Protect Insurance Company Executives

Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell

All Hail Jon Stewart

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Typography on TV

I managed to make it through only the first 15 minutes of the new TV show "Fringe." However, the typography was awesome. Take a look:

Duluth coverage of Sept 1 march

The Duluth News Tribune ran a good article talking about the folks who plan to hop on a bus to the Twin Cities to protest the war during the Republican National Convention:

Anti-war groups plan protest in St. Paul

Duluth News Tribune
Published Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Several local anti-war groups outlined plans today to participate in a peace march next week in St. Paul at the start of the Republican National Convention.

Holding a news conference in the Duluth Civic Center were representatives of the Northland Anti-war Coalition, Grand Rapids Peace Circle, Bemidji Peace and Justice, Veterans for Peace Chapter 80, University of Minnesota Duluth students for Peace, and the Center for Just Living at the College of St. Scholastica.

Members of those groups will travel to St. Paul Monday for what they called a peaceful protest. The groups plan to march on the Capitol Building in St. Paul at 11 a.m. and later will make their way toward the Excel Energy Center, the site of the Republican National Convention.

The Duluth bus leaves at 8 a.m. from Peace Church, 1111 E. 11th St. The bus will stop in Pine City to pick up additional riders. The cost for the trip to St. Paul is $35 a seat, with discounts being offered for students, families and people with low incomes. For more information, call Peter Krause at 728-9395

For information about the Bemidji bus, which leaves at 5:30 a.m. and makes stop in Cass Lake and Grand Rapids, contact Vicki at 795-2453. The cost for this bus is $30 per seat.

They're coming!

I have been extremely busy lately trying to get ready for our big antiwar march at the RNC. Just heard about this lovely billboard that will great the Repubs at the airport! :)

Going to AMC

Why is it that I have to work three hours of overtime in order to get ready a few days off? Yikes!

Anyway, I'm headed off to Detroit for the Allied Media Conference this weekend. I've never been before and I have no idea what to expect, except that I look forward to meeting some folks I've been reading on the internets. Brownfemipower, Black Amazon, Little Light, Miss Crip Chick Lex, Mamita Mala, tigera consciente will all be there. An embarrassment of riches if you ask me.

I'm going to do my best to sit, listen, learn, absorb, and try to comprehend. One thing about an old gal like me is how hard it is to sit and listen for hours on end. I know I did this when I was in school for many years. But I've lost the talent. I need to rest and let stuff settle in or it will just bounce right off my hard shell of a brain.

Going to Detroit is almost like going home. I spent much time on my Grandmother's farm growing up on 37 Mile Road north.

I hope to give a decent report when I return. Wish me luck!

Shirley Chisholm presente!



Sylvia has an awesome post about Shirley Chisholm. Go. Read. Enjoy!

Look who's blogging

When I was in high school, I got a job at my city's newspaper covering high school sports. I had it in mind to be the first female sportswriter for "Sports Illustrated". I never made that goal, but I still remember my heroes from back then. One of them, Kareem Abdul-Jabar is writing a blog for the Los Angeles Times. He's got some great, short posts to African Americans who made a difference, including Charlotte E. Ray, the first African-American attorney, and Bessie Coleman, the first African-American airline pilot while noting the problems these women faced are still with us.

It's nice to know one of my childhood heroes continues to be an awesome human being.

Oops!

CNN has been having problems with geography it seems.

Why our education system sucks

Via reddit, I found this link to some kind of discussion forum. Here's the entire comment:

book rental service?

was just thinking. my sister does -alot- of reading, and spends like $1000 a year on just books alone. most of them she reads once then never looks at again. is there any kind of like ... video rental store but for books? would make things alot cheaper, plus once one person has read one the next person can get enjoyment from it etc

60 minutes interview with George Piro

Tonight 60 minutes aired and interview with an FBI investigator named George Piro who spoke to Saddam Hussein for several months after his arrest.

A couple of things were revealed, for the first time that I am aware:

All WMD had been destroyed, unlike all the lies told by GBW and his cronies.

Kuwait practically begged for the Iraqi invasion by insulting Iraqi women in a meeting with the Iraqi foreign ambassador.

Scott Pelley conveniently forgot to ask the obvious questions. As a result, my first google search indicates that right wingers believe this is confirmation of their beliefs that Iraq needed to be attacked.

From the CBS website you can read most of the interview.

The trashy interview ends with this:

Piro says Saddam expected to die and that it didn't bother him.

Why not?

"Well, his answer was is he was 67 at the time. He had lived longer than the average Arab male lived in the Middle East. He had a wonderful life. Got to be the leader of the cradle of civilization. And in his opinion, of course, had a significant impact on that country. The region. The world. So he was not bothered by having to face death," Piro says.

