NRA vs. PETA? A Throw down death match? Tonight on Pay Per View

Honest to G-d. This is the text of a letter sent out by Wayne LaPierre about the debate he accepted with Andrew Butler of PETA. Tonight, no lie, on Pay Per View.

The letter was re-typed by Andrew Connor, and posted here. Typos, I assume, are his.
I have added Color for emphasis, to pull out my favorite bits.

FBI Statements of Congressional hearings in May of 2005 make it clear that a major terrorist support netword ks now actively operating in your home state of North Carolina.

And some of your neighbors are probably contributors or even members.

This group provides major financial aid to arsonists and fire bombers. They massacre thousands of dogs and cats each year. They conduct psychological warfare against your values by providing hate literature to schoolchildren. They have recruited 235,000 classroom teachers across America to their cause. And they have left no doubt in my mind that they will do whatever it takes to ban your hunting forever.

I have been warned not to stand in the direct path of these fanatics -- because I could become a target of their hate.

And I have been warned by a representative of a major U.S. corporation that those who oppose this terrorist network are routinely stalked, harassed, and intimidated.

But I believe in my heart that someone needs to draw a line in the sand. Someone needs to break the silence. And because you've invested your trust in me to lead the NRA and lead our cause, I believe this is a fight I can't walk away from.

That's why I have accepted a television offer to debate one of the leaders of this organization -- Andrew Butler -- in a nationally-televised broadcast on October 18, 2005.

I need you to watch this debate. I need you to tell your friends about it. Because the group I'm talking about -- whose spokesman I will debate -- has an admitted track record of supporting a movement now considered by the FBI to be the #1 domestic terrorism threat to you, your family and your safety.

I'm not talking about Al Qaeda. I'm not talking about Hamas or Hezbollah.

The group I'm talking about is People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) -- which, along with two groups they support, the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) are the most fanatical and most extremist anti-hunting organizations in the world.

Right now, most Americans -- including gun owners, hunters and even NRA members -- have no idea what PETA really stands for or what they really do.

Some of your own neighbors could be among those who are sending nearly $30 million a year in tax-deductable contributions to PETA -- duped by slick ads claiming that their money will help find homes for stray dogs and cats.

But most are unaware that their money also helps to provide legal defense funds for extremists who use harassment, intimidation, and even terrorist tactics to achieve their aims.

But the more I've learned about PETA since accepting this invitation to debate, the more strongly I believe that the American People need to know the real truth about the growing "animal rights" movement.

And the more I believe that NRA members and hunters must step out and become the front-line defenders against PETA -- the biggest, richest and most powerful organization backing and supporting the "animal rights" terrorist movement across American and around the world.

You and I need to lay bare PETA's outrageous record of hypocrisy, zealotry and disregard of human life for all thee world to see. If children must die so that mosquitoes or lab rats can live, that's justifiable in their eyes.

Your neighbors and their nearly one million supporters of PETA need to know that when they send their contributions, they're supporting "animal rights" terrorists. Indoctrinating kids to hate. Shutting down medical research. And slaughtering animals that PETA pretends to protect.

They've provided cash assistance and legal defense funds to memebers of the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) -- organizations that are part of an eco-terrorist network that the FBI says is America's "most serious domestic terrorism threat."

And just as Saddam Hussein once provided $25,000 cash to the families of suicide bombers, PETA provided a similar amount to the family of Rodney Coronado -- who was convicted of a multi-million dollar firebombing at Michigan State University.

And they're packaging their madness and pitching it to our kids, too.

One of PETA's newest campaigns, "Your Mommy Kills Animals," is targeting children in 20 states across the natino with a "comic book" feathrin a blood-spattered woman killing and mutilating a live rabbit -- a psychological warfare campaign aimed at converting the next generation of Americans to the "animal rights" cause.

Their website teachers kids how to be "animal Rights rebels," how to ridicule kids won drink milk, and how to boycott classes.

And even PETA's so-called "animal shelters" have now become killing fields for dogs and cats.

Between 2000 and 2004, PETA slaughtered over 10,000 dogs and cats at one Norfolk, Virginia "shelter" alone. For the past three yeas, this "shelter" has slaughtered more than 85% of the animals it has taken in.

In fact, two PETA employees in North Carolina were recently indicted for dumping 18 dead dogs and cats into a dumpster -- and authorities found 13 more dead dogs and cats in their van.

Yet, the "animal rights" and "eco-terrorism" movements have no more regard for human lives than they have for dogs and cats.

In report after report, scientists and doctors who were working on breakthrough medical research -- cures for cancer, Alzheimer's disease, cystic fibrosis, multiple sclerosis and other human sufferings -- have left their research after receiving letters containing death threats and poison-laced razor blades, and threats to their children

And there's no doubt in my mind that it's only just a matter of time before they start escalating their tactics against hunters in the field.

Would it look like an accident? Would it look like a fall from a tree stand? Mark my words. There's a lot of thing that can happen in the woods, where nobody knows the truth but the trees.

And "animal rights" fanatics have already make it crystal clear where they stand when it comes to hunters.

PETA compares hunters to the KKK and Jeffrey Dahmer, the notorious serial killer who ate his victims -- and claims that hunters are no different than "Nazi doctors and slave traders."

You need to know the facts as well as what I believe about PETA and their fellow "animal rights" extremists. Your fellow gun owners and hunters across America need to know the facts. And your neighbors and friends need to understand what really happens to theeir money when they send a contribution to PETA.

It's abut time that somebody had the courage to stand up to these fanatics. They are a threat to our values. They are a threat to our children. They are a threat to our way of life. And you and I need to stand up together and draw the line against PETA's war on our values and our future.

That's exactly why -- despite the warning I've received -- I decided to break silence and debate PETA spokesman Andrew Butler on October 18th.

And I hope I can count on your strong personal support for my decision.

First, I hope you'll be sure to watch this debate, premiering October 18th at 9:00 p.m. Eastern Time on InDemand Pay-Per-View. Invite your friends to join you. And invite them whether or not they hunt, or own guns - - because your neighbors will be shocked when they find out the real truth about PETA.

Second, I hope you'll use the postcards I've enclosed to tell more of your friends, relatives, and fellow Americans about this debate. Give them to people at work. Put them on the bulletin board at your hunting club. Or mail them to people you kow in other towns or states -- so that your fellow Americans can learn the truth about PETA on October 18th.

Third, in making this decision to take on PETA -- and explose them for what they are -- I hope I can count on your financial support to reach America with our NRA message.

I want to make sure that by the end of this year we can put a copy of this debate into the hands of as many Americans as we can.

According to PETA's most recent annual report, 11 million American schoolchildren have already been subjected to PETA's "animal rights" propaganda. 235,000 teachers have been co-opted into PETA's national misinformation campaign. And thirtyu million Americans have visited their website.

That's why I want every member of Congress, every legislative staff member on Capitol Hill, and every courtroom judge to have a copy of this debate.

I want to make sure we can send a copy to every hunt club in the nation. To every fair-minded T.V. and newspaper reporter across the country. To every American who takes a hunter safety course. To educators in cities where PETA is most actively propagandizing our children. And to every member of the 4H and other youth groups that work with animals -- young people who will soon be called on in the battle against these extremists.

I want to make sure that in the coming months, we have the resources we need to combat PETA's ongoing efforts -- because there's no doubt in my mind that we'll have to fight in the federal bureaucracy, in the stat legislatures and in the courts if we want to keep our public hunting lands open, preserve hunting opportunities in our National Forests and National Wildlife Refuges, and block efforts to shorten hunting seasons nationwide.

