Get Your Can to Your Mailbox

Today is the annual "Letter Carrier's Food Drive"
Just put a can of soup, chili, fruit, box of mac and cheese, etc. in or near your mailbox for pick up.


NALA Food Drive

The Noble Experiment Is Over

How to Handle a Troll -- manual

I grabbed this off of HuffPo (link below).

******

** TROLL TACTIC ALERT **
** TROLL TACTIC ALERT **

Please be aware of the following troll signs:

Trolls,

1. Try to change the subject with irrelevant trivia.

2. Post official sounding "news items" with no attribution, much less a link.

3. Post a link, but it is to a right wing gossip site.

4. Post a link, but it actually proves the opposite of what the troll is claiming.

When confronting a troll, understand that reasoning with them will not work.
The best course is either:

1. Humor at their expense (a win-win in that it is enjoyable for you and irritating to the troll).

2. Examination and, where appropriate, debunking of their misbegotten talking points. This is sometimes useful if the troll's arguments have a surface plausibility.

3. Ignoring them. This is actually the most frustrating for a troll, but it also the most difficult because trolls are such tempting targets.

These tips were brought to you by the CTFA (Council for a Troll-Free America).
- Optimist, 05.11.2006


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2006/05/10/coulter-appears-to-have-c_n_20777.html

******

Thanks Optimist!

source: the darling little troll in the pot that I adore: http://www.lindhros.altervista.org/

A Tale of Two Children: 9 Years, 2 Presidents and 1 War Apart

Way back in 1997 the neo-cons got their knickers in a twist over a teacher keeping a 4th grader from reading "The Way Things Out to Be" by Rush Limbaugh and the "Limbaugh Letter" in the classroom during personal reading time (probably during D.E.A.R - Drop Everything And Read)

Part of the news release read:

"We are deeply concerned about these additional infringements," said Wayne Haig of Donald W. Huffman & Associates, who is handling the case for The Rutherford Institute. "School should be a place which tolerates the free discussion of different views and beliefs."

The original complaint included an incident in which teachers took Rush Limbaugh's "The Way Things Ought To Be" away from Jason when he attempted to read it during a free-reading period.

"There is no tyranny quite like the tyranny of the classroom," said Haig, "where a teacher uses her authority to censor the small voices of children with viewpoints contrary to her own. As far as school children am concerned, the teacher is the law in the classroom, and there is normally no watchdog to guard the constitutional rights of the students, We commend the Gardners for taking a stand."

In this instance I agree. I've fought for 1st Amendment rights, and I've read "The Way Things Ought To Be." If a 4th grader can read and understand it, then I don't see a problem with it. I don't agree with the what is inside the book, BUT it doesn't contain overt sexual and violent content that is too much for a 4th grader.

Fast Forward to 2006, an 11 year old girl, Molly Shoul, wants to sing Pink's "Dear Mr. President" for her school talent show. The principal is barring it after deeming it inappropriate and too political

The reasons?

The song does not mention abortion, and the profanity mentioned is the word "hell." The drug use refers to Bush's alleged conduct before he became president.

… What kind of father would take his own daughter's rights away

… And what kind of father might hate his own daughter if she were gay

… I can only imagine what the first lady has to say

… You've come a long way from whiskey and cocaine

Another portion criticizes Bush for the war:

… How do you sleep while the rest of us cry

… How do you dream when a mother has no chance to say goodbye

Molly said Thursday she thought the song was "really cool" because it spoke about important subjects like war and homelessness.

Molly said she liked the way the song addressed the president directly

One wonders if the Neo-cons will step up and be as outraged that Freedom of Speech is being denied for this girl as they were for the boy in 1997. Probably will not, they are hypocritical that way.

But do you know what she will sing if she is not allowed to sing a song about social conscience and concern for one's fellow man? She will sing a hip hop song about 2 girls fighting over a boy. Hmmm... something more up the theocons alley.

Here's hoping that Pink contacts this little girl, and that she will be able to sing about something that means something her and that is social relevant and not some mindless drivel.



The video

keywords: Molly Shoul, Nancy Shoul, Jason Gardner

Why we will NEVER catch Osama Bin Laden (at least with the Republicans in power)

<-- Remember these days?

Well, I've come to the conculsion that it was just for show. Bush and the Republican's in congress and senate don't really want to catch him. He's too valuable to them running loose and free.

Now I'm not the first to come to this conculsion. In fact I derided Bush for being an ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder) president. To me he seemed to loose interest in Afghanistan and start up on Iraq (and now maybe Iran too).

