Crawford's Take

GOP's Disingenuous Anti-Obama Gas Price Ad

2012-02-23T14:59:00.000-06:00

http://www.eia.gov/petroleum/gasdiesel/

So the GOP is running this ad where they play Obama singing Sweet Home Chicago against a chart of gas prices since Obama took office. I thought there was something "not quite right" about the chart, so I went to the US EIA website and pulled the ACTUAL weekly gas price figures for the past 20 years or so. Then I charted them in Excel and the above graph is what I came up with.

For years I've posted about how gas prices seem to rise right before a presidential election when a Dem is in office and fall when a GOP is in office. The chart proves this pretty clearly and in fact, gas prices fell in July 2008 almost $2/gallon just before the Presidential election that year. What's kind of amazing is that one COULD make the assumption that somehow, the energy companies are in collusion with the GOP to make Dem presidents look bad and GOP presidents look good just before an election. That would only be an assumption, but I find it interesting that this trap is something of an Election Year anomaly. While it IS true that gas prices were very low when Obama took office and are creeping up now, what is ALSO true is that gas prices made the largest and steepest climb under the 8 years of Bush in the history of gas prices in this country and peaked at higher than they are now.

This ad is disingenuous at best and targeted towards those with short term memory loss. Obama could just as easily have run an ad that says on January 15, 2001 when Bush took office gas prices were $1.458 and peaked $4.054 by July 15, 2008 before a pre-election massive plunge that led into the Obama Administration taking office with gas at $1.81.

It seems to me that so far, the Bush administration was FAR WORSE on controlling gas prices and that's what makes the new ad so deceiving. Gas prices have been out of control since the Bush Administration allowed some rules changes that let this happen. With energy trading in a derivative futures market, the international whims of investors now directly affect the price of gas. Until this problem is solved, gas prices are fungible and can change with a news article instead of based on the actual price of a barrel of oil like they did before Bush stepped in and changed the game.

The GOP won't tell the whole truth in a 20 second ad, so they ONLY tell the part that might freak people out... and how stupid to use the video of President Obama, Mick Jagger, BB King and Buddy Guy singing Sweet Home Chicago together? Our POTUS is just TOO COOL and it's driving them nuts. LOL

(note: I have all the data if requested or you can pull it yourself at the link below the chart above and also, you can click on the cart to read it better!)

Resignation and Farewell

2011-10-07T15:26:00.002-05:00

As many of you know (and some do not), I resigned from the ACLU of WI as Associate Director, to finish my degree two weeks ago. Today is my last day with the office and I wanted to express the incredible honor it has been to serve with you in the advancement, protection and promotion of civil liberties and civil rights in Wisconsin.

I expect to focus on these last two semesters intently to complete a long over due personal goal, but expect that my general activist nature will not keep me out of the spotlight too long :).

I feel like I'm moving away from family, but I won't be far and I won't be gone long so I like to think of this as more of a sabbatical for myself.

I wish you all the greatest success in this most important work and I look forward to seeing you soon in the continuing struggle for justice.

Best of luck to you all!

Rae

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Social Security, Medicare, Unemployment and Disability are NOT "Entitlement Programs"!

2011-07-15T17:15:00.124-05:00

The use of the phrase "Entitlement Programs" for Social Security, Medicare, Unemployment and Disability is driving me nuts!!! Why do we always buy into our opponents' misnomers?

The word "entitlement" means "the act of giving (a person or thing) a title, right, or claim to something; furnish with grounds for laying claim: His executive position entitled him to certain courtesies rarely accorded others."

These are NOT entitlements that are "given" to Americans.

These programs are INSURANCE programs mandated by the Federal and State Governments that our grandparents, parents, we and our children are PAYING PREMIUMS on to ensure that when we get old, sick, or lose our jobs, we have the financial means to continue to live in our homes, stay alive with decent medical care and live a life of dignity after tragedy.

As a society, 50+ years ago, we made a collective decision to ask our government to pool a small portion of our collective wages to allow us to have that security, the security of basic human dignity in the face of tragedy, no matter our financial position in life when that tragedy hit.

We PAY THE PREMIUMS on this insurance. Now the government is talking about changing the terms of the policy after our premiums were paid...

The wealthy have LOTS of insurance. They have 401K's, stocks and bonds, life and health insurance, disability insurance plans, critical illness insurance and long term care insurance plans, and years of financial stability tied up in financial instruments should they lose their job. These programs are for them as well because anyone can face tragedy at any time in their lives, but they are most effective and critically needed:

for the workers who are downsized and whose jobs go overseas,
for the mother who chooses to give birth to or suffers the tragedy of an injured or sick child and cannot afford the medical care or time off of work to care for that child without financial help and medical insurance,
for the elderly person who worked all their lives at a low wage job, hard work, with little or no retirement benefits and must retire due to illness or just the inability to work, or their pension was canceled by the closing of their plant or just never had the opportunity to live more than one paycheck from disaster let alone buy insurance or save money for their later years,
for the 20 year old who dives into a swimming pool the wrong way and can never walk again,
for ALL of us to be able to afford some SMALL measure of security in our worst and weakest moments of our lives.

And I repeat WE PAY THE PREMIUMS on these insurance plans and they WORK AS INTENDED.

It's ludicrous to call them "entitlements" and we need to rethink how we think about and discuss these programs because the wealthy may not think they need them, but they may someday. And you may not think you need these programs, but you may someday, and the Federal government does not subsidize these programs. They are ALL SOLVENT. Just like an insurance company, when the disaster happens or the annuity comes due for payment, the government MUST make the payments on the policies. If the government has borrowed against that income we gave them or not invested it wisely in the 50 years of working and making payments we each will make in our lifetimes, then the government needs to pony up and pay it's debt to us PERIOD and we need to elect representatives who will promise not to change our insurance policies, but to stop borrowing from them to pay for random wars of aggression and choice.

To discuss changing these programs in ANY way is a default on our contract with our insurance company and anyone who says otherwise is just being dishonest.

When the wealthy buy an insurance policy, the terms are set for the life of the policy and cannot be changed except under the terms set out in advance in the policy. They get exactly what they pay for and pay for exactly what they get. As Americans we should expect no less from the medicare insurance, disability insurance, unemployment insurance and social security insurance policies we have purchased from our government throughout our working lives.

The government needs to quit whining about the expense and pay the insurance contracts we have with them without question. The options to pay are numerous. They could just print more money. They could repeal the pre-Bush tax holiday for the wealthy. They could cut military spending in half (who are we fighting anyway?). They could invest in our education and in research and technology to grow the worker base and increase revenues that way. They could eliminate the corporate tax loopholes and subsidies that give Murdoch $4.8 billion in tax rebates over the last 4 years and allow the energy companies to take home trillions in profit quarterly. Our leaders are so mired in their own ideology and in the language of defeat, they no longer can have a civil intelligent conversation with each other and sit down and do the work to fix these problems.

