I wish I could say that I was watching Sicko as a completely disinterested party. Unfortunately, I'm one of those 50 million Americans who doesn't have health insurance--
--quick aside: I indirectly work part time for UPMC. I even have an UPMC identification card. But part timers don't get health care benefits for the smaller company that I work for and apparently UPMC, with only 400 million in profits last time I checked, can't afford to cover me as well. Quick note to all you folks who spout AMA propaganda about the "long waits" whenever single payer comes up: I would prefer long waits to never seeing a doctor at all--
--True, I'm in good health (I think. Nothing has fallen off, so far....) and I walk a lot but it would be nice to talk to a doctor other than in an emergency room. The main thing I took away from the movie is that other people in other countries live much better than we do, period. They get better health care, better education, and probably better lives. And yes there are other reasons why they want us to hate France as Mike Moore makes clear in this clip. I guess this is why your usual corporate media outlets don't do more journalism about How People Live abroad. One: They rather you didn't know and two: you might notice that where people have the six week vacations and unemployment insurance that pays better than our minimum wage they tend to have real opposition/labor parties, as opposed to pretend ones that think NAFTA is going great. I guess, and this could be the theme of all of Mike Moore's movies: I live in a country that really doesn't give a fuck about me. Hail America and so forth....
Moore also offers a number of solutions at his website. I'm definitely printing out that Sicko health care card above. Its the only health card I'll have. There's also this:
I'm still on the beat on the voting reform bills that are in the US Congress. As far as I can tell, I'm the only person on this beat here in Pittsburgh. Still waiting for that cute Samantha Bennett to give it a shot but no such luck. Just for the record, there is some evidence that both the 2000 and 2004 elections were stolen. There are at least four books and one prominent article, written by heavyweight reporters and PhDs with math degrees and one of the smarter Kennedys, which can lay it out for you here, here, here, here, and here. These books went largely unreported on by both the Republican (Fox and Scaife and radio talk ilk) and corporate mainstream press. In fact, most of the hostility has come from Salon's Farhad Manjoo who was destroyed not only by the public but by Mark Crispin Miller here.
The story so far: The voter reform movement is bitterly split over the Holt Bill in the US House. After looking at this for a long time with puzzlement I have decided that the people (Bradblog and Mark Miller and Bob Fitrakis) against the Holt bill were right. I base my final opinion on this article by Mark Crispin Miller, where he points out that machine lobbyists and Microsoft essentially got the house committee to roll over on open source provisions in the bill. (Quick aside: if you can look at and observe the code you could in theory prevent the Hursti hack during an election. Proprietary code prevents you from looking. See related evil judicial decision here.)
The second reason has to do with the Senate voting reform bill, which everyone hates and which seems to have been written by machine lobbyists. That bill is being sponsored by Diane Feinstein. Now, it turns out that Feinstein is also pushing to make sure that the bill doesn't take effect until 2010 thus ruining the only good reason to pass some changes now for the 2008 presidential election even if they're not all favorable to transparency. Feinstein, according to what I've read, doesn't think the voter theft issue is real.
There is a shot that the bills could be revived this session but at this point perhaps we should let it die. We do have other options. It would seem to be that the major thing to do would be is to notice when someone like Ken Blackwell purges 300000 mostly black democratic voters from the voting rolls. I have to be honest I really thought the Democratic Party was doing something like that back in 2004 now I realize that they weren't. And with people like Feinstein at the helm I'm pretty sure the dems won't be looking again. Why bother after all only two presidential elections stolen and a million Iraqis dead. Such minor things...
Last year Luzerne County, PA spent $2.4M on 750 ES&S iVotronic DREs and a one-year warranty. Now that the first warranty is to expire ES&S wants $300,000 for a three-year warranty. The county Director of Elections has written the state and told them, in part, “In addition to not being able to meet the financial burden that ES&S is asking us to meet, we cannot individually deal with such a large, multi-national corporation and the mix of deception this company promulgates.” And he asked the state to ensure “that voting-system vendors doing business here do not have the opportunity to threaten the democratic process with such unsavory business practices that vendors, such as ES&S, seemingly have a deep commitment to employing.”...
I openly support Cindy Sheehan's run for congress. It would be better though if she got 25 to 40 people to run with her in the senate and the house and create a viable third party in the US but that's just me. There needs to be another option than just the dems and repubs. It would actually make the two parties better.
Coverage of John Edwards here and surprisingly from Mullah Rob, who probably approves of Edwards firing atheist bloggers. No I didn't attend but I still think its between Edwards and Obama. Would be nice if these guys were on the same ticket in any order, although considering the reality of changing demographics Richardson would seem to be the best vp choice.
Japanese nuclear accident underplayed. I don't understand why anybody supports nuclear. Related: Possible organic solar cell breakthrough where you could produce solar cells by way of a printer. More info here and here. Possibly related:The CEO of Steorn, whose video I feature on my channel above and whose demo several weeks ago was a complete bust, talks about their recent troubles. I still think there might be something to this free energy device of theirs, but why they simply couldn't film the working prototype back at the plant troubles me...I guess I'm just being hopeful and I also think there may be dimensional properties to magnetism and gravity that we simply don't get yet. Still, we need to see that prototype fellas...
