Earthbound in the Space Age

I just finished watching a documentary titled, "When we left Earth" the NASA Missions; and was reminded of the folly that will allow the decommissioning of the Space Shuttle in 2010 while it's replacement, the Ares1 Orion, is not scheduled until at it's earliest in 2014!  How will we service the International Space Station during this lapse?  We will pay Russia to take our mission specialists, astronauts, and others in their own aged space vehicles.  Why this is a folly is that it impacts on our technological growth, and further degrades the next generation of hoped for scientists, engineers, and a home grown aerospace manufacturing industry.

Back when President Kennedy challenged this nation to reach the moon in a decade; this impetus caused the micro-miniaturization that created the home computer and all of the advances that brought us into the information age.  Funding this will promote good wage, next generation 21st century employment.  This employment and the creation of new industries that will advance

and expand the technology to end Global warming, alternative energy, and even a automobile that will end our dependence on oil!

We must support bridging with a refurbished shuttle fleet until a true new generation of launch vehicles not based on last century Apollo era hardware can be developed.  We must look to the future and fund one of our greatest native industries which will also employ new aerospace workers who can also assist in advances for Rapid Transit, and don't forget where solar energy came from!

Green is the new color for 2009

While many of us worked for a bluer United States as well as a bluer California; the new color or better yet the renewed color for 2009 should be green! Green as in GREENpeace; green as in GREEN JOBS NOW, green as in Senator Barbara Boxer's excellent work in the US Senate. Green has always been a keynote color in the environmental movement; and there is a renewed call for green interaction between environmentalists and organized labor as well as small business.

On the November 2008 ballot in California were two Faux environmental propositions that we thankfully defeated. What we need is a proactive, labor intensive, small business green initiative that we can all get behind and support. Not a T. Boone Pickens enrichment plan, nor a so called alternative energy proposal that enriches speculators and major corporations but blocks small business and the plans we already have in place as we strive to advance and enhance the provisions of AB-32. AB-32 was the California Global Warming legislation co-authored by newly elected State Senator Fran Pavley, and former Speaker Fabian Nunez. Couple this with an Obama EPA that will give California a waiver and we are on our own Green Road to an environmental OZ.

Cabinet Appointments could deplete the Senate

While I have to recognize that the US Senators that are being discussed are without exception qualified; why deplete the US Senate. Now that the Democrats have a stronger majority; it is time to support the President Elect in bringing our nation to an even keel.

For example: Hillary should work in the Senate and in the future become the first woman majority floor leader after Harry Reid; John Kerry should advance to be the new Foreign Relations Chair to work hand in hand with Secretary of State Bill Richardson.

Protest Prop. 8!

Last week was one of mixed emotions 'round these parts. Going to sleep on Tuesday, November 4th with the cheers of millions still ringing, chants of "Obama!" and "Yes, We Did!" was a wondrous thing, causing my heart to grown three sizes that night at the election of the first African-American president of the United States - a man who seems as if he really will be able to lead us out of the nightmare of the Bush Administration, with a little help from all of us.

But to awaken on Wednesday morning to the news that Californians voted to pass Proposition 8? To know that the majority of citizens of my adopted state - where I've lived since I was 11 and the only state I've ever really known as home - decided it would be just fine and dandy to remove the rights of an entire group of fellow citizens and to codify hatred and bigotry into the California State Constitution?

All of my happiness and goodwill from the previous evening evaporated.

I thought we were better than that, California. We're known for being on the cutting edge of so many things, and here we've taken a step back into the dark ages of fear and bigotry, allowing out of state interests and churches to manipulate us for their own purposes, buying the lies that they told us about teaching same-sex marriage in schools and forcing churches to marry couples they don't want to marry. And for what?

To yank away existing civil rights for people who only want the same opportunities that the majority have: to marry the person that they love. Nothing more. Nothing less. If I have the right to marry a man at a quickie chapel in Las Vegas, two women or two men who have been together for a decade or more (or less) damn well better have the right to marry the person that he or she loves. And yes: MARRY. Not civil unions. Not separate but equal. Not accepting that said couples are second class citizens. We went down that road with African-Americans. Do we really want to go down that road again? I think not.

Dear readers, this ain't over. Not by a long shot.

SoCal Grassroots fully supports equality for all, which is why we've put together a page of links for actions that you can take to fight the passage of Proposition 8.

We're all in this together: gays, lesbians, straights, asexuals.

Everyone.

Let's work to assure basic civil rights for EVERY Californian. And EVERY American.