I want to make sure we have the resources to work with local law enforcement agencies to demand prosecution of extremists and fanatics if they harass and terrorize hunters in the field.

And most of all, I want to make sure that every American who cares about the truth has the opportunity to find out what PETA really stands for and what they really do.

Most Americans, if they know anything at all about PETA, think that they're over-eager animal lovers, or college kids with too much time on their hands or, at worst, annoying vandals who splash paint on fur coats.

They don't understand that, when they send a few dollars to PETA they're also sending money to a terrorist support group that wants to shut down hunting, take fishing poles out of children's hands, ban milk from their breakfast, and stop medical advancements. A group that condones the use of threats and destruction to achieve their ideological goals.

Someone needs to break the silence. And I'm asking you to help me lead the way,

And if I can count on you to send a contribution to the NRA for our efforts to fight back and expose the truth about PETA and the "animal rights" thugs, I'll send you a DVD, VHS, or audio CD copy of my debate with Andrew Butler just as soon as it's available after it airs on October 18th.

So please, support our NRA efforts. Please help me counter the $30 million that PETA is spending each year to brainwash our children, shut down medical research, slaughter dogs and cats, ban our hunting and end our way of life -- by sending a special contribution of $20, $30, $50, or whatever amount you can.

Please stand with me in this fight by watching my debate, using the enclosed postcards to spread the word, and sending your most generous contribution today.

Thank you very much.

Sincerely,

Wayne LaPierre
Executive Vice President

P.S. Please watch my debate with PETA representative Andrew Butler on InDemand Pay-Per-View on Octobe 18th. Please use the enclosed cards to spread the word about this debate. And please send a generous gift to help fund our all-out NRA fight.

P.P.S. The FBI has called the "eco-terrorism" movement the #1 domestic terrorism threat in America today. You and I need to break the silence, stand up to this threat, and fight for our rights. I hope you'll let me hear from you in the next few days. Thank you again.

***

My favorite part? "I want to make sure we have the resources to work with local law enforcement agencies to demand prosecution of extremists and fanatics if they harass and terrorize hunters in the field."

Because if I were an animal rights activist, I'd surely go into the woods, walk up to Mr. Hunter up in his perch on his stand holding his gun and I'd ask him to stop shooting at the deer. please. right.

It must be nearing an election

Because campaigns are invoking Hitler. I am so tired of people throwing around Hitler or Fascism every time someone disagrees with them. Ugh.

Adolf Hitler became a central character in the Virginia governor's race this week as Republican Jerry W. Kilgore's campaign used the Nazi leader's name in an emotional ad on the death penalty... Kilgore's ad accuses Democrat Timothy M. Kaine of not supporting the death penalty, even for Hitler. <more>

"There's a real difference here in the use of Adolf Hitler," Cantor said. "Mr. Rosenbluth was trying to illustrate that Tim Kaine's views are so extreme, he wouldn't put the ultimate killer to death."

Tim Kaine's anti-death penalty views are so EXTREME, that he wouldn't put Hitler to death? And this is a bad thing? Consistency in a politician?

And the Kilgore campaign managed to have about 36 hours of news cycle out of it because they released it just before Yom Kippur.

There's a good editorial posted on Kaine's website.

Mormon Mix-Up -- When people forget to pay attention at their jobs.

A Provo Utah video store discovered that the PG-rated "Sons of Provo, " a wholesome story about a LDS boy band, Everclean, had been replaced by "Adored: Diary of a Porn Star."

Yup, lables and discs were mixed up.

Wolfe Video, distributor of the not-pornographic but about a porn star video, said, "It's a very heartwarming film about a porn star that reconnects with his family."

See, could be wholesome LDS family fare if only the porn star wasn't gay.

Whole story here.

4:18 am - Sorry if you recognize this list for what it is

Recognize these? ER - Rare Gems - Adams family Values - buy Shy - Coin Vault - Santa's Toy Shop - Heartland - Suze Orman - Oreck - My Body Guard - Fresh Prince - teacher's pet - dave the barbarian - School Ties - the amazing whirling chopper - boundty hunters - 20 dates - videos - Total Gym - Godzilla Vs. Megachizalla - Trading up - Happy Days - Rare Gems - Brainiac - Guthy Renker.

It's pitiful what's available on television to keep one awake at 4:20 in the morning. (although Brainiac is pretty good) If you too recognize this list, I'm sorry, but you should be sleeping now.
If I had something other than dialup, I'd watch any of the great independant films at ifilm.com or atomfilms.com, but alas, it's me and my dialup.

Why am I awake? Because we've been pumping out our basement since yesterday at 8 am when we woke up to 3 inches of water. I'm incredibly (O.M.G. Some guy just said, 'right in my ass' on the Total Gym ad, the phrase leapt right out at me) grateful that we are able to keep up with the water. We turn the pump on for 20 minutes, then off for 20 minutes, but I'm not sure how much it's helping, because although we're pumping it outside, it ends up in the storm drain that's backing up into the basement. As long as we don't use any water it's just runoff and not sewage, so there's that which I'm also grateful for.

I did it yesterday till 11 pm, then Beck did it, and now Tag! I'm It until I go to work this morning, when she'll get up again, but some incredible people on the RE Council are going to come in and be the DRE for the day after first service, so she'll be able to get back to bed.
So I'm putting this on Cranky Cindy because I am on the cranky side about this -- but still, so grateful that our house is in good strong standing.

It's funny tho' there's no StairMaster ad for running up and down to turn on pumps, and no total gym sweep the water sweep the water think wash on wash off ad either.

Going to pump and sweep now.
Oh m god, Peter Brady is selling the Ab Lounge now. ugh.

Pirates of the Caribbean Commentary Track. Another funny from the Wittenburg door

WWJFTLPT SAY?
What Would Jerry Falwell, Tim LeHaye, and Pat Robertson say about this movie? The funny funny people at The Wittenburg Door, my favorite evangelicals of all time, tell us here.

Harriet Miers and her religious community

Bartholomew's notes on religion has posted info via New Donkey, on Miers' church, the Valley View Christian Church, the years-ago church split that led to the theological formation of church she attends, and the recent church split that led her to join 200 others out of the church and into a hotel conference room.

Love Won Out (of homosexuality) Love One/Won Out. Get it?

I mentioned this earlier, and the particulars have been set.
I got this ad in my email today.

Love Won Out® Conference Boston, Massachusetts, October 29, 2005 Dear Friend, Nearly every family, church, and community has been impacted by homosexuality. Given the significance and scope of this issue it is imperative to know how to balance Truth and love. Focus on the Family developed the Love Won Out conference to provide helpful information and equip you to share the love of Christ with those affected by homosexuality. Join us in Boston and you'll learn how to minister to a loved one who's dealing with homosexuality, respond to misinformation in our culture, defend biblical beliefs and prevent your child from embracing homosexuality. What: Love Won Out Conference When: October 29, 2005 - 8:00 am - 5:30 pm Venue: Tremont Temple Baptist Church Where: 88 Tremont Street, Boston, MA Cost: $50 pre-registration/$60 at the door Contact: 1-800-A-FAMILY (232-6459) Homosexuality is one of the most hotly debated topics today. Popular culture tells us that homosexuality is biological and that change and freedom are not possible. The church frequently responds with either a deafening silence or a vitriolic condemnation of the individual struggling with same-sex attractions. Some Christians who stand firm in their biblical convictions often don't know how to share their beliefs with those they come in contact with, and thousands of families are faced with the heartbreak of learning about a gay loved one and feel there is nowhere to turn for answers. Whether you're a parent, friend or loved one of a homosexual; a pastor, mental health professional, youth worker, educator or gay activist; or simply someone who has a heart for the culture in which we all live, the Love Won Out conference is for you. Since our first event in 1998, the Love Won Out conference has traveled to America's largest cities bringing a life-changing message of hope to tens of thousands of people. At Love Won Out, you'll hear from nationally known experts who have firsthand experience with the seldom-told side of the homosexual issue. You'll learn how to minister to a loved one who's dealing with homosexuality, respond to misinformation in our culture, defend biblical beliefs and prevent your child from embracing homosexuality. Most of all, you'll experience the power of God's love. You'll come face-to-face with His desire to transform the lives of struggling homosexuals who seek freedom in Jesus Christ. Come witness the type of love that will help you become a catalyst for extending grace and truth in the midst of the controversy.

