We Won The Country Back!

OBAMA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

McCain is a Typical Republican Not a Maverick

McCain is a maverick? What does that mean? A dissenter? I just don't see it. The biggest issue of our time is the VietIraqNam War. Actually, the US had more reason to be in Vietnam than we do in Iraq. Yet McCain is gung-ho about this war. He goes along with Bush's oil war and is willing to put our young men and women in harm's way to line Cheney and his friend's pockets for the next 100 years. How exactly does this make him an independent thinker? A dissenter? A maverick? On the most important foreign policy issue of our time, he is a foot soldier for Bush. A servant to political status quo. Furthermore, on the domestic front, he thinks Bush's ideas on domestic oil are right on. We are at a moment in time when we can truly innovate our economy with the transition to other forms of energy. McCain thinks the Bush Administration's "just domestic drill and that'll solve it all" approach is right on the mark. Again, exactly who is going to benefit from this approach? Oh yeah, the Bush oil family and Cheney and his buddies. I don't see a maverick here at all. Finally, his pick for VP shows that he is trying desperately to get in bed with the Christian conservative right wing base just like Bush. How exactly does this make him a dissenter? A maverick? An independent thinker?

McCain is a wacko

OK, does anyone need any more proof that McCain is certified nut job after his ridiculous pick for VP?

Winning Beats Losing

This week started out so incredibly crappy. The crappiness was encapsulated within the losing of my cell phone out of state at a conf. I attended for work. I thought it was gone and it was a phone I couldn't afford to replace. The place I lost it at told me they didn't have it on Sat. but today left a message that they did have it. I called them and they are going to send it to me.

In less trivial news, we won our appeal against the shitty building in our neighborhood getting the co-location of a cell phone tower on top of the building. Basically three average run of the mill Angelinos (ok I'm the average one in the group but you know what I mean) fought a slumlord, the city, and T-Mobile and WON! No lawyer, just homegrown grassroots community activism. I spoke at the hearing and the commission voted unanimously to uphold our appeal! This is a huge victory for my neighborhood and for the rights of stakeholders in Eagle Rock.

They Shoot Blonde Women In Los Angeles, Don't They?

Al Sharpton recently met with the Los Angeles County Sheriff to discuss his concerns that Paris Hilton is getting special treatment in jail. Of course she is getting special treatment in jail--she is a celebrity and this is Hollywood, baby. This is not about race, it's about class, wealth, privilege, and the power of celebrity. In this town, every male celebrity is allowed one murder--it's the rules. And we are worried about the special treatment Paris gets? Wow, I wonder how the families of these women feel:

Back in the seventies, the son of sam killer had fearful brown-haired women of NY changing their hair color to avoid being a target. So my suggestion, my fellow Los Angeles blondies, next time any one of us dates a celebrity--we must dye our hair brown before strapping on the Manolo's and heading out the door. We need to look out for each other because the law certainly won't.

Peace is Radical

When I envision a radical I imagine some paranoid guy living out in the backwoods of Montana, stashing cans of food and piling up machine guns, making homemade bombs in his basement to send through the mail to the folks that are "after him" and pacing impatiently for the end of the world. However, I am wrong. A radical individual is someone who thinks striving for world peace is the correct course of action for humanity. A radical believes that diplomacy should be policy. A radical wants to be educated about world cultures and history and use debate, communication, and discourse as a means to solving the global issues.

Bill Maher Interviews Dennis Kucinich (04/27/07)

In other news, cause you know how I love me some urban renewal, blogdowntown, one of my favorite blogs about Los Angeles, is quoted in an article about downtown Los Angeles by Susan Pigg, a travel writer from the Toronto Star.

The Biggest Discussion Taboo: Gun Control

One of my least favorite slogans: Guns Don't Kill People, People Kill People. When I hear this moronic statement I want to kill someone, with a gun. No not really. I want to use my fists--- no wait I'm not very strong---I'll use my psychic powers---oh wait I don't have those either. Oh well, I don't really want to kill anyone anyway. But if I did want to kill someone it sure is comforting to know that I can quickly purchase a gun, isn't it?

If you want to have a gun have a gun...but unless you need to kill something or someone really fast you shouldn't be worried about gun control. Well, unless there is something on your record that should prevent you from obtaining a gun...like your a psycho. Or, maybe you are just an idiot and actually believe in the slippery slope (oh but then you probably also believe that the US invaded Iraq to fight terrorism).

Democrats are such wimps on the issue of gun control because they are afraid they will lose elections over it and Republicans are in bed with the NRA. And the majority of Americans can't think their way out of a paper bag...wait maybe with guns they can shoot their way out.

America's Violent Heart: Poetry is Dangerous

This was forwarded to me as an e-mail and I think it is important...

Friday, April 20, 2007

Poetry is Dangerous by Kazim Ali

On April 19, after a day of teaching classes at Shippensburg University, I went out to my car and grabbed a box of old poetry manuscripts from the front seat of my little white beetle and carried it across the street and put it next to the trashcan outside Wright Hall. The poems were from poetry contests I had been judging and the box was heavy. I had previously left my recycling boxes there and they were always picked up and taken away by the trash department.

