January 18, 2010 archive

Afternoon Edition

Afternoon Edition is an Open Thread

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 Haiti fears grows despite surge in relief effort

by Sophie Nicholson, AFP

1 hr 28 mins ago

PORT-AU-PRINCE (AFP) – Haiti relief efforts stepped up a gear Monday with the arrival of thousands more US Marines, while doctors and aid workers struggled to save lives and stave off disease six days after the quake.

Despite the massive international effort spearheaded by the United States, security fears grew as television pictures showed troops in combat gear firing off rounds and hauling looters to the ground in the capital Port-au-Prince.

The Red Cross warned that violence by desperate Haitians was growing, although Lieutenant-General Ken Keen, the top US officer on the ground, insisted: “The level of violence we see now is below pre-earthquake levels.”

What Would MLK …SAY… Day

No one, of course, can speak for a dead hero.

But today as everyone honors his memory…..and seems to forget what he stood for…

I would rather take this second to have us all ask ourselves what Martin would be saying about the issues of the day.

What would he say about escalating AfPak and Drone killings?

What would he say about Wall St. preying on the weak?

What would he say about there STILL being a permanent underclass in America….and it still consisting of a disproportionate number of people of color? 40 years after his death.

Etc.

And what would he be DOING about it?

And how, lol, would the Dem establishment be reacting?

We all have only our subjective answers to these questions.

But I am guessing that Martin would not be heeding the calls to STFU for “the Good of the Party,” lol.

Thank You, Martin. RIP.

Boston Globe reports: “Nearly half polled say Obama not delivering on promises.”

According to the Boston Globe, nearly half of Americans polled believe that U.S. dictator Barack Obama is not living up to his campaign promises.

Nearly half of the Americans surveyed said Obama is not delivering on his major campaign promises, and a narrow majority had some or no confidence that he will make the right decisions for the country’s future.

More than a third saw the president as falling short of their expectations, about double the proportion saying so at the 100-day mark of Obama’s presidency in April. At the time, 63 percent said the new president had accomplished a “great deal” or a “good amount.” The percentage saying so in the recent poll dropped to 47 percent.

Although the article does not mention the loss of left-wing support as reason for the drop-off, choosing instead to focus on right-wing discontent, the overall attitude indicated by surveys is that he is either incapable or unwilling to make good on public expectations of change away from the institutionalized horrors of the Bush-Cheney regime.

The signs are everywhere that at least one chamber of Congress will revert back to Republican rule, though the public is unlikely to notice the difference.  Obama really shot himself in the foot by raising people’s expectations without having any intention of meeting them.  No one thought he would be able to work miracles, and no one has claimed that he would end eight years of devastation overnight.  But with a year now behind his dictatorship, Obama has not made even token efforts to undo the policies of the Bush-Cheney regime – and in some cases, such as government secrecy and illegal spying on Americans, he has exceeded them.  The public is not stupid.  We do not enjoy being lied to, used, taken for granted.  And we will punish those who do so.

Scamerica

Everybody knows the economy is gone and it ain’t coming back.  That makes great incentives for internet scamming gone wild.

Yes Mr. Lasthorseman, we are registered agents for Visa and Mastercard.  All you have to do is…….

Well, look up the name of the company on Google and there are scam alerts.

Wear Red for Haiti

As I have already said, I apologize if this is already common knowledge. Tomorrow an international fundraising and solidarity event will be staged. Everyone, everywhere can be involved. If we all step up together, and each of us makes a small contribution, we will make a difference!

Open Smile

Photobucket

Nothing Like a Little Disaster for Sorting Things Out

As many of you have been doing, I am nervously monitoring the special election for Massachusetts senator.  By now, one would hope that no one needs reminding of the repercussions and consequences a defeat would portend both for the short term and for the long term, but one would hope also that its instantaneous impact would spur many to make long-deferred reforms.  To wit, Coakley’s defeat would make a powerful statement to residents in even the bluest of blue states.  To wit, liberalism must self-monitor and must fortify itself against a desire to snooze and slumber.  Nothing is owed to us in this world and a person is only as successful as his or her last triumph.  This realization can be applied well beyond the Democratic party and all the concentric circles of influence and power that feed into it.  Indeed, the ripple effects if Scott Brown wins will be felt across the country and will spawn a thousand prophets in the publication wilderness, each proclaiming that the end is nigh for a Democratic majority.  

