Way to Go Iowa!

Not Cranky Today!

Our responsibility, however, is to protect constitutional rights of individuals from legislative enactments that have denied those rights, even when the rights have not yet been broadly accepted, were at one time unimagined, or challenge a deeply ingrained practice or law viewed to be impervious to the passage of time." The Iowa Supreme Court.

Why some people should not drink at the staff Holiday Party

A Cartoon.
originally posted here.

No Commentary Needed.

Except to point out that this is funny, but not a personal statement of any kind.
I happen to adore my boss, and working conditions here could be improved upon, but are far from frightful.















Alternative text provided for accessibility:
A drunk man standing on the punch table up sings:
"Well conditions at work are frightful,
and the boss is not delightful,
and someday we'll all be let go,
this job blows,
this job blows,
this job blows."

Caption:
Harvey's bitter, drunken version of "Let it Snow"
brought down the house at what turned out to be
his last Christmas Party.

Friends don't let Friends give socks to terrorists

Nat Hentoff reports A Brooklyn College Grad Experiences the Constitution in a Cage.

For the past year, a 28-year-old Muslim American student, Sayed Fahad Hashmi—the first person extradited to the United States from Britain to face charges of terrorism—has been held at the Manhattan Correctional Center under conditions of confinement that are the very definition of the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of "cruel and unusual punishment."

He has not been charged with being a member of Al Qaeda or for providing any money or resources to any terrorist. He is here—for a trial months away in 2009—for letting a former acquaintance, Junaid Babar, stay for a couple of weeks in his London apartment, where Babar stored several ponchos, raincoats, and waterproof socks in a suitcase.

A week ago, I was having a proud to be an American moment. But there is so much work to be done. The conditions under which he is being held, this American citizen? This is keeping me safe?

On a 23-hour solitary-confinement lockdown, Hashmi, was not allowed family visits for months. Now, he can see one person for an hour and a half, but only every other week. He is permitted to write only one letter a week to a single member of his family, but he cannot use more than three pieces of paper per letter. (I would be grateful, Mr. Mukasey, for an explanation of how these restrictions serve our security needs.) Mr. Hashmi is forbidden any contact—directly or through his attorneys—with the news media. He can read newspapers, but only those portions approved by his jailers—and not until 30 days after publication. And he is absolutely forbidden to listen to news radio stations or to watch television news channels.

You will not be surprised to learn that he is under 24-hour electronic monitoring and is forbidden to communicate with any of the other inmates. However, a merciful Justice Department allows him one hour of recreation every day—inside a cage.

There is nothing I can say to comment upon this that the facts themselves don't say.
Go read the whole article.

If only I had stock in Cafe Press

The Sarah Palin Debate Flow Chart is available on products from buttons to messenger bags. I'm sitting here wondering what I'll break down and buy.

I stayed up half the night and yelled at the tv with family and facebooked with friends and then went to sleep. These guys stayed up all night and made money.

Palin-Biden debate drinking games

I went a'googlin' for drinkin' games, and lookey here, Josh Nelson over at The Huffington Post has compiled them for me.

You can go there for the whole thing, but I could choose from this brief selection:

When Palin claims she said "Thanks but no thanks" to the Bridge to Nowhere: Demand a new drink from your hosts, say "thanks but no thanks," and then when no one's looking, take it anyway, then claim you never wanted it. (Via) (from MIT)

Every time Palin mentions a Moose or says something so stupid you think she might be less intelligent than one: drink a Moosehead beer.

Everytime Biden mentions a foreign leader he has met: sip wine -- every time he mentions a Senator as a friend: drink beer.

Every time Palin fidgets and twists her fingers, switch drinks with the person next to you.

Every time Palin mentions Wasilla drink a shot of Jager and howl at the wolves.

(If you go to the original page, you'll find more ideas, and many embedded links)

But since I'm just too old to drink like that, more likely I'll simply add tequila to my margarita for every answer squeezed in that she missed with Katie Couric last week. She said she'd get back to ya on that, so I'm going to drink when she does.

Smithsonian Magazine on Why Iran is so Ticked off

I hate when I forget the history I swear I'll learn from. I'd forgotten that in 1953, the US overthrew Iran's democratic govt (whose Prime Minister was Time Magazine's Man of the Year in 1951) and installed the Shah. I had remembered that we backed the Shah, but had forgotten that we went and actually did the imperialist intervention thing to establish him.