Here's a few ideas:

Energy companies ONLY get tax incentives for investment in clean energy technology and for job growth IN the United States.
Corporations ONLY get tax incentives for new jobs and research and development activities created on American soil.
Universal single payer health care (Medicare for all) would remove the burden of health care from the corporations and with the savings allow them to reinvest that money for those new jobs and research and development on American soil. It would also provide Medicare with a more diverse risk pool and lower the costs for us all without lowering the quality of services. When a company has to consider paying $20,000 that increases 18% annually on top of the employee's salary for health insurance, it makes a huge difference in that hiring decision. If instead it was an increase in the Medicare tax of even 7.6% of wages (way higher than estimates), the costs remain fixed to wages and the burden is removed from the company's bottom line. I currently pay more than 20% of my pre-tax wages for health insurance and my company pays another 50% of my wages for health insurance (you'd think employers would be all over this, but for ideological reasons, they are working against their own self interest). It's obvious that changing that to 15% and 15% would spur some job growth and fuel a healthy economy.
Divest from the military industrial complex and invest in diplomacy and assistance to the global citizenry on a massive scale to raise the standards of living globally. Less desperation = less war.
Privatization = profit margins for a few, higher costs and lowered services for us all. The citizens of this nation 30 years ago paid for the cost of their energy, children's education and the social safety net of aid to families with dependent children AT COST of those services. NOW the citizens are increasingly paying for those services with a profit margin attached to them. Why should our tax dollars go to the bottom line of corporations for critical services? It's the MOST inefficient use of our dollars possible to pay a CEO some exorbitant unregulated salary to educate our children or hand out piddling amounts of money to the poorest in our society.
Finally, this is for my stoner friends... Legalize and tax marijuana. This would empty the prisons and gut the prison industrial complex throwing trillions of dollars back into governments at all levels. It would raise trillions of dollars and could fill our governmental coffers making all of these discussion moot. The real "reefer madness" is the criminalization of this non-lethal and powerfully useful medical substance that makes people happy, hungry and sleepy...

These are just a few simple ways the government can invest a little and get huge returns. I'm just an average American citizen and I can come up with these off the top of my head. Why can't our politicians?

STOP calling them "entitlements" and start calling them something else, I suggest "guaranteed insurance policies" or "insurance for everyone". I call on my readers, the media pundits, politicians, all Americans and most especially my colleagues in this discussion to think of some other interesting or fun ways to reframe how we discuss these programs in a genuine light instead of the disingenuous terms everyone has bought into of something the government is handing out for free.

Politics of International Economic Relations

2011-03-08T23:23:00.000-06:00

I am taking this class at UWM and it's both really interesting and also really complicated stuff. I'm getting an A so far, so I guess I must be grasping the concepts I'm reading (over 400 pages in the last two weeks!) fairly well. I've decided that the topics are a lot of work and writing and I do think through them quite deeply. So why not post them here? Sometimes I will reference authors, etc that were part of the required reading. If you see them and want more on who they are and what articles I'm referencing, please just send me an email. Otherwise, the professor knows, so I won't have links in these articles to the books and papers I'm referencing and am not going to take the time to put them in unless you really want to know something. For the most part this is my original work and thoughts. I generally disagree with most economists because I live in the real world and they do not... ;). I get A's anyway I think because I do make my points with facts and in light of the concepts the professors are teaching in these classes, I just tend to come to different conclusions or bring up other facts not considered by the writers... ;) Also, these are often my prep notes for the almost weekly essay quizzes and so they are written to answer questions or sometimes, just to get my thoughts and ideas straight before I take the timed quiz each week.He gives us lots of questions to study and only gives us 35 minutes to take the quiz, so I try to write answers to most if not all the questions before the quiz starts and then taylor them during the quiz time to the question he actually asks, in other words, if the topics shift a little half way through, I was probably moving onto another study question.

So here's this week's prep work for the quiz in its entirety. Hope you enjoy!

A protectionist US industry is the automobile industry. Prior to the 1970’s the US auto industry was the dominant industry worldwide. It supported a massive manufacturing labor force in the US and with pressure from labor created a set of labor protection laws that exceeded any known throughout humanity. The result was a huge middle class and an economic boom in this nation. In the 1970’s though, the price of fuel skyrocketed due to many international political factors. OPEC became a dominant force in the setting of prices of fuel and artificially raised them as a result. This forced the US economy into a downward spiral. Manufacturing was highly depending on fuel as were the big gas guzzling cars the US manufacturers were building. At the same time however, investments in education in the US were at a peak and the US workforce was becoming the most educated on the planet. This led to several diverging factors at the same time as the 1970’s closed. In Japan and Germany, capital was strong. They spent little on defense since the US took over the defense of those nations after WWII. This left many manufacturing companies and scientists focused on emerging industries like computers and automobiles. They built smaller cars that used less fuel and they employed and invested in educating their workforce to the highest standards possible. Their middle classes also rose in numbers making it possible for them to purchase their own and US automobiles, but the cars they were producing were of higher quality and more efficient. They were subsequently not as hard hit by the gas crisis as the US and were able to flood the US market with lower cost, more efficient cars just when the US markets were tanking from the crisis and the US population could no longer afford US cars or afford to drive them.

By the 1980’s the backlash was misdirected at the US labor force and unions for high wages and benefits when it should have been directed at the US government and manufacturing sector for focusing research on the defense industry instead of the industries that were employing most American’s in the Rust Belt. The workers were blamed for the crisis instead of the companies that were spending their resources on issues that did not look towards the future.

Technology was on the fast track world wide and had it not been for a strong computer industry built for the space race and the military (and a young kid computer genius named Gates who transformed that technology to be useful for the general public), the entire economy of the US would have tanked for decades instead of just the 1980’s. The auto industry was slow to realize their mistake. They struggled with Buy American campaigns, they watched factories close throughout the Midwest and the Japanese developed and perfecting just in time manufacturing to lower their productivity and costs. During the 1990’s, the auto industry in the US saw a temporary comeback with a well educated US workforce, but the backlash against the “greedy workers” spilled into a growing public that was on government assistance due to the collapse of the auto industry (in conjunction with the collapse of the family farm). Union membership was decimated and their power to negotiate minimalized with the closing of thousands of factories. Auto manufacturing’s first adjustment was to utilize the Japanese factories to build their parts and then to assemble them in the US. Huge tariffs on import autos especially from Germany where quality was high and costs were high as well slowed the import of those cars and put them in reach of only the upper middle class and wealthy, while the Japanese manufacturers continued to focus on small and fuel efficient technology and prices so low that the tariffs still could not touch their value to the American public. When the costs to import cars got too high, Japan adjusted again in the last few decades building Toyota plants in non-unionized areas of the nation like Tennessee. This boosted economies in those areas somewhat but had another affect on the auto industry in the last decade. Japanese and US manufacturers were importing parts, so US manufacturers did not heavily argue for protectionist policies on imported parts, only on whole cars. This led to the complete collapse of the US auto parts industry and cities like Gary, IN and Milwaukee, WI lost nearly all of their part manufacturing companies by the end of the 1990’s. The myth of the greedy union employee became the myth of the greedy welfare mom and the lower tax base led to fiscal crises in the Midwest. The same time, the Reagan, Bush and Bush administrations divested in the education of the American public. Only slightly more investment was made by the Clinton Administration in public and higher education. Cities like Milwaukee became testing grounds for the privatization of the public education system with dire consequences. Bush allowed a false housing market with artificially low interest rates and risky credit lending and unregulated credit markets to boost housing sales and refinancing of existing mortgages for people who no longer or could no longer be a part of the middle class. This gave the American public the false sense that their homes were worth more than they actually were worth and that their money was worth more than it was and the bubble eventually began to crash in late 2007. Rising gas prices again contributed to the collapse as the cost of gas went from 99cents a gallon in 1999 to $3-5 range throughout most of the 2000’s. Fuel efficient Japanese cars continued to dominate the market in the US and globally and US manufacturers were again caught behind the curve building huge gas guzzling SUV’s and Hummer’s for an American market delusional as to its own purchasing power. Mortgage refinancing gave the American public the ability to keep buying cars on income that they were not earning and with loans they increasingly could not afford. When the bad mortgages maxed out and the ponzi schemes came crashing down, the US auto industry which still had not made the leap to hybrids and smaller efficient cars crashed with it and by late 2008 the Bush administration was writing a trillion dollars in protectionist money to the mortgage and auto industries. Obama continued this policy and bailed out the financial and auto sectors to keep them afloat and save the spirally recession from becoming a great depression.