Featured Speakers: Mike Haley currently directs the Gender Issues department for Focus on the Family and also serves as chairman of the board of Exodus International. He is the author of the recently published book 101 Frequently Asked Questions About Homosexuality. Melissa Fryrear, M.Div, is the gender issues analyst for Focus on the Family and also serves as the church affiliate representative for Exodus International. She holds a Master of Divinity from Asbury Theological Seminary and is actively involved in public speaking, writing and educating the church and society on homosexuality. Joe Dallas is a counselor, public speaker and author of three books including the recently released When Homosexuality Hits Home. Joe served for three years as the president of Exodus International and has been with the Love Won Out conference since its inception in 1998. Nancy Heche, D.Min., endured her husband’s diagnosis of and subsequent death from AIDS and experienced the media rush during her daughter’s highly visible lesbian relationship with a well-known celebrity. She holds a doctorate degree in pastoral counseling and has a private practice in psychotherapy. Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D., is the president and principal research investigator for the National Association of Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH). He is the author of several books including A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality. Featured Resource: 101 Frequently Asked Questions About Homosexuality Mike Haley Paperback Book Suggested Donation: $11.00 US What people are saying: "Thank you for being real! For educating not only gay individuals but everyone that will have this issue touch their lives. You could apply this information to any problem we have in life." - Recent Love Won Out Attendee "This was more than I imagined. Thank you for your speaking the truth in love and encouraging me as a parent of a gay son." - Recent Love Won Out Attendee Please pray for our next event February 25 in St. Louis. For more information about this event, visit us at MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "imdl.net" claiming to be www.lovewonout.com.

and again, Mail Scanner thinks there's a possible FRAUD attempt here -- there is, it just doesn't know what type of fraud.

Another Funny moment in Religious Right History

The American Family Association is appalled at an advertisement in a gay magazine.

"Tylenol ad promotes gay sex
It wasn’t exactly the kind of advertisement one would expect from a supposedly family-friendly company like Johnson & Johnson.

In July, the company placed an ad for its Tylenol PM product in The Advocate, the nation’s leading homosexual magazine. The ad shows two shirtless men in bed side by side. The text over one reads: "His backache is keeping him up." Over the other: "His boyfriend’s backache is keeping him up."

AFA Director of Special Projects Randy Sharp said the Tylenol PM advertisement is a blatant promotion of homosexual activity. "Two half-naked men shown in bed together, described as being a homosexual couple, absolutely places the company’s stamp of approval on sex that is unnatural and immoral," he said. "If Johnson & Johnson had used an ad that applauded adultery, it could not have been more offensive than this."

Contact Johnson & Johnson, Chairman William C. Weldon, One Johnson & Johnson Plaza, New Brunswick, New Jersey 08933, Phone: 732-524-0400; online contact form at: www.jnj.com.

I have to say, if they hadn't pointed it out, I would never have noticed the double entendre.

Sometimes Racism is just so obvious

Let's hear it for unscripted call in shows to let us see people's true "colors." Bill Bennett, Mr. We should all have High Moral Values but Gambling is OK, stated that if black babies were all aborted, the crime rate would go down.

Said Bennett: "But I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could, if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down."

He went on to call that "an impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far-out, these far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky."

I realize this is old news by now, but I spent the weekend studiously NOT watching news.

Church of the Flying Spagetti Monster

This very very FUNNY Website provides an alternative theory of Intelligent Design.

Continuing to bring you the very best in web humor...

Thanks to Steve Caldwell for bringing this to our attention.

Pink Girlie Men visiting U. Iowa

Made Ya Look!!

Continuing today's theme of Only Funny Things,

Here's a patently ridiculous silly moment.

Cheers and Jeers Thursday via Bill in Portland ME

Over at the Daily Kos. This made me laugh.

"Focus on the Family is promoting the truth that homosexuality is preventable and treatable"

Join me at the Love Won Out conference in Boston on October 29th.

If you want to understand, really understand, what the Religious Right thinks, there's not much of a better way than to attend an anti-gay/ex-gay/"pro-family" conference like this one.

In my work as a researcher, I've attended bunches of these religious right events, and I strongly encourage you to go if you're in New England. Love Won Out is the cornerstone of the anti-gay/ex-gay organizing, and it rarely is held in the Northeast. Given the current anti-gay marriage political campaigning in Massachusetts, it's a rare opportunity to see these committed concerned conservatives in action.

If that's not enough reason, Anne Heche's mom is one of the speakers.

I also encourage you to attend only if you can do so to learn how their world-view makes sense to them. ..and to be polite and respectful.

HEADLINES: Focus on the Family is focusing on mine.

Again. ...or still.

MailScanner finds possible Fraud!
see below for details! lol.

Protect Marriage in Massachusetts - Sign the Petition
Today!
Dear Friend,

The threat to traditional - one-man, one-woman - marriage has never been greater.
Now is the time to take action and defend traditional marriage in Massachusetts.


So far, 18 states have acted to protect marriage by enshrining traditional marriage in their state constitution. The people of Massachusetts deserve the opportunity to make their own decision on the definition of marriage. It is time to stand up to your activist Supreme Judicial Court and reclaim marriage.

Our friends at MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "imdl.net" claiming to be VoteOnMarriage.org - a coalition of pro-family, pro-marriage groups - have been diligently working to see that marriage is reclaimed in your state. In order to place this issue before the Legislature, the state requires at least 65,825 registered voters to sign a petition in favor of traditional marriage within a 60-day period. Because each signature must be certified, the committee is hoping to gather 120,000 signatures before the November 23 deadline.

But MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "imdl.net" claiming to be VoteOnMarriage.org can’t do it without you! There is much work to be done in
a very short amount of time. I’d like to ask you to prayerfully consider becoming involved in this vital effort.

First, sign a petition you can download from MailScanner
has detected a possible fraud attempt .... Then, sign up on the same Web site to become a signature gatherer and carefully follow the instructions for gathering signatures if you're able to commit to additional involvement. You can either make copies of the petition prior to collecting signatures or download additional copies. Once you have gathered the signatures, please return the petitions to the address listed at the bottom of the petition.

Please join with MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt ... in the critical effort to restore the traditional definition of marriage in Massachusetts. Thank you for standing in defense of marriage and family in your state.

Sincerely,Tom Minnery
Vice President,
Government and Public Policy
Focus on the Family
P.S. - To learn the latest on the petition efforts, visit our CitizenLink Web site.

