As strange and threatening as these times are, we need to remember a few key points.Universe rewards courage. Count on it. Courage is continuing in spite of the fear. Universe gets a big kick out of personal acts of courage, and will let you know. Humans, as a species, are not alone. Humans have never been alone.  Modern humans are most likely the result of genetic manipulation.  Modern humans genetic structure has most likely been altered by parties unknown for agendas also unknown to humans.

http://standeyo.com/NEWS/10_Pics_of_Day/101104.pic.of.day.html

As I prepare to head from Cleveland to San Francisco for the largest sustainability event in the world - The Green Festival - I'm packing some of my favorite bright green products from Northeast Ohio, including a Hemp n' Berry Bar from Plant Kingdom, of Akron, for the road. Bought at VERY OHIO PROUD bright green coffee roasters and retailers Phoenix Coffee, this healthy organic treat proudly boasts it is OHIO PROUD - and I'm proud of that.

Dear President Obama, I guarantee one ingredient in this Ohio Proud product is not from Ohio, or even America-proud - the first ingredient listed on the label - "Sheeled Hempseed (certified organic)". Ask your wife about "H" "E" "M" "P"...

It's a toss up to me between my two favorite assets in Cleveland - The Cleveland Orchestra or the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) - so I am always interested in unique perspectives on those worlds. The CMA is especially interesting right now as they near completion of a massive expansion, that is going very well, and they bring a new Director on board - from the Canadian Museum of Art - David Franklin.

In this week's Scene Magazine, Michael Gill offers the most informative and interesting perspectives on recent CMA developments I've seen, with THE MONEY BUSINESS - The art museum's new boss gets a crash-course in American arts funding.

I've had a good feeling about Franklin from all I've read, and this adds to my enthusiasm. He seems like a personable family man who will integrate with and celebrate with the community rather than hover above, as is so often the case with people in such lofty places - we'll be seeing much human interest in this family in the community, and expect people will appreciate the additions to the community - and neighborhoods of Shaker, where the Franklins have settled.

Of interest in Gill's informative reporting are some financials on the museum and it's operations, including - "Its largest and most dependable source of public funding — the cigarette tax — is just a $1.5 million fragment of the museum's $30 million overall budget". As the museum is one of the greatest in the world and one of few that are FREE - YES FREE - I'd say this is one public expenditure worth spending... although I strongly oppose this sin tax. I'd prefer to offer them some SALES TAX, de la MedCon.

Last night's election gives way to a Republican Majority in the House of Representatives while Democrats will retain control of the Senate.

This split control of Congress will be a challenge, but we have no intention of ceding America's future to Big Oil.

Do you?

We've worked too hard to turn back now.

I want to thank and acknowledge the tens of thousands of you who volunteered with the Sierra Club and local campaigns across the country. While there were some painful losses, your presence in campaigns across the country bolstered our champions and helped drive our agenda forward.

The question is, which side will the new House Republican Majority choose? Will they bow to the Big Oil and Coal interests who expect a return on their $247 million investment in the elections? Or will they listen to what Americans want: clean energy jobs that will lift our economy up.

realNEO Word Of The Day: 忍者 - Dedicated to Lily and Dianna

Perhaps the best thing about FitzGerald being elected County Executive - the Great City of Lakewood needs a new Mayor.
Slam Dunk - Jim O'Bryan for MAYOR (I wish he lived in Cleveland).

For this, I'll campaign.

Amazing! Ohio has an opportunity to be #1 in the world developing a new industry - a new economy - better and different than anywhere else in the world - ahead of the other 49 states in America and every other country in the world - as citizens of California foolishly failed to pass Proposition 19 today.

Supporters include the California branch of the NAACP, state chapters of the American Civil Liberties Union, the California Young Democrats, the Republican Liberty Caucus, the California Council of Churches, and several big labor unions.

"The Obama Administration has been clear in its opposition to marijuana legalization because research shows that marijuana use is associated with voluntary treatment admissions for addiction, fatal drugged driving accidents, mental illness, and emergency room admissions," Kerlikowske said.

What tools of old economy polluting industry our PROGRESSIVE (sic.) Democrats have proved to be!

I can't wait for 2012 and the next Presidential election! The next two years are going to be fun, for a change... I love a GOOD WAR.

Brian Eno- China My China - 1974 - Written & Produced by Brian Eno

Around 1990, I had brunch in Cambridge with one of MIT's rock star MBA candidates from China. I asked him what he intended to do after he completed his studies... Wall Street... corner office on Madison Avenue? No. He said he was going back to China to transfer his knowledge from MIT to there. Good strategy for China, sucking the knowledge from our best universities and transferring it back home!

