Thanks for the Chicken!

OK, I am not one to criticize another’s clothes.  Heaven forbid!  I am sure I could receive a few fashion citations myself!

But.. regarding Michelle Obama’s Election Day dress.. “What was she thinking?”  She is usually very tastefully attired.

At the Election Night Watch Party I attended, everyone kept remarking how awful the dress was.  I kept trying to find the redeeming qualities of the dress “the color looks good on her”,  “it makes he look tall and thin”, “maybe it is better without the sweater”.  But, no matter how I tried to rationalize, I thought the dress looked wrong.

I look forward to her style unfold as she becomes comfortable with her First Lady role.  As a matter of fact, I look forward to just about everything with this new administration!

You hear the term ‘white suprmacist’ and it conjurs up an image of something that is supreme, or superior…sorta like what the term ‘aryan’ was supposed to conjur to Hitler youth.

Instead what ‘white supremacist’ indicates is some creatures/cretins that look like this:

Why are hate mongers so f–ing ugly?  Is it a physical manifestation of their souls?

If you bought $1000 of stock a year ago, you would now have:

$91.28 if you bought Washington Mutual

$37.50 if you bought Neomagic

$21.29 if you bought Freddie Mac

$20.79 if you bought Fannie Mae

But, if you had purchased $1,000 worth of beer one year ago, drank all the beer, then turned in the cans for the recycling REFUND… You would have $… 214.00 in cash.

So the best investment advice is to drink heavily and recycle.

It’s called the 401-Keg Plan

According to John McCain, being a PTA member is qualification for VP choice.  Dang!  If only I knew this.  Not only was I a PTA member, but I was also it’s President.  Oh wait a minute, I think that was the Hair Club for Men…nevermind!

Hey!  I was President of the Newcomers Club in my town too!

I read the NY Times, the Washington Post AND Oprah Magazine!

I can name a few Supreme Court cases besides Roe v Wade:  Dred Scott, Miranda v Arizona, Plessey v Ferguson,  Bush v Gore and Nixon v US. 

I am married to a lawyer (hey.. that should count!)

AND… I stayed in a Holiday Inn Express!

I am MORE qualified than Sarah Palin!

Under the guise of disaster, the administration is once again trying to RUSH a VAGUE bill that will give them UNFETTERED control over $700,000,000,000???

Bernanke is giving “GRAVE THREAT WARNINGS”, Paulson is urging an IMMEDIATE decision in which: “Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.”

This is terribly reminiscent of how quickly and BLINDLY The Patriot Act was passed.

Here’s what we’re being told by the McCain camp and Conservative Republicans:

v If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you’re “exotic, different.”
        – Growing up in Alaska and eating moose burgers is the quintessential American story.

v If your name is Barack you’re a radical, unpatriotic and possibly Muslim (even if you only attend   Christian church services).
       – Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, and you’re a maverick.

v Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.
      – However, if you attend 5 different small colleges before graduating college, you’re well grounded.

v If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate’s Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works, and Veteran’s Affairs committees, you don’t have any real leadership experience.
      – If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you’re qualified to become the country’s second highest ranking executive.

v If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you’re not a real Christian.
      – If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married heiress Cindy the next month, you’re a Christian.

v If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.
      – If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state’s school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you’re very responsible.

v If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family’s values don’t represent those of America
       - If your husband is nicknamed “First Dude”, with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn’t register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.

OK, got it now? Is it clearer?

By Tim Wise
For those who still can’t grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.

White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because “every family has challenges,” even as black and Latino families with similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.

White privilege is when you can call yourself a “fuckin’ redneck,” like Bristol Palin’s boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you’ll “kick their fuckin’ ass,” and talk about how you like to “shoot shit” for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.

White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action. 

White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don’t all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you’re “untested.”

White privilege is being able to say that you support the words “under God” in the pledge of allegiance because “if it was good enough for the founding fathers, it’s good enough for me,” and not be immediately disqualified from holding office–since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the “under God” part wasn’t added until the 1950s–while believing that reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because, ya know, the Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it), is a dangerous and silly idea only supported by mushy liberals.

White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you.

White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto was “Alaska first,” and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you’re black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she’s being disrespectful.

White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do–like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor–and people think you’re being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college–you’re somehow being mean, or even sexist.

White privilege is being able to convince white women who don’t even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because all of a sudden your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a “second look.”

White privilege is being able to fire people who didn’t support your political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt.

White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God’s punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you’re just a good church-going Christian, but if you’re black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you’re an extremist who probably hates America.

White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a “trick question,” while being black and merely refusing to give one-word answers to the queries of Bill O’Reilly means you’re dodging the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced.

White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing racism is, as Sarah Palin has referred to it, a “light” burden.

