the failure...