The auto industries have begun to come back in the US partly due to the fact that the American public increasingly wants cars that get 50 miles per gallon and partly because the government bailouts require them to increase the competitiveness of their cars with Japan. They are still behind technology wise however and an increasingly lower educated American public is not prepared to innovate as they were even 20 years ago. The future looks bleak for the American car industry unless they find ways to compete without relying on protectionist government policies and instead compete on better cars. Henry Ford once said, “I pay my employees enough to afford to buy my cars.” The US auto industry is not anywhere near able yet to compete internationally again with its cars and unless the American work force is quickly re-educated to innovate again for the future, the American workforce won’t be able to earn enough to buy American cars.

Obama has continued trade talks with countries such as Columbia, Panama and South Korea recently. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/10/business/10trade.html. Much of the criticism of NAFTA was that it approved free trade without provisions for the fair treatment of humans and the environment. The result has been an environmental and human disaster for NAFTA nations. Obama and the democrats in congress supporting labor have pushed to have these protections built into any new trade agreements. This seems to have slowed trade discussions down, but countries such as the new government in Columbia are open to these restrictions on manufacturing in their countries being built into the agreements. This is certainly a labor benefiting protectionist strategy as described by Bhagvati. The high track administrative protection of the US labor force by building the Voluntary Export Restraints (VER’S) and thereby protectionist policy into the “free trade” agreements is necessary though because while the US labor force has been displaced by the low cost labor force to our south, the US has not yet figured out politically how to increase our investments in high tech workforces and so the race to the bottom for the US middle class worker who used to have a high school education and now must have an advanced degree leaves millions unemployed which in turn puts substantial pressure on the government’s finances. The US needs time to “catch up” it’s workforce to the changing global economy and labor’s protectionist pressure on both Congress and the Executive Branch are predictable under Bhagvati’s theories. Conservatives however are taking a purely free trade approach to the agreements arguing that the cheaper labor force in developing NAFTA nations and lack of environmental, labor and safety controls means cheaper products for an increasingly poor US public that needs those products and higher profits for US manufacturers producing products internationally. They also cynically argue that we should never concern ourselves with the labor policies in other nations that employ child labor, have no wage standards, pollute the environment and poison the populations, and allow workers to produce products in working conditions that are arguably worse than the early 19^th century in our own nation. They “get away” with this rationale because a large portion of the American public is ethnocentrically blind to the inhumanity of the corporations and because the inhumane practices are out of sight of the public since they are in nations Americans rarely visit or even study in depth in school. I argued a few weeks ago in my personal blog http://www.crawfordstake.com/2011/02/long-term-plan-is-much-much-worse.html that the corporate takeover of the GOP has an awful potential outcome and possibly even goal for the American workforce. It seems their policies may be directly motivated by a goal of creating a workforce in the US that can compete with the underdeveloped world at the underdeveloped world’s level. Political power in the US is assumed in economic circles to center on rational economic behavior of the principles. In other words, people will vote in their own economic self interests. This is not always the case in the US because of strong ideological forces, money imbalances among the players and Proposals such as eliminating prohibitions on child labor in Missouri certainly never would have passed a referendum by the people, but the legislators proposing them misled the voters using enormous amounts of political donations from the corporate center and distracting them with social issues such as abortion and exploiting the inherent subtle racism that arose in this country with the election of an African American president. This allowed corporate interests to seize control of the public’s support in states like Wisconsin, for example, in an election with low voter turnout. What we are seeing in Wisconsin is a wider sector of the public, not only unions or even traditional democrats but also farmers and non-trading sectors realizing that the government they voted for was not in their best interests. The national attack on labor unions that is front and center here in Wisconsin currently could only be with this goal in mind. By not investing in the advancement of, and temporarily, at least protecting the US labor force, the temporary solutions of the conservatives will long term lead to the decline of the purchasing power of the US public and eventually one of the largest markets for goods in the world will become one of the poorest populations in the world. Obama was attempting to do both investment in education and protection of the US labor force, but was stopped by the November elections. Neither will work without the other and the protectionist policies relative to the short and long term stability of the US economy depend on both happening as quickly as possible in the short term and on the protectionist policies bringing the rest of the world up to the standards the US labor force has fought for over a century in a faster and more efficient way.

It remains to be seen what will happen next.

Is Collective Bargaining a Fundmental Human Right?

2011-02-27T10:54:00.000-06:00

Sykes to Walker on Sunday Insight this morning: "Is collective bargaining a fundmental human right?"
Walker: "NO!"

Really Governor? Collective bargaining is NOT a fundamental human right?
Not according to the ENTIRE WORLD. Consider just a few of these facts:

The right to collectively bargain is recognized through international human rights conventions. Article 23 (4) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights identifies the ability to organize trade unions as a fundamental human right. "Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests." (notice the word EVERYONE).
Item 2(a) of the International Labour Organization's Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work defines the "freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining" as an essential right of workers.
In 1930, the Supreme Court, in the case of Texas & N.O.R. Co. v. Brotherhood of Railway Clerks, upheld the act's prohibition of employer interference in the selection of bargaining representatives.
In 1962, President Kennedy signed an executive order giving public-employee unions the right to collectively bargain with federal government agencies.

and then there's that pesky thing called the first amendment (the stuff our founders thought important enough to put FIRST):

Amendment 1 - Freedom of Religion, Press, Expression. Ratified 12/15/1791.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

What about freedom of speech? Freedom to peaceably assembly? Freedom to petition the government for a redress of grievances? does this governor not understand???

The entire point of a Union is for workers to peaceably assemble and speak (negotiate) their concerns with their management. In the case of public employees, they are also covered by the freedom to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Scott Walker has in one word this morning denied 81 years of Federal protections on the right to collectively bargain AND 63 years of international law AND 220 years of the United States Constitution's Bill of Rights.

Walker is fundamentally just WRONG. The right to collectively bargain is ingrained in international, national and state law (which is why they need to CHANGE the law to take the right away) and THIS is why the entire world is hitting the streets to protest his agenda.

EVERYONE seems to know this except for Governor Scott Walker who answered simply and emphatically "NO!"

GOP: Tax! Tax! Tax! the Poor & Middle Class and Manipulate them to Vote for You to Tax them!