"No remorse? No concern for the kinds of things that he had ordered and done?" Pelley asks.

"No. No remorse," Piro says. "No regret."

Do you think we can expect Scott Pelley to ask the same questions of GW Bush?

No. Of course not.

Edited to add link to Consortium news article on the Pelley's complicity with Bush's lies

Hanukkah Special

A store in New York City, of all places, screws up big time when it comes to multicultural knowledge:

New York store red faced over 'Hanukkah hams'

Dec 6 12:55 PM US/Eastern

A posh food store in New York's Greenwich Village has found itself red faced after offering hams for sale with the slogan "Delicious for Hanukkah," the current Jewish religious holiday.
The non-kosher labelling was spotted at the weekend by Manhattan novelist Nancy Kay Shapiro, 46, who decided instead of alerting management to take a picture of the unorthodox sign and post it on the Internet.

"I just thought it was funny," Shapiro, who described herself as an unobservant Jew, told the New York Post. "I wasn't offended in any way. I just thought, here's somebody who knows nothing about what Jews eat."

By the time Shapiro returned to the store on Tuesday, the first night of Hanukkah, the signs had vanished, the newspaper reported.

A manager at the Balducci's gourmet grocery store told the newspaper that the sign was a mistake and blamed it on a stock clerk.

Pork and shellfish are among the foods considered unclean under Jewish law.


Copyright AFP 2007, AFP stories and photos shall not be published, broadcast, rewritten for broadcast or publication or redistributed directly or indirectly in any medium

Help select the word of the year

Go to the Merriam-Webster site to help select the "Word of the Year". Here's the gems you get to vote on:

apathetic
babymoon
blamestorm
charlatan
conundrum
cruft
eleemosynary
facebook
hypocrite
linkability
melancholy
Pecksniffian
pretentious
pugnacious
quixotic
sardoodledom
sputum
subpoena
vanity sizing
w00t

I went for blamestorm, since it's a word I might actually use some day!

Come and sit a spell



Yesterday it was announced that Doris Lessing had won the Nobel Prize for literature. She was on her way home from shopping and was met by a hoard of journalists on her front porch. So she sat down and answered questions. What an awesome 87-year-old!

I've spent time this year re-reading her books, this time in order. I've read the first two books of the "Children of Violence" series: Martha Quest and A Proper Marriage. Many times I found myself quoting passages out loud to Ravenhub because she does such a wonderful job of popping the overinflated egos of the colonists in Africa.

Here's some quotes form her encounter with the press yesterday:

"I was coming back from the hospital with my son Peter who was sick. I stepped out of a taxi and there were all these cameras, a whole posse of photographers. As this street is very good for that kind of thing, I thought they were shooting a soap or an episode of Morse or something. But it was me. So I first heard that I had won the Nobel prize for literature from the reporters."

"It is the most glamorous prize, and naturally it has got a lot of prestige, which none of the other prizes have, so it's the icing on the cake. At one point, sometime in the 70s, they [the Nobel academy] didn't like me - they said they didn't - but they seem to have changed their minds. Committees are like that. Of course I didn't expect to get it. I've been on the shortlist for 40 years. It is good to be the 11th woman on the list, I'm only sorry that one of the first or fourth or the fifth wasn't Virginia Woolf. But I don't think it is helpful to talk about writers in terms of male and female. A lot of British writers have won it, which is good. We produce a lot of good writers. I've been talking non-stop all day. I've spoken to my publisher and agent and old friends who rang me up, which was very good. There were lots of people who have wanted me to have it for a long time, so it is very nice that I have. I'm exhausted. To celebrate I'd have to go and buy champagne. I'm going to bed."

Please come, don't come, no please come!



I haven't had time to blog about this until now. Recently, Rev. Dennis Dease, president of a local Catholic university, St. Thomas in St. Paul, decided to disinvite Desmond Tutu from speaking at an event on campus because he was accused of being an anti-Semite. The accusation was a result of this speech Tutu gave in Boston on April 13, 2002.

An article about this trend of disinviting speakers is here. Here's a quote:

The escalating controversy reflects a tension at colleges nationwide, one pitting free speech and academic freedom against views some find objectionable.

Last month, Columbia University's decision to allow Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak drew protesters. Speakers with strong political opinions regularly draw ire on campuses. Many religious-affiliated universities have taken heat for speakers who hold positions that, some say, go against particular doctrines.

What has changed of late has been the reaction of some colleges and universities. There is a growing trend, according to the American Association of University Professors, of schools inviting speakers and then un-inviting them after opposition groups turn up the heat.

