September 2007 archive

Sep 29 2007

Progressive Blog Party

This is a companion to the companion of Nightprowlkitty’s MANIFESTO! essay.  It’s an idea of how to reach out to our progressive allies and minority bloggers.

Have you ever heard of a Progressive Dinner Party?  It’s a party where each course of a meal is served at a different person’s house or apartment.  You begin at one house for cocktails and appetizers, go to the next place for salad, then another for the main course and coffee/dessert at the final destination. 

So how about a Progressive Blog Party (PBP)? We could organize these for any given night so that a group of us could make 3 or 4 planned stops at other blogs and engage in conversations there. It would be like we are all in the same room at the same time having a discussion. Hopefully we could give the host enough advanced notice so they could be there to talk with us too.  Otherwise, we can still talk about the selected post and leave comments or questions for the author.  After half hour we go to the next site.  And we always leave our mark…”Progressive Blog Party was here”…with an invitation to join us next time. 

Sep 29 2007

British Govt sued over Gore’s Inconvenient Truth

A truck driver/volunteer school governor from Dover has sued the British government for distributing Al Gore’s AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH to their secondary schools:

The British government’s decision to circulate Al Gore’s film about climate change to all English secondary schools was challenged in court Thursday by a school governor who believes it is inaccurate and biased.

http://www.msnbc.msn…

More below the jump…

Sep 29 2007

Reconciliation. A revisit and an update.

I'm revisiting a previous piece of writing from August of last year. Today is my oldest sister's birthday – Jackie would have been 71 years old, born September 28, 1936. Midst of the Great Depression, midpoint between the Great Crash of 1929 and the final year of WWII, 1945.

In reading through this again, I realize that I wrote it as if I knew her. But really, how can a much younger sister, only a teenager so many years ago, know a sibling who is in their middle thirties? I write with a great deal of supposition as I carry the anecdotal memories of the other parts of my family forward. Most of all these last few years, I listened to the sometimes faulty, often biased, almost always self-focused stories of my other sister, Sharon. I heard her side of things, and sometimes her perspective filled in gaps in the hollows of the family legends initially created for me by my mother. Sometimes Sharon's words served to underline the inequalities of family dynamics. A family organic pulses in that way –  the web that connects us as family is either nourished or fermented by how each of us share memories or opinions with each other.

Sep 29 2007

UPDATED: The Dollar Crashed Yesterday — But don’t think twice, it’s all right

[UPDATED: 9/29/07 with additional links and passionate rants.]

The Dollar got pummeled against all major currencies yesterday. It’s a dangerous time for the greenback because its value has plunged below its all-time lows (set back in 1992). Often, major break-outs below key levels lead to a whole new wave of selling. (The pile-on effect.) It’s playing out right before your eyes and it’s going to get very ugly for the Dollar before it gets better.

This could be great news for YOU — if you play your cards right!

Back to the Future — Do you remember in the movie when Biff got his hands on that sports almanac, and took it back to the past? That outdated little almanac suddenly became the most valuable item on the face of the planet — because the person who possessed it knew how reality was going to unfold — and could wager big money on it.

The winner of the World’s Series was a “sure bet” in Back to the Future. Well, another “sure bet” is that the dollar will be crashing for the next 6 months. Sure things don’t come along very often — maybe once in a lifetime if at all. But we have one now:  As long as you bet against America you can build a lot of wealth, fast — and you can definitely protect the wealth you already have.

I’ll demonstrate one of the ways I’m doing it, below the fold.

Sep 29 2007

Coalitions

Some time ago I found a speech given by Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon titled Coalitions Politics: Turning the Century at the West Coast Women’s Music Festival in 1981. It is some of the most profound thinking I have ever read about our struggles to work together as progressives. I can’t tell you how many times the content of this speech has crept into my thinking in all kinds of discussions. I’d love it if everyone would just go read the whole thing and then come back and talk about it in the comments. But knowing that’s not likely, I’ll excerpt some quotes and try to summarize.

Sep 29 2007

Never-ending war

Should we start getting used to those words?  Is there a way to fight the wave that seems to have overcome our foreign policy, starting a number of decades ago, but looking more and more like the offerings of nearly all republicans, too many Democrats and an unbelievable amount of our own Presidential candidates.