Stephen Kinzer's excellent article, Inside Iran's Fury, is available online.

About the Iran hostage Crisis, he writes

Bruce Laingen, a career diplomat who was chief of the U.S. embassy staff, was the highest-ranking hostage. One day, after Laingen had spent more than a year as a hostage, one of his captors visited him in his solitary cell. Laingen exploded in rage, shouting at his jailer that this hostage-taking was immoral, illegal and "totally wrong." The jailer waited for him to finish, then replied without sympathy.

"You have nothing to complain about," he told Laingen. "The United States took our whole country hostage in 1953."

Understanding what hundreds of years of foreign intervention will do to the cultural and political outlook of a people (as say, First Nation peoples in North America, or African American descendants of 400 years of slavery) is important in terms of understanding the political context of a country in this fraught region.

And understanding how our CIA overthrew a[nother] government because their policies were first and foremost in the interest of their own people and not ours... that's a patriotic duty. The good and the bad people, the good and the bad.

Working Class Warrior or Liberal Elite ?

I took the How to Win a Fight with a Conservative Quiz, and with one answer change, got two different identities.

I had a terrible time deciding who to place in my naked pyramid, (in fact, wanted an opt-out so as to put no one into a naked pyramid) so I tried it both ways:

Turns out that it doesn't take much to change me from my working/middle class anti-corporate greed roots into an intellectual elite.

Putting George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld into a naked pyramid made me a Working Class Warrior.

My Liberal Identity:

You are a Working Class Warrior, also known as a blue-collar Democrat. You believe that the little guy is getting screwed by conservative greed-mongers and corporate criminals, and you’re not going to take it anymore.

Take the quiz at www.FightConservatives.com

Putting Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter, and Rush Limbaugh in the pyramid is all it took to make me into a Reality Based Intellectualist

My Liberal Identity:

You are a Reality-Based Intellectualist, also known as the liberal elite. You are a proud member of what’s known as the reality-based community, where science, reason, and non-Jesus-based thought reign supreme.

Take the quiz at www.FightConservatives.com

Truth is, I'm a farm girl that went and got edumakated. Which kind of makes me a Working Class Warrior Liberal Elite.

Funny how quizzes never have a category for that.

Nod to Ms. Kitty and Rev. Sean.

While you were watching the Other Hand

The House just passed the $630 Billion Omnibus bill. The Bank Bail out makes great press, as does John McCain's "suspending the campaign."
Meantime, as if they're powerless, the House Dems have passed a bill that contains
$488 Billion for the Pentagon
$30 Billion for Homeland Security
But not the increase in food stamps, extension of unemployment insurance, or Medicaid support they wanted.
Thank god there's an increase in funding for Veterans' Health programs, but here's a surprise to me, a 25-Billion dollar bail out (low interest loan) of the US Auto manufacturers. hmmm...

Thanks to ohmygov.com

and mom.

David Letterman on "suspending the campaign"

I haven't seen Letterman go on and on like this in a long time.

"You don't suspend your campaign, you have the vice president run it... are we suspending it b/c there's an economic crisis, or are we suspending it because his poll numbers are dropping......someone's been putting something in his Metamucil... you don't suspend the campaign, you put in your second string quarter back. Where's Sarah Palin? ...The Economy in Alaska is fine.

and best of all, 7 minutes in he does a lovely bit about how McCain couldn't be on Letterman because he was racing back to Washington, but then cuts live to the Evening News studio where he is doing an interview with Catie Couric.



or link directly

Sarah Palin - even talking about her is sexist

Why watch real news when there's Jon Stewart? He masters another moment of letting people speak for themselves...again and again and Oh My Goodness, it's quite lovely. Watch Karl Rove, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Dick Morris, Nancy Pfotenhauer.

Reasons to love Jimmy Carter #46587b

You may have forgotten, but Carter put solar panels on the white house in 1979, and offered tax credits to Americans who did the same.

Reason # 5,947,356 to be mad at Ronald Reagon -- he took them down and terminated the tax credits.

Carter's goal was to have 20% of the nations energy supplied by renewable sources by the end of the 20th century.

Today it is the same as it was in 1979 -- %6

Jon Stewart and Samantha Bee introduce Sarah Palin

Right here...