Photos of a nice country that we're probably going to bomb into oblivion in order to please the military industrial complex and AIPAC.
As some people may or may not know, I believe in the religion wacky techno geek cult very sensible and optimistic philosophy of Transhumanism or "The I'd Like To Be An XMan Movement". I found this interesting transhumanist statement of purpose which I suppose could double as a kind of a secular transhumanist prayer. It's very cool. Here it is:
I have seen a world where death and disease have been defeated by science… where food, shelter, and clothing is manufactured quickly, and without waste… where transparency makes violent crime impossible, and authorities accountable… where people walk on other planets and in endless virtual worlds… where intelligence and empathy are magnified far beyond present levels… where the diversity of sentient beings has expanded to unimaginable proportions… where the risk of human extinction has been reduced to near zero.
I will endeavor to take the fastest safe route to such a future, and direct my present-day energies towards its realization. I will be polite and understanding to skeptics and naysayers. I will thoroughly enjoy my daily life while simultaneously working for a better future. I will work towards that future for the good of all, not just myself, and try my best to maintain an altruistic point of view at all times.
And after this the William Shatner voiceover kicks in talking about "and Boldly going where no MAN..."
I could have been back Saturday or Sunday but it turns out that while Comcast can quickly turn off your internets service when you haven't paid your bill it takes them at least three days for them to turn it back on when you have paid your bill. Real cute fellas. Looking into alternatives as I write this.
I also found out that internet services at the public libraries suck. Downtown, at the Carnegie Library, if you log out because your crappy 200 dollar mini comp won't access pages anymore you can't get back on for another half hour. But at least they sell you ear plugs so you can do this wild thing where you listen to things on the Internets. That's something that you can't do at my neighborhood Wilkinsburg public library. That's right. You're not allowed to use your ear phones at the public library in Wilkinsburg. Now I can see why they would ban speakers. I'm no fan of the hippity hop at public libraries. And many people would find my fave band the Mahavishnu Orchestra equally offensive. Fair enough. I don't understand why I can't listen to things on earphones. I guess I'm a wild man. Next I'll demand my federally funded heroin after finishing up "listening" to something at the Wilkinsburg public library. Call me a scofflaw and a rebel.
I did ask as to what was behind such an insanely hideous and backwards policy, although perhaps not in those exact words even though I like to think my expression told a thousand tales of incredulity.
I was told that people listening with their headphones--which I assumed was a private act which I would recklessly describe as private and contemplative--was "disruptive". Really. When I asked the kindly white haired gentleman how is it the Carnegie Library--a slightly bigger library with more possibly "disruptive" patrons by about a factor of 1000--could sell earplugs and yet you won't even let me listen to stuff he proudly exclaimed that the Wilkinsburg library was a separate library not at all operated by the anarchist bomb throwing emma goldman scum who run the Carnegie Library who let you "listen" to things on the Internets heaven forbid. I mean, if you let people listen to things then dancing might break out, or experimental open marriages between adults. Gotta nip this thing in the bud the librarian thought to himself while he gave me the evil eye for daring to question Big Brother. That librarian loved Big Brother. I kept on thinking: "You know if I strangled you where you stood I bet that would be disruptive...hmmm."
I might ask one of the librarians for a more thorough explanation of the policy, probably the cute girl with red flower tattoos on her forearms. Hey, its all for the "mission".
Posting here may be light this week as I take care of some personal business. But my video channel will be here. Lots of good stuff if you like alt jazz and left wing propaganda. I recommend all Jaga Jazzist vids if you can find them. There's also a beautiful jazz tune by Keith Jarrett and Jan Garbarek called "Country" If you listen carefully you can catch Keith Jarrett's trademarked humming. Above: One of my fave tunes ever by Mr. Frank Zappa.
July 8
Hey they posted my letter on Elwin Green's PG blog. It has a glaring grammatical error (should have said: "Why ACORN only held an event with DNC presidential candidates..." Double Sigh. That's what I get for typing too fast.). On the other hand, Brave corporate media blogger Elwin has yet to offer his opinion as to what the RNC can do for the black working classes, other than ship their jobs off to Chinese slave labor, which most black folk should find ironic. Quiz time: who has more power? The broke ass black blogger who runs this site or the corporate media African American blogger who can't answer a simple question unless "massa" tells him he can. I'm going to go with the former, although I wouldn't mind making 40 grand a year.
Make your own Simpsons likeness. And I must say that I am one handsome fella.
Agent Ska's brother goes to Ireland so you don't have to. Some good writing here as well.
Readers sometimes ask me if analyzing the news from Iraq every day doesn't get me down.
It got me down today. Sunni Arab guerrillas, unable to operate as effectively in Baghdad because of the US troop surge, had a suicide bomber drive a truck loaded with explosives into a market in a village on the fringes of the northern city of Tuz Khurmato and detonate his payload. As I write, authorities had counted 130 dead bodies, many of them women and children, and relatives reported another 20 dead. Another 250 or so were wounded, some of them badly, according to the Arabic daily al-Hayat. The latter says Iraqis are referring to the bombing as "the Turkmen massacre." Some 40 homes, 20 shops, and a dozen automobiles were also destroyed.