2011-02-24T17:18:00.000-06:00

Is kind of feeling like the GOP should just be allowed to have it's way. Here's the current agenda as I understand it:

End all public health care so the poor just start getting sick and spreading things like cholera to everyone.
Let the Koch bros buy the power plants and raise gas and electricity so high that all the poor people either die or move south, that worked so well with Enron and California after all.
Privatize or eliminate all public transportation, etc so no one can afford to get back and forth to work.
Privatize or eliminate social security so old people die earlier and broke.
Eliminate Medicare (see previous point).
Eliminate the right to vote for everyone who doesn't own property and isn't male and protestant. After all both Bush and Walker have joked that this is an easier job if you're a dictator.
Eliminate all public schools so poor children don't ever get an education and compete with the rich kids for the good jobs.
Make unionization of workers illegal
Eliminate child labor laws (with no public schools what else are our kids going to do during the day).
Eliminate all worker, safety and environmental protections (weekends, 8 hr workdays, etc).
Eliminate all racial protections, laws against discrimination, women's rights, etc
Make the ability to speak spanish a crime

The GOP has an interesting agenda huh? A bit more stunning when you see it all in one place huh?

Tax Tax Tax the poor and now extinct middle class and laugh all the way to their yachts as they have now created a desperately poor, uneducated, sick and plagued, unskilled workforce in the millions. Let old people die poor and sick. They live too long these days anyway. This sound to me much like the good olde days of Europe. David Copperfield was a good novel afterall we should go back to coal filled air and poverty by the millions in the streets, the black plague, orphaned starving children every where you turn.... Oh yeah, that's a world I want to live in/go back to. Yes. That sounds like just the perfect future for my children.

Let's let these numbskulls have what they want. The irony of it all is that they are winning this battle by winning the votes of the poorest and least educated of us, the ones using Badgercare and taking the bus and driving on the roads. The ones who are naive enough to vote for people who want to cut the tax rate for the top 1% because they honestly believe that SOMEDAY they will be in that top 1%. Do you honestly think you can get in that country club if they keep taxing you now and taking all your extra cash while THEY get the tax breaks?

Not if these guys have any say in it you won't. You think the Koch Brothers would actually allow YOU in their country club to golf. They won't even let Walker in... He's just another sad sack like you who somehow hopes someday he will be rich like them and does whatever they say to try to get there.

Okay I'll stop now. The cynicism, hatred, anger and frustration must be getting to me.

Totally disgusted right now. Can you tell? Definitely time to stop writing...

More on American Labor Unions and International Trade

2011-02-22T00:50:00.001-06:00

As some of you may know, I went back to school last fall to finish my bachelor's degree. Yes, you CAN do that later in life. I only need a few classes to finish, but I decided that since some of them were staged I would be best served to get an International Certificate on my BBA-Finance at UW-Milwaukee. I LOVE being back in school. It can be really hard, I have to study a lot and can't write as much as I'd like to... The upside is that I'm learning a LOT (it really does matter to finish those last few classes..)! I should graduate by December of this year.

Below is an essay I wrote last semester in my course Concepts in Global Management (I got an A-, not bad after nearly a decade huh?). The question the professor asked was (paraphrased): If you could have gone, would you have protested in 1999 in Seattle at the WTO protests? Why or why not? My answer was long (my readers know brevity is not exactly my strength), but I thought with Wisconsin's labor wars, it might help to add to that "bigger picture" I mentioned in my blog earlier this week... Remember this was written about 8 months ago, long before we knew what was going to happen in Wisconsin. Rereading it for a class I'm in now, I was amazed at how it is relevant today.

Seattle

In simple terms and knowing myself, yes, in fact, I was bummed to have missed it. More practically though, I was pregnant at the time and had two other children, so going would not have been an option for me. I think the bigger question you're asking is why would I have gone? And the lesser questions are once the violence broke out, would I have stayed and what would I have done? Contributed to the violence? Tried to help calm things? The answers to these questions are complex, so I'll start with the simple parts. The answers are maybe, I'm a peaceful protester, I was not angry enough to participate in violence and if I decided to stay, I would have probably tried in vain to both help calm things and take notes on how the violence was developing and who was participating. I would have left when the tear gas came out. I hate tear gas.
I love a good just protest. I was raised in the civil rights movement in the 1970's, marched for justice for Earnest Lacy in the early 1980's, built shanty towns for divestment in South Africa the 1980's at Cornell University and was a major player in the Win Without War peace movement in Milwaukee in the first half of this decade and my job now partially involves organizing to ensure protesters are not inhibited by government interference. I was also very informed about the global economic justice movements in the 1990's, so I had an informed opinion at the time that the WTO, IMF and World Back were behaving as a perfect trilogy of disaster.
This does not mean that I am in anyway against globalization. I believe that both coercion and hegemony are critical to getting bad players in the world to behave on behalf of their populations. What I am against is unfair trade policies that specifically are designed to both destroy labor movements globally, the power of the people to organize for fair labor practices, and take money out of the developing nations' government's ability to care for the basic infrastructures that bring a developing nation into the developed world. That's what the trilogy of disaster was doing in the 1990's especially after NAFTA was passed and what they are still doing today.
Baqwhati's piece was very difficult for me to read mostly because his writing style was arrogant, demeaning and sarcastic to the point where I didn't like him at all. That said, he makes some good points about the benefits of globalization, such as the benefits of cross cultural advancements when two cultures collide, but then ignores the negative effects making his argument very biased. For example, he discusses (in a very obnoxious way) the spread of the women's rights movement as US Corporations move around the world with female managers, etc ignoring the setbacks of women and their children being forced into slave labor and the sex slave trade as a result of mass migrations from rural areas to large cities to find limited employment and unfair labor practices such as long work days, no right to grievances, unsafe working conditions that lead to work ending injuries, etc...
Social justice movements serve a purpose, but cannot be effective in a vacuum. Millions of people can march in the streets to not go into Iraq prior to the war for example, but if the political leadership is determined to fight that war for oil, well, we see the results, there’s not much even the people of the United States can do in a short period of time. With more time though, say about 5-8 years, we can organize and change the leaders in America, in most developing nations, though that requires a revolution. The social justice movement is really a slow movement for change. The WTO promotes trade policies that take tax revenue out of developing government’s coffers and forces developing nations to abandon fair labor and environmental standards in a race to the bottom as to who has the will to be the worst actor in order to get the factory in their country.
A divide exists in this world between the very wealthy and the rest of us. One of the great equalizers in that divide has always been the labor union. EJ Dionne wrote a great piece on this in the Washington Post this week for Labor Day. None of those poor working conditions are new to the labor environment. In fact, what’s new is workers organizing for example, the eight hour workday, the five day work week, OSHA standards and the end of child labor in America. Dionne argues that