Keep watching for the excellent moment of letting FOX commentators speak for themselves.

Just a heads up, Samantha Bee goes a bit over the top... even for me.

Really really bad judgement

See the party boat.

See students drink.

Drink, Students, Drink.

Vodka or beer?

Both please.

They can drink because everyone on board is over 21.

Drink more students, drink more.

(wait, excuse me a minute....

What?

Not all students?

A... what was that? A President?

Oh, that guy my age is Robert Paxton, President of their community college?

Oh.)

Hold the keg Mr. President.

Drink, Students, Drink.

Resign, Mr. President, resign.


Why might he think this wasn't a bad idea? Maybe because no one has ever put the brakes on his behavior before. According to Clark Kauffman at the Des Moines Register,

In 2002, Paxton was indicted on charges of felonious misconduct in office, falsification of public records and tampering with public records. The charges grew out of an investigation into student athletes being awarded false grades.

Three of Paxton’s colleagues at Iowa Central eventually pleaded guilty to charges they tampered with student records to benefit the athletes and to deceive others. All three men retained their jobs at the school. The charges against Paxton were deferred under an agreement in which he accepted responsibility for the transcript fraud.

I guess if you get to keep your job after being responsible for tampering with student records, it might not occur to you that partying with students is a bad idea.

My favorite bit: he gets paid $400,000 for resigning.

PolitiFact : checking on political accusations

The Truth-O-Meter is great!

Even better than truthiness, they do fact-checking.

Constantly updated, for instance, when it became clear that John McCain has 8, (not 7) houses, they fixed it immediately.

When is Fasting and Prayer like Mind Control?

When it happens in DC, in August, for 12 straight hours, in likely 90+ degree heat and has silence rather than speech as an expectation of participants.
Mind Control = Creating circumstances within which one person can modify perception and cognition of another. It's not rocket science - it's social psychology.

The Call : A Fast, not a Festival August 16, 2008, Chief organizer, Lou Engle.

It is not enough that Jesus died. Someone must apply the blood of Jesus to the national sin of USA.
~ Lou Engle, from The doctrine of the Shedding of Innocent Blood(this is a .pdf).

First, who is Lou Engle? You think you've never heard of him, but you did if you saw "Jesus Camp" He is the man who showed plastic fetuses to young children and reminded them that 1/3 of their potential friends had been aborted. He prayed while the children chanted, "Righteous Judges, Righteous Judges."

We are preparing for some 500,000 people, but really there's no way of knowing beforehand.

Can you imagine though if 500,000 people gathered on the National Mall, not in irritated protest against a man or his policies, but in abandoned worship and prayer - coming before the Lord, in a Joel 2 Solemn Assembly where united in fasting and prayer, generations turn to seek the Lord? Can you see the largest silent siege - as seas of people in solemn silent prayer with red LIFE tape across their mouths turn to face the supreme court and pray to the Maker of Heaven and Earth to "...end abortion and send revival to America?" and establish righteous judges?

What might this LIFE tape look like at a rally of fasting and prayer?


Faith Development is the natural unfolding of one's mind toward trust and commitment. There are natural stages of this, and concrete ways to help people to explore in developmentally appropriate ways.

The opposite of Faith Development is Mind Control -- dishonest and manipulative influence over what people believe.

How do you exert, not honest, appropriate influence, but manipulative influence to the point of control, over what people believe?
BITE
Control over Behavior, Information, Thought, Emotions. (Hassan)

What might this look like?
~Control the environment and limit information and ideas -- social environment and physical environment.
~Cast the world as binary - 1 and 0, yes or no, on or off. Don't allow for questioning, or context or complexity.
~Be sure you have absolute truth and repeat it again and again.
~Use language that is so loaded that everyone accepts the meaning of the word, and the surrounding ideas.
~Manipulate and induce blank-mind states - trance like states of openness -- through prayer, chanting, repetitive singing, etc.
~Keep them tired, fill up their awake time with material controlled by the group leader.
~Create emotional highs and lows and use those emotional states to induce thinking that the leader wants.

If you want to control someone's mind, control their behavior, limit their freedoms (of movement, speech, self-care), and keep them hungry and tired.