Like the detonation of the minarets at the al-Askariya shrine in Samarra recently, this act of terrorism had a strategic purpose. First, even 160,000 US troops cannot provide security to the whole country. The guerrillas are announcing that if they are prevented from operating in the Karrada neighborhood of Baghdad, they will just shift operations to Samarra (an hour's drive due north of Baghdad) or Tuz Khurmato.
Moreover, they are saying that they are just as capable of waving a read flag in front of the Shiite bull even if they aren't in Baghdad. Thus, they hit a sacred Shiite shrine again at Samarra. And Tuz Khurmato is a largely Shiite Turkmen city of some 63,000, surrounded by villages with a similar composition, like the one that was blown up Saturday. Although Turkmen Shiites had in earlier decades been removed from the formal, clerically-dominated Shiism of Najaf, practicing instead a folk religion, in the 1990s Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr reached out to them and brought many of them into orthodox Twelver Shiism. Arab Shiites now feel solidarity with them, and on occasion young cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has sent Mahdi Army fighters up to protect them. The Badr Corps of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council has also attempted to attract their loyalty. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki denounced the bombing as the work of Sunni extremists who declare that Shiite Muslims are actually infidels.
I criticized ACORN in my letter to the Post Gazette. My history with ACORN goes way back and I detail their many many problems here. I occasionally still get feedback from people who have worked or have tried to work for ACORN. Elwin should read it with links.
Thank You so much for this very informative article. I was in the process for being hired for an organizer position in ACORN. I was very excited about the prospect of being part of working for fair labor rights, but after I learned about the hypocricy and expliotation that comes along with working for ACORN, I withdrew my application. Thank you for the advice. Just for fun... here is the email Im sending to their Director of Recruiting hopefully it will strike a chord:
Ms. Mansour,
I regret to inform you that I am no longer interested in the activist/organizer position. After doing further research into your organization I was educated on the hypocricy and mismanagement that is rampant in ACORN. I refuse to work 55 hours a week and not be paid overtime. I refuse to be denied lunch breaks and 15 minute breaks that are required by law in several states. I refuse to work for an organization that insists on putting young unexperienced workers into possibly dangerous neighborhoods without at least a buddy system for security. Most importantly, I refuse to work for an organization that tauts the necessity of fair labor practices and then blatantly DENIES THEM TO THEIR OWN WORKERS. I am very passionate about the fighting oppression that ACORN works against, but I will not become a victim of it myself. Thank you for your time, and I hope these problems can be rectified within the ACORN community.
Jaco Pastorius, voted greatest bassist of all time, does his version of America (catch the early wiz of oz riffs...).
And now a few words from Frederick Douglas, a badass in any time. And yes I was surprised to see that at the Great Orange Satan's left side or his virtual frontpage. Perhaps he's getting smarter.
What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States at this very hour.
Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms- of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.
There were two prominent black american bloggers of prominence who you could reliably trust to fill the "token" slot in most liberal blogs over the last few years. One of them, Steve Gilliard, just passed away and while I sometimes disagreed with him (Steve never got the vote theft issue right or figured out that this was kind of a black issue...not a problem with, say, the Black Agenda Report, which arguably has the best black writers on the net. They never say stupid things.) he knew stuff. Oliver Willis is the other who guy who usually fills the token spot on most liberal white blogs. I have come to the conclusion that Oliver Willis just isn't a very talented guy. Certainly not a guy who represents black intellectual thought at its best and brightest. Today, for example, he recently called Howard Zinn an "idiot".
Go ahead and gasp.
Even if its true that Howard Zinn--who actually served in ww2 when its clear that the only thing the Original O Dub has ever served is on the menu and its large portions--doesn't love America sufficiently enough for Oliver's tastes I don't understand someone who's African American putting this guy down. Here's just a partial rundown of Mr. Zinn's civil rights pedigree from Wikipedia:
While at Spelman, Zinn collaborated with historian Staughton Lynd and mentored young student activists, among them writer Alice Walker and Marian Wright Edelman. Although Zinn was a tenured professor, he was dismissed, in June 1963, after siding with students in their desire to challenge Spelman's traditional emphasis of turning out "young ladies" when, as Zinn described in an article in The Nation, Spelman students were likely to be found on the picket line, or in jail for participating in the greater effort to break down segregation in public places in Atlanta. Zinn's years at Spelman are recounted in his autobiography You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times. His seven years at Spelman College, Zinn said, "are probably the most interesting, exciting, most educational years for me. I learned more from my students than my students learned from me." [1]
Zinn said that while at Spelman, he observed thirty violations of the First and Fourteenth amendments to the United States Constitution in Albany, Georgia, including the rights to freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and equal protection of the laws. In an article on the civil rights movement in Albany, Zinn describes the people who participated in the Freedom Rides to end segregation, and of the reluctance of President John F. Kennedy to enforce the law.[2] Zinn has also pointed out that the Justice Department under Robert F. Kennedy and the Federal Bureau of Investigation headed by J. Edgar Hoover, did little to nothing to stop the segregationists from brutalizing the civil rights workers.[3]
Zinn wrote frequently about the struggle for civil rights, both as a participant and historian [4] and in 1960-61, he took a year off from teaching to write SNCC: The New Abolitionists and The Southern Mystique.[5] In his book on SNCC, Zinn describes how the sit-ins against segregation were initiated by students and, in that sense, independent of the older, more established civil rights organizations.