Constipated activist organizations now tapping out a panicked SOS are profuse, but as is my want, I’d like to single out one in particular.  One can only hope that if, God forbid, Coakley were to lose, the mainstream Feminist™ organizations currently pushing for her election might be forced to concede that their strategies are out of date and their larger influence is negligible in the grand scheme of things.  Coakley’s detached Front Porch Campaign did not resonate well with voters inclined to distrust and thus to be turned off by on candidates who seem above kissing babies, shaking hands, and being highly visible to the prospective voter.  Though I do not welcome the sense of helplessness that might reverberate through many workplaces come tomorrow night, I know that sometimes people have to learn their lessons the hard way.  And in so doing, they have to sometimes have to learn them more than once.  Still, how many times do some have to be on the losing end of easily preventable catastrophes before they recognize that the problem is with themselves, not with external factors?  

Sloth and entitlement are usually fatal flaws in politics and activism, and at least one recent harsh blogosphere attack against the established players of Feminism™ was penned in an effort to shake them out of their old ways.  These organizations do have a function and I’m not advocating that they need to be dismantled, but they do need to step into the times and embrace new realities.  The true tragedy is that there are any number of highly qualified women who could be enlisted for the cause and be convinced to run for any number of high elective offices.  Instead, someone decides to earmark and denote a particular legislative office for a Female™ and then feels obligated to advance a candidate with the highest possible degree of name-recognition, regardless of whether she is a good fit for the office.  In addition to being bad policy, this is tokenism writ large.  Tokenism has never truly advanced anyone’s noble imperative.  What it has done is appease someone’s guilt and in so doing serve as a temporary concession rather than a desire to completely integrate women actively into the political process.  If we were really committed to the idea of equality, then such decisions would be a matter of course, not a conscious effort towards appeasement.    

In this same regard, a prior school of political theory and general leadership philosophy believed that in order to be taken seriously and to survive in a man’s world, women in positions of authority ought to strive to be as tough and as masculine as their male counterparts.  In effect, as the theory goes, they ought to adopt the pose and guise of a man for fear of seeming weak or being summarily discounted as ineffectual and ineffective as a leader.  One would think that thirty or forty years of this would have given us the ability to recognize that sexist and misogynistic attacks come from everywhere, at any time, for any reason.  Women who make no apology for “encroaching” into traditionally male spaces will find themselves insulted for any reason at all, really.  For example, in the past few days, Coakley has found herself the target of a bizarre remark implying that someone ought to sodomize her with an electrical appliance.  One can’t get away from the offensive voices, unfortunately, but one can advance the authenticity of self as an excellent counter-weight to push back against the name-callers and childish smears.  

I still recall how Hillary Clinton shed tears at a campaign stop shortly before the New Hampshire primary, showing not just a very human, vulnerable side, but also a very feminine side as well.  In so doing, she transformed what was expected to be a sound drubbing into an improbable win that gave her campaign new life.  Women voters related heavily with the gesture and cast their ballots accordingly; I’m not entirely dissuaded from the notion that some men might have been taken aback in a good way, recognizing that there was more to the candidate the icy, calculating stereotype that made her seem supremely unlikeable and at times threatening to the male voter.  If we are ever to live in a world where the content of our character is more important than both the color of our skin and our reproductive organs, we will reach the point that no one ever feels the compulsion to pass, assimilate, or modify one’s authentic self to seem more fitting to majority norms.  Humanity and with it authenticity is what voters crave more than anything.  Policy wonkery and strategy are lost on the average voter who seeks to identify himself or herself personally with the latest slate of candidates for elective office.  When we can see ourselves clearly in those who run, then we are compelled to pull a lever for them on Election Day.          

I voted, in part, for Barack Obama because I saw parallels between his life story and my own.  In particular, the description of his mother closely mirrors my own—a woman passionately devoted to a cause beyond herself who sought to see the world through an optimistic lens, even though many criticized her desire as foolish and a trifle naïve.  Others saw their own dreams mirrored in his rhetoric and the possibility of what he represented.  Though a year later reality has set in and we are far less enthralled with the President then we were then, we continue to find his policies more objectionable than who he is as a person.  Personality has limitations, but it can go a long way.  A politician who is disliked as a person must rely on the political atmosphere around him or her, and sometimes only maintains power when his or her opposition is reviled even more.  

Competence goes a long way, too, and I know that, speaking from a strictly women’s rights perspective, we can’t expect to not have reproductive rights compromised for the sake of passing a massive reform act if we are unable to break free from the scourge of tokenism.  Victories are won with a collection of smaller successes that, linked together, move closer towards ultimate triumph.  An occasional arm-twist, guilt-trip or, worse yet, established tradition of being granted an occasional “favor” in exchange for unwavering support are not going to get us where we need to be.  No one would ever confuse that for complete integration and total parity.  We should know instinctively what it will take to get there, but the question remains if we are willing to do the hard work on the ground to actualize it.  The ivory tower might be cushy and familiar, but it is a universe in and of itself, one wholly removed from any semblance of the actual lives of working people.  We have in front of us an opportunity to learn from what will be a debacle whether victory is won or lost.  Let’s not ignore it.  

