George Winston - December

Get this album and leave it in your home CD player the entire winter.

This is the first track on the December album.

The video also has some nice nature photography, so stay with it.

America's Torture Disgrace

Many Americans have long known that the horrors of Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo Bay and in secret C.I.A. prisons were not the work of a few low-ranking sociopaths.

A recent bipartisan report by the Senate Armed Services Committee has made what amounts to a strong case for bringing criminal charges against White House officials.

Our highest officials, charged with defending the Constitution and America’s standing in the world, methodically introduced interrogation practices based on tortures devised by Chinese agents during the Korean War.

These top officials ignored warnings from lawyers in every branch of the armed forces that they were breaking the law, subjecting uniformed soldiers to possible criminal charges and authorizing abuses that were considered by experts to be ineffective.

Importantly, our policy of torture swiftly recruited fighters for al-Qaeda. Bluntly, torture and abuse cost American lives. The No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked to Iraq were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo.

I can understand that some Americans are eager to put these dark chapters behind them, but it would be irresponsible for the nation and a new administration to ignore what has happened.

Mr. Obama should consider proposals from groups like Human Rights Watch and the Brennan Center for Justice to appoint an independent panel to look into these and other egregious violations of the law. Like the 9/11 commission, it would examine in depth the decisions on prisoner treatment, as well as warrantless wiretapping, that eroded the rule of law and violated Americans' most basic rights. Unless the nation and its leaders know precisely what went wrong in the last seven years, it will be impossible to fix it and make sure those terrible mistakes are not repeated.

Believe in Clean Coal?

Monday night, 2.6 million cubic yards (the equivalent of 525 million gallons, 48 times more than the Exxon Valdez spill by volume) of coal ash sludge broke through a dike of a holding pond in Tennessee.  

Until I saw this video, I had no idea of the scope.

Apart from the immediate physical damage, the issue is what toxic substances are in that sludge: Mercury, arsenic, lead, beryllium, cadmium. This toxic sludge got into the Emory River, a tributary of the Clinch and Tennessee Rivers: The water supply for Chattanooga, Tennessee as well as millions of people living downstream in Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky.

Needless to say, the authorities need to get to the bottom of what went wrong and hold the responsible parties accountable.

This sort of thing really makes the proposition of clean coal so absurd. Even if you can scrub all the CO2 out of it, you still have so many other toxic waste products associated with burning coal that have to be stored that carbon emissions are just a part of the problem.

Christmas Time is Here

Blessings and Merry Christmas every day!

A Buddhist's Merry Christmas

Let's explore how a Buddhist can wish you a Merry Christmas.

First let's recognize two secular things about the holiday:  1. Through the centuries (even before Jesus), winter festivals were the most popular festival of the year; and 2. The Christmas season has become a major event for many retailers.

For Christians, it marks and honors the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, and all the promise found by his living, dying and resurrection.

What is the spirit of Christmas?  Many would say that it is being with family and friends, exchanging gifts, aiding the less fortunate or those who are suffering, and being generous.

This agrees with the Buddha, who taught that what we own or have should be used for the benefit and happiness of others. 

When giving, we should not perform charity as an act of our body alone, but with our heart and mind. There must be joy in every act of giving.

We give because we realize that we have enough. We give to express loving kindness or compassion for another's suffering. 

There are many things which we can give. We can give material things: food for the hungry, and money and clothes to the poor. We can also give our knowledge, skill and time to projects that benefit others. We can provide a sympathetic ear and good counsel to a friend in trouble. We can give our blessings for peace, wellness and happiness to all beings.

We can joyfully give these each minute of every day.

So I say to everyone, "Merry Christmas" every day!

NASA reports 2008 is ninth warmest year since 1880

The year 2008 was the ninth warmest year since instrumental temperature measurements began in 1880. All of the nine warmest years have occurred in the past 11 years.

The new data is from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and other government agencies.  It adds to the evidence scientists have been observing about a warming Earth as fossil fuel burning emits heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere.

Britain's Met Office, whose records go back to 1850, has confirmed these facts.

Also, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Tuesday summarized these and other trends, including:

The 2008 Atlantic hurricane season was the third costliest, after 2005 and 2004.

The U.S. had nearly 1,700 tornadoes from January through November, which ranks second behind 2004 for the most tornadoes in a year since records began in 1953.