This is the guy that Oliver Willis calls an "idiot". Astonishing. Beyond contempt. So beside Oliver's name on my linkroll I've added a whole list of African American bloggers who are probably better and brighter than Oliver Willis and who know who their friends are. Oh, he adds: "I hate people like Howard Zinn". Unreal. Un fucking real.
Speaking of the vote theft issue, there are a number of voter reform bills moving through the congress right now. This is actually a really important debate that you would know about if the media concentrated on real issues and not bullshit car wreck and fire stories that you can do nothing about for the most part.
It's actually a fairly complicated issue. Voting activists that I respect are split on the Holt Bill in the house. Everybody agrees that the Feinstein bill is terrible and seems to have been written by voting machine lobbyists. I would think that if any of the senate bill makes it into the final package this bill shouldn't pass.
There has finally been a debate between the pros and cons of this issue and you can listen to it here. Unlike Paris Hilton going to jail this issue may determine who wins or gets away with stealing the 2008 election.
A Special "I Link Therefore I Am" Version of Around the Internets
Some art by Paul Pope. Pic of Ravi Shankar, father of Norah Jones.
Horrible supreme court decision commentary here and here. I agree that the high court has become a tool of evil. I will also remember that the dems didn't filibuster a single Bush II court nominee. Related "racism is dead" news here. Also related: Pitt study documenting that life in Pittsburgh not great for African Americans.
It's amazing how badly the entertainment industry wants people to believe that anything they don't like must be illegal. There's already a long history of them suing the easiest party for them to find rather than the party actually breaking the law, so it shouldn't be much of a surprise to see them doing so again. Apparently the MPAA has sued some sites that create a directory of online videos, mainly TV shows and movies. These sites do not host the files. They simply point people to where they are online. Effectively, it's the same thing that a search engine like Google does. There are plenty of Google searches that will lead you to unauthorized content, but for some reason, the entertainment industry believes that if you make a specialized search engine or directory you're somehow liable. These sites have come under attack before, and the MPAA may be hoping that by creating a specialized search engine they'll be able to show "inducement" under the Supreme Court's Grokster standard. It will definitely be worth watching how these court cases go, because if the MPAA succeeds, it effectively means that they'll have the right to sue anyone who links to infringing content by claiming inducement. That would be a horrible precedent to set.
Agent Ska's brother is blogging. Are there any underachievers in this family? Related: She's also involved in this group ladies (with a title font right out of Jane Austen) blog that I had better permalink and soon...
I decided to check out my fave impartial corporate media blogger (because when I read something from corporate media bloggers I just KNOW I'll learn something dangerous and whatnot..) Elwin Green, who apparently is quite the impartial one. Don't ask who he backed in the civil war. He won't know or can't tell or something. Anyway, he wrote about how ACORN (not my favorite organization but they do some good) wrote about who how they were going to meet Obama and then he mentioned this:
"No word yet on whether the organization will offer a similar trip to see and hear Fred Thompson, Rudy Giuliani or any of the other Republican presidential candidates."
So I wrote him this:
Well, first, I think the reason why ACORN, run by mostly unaccountable white folks by the way last time I checked, is that the Republican Party is thought to be, quite correctly, kind of a racist party. Why did white supremacist David Duke choose the GOP? Because that's where he felt comfortable and I agree with him. I know that there's a tactical reason not to lay your eggs in one party but why help the other people that's clearly a racist party and against any significant widestream effort that would actually improve the lot of the black underclass for example: direct federal funding of education as opposed to property taxes or amending these top down trade deals to protect the bulk of african american blue collar workers or investing more in education than prisons or not waging imperialistic war against mostly brown skinned people and the list goes on. What benefit would there be to hearing Fred Thompson speak? I mean, even white americans are soured on the GOP...why should African Americans embrace them? Wouldn't building the Green Party into a viable second party make more sense. Your opinion please.
So far no response from Elwin. Hey, he said he wanted feedback...I also forgot to mention the republicans are really really bad because they've stolen the last two presidential elections by purging mostly african americans from the polls. I know Elwin is impartial but sometimes a grudge is a healthy thing...
June 19
I actually caught the last day of the Three Rivers arts fest thing and I caught two interesting artists. The above work was drawn by Monique Luck, who also has a mural in Squirrel Hill. I like all the murals I've seen in the city so far. And below there are two pieces by Mark Traughber. There were more other interesting artists at the fair--the couple who built modded broomsticks and the black wood carver come to mind--but they didn't have websites so...
Down below I linked to a site called The Real News. This is an attempt to create a completely publicly funded press. They don't want government subsidies or corporate money. They need your donations. I guess it would be like NPR except that the republicans wouldn't work relentlessly to either destroy it or convert it to fox news. The founder talks more about the project below.
