Some people will assume that’s a bad thing, but if you look at the facts, it seems that Vermont’s godlessness serves it well. Vermont residents are among the most educated in all the USA. Vermont crime rates are among the lowest in the nation. Vermonters also feel more trust in their neighbors than people in other state. Whereas the level of stated trust of other people in the nation as a whole has declined to just 34 percent, the level of trust in other people among people living in Vermont is at 71 percent.

Maybe the rest of the nation ought to try going godless, as Vermont has done.

Now, as President of the United States, Barack Obama hasn’t done one thing to stop this Big Brother spying against Americans. He hasn’t even reformed it. George W. Bush’s warrantless wiretapping against Americans is continuing on under Barack Obama.

At least one American remembers this, and was there to confront Barack Obama when he arrived in Columbus, Ohio last week:

One sign on a sidewalk on a windy day for Barack Obama to see as he drives by in his limousine: Does it make a difference?

Well, it makes more of a difference than if no signs on the Bush-Obama spying were there at all.

The latest news item from the Delaware Greens appears to be from March, 2006 - back when the Republicans still controlled Congress, and people were not yet sure whether Barack Obama would really run for President. The most recent news before then was from June, 2005.

The Green Party in Delaware can complain all it wants to about having unequal access to corporate media, but if it isn’t even using its own media to speak in a compelling way to the public, it can’t expect to do better on a larger scale.

There’s a bigger lesson for activists: Making progress requires persistence.

But what did Rick Allison and his buddies in New Haven, Connecticut decide to protest? The cancellation of a radio show on WPLR - of everything that’s going wrong in the world. That show’s importance? It gave air time to local music bands - people who are playing quite often in local venues.

WPLR management even offered Rick Allison the chance to host a show through the radio station’s web site. Yet, Allison refused, on some kind of principle, perhaps the principle of some kind of inherent right of people to play the tunes they want to play on a commercial radio station.

Forgive my irritation, but I find it difficult to be patient when people who have failed to protest on the significant issues of our day finally decide to act just because a radio station does not share their opinion about what kind of music is worth broadcasting. It is a frivolous act for a trivial cause in very serious times.

There’s a great source for finding out about foods local to Cincinnati: The Cincinnati Locavore blog.

Local foods are great for the local economy, but they’re good for the national economy as well, because local foods cut down on waste, and leave consumers with more money to spend on stuff they actually need, rather than interstate transportation that doesn’t add any value to food (and actually takes a good deal of quality away, through aging and selection of produce varieties that don’t taste great, but deal with shipping well). Local foods keep our economy more diverse and complex, and thus more resilient to bad times.

Local food networks also support farms that are more likely to reject the industrial agriculture model of big monocultures of a very few varieties of produce or livestock. Local food keeps cultural diversity and biological diversity right along with economic diversification.

So, celebrate, Cincinnati. Eat up, and keep it local!

Homosexuality is a greater threat to America than the economic crisis? That’s absurd.

The greatest threat to America that I can think of is ignorance of the Constitution and the freedoms it guarantees - after all, it’s the Constitution that makes the USA the USA.

The Human Rights Campaign is organizing an effort to talk back to State Senator Buttars, and let him know that his bizarre beliefs are not shared by many Americans.

Marlin was once king of the oceans, as big as many sharks, the fish was the nemesis, as powerful as Moby Dick, in Earnest Hemmingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. Sadly, there aren’t big marlins like that any more. They’ve all been fished, and sold off by a lot of greedy old men, the owners of industrial fishing operations and seafood merchandising networks.

Marlin populations are down to 90 percent of what they once were - if that.

And so what does Chino Latino do? They help fund the extermination of the marlin by offering it up on their menu… calling the dish The Great Marlin Jerk Off.

“Everyone is a winner with our blue ribbon jerk spiced marlin grilled atop a bed of jasmine rice with coconut cream sauce and a refreshing mango salsa” says the Chino Latino menu. But, no, not everyone is a winner. The marlin certainly isn’t a winner. It’s been reduced from a Hemmingway’s noble character to a joke about masturbation.

And please… by the time that marlin reaches Minnesota, it isn’t even fresh. Something else that ought to make that marlin rather unpalatable is the fact that, because marlins are a top ocean predator, marlin flesh is filled with mercury. Mmmmm…. yummy heavy metals.

You can do something about this grave insult perpetrated by Chino Latino. Don’t go eat at Chino Latino… and spread the word. When people ask you why you won’t go with them to that restaurant, point them to the web site of Take Marlin Off The Menu.

H.R. 381 would force substantial cuts in funding to hospitals, early childhood education, and health care for kids. It would also require cuts to programs like WIC, which supports pregnant mothers by giving them access to the adequate nutrition that their unborn children need.

It’s cruel to attack American families, especially at this time, when many Americans find themselves out of work, through no fault of their own, only because their employers couldn’t stay afloat. If you live in Representative Blackburn’s district in Tennessee, please call her office through her congressional switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask her to rescind this bill. We don’t need Marsha Blackburn to kick American families when they’re down.

http://irregularnews.com/statesprogress/?p=156 News of a couple changes to the Wyoming Progressive Directory. A Wyoming environmental news service was removed after it began charging for access to its articles, and a Wyoming Arts blog was added.

Arts blog? Yes, we’ll count that as a progressive source of information. One of the progressive values we hold dear, after all, is the consideration of alternative forms of communication. Freedom of expression is something we wholeheartedly support, and that’s what the arts are all about.