It's really them, not a circumstance of fiscal internet fraud, but the assignment of the term is, I think, appropriate.

This site is certified 39% evil

by the gematriculator . This is the funniest I've seen in a while. Let's hear it for invented numerology.

The Gematriculator's reasoning?

• Amount of letters
  25053 25053=7x3579
• Amount of different words
  1603 1603=7x229
• Amount of words beginning with vowel
  1507 1+5+0+7=13
• Amount of words beginning with consonant
  4207 4207=7x601 4+2+0+7=13
• Value of all words
  2089465 2089465=7x298495

I especially like "Amount of words." Even my poor gramar and speling knows that's knot rite.

The kicker that it's a joke site? It then recommends that you go kill everyone here.

"Each Christmas it kidnaps the baby Jesus"

This phrase sent someone to my blog. Thanks to statcounter, I can see that someone searched for "Each Christmas it kidnaps the baby Jesus", and Yahoo sent them to crankycindy.

This may be better than submissive wives.

"Economic liberal" for corporate economics?

Hmmm,

Someone who understands economics better than I please go take that test. In retrospect, I'm wondering what my answers that were percieved as indicators of economic liberalism were asking about. Personal freedom of economic choice in buying low-cost? Personal access to jobs that pay a decent wage? Corporations have the "right" to do whatever they want if it's in their corporate best interest?

someone please ponder this, yes?

what is my political stripe

i'm using taking a politics test online to find out.

Right now. I'm taking it in another tab and writing about it as I go along. when i'm done i'm not going to edit my comments, even if it makes me look idiotic. It's full of binary type statements with teeny tiny variables thrown in...

Tradition is a reliable guide in deciding what's right

Well, I think tradition is A touchstone, of many, in deciding what is right. They've asked me if it is a reliable guide, not the reliable guide. If I answer agree, does that make me conservative? I respect my elders, and it's important to know what tradition says, did, and why. I'm going with Agree.

The separation of church and state has demoralized our society.

Demoralized? De-MORAL-ized? Well, I believe in the absolute separation of the institutions, but I don't believe in the separation of religious beliefs and politics/political beliefs, which is where the MORAL bit comes in. I'm going for strongly disagree.

So far this is my favorite:

It should be legal for two consenting adults to challenge each other to a duel and fight a Death Match.

Sometimes I wish certain consenting adults would duel to the death, but, alas, I don't actually think it should be legal.

The life of one American is worth the lives of several foreigners.

There was that great episode on The West Wing (the government we should have), where they were discussing this. i think it was Leo who said, "I don't know [why] sir, but it is."

well, let's see, here it comes: on my dial up, it's still coming
and coming.

not quite, just a couple more things...

Damn, I'm a Socialist!
Well it says cut and paste here, so here goes.

And yes, the SATs and GREs made me nuts! I took the Miller's Analogies too b/c it was nice and flexible. Turns out if you go by the Millers, I'm really smart.

You are a Social Liberal (80% permissive) and an... Economic Liberal (11% permissive) You are best described as a: Socialist Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid

An amazing poem that is appropros

apropos

appropo

aproppos


um.... relevant.

04/09: definitely not calm (through audre's work)

Race as Meme and white privelege

Another blog recently sent me scurrying to wikipedia to read about memes. (a self-propagating unit of cultural evolution)

Karl Popper advocated [meme resistance] in the strongest possible terms: "The survival value of intelligence is that it allows us to extinct a bad idea, before the idea extincts us."

I agree with others that the concept of race has become a powerful meme, a powerful idea that may exist separately from observable testable reality. I also believe the concept of race, the meme of race, has become part of how people identify themselves as part of a group, a very human need, consciously or not, and how people judge others, consciously or not.

Personally, (and at the risk of over simplifying the argument) I think we can't end a meme by ignoring it, or simply saying that it's an unscientific concept. It's become a social concept that is imbued with all kinds of complicated power structures, utilized by people who either don't agree that race is a logically meaningless category, or who believe that race doesn't matter and therefore don't examine how race/identity/racism influences them unconsciously.

I was listening to talk radio the other night on my way home, and a caller, who identified himself as a hard working trucker, stated that you can watch "these people" outside the superdome and know what they're about, that giving $2000 cash cards to "these people" was wrong headed, and that 3/4 of the people displaced from New Orleans were on welfare anyway, so we're just still just paying for them one way or the other.

The (articulate and educated) talk show host didn't contradict the premise that 3/4 of New Orleans was on welfare.

He didn't ask who the caller identified as "these people" or who the caller identified as "we."

So who was the caller referring to? What kind of power to shape public opinion and the very perception of reality does this meme have? I think tremendous, and ignoring it isn't going to make it go away.

My family history of our lives as french/scottish/irish is full of stories of oppression, assault, sub-human indenturedness, and poverty. "Irish need not apply" was a real discrimination that had real consequences. But today when I hail a cab, or a policeman, that Scotch/Irishness hasn't "memed" into something that will interfere with what I'm trying to do. I'm hailing the cab as someone who is perceived as a white person. I'll never be mistaken for Danny Glover. (hell, when hailing a cab, Danny Glover isn't mistaken for Danny Glover.)

The history of slavery in America has turned into something very specific for African Americans in ways the history of Irish oppression didn't.

Personally, I'm with Noel Ignatiev and believe that one of the most powerful things that people identified as white can do to end the meme, or concept of race, is to refuse to use the privelege that comes from whiteness.

The cops that pulled me out of the car did so because they privileged whiteness and assumed that a white person wouldn't choose to ride in a car with 5 black people. They thought they needed to protect me, and, I would suggest, my whiteness.

Several years ago I was in Provincetown with my extended family which is multi-racial, multi-ethnic. The large imposing woman staffing the rest room leaned over like we were friends and asked me, loudly, in front of my two African American god-daughters,

"Are these your foster children?"

I was appalled. I had a foster child at one time, and I loved him, but these weren't him. What, the only reason a white woman would have black children is if their own mother couldn't care for them?

The girls froze, faces full of fear.

I did better than the time the police pulled us over in the car.

I looked the woman straight in the eye and said, "What? No, this is my family. Oh, I see what happened, you thought I was white. Yea, that happens all the time. Have a nice day."

I believe actions like that help to extinguish a bad idea. Refusing those moments when our whiteness priveleges us, or seems to make some kind of special bond between two otherwise anonymous people, that's the best meme-buster.


peace,crankycindy who is pretty happycindy that this conversation is happening.

The Rubix Cube of Racism and Classism

I've been reading posts all over the uublogosphere about GA, racism, and classism. It has been fascinating, and sometimes frustrating to read statements made out of opinion, belief, and what people imagined might have happened at GA that would mean it wasn't about racism. I didn't post anything in reply: first because of that whole distracting wedding thing, then because it's time to open the RE program and that means bzillions of hours over 4 weeks.

But this morning I decided to not go into the office till later, to give my eyes a break from the computer, and my hands a break from collating, but, just for a sec, I thought I'd pop online and see what was up.

I read a few blogs, followed some commenters and links, and now, here I am, not cleaning the bathroom or making bread, but responding, writ large, to these conversations that seem to say classism and privelege, not racism, is the problem, and people are being distracted by a focus on racism.

I start, like any good feminist, with my own experience.

When I grew up, a white fundamentalist, working-class farmer kid in the mountains of NY just south of Canada, my whiteness seemed irrelevant.

What was relevant was that we didn't have any money.