There were two prominent black american bloggers of prominence who you could reliably trust to fill the "token" slot in most liberal blogs over the last few years. One of them, Steve Gilliard, just passed away and while I sometimes disagreed with him (Steve never got the vote theft issue right or figured out that this was kind of a black issue...not a problem with, say, the Black Agenda Report, which arguably has the best black writers on the net. They never say stupid things.) he knew stuff. Oliver Willis is the other who guy who usually fills the token spot on most liberal white blogs. I have come to the conclusion that Oliver Willis just isn't a very talented guy. Certainly not a guy who represents black intellectual thought at its best and brightest. Today, for example, he recently called Howard Zinn an "idiot".
Go ahead and gasp.
Even if its true that Howard Zinn--who actually served in ww2 when its clear that the only thing the Original O Dub has ever served is on the menu and its large portions--doesn't love America sufficiently enough for Oliver's tastes I don't understand someone who's African American putting this guy down. Here's just a partial rundown of Mr. Zinn's civil rights pedigree from Wikipedia:
While at Spelman, Zinn collaborated with historian Staughton Lynd and mentored young student activists, among them writer Alice Walker and Marian Wright Edelman. Although Zinn was a tenured professor, he was dismissed, in June 1963, after siding with students in their desire to challenge Spelman's traditional emphasis of turning out "young ladies" when, as Zinn described in an article in The Nation, Spelman students were likely to be found on the picket line, or in jail for participating in the greater effort to break down segregation in public places in Atlanta. Zinn's years at Spelman are recounted in his autobiography You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times. His seven years at Spelman College, Zinn said, "are probably the most interesting, exciting, most educational years for me. I learned more from my students than my students learned from me." [1]
Zinn said that while at Spelman, he observed thirty violations of the First and Fourteenth amendments to the United States Constitution in Albany, Georgia, including the rights to freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and equal protection of the laws. In an article on the civil rights movement in Albany, Zinn describes the people who participated in the Freedom Rides to end segregation, and of the reluctance of President John F. Kennedy to enforce the law.[2] Zinn has also pointed out that the Justice Department under Robert F. Kennedy and the Federal Bureau of Investigation headed by J. Edgar Hoover, did little to nothing to stop the segregationists from brutalizing the civil rights workers.[3]
Zinn wrote frequently about the struggle for civil rights, both as a participant and historian [4] and in 1960-61, he took a year off from teaching to write SNCC: The New Abolitionists and The Southern Mystique.[5] In his book on SNCC, Zinn describes how the sit-ins against segregation were initiated by students and, in that sense, independent of the older, more established civil rights organizations.
This is the guy that Oliver Willis calls an "idiot". Astonishing. Beyond contempt. So beside Oliver's name on my linkroll I've added a whole list of African American bloggers who are probably better and brighter than Oliver Willis and who know who their friends are. Oh, he adds: "I hate people like Howard Zinn". Unreal. Un fucking real.
Speaking of the vote theft issue, there are a number of voter reform bills moving through the congress right now. This is actually a really important debate that you would know about if the media concentrated on real issues and not bullshit car wreck and fire stories that you can do nothing about for the most part.
It's actually a fairly complicated issue. Voting activists that I respect are split on the Holt Bill in the house. Everybody agrees that the Feinstein bill is terrible and seems to have been written by voting machine lobbyists. I would think that if any of the senate bill makes it into the final package this bill shouldn't pass.
There has finally been a debate between the pros and cons of this issue and you can listen to it here. Unlike Paris Hilton going to jail this issue may determine who wins or gets away with stealing the 2008 election.
A Special "I Link Therefore I Am" Version of Around the Internets
Some art by Paul Pope. Pic of Ravi Shankar, father of Norah Jones.
Horrible supreme court decision commentary here and here. I agree that the high court has become a tool of evil. I will also remember that the dems didn't filibuster a single Bush II court nominee. Related "racism is dead" news here. Also related: Pitt study documenting that life in Pittsburgh not great for African Americans.
It's amazing how badly the entertainment industry wants people to believe that anything they don't like must be illegal. There's already a long history of them suing the easiest party for them to find rather than the party actually breaking the law, so it shouldn't be much of a surprise to see them doing so again. Apparently the MPAA has sued some sites that create a directory of online videos, mainly TV shows and movies. These sites do not host the files. They simply point people to where they are online. Effectively, it's the same thing that a search engine like Google does. There are plenty of Google searches that will lead you to unauthorized content, but for some reason, the entertainment industry believes that if you make a specialized search engine or directory you're somehow liable. These sites have come under attack before, and the MPAA may be hoping that by creating a specialized search engine they'll be able to show "inducement" under the Supreme Court's Grokster standard. It will definitely be worth watching how these court cases go, because if the MPAA succeeds, it effectively means that they'll have the right to sue anyone who links to infringing content by claiming inducement. That would be a horrible precedent to set.
Agent Ska's brother is blogging. Are there any underachievers in this family? Related: She's also involved in this group ladies (with a title font right out of Jane Austen) blog that I had better permalink and soon...