But every time the Republican's slip in the poles, they trot out "9/11" and "Osama Bin Laden." And before any election, they trot out 9/11, Osama Bin Laden, sleeper cells, unkown plot against some US city, etc, etc.

He's their new "Boogey Man." Something, some one, that the Republicans can scare US citizens with to keep them in power. If they catch Osama Bin Laden, they will loose the "face" of their boogey man, and an important tool in maintaining power, no matter how corrupt that power is.

The War on Eve and Women in General

Way back in the 1970's a fantastic book came on the scene. It was a book that caused the likes of Jerry Falwell and the “moral majority” tremble, to deride and speak of evil and caused feminists to cheer. It is sometimes hard to remember those days. We are so much more of an information rich, open and accessible society, but it’s important that those of us who remember those days impart those memories to a new generation. As the “faith based” anti-women screeds and organizations gain power, we seem to be returning to the “medieval” days of yore.

I shiver when I think about it. When just the suggestion of knowing what one’s own body looked like was enough to send Falwell and his ilk to the airwaves, denouncing the book. And it did too. In one passage the book directed women to place a mirror on the floor, stand over it/ sans panties, and look at themselves. Radical, that women should be encouraged to know what their genitalia looked like. According to the Moral Majority it threatened the very existence of the United States. Funny how anything promoting and encouraging female empowerment is viewed that way.

“Our Bodies, Ourselves” was frank, to the point, and it didn’t mince words. It was ground breaking, radical, hailed and denounced! It was scandalous! Imagine telling a woman that she was in charge of her own body and not to blindly accept what a doctor a pastor etc. told her, but to ask questions. It talked about relationships (straight and lesbian), the here-to fore-only-“bad”-girls-have-one; female orgasm, it encouraged sexual pleasure and sexual health, reproduction education, mental health, to ask questions and to know themselves, both physically and mentally.

Sex wasn’t just to be fun for men it said, it was supposed to be enjoyable for women too. In many places it was a banned book, so naturally I bought one.

It told us that we were not, to use Pseudo-Adrienne's term, “birthing chattel”. We had rights, we had a voice. The Seattle Times notes “under the prevailing medical wisdom in the late 1960s, nurses whisked newborns away from their mothers without giving them a chance to bond and doctors customarily banned fathers from delivery rooms.” Our essence, being and even our medicine was dominated and defined by men.

Unfortunately some things haven’t changed. But the anti-women, forced pregnancy organizations and those who support it, want to not only end abortion, but also end education about our sexual health and contraception, and even contraception all together. (I secretly wonder if they will force me to reverse my tubule legation. )

But while some see this as a war on sex, or even a war on fucking, it’s not. Sure, making contraception illegal removes sex for pleasure, even among married couples, but it does not seek to prohibit a man from enjoying sex. The very same people, churches, sects, organizations that want to end contraception are the very same that tell a woman that she cannot refuse her husband and be a “Godly wife.”

So while the result of this retrograde abomination may make condoms more difficult to get, the end results falls harder and squarely on a woman’s shoulders. Men can always walk away, and without strengthening and aggressively going after dead beat dads, it would seem to encourage this result.

Eve’s curse or man’s folly? Are we going to roll backward even more? With this current crowd in power and our guard let down, the answer may be "yes."

Before that happens we should make sure that every public library has books on women’s health, and that they are not removed by the anti-women abstinence only crowd, we should make sure it is translated in as many languages as are spoken in the United States, and we should educate the younger generation about what it was like way back then, when we were kept from knowledge, from controling our own bodies our own destinies.

For it seems history is want to repeat itself.

See also:

• New edition of "Our Bodies, Ourselves" updates the groundbreaking feminist book


• The War on Contraception and Women's Sexuality -- Pseudo-Adrienne


• The War on Peons Fucking -- Pandragon

aside:
I will take issue with the Seattle Times “Still, many pages in "Our Bodies," carry a vestige of its counterculture origin. For instance, the section on menstruation touts old flannel shirts and T-shirts as economical alternatives to tampons and pads” One wonders what the writer, Kyung M. Song, thinks women did at the turn of the last century. My grandmother, like her sisters and mother, used towels. She said it made them “waddle.”

Should the CDC be a political tool?

In another move to make every agency in the US government suspect to the American people, the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) were forced to remove two members form a recent federal panel on sexually transmitted diseases and replace them with two unvetted abstinence-only proponents.

Why? Because the panel was to focus on the failure of abstience until marriage programs. In fact one of the two panel members who were replaced was "going to talk about how abstinence programs were tied to rising STD rates." But there were no representatives on the panel to talk about how wonderful the abstinence only program is. Republicans didn't like that.