With such an overwhelming percentage of the American population being against any more of Iraq than is necessary to get our troops out, with no feasible or credible reason do be chest thumping at Iran and a resolution that overwhelmingly passed the Senate yesterday that all but dared Bush and Cheney to take military action against Iran, what else can one think?

Sep 29 2007

Congress should not condemn Rush Limbaugh

So Congress is getting ready to condemn Rush Limbaugh for his odious “phony soldiers” comments.  I beg you all not to fall for it.  It is exactly what the people who came up with the phony MoveOn scam last week are hoping for.

They want to keep the subject about manners and niceties.  They want to make the issue whether or not the Republicans are hypocrites.  Because that is far, far better than talking about the policies they are enacting.

Sep 29 2007

Friday Night at 8: MANIFESTO!

My Unified Theory of Everything

Well not really.  It’s not anything so fancy as a theory.

My manifesto, by the way, can be expressed in one phrase:

THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX

Let us assess where we are now in the grand old blogosphere:

We have performed approximately seven trillion “gotcha” attacks on the media, reversing memes at the speed of light!

We have helped to elect a Democratic majority in the Senate and Congress.

We have spouted bloviations on every imaginable topic that if laid end to end would easily wrap around the circumfrence of the universe 50,000 times.

We have called to the media’s attention stories they would not otherwise have covered.

What we have NOT done is change policy in our government.  Bush and Cheney have more power now than they did before the 2006 election.  The War in Iraq is still raging, and I see no end in sight, no vote that points to our representatives ending this war.  We have seen no real opposition — NONE.

So, athough the blogosphere has accomplishments to its credit, ultimately we are all frustrated … which is why we are clamoring for a manifesto in the first place!

Sep 29 2007

Thank You Everyone, please unrecommend this ESSAY oops

Thank You All for your kind words and wonderful pictures.  This helped make a special day in a troubled world.  Now please unrecommend, so our important essays get the attention they deserve.

I love you all,  Alma

Ponies for Katie

My daughter Kate loves animals and always has.  She’s a vegetarian even.  Every year for her birthday, she asks for a pony.  I told her “yes” this year.  (She’s 24 so, no, she isn’t expecting a real live pony.)  LOL

I thought maybe this year I could get some help from all you kind folk here.  If you have time, and know how, could you post a pony (or really any animal) pic here to help me out?  Birthday wishes are always welcome too.  🙂

Thanks!

Sep 29 2007

Deerfield Fair

A welcome family fall tradition is a country fair.  Being 52 and having many country fairs in memory this year I noted two changes.

Approaching the free parking lot last year’s sign “Designated Protest Area” was not there.

The patriotic exhibit last year sponsored by Jeep was not there.  That and the Army recruiting station was mostly visited by fourteen year olds looking for “free stuff”.  The armament displays, a howitzer, Saw machine gun and the full camo bunker which were in place after 911 were not in evidence this year.

Sep 29 2007

Friday Philosophy: Learning to Count Past Two

If I were not exhausted and didn’t have an afternoon meeting…or if maybe sometime during the week I would have seen this coming and managed to set aside some time to write about it, this is where I would have posted a piece about the talk about the removal of protections for transgendered people from the Employment Non-Discrimination  Act.

But I am tired.  Oh, so tired.  As Fanny Lou Hamer said,

I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired

Since I am having a meeting today to discuss trying to get my stuff published in book form, I have no time.

So I went back in the stacks.  Way back.  This was presented first to a Psychology class at the University of Central Arkansas in the mid-90s.  The professor who invited me to give this and several other lectures did not earn tenure at UCA.  I’m sure there was no connection.

Sep 29 2007

Pony Party, Riddikulus Edition

my sincerest apologies to alan rickman

If you don’t know what “Riddikulus” refers to, this might be a good time for you to scroll your way past the body of this Pony Party and jump right in to the comments…though you’re welcome to stay and be entertained anyway. 

Ok, now that we’ve gotten rid of the Muggles (and any stray boggarts, thank goodness, because they always turn into Dick Cheney around me, and who needs that late on a Friday?), I submit for your approval 4 “better” Harry Potter endings.  They are roughly and amateurishly animated, contain loads of cartoon violence, and in the end have really no real redeeming qualities whatsoever….( /disclaimer)

Better ending for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire?


Better ending for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince?

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