The local activist community responded quickly and decisively, sending thousands of faxes and sparking news stories from around the world.

Yesterday, Dease reversed his decision. Way to go activists!

Women of Color bloggers want you to know

The amazing turnout for Jena 6 and the fact that it finally hit the mainstream media after months of work by WOC bloggers, reminds us that there are more issues out there that are just as worthy of attention. And if Jena tells us anything, the way to get the real truth is to avoid the nonsense put forth by money-making enterprises like cable news, and go straight to the grassroots.

FIERCE (Fabulous Independent Educated Radicals for Community Empowerment) in New York City, is just such an organization. They are leading the struggle to highlight the cause of four lesbian and black women who are imprisoned after confronting a sexist homophobic thug in the West Village of New York.

Imani Henry has written a terrific summary of the events leading to their prosecution that bfp posted in June here:

Lesbians sentenced for self-defense
All-white jury convicts Black women

By Imani Henry
New York
Published Jun 21, 2007 2:58 AM

On June 14, four African-American women—Venice Brown (19), Terrain Dandridge (20), Patreese Johnson (20) and Renata Hill (24)—received sentences ranging from three-and-a-half to 11 years in prison. None of them had previous criminal records. Two of them are parents of small children.

Their crime? Defending themselves from a physical attack by a man who held them down and choked them, ripped hair from their scalps, spat on them, and threatened to sexually assault them—all because they are lesbians.

Read the entire article.

Beautiful, Also, Are The Souls of My Black Sisters has a beautiful call to action:

That these women could not go to this area of town as if they had no right to be there (per the district attorney who prosecuted their case) reeks of society’s desire to segregate and suffocate these women for what they are. Lesbians.

That these women who sought to harm no one, but, instead, were vilified and castigated because of their attacker’s hatred, while he still walks free, and they languish in prison, is unconscionable. Deemed a so-called “hate crime” against this straight male, every possible racist, anti-woman, anti-LGBT and anti-youth tactic was hurled against these women by the state of New York, and that they lived in a working-class black-majority city of Newark, N.J., and their gender expressions and body structures, was dehumanized, and demonized, in the eyes of the public, and ultimately, the jury that decided against them, is concrete proof that LGBT people have rights that no heterosexual is bound to respect.

The organization, FIERCE!, (http://www.fiercenyc.org ) is fighting a campaign to free these women who have been unjustly imprisoned for having the temerity to be themselves in a lesbian, homosexual-hating society.

Please do not forget the Newark Women.

Contact FIRECE! to lend your help for these unjustly accused women in their fight for justice.

Give them your solidarity, your support, and let them know that they are not forgotten. Let them know that respect and dignity are the rights of all people: black, white, male, female, heterosexual—and lesbian and homosexual.

Get the banner here
Sign the petition
Join the letter writing campaign

Also sign up for the virtual march

See the awesome example from Black Amazon. She rocks my world.

Looks like a fabulous turnout:

Minnesota Daily Supports Teach-In

Awesome. The student newspaper for the Zooniversity encourages students to attend the teach in!

Teach-in for AFSCME

Faculty and students should support striking workers Sept. 11 and 12.

as the University workers' strike continues into its second week, the University's academic community needs to stand with AFSCME employees. This Tuesday and Wednesday from 10:00 a.m. to noon and 1:30 p.m. to 3:00 p.m., University faculty, students and AFSCME workers are asked to meet at the Oak Street Cinema near the corner of Washington Avenue and Oak Street in Stadium Village in support of the current workers' strike. The Teach-in, as the event is called, is intended to take the place of regularly scheduled classes in protest of both President Bob Bruininks and the University administration's wage increase offer to University workers, and as a learning opportunity in labor history.

The morning session will include AFSCME members, faculty, graduate students, labor educators and student activists discussing the importance of labor movements and the purpose of unions. A film and panel discussion of the 2003 AFSCME strike will take place in the afternoon. Following the morning session at noon on both days, students and faculty are encouraged to join striking workers on the picket line to show solidarity - the University administration must see they represent only the interests of the minority on campus and are supported by few.

Some faculty and students have already taken steps to oppose the University administration. professors and graduate students have moved classes off campus and students, this past Friday, protested a Board of Regents meeting. To those weary of politics, the University workers strike is not a political issue. The state Legislature already approved a 3.25 percent plus wage increase to state workers. It is the University administration that intentionally lowered the pay increase to 2.25 percent for technical and clerical workers and 2.5 percent for health-care workers. Bob Bruininks has devalued the worth of these women and men.

"The students are a bulwark of liberty," the writer José Martí said near the turn of the 20th century, "and its strongest army." University students and their teachers have an opportunity on Sept. 11 and 12 to amplify the voices of the striking technical, clerical and health-care workers. Please support the University workers on Tuesday and Wednesday and show them their worth.