America

became a world leader because of its labor movement not in spite of it. A strong educated and happy middle class sparks innovation and entrepreneurship which strengthens the entire economy. Henry Ford once said, “I pay my workers enough so they can buy my cars.” Working American’s pay taxes instead of living off public safety nets leaving more money for important infrastructure improvements such as educating the entire population, healthcare, transportation, law enforcement, and housing/food security That’s a piece of business economics that is lost in today’s corporate environment and at the core of the problem with American’s economy. It’s also the problem globally though.
As a union organizer in Madison, WI in 2004-2005, I met several chefs, white male, with lower middle class incomes completely unable or unwilling to comprehend the need to unionize and terrified of losing their jobs even if they did, an oxymoron since unions and Federal laws they passed protect workers from unfair firing practices. However, when I spoke with a man from Honduras who cleaned bedrooms in the same nursing home about the union though, he laughed in my face and said, “So you mean all I have to do is show up and vote yes and we get a union? And the worst that can happen to me is I lose my job, but the union will help me get a new one or fight the company through the Department of Labor? Ha! When I was union organizing for in company in Honduras a few years ago, three men came into my home with semi-machine guns, put my family on the floor and the guns barrels to the backs of our necks and told me that if I continued organizing, they’d come back and shoot them all first and me last so I could watch. I kept organizing and we got our union. Where do I sign up?”
That was an American company he worked for behaving like that around the time of the WTO protests in Seattle. The American people in general have a strange type of amnesia for those days here at home, and often take our worker protections for granted or even disdain thinking the problem is that we ask too much of corporations here at home driving them away from us. What we could offer the world though an actor such as the perfect trilogy is to skip a step in the economic nation building process. We could through well thought out and imposed standards utilize the power of organizations such as the WTO, IMF and World Bank to force multinational corporations to behave better. By imposing rules for example on trade policies or on loans that nations must protect their workers with similar environmental, social, labor and economic laws as exist in developing nations, it would not necessarily level the playing field between the developed and the undeveloped world, but it would give the undeveloped world the opportunity to advance faster, stabilizing economies and therefore, political movements and the people in those countries would find themselves in essentially a 1950’s economic mode in just a few years. Once they can afford to buy cars, they begin to buy more and a whole new market opens up raising the living standards of all the markets that feed into it.
In

Jamaica

, the free trade is tourism. The WTO report from 1998 discusses tourism as its largest trade, but does not actually discuss the true problem with

Jamaica

and its tourism industry. In fact, finding information on the true issue is not an easy task. Even though billions of dollars come physically into Jamaica from tourists all over the globe, the Jamaican dollar is essentially worthless and the nation is dirt poor. How can this be? It’s actually quite simple: “Duty free” shopping. Tourists love to go to other nations and shop in the duty free shops to avoid paying local and national taxes on the goods to the nation. Something about getting a good without having to pay taxes on that good is too good to pass up for the average tourist. Most have no idea the devastating affect that has on the local economy.
In Jamaica, when I was there in 1996, the locals explained to me that the duty free shops sit on international land such as beaches and waterways. They are owned by foreign investors and the cruise ships actually warn tourists not to shop in local stores, not to change their money to local currency, and only to buy from the duty free shops when they land on the ports by the millions each year. The duty free shops accept the Euro, US Dollar, Yen, etc. They do not hire local workers, but instead import workers for these shops in to the country to work in the stores. It gets worse though. The workers they import have a gated community where they have their own stores, homes, electrical system, etc and all money they make is deposited not in Jamaican banks, but in banks in their home economy which is much more stable. Not one Jamaican is hired, not one Jamaican dollar spent, not one Jamaican dollar deposited into their banks, not one dollar spent in Jamaica is available for the government to reinvest in its people and their great potential. Essentially, from the moment that dollar spent by a tourist hits the Jamaican shore until it leaves, it does not once touch the local economy of Jamaica. Billions of dollars go in and out of the country like this annually with not a dime left behind to prop up the Jamaican government. These arrangements were banned by European nations decades ago because of the unfairness of the trade. This type of trade needs to be reformed in major ways to ensure that a nation such as Jamaica that has the natural resources to be a wealthy nation and the industry to support it, but is trapped in unfair trade policies ignored by the WTO and further aggravated by NAFTA trade agreements that give advantage to Mexican bananas for example over Jamaican ones in a race to the bottom. The only industry left for the people is the illegal drug trade which operates out in the open and scares tourists right back to the duty free areas of the port. This drives down the value of their currency, increases the unemployed workforce, and creates the ongoing social and political unrest that led to the wonderful protest music of Bob Marley, “How long shall dey kill our profits while we stand aside and look?”, Redemption Song and so many others great musicians.
My main issue with the WTO and the rest of the trilogy, is it’s complete and utter lack of acknowledgement of problems such as these, the fact that it’s leadership and decision makers operate in a vacuum to the needs of the majority on this planet in deference to the greed of the few, with no oversight at all and that’s where Seattle came into the picture.
I believe the Seattle protests at their core were about these concepts or they would have been for me, and so yes, I would have been there. Not to end all globalization, that would be a foolish endeavor to attempt even for the hard core, protectionists, but using the trilogy to skip the violent, oppressive and brutal methods that do little good but enormous harm to an entire nation and the individuals that make up its population and ultimately the entire world.

The LONG Term Plan is MUCH MUCH Worse!

2011-02-18T17:18:00.000-06:00

So for several days now, I've been watching the protests in Madison and around the state. I've listened to the pundits from Limbaugh (yes, I actually turned on Limbaugh for a few hours) to Maddow, from the Unions locally in Wisconsin to Sykes, Wagner, Belling and McKenna. I have listened to all the politicians stake their cases on both sides of the aisle. I've watched as the anger swells from all sides. I've talked to union members and conservatives on Facebook. I've read more articles in the last week than I've read in the last year from top to bottom locally, nationally and internationally from all sides of the issue.

I've had a hard time the past week grasping the BIG picture of what the conservative movement is up to in this country. The liberal movement is so busy responding to each individual attack that I'm not entirely sure they've really stopped to figure out the BIG picture. Rachel Maddow took a stab at it last night on her show and came to the conclusion that this is all POLITICAL. Bust the Unions and you bust the get out the vote mechanisms that help the Democratic Party. That all made a lot of sense, but it STILL doesn't get at what came to me this morning. It's definitely relevant in the big picture, but it's still doesn't go far enough...

Here's what doesn't jive for me. The question that's been running around in my head over and over and over. If the GOP is the corporate party. If they are funding almost entirely by corporate money by people like the Koch Brothers through a bunch of crazy shady organizations. What do corporations get out of busting public sector unions? The National Labor Relations Board would still govern the private sector, so how does busting the public section unions affect private sector corporations? There MUST be something we are all missing that's puts these big corporations in the game of busting public unions. Some larger plan in the works that we're not catching on to yet.

I got my first clue earlier this week. I read an article that came out of Missouri where a state senator has proposed a bill that would eliminate child labor laws. Hmmm, I thought that's a pretty draconian idea... I can't quite reconcile why that would be important in Kansas City, MO.

So what have labor unions (both public and private) done for this nation in the past 100 years that have helped ALL workers whether or not they belong to a union:

8 hour work day
Health insurance
Child labor restrictions
40 hour work week
Workplace safety
Environmental protection
Minimum wage laws
The Weekend
Women's Rights in the workforce
Strong and viable public school systems
The Civil Rights Movement (largely boosted by MLK, JR in the garbage workers strikes)
The right to form unions and collectively bargain for pay and benefits

Some major pieces of labor legislation that are the result of direct labor union efforts include:

National Labor Relations Act
The Family and Medical Leave Act
Americans with Disabilities Act
Occupational Safety and Health Act
Age Discrimination in Employment Act
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
Civil Rights Acts of 1866, 1964, and 1991
Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1984
Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act-WARN Act (large scale layoffs require 60 days notice and retraining provisions)
Employment and Retirements Income and Security Act (ERISA)
Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act
Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA)
Social Security
Medicare/Medicaid

Okay so this is a partial list (for all you really amazing labor historians). It's a damn good one though.