20 years later... Do Believe The Hype, Thomas Friedman writes in today's New York Times:

"Having traveled to both China and India in the last few weeks, here’s a scary thought I have: What if — for all the hype about China, India and globalization — they’re actually underhyped? What if these sleeping giants are just finishing a 20-year process of getting the basic technological and educational infrastructure in place to become innovation hubs and that we haven’t seen anything yet"

If you thought the rate of change was fast thanks to the garage innovators of Silicon Valley, wait until the garages of Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore get fully up to speed. I sure hope we’re ready.

David McCandless: The beauty of data visualization - Outstanding presentation on data presentation - how creative economists see and show the world, at our best

Watch and see the first Carbon Neutral Volcano... and, Facebook Knows When You Will Breakup...

I once told an supposedly "green" friend that in the future he will not get to jet off to India or Brazil if he can afford, as that will not be ecologically responsible. He nearly cried.

Flying Is One of the Worst Things You Can Do for the Environment -- So Why Do So Many Well-Intentioned Folks Do It?

It's not easy being "Green" - that is life... as highlighted here, and provided in full below, from AlterNet:

The trouble with this is that flying is the single most ecologically costly act of individual consumption, one that requires the exploitation of large amounts of environmental and human resources. In a world of deep inequality, it thus also speaks to privilege -- most notably what we might call ecological privilege -- and its ugly flipside, disadvantage.

Moreover, the climate-destabilizing effects of air travel -- per passenger mile -- dwarfs that of other modes because of the enhanced climatic “forcing” it brings about: due to the height at which planes fly combined with the mixture of gases and particles they emit, conventional air travel detrimentally impacts global climate approximately 2.7 times more than that of its carbon emissions alone, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

My thoughts exactly... but then I'm not paid to pimp for Democrats or Republicans... I DID SOMETHING TO MAKE CHANGE HAPPEN INSTEAD, FOR FREE... FOR FREEDOM - REALNEO.US

What to do if you’re courageous enough to admit the Obama administration and Democrats are full of shit and the Tea Party and Republicans are dangerous and stupid?

  When it comes to the treatment of big business, we can’t tell the difference, either

President Barack Obama soared into the public consciousness with a stirring speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. He then took Howard Dean’s example and used the power of the Internet to create a fundraising juggernaut for his historic 2008 Presidential run. With a swiftness not seen since JFK’s political ascendancy, Obama became president and claimed broad power to affect “change” across the country. But Kennedy only had to surmount his Irish Catholic background — Barack Obama had to transcend the fact that he is African-American.

But appearances are, in the final analysis, immaterial. Just as a magician uses scenery and sleight-of-hand to divert the audience’s attention, Barack Obama has used his background, intellect, perceived worldliness and powers of speech to distort the reality field, as I call it (to repurpose Steve Jobs’ “reality-distortion field”).  To get Americans thinking about a certain reality, while another is at work behind the scenes.

Maybe you — an Obama voter — have asked yourself, “What happened to the man for whom I voted?” I would argue nothing. Make no mistake about it: Barack Obama is a masterful political manipulator.  And if one is able to let dissolve mental distinctions of party — Democrat, Republican — then Obama can be seen for what he really is: a trojan horse.

To those who don't understand the change that is occurring in the civilized world, outside Ohio, consider this new product line from Colorado and realize if you are in Ohio you can't have any - you can't have the health benefits - you can't be an entrepreneur to compete with this product line - you can't innovate in this space - you can't hang out with these innovators or their class of people - you can't access their markets, customers or investors - because you live across the cannabis divide from civilization, in corrupt, coal-brained Ohio.

But you WILL have lots of pollution from coal-burning in your lungs, in Ohio!

Smart? No! Grohio!

Marijuana Soda Provides a High Without the Smoke

One Colorado soda company has developed a line of sodas that have an unusual ingredient: marijuana. Dixie Elixirs has made their drinks available to anyone with a prescription for medical marijuana.

Did anyone go to hear the Lame Duck Democrats speak in Cleveland - did they apologize for the harm their party causes Cleveland?

I expect an apology - and I expect never to see any of these lame ducks running for office in America again.

That includes President Obama and Vice President Biden.

Does the Democratic Party have plans to get its shit together, be real, and run better candidates for better leadership in 2012... locally and nationwide?

Here is the legacy Obama squandered by selling his people (all Americans) down his polluted, warmongering river, after the disastrous Bush era... "Think of the growth I expect like when an economy is freed from a dictatorship and people are allowed to be free and thrive - markets open up - that is America, now that Bush has been replaced by democracy."

Below is my view on the public/private partnership traditional model of governance in Cleveland as reflected in the efforts at school reform here. The politics surrounding the Education Transformation Plan of Dr. Sanders and Cleveland’s Foundations should give us cause to wonder if in this instance the 100 plus year public/private partnership model in Cleveland needs some reform itself.