I decided to check out my fave impartial corporate media blogger (because when I read something from corporate media bloggers I just KNOW I'll learn something dangerous and whatnot..) Elwin Green, who apparently is quite the impartial one. Don't ask who he backed in the civil war. He won't know or can't tell or something. Anyway, he wrote about how ACORN (not my favorite organization but they do some good) wrote about who how they were going to meet Obama and then he mentioned this:
"No word yet on whether the organization will offer a similar trip to see and hear Fred Thompson, Rudy Giuliani or any of the other Republican presidential candidates."
So I wrote him this:
Well, first, I think the reason why ACORN, run by mostly unaccountable white folks by the way last time I checked, is that the Republican Party is thought to be, quite correctly, kind of a racist party. Why did white supremacist David Duke choose the GOP? Because that's where he felt comfortable and I agree with him. I know that there's a tactical reason not to lay your eggs in one party but why help the other people that's clearly a racist party and against any significant widestream effort that would actually improve the lot of the black underclass for example: direct federal funding of education as opposed to property taxes or amending these top down trade deals to protect the bulk of african american blue collar workers or investing more in education than prisons or not waging imperialistic war against mostly brown skinned people and the list goes on. What benefit would there be to hearing Fred Thompson speak? I mean, even white americans are soured on the GOP...why should African Americans embrace them? Wouldn't building the Green Party into a viable second party make more sense. Your opinion please.
So far no response from Elwin. Hey, he said he wanted feedback...I also forgot to mention the republicans are really really bad because they've stolen the last two presidential elections by purging mostly african americans from the polls. I know Elwin is impartial but sometimes a grudge is a healthy thing...
June 19
I actually caught the last day of the Three Rivers arts fest thing and I caught two interesting artists. The above work was drawn by Monique Luck, who also has a mural in Squirrel Hill. I like all the murals I've seen in the city so far. And below there are two pieces by Mark Traughber. There were more other interesting artists at the fair--the couple who built modded broomsticks and the black wood carver come to mind--but they didn't have websites so...
Down below I linked to a site called The Real News. This is an attempt to create a completely publicly funded press. They don't want government subsidies or corporate money. They need your donations. I guess it would be like NPR except that the republicans wouldn't work relentlessly to either destroy it or convert it to fox news. The founder talks more about the project below.
I finally have time to respond to this, which was a part of a City Paper story here. (I do think Chris Potter has done a better job as editor than my old In Pittsburgh editor Andy Newman...on the other hand, Chris has never gotten back to me about doing a weekly book column, which I could even do online. Oh, I'm sure he'll find a cute white kid who hasn't written for Locus to do it, preferably from an Ivy League college or local...Just like my mom implied: only rich white kids should aspire to write. True, that would eliminate about 99.9 percent of the majority of black writers who've written over the last 100 years but my mom isn't a big reader...I think I'm going to ignore her advice...yeah I'm a little pissed off at my mom not that she would read this. She has a hard time even turning on the computer in between bouts of telling me how to live because she's so "bright"...)
Here are the interesting quotes from the new council rep from Homewood:
"The issues of some people, like those in the blogs, are not my issues," Burgess says. "What's holding our district back is the education for our kids, the violence and lack of economic development in our communities." Such issues, he notes, get very little attention from bloggers, who are much more likely to be set abuzz by the news that Ravenstahl was detained by police at a Steelers game in 2005.
Burgess admires the blogs for being an "unfiltered perception of some segment of the community." But, he adds, "The authors of the blogs are talking about the perspective they live" -- and "mostly, they aren't living in Homewood."
First, and this is just flat out wrong on so many levels, there are a number of local blogs that do concern themselves primarily with education and economic development, almost nauseatingly so. I suppose Pittsblog and Mark Rauterkaus would be the first stops. Of course, I'm curious as to what he's going to do about the issues of education and economic development as a councilman. I always thought that those were macro issues that involved direct federal funding for education as opposed to property tax based (where the residents of Fox Chapel and the residents of Homewood (or what American Writer Greg Palast bluntly and correctly calls "American Bantustans" ) get a slightly different kind of "public" education.) and massive deindustrialization where corporations and their political servants are rewarded for hollowing out the American economy...not to mention continuing an imperialist war at odds with the public in and in concert with what C. Wright Mills called "The Power Elite".
Two, the reason that Luke got a lot of attention early is not because whitey is preoccupied with minor things about how the mayor beats raps that would lead other people into beatings or arrests (I would think that would interest an African American man, really.) but because he's perceived to be a lightweight machine dem--who would be a republican in a two party town-- who doesn't have the heft, breadth, or depth to do anything to fundamentally change the many things that are wrong in the city. Furthermore, they were also shadow operatives for the now deceased Peduto campaign and they probably thought it was helpful to his campaign.
Three, there's nothing stopping someone from writing about Homewood who lives in Homewood, aside from that Post Gazette guy who registered as a Republican because, you know, as a black man he's completely unbiased. (File under: what's wrong with the corporate media and the objectivity principle.) Actually, if you really are unbiased, does that make you smart? Some black guy who won't tell me who he wants to win the Civil War because he's "objective"? Who's more helpful to me you or David Sirota, or even the late Steve Gilliard? (More thoughts on him when I have time..tragic loss.)
