Helen Thomas is my Hero

You may have missed this photo. It seems only the Washington Post published it, then got grief about it. The government... that is to say... our U.S. Government, has been pulling out all stops to keep us regular American citizens from seeing the consequences of the war in Iraq.

The Washington Post published this photo, of 2 year old Ali Hussein, being removed from rubble left by a US Airstrike. He later died.The photo is hosted at washingtonpost.com and was taken by Karim Kadim, Associated Press Photo. (He also was part of the AP pool who won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news. Those photos can be accessed here.)

Some people complained that this was published in the newspaper.

Helen Thomas responds in her column, A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words

Howell [Post ombudsman] said some readers felt the photo of the Iraqi boy was “an anti-war statement; some thought it was in poor taste.”

Helen Thomas' response?

Well, so is war.

...

Howell said her boss, Executive Editor Len Downie, “is cautious about such photos.”
“We have seldom been able to show the human impact of the fighting on Iraqis,” Downie was quoted as saying. “We decided this was a rare instance in which we had a powerful image with which to do so.”

It’s unclear to me why this was deemed to be “rare.” After five years of war, there is finally one photo that is supposed to say it all?

Please go read her piece. I hope that when I am her age (39?) I'll have as much ... everything.... that she has.

"The Contents don't squirt... (moved from happycindy)

Hmmm, odd that this clip about the perfection of a BANANA proving God's creation didn't make it into Expelled - No Intelligence Involved.

Bad, Bad, Happy Cindy. This is another "Mom, It's not my fault, I didn't do it, I just found it!" clip from the wacky world of media and cultural critics who don't pay enough attention to their own media.

Below are Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort in a clip from The Way of The Master (this is a longer clip).

There's more subtext here than in a Jr. High Locker Room.

How did they not know that this was a Bad Bad idea?
and how did Happy Cindy not know it was a Bad Bad idea to post this over there?????

People believe strange and surprising things. Why would Rev. Wright be different?

According to Gallup, 6% of Americans believe that the Apollo Moon Landing was a hoax. Another 5% aren't sure.

A CNN/TIME poll shows that 80% of Americans think that the US Government is hiding the fact that it has knowledge of alien life.

Sixty-four percent of the respondents said that aliens have contacted humans, half said they've abducted humans, and 37 percent said they have contacted the U.S. government.

Huge numbers of Americans believe that UFO's are coming to earth and kidnapping humans.

Scientologists believe that L. Ron Hubbard's body is on a planet galaxies away from here, and that Xenu, head of the Galactic confederacy, was responsible for bringing billions of frozen humans to earth 75 million years ago.

16 % of the American people believe that the Collapse of the World Trade Centers was primarily accomplished by an intentional, controlled demolition, likely by the US Government.

49% of New York residents believed (in a poll in 2004) that the US Government knew ahead of time of the attack on the Twin Towers.
Over the years, 36-49% of Americans polled by Newsweek have believed that Sadaam Hussein was behind the attacks.

Scripps Howard found (Nov 23, 2007) that of 811 US adults,
42% think it likely or very likely that people in the US govt knew ahead of time about the assassination of JFK,
37% thought it likely or very likely that some people in the US Govt have proof of alien/UFO life.

Where people believe that UFOs are kidnapping humans, we know that Africans were kidnapped.
So it fascinates me that it surprises anyone that a leader in the African American community-- a community that has a collective history that includes, yes, kidnapping, slavery, lynching, murder, rape, exclusion and discrimination, less than average educational opportunity and greater than average incarceration rate, and medical experimentation without consent -- why is it surprising that this man might believe that the US Government introduced HIV to that community?

For goodness sake people. I don't have to believe this myself to understand how someone could! Frankly, I think it's more likely to be true than alien abduction, or ghosts or that Xenu planted humans in volcanoes 75 million years ago. No, change that. More likely to be true than alien abduction or Xenu, but less likely than the existence of ghosts.

This is not a fringe belief in our country, to be scoffed at by others, including Mr. Obama, but a belief we must acknowledge and grapple with what it means that, in fact, "A 2005 Rand Corp. survey found...that 15% of African Americans consider AIDS "a form of genocide against African Americans, and nearly 27% agreed that "AIDS was produced in a government laboratory." (Rosa Brooks, LA Times, Today)

This belief, unlike beliefs about UFO's or who killed JKF or MLK, this belief is one which contributes to killing people. A lack of realistic scientific understanding of the etiology and transmission of this disease is killing people. These kinds of beliefs can lead people to dismiss the basic behaviors they need to do to keep from getting HIV -- the use of barrier protection/condoms for all sexual activity. This kind of belief keeps people from going to the Dr early enough after infection to make appropriate use of the medication regimes available.

And this kind of belief, unlike aliens and their magic spaceships, can make people lose focus on their own bodies and health and prevention, and make them turn their heads and Look Over There at the Big Bad Government rather than thinking carefully about their next step with the hot guy next door who wants them.

(and just for fun, here's my favorite hot guy)

We know that Pres. Reagan tied the hands of his Surgeon General for five years.

Dr. C. Everett Koop, Reagan's surgeon general, has said that because of "intradepartmental politics" he was cut out of all AIDS discussions for the first five years of the Reagan administration. The reason, he explained, was "because transmission of AIDS was understood to be primarily in the homosexual population and in those who abused intravenous drugs." The president's advisers, Koop said, "took the stand, 'They are only getting what they justly deserve."

So, what is the distance between knowledge of apathy and inaction to belief that some people in the govt caused AIDS? A couple of inches? A Mile? Is it so hard to believe that some people might believe this? I think these are incredibly important questions. And Obama needs to take a speech and talk about HIV/AIDS again. Here (reprinted) is his HIV/AIDS Plan (I'd call it an overview more than a plan) the original pdf. is here. He can't just say that Wright is wrong, he needs to take a positive stand about this disease, and how it is ravaging people here in the US and around the world, needlessly, because people aren't protecting themselves.