Working Rules For ALL Us Working Stiffs

Which Side Are You On

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…

My work rules for working hours need to apply to all the globe’s working people.  From what I’ve seen in the last 3 decades of my 50 years, unless you have enough interest income and or dividend income to live on, you’re a worker.  Managers are workers, if they are useful managers.

Most senior managers are most focused with rigging the system to take a undeserved huge cut of the pie before anyone else gets a fair share of the pie, and, it takes EVERYONE’S work to make the pie. Most senior managers are senior so that they can be on top, first in line, TAKING a chunk of the communities’ wealth they do NOT deserve.

(MA-Sen) Teach Your Friends To Make Calls Online For Coakley

originally posted by Will Urquhart at Sum of Change

Yesterday, we attended a Grow the Hope (GTH) house meeting with their Rapid Response team, Organizing for America (OFA 2.0), and the Carrots and Sticks Project. After the meeting everyone decided to stick around and make calls into MA to help elect Martha Coakley in the race for Ted Kennedy’s former Senate seat. We took a moment before leaving to talk with Jon Randall, Maryland’s 8th district liaison from OFA 2.0, and we put together this video, quickly detailing how to make phone calls online to support Coakley:

The Mountaintop, revisited again

I am an activist for my people.  As I have grown older, I have more likely performed my activism with my words, which is the tool I have had at hand.

Sometimes I am repetitive.  I am a teacher.  Some lessons are hard.  That’s a clue to the fact that they are important.  Important lessons need to be taught more than once, again and again, time and again, using different words, approaching the issue from different points of view.  That’s what I do.  Some of you claim that I do it “ad nauseam.”  It’s your nausea, not mine.

Many of you know me as the transsexual woman (or whatever you call me…I’m sure that it is not favorable in many instances).  Some of you know me as an artist or a poet.  Some of you see the teacher in me.  Or the glbt activist and PFLAG parent.  I am all of these.  I am a human being.

I was born in a place and time.  I have absorbed the life lessons presented to me since then.  I am still learning.

I’ve tried to pass on what I have learned.  I continue to make that effort, in whatever new venues are available, wherever I can find an opened eye or ear.

Israel Has a Hospital in Haiti

“We” sent mostly guns I guess, for “security purposes”.  It was on CNN.  Israel set up a well equipped field hosptial after coming from greater distances than the US.  Katrina part two.

In light of the Scott Martha Massachusetts vote the pundits are already talking about how the left is going to rewrite law to advance the destruction of health care.

Here it is Martin Luther King day.  I have to wonder what he would think today.  We went through the entire black v white struggle by granting minorities special rights, special protections and really setting up an entire industry government consortium to import Latino and other races by going out and screwing with other countries.  NAFTA wrecked Mexico and refugees simply walked across the border.  Today you see nobody has to “change” by conforming to American ideals.  Assimulate into “our” society?  No way.

Do I burn crosses on my front lawn?  Well no.  Do I take offense at being called a racist based upon mental telepathy of my fucking thought patterns?  Yup.  And what is up with the neuro-linguistic phrase “homophobe”.  Am I not understanding the English language correctly by interpreting it as I am afraid of homosexuals?  The plan here is not for “equal rights” the “issue” simply grows into pre-kindergarten sexual orientation classes.  And why?  Because globalists don’t want nations, just a demoralized limited collection of servants.

I came up with another phrase yesterday when I saw a sign on the local Yuppie Bank.  Parking for Hybrid Vehicles Only,  Yes you fucking Prius Pricks.

Haiti: Let Them Eat Bullets, or Worms?

Amid accusations that the US Government is using the disaster in Haiti as a pretext to militarily occupy and control the country, and while the deputy commander of U.S. Southern Command, Lieutenant-General Ken Keen, has said that he thinks the eventual Haitian death toll from the earthquake will be between 150,000 and 200,000 people, there are now also video reports from on the ground in Haiti of people there seeing more guns than food as the most visible face of ‘humanitarian’ aid efforts, and of starving people being given food containing ‘bugs and worms’:



al Jazeera via The Real News Network – January 18, 2010

Disputes emerge over Haiti aid control

Most Haitians here have seen little humanitairian aid so far. What they have seen is guns.

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