In, what may the best example of the Republican and the Bush Administration's not wanting to hear anything that in at odds with their policies, their thinking, their world view, no matter how damaging their policies are to the people of this country and to truth and trust in general, Sen. Tom Coburn's, (R-Okla.) spokesman John Hart "questioned why the CDC would present data that contradict the administration's policy."

Well, because it's the truth!

Not all of us think that government should be run by sticking your fingers in your ears and singing "la la la la la la la la la -- I'm not listening --- la la la la la la la la la," when given information you don't like. Aparently Republicans do.

So here you have it, another governmental agency that has been bent to poilitics. We no longer trust FEMA, EPA, Dept of Education, etc. etc., because they are now political tools for the Republicans and the White House. So too, it seems, is the CDC under Pres. Bush.

Is this an agency that you really want the American people to question and disregard as a political tool? Do you want the American people to ignore the CDC, espeically with a possible pandemic of H5N1 (Avian Flu) is expected to hit the US very soon?


See also:
Americablog (hat tip)
Huffington Post
Centre Daily

Star Spangled Banner in MANY Languages - Think Progress Should Add These

“But, Mr. President, I’m afraid the message is, quite literally, getting lost in translation. As part of these demonstrations, a new version of our national anthem, the Star-Spangled Banner, has been produced – in Spanish. “

According to an article in the Washington Post last Friday, at least 389 different versions of our anthem have been produced over the years, in many musical styles, including rock and roll and country. But, the Post also noted, never before has it been rendered in another language. -Thus Sayeth Senator Lamar Alexander

Think Progress revealed that indeed the Star Spangled Banner had been rendered in Spanish in 1919. But they didn't go far enough to take the Post and Alexander to task. A little research before provoking their base would have stopped them from making such a stupid statement (but hey, we like when Republican/Neo-Cons make stupid statements.)

Today, with time I didn't have earlier the week, I found that it has been rendered in many languages. Lamar and the Post should fire the have people who's job it is to do fact checking.

The Star Spangled Banner has been rendered in:
Chinese
Gaelic
Esperanto
Finnish
French 1999
German 1861
Japanese
Samoan
Swedish
Navajo 1988
Polish
Yiddish 1943

And because of the flap over the Spanish version, the Star Spangled Banner will be rendered in Klingon!


Sources:

• Thread on National Anthems


• CBR


• Boing Boing


• Wikipedia


• German-American Day


• La bandera estrellada: The Spanish Star Spangled Banner of 1919


• Beginner's Mind

Anatomy of a Republican

http://republicananatomy.cf.huffingtonpost.com/

Two causes YOU should get involved with

1. Save Mammograms
www.acscan.org

S.1955 Could End Insurance Coverage for Mammograms
Your U.S. Senators Must Be Told to Vote NO on S.1955


2. Save The Internet
www.savetheinternet.com

Congress is pushing a law that would abandon the Internet's First Amendment -- a principle called Network Neutrality that prevents companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast from deciding which Web sites work best for you -- based on what site pays them the most. Your local library shouldn’t have to outbid Barnes & Noble for the right to have its Web site open quickly on your computer.

Net Neutrality allows everyone to compete on a level playing field and is the reason that the Internet is a force for economic innovation, civic participation and free speech. If the public doesn't speak up now, Congress will cave to a multi-million dollar lobbying campaign by telephone and cable companies that want to decide what you do, where you go, and what you watch online.

This isn’t just speculation -- we've already seen what happens elsewhere when the Internet's gatekeepers get too much control. Last year, Telus -- Canada's version of AT&T -- blocked their Internet customers from visiting a Web site sympathetic to workers with whom the company was having a labor dispute. And Madison River, a North Carolina ISP, blocked its customers from using any competing Internet phone service.

Of Lower Standards, Urban Warfare and US Street Gangs in Iraq

Two years or so ago I commented on Americablog about my concern for US soldiers coming back from Iraq and their psychological welfare. As the ex-wife of a Vietnam veteran the issue is of interest to me.

Will these men and women who served our country receive the mental help they need for them to get through the horrors that they've seen and allow them to be fully functioning members of society? Or will the government once again cut the benefits these who've risked so much for this nation deserve in full?

Well we already know that the Bush government/administration, while risking no family members themselves, are cutting back and/or not fully funding necessary services for those who have served. The president who can afford to privately pay for his own medical insurance and doctors, receives the finest tax payer funded care. He always will.

What I did not think about when raising my concerns is that when the military lowered it standards to try and reach recruiting goals, that meant letting in gang members. These gang members are more than eager to "serve" their country.