Arctic sea ice in 2008 reached its second lowest level at the end of the melting season in September, following a record low in 2007.  Sea ice loss is important because ice reflects most of the sun's radiation, but open ocean water absorbs most of it, adding to the warming trend both in the ocean and on land.

Many will ignore or deny this evidence and these facts.

My duty is not to convince them against their will.  My duty is to prevent them from achieving public office.  

My duty is to put into place officials who believe in science.  I applaud Barack Obama's choice of John Holdren as his science advisor.

Iron and Wine - Naked As We Came

For Buddy . . .

Impermanence in Everything

A grandmother visited the Buddha in the middle of the day, her hair, face and clothes wet. Her beloved grandson had just died.

The Buddha asked, "Visakha, would you like to have as many children and grandchildren as there are people in Savatthi (the nearby city)?"

"Yes, Lord," Visakha replied.

"But how many people in Savatthi die in the course of a day?"

Visakha answered, "Sometimes ten people die in Savatthi, sometimes nine... eight... seven... Sometimes one person in Savatthi dies in the course of a day. Savatthi is never free from people dying."

"So what do you think, Visakha: Would you ever be free from wet clothes and wet hair?"

"No, Lord."

The Buddha replied, "Visakha, those who have a hundred dear ones have a hundred sufferings. Those who have ninety dear ones have ninety sufferings. Those who have eighty... seventy... Those who have one dear have one suffering. For those with no dear ones, there is no suffering. They are free from sorrow, free from stain, free from lamentation, I tell you."

The sorrows, and lamentations, the many kinds of suffering in the world, exist dependent on something dear. We can love a wonderful person, or a enjoy a beautiful view or a field of colorful flowers, knowing that all of these things are impermanent. Our pain in life comes to us when we expect a permanence that doesn't exist.

Playing For Change: Stand By Me

For more information on Mark Johnson, the playing for change organization, and this video, click here.

(Grandpa Elliott just blew me away -- a great voice!)

Compassionless State

Let's consider two news articles from this week.

First, as Congress considers extending unemployment benefits, and temporarily increasing Medicaid and food stamp funding, Texas' only governor Rick Perry spoke out.

He said that this aid is not needed, and that Congress should "learn from states that are coming up with solutions that work."  He said that the "federal government would only step in for that which states cannot do themselves."

That brings me to the second article.

Texas has more mentally disabled patients in institutions than any other state, and the federal government has concluded that the state's care system is stubbornly out of step with modern mental health practices.

For the third time in three years, the Justice Department accused Texas of violating residents' constitutional rights to proper care.

In Texas, officials verified 465 incidents of abuse or neglect against mentally disabled people in state care in fiscal year 2007.

One mother said her son spent three months in the Austin State School, which she described as a place of "dingy yellow floors and patients running around without any clothes on." During his time there, he refused to leave his bed and often languished in his own excrement.

To add to the insult, in Texas, government entities are all but immune from lawsuits.

So you are wrong Mr. Perry in saying that the "federal government should stop believing it has all the answers."  Sometimes, in partnership we can find answers better than we do individually.

What I am certain of is that we do not need more of the same compassionless conservatism as is provided to our state's most disadvantaged citizens.

The Change

Sometimes, the change is enough to make your head spin. This is one of those moments.

Here's the status quo: A president who has overt contempt for public opinion, who shields himself from opposing views and whose idea of White House Web site interactivity is a video of his dog.

And here's the change: The Obama transition team is actually soliciting public comments on its Web site, reading them and responding to them.

Change.gov last week asked members of the public: What worries you most about the healthcare system in our country? The site's users responded with 3,700 comments -- and were able to vote each others' comments up or down for good measure.

On Tuesday, former Sen. Tom Daschle, President-elect Barack Obama's point person on health care, posted a video response. "I spent a lot of the weekend actually reading the comments," he said. "And I have to tell you I'm extremely moved by a lot of the stories that you shared with us. We want to keep this a very open process. We want to make sure that you understand how important those comments and your contributions are. We really want to hear from you, and already have begun to follow through with some of the ideas." Daschle's video has now generated an additional 3,800 comments and counting.

This is a big deal. When you consider that for the last eight years, the occupant of the White House has essentially told the public 'you get input once every four years, after that I'm the decider,' this is huge.

Before our eyes, we are witnessing the beginning of a rebooting of the American political system.

(Click on the change.gov link, below my profile.)