What Rev. Wright said two days ago at the National Press Club: (whole transcript here) It was a good speech overall.

MODERATOR: In your sermon, you said the government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color. So I ask you: Do you honestly believe your statement and those words?

WRIGHT: Have you read Horowitz's book, "Emerging Viruses: AIDS and Ebola," whoever wrote that question? Have you read "Medical Apartheid"? You've read it?

(UNKNOWN): Do you honestly believe that (OFF-MIKE)

WRIGHT: Oh, are you -- is that one of the reporters?

MODERATOR: No questions...

(CROSSTALK)

WRIGHT: No questions from the floor. I read different things. As I said to my members, if you haven't read things, then you can't -- based on this Tuskegee experiment and based on what has happened to Africans in this country, I believe our government is capable of doing anything.

In fact, in fact, in fact, one of the -- one of the responses to what Saddam Hussein had in terms of biological warfare was a non- question, because all we had to do was check the sales records. We sold him those biological weapons that he was using against his own people.

So any time a government can put together biological warfare to kill people, and then get angry when those people use what we sold them, yes, I believe we are capable.

This cell phone stuff has gone too far

Cranky Nephew, who resides with Cranky Cindy, didn't feel good yesterday.

I got home from church at about 2, changed clothes, then knocked on his door to remind him that he was supposed to be at McDonald's at 3:30.

I thought he said, "Uhhhh" but it was hard to hear him. He low-talks when he's sleepy, but he hears everything (ask me some time about the argument he overheard between me and Cranky Spouse.)

I walked away and made lunch.

I ate my lunch.

I watched the end of a Die Hard Movie, a panacea after a long hard day at work where I'm terminally happy cindy to people who are, (just occasionally,) shall we say, um, overly assertive in my general direction.

An hour later, the phone rang. Caller ID identified it as him.

I sat up straight and said "Hello?"

"Hellooowww wwoowwooph." Cranky Nephew said.

"Where are you?" I demanded, fighting the intrusive traumatic pictures in my brain, imagining that perhaps I'd been wrong, that he wasn't in his room, that he was out all night, not safely ensconced in his bed, and I needed to go find him somewhere. My pulse raced.

"In my room."

In. His. Room.

Calmly, very calmly... deep breath first ...

"Why are you calling me from your room?"

"I can't move." My limbic system re-fires. "Everything hurts."

"What hurts?" What if he can't, actually, move?

"Everything! -- My back, my neck, my ribs, my thighs, my arms. Practically even my fingernails."

And there it was. Even the fingernails.

Calm, breathe, yelling doesn't work. As I realize that I've been tricked into talking on the phone with a young man in the next room, who Can So Move.

"I'm hanging up the phone now. You need to open your door so we can talk like actual human beings because you are going to be late for work."

Well, you don't need the details, suffice it to say he learned the hard way what happens to one's body when one throws oneself head first (literally) into a 2 hour Kung Fu class. when they say stretch first, they really mean it.


The calling from the cell phone? It seemed to him a perfectly reasonable thing.

So tell me, dear readers, do your children (or other young people in residence) do this to you?

And if so, do you tolerate it, take it as an indication that we are, in fact, old, and/or do you make them hang up and drag their sorry behinds out into the real world where there are real people to bother and tell them they smell bad?

Or worse, are you one of those younger people with cell phone strapped to hip like Annie Oakley's gun, pulling it out and shooting off a text to people during meetings and phoning people in the same house? And if so would you please explain it to me?

Jack Kevorkian for Congress

Honest to God, he's running.

There is no better commentary on this than the time that Michael Moore spent with Dr. Kevorkian on TV Nation in 1994.

A Day with Dr. Death

Cindy Goes to a Party - 1955

[deep sigh.]

Cindy, a tomboy unsure of her social status, dreams of a party where her fairy godmother gives her etiquette lessons, and wakes up to receive her very own invitation.

Just this very weekend I had an extended conversation with a group of people about the complex and wondrous diversity of the interplay of biological sex, gender identity, gender roles and sexual orientation.

One of the participants sent me the link to this video. Alas, if only I had a fairy godmother when I was a child, with my short hair and jeans and an untucked boys' shirt, I too could have been blinked into a frilly dress, and learned how to Obey the Rules of The Game.




My favorite line:

You can't see or hear fairies unless you need them.

of course, you could try looking here...

What prompted yesterday's post about racist opposition to Barack Obama

In all my flurry to get out yesterday's post taking apart some of the racist opposition to Barack Obama, I neglected to nod over to smijer over at tete-a-tete-tete where he posted a link to an email that's making the rounds. That's what prompted my post, and I'm copying it here in case you missed it, (and to strip out the email addresses, which makes it easier to "see" the message and not put people's email addresses out there.)

Subj: Fw: NEXT FIRST FAMILY Say "HI BRO" to the next First Family?


Barack stands behind Kezia (stepmother) in a Kenyan family shot.

(Including brother Abongo "Roy" Obama who is a Luo activist and a militant Muslim who argues that the black man must "liberate himself from the poisoning influences of European culture."

"Abongo's new lifestyle has left him lean and clear-eyed, and at the wedding, he looked so dignified in his black African gown, with white trim, and matching cap, that some of our guests mistook him for my father," Obama wrote in Dreams From My Father.

(in the original, you have to page down past a couple of hundred email addresses to get to the rest of the email.~cranky)

Source Associated Press

Senator John McCain and his wife, Cindy, in a
1999 family photograph with, from left,
Meghan, Bridget, Jimmy and Jack.

Source

Source

and that's it. That's the visual email.

Any Questions?