All that training in urban warfare, house to house fighting, sniping, suppressive fire, kill zones, explosives, not to mention field medic training. Our modern paramedics came from the medics in Vietnam. So successful was it to have on the scene medical help, that more soldiers survived. Bring that lesson home and ambulance ride became more than just loading the injured into the back a converted station wagon. It became, in some cases, a fighting chance to live.

The medics in Vietnam brought back their training for use at home. What do you think gang members, learning urban combat tactics will bring back from operations in places like Fallujah, Du-jail, etc.?

Don't think a gate community will save you either. Ever see what towns/cities in Iraq look like? Here's Mosul:

So while this brewing problem goes under and un-reported (another case of our lap dog media) do you think a Republican controlled government will help pay for the domestic devastation these military trained gang members in an unnecessary war, will cause? (At any other time they'd be vetted out).

Me neither.


Video report from North Carolina
The News Blog
Training Terrorists for the Home Front HuffPo
Street Gangs: The New Urban Insurgency Strategic Studies Institute
United States Army War College
Violent gangs infiltrating US Military? -- Whatsakyer

La bandera estrellada: The Spanish Star Spangled Banner of 1919

Think Progress did a fact check and found 4 different Spanish versions of the Star Spangled Banner the first has a 1919 copyright. And guess where they are; the United States of America State Department web site!

So 87 years ago during the Nadir of American Race Relations a specifically multicultural, inclusive project was commissioned by the U.S. Bureau of Education.

And in doing so the Post and Senator Lamar Alexander are wrong asserting “According to an article in the Washington Post last Friday, at least 389 different versions of our anthem have been produced over the years, in many musical styles, including rock and roll and country. But, the Post also noted, never before has it been rendered in another language. "

And you know what, why not? One may learn English, but speak another language at home. What better way to write the words on ones heart, but in the language of ones birth.

So in "official capacites," YES! sing it in English. But to write the love of country on ones heart, sing it in the language of your mother, your father, in whose arms one first learns about love and meaning.

see also
Star Spangled Banner in MANY Languages - Think Progress Should Add These

Colbert's Standing O

Stephen Colbert's bit at the Washington Correspondence Dinner is probably one of the hottest forwarded links among progressives.

My husband, kids and I found it hilarious. Yes I know that right wing is panning it, and the MSM is ignoring it but really it was brilliantly done. It also occurred to me this morning that the only one who could have done sent this message to the MSM and the White House was a Colbert or someone like him.

In the age of "play or pay" white house reporting, to expect a reporter to go after this administration is probably expecting too much. No matter how much he or she might like too, their immediate bosses or the network CEOs will not allow it. Even if they do, the segment is likely to never see the light of day. We were warned about this happening in the 1980's when everything began trending to make network news a business.

What we'd like the MSM to do at a press conference really can’t be done now, with the exception of Helen Thomas. Softballing is all white house reporters can do until the tide turns on a president, and even then it seems to err on the side of the President. There probably will never be another Woodward and Bernstein, and to that end what happened Saturday night could only be done by a Stephen Colbert; a satirist, not a journalist.

So it was really gratifying to see that despite being lambasted by the right and ignored by the MSM, Stephen Colbert got props from Jon Stewart and a "Standing O" at his show.

Okay I am assuming it was a "Standing O." The cameras never showed the audience. Judging by what the crowd sounded like and Colbert’s reaction, which was on camera, it was a "Standing O." And if it wasn’t, it should have been.


Various links to the video at the Democratice Underground
Partial clip on Crooks and Liars
American Nightmarez - Huff Po
60 Minutes

Thank you Stephen Colbert

Things to do with your $100 insult, uh, I mean, gas rebate checks

First off let's be clear, this ISN'T a rebate. A rebate is money you receive after buying something. And you never have to give it back. Republicans NEVER give you anything of benefit, and certainly not for free with no strings attached, we all know that.

This is a loan. A loan is something you have to pay back, and that's precisely what you will do with this. You will see an increase of $100 you owe the Feds on your 2006 taxes. Actually you'll see a little more than $100 because you will be charged interest on the money "rebated" to you.

What's more you can't say "NO." This is a loan from the Feds, actually Republicans, that you will be forced to accept.

So while you are pondering if you can squeeze more than a week's worth of driving from the $100 "relief" bribe, uh, I mean check you will receive, let me offer some other suggestions of what to do with the money:

• Give your $100 bribe/insult/"relief" check to Habitat for Humanity. Katrina victims still need our help. You can even do it through the Randi Rhodes show



• Donate your $100 bribe/insult/"relief" check to Democracy for America



• Donate your $100 bribe/insult/"relief" check to help our veterans by giving to the Disabled American Veterans.