I suppose, if Burgess understood the Internets, he could write that blog and tell me more about what he's doing to improve the local economy and education in Homewood. Hey, I'd like to know.
Speaking of C. Wright Mills, here's a helpful quote that perhaps explains why the Dems haven't stopped the war.
"American 'militarism,' accordingly, involves the attempt of military men to increase their powers, and hence their status, in comparison with businessmen and politicians. To gain such powers they must not be considered a mere means to be used by politicians and money-makers. They must not be considered parasites on the economy and under the supervision of those who are often called in military circles 'the dirty politicians.' On the contrary their ends must be identified with the ends as well as the honor of the nation; the economy must be their servant; politics an instrument by which, in the name of the state, the family, and God, they manage the nation in modern war.' What does it mean to go to war?' Woodrow Wilson was asked in 1917. 'It means,' he replied, 'an attempt to reconstruct a peacetime civilization with war standards, and at the end of the war there will be no bystanders with sufficient peace standards left to work with. There will be only war standards ... ' American militarism, in fully developed form, would mean the triumph in all areas of life of the military metaphysic, and hence the subordination to it of all other ways of life."
Speaking of the Pittsburgh Lesbian correspondents, I noticed they thought that there should have been more comment about the house fire that claimed five lives. I don't think it means that we're not paying attention. Some of us just don't think that's real news. If you're interested in real news, then go look at the topic matter of, say, a Democracy Now or Undernews. Real news, to me, is something that you can change and affect. I'm more interested in policy questions because, in theory anyway and not necessarily in practice as of late, I can replace the policymakers whereas I really can't do anything about tragic fires or carwrecks. That's my two cents. I also remember my two years of being a beat reporter at the Evansville Courier where I had the wonderful joy of asking somebody how they felt about their newly dead relatives. Not the fun part of that job...
I agree with this Agent Ska piece on POG. Peduto must know that what he's saying wouldn't hold up in a court of law. It had a kind of "If not for you meddling kids" kind of tone so perhaps he thinks these attacks against Shadyside shops and green grocers (Is that a legitimate target...I know the East End Co-op is a little pricey but still...) were inspired by POG's actions. I guess I have a different point of view. I think that when your country slaughters a half million Iraqis and the political process isn't working some things should be broken. I wouldn't have picked community grocers as my target but who said anarchists were organized, or even could be.
June 12
Darwyn Cooke, the artist above, apparently won an award or two or something. I think he deserves it. I have not read this new Spirit. Since the art looks spectacular and Frank Miller is putting off Sin City 2 in order to do a movie version of this property perhaps I should check it out.
Well, the fact that we didn't see the actual hit itself blurs things just a bit. One, its meant to symbolize how you would see a quick death. Actress Sean Young, who had a near death experience, described it as someone turning the television off. Two, its kept open ended because of movie potential. That nervous guy who goes into the bathroom isn't a hitter who finds a gun in the stall. Those black kids aren't hitters either. Three, life goes on for Tony as uncertain as it ever was and Paulie Walnuts is the head of the New Jersey gang? Please. I opt for two: "Sopranos: The Movie."
More pros and cons about the new election bill in congress. I'm still a cowardly fencesitter. First the cons:
From Rebecca:
"The 2007 Holt bill and its revised version is NOT a compromise bill, although it HAS been COMPROMISED in various regards. Specifically it re- funds the EAC (the earlier version actually extended the EAC as an institution, indefinitely, the later version provides a $1B handout to the vendors, to be doled out by the EAC since they are out of HAVA money to give away) with funds that will CERTAINLY be used by states, such Holt's home base of New Jersey, to purchase VVPAT add-ons to DREs, hence perpetuating the use of this unreliable and expensive equipment. The bill does NOT ban DREs, as some HR811 advocates have been misinformed to believe and expound. In the case of New Jersey, purchasing precinct-based opscan equipment is NOT an option, since the state has continued (to this date) to refuse to certify any such equipment.
The Holt bill also will be the FIRST to FEDERALLY legislate and thus legitimize the restrictive use of non-disclosure agreements in the examination of election systems. Certainly Holt could have disallowed trade secrecy for voting systems and the vendors could continue to protect their intellectual property with copyrights and patents. Instead, this is a very bad aspect of the bill, because it introduces this sanction of secrecy in such fashion that election advocates run the risk of being silenced or threatened with lawsuits if they reveal information about the equipment. The NDA section of the Holt bill has been weasel-worded such that advocates will be required to foot hefty attorney fees in order to ensure that the NDAs that they sign do not contain implicit risks such as compensation for vendor loss of income, criminal charges if false claims are made, and so on.
There are many other severely bad aspects of this bill, such that it does NOT pose an improvement for 2008 or 2010, but rather provides a further legacy of bad voting equipment and election-related policies, that will be exploited by the vendors into a 180 degree turn-around from the bill's (presumed and touted) intentions. We will be dealing with this additional resulting mess for another half-decade, much as we found ourselves dealing with the mess that HAVA created for the last half-decade.