Coverage of our vigil for the 3,500 U.S. combat death

The Downtown Journal had a reporter and a photographer at our protest.

They also posted an interesting multi-media piece with voices from the protest and a slide show that you can watch here
Here is the article:

All they are saying...

By Michael Marchio

Protesters lined the southwest corner of Loring Park along Hennepin Avenue June 8 to voice their opposition to the war in Iraq.

The event was called together by the Iraq Peace Action Coalition to mark the 3,500th U.S. military death in Iraq.

“The Iraq Peace Action Coalition has been trying to mark the quantity of lives that have been wasted in this conflict in Iraq,” said Meredith Aby, one of the group’s organizers. “We’ve had demonstrations at 2,000, 2,500, 3,000 and now 3,500 in terms of marking how many soldiers have died.”

Aby noted the recent increase in violence in Iraq as one reason for the event.

“The surge that Bush is orchestrating is having an incredible consequence on human lives for both Americans and Iraqis, and we wanted to encourage people to organize against this war because we’re going to be marking 4,000 dead pretty soon,” she said.

Emotions and frustrations ran hot in the afternoon sun, with many protesters, which numbered from 50 to 100 during the event, voicing their displeasure with the president and his policies in no uncertain terms.

“I’m out here because George W. Bush considers the Constitution a damn piece of paper,” Daniel Fearn, a nine-year United States Marine Corps veteran, said.

As rush-hour traffic hummed along, the protesters’ chants and speeches were peppered by honks of support, an indication of the intensifying unpopularity of the war, according to many in attendance.

“There’s very little against us; that’s changed in the four years we’ve been out trying to convince people this is the worst thing our country’s ever done,” said Rick Hanson, from the antiwar group Military Families Speak Out.

Hanson, whose son, Eric, 21, is a marine on his second deployment to the Anbar province of Iraq, took issue with the medical treatment troops receive when they return from their tour of duty. “I think it’s horribly unpatriotic the way our soldiers are treated when they get back,” he saidAnother demonstrator, Patricia Keefe, 64, also noted the change in attitude.

“A lot more people are honking now,” she said. “People are realizing that [the war] was a terrible mistake.”

One of the featured speakers at the event, Julie Larson of Blaine, spoke about her son, a member of the Navy who is being redeployed to Iraq, and called for more public involvement in the antiwar movement.

“I ask you to write to your representative and keep the pressure on. Let’s see all of these kids as ours — they belong to us, not somebody else,” Larson told the crowd.

In an interview with the Downtown Journal, she said America’s young service members are fighting a war that is, in the words of her son, “about oil.”

“It’s so easy for the rest of the country not to see these people; they’re just invisible, they go off and do the war. Until you have someone really close to you [involved in the war], it doesn’t affect you, and I don’t think that it’s affecting, still, a lot of people,” she said.

Her belief was echoed by August Nimtz, a professor of political science at the University of Minnesota and a participant in the rally.

“Only with a mass movement will [the war] end, because neither political party — Democrats or Republicans — are interested in peace,” he said. “We need to do what history has taught us; the only way which you end wars is when working people take power and organize in massive, massive numbers.”

Missed it

60 Minutes had an interview by Katie Couric with John and Elizabeth Edwards last night. A good friend who is a cancer survivor sent me a copy of a letter she fired off immediately after the broadcast. If you saw the broadcast and agree, please write a letter as well. Talk about missed opportunities!

TO: The Producers of "60 Minutes"

What a disappointing interview!!

Instead of asking both Elizabeth and Senator Edwards (since they are a team) how Elizabeth's cancer has affected their thoughts on the health care system in this country and to explain his political program on that issue, Katie wasted the entire interview time concentrating on the things that both Edwards obviously want and have to accept and adjust to and then -- equally important -- they want to move forward with their lives. Katie wouldn't let that happen.

I saw their announcement on CNN Thursday and that was much more informative both as to Elizabeth's cancer and John's campaign plans.

One of the reasons I watched "60 Minutes" tonight was that because I knew Katie had dealt with the death of her husband from colon cancer and yet went on to raise her -- then -- young girls and also to continue with her career. For some reason I thought she would give a good interview based on her own experience. Obviously, I was wrong!!!!

To Katie Couric: How irresponsible of you, Katie, for playing on the fears of many out there who may have seen your interview with the Edwards tonight. It would have been better if "60 Minutes" had asked Betty Ford to conduct the interview. She was an inspiration to women years ago and saved many lives because of her encouraging women to have regular mammograms. Elizabeth and John Edwards have taken that contribution one step further only you didn't understand.