GET YOUR HAPPY ON! - a meliorist worldview

This is something I have to get off my chest. It’s been bothering me for way too long. I lived in Dallas for five years. It’s a city that shouldn’t exist.

If it wasn’t for oil and air conditioning, Dallas wouldn’t exist. Seriously, it’s a gigantic shopping mall.  Don’t worry, I’m not crapping on Texas; I love Amarillo, Austin, Fort Worth, Lubbock, and San Antonio, but Dallas is disgusting. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more collagen injections and silicone implants than in Hollywood, and more strip clubs than in Las Vegas. It’s hard to tell the difference between the call girls and the trophy wives. It’s the city that shot JFK, and it should be no surprise that Dallas is the birthplace of “Needless Markup.”

Needless Markup is perhaps the worst store in the world. Their merchants sell gaudy and impractical goods at 200 to 500% the actual value. I can appreciate that they have a wide variety of unique and hard to find items, but doesn’t that ultimately translate as “Not Made by American Workers”? Do you really need a Faberge beer can cozy just because Jenna Hilton has the same one?

When an item has to travel thousands of miles in 10-inch thick Styrofoam containers just so that it will look fierce when held in your Gucci-manicured hands, I’d like you to ask yourself what kind of a message are you sending to future generations of consumer zombies? (“Labels. We need labels.” )

Foreign-made goods add millions of tons of carbon waste to the atmosphere when they are shipped here. Diamond hunters and precious metal miners fuel genocide and terrorism with their shady dealings. The American economy suffers when money is carelessly spent on frivolous and overpriced merchandise, when our dollars could be helping to feed families. When we rationalize our purchase with “I just had to have it!” are we doing right by our children and their children’s children? Dooming them to futures of debt slavery and landfills brimming with packaging waste?

I am convinced that no store in America is more responsible for the hyper-consumption in America than Needless Markup. They started it, but you can finish it — with your dollar votes. You have to participate in the market, right? You have to buy something if you want to eat, right? So, you might as well say something with your money.

Be good to yourselves and your pocketbooks, my friends. Buy American-made goods and American-grown produce from local shopkeepers and local farmers (not Wal-Mart!), and give back to your communities. We will all be much better off in the long run. Trust.

John McCain’s posse has recently attacked Obama for opting out of his privilege to receive federal funding for his campaign, but that sounds like sour grapes to me. (Sorry, Senator, I’m just telling it as I see it.)

Barrack Obama’s inherent ability to get ordinary folks to vote with donations for his campaign is somewhat unprecedented in modern politics, and Obama’s campaign has a clear fiscal advantage over McCain.

When the fella’ with the most money in his war chest is the candidate most likely to win the general election (and the Presidency), candidates at all government levels have been forced to make uneasy alliances with wealthy corporations and interest groups. Of course, some morally lenient politicians have seen no conflict of interest in receiving moneys from corporations while serving the public, which is why campaign finance reform has been a hot button issue since 1867.

Contemporary politicians have taken up the call of campaign finance reform — though few with as much vigor as John McCain — so it should not surprise anyone that McCain & Co. would leap as soon as Barrack Obama announced his decision not to receive public assistance, which would limit his campaign to only $80 million, (a veritable drop in the bucket).

John McCain’s campaign is struggling to keep up with Obama, so it will be interesting to watch McCain in the next few months. Will his campaign survive with only public funding? Or will McCain learn to enjoy eating crow? Another interesting question is will the special interest groups, from whom McCain has made such a great show of distancing himself, view the cash-poor Arizona senator as a smart investment?

Maybe another reason might explain why McCain’s people are making such a big stink about Obama refusing federal campaign assistance, when Barrack Obama has endorsed campaign finance reform in the past.

John McCain, however, has shown himself to be a bit of hypocrite as well. I mentioned yesterday how John McCain claims to be the voice of the American Indians, yet makes shady deals for Navajo and Hopi land rights with mining companies.

Not good karma, Senator. And it certainly is not environmentally conscious, even though “Maverick” McCain claims that he is the Environment’s greatest advocate among the Republicans.

Greater light has been shed on McCain’s eagerness to again betray the Environment with a pitch to lift the Congressional ban on offshore drilling, just like George W. Bush.

If all of this coming from the Republicans doesn’t sound familiar, dear reader, I will remind you that George Jr. also claimed to be a “Friend of the Environment,” and his administration represents the worst energy policies since Reagan.

Isn’t it ironic? Don’t you think?

Take care of each other, my friends. Be kind to a stranger today.

Al Gore has finally publicly endorsed Barrack Obama. Although it might not surprise anyone, the endorsement makes news because Al Gore is a Nobel Prize winner.

How many Nobel Prize winners are supporting John McCain?

John McCain claims that he is all about helping the environment, but how many Oscar-winning environmental activists are supporting McCain?

The author/producer of the multi-media bombshell An Inconvenient Truth (which won Al Gore his Nobel and Oscar), has endorsed Obama, not McCain. Al Gore believes that Obama will make the requisite environmental policy changes for the sake of many generations to come, slowing and possibly suspending the current climate crisis.

On the other side of the aisle, John McCain has a history of betraying the environment at almost every opportunity. McCain flip flops on the off-shore oil drilling issue, and he has awarded Navajo-Hopi Reservation mining rights to Peabody Western and friends.

McCain has had so opportunities to help the Indian peoples in his state and has consistently decided to ignore them, occasionally making hollow gestures that end up hurting them even more.

McCain is the wrong man for the job. It would be better to vote for anyone other than McCain, but I recommend voting for Obama. I guess, I’m endorsing Barrack Obama too! Heh, think of that!

Be good to each other friends! Increase the peace and whatnot!