I am of the strong opinion that a bad federal bill is WORSE than no bill at all. At least with no federal bill, the states can continue to enact GOOD legislation (with the assistance of input from concerned citizens and election advocates). With a bad bill, threats (such as we saw with HAVA) and intimidation (such as from the DoJ) can be used to force unwanted election equipment down on the municipalities. HR811 is a bad bill and should not be supported AT ALL BY ANYONE, least of all, election integrity advocates.
............ .... and further, the companion bill is unlikely not to have sufficient bipartisan support to pass muster in the Senate, and certainly both the House and Senate do not have sufficient votes to override a Bush veto. ............ ......... the "shushing" tactics used by so-called election integrity advocates to quelch debate and discussion on Holt's bill this round have been rather appalling. It seems apparent (at least to me) that supporting (or remaining quiet about) HR811 is actually a "litmus test" to see who will continue to get a seat at the table at hearings, and who will benefit from the grant money being doled out by the feds.
So far, we can see that the legacy of this crop of House Dems will include hundreds of billions of war debt, plus the death of tens of thousands (including many of our own service people) in the Iraqi civil war, all in the spirit of "compromise. " Let us not be fooled by the gutless Dems that Holt's voting bill will not be similarly "compromised" to promote the vendors' agendas.
Rebecca Mercuri.
And the pros:
Folks,
In an effort to be gentle and polite, here's my overview opinion on HR 811.
I wholeheartedly support it, and will continue to do so. And I encourage you all to do the same.
The bill has been in markup lately and only a choice few have seen it along the way. I do not know who all has seen it, but I believe that Barry Kauffman (Common Cause) is one of them and still likes it as it is. His opinion trumps some of you folks' opinions by me.
What I read in some of your emails [on this and other lists] is anger. Unthrottled, unbridled anger. What on earth are you all so angry about? Some of what you say is somewhat inaccurate, but we will pass on that for the moment. But mostly what I see is a railing at the heavens because it's not raining in the right spot.
In the House now they have a huge contingent of sponsors and cosponsors to HR 811. It has taken well over a year to garner that support. It is based on a tentative balance, as is every negotiated bill, and yet it still retains bipartisan support.
Right now, large corporate forces are opposing the bill, because it would affect what they see as their "proprietary" rights (it would let others see what poopy computer code they've been selling or would allow the theft of Windows code which is also used in their systems) and some of those corporate interests also now have the ears of elections officials, whom they have been wining and dining and whose elections they have often quite effectively infiltrated with their employees' hands. They have gotten such elections officials to write letters to legislators (who have waved hunks of paper around to show same) advocating against the legislation.
We are not bloody likely to get anywhere near this kind of Congressional support for any other bill of this sort ever again. It is all we can do to keep Voter ID out of the blasted thing before it is passed. There is absolutely no reason to throw the bill away.
And further to that, I'll stand AccuPoll's machine up to some of your opinions any day. Even our cohorts at CMU and Pitt computer dep'ts can appreciate its merits. Also appreciate the integrity of the company. I get furious when folks come up and say that no DRE - or "no electronic voting machine" - is good enough. The machines are meant for (a) expediency of tabulation of votes, and (b) facility of user interface with the ballot, and (c) accurate calculations. This is really what all computers were/are designed for. We don't want them to do any more. And this is what should be reflected in the federal law. If they are doing this stuff and are not retaining recountability, accessibility, security, safety, or voter- verifiability, then they are not good enough tools toward our ends.
Certain of your plans of action really are no plan at all. Certain items such as emergency paper ballots in case of breakdown really do not belong in federal legislation. They are covered in county and state legislation. I don't really think it is a good idea to cast off all our various state legislation in favor of uniform federal legislation (although Pennsylvania' s election laws are so convoluted and self-contradictory and antiquated in many places that I have to bite my lip when I say that).
Let me reiterate what I keep on saying in various arenas. The Help America Vote Act was written by Bob Ney for his voting machine comapny owning friends to make a pile of money and possibly to rig votes in certain places. It was passed by a Republican Congress, another bunch of his friends. (I hope he has so many friends in jail.) You know what Bob Fitrakis wrote about the computers in Ohio vis-a-vis the lost federal emails and the voting tabulations running through the same server.
The companies spent virtually nothing on R&D but everything on schmoozing. Now we have all, like sheep, bought their machines, even against all common sense. So we need to fix this, and that fix should rightly come from a federal level. We really cannot outlaw bad companies or bad business decisions by counties and states. But we can legislate against their effects. What do the bad machines do? What wrongs might they cause? How do we prevent those?
Right now, too many folks are dividing those of us who have been working toward getting the best out of what we have been given - finding the best machines, using the happy notion of accessibility to its best intent, etc. We have to let common sense prevail, and we have to work with what we have. We cannot go off railing and wailing and flailing, and those who do should please disassociate themselves from those of us who remain calm.
I'm still sticking behind 811 because it is our best shot. We have a cannon aimed at the groin of the problem, and even if we don't have a killer charge in the cannonball, we need to fire, because the only thing we have left is shotguns at 500 feet.