The Tea Party Platform and recent GOP legislation in the states include:

The elimination of child labor laws
Repeal of the minimum wage
Repeal of the new health care bill
Repeal of or the scaling back of the EPA
Scaling back of women's rights to make their own medical decisions
So called "Right to Work" legislation (that eliminates the ability of workers to organize)
Eliminating the right to collectively bargain
Repeal of "over-regulation" which means everything from OSHA standards to the Clean air and water acts, to labor laws to media regulation to the EPA to the new net neutrality law
Busting the pension system
Anti-immigration legislation (a new low wage work force in our country)
Gradual elimination of "entitlement" programs (social security and medicare)
Elimination of ALL affirmative action programs
Gutting of the public school systems (in some cases I've seen advocating for NO public schools, full privatization)
Elimination of all warning labels on dangerous consumer products
Expansion of the definition of a Capital crime to include (they want to KILL anyone who commits these crimes): Treason, Murder, Kidnapping, Rape, Child Molestation, Aggravated Assault, Attempted Murder, Trafficking in illegal narcotics
Elimination of the 14th Amendment (this section in particular grates at them: All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. ) Equal protection, natural born citizenship, etc... a lot of WHITE people would no longer be citizens if they had their way, let alone new immigrant's children!

NAFTA. What the heck does NAFTA have to do with all of this? Well, hang with me...

I've taken a LOT of international business courses lately. I'm not going to bore you with all the details, but here's the basics.

In the mid 1990's the GOP wrote and Clinton signed the North American Free Trade Act. It resulted in much of the problems the United States faces financially today. The US you see, had all of those AWESOME laws above written, advocated for and passed by labor unions over the course of about 100 years of worker's struggling. Mexico did not. Mexico has little, ineffective or no child labor laws, environmental protection laws, no farm subsidies, no minimum wage, no 8 hour work day, no health protections or working place standards. Essentially, it was like working in the United States in the 1800's to about 1950. Manufacturing and farming corporations left the US in droves over the next 20 years. They could hire children, pollute to their heart's content, pay 30 cents a day, work people for 12 hour shifts with no breaks, no days off, and if they got hurt or killed at work, so be it. No requirement for compensation, no fines for harming the workers. This is an EXTREMELY profitable way to do business. CEO's and stockholders are making a LOT of money by moving their manufacturing to Mexico. Anyone who has taken a business class knows that the one goal of a corporation is: Maximize shareholder wealth. Completely unregulated and disorganized slave labor certainly does that.

So here's where I'm going with this. The corporations have seen how great it is (how much money they make) to hire in large unemployed populations with NO working standards or worker protections at all.

As cynical as this may sound. I've figured out what the corporations are up to! I've figured out why the bills being tried by the corporate bought and sold GOP are becoming increasingly radical and harsh!

The ultimate goal of the Koch Brothers, the Oil Tycoons, the major manufacturers and other huge corporate interests in this nation is to CREATE an employer's environment like that in Mexico!!! All their best labor leaves Mexico the first chance they get to find work in the US that meets the amazing laws that labor unions have given us over the past century.

I had this vision this morning. Of a corporate CEO sitting in a board room saying almost under his breath and almost kidding, "Wow, wouldn't it be great if the working environment in the US was the same as it is in Mexico?" Then looking around the room in a sudden 'light over the head' idea moment and everyone saying at once... "Why not? Why can't it be? We OWN these politicians. Why not?"

So who would you need to get rid of first to accomplish a goal this bold? The labor unions of course! Starting with the public sector (who don't fall under the NLRB), and then when the public sector unions are all destroyed, you can go after the weakened private sector unions. Get rid of the unions first and you can then get rid of those pesky "liberals" who brought all these awful burdens to the country in the first place. Next, you make sure you have your people in charge of all the elections, all of the legislators, and all of the executive branches. You pack the courts with pro-corporate judges along the way. You now can start to one by one eliminate all of these pesky labor laws.

This is NOT an attack on the public sector unions. It's NOT an attack on private unions. It's NOT an attack on a political party. Well it IS all of those things, but the real goal is NONE of them.

THE REAL GOAL IS TO SEND THE UNITED STATES WORKER BACK TO THE CONDITIONS THE MEXICAN WORKERS ENDURE and the American corporations have become so fond of operating under in the past 10 years.

To essentially create a SLAVE LABOR class in the United States. An uneducated, desperately poor and sick class of workers in the United States who are completely and utterly at the whim of the corporate class.

Thing I'm wrong? Does this sound alarmist? Does it sound radical?

ARE YOU SURE ENOUGH that I'm wrong to bet your life on it?

Think about this for a while. Stew on it. Do your own research on the labor movement, on working conditions in the US 50-60 years ago, on the working conditions in Mexico now, on the bills being proposed by the GOP recently, on their platforms, on the effects of NAFTA on our economy in the US. Then think about it again.

What else could be the BIG picture goal? Maximize shareholder wealth.

Special Rules for Students Voting in Wisconsin!

2010-11-01T16:13:00.000-05:00

Please read the following if you are a student and want to cast a ballot tomorrow in Wisconsin! YOU CAN REGISTER AT THE POLLS!!!

(Well, anyone can, who meets the criteria to register in Wisconsin)

See the info below on voting in Wisconsin as a student, or if you have ANY questions, click on this link!

VOTE!!!!!!

Can I vote in Wisconsin?

You can vote in the November 2, 2010 election if you’re registered to vote.
You can register if you meet all of the following qualifications:

(1) you’re a U.S. citizen;

(2) you will have been a Wisconsin resident for at least ten days on Election Day;

(3) you’ll be at least 18 years old on Election Day;

(4) you’re not currently incarcerated or on probation, parole or extended supervision for a felony conviction; and

(5) you haven’t been declared by a court to be mentally incompetent.

What if I’m a student?

You can register to vote at whatever address you regard as your primary legal residence. This can be either your school address or your home address.

How do I prove my residence (where I live) so I can register to vote?
• Acceptable forms of proof of residence include:

(1) a current and valid Wisconsin driver’s license or Wisconsin state ID card;

(2) Any other official identification card or license issued by a Wisconsin governmental body or unit;

(3) an employee ID card with your photo on it (but not a business card);

(4) a 2009 or 2010 real estate tax bill or receipt;

(5) a current residential lease (except that first-time-voters who registered by mail can’t use a lease as proof of residence);

(6) a university, college, or technical institute fee card or ID card with your photo on it;

(7) a utility bill (such as gas, electric, phone, cable TV) from the last 90 days;

(8) a bank statement;

(9) a paycheck or government check; or

(10) some other government document. W.S.A. §§ 6.29, 6.34

• A student who lives in college, university or technical college housing may prove residence with a student ID card that does not have their address, as long as before the election the school gives the clerk a certified and current list of students who reside in that housing, and the student is on the list. W.S.A. § 6.34(3)(a)7

It's Time for All Women to VOTE!

2010-10-27T10:32:00.001-05:00

I didn't write this or put it together, it came to me in a chain email... It is important enough though, that I wanted to repost it and although I don't have any info on the original author of the email, I would like to thank her for putting this together!