I've been to Marches on Washington. Hot, sweaty, thirsty, hungry and tired from a bzillion hour bus ride, but I am expected to participate, to march, to move my body and interact with people, to eat and drink, and listen to different speakers, some of whom don't' agree on everything and we all agree to disagree that day b/c the focus of the march is primary.
And we holler. And hoot. and whistle. And did I say, eat?

We sometimes take UU youth to events, overnight trips/lock-ins, or camps - and we support them while they examine and ponder and talk and worship and eat and drink. We feed and water them, we keep them safe, we engage them in dialogue, and we strongly encourage sleeping and other forms of self-care.

What happens if young people stand silently in the sun without eating for 12 hours?
They think this is what will happen:

TheCall does not seek to entertain, but to encounter God. Unlike other mass gatherings which attract people through the rhythms of loud music, the glamour of flashing lights, or through the appeal of charismatic personalities, TheCall is a gathering centered around the affections of a loving God. There will be no advertised bands and no promoted speakers, as our purpose is not to promote any man or ministry.

TheCall is a FAST not a festival. TheCall is a SOLEMN ASSEMBLY not a conference.
Whereas conferences focus primarily on training and discipleship, the 12 hours of TheCall are spent primarily before the Lord in the place of prayer and worship. ...
PEOPLE SHOULD PRAYERFULLY CONSIDER FASTING ON THE DAY OF THECALL
Those who fast should do so under the supervision of parents and doctors and by the leading of the Holy Spirit. A person could fast just one meal or drink only juice for the day. Water will be provided by The Call organization; however, food will not be available because this is a solemn assembly to pray and fast for revival. (bold emphasis mine)

I think that this prayer and fasting in the sun is just plain wrong. Their belief system aside (and don't get me started) I think this is coercive at best, abusive at worst.

An intervention is called for. This is what I would do if I weren't' in a pulpit the next day 650 miles away. Maybe you might choose to do it my stead.

Go to the rally.
Pass out juice and crackers/cookies/fruit.
Tell people the food is free, like speech, and you hope they will ask questions instead of agreeing to silence.
Don't argue, feed and walk away.

Jesus fed the 5000. No reason we couldn't as well.

Turn your face away from GA just for a minute

and watch Stephen Colbert interview Tony Perkins, President of the Family Research Council, on Gay Marriage. He's plugging his book, Personal Faith, Public Policy. This clip was from May 27, but you can never wait too long to watch Stephen smoothly "agree" with his right wing guests.





According to the FRC website, the authors

argue that the religious Right is not falling apart; rather it is growing, expanding, and being rejuvenated.

"What our critics see as 'splintering' is actually the growing pains that precede a healthy expansion," write Jackson and Perkins. "The movement is adapting to the changing political environment and broadening its ranks while holding firmly to the principles that have united us thus far."

Jackson and Perkins write that the religious Right has experienced significant growth in recent years, becoming more diverse in a number of important ways, from race to age to political affiliation; however, they conclude that unifying these coalitions has been and will continue to be a challenge to the religious Right.

I wonder why they capitalized Right, but not religious in those paragraphs.
Perhaps being Right is more important than being religious?

naw, probably just an intern.

Best Zinger all year

Departing from the cranky news, I thot I'd share a story wherein I'm not the cranky one.

My best friends used to own a small store during the 90's and into this century. I helped out and supported them and watched them through good and lean times, I got a discount on nifty items, and contributed my New Years' Days to inventory and carpet cleaning. Eventually, they sold the store. I have a huge soft spot in my heart for this store, and feel a lingering connection to it.

The new owner rearranged, and like when a therapist gets a new office, or the minister redecorates after a decade, the changes just felt wrong for the longest time. But after a few years I'd gotten used to the changes, and the store continued to have a special place in my heart.

I was there yesterday, asked the owner how he was, and he told me that he is selling and has a couple of prospective buyers. Awww.... damn. It seemed wrong again, just after I had gotten used to him and his way of doing things, just after I had gotten used to paying retail price for everything.

I said, the way I would were we say, actual friends, "So are you getting out with some money, or just your shirt?"

He didn't miss a beat and with no affect whatsoever said, "I am happy to talk in detail about that with any prospective buyers."

Bam, Zing, Set that boundary I'd crossed. It was excellent, and I laughed with appreciation.

He didn't.


I wonder if it is similar to how people come in and out of congregations, and have an emotional relationship to the congregation as a place, or as an idea, and come back after time away and are surprised that they can't just jump in where they left off.

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.