In the on-line discussion between the reporter and readers following The Plain Dealer’s Friday, October 29, 2010 article “Cleveland, George Gund foundations seek to shape school policy” the reporter was asked:

“So if the ‘foundations would not argue that a young teacher is necessarily superior to an older one” then are they putting a burden on the Union as a whole and teachers individually that has more to do with the management failures of a school District?

I love you...,my dear friend...JFK!!! Thanks for being there in a time of need.................................... LoveDLH

Already, we've spent more than $1 trillion in Iraq, not counting the $700 billion consumed each year by the Pentagon budget.
And spending in Iraq and Afghanistan now comes to more than $3 billion weekly

There is an important update on the cost to Americans of the war in Iraq and Afghanista, published in the Daily Beast October 27, 2010 - How the Wars Are Sinking the Economy - reporting "Nobel Prize recipient Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard budget guru Linda J. Bilmes are revising their original $3 trillion war cost estimate. As Bilmes reports, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are at least 25 percent costlier than previous projections—the cost of the wars will reach between $4 trillion and $6 trillion."

They frame these costs from the perspective of the burden the wars place on our economy, which will peak in about a half-century:

For example, we recently analyzed the medical and disability claim patterns for almost a million troops who have returned from the wars, and, based on this record, we've revised our estimate upward to between $600 billion and $900 billion—a broad specter, yes, but certainly also a significant upward tick from our earlier projection of $400 billion to $700 billion, based on historical patterns.

Similarly, our estimates for the economic and social costs associated with returning veterans can be expected to rise by at least a third—the staggering toll of repeated deployments over the past decade.

These poll results, just released today, explain why I will vote and I will vote ANYTHING BUT REPUBLICAN - followed by ANYTHING BUT CONSERVATIVE - followed by ANYTHING BUT 65+ OLD FART... those groups of people are found by most recent Gallop polling to be most likely to be flat-Earther anti-science tools of industry and are not welcome as leaders of my society.

Those I will seek out to vote for will be, in the following order, LIBERALS, THOSE 18-49, from the WEST, DEMOCRATIC and INDEPENDENT, as they poll as most real about public health, liberty, economics and freedom... which is what the issue of legalization of marijuana and hemp is all about.

How I shall ultimately cast my most important ballot is with my feet, choosing to move where I find people most like myself, being liberal, Independent, young (at heart) and West... until Ohio shakes its old-fart conservative Flat Earther failure and gets real.

The first order of business for Cuyahoga County's new executive should be to kill the Land Bank--

See why:

http://www.annarbor.com/news/washtenaw-county-officials-vote-to-dissolve-land-bank-authority/

(READ BACK STORY) Ricky Aldridge asked a friend to kill a neighbor in exchange for a blue pickup truck. He did not know his friend was an FBI informant wearing a wire and helping to investigate three acts of arson that had occurred along West 12th Street. One of the deliberately set fires was to the home of Cleveland Councilman Joe Cimperman.

A dear friend just sent this to me and asked me to send it on to  20 people and ask them to send it on to  20 others, etc. I was  struck by its common sense and the fact that we agree with each other, not always the case after many years have passed, I am sorry to say. So, if you agree, email this to 20 people; and, if you disagree, forgetaboutit:

I just received an after-the-fact announcement from President Obama's U.S. Department of Energy that Obama Administration Hosts Great Lakes Offshore Wind Workshop in Chicago with Great Lakes Wind Collaborative, reporting on "a workshop with the Great Lakes Wind Collaborative in Chicago on October 26 – 27, 2010, focused on the siting of offshore wind power in the Great Lakes. The two day workshop brought together wind developers, Federal and state regulators, environmental advocates, and other regional stakeholders to discuss methods for ensuring greater clarity, certainty and coordination of Federal and state decision-making for offshore wind development in the Great Lakes."

Yet, on September 14, 2010, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported Bechtel among developers selected for building a Lake Erie wind farm off Cleveland's coast, stating:

The company that built Hoover Dam, the tunnel under the English Channel and 23,000 other gargantuan projects around the world is going to build the first wind turbines in Lake Erie. Bechtel Development Co. of San Francisco is one of three companies chosen to construct and own the five-turbine demonstration project about 7 miles off shore at an estimated cost of $100 million.

Small by wind farm standards, the five-turbine cluster has been proposed as the precursor to erecting thousands of turbines in the lake -- and jump-starting an entire industry in Northeast Ohio.

Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason, who has chaired the Great Lakes Energy Development Task Force for more than four years, agreed that the idea has always been jobs, not electricity, at least not at this point.

Huge earth changes are taking place at this time. L.A.