Red State Green

Just thinking about how things have been going in the news lately, I’m beginning to think that these Independence Days are more important that ever. Anything that makes us more self-reliant, less tied into the global economy and more tied into our local communities, makes us more able to take care of our own and [...]

Gardeners are getting a nasty surprise
Gardeners beware — straw, manure and maybe even compost can kill your garden, thanks to the folks at the Dow chemical company. An herbicide called aminopyralid, released by DowAgroscience in 2005 and aggressively marketed to horse and cattle owners to control perennial weeds, has been associated with the loss of [...]

By way of Jon Stewart
Who I think is a pretty funny guy.
(warning: reference to a bad word is in the title of the video, so if that makes you crazy don’t click.)

Since we already know who I’m not voting for (either of the top dogs … personally, I like Obama a lot, but not his policies), I went and found the platforms of the other three parties running for president (in order of how much I like them):
Libertarian Party
Constitution Party
Green Party
I would encourage everyone to read [...]

Because that implies we’re not independent, and considering the matter, I tend to agree.
Take a look at this article: Why “Drill, Baby, Drill” does not translate into effective national energy policy . Lots of good information, but the key to the issue lies right here:
[...] the faster we use up the little oil we have [...]

Newsweek has a commentary up on Sarah Palin that I found interesting. If you can get past the blatant attacks on religion (the man comes out front and says he’s an atheist), you get to a statement that sort of sums up what’s wrong with the way we choose a President:
Ask yourself: how has “elitism” [...]

I’ve found this site instead: On The Issues
Here they have all the candidates, with how they stand on the issues, as well as a quiz that matches you with the candidate whose beliefs are closest to yours.

Want to know if something said in a political ad is true? Go to FactCheck.org, where both sides are put under the microscope. There’s a video that summarizes the findings for the week up in the left corner, if you’re short on time.

Justice Desserts is doing a wonderful series over on her blog: if you had good knowledge that a disaster was coming in 21 days that would last for 6 months, what would you/should you do?

You can’t. Do it all.
I’ve talked to a lot of people who say, “well, I can’t do [insert whatever thing they're worried about here], so why bother doing anything?”
You can’t do everything yourself. That’s why we have towns, instead of everyone living on their own back 40. Even the pioneers went into town to get [...]

I’ll tell you why.
(If you trigger easily, you might want to skip this. It’s ugly.)
Let’s pretend that one day your wife doesn’t come home. Maybe she was going to the grocery store, or on her way home from work, or on her way to pick up the kids. It gets later and later, and you [...]

It’s a beautiful day here today, and cool enough to get some actual work done. I’ve started my fall cleaning (which I do instead of spring cleaning since I like fall better).
Planted: garlic
Harvested: a particularly large sunflower head, some green beans.
Managed: composted some bunny litter and shucked a couple of sunflower heads that had been [...]

The implications of a ten day refinery outage
If your area is anything like mine, you’ve seen major gasoline price hikes in the past few days, especially if you live on the East coast.
Where is our gasoline and diesel supply headed? Even before Ike hit, quite a few areas of the US were starting to see [...]

You don’t always have to go to the store to get something for dinner.
In fact, I very rarely set foot inside a grocery store anymore. I did yesterday, since my husband was home and wanted to drive his car around he’s going to sell (he got a new, better mileage one. Anyone want a Honda [...]

26.89 mpg … not bad for a Honda CR-V run mostly in city. This is a record for me.

Here’s an interesting discussion of politics: What makes people vote Republican?
While the original article (as well as the question itself) is rather liberal-biased, go ahead and read it, then click the link at the bottom for a really good series of articles discussing (more or less) what makes Republicans tick.
Here’s a fun quote:
Why [...]

I realized that I haven’t posted my doings for a while. Here goes:
Planted: Parsley. I also have these carrot plants that sent up lovely white flowers, which are now brown and curled up into a cup-like structure at the top of their stalks.  I know that’s where they keep the seeds, so today I rubbed [...]

Here’s an article I just ran across: No Hope for a Sensible Energy Policy
THERE IS A REASON I chose “Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here” as the subtitle of the study of energy policy I just completed under the auspices of the Washington-based Hudson Institute. That reason: decades of listening to politician leaders [...]

I honestly still don’t know who, if anyone, I’m going to vote for.
McCain’s speech (what I heard of it so far) didn’t really excite me. (in the interest of full disclosure, I had a headache, had taken allergy medicine, and fell asleep through part of it; I’m going to find it on YouTube and listen [...]

A speech given by Republicans for Environmental Protection President Martha Marks, given to the “Tuesday Group” of Mainstream Republicans at the RNC Convention, St. Paul, Minnesota, September 1, 2008:
[...] Some of you may have laughed, or maybe rolled your eyes a bit, when you saw the title of my talk today: “It’s Easy Being Green—and [...]