I hate to keep talking about Sarah Palin because our criticism only seems to make her more popular with the extreme right wing of the Republican Party and the Republican Party cannot hope to win any election without bringing along this extreme element which they created by using Christianity, scare tactics and racial code words in the two previous election cycles. But…one cannot leave unremarked Ms. Palin’s use of crib notes on her palm. This is something one might expect from junior high school girls who hadn’t bothered to properly prepare for a Geography test or who were just not smart enough to learn the subject matter. (There are certainly those of us who believe Ms. Palin could benefit from going back and taking a class in eighth grade Geography.)

Now, let’s talk about matters of substance. The issues that will need to be addressed on all levels of government by anyone running for office are Health care, Energy, Water, Disaster Preparedness, Crime and Social Services such as homelessness and hunger. It is necessary to develop clear and firm policies and in regard to all these issues and to have a plan to deal with them before throwing your hat in the ring. Platitudes and generalizations are no longer acceptable to savvy American voters and to young voters in particulars. If you have details ready to present as you campaign and have these details committed to memory so that you can discuss them on your feet you will have a tremendous advantage over the traditional politicians who are all going to, “cut out the waste and corruption and eliminate unnecessary spending.”

It is more important to do the right thing than to get elected. Have and keep the courage of your convictions. Your policies will not be popular with everyone and some of them may be unpopular with the majority. That doesn’t make them wrong and that doesn’t give you permission to change them. You should change your position on issues only if you are convinced that those positions were wrong in the first place and then should not hesitate to make those changes and be prepared to explain why you are changing them.

And on a personal note:  Draft Drew Brees for Senate.

1. Congressman Shelby stomped his foot and blocked 70 Obama nominees until he gets pork projects for his state.

2. Mitch Landrieu became the first white Mayor of New Orleans since his father who was Mayor in the 1970s. He is the brother of the state’s only Democratic senator, Mary Landrieu and the choice of the black community.

3. Mardi Gras parades began this weekend (There are two that go by my house today.) and will keep my small town somewhat hamstrung until Ash Wednesday happening next week.

4. The New Orleans Saints are playing in the Super Bowl.

5. Nashville hosted the Tea Party Convention and Sarah Palin launched an illogical diatribe after Tom Tancredo insulted Hispanics in particular and all immigrants in general as the opening speaker. Both were well received by the convention attendees.

As a result of all these converging attractions and my attempts to follow them all I didn’t manage to post yesterday and I will not attempt to give my opinions or advice today.

There is just one thing that I have been wanting to mention and that is that offices such as Mayor and Town Council Member are not insignificant. They are a very good way for people to get a foot into the door of the political process and alliances among mayors and small towns with big cities can have a great weight in forming the direction of your state’s momentum and its influence on the national front.

Today, enjoy the Super Bowl and those in places that have them, enjoy the parades.

The good news is that the Tea Party Movement seems to be falling apart. The bad news is that it isn’t happening fast enough to prevent further damage to the country. If CNN and other news media would stop referring to the Tea Party as a “growing movement” it might go away a little faster. It isn’t growing, it’s actually shrinking. But it’s good for CNN’s ratings so they will continue to hype it the way that they treated right wing lies about the health care proposals as different points of view rather than the pure fabrications that they knew them to be. It was months before they told the public that the “death panels” didn’t exist even though they knew the truth from the beginning. More than anything we have to hold the media accountable for the way they report on the issues of importance to us and the way to do that is to constantly confront every lie or piece of misinformation with a flood of complaints to everyone involved and to publish our complaints in the headlines of their competition.

In the long run the Tea Party will damage Republicans more than Democrats. Unfortunately it’s the short run that matters most right now. According to the most recent polls the Tea Party is approved by about one third of the national population and more people have no idea what they stand for than approve of them. I have to put myself in two of those categories. If they have a recognizable agenda I am unable to recognize it. I also fit into the category of those who disapprove based on their inflammatory rhetoric and dismissal of the truth. The only definite agenda that I see from them is a desire to see the President fail regardless of the consequences to the country. They are in lock step with the Republicans in this regard. Republican lawmakers who were in favor of lifting DADT only a few months ago are all opposing the change now and Secretary Gates (a Republican) first seemed to be in favor but is employing the same delaying tactics that the Republicans in Congress used to prevent health care reform from going forward until it was dieing on the vine.

It is becoming more apparent that we are going to be thrown under the bus again by the people who pretended that they would help us gain true equality as American Citizens. We have no one to rely on but ourselves. It is essential and urgent that we register and run for every office that we can so that we will soon be making our own laws that treat all Americans as equal under the law. We need at least two people running in the Republican primary in Florida for the office of Senator. Then they should both run as Independents in the general election (assuming that they don’t win the primary, lol).