I wore other people's used clothes (sometime I'll blog about the first day of 7th grade when Janine, the nastiest girl in class, pointed out loudly that my carefully pressed new shirt said "to Janine from Gramma" on the collar tag,) I ate what we grew, which meant a lot of canned green beans and tomatoes, stir fried in a thousand different ways with eggs or hot dogs. I was the kid in the lunch room who begged other kids for their Tunaboats. "Are you going to eat that?"

My dad was a farmer and a pharmacist. The first, and only, member of his family to go to college, he became a pharmacist because they couldn't afford to send him to medical school which was what he wanted to do. He worked his way through college and was in the Reserve. The little money a pharmacist made at a prison in the 60's- 70's went into the farm; land and self-sustenance being the fall-back safety net for both of my parents families, generations of Nova Scotia, Maine and Massachusetts dirt farmer people. My one grandfather sold shoes door to door and raised chickens, the other was a PartsMan at a Ford Dealership working than less than minimum wage, who tended an amazing and giant backyard garden that fed them.

My dad got up at 5 every morning to feed and water cows and chickens, then worked 7-3 at the prison, then came home to work the farm. Most of his vacation each year was taken in early spring so we could pick rocks that had risen in the fields over the winter, and then later in summer so we could get the hay in. When we did go on vacation, it was camping at a state site, bringing with us our green beans and tomatoes, eggs, and hot dogs. Once, he saved up forever to take us on a week long trip to Pennsylvania Dutch Country. In one year he bought a used pickup-bed camper, and a couple of years later he'd saved up enough for us to take the week and drive there.

My understanding of racism was theoretical and far away. For my middle-school years my favorite imaginary game was "raise an army and go rescue South Africa" for g-d's sake.

My experience of class and classism in America has been a journey - I left that mountain home; went to college; lived in a collective while being an activist and working at the 7-11; went to seminary; made the ethical decision to make it clear by the work/volunteer experience I left on my resume that I was a lesbian, and oops! didn't get a professional job out of Seminary. Of 75 resumes I sent out in response to job ads for which I was qualified, I got one interview, and got this 1/2 time live-in job at a college. Couldn't pay college/grad school loans, couldn't get those root canals (thanks Will for that great touchstone), defaulted on the loans. After a year, they hired me full-time, but still, it wasn't a job that payed enough. I loved working with college students, and I was good at it. I taught january term classes in fundamentalisms and liberation theologies and such, and generally tried to keep my head above the water that was filling in the financial rut I was in.

After several years, I found a 3/4 time job working at an agency as a staff educator and foster parent trainer. It was for less money but I was actually learning something I knew would be useful in the future. I wanted to learn how to be a great stand-up trainer on someone elses' dime.

Finally I fell into this job at the UU. I was at an Exodus International conference doing research about the ex-gays when my friend Karen called me there and told me that the UU was hiring, but that I'd have to move fast. It was the first time that knowing someone had benefitted me. I applied, competed, and got hired as an acting DRE. A year later they hired me permanently, and after a few years moved up to the UUA's mid-level salary for a congregaton my size. Of course, I'm still 100,000 in default (are you "in debt" if you're in default?)

I'm the epitome of class confusion in the US. Am I middle class because of my education and that fact that I finally have some semblance of job security? Was I working poor as a child even though my father had a professional job? I'm a 43 year old woman who will probably always be a renter, w/ a 5 year old Subaru my parents gave me last year when they downsized from 2 vehicles to 1. I'm working on a Soyo computer running Win 98 on a dial-up connection, and I got my wedding suit at a tagsale. But I own 1,500 books, and two hundred videos, (which sucks, as a renter, because I'm constantly having to pack them again.) Last year I did have a root canal instead of having it pulled because I have dental insurance now. What class am I?

Class is something I can't escape. I don't come from the social world that my upper middle class congregation resides in, I don't have the clothes or social skills that would enable me to blend in, and my personal politics are to the left of most of them. I don't answer the phone b/c it might be a bill collector. Whatever class I am, I cannot escape having to deal with it, I cannot escape the ways my lack of access to money or privelege limits my choices.

So. There might be some who would think that this post is about how challenging classism is. It's not.

It's about how I can never choose whether or not to deal w/ classism in my personal life, b/c it's just the way my life is. People of color have the same experience around racism. If they're poor, it's more difficult, not instead of difficult.

Another story: It's summer and hot. I'm in a car with 5 friends on the way to a picnic. We rock/paper/scissors for the hump in the back seat and I lose. After a while, a police cruiser follows us, we watch with nervousness in the mirror as they talk on the radio, and we compulsively watch our speed, travelling at exactly 55 mph. No more, no less. Then, after a few miles, they pull us over. They tell the women in the front seat to put their hands on the dash, and the three of us in the backseat to get out.

One puts the two men spreadeagled on the front hood of the car, and the other walks me to the back of the car and says, "Are you ok, miss?"

I'm confused. I say, "Yea, what's the problem officer?" not getting it.

He says that the car was suspicious, and he wants to make sure I'm ok.
I still don't get it. "Why are you asking me instead of them?"
As the words come out of my mouth I realize that I'm the only white person. My black friends are suspect.

I wish I could tell you that I hollered at him and reamed him a new one, but I can't, because all I said was "These are my friends."

He says, "I'm just trying to help you here, Miss."

I say, shaking my head incredulously, "I don't need any help, I'm going to a picnic with my friends, what's the deal?"

He calls to his partner to let the guys up, and as they walk back to the car I hear one say, "fuckin' fags."

So how do we pull this apart? Classism, Racism, and Homophobia all had a place in this story, but the core reality is that we weren't pulled over because we were (mostly) poor, or activists, or gay. We were pulled over because one white woman in a car with 5 African American people was a danger signal to these police officers.

Class didn't identify a car as dangerous. Sexual identity didn't identify a car as dangerous. Race did.

Most of the time, racism doesn't go to the gut of my experience like that. I'm a white woman, and my whiteness is what people see first, leaving me something of a blank slate until I open my mouth and my class falls out, or until they watch me walk and my dykeness leaks.

I can never ignore the complexities of classism in my life. Those people we could call "owners," those with privelege and power, do indeed make huge sweeping corporate and governmental decisions that benefit them and hurt poor people. The bankrupcy law changes of the last decade have completely screwed me. I'll be in debt forever and I'll never own a home, lacking a rich relative with an estate.

I could choose to ignore the complexities of racism, because except for occasional circumstances like the above, racism doesn't effect me in the same way as classism does. But people of color can't ignore it.

When I tell this story to white people, they often find it hard to believe -- they often say the types of things I've heard about the incident at GA -- well, it must have been a bad looking car, or maybe you were being loud with the radio and hollering, or maybe it was because you were a woman in between two men. Domestic people of color, particularly African American people, are rarely surprised by this story.

I could choose to ignore the complexities of racism, but I choose not to.

These bankrupcy laws disproportionately effect poor black people because there is a disproportionate percentage of black poor people in our country. It's not as simple as saying their problem is classism and privelege, not racism.

Racism, classism, homophobia -- these aren't different sides of the same coin, they're a freakin rubix cube.

Respectful of Otters

Everyone should be reading this Blog right now.

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

THIS is the best explanation for why I place responsibility on Rumsfeld and Rice and others...

from REspectful of Otters, go there to read the rest:

CNN Quote: Displaced survivors in the Houston Astrodome can choose from counterfeit and abandoned clothing, toys, and even dog food.

More than 100,000 items were quickly taken from warehouses and more will follow, said Kristi Clemens, spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security's Customs and Border Protection division.