I give lectures around the state on the right to vote and here's a bit of what I always say in those lectures...

"When the 14th and 15th amendments were passed to solidify the right to vote for African American men in the United States, they were considered by the vast majority of the population to be animals, property, not human, unable to be educated and disposable. Something to be traded, enslaved, beaten, purchased and sold.

"And yet, it was another 50 years before women, white and black, were given the right to vote... They marched, fought and died for another 50 years before this country would acknowledge that they were as capable as African American men to think for themselves. We must always remember this as women when we step in the ballot box. It is our legacy, our right and most importantly our responsibility to cast a ballot and each of us must always do so." Renee Shavers

As women, we MUST vote nationwide! November 2nd, let's honor the women who gave us this right! And now the email!

_________________________

Now, read and look at the following pictures below of the following about the women who gave females in the U.S. the right to vote just a few years ago! This is the story of our mothers and grandmothers who lived only 90 years ago.
Remember, it was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote.


     The women were innocent and defenseless, but they were jailed nonetheless for picketing the White House, carrying signs asking for the vote.
(Lucy Burns)
  And by the end of the night, they were barely alive.
Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden's blessing
went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of "obstructing sidewalk traffic."

They beat Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air.

  (Dora Lewis)
  They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her
head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting, and kicking the women.

  Thus unfolded the "Night of Terror" on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson's White House for the right to vote. For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their food--all of it colorless slop--was infested with worms.

  (Alice Paul)
When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press.

So, refresh my memory. Some women won't vote this year because - why, exactly? We have carpool duties? We have to get to work? Our vote doesn't matter? It's raining?


    (Mrs. Pauline Adams in the prison garb she wore while serving a sixty-day sentence.)
I went to a sparsely attended screening of HBO's (2004) movie Iron Jawed Angels. It is a graphic depiction of the battle these women waged so that I could pull the curtain at the polling booth and have my say. I am ashamed to say I needed the reminder.


      (Miss Edith Ainge, of Jamestown , New York )
All these years later, voter registration is still my passion. But the actual act of voting had become less personal for me, more rote. Frankly, voting often felt more like an obligation than a privilege. Sometimes it was inconvenient.


   (Berthe Arnold, CSU graduate)
My friend Wendy saw the HBO movie, too. When she stopped by my desk to talk about it, she looked angry. She was--with herself. "One thought kept coming back to me as I watched that movie," she said. "What would those women think of the way I use, or don't use, my right to vote? All of us take it for granted now, not just younger women, but those of us who did seek to learn. The right to vote, "she said, "had become valuable to her all over again."

HBO released the movie on video and DVD. I wish all history, social studies, and government teachers would include the movie in their curriculum. I want it shown on Bunco night, too, and anywhere else women gather. I realize this isn't our usual idea of socializing, but we are not voting in the numbers that we should be.


   (Conferring over ratification [of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution] at [National Woman's Party] headquarters, Jackson Pl [ace] [ Washington , D.C. ]. L-R Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, Mrs. Abby Scott Baker, Anita Pollitzer, Alice Paul, Florence Boeckel, Mabel Vernon (standing, right))
It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized. And it is inspiring to watch the doctor refuse. Alice Paul was strong, he said, and brave. That didn't make her crazy.

  The doctor admonished the men: "Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity."

  Please, if you are so inclined, pass this on to all the women you know. We need to get out and vote and use this right that was fought so hard for by these very courageous women. Whether you vote democratic, republican or independent party - remember to vote.



   (Helena Hill Weed, Norwalk , Conn. Serving 3 day sentence in D.C. prison for carrying banner, "Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.")
History is being made.

NSA Archives on US-Iraq War Released Today! You're not going to believe this...

2010-09-22T18:12:00.001-05:00

The NSA has released Part 1 of the archived records of the discussions, talks, planning and run up of the Iraq War. YOU MUST READ THIS. It will FREAK YOU OUT!

It's stunning, and so called "conspiracy theorists" all over the nation are shocked and stunned by the relevations. They were way more right than even they thought....

My biggest question right NOW is WHY is the media completely ignoring this story? Perhaps the biggest story of our century and its being completely ignored on the national news tonight.

You really just have to read it for your self, but be prepared, the timing, discussions and planning for the Iraq War started way earlier than anyone previous thought (like day 3 of the Bush Administration) and you're going to be sick to your stomach at how horrible these people who were running our government really are...

The one of only 21 Senators in the entire US who smelled a rat and voted NO on the authorization of this war was our OWN Senator RUSS FEINGOLD.

THANK YOU RUSS! His insight and instinct and INTEGRITY are beyond pale and I'm proud to call him my Senator and will be proud (as should all Wisconsinites) to vote to send him back to the Senate because first and foremost, RUSS VOTES FOR US!

US vs THEM

2010-07-24T20:04:00.002-05:00

I just spent 3 weeks in Tucson, AZ visiting a friend. The good liberal that I am, I was hesitant to even think about a trip to Arizona now in the middle of a national controversy and travel boycott about a racial profiling law couched in anti-immigrant clothes (as if that makes it okay) going into affect there in July.

We have our own problems in WI with new anti-immigrant laws being proposed, so even the thought of leaving in the middle of this new mess in the legislature had me personally nervous, but curiosity killed the cat and I'm no pussy... cat, so the offer to go see for myself What's the Matter with Arizona? proved too enticing and I took my friend up on the invitation.

First of all, Tucson in summer is Hell. The Sonoran Desert in the middle of the summer is heat that cannot be described to a human who has never experienced it. Most of my days were spent running from air conditioning to the swimming pool to air conditioning to air conditioning and back to the pool, etc with an occasional STUNningly beautiful trip up 10,000 feet Mount Lemmon to enjoy the cool air (90) and light breeze (with more intense sun...). I made the mistake one day of thinking to myself "Walgreens is only a short walk (less than half a mile), think I'll go get a soda". Only to find myself in scorching hot sun and 107 degree heat gasping for air by the time I got there, skin burned and exhausted... My friend had to pick me up to get me home. Lol!

I mention the pool because it was there that I began to notice perfectly sweet rational and even liberal people I really liked turn into raving irrational racist lunatics before my eyes whenever their minds turned to any thoughts about immigrants. Actually in AZ these normal nice people would call them "those damn immigrants". Even a random statement like "My husband had to go to the ER last week.". Would turn into a rant about it taking 3 hours to be seen because "those damn immigrants swarm the place in groups and its so busy WE can't be seen by a doctor."

On the plane down I met a lovely woman who was a doctor in Phoenix. When I mentioned I needed a simple medical procedure that any doctor could do, she cautiously said "Well whatever you do, DON'T go to an ER anywhere in AZ, they're horrible and you'll never get seen for something that simple.". The tone made me double take her with a questioning look and clearly more aware of her inability to SAY what she meant, she said "Well, you know with all the uninsured in AZ, EVERYONE (said with almost a wink) on the planet ends up there."

At the time I didn't understand, but my pool conversation gave me a new clarity on the issue...

Back at the pool my new friend whom I already really liked went on... I was too stunned to speak... Especially in a language that I was unfamiliar with (hate speech), and a place I didn't know...