I said yesterday that the discussions of repealing DADT would be ugly but I had no idea that they would become patently ridiculous quite so soon. Yesterday, Saxby Chamblis, Senator from Georgia, said that repealing the law would lead to “adultery and body art” in the military. Simply being in the military is one of the leading causes of adultery and the only people I knew with tattoos when I was growing up were men who had been in the Navy or the Marines. You’ve got to do better than that, Senator.

Back to running for office. If at all possible I recommend running in both the primary and the general election. Running in the primary will give you a chance to become known and to get your views in front of the public. Simple change your party registration to Independent to run in the general election. Nothing new about this tactic either as we saw in the last Congressional election.

Don’t even think about spending your own money for your campaign. Raising money is an important part of any campaign and anyone who is contributing is seen as endorsing your candidacy.

Don’t spend a lot of money on television ads. Let’s face it, you probably won’t be able to raise enough money to run many such ads. Local newspapers with half-page ads can be very effective and social media, while already beginning to decline in importance, is still very useful for the near future.

Direct mailing and those offensive robo-calls are actually very effective. Making use of the news media, television in particular, are one of the most effective things you can do and it is completely free. All you have to do is say something outrageous enough that the local news will want to question you on the air.

Places where Tea Party candidates are running against republicans will have the most impact for your candidacy because the traditional candidate will already be weakened and your statistics in the polls will look closer to the other candidates numbers.

Another thing about Tea Party candidacies, the places where they are running have a great deal of anger about the way the country is being run. There is no specific reason for this anger in general, the Tea Party is simply taking advantage of people’s discontent and has no specific agenda so offering an alternative, regardless of what it is, will appeal to a great many of these people who consider themselves Independents or Centrists. These are the people who follow my mother’s old axiom, “Do something, even if it’s wrong.” They don’t know what they actually want and they are largely uninformed on the specifics of issues and will vote for almost any alternative.

Let’s go gaily forward! Good luck!

We are about to be treated to a year of insults, humiliations and discussions about us that ignore the fact that we are in the room if Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, has his way.

This unnecessary prolonged debate will undoubtedly energize the tea party nut-jobs who will say anything, regardless of how hurtful or how untrue, to get themselves on television.

We need to flood the local media with letters to the editor and all of the members of Congress with letters demanding that we be given our constitutionally guaranteed equality under the law. We need to inform the ignorant, neo-nazis, KKK, Christian Taliban and the public in general that we will not be intimidated into allowing Congress or the Military to continue to deprive us of our rights as Citizens of the United States.

Congressmen should be informed that there could be several people running against them in the upcoming elections, that you will do all in your power to place gay candidates on the ballot to run against them in both the primaries and general elections without regard to party affiliations or that you will personally run against them in the primaries, disrupting their party elections by limiting the number of votes cast for them and making it more likely that they will not get to run in the general election by placing their opponents into the position of the nominee of their party.

Dirty tricks? No! Self defense. Running “spoiler” candidates is a tried and true political tactic that has been used by both parties throughout history. If we do it better and more intensely more power to us. Nobody will expect us to be elected or even nominated but simply getting on the ballot will guarantee that we will get SOME votes if only those of our friends and relatives. In a closely contested election these few votes could determine who gets the nod in the end. While we will not be getting candidates we like elected we will be throwing the parties into confusion and disarray and causing them to spend money on issues that they may not want to address.

I suspect that the Democrats will reconsider their positions on the DADT issue and the Republicans will fail to take us seriously to their detriment so that they will end up being more damaged in the long run.

As was pointed out in the comments for Part I, biodiesel made with algae oil is a thing for the future and not ready for prime time. I do believe that it will become one of the most important energy sources in the long term. Certainly biodiesel produced with peanut or corn oil will be a small part of the energy menu going forward, but this is unsustainable in the long run because it would require too much dedicated farmland and take enough food off the market so as to drive the price of corn and peanuts to unacceptable levels.

For those of you with an entrepreneurial drive who are interested in getting into the energy production business now or in the near future I believe that solar panels would be the way to go. Start-up costs would have to be arranged through bank financing (which would be difficult in the current economy) or through private investors. I think that one of the best and most effective ways to arrange financing would be through coops sharing expenses and profits. This might even be arranged with the cities and towns getting involved and sharing the costs or a more traditional coop with the customers owning the company with the people creating the company remaining in control and having the last word on all significant issues while retaining fifty-one percent of ownership.

While there are bound to be benefits to the environment my primary concern it that the LGBT community could develop an important area of influence and leverage in the country. If gay owned businesses controlled a significant share of the nations power supply it would be impossible for the general public to deny us full equality.