The agency has some 1 million items stored, and Customs officials are going through their inventory to see what else would be useful. While the initial shipment went to Texas, officials are looking toward a wider distribution, Clemens said.

Respectful: At first that story made me smile. I could picture some frustrated worker at Customs, someone whose responsibilities had nothing at all to do with disaster relief, watching hour after hour of CNN until it hit them: we've got things those people could use. Disaster relief isn't supposed to be our mission, but it could be.


No, Seriously. Go there now.

Take me out to the Ball Game

Donald Rumsfeld was at a baseball game while the Mayor of New Orleans and the LA governor were begging for assistance.

Shoes, Baseball, Broadway, Texas Ranch, Montana:
Why are people harshing on the Pres and his Posse?

Our federal government were totally representing our nation during the Hurricane and immediate aftermath:

Labor and Manufacturing
Sport Jocks and Loafer Lifters
Red States- Blue States
Rural - Citified
Conservative Christian - New York Jews

Really, people. The President and his advisors were simply enjoying the broad diversity this nation has to offer.

Except of course New Orleans Jazz and the rich culture created by descendants of slaves and French Canadian immigrants.

picky picky.

Kanye West Rocks

How people couldn't have been pained by the turmoil he expressed, I don't understand.

The coverage at Democracy Now! was good.
The clip is here


There are bloggers who think that class, not race, is the problem in terms of the government's response to this crisis. I think this must come from a sense of really really wanting for racism to not be a problem anymore.

Google gives me this for a single blond haired blue eyed beauty.

Web	Results 1 - 10 of about 521,000 for "natalee holloway" aruba.

If there were 25,000 Natalee Holloways' in the SuperDome everyone would have sent helicopters.

We can't get people moved, fed or housed, but

...we sure can take good pictures.

The New York Times has this great interactive.

This page from Spiegel is great.

Blaming the Victims

choice n.

1. The act of choosing; selection.
2. The power, right, or liberty to choose; option.
3. One that is chosen.
4. A number or variety from which to choose
5. The best or most preferable part.
6. Care in choosing.
7. An alternative.

The news story is from http://www.cnn.com/2005/WEATHER/09/01/katrina.fema.brown/index.html

A Conversation at FEMA:

"What's another way to say, 'It's not our fault?'"
"We didn't know?"
"No good, we kinda did see it coming."
"It's the locals fault?"
"Good."
"Yea, that's it-- it's local government and local individuals' fault. Plus, that message is consistent with fundamentalist republicanism and a lot of our base will buy into it."
"I know, let's talk about the CHOICE people had to leave, and how their CHOICE "not to heed warnings" led to their deaths."
"That's awesome, with the added benefit of fitting into our use of the word choice as a code word for death, so it's consistent."

(CNN) -- The director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency said Thursday those New Orleans residents who chose not to heed warnings to evacuate before Hurricane Katrina bear some responsibility for their fates.

"Let's bury it by making it clear that the local folks said that bad news first."
"We're going to have to get around to saying the true death toll soon anyway, let's use this opportunity to bury the first pronouncement that changes the likely number from hundred[s] to thousands."

Michael Brown also agreed with other public officials that the death toll in the city could reach into the thousands.

"Slam hard on the idea that people could have saved themselves if only they'd listened (like the children they are)."

"Unfortunately, that's going to be attributable a lot to people who did not heed the advance warnings," Brown told CNN.

"Make sure not to suggest that poverty, physical and mental illness, hospitalizations, mobility challenges, and not having a car weren't the cause of staying in these areas. Leave room for the assumption that this CHOICE people made was one that involved ACTUAL OPTIONS."
"Yea, let's not mention that drug addicts are going to become desperate quickly without a supply of drugs, or that when people run out of their prescription drugs for blood pressure, mental illness, or diabetes, their thinking will become disordered."
"Oh crap, that disordered thinking happens when people get dehydrated too, doesn't it? Yea, best keep the subject to their individual choices. That's a nice American image--individuality, bootstraps, and cowboyism."

I don't make judgments about why people chose not to leave but, you know, there was a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans, " he said.

"But make sure to show that you feel bad for these poor people. Don't let it seem like you don't care."
"Make sure to emphasize that the hurricane and the evacuation was a local issue, not a federal one until after the catastrophe itself."
"Don't suggest that having 4 days to prepare meant that the federal government could have, say, started that hospital ship going in the general direction of, um, south."
"Yea, and give the appearance of sticking up for the Mayor while you distance the federal govt from responsibility."

"And to find people still there is just heart-wrenching to me because, you know, the mayor did everything he could to get them out of there.

"Hit again the idea that poor people have options that they choose not to exercise."
"It's got to be spun like welfare reform... If we're going to have to be helping these people for months, which no way we'll pay for, then we've got to start blaming them for their plight now."
"But end on a nice strong note of helping out, looking like a good guy."

"So, we've got to figure out some way to convince people that whenever warnings go out it's for their own good," Brown said. "Now, I don't want to second guess why they did that. My job now is to get relief to them."

I just imagined this conversation, right?

Where is our leadership?

DATELINE SEPT 1-2, 2005

Dick Cheney is still on vacation in Wyoming,
Condelezza Rice is watching a Broadway show and buying shoes ($1000's),
Karl Rove went to Texas to hang out with 6 bush supporters at Crawford,
and Bush is, I guess, in the rose garden smelling them.

Although Thursday evening he admitted that there were hungry and thirsty people in the Superdome, by the morning of Sept 2, Michael Brown, the head of FEMA was once again swearing on tv that people in New Orleans at the Superdome had adequate food and water.

Looting or Lunch?

Remember those values clarification exercises from 6th grade? Is it ok to steal to feed your kids?

MSNBC says, "Looters take advantage of New Orleans mess"

People in New Orleans who were too poor to be able to get out of town, who had to live at the Superdome, who don't have cars, looted (an AP story on MSNBC and CNN).

At a Walgreen’s drug store in the French Quarter, people were running out with grocery baskets and coolers full of soft drinks, chips and diapers.

No electricity, the food in their fridges rotted.
And it's not like there were any stores open to sell them diapers and food.

Looting is wrong, and lots of the looting was just plain stealing stuff, but please, there's no food for sale in New Orleans!

In 1983 I got caught out in a Monsoon in the Philippines with a couple of friend. We were trapped by water, and slept on a porch of a store, and ate a pineapple that'd been left in the corner of the porch. We were ready to break in for water and food when the rain stopped and the water started receeding. It could have been called looting, but I would have called it lunch.

The most unfortunate thing Howard Dean's said since the Scream

"I have three words for the Democratic Party...
We
can
Do
Better."

I saw this as I was falling asleep, on Letterman, I think. Can anyone confirm?

Lesbians, Terrorists, Judges, and Assassins

Pat Robertson.

That's all I need to say.

McDonald's French Fried redux

Why McDonald's Fries
Taste So Good

By Eric Schlosser

Excerpt From

'Fast Food Nation' (Houghton-Mifflin, 2001)

From The Atlantic Monthly

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2001/01/schlosser.htm

1-17-01

http://www.rense.com/general7/whyy.htm

Twisty Turny of craziness. Fred Phelps as Gay Plant

I published a sermon I gave recently in Plattsburgh NY (Fred Phelps, Tom Cruise, and Me) on my other blog. Here's an interesting follow up.