A young man from ROTC was watching me as I got into my car and drove away. I thought he was looking at my car which has black flower decals and sometimes inspires strange looks. I later discovered that I, in my dark skin, am sometimes not even a person to the people who look at me. Instead, in spite of my peacefulness, my committed opposition to all aggression and war, I am a threat by my very existence, a threat just living in the world as a Muslim body.

Upon my departure, he called the local police department and told them a man of Middle Eastern descent driving a heavily decaled white beetle without of state plates and no campus parking sticker had just placed a box next to the trash can. My car has NY plates, but he got the rest of it wrong. I have two stickers on my car. One is my highly visible faculty parking sticker and the other, which I just don't have the heart to take off these days, says "Kerry/Edwards:For a Stronger America."

Because of my recycling the bomb squad came, the state police came. Because of my recycling buildings were evacuated, classes were canceled, campus was closed. No. Not because of my recycling. Because of my dark body. No. Not because of my dark body. Because of his fear. Because of the way he saw me. Because of the culture of fear, mistrust, hatred, and suspicion that is carefully cultivated in the media, by the government, by people who claim to want to keep us 'safe.'

These are the days of orange alert, school lock-downs,and endless war. We are preparing for it, training for it, looking for it, and so of course, in the most innocuous of places-a professor wanting to hurry home, hefting his box of discarded poetry-we find it.

That man in the parking lot didn't even see me. He saw my darkness. He saw my Middle Eastern descent. Ironic because though my grandfathers came from Egypt, I am Indian, a South Asian, and could never be mistaken fora Middle Eastern man by anyone who'd ever met one.

One of my colleagues was in the gathering crowd,trying to figure out what had happened. She heard my description-a Middle Eastern man driving a white beetle with out of state plates-and knew immediately they were talking about me and realized that the box must have been manuscripts I was discarding. She approached them and told them I was a professor on thefaculty there. Immediately the campus police officer said, "What country is he from?"

"What country is he from?!" she yelled, indignant.

"Ma'am, you are associated with the suspect. You need to step away and lower your voice," he told her.

At some length several of my faculty colleagues were able to get through to the police and get me on a cellphone where I explained to the university president and then to the state police that the box contained old poetry manuscripts that needed to be recycled. The police officer told me that in the current climate I needed to be more careful about how I behaved. "When I recycle?"I asked.

The university president appreciated my distress about the situation but denied that the call had anything to do with my race or ethnic background. The spokesperson of the university called it an "honest mistake," not referring to the young man from ROTC giving in to his worst instincts and calling the police but referring to me who made the mistake of being dark-skinned and putting my recycling next to the trashcan.

The university's bizarrely minimal statement lets everyone know that the "suspicious package" beside the trashcan ended up being, indeed, trash. It goes on to say, "We appreciate your cooperation during the incident and remind everyone that safety is a joint effort by all members of the campus community.

"What does that community mean to me, a person who has to walk by the ROTC offices every day on my way to my own office just down the hall-who was watched, noted,and reported, all in a day's work? Today we gave in willingly and whole-heartedly to a culture of fear and blaming and profiling. It is deemed perfectly appropriate behavior to spy on one another and police one another and report on one another. Such behaviors exist most strongly in closed and undemocratic and fascist societies.

The university report does not mention the root cause of the alarm. That package became "suspicious" because of who was holding it, who put it down, who droveaway. Me. It was poetry, I kept insisting to the state policeman who was questioning me on the phone. It was poetry I was putting out to be recycled.

My body exists politically in a way I can not prevent. For a moment today, without even knowing it, driving away from campus in my little beetle, exhausted after a day of teaching, listening to Justin Timberlake on the radio, I ceased to be a person when a man I had never met looked straight through me and saw the violence in his own heart.

http://www.kazimali.com/

You Can Call Me A Whore...

...just don't preface it with a racial slur cause then it's not acceptable. I can bet you, oh, say my house, that CBS would not have fired Don Imus from his radio show if he had merely called the Rutgers Basketball Team "ho's", a term I hear from radio, TV, and movies on a daily basis. That is because there is no women's issue leader ala Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson, to invoke public outrage on behalf of women that can sway the likes of Procter & Gamble to pull advertising from the likes of Imus, Leykis, etc.


This could be because we as women are ambivalent about the use of derogatory terms used in the mainstream media to describe women. In fact the overt misogyny in mainstream media may have something to do with female appropriation of the language of the oppressor--an ideology that become very popular in the 90's. Perhaps as we became more comfortable as women referring to ourselves as dirty whores, bitches, pussy posses, and even cunts (I have to admit it felt pretty powerful to deflate these words through usage) we also became more comfortable hearing them from the media to describe us--now are we doubly bruised?

Furthermore, women's groups tend to be, like I am, intensely pro freedom of speech. Having fought so hard for our voices to be heard and accounted for, it is antithetical to the women's movement to squelch others. However, public opinion does have the power to dictate public discourse and I often wonder, where is our Al Sharpton, our Jesse Jackson...would anyone have heard this Imus comment or cared if he had said "viking ho's" or "giant bitches"?