And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters aren’t sure about that whole “change” thing. Ya know, it’s just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain.

White privilege is, in short, the problem.

In reference to the negative and denigrating comments conjured up by the Republicans in reference to ‘community organizers”, I offer you a wonderful perspective and account of what community organizer really means.

This is an open letter to Sarah Palin, written by Gabriel Thompson, a former ‘community organizer’ in Brooklyn NY.  http://wherethesilenceis.org/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=78

An Open Letter to Sarah Palin from a Community Organizer

Sarah Palin, I’d like to introduce you to a woman named Jo Ann Gibson Robinson, who passed away in 1992. Based upon your recent comments about community organizers, I’m certain you’ve never heard of her. Most people haven’t, and most people don’t know a whole lot about the principles and history of organizing. But unlike you, most people don’t go out of their way to disparage a group who has done so much to make this country great.

I don’t pretend to believe that you wrote the speech; I presume you were being a loyal soldier and reading whatever your speechwriters felt would rile up your base. But because you spoke the words, they are now yours to defend, and one line in particular is indefensible: “I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer,’ except that you have actual responsibilities.” Rhetorically, it was cute—a zinger that drew laughs. But politics shouldn’t just be about scoring points.

Keep your line about organizers in mind as I tell you about Robinson. Like you, she was an accomplished woman; unlike you, she was a community organizer and not a professional politician. In the 1950s, she was a teacher of English at Alabama State College in Montgomery and the President of the Women’s Political Council (WPC), a local group dedicated to organizing for equal rights for African Americans.

Along with registering people to vote, a pressing concern of the WPC was the segregation of Montgomery’s buses, which forced Blacks to sit in the back. In 1954, Robinson wrote a letter to Montgomery Mayor W. A. Gale, who in your determination had “actual” responsibilities. The letter threatened a boycott if the racist seating arrangement was not abolished. The Mayor paid no attention. Unfortunately, this is a frequent occurrence: politicians often worry more about money and political survival than social justice. Luckily, that’s where we organizers come in.

A year and a half of community organizing later—with the WPC now 300 members strong—Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat. Robinson and the WPC wasted no time, working through the night to produce thousands of copies of a boycott notice, which began: “Another Negro woman has been arrested and thrown in jail because she refused to get up out of her seat for a white person to sit down…We are, therefore, asking every Negro to stay off the buses Monday in protest of the arrest and trial.”

Did you know it was a group of women organizers who called the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which heralded the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement and introduced Martin Luther King Jr. to the national stage? Did you know that every mass movement for social justice—from establishing the 8-hour day to gaining female suffrage—was made possible by the struggles of thousands of unknown people? They didn’t do this for votes, or because their handlers told them it was expedient. They took great risks for no monetary gain—often, in fact, risked losing their livelihood, if not their very lives—because some people are called by a higher responsibility. It has to do with justice and ending oppression, not with vote getting and political maneuvering.

Although you are ignorant about organizing, in one way you have done the country a national service: you have made community organizing a newsworthy topic. You see, organizers like Robinson don’t make the news, because they don’t brag about their accomplishments. They work behind the scenes, listening to concerns instead of making speeches. They develop leaders who engage in campaigns that force politicians to respond. When we win—and we win a lot—the politicians who have changed their stance then get to boast about laws that they either initially fought or did nothing to support. That’s fine with us. Let politicians do what they do best, and take responsibility for good news.

But please don’t be fooled. Read some history from the bottom up. Learn a bit about the Jo Ann Gibson Robinson’s of the United States before you insult them. As you embark on your new journey, you might find that they have a lot to teach about this country you claim to so dearly love.

Gabriel Thompson is the author of There’s No Jose Here: Following the Hidden Lives of Mexican Immigrants and Calling All Radicals: How Grassroots Organizers Can Help Save Our Democracy (Nation Books/Perseus). His website is www.wherethesilenceis.org.

You know how sometimes you do something ‘green’ and you can never really tell if it is having an impact?  You follow suggestions to save money/cut your electric use/improve your footprint…etc, but you can’t really measure the outcome?

Well, a year ago, I changed all the lightbulbs in my house (with the exception of a few special ones) to the new CFLs.  I realized that my electric bill is about 20% less month over month than years before!

CFL stands for compact flourescent bulbs. They are the curly-looking ones that fit into a regular incandescent base. Typically, they are more than an incandescent bulb, but they last much longer, burn much cooler, use 80% less energy for the same light and over the life of the bulb, save you $30. Mulltiply that savings by the number of bulbs you replace and – HEY! You’re saving buckaroos! You’re also helping to save the Earth.
 
Checkout this site for all sorts of great information on CFLs and also LED bulbs:
unscrewamerica.org