The Religous/Theocratic Right has enjoyed the useful existence of Fred Phelps for years now, for they can claim that they're not as bad as he is-- that they love people, just hate their sin, whereas Rev. Phelps hates the people and the sin. Here's a good example, from what might be called generic evangelical conservative Christians, by that I mean people who are Christian first and whose politics follow what they believe is clear and fairly consistent biblical teaching... and here's one put out by one of the more vehement anti-gay organizations of the Theocratic Right, where politics is cloaked in the rhetoric of religion.

In an incredible twisty turny, Peter LaBarbera, (who once attended a Leather Party in D.C. just so he could count how many acts of sodomy he witnessed,) has, in the same essay, condemned Fred Phelps for not supporting the idea that gays can change, and simultaneously hypothesized that that Phelps is a gay plant, not really a homophobe.

silly rabbit.

Justice Sunday II

Where have I been all summer? There's been lots going on, but crankycindy wasn't cranky.

Especially surprising is the silence on Justice Sunday, the Theocratic Right's assault on judicial independance. Normally, I'd have watched the Justice Sunday event on tv, while taping it and taking notes about who said what where on the tape, fussing a little, thinking about excerpts to use when teaching, and maybe even a little of this new blogging thing.

The basic origin of the Justice Sunday was in opposition to the idea of "activist judges," which has been discussed at length elsewhere. In particular, this right wing rhetoric of anti-independent judiciary went from bristling and posturing to outright public fits when gay marriage became legal in Massachusetts.

They said things like this: (thanks to the PFAW coverage)

James Dobson said “Consider this: In the next few months, and certainly in the next few years, the Supreme Court is going to be issuing rulings on a variety of extremely important issues, including the very definition of marriage. The family itself is at stake here. . . .

Eagle Forum's Phyllis Schlafly [said] “The biggest threat facing America today is the out-of-control judges who are banning our acknowledgement of God in schools and public places, overturning marriage and morality, and imposing their social views on us.” ... “I call these judges supremacists,” while others call them “liberal activist judges” or practitioners of “judicial autocracy.”

Tony Perkins [said] “The Court has expanded the Constitution to include the right to kill unborn children. They've expanded the plate so that they can find this right to homosexual sodomy. . . . "

Former Democratic Senator Zell Miller (GA) stated wildly, “[The court] has removed prayer and the Bible from schools. Each Christmas it kidnaps the baby Jesus, halo, manger, and all, from the city square. It has legalized the barbaric killing of unborn babies, and is ready to discard like an outdated hula hoop the universal institution of marriage between a man and a woman.

I didn't see the Justice Sunday event. Didn't even remember to videotape it.

I got married instead.

To my female partner.

In a church, with a license and officiant, parents, family and friends.

Happy details on happycindy.blogspot.com

I'm working on the template of this blog today

Please ignore any temporary ugliness while I try to pretend I'm technologically adept.

I was wrong

I finally got an answer on the MARC poster. It isn't a MARC poster.... it's a CSX poster. Hence, the wrongness of my suspicion that it was street activist art, counter propaganda.

Recently, the MTA received a number of inquiries from
MARC riders concerning the "Watch, Ride & Report"
poster which was commissioned by CSX last year.

MARC contracts with CSX for its commuter rail service
on the Brunswick & Camden Lines. Both lines are owned
and operated by CSX.

CSX displayed the poster at rail facilities during
the last year as part of its campaign to promote
passenger security awareness. You may consider
contacting CSX Corporate Communications to inquire
about its origin.

MARC did not post or distribute this poster.
Please note that the term "MARC Marshals" is a
phrase used on the poster named by CSX and is not
an official MARC program.

MTA Customer Communications

What's an old radical to do when business interests start co-opting old socialist and nazi art in a counter propaganda way. And when they do so using fake police forces. (So I was a little right)

I specifically asked MARC to provide me with a contact at "any other agency, business, or interest that may have posted this poster." Alas, what is clearly a form letter response didn't provide one, so I'll keep looking.

we believe things when they fit in our view of the world

I came across a blog today while investigating the upcoming protest of Plattsburgh NY by Fred Phelps and Family AKA Westboro Baptist Church (more on this later). He restated something he read in the local paper that claimed there were 4,000 homeless people in NYC. He very simply believed this statistic. He seems proud of himself that the he'd known the estimate of 90,000 given by his college professor was way off, and pleased that his initial disbelief of it, and wonders at the impact on other students who believed

the number thrown out there by the admittedly liberal instructor and may have let that, and other unsubstantiated statements by their instructors, influence their ideologies in subsequent years.

Apparently, he didn't think twice about believing this number. It was clearly a much more believable number for him, and so merited no investigation. Tho' one might think that if one had a website/blog, they might be basically proficient in internet research.

So I was cranky, and didn't buy the 4,000 number. I lived in NYC for 3 years, my own experience said that there were more than that, by a factor of 10 or 20. I thought I'd look it up and email him the results. At this point in the research and this story, I was simply mad at this guy for not checking his facts or reading the original article carefully enough to make him wonder if apples were being compared to oranges. Very hungry apples and oranges.

Had he pondered the incredible difference, or wondered at the genesis of this discrepancy, he could have simply Googled or Clusty'd the question.

So I did for him.
The FIRST response that came up in my search was a Coalition for the Homeless Fact Sheet

In February 2005 some 36,200 homeless men, women, and children were sleeping each night in the New York City shelter system, including 14,900 children, 12,600 adult family members, and 8,700 single adults. Thousands more sleep on city streets, park benches, and subway trains. Since 1998 the New York City homeless shelter population has increased by 72 percent, from 21,100 people in shelters each night to 36,200 people per night currently.

One of many advocacy research documents.

Even if one were disinclined to trust statistics put out by advocacy organizations, and presumed that the above liberal professor had friends in such liberal professions as social work and social justice, the simple fact of 36,000 beds being utilized each night would indicate that, hmmm, something is wrong here. But nope, not for this blogger, he bit into the 4000 figure right off, it proved his instincts were right all along and so a quick google was unnecessary.


The second result was a socialist newspaper. I skipped it without even looking, because if a professor at Plattsburgh State University was too liberal, this blogger would never accept anything the socialists purported.

The third result was a WABC article in 2002 which noted the homeless population went over 30,000. Of course, they also cited the above advocacy organization, so maybe he wouldn't believe that either.

The fourth one tho', that's the NYC Department of the Homeless Services. And we all trust government statistics, so I was sure I'd find something to send him.

Their statistics page has several documents. This (pdf) is the result of a survey conducted by walking around the streets. It indicates they found 4,395 individuals who were on the street and not in shelters. It wasn't the homeless population, it was the population of people who weren't in a shelter that night, those that they could find.

So I'm grumpy, still mad at that original blogger for not checking things out before repeating them, but now the NYC survey smells incredibly rotten. Only 4,300 un-sheltered homeless? This smells like the kind of rotten that is on a 650 calorie energy bar that proudly advertizes Zero grams of fat as if ingested unused sugar isn't turned into fat in your body.

Even so, my ideology, my worldview means that I'm just as likely as the aforementioned blogger to believe what is most similar to what I already believe, so the right thing to do is to keep investigating.

Their search for volunteers went out like this:

Project HOPE 2005, the annual census of New York City's homeless, will take place on February 28th, when around 2000 volunteers will set out to assigned areas to count the number of street homeless they encounter between the hours of 10:30pm and 4am. The information and statistics gathered on this night are crucial to all policy-making and aid initiatives at DHS and throughout the City government for the remainder of the year.