• Donate your $100 bribe/insult/"relief" check to Greenpeace



• Give your $100 bribe/insult/"relief" check to American Progress Action Fund



• Give your $100 bribe/insult/"relief" check to MoveOn.Org



• Donate your $100 bribe/insult/"relief" check to Heartland PAC




• Donate your $100 bribe/insult/"relief" check to FAIR



• Donate your $100 bribe/insult/"relief" check to Media Matters



• Donate to any of the organizations in the right column

Oh there are more worthy organizations than those I've listed, just donate your bribe help those the Republicans have left behind, or to help our progressives candidates get into office and take back the house and senate, etc. etc.

Congress members arrested at Darfur protest

from USA Today

"The slaughter of the people of Darfur must end," Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., a Holocaust survivor who founded the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, said from the embassy steps before his arrest.

Four other Democratic Congress members — James McGovern and John Olver of Massachusetts, Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas and Jim Moran of Virginia — were among 11 protesters arrested on charges of disorderly conduct and unlawful assembly, a misdemeanor subject to a fine.

Oh I'm so glad I live in Mass!

1st FEMA; then maybe the DOE or how about the ATF?

A day of two ago I wrote about they "bipartisian" senate panel to scrap FEMA. I then wondered if the Department of Education might be next. Well maybe the reticle is on to the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (and explosives) - the ATF. (pun intended)

The image on the left is a T-shirt from Those Shirts, a right wing T-shirt maker. While the website has a "disclaimer" of humor, it is a window on how conservatives and neo-cons, the Republicans think.

So would scrapping the ATF be far fetched? Once we thought ending FEMA to be a far fetched idea too.

So make a list, what programs, agencies, etc. do the Repblicans hate? What might be on their hit list? They've had 5 years to undercut, make impotent, "bureaucritize," these agencies and programs. Five years in the oven, maybe it's ready to show the end result. Maybe it's time to yet again feast on the bread of social neglect the Republicans are so good at cooking up.

There is another T-shirt about journalists. Considering how hostile many of them complain the enivorment is now, do you think they are laughing?

The Right Tool for Every Job

Your shop teacher, home ec teacher, mom, dad, grandparent, etc. may have told you to always use the right tool for the job. You may not have listened, but the Republican's did, and they seem to have found the Democrat tool they need for the "bi-psrtisan" job.

Come Play

Well this is what I do to relieve the pressure, stress and sorrow over the Republican Robber Barrons raping my county and killing the middle class.
I play a game called Ticket 2 Ride. It's a board game but you can also play on-line.

Last night I played games with people from Austrailia, Wisconsin and LA. I have also played with people from Germany, France, Canada, Britian, New Zealand, Israel, etc.

Tutorials can be found at:
Game Basics

Come play and release your tension.

FEMA, the first to GO

The neo-cons, the face and blood of the new Republican party, had a plan. Take good, functioning programs and departments, in some case "jewels in USA's crown" and mire them in red tape, lack of funding, incompotent cronyism, political hackery, bureaucracy. Then have it falter under either the added weight of this new load, or so unworkable as to frustrate and cause abandoment of it, add in a trillon dollar debt so that there is additional pressure and voila! departments/programs will be abolished.

The first for this recommendation is FEMA "Senate Panel Recommends Abolishing FEMA"

Describing FEMA as a "shambles and beyond repair," Collins said the overall report "will help ensure that we do not have a repeat of the failures following Hurricane Katrina."

Well it wasn't before the Republicans took over... it worked well and was a jewel we proudly pointed to.

It [panel] proposes creating a new agency, called the National Preparedness and Response Authority, that would plan and carry out relief missions for domestic disasters. Unlike now, the authority would have a direct line of communication with the president during major crises, and any dramatic cuts to its budget or staffing levels would have to be approved by Congress.

It would also oversee efforts to protect critical infrastructure such as buildings, roads and power systems, as well as Homeland Security's medical officer. But the inquiry calls for keeping the agency within Homeland Security, warning that making it an independent office would cut it off from resources the larger department could provide.

But didn't FEMA have that during Clinton? Didn't FEMA WORK under Clinton? Wouldn't FEMA and the US taxpayer be better served if it were once again a separate stand alone agency, with compotent people at the helm.

What will be next on the chopping block? The Republican long despised Department of Education?

I seriously had one Republican lawyer tell me that his group does not believe the government should nor has an obligation to educate it's citizenry.

I can't afford my gasoline

Can't Afford my Gasoline