CODEPINK: Toy Soldiers

http://www.codepink4peace.org/

My Humps

Yes, two youtubes in a row makes me a bit of a cheeseout bloggie, but I love that this exposes how totally lame and demeaning the lyrics of this song are. It's something you don't really think about when it's set to it's limpy dancebeat.

I've never been much of an Alanis Morisette fan for several reasons:

• I hate the way she says her S's. They always come out with a shushy sound that irritates me.
• I also hate that most of the situations that she sings about in her "Ironic" song are not really examples of irony. They are just things that would not be cool if they happened.
• It's weird to me that she's married (or was married?) to that sitcom guy--I can't make that one work in my brain and that bugs me.
• I was a big Sex in the City fan and her episode is not one of my favs so I hate it when that's the rerun waiting for me on TIVO.

Aside from that I think this is funny even if it is in a slightly weird alish sort of way.

Alanis Morisette Video for Fergie's My Humps

Do you ever hear kids sing pop songs and cringe a little at the words that come out of their mouths as they obliviously sing their little hearts out? Moms around the country must draw their fingernails into their minivan seat cushions every time they hear their daughters sing along to My Humps.

Bill O'Reilly says "We're the Bad Guys"

Bill O'Reilly cuts mic of US Colonel Ann Wright



Is it just me or is he getting crazier by the minute? Anyway, love to see him get his ass kicked by a woman.

Bong Hits 4 Jesus

Kids are funny. I couldn't believe that the kid's school district took this case all the way to the supreme court, but then I read who is representing (and for free I might add) the school district--none other than the most repressed man alive, Kenneth Starr. You know him as the guy that was so obsessed with Bill Clinton that he ultimately got him impeached for getting a BJ. My personal belief is that Starr was secretly in love with Clinton and so ashamed of his own feelings that he tried to destroy the man. And with all the whacked out conservative gay-bashing politicians turning out to be closeted homosexuals these days, I think my hypothesis may be gaining validity. And now, because there is nothing that this repressed little man needs more than a bong hit, he is on to destroying free speech. Starr, Jesus says its OK, free speech and bong hits...

Some Junk Mail:Motivated christains* to work @ home

This is so Goddamn funny to me...and not just because I recently drank a whole bunch of vino. I'm sure posting this breaks all rules with what you are supposed to do with junk mail but I keep getting this faith-based crap in my e-mail and I think it is hilarious. So, any good Christians out there lookin' to pick up a little extra cash? (I'll send you the link if your interested)

*"Christains "was the spelling used in the title of the junk e-mail I received. Maybe this is some alternate spelling I am not aware of but I always thought, as it is spelled in the compelling ad, that it was spelled, Christians.

War in Iraq: Four Years On

All I can say is Congress and the Senate, you have the power to stop this war. Nancy Pelosi, your appointment symbolized America's referendum on the War on Iraq. We want you to stop this madness. Bush won't stop this. But you can stop this war before more soldiers die or come back with their limbs blown off of them. Please honor the people of the United States.

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/casualties/

And please remember this war began on false pretenses. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and no link between Hussein and Al-Qaeda has been established. Oh, and by the way, how's that hunt for Osama Bin Laden (you know, the guy responsible for 9/11) going?

www.thenation.com/doc/20070402/editors2

http://thinkprogress.org/the-architects-where-are-they-now/

Ridiculous News Title of the Day

Brain injuries a 'silent epidemic'

An epidemic? Really? I guess since bird flu and west nile didn't really pan out as epidemics, the news media is going for a more homespun epidemic--driving in cars! Or, advancements in medicine that keep people alive after horrifyingly bad accidents! Yes, medical advancement, you are now an epidemic. I am so scared, I called in to work today cause nobody's getting me in the car during the dangerous Los Angeles morning rush hour, no way.

Also, since the war is topical, the article refers to it--"Millions of cases of traumatic brain injury happening far from war zone" -- Then the article makes mention of all the brain injuries soldiers coming back from the war have (nevermind that these injuries will stop when the government stops this war) but acknowledges, "most cases of traumatic brain injury...happen far from the war zone. More than 40 percent of TBIs are the result of traffic accidents — the most common cause of this type of injury."

I see where this is going and it ain't pretty...the law requiring all drivers and passengers to wear helmets. Imagine it, cruising down the PCH with the top down and your helmet securely fastened.

Ann Coulter is Fun!

Here's Why:

1. Don't you get the sense that she was the ugly gawky-limbed girl in high school that everyone made fun of? I bet they called her "spaz"
2. She likes to be made fun of. Psychologists call this a negative personality disorder.
3. She is pretty in conservative republican circles, but ugly to the rest of the world.
4. She sounds (and looks) like a transgendered person.
5. She prostitutes herself for attention and money so she actually encourages us to make fun of her--it's her career.

Here are some FUN quotes from our gal: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ann_Coulter

Oh, and this is really FUNNY http://www.anncoulter.com/cgi-local/gallery.cgi

Thanks Ann for brightening my day!