They used a "scientific method." They divided the city into small areas, groups of city blocks, or a park, divided into low and high density (of homeless people), then walked through a RANDOMLY SELECTED AREA for four hours.

It's named much like a military operation naming aggressive action Operation Fuzzy Bunny of Freedom.

Project Hope. Like,
i hope i don't get mugged,
i hope I don't find any frozen dead people.
I hope i can count them from a distance.

That's like trying to estimate the gay people in Massachusetts by randomly sampling Taunton, Framingham, Turner's Falls, and Stockbridge, and one known high density area, say, the South End of Boston. But without counting the gay people where you know for sure they are, like, say, Provincetown, Cambridge, Northampton, you aren't going to get a statistically accurate anything.

I'm all ready to email him when I discovered that his identity didn't exist on his web page and it wasn't possible to email him. (tho' the subsequent use of whois led me to identify him as male).

So I opted to link to his plattsblog site and talk about it here.
Plus, now i'm mad at the NYC Dept for Homeless Services, helping M. Bloomberg lower the # of homeless people one statistic at a time.

Well, here's a lovely article by the Coalition for the Homeless about the under counting in this survey. They do a great job of debunking this silly idea of random sampling homeless people, methodological flaws, and other data.

So my blogging rant can stop

I'm sticking my neck out against blogosphere public opinion. I predict that the MARC poster is subversive art, not Homeland Security

There’s an incredible thing in the blogosphere today – we are willing to believe that our Homeland Security folk (or even the Maryland Transportation Administration) would put a Watch, Ride, and Report poster on the Maryland Trains. I believe that people are stupid, but not stupid, ya know? Agencies under Geo. Bush using Soviet looking posters? I can't see it happening.My penchant for accuracy go the best of me... and my declaration, at 2:06 pm is that it's public art as social intervention.

The site that the photo is on is of Railroad photography, not the MARC railroad itself. Responses on blogs that are discussing this today have included people seeing this poster in various places, and one guy says he called, and the Maryland Transportation folks say it's not theirs.

I can find no web presence of an entity called the "MARC Marshals" as the poster reads. The security/police for MARC is the Maryland Transit Administration Police (MTA).
The use of the word "Marshals" suggests Air Marshals, so it would seem to make sense on quick glance, but I think not.

Resources:

The Billboard Liberation Front's discussion of "Questions for Redressing the Imposition on Public Space"

Looks like the Propaganda Remix Project

http://www.obeygiant.com/main.php OBEY -= Manufacturing Quality Dissent since Engineering Propaganda

or The Praxis Group, "a Minneapolis-based unit which stages site-specific, unsanctioned and unsolicited projects within the confines of public spaces which are privately owned."

or Propaganda Billboards that can be found here

Other satire and subvertizing posters like this can be found at About.com here

And a nifty film of made by robbie conal “guerilla etiquette and postering guide” is at http://www.robbieconal.com/guerrilla.html (needs quicktime) The rest of the website's cool too.
Clearly, this site is doing wheatpaste, not getting posters inside "official" displays...

My opinion, and I'm sticking with it until someone proves me wrong.

Cold McDonald's French Fries...

are gross.

Does anyone know why? Like, do you know the science of why they're tasty delicious when hot and disgusting when cold?

Michelle? Anyone?

Mark Felt and COINTELPRO

Remember CointelPro? The FBI's Counter Intelligence Program designed to illegally harass, discredit, injure and kill people who opposed US policies?

This is a nice time to remind people that the Patriot Act is not without precedent. The difference is that before, the Federal Govt, via the FBI, violated constitutional rights extra-legally, now they're doing it within the permitted baloney of the PA.

The Salt Lake Tribune says today (06/02/2005 01:10:49 AM) that
MR. Watergate Deep Throat was an "imperfect hero."

Now that Felt has outed himself, the most famous mystery of the Watergate affair, which brought down Nixon's presidency, has been solved.
The larger questions, though, go beyond "Deep Throat's" identity. Was Felt a hero or a traitor? He seems to have wrestled with that question himself for years.
He was a hero, though like others, not a perfect one. The political dirty tricks of the Nixon campaign in 1972 were bad enough, but the president's attempt to cover up the wiretaps, burglaries and other misdeeds approached the tactics of a police state.
Felt was right to cry foul, even if he used cloak-and-dagger methods to protect his own identity.
Were his actions criminal? Possibly. He did reveal secrets of a criminal investigation. But there is little doubt that by doing so, he served the greater good.

One blog says "Felt's leaks were disloyal on a personal level, but were loyal to American democracy. This is what makes him a hero."

Chuck Colson and Pat Buchanan lament that W. Mark Felt was a snitch.

"I'm still in a state of shock," Colson told "Today" show host Matt Lauer. "I never thought anybody in such a position of sensitivity in the Justice Department would breach confidence. And if the FBI can't be protected to keep confidences, then it shakes you - it shakes the citizens' confidence in government."

Rejecting the description of Felt as a national hero, Buchanan said

"there's nothing heroic about breaking faith with your people, breaking the law, sneaking around in garages, putting stuff from an investigation out to a Nixon-hating Washington Post."

He didn't mean, of course, the COINTELPRO activities mentioned below, but sneaking out to meet reporters.

Mind you, this is the same Pat Buchanan who

"opposed virtually every civil rights law and court decision of the last 30 years, published FBI smears of Martin Luther King Jr. as his own editorials in the St. Louis Globe Democrat in the mid-1960s. "We were among Hoover's conduits to the American people," he boasted (Right from the Beginning, p. 283)."

(see more at the Fair Report of Feb 26, 1996.)

So, Is W. Mark Felt a hero?
W. Mark Felt was a high ranking official during most of the time of CointelPro.

The Church Committee Report on INTELLIGENCE ACTIVITIES AND THE RIGHTS OF AMERICANS (Book II, section A. Violating and ignoring the Law) states that

"Internal inspection at the FBI has traditionally not encompassed legal or ethical questions at all. According to W. Mark Felt, the Assistant FBI Director in charge of the Inspection Division from 1964 to 1971, his job was to ensure that Bureau programs were being operated efficiently, not constitutionally: "There was no instruction to me," he stated, "nor do I believe there is any instruction in the Inspector's manuals, that inspectors should be on the alert to see that constitutional values are being protected." He could not recall any program which was terminated because it might have been violating someone's civil rights.

Thus, Felt testified that if, in the course of an inspection of a field office, he discovered a microphone surveillance on Martin Luther King, Jr., the only questions he would ask were whether it had been approved by the Director and whether the procedures had been properly followed.

When Felt was asked whether the Inspection Division conducted any investigation into the propriety of COINTELPRO, the following exchange ensued:

Mr. FELT. Not into the propriety.

Q. So in the case of COINTELPRO, as in the case of NSA interceptions, your job as Inspector was to determine whether the program was being pursued effectively as opposed to whether it was proper?

Mr. FELT. Right, with this exception, that in any of these situations, Counterintelligence Program or whatever, it very frequently happened that the inspectors, in reviewing the files, would direct that a certain investigation be discontinued, that it was not productive, or that there was some reason that it be discontinued.

But I don't recall any cases being discontinued in the Counterintelligence program.

As a result of this role definition, the Inspection Division became an active participant in some of the most questionable FBI programs For example, it was responsible for reviewing on an annual basis all memoranda relating to illegal break-ins prior to their destruction under the "DO NOT FILE" procedure."

I'm very glad that Deep Throat blabbed. It mattered to us as citizens. Immensely.

But it doesn't make him a hero.