"Well, you know, THEY just come here with no money and sick and the doctors don't have a choice... And they bring all these sick kids in and it just clogs up the system...". Still speechless, I said nothing (rare for me), but at this point I think I was supposed to voice some agreement about what a "problem those damn immigrants are...", but not having any and shocked by the callousness of wanting to deny sick children medical attention, I stayed silent. Not hearing what must be some standard response in agreement by fellow Arizonans, the East Coast raised woman stopped for a minute as if she had for the first time actually listened to what she was saying and said, "Well, of COURSE an ER is based on need first and sick children should always have the right to be seen by a doctor, its just that there's SO many of THEM, that US Americans can't even use our OWN hospitals!"

This was a perfectly lovely, sweet, rational woman raised on the East Coast who stated without prompting she'd voted for Obama, who'd lost her mind over "those damn immigrants".

So next incident was a woman who lived next to my friend who was a tiny, but tough old broad :), working in a local hotel in Tucson. Out of the blue she's walking into her apartment and says hello to me. Nice woman, kind and generous and friendly to all her neighbors regardless of race. Next thing I know she goes on a rant about "those damn immigrants" and how they can't speak English and yet somehow get jobs at the hotel and she's giving them instructions they can't understand and they act like they do and then get it wrong. She would say things like "There's this one woman, Maria I think is her name, she's actually a nice lady, but can't speak a word of English and I can't for the life of me figure out how she got an AZ drivers license. How does she read the street signs? What's wrong with these people... Getting licenses like that and can't even speak English".

Then she went even farther, "Most people think its just the Mexicans that are causing problems, but at the hotel, we have AFRICAN immigrants and KOREAN immigrants and they don't speak English either! All these Americans out of work and all they do is hire all these immigrants! They have this Mexican woman at Walmart who doesn't speak a word of English.".

I interrupted her here saying "Well, considering this is Tucson, that may not be a bad business decision". She nodded, kind of, and went on and on about the Korean woman at the hotel ("Nice lady, but why does she have a job and nice American kids don't"). It didn't stop there... Over and over I was either accosted with this new language of hate or over heard it.

What's amazing to me is we were only one hour from an artificial border drawn by the Spanish and English invaders on this land a hundred years ago. The people who lived on this land were neither Spanish nor English and the only difference between them and us is which invading country spent more time occupying what side of that artificial border. The Mexicans are really Native Americans for the most part. Their land invaded, their culture co-opted and even their language changed. They had no border between these lands and they moved freely before Europeans started drawing lines. So here these INVADERS come in, speaking different languages and stop on Native American lands and make it so no one understands anyone anymore and draw artificial lines and build cities in endangered deserts and then have the NERVE to tell them THEY are the "immigrants" who are a nuisance like pests.

More than 50% of Tucson is Latino by my visual estimate. Spanish is the main language spoken by most residents (no kidding, the Spanish settled there...). All signs are in Spanish and English no matter where you go. The Mexican food is to die for... The Latino community IS Tucson. For Americans from all over the nation to have invaded Arizona "because the dry heat is healthy" and then turn around and be surprised that there are a lot of Mexicans an hour from Mexico is ludicrous!!!

As my friend from Tucson says, "Welcome to Tucson, I warned you..."

(note, post reformatted 8/4/10)

Healthcare By the Numbers URGH!!!

2010-03-17T17:19:00.002-05:00

This all seems like it should be so simple!

Let's run some numbers and think about this a minute.

I'm going to do this with an example so you have the ability to do the math on your own. Let's say you make $50,000 annually. You pay $300 monthly for family coverage, another $100 monthly for dental with $2000 annual dental costs between deductibles and co-payments for the family, you have a $3000 max family high deductible plan, and your employer pays 80% of your health care premium. (Note these aren't my personal numbers. Only for illustration, but pretty close to the quotes I've gotten from insurance companies this year).

Right now (yes, conservatives, you too...), go add up your health care expenses for the year, and include in that your dental and medical premiums (out of your paycheck), your co-payments, your deductibles and make sure you include the maximum out of pocket you may have to pay in any given year. ASSUME (cause eventually you will hit those maximums) this year you get hit by a car, or you get diagnosed with cancer, or your child steps on a pin and needs surgery to remove it (actually happened to me last year), etc and you HAVE to pay the full deductibles and co-payments. (If you don't have insurance, go to any health insurance website and try to get a quote, so you can see what your medical expenses would be if you could afford them or were eligible for them OR go add up all your bills for the year whether or not you paid them).

Next step is a little trickier... If you know what your employer spends on health care (80% is pretty common, so use that figure if you don't know), figure out how much your employer spends on your health care each year. Simple formula would be employer cost=your premium/your percentage of premium-your premium. So if your health and dental premium is $400 and your employer pays 80% of your premium, the formula is x=400/20%-400=$1600.
Multiply your premium times 12 and your employer's premium times 12 (in the example about that would be $4800 and $19,200.)
Now divide your total health care costs by your annual salary. Total health care costs/annual salary 9800/50000*100=19.6%
This is the percentage of your pay that goes to health care annually...19.6% in this example.

Think about that number a while. Post your number to the comments below. My personal number is actually 18.2% (for health insurance alone without my dental premiums, deductibles and co-pays).

The health care plan on the table includes a 2.3% increase for people making over $200000 single/$250000 couples and that PAYS for the entire plan and leaves some money on the table to shore up Medicare.

With a Medicare tax increase of say 7.6% across the board to individuals and businesses as FICA is currently charged, the government could easily afford to expand Medicare to all Americans(take your FICA on your paycheck and double it for this example $3800 increase in FICA annually).

The person in this example would get an instant $6000 raise annually. The company would have another $15,400 in the bank to either reinvest in the company, increase employee pay, business owners/shareholders could even take it as profit (not advisable... ;). Most likely, some combination of all of the above!

Now multiply that by 10 employees, how about 100 employees, how about 1000 employees, how about 200 million? $3,080,000,000,000

That's over $3 trillion back into the hands of American individuals, businesses and shareholders IN JUST THE FIRST YEAR!

Talk about stimulating the economy!

Business owners (of all sizes and types) would benefit the most, they'd be able to invest in new employees and expand their businesses almost instantaneously. Individuals would have new job opportunities (eliminate job locking because you can't leave or you'd lose your health care), entrepreneurial ability (again, not stuck in your job, so you can start that dream business), more money in their pockets immediately (note, more taxable dollars as well, so the government could lower tax rates with the influx of new income) AND they would no longer have to worry about all those medical bills driving them into bankruptcy even when they DO have coverage.

It seems to me that the blow back over universal health care is purely and totally one of a lack of the ability in this country for individuals to do the math.

This is the ONLY fiscally conservative answer to the problem of health care in this country.

I URGE each and every one of you (regardless of political views) to sit down and do your own math.

Granted the plan on the table doesn't do any of this... That said, it's a start in the right direction and at this point, we need to take what we can get!

One other point I'd like to make on health care. This has to do with the polling. Polling seems to be in the low to mid 40's in support of this bill. What that doesn't say is WHY people don't support the bill. Considering about 60% of the US public wanted universal healthcare (and thought that's what they were sending Dems to Congress and the White House to do) about a year ago. I think it's safe to assume that at least half those "opposed" to the legislation are "opposed" because they don't think it goes far enough.

Polls can be misleading is all I'm saying...

The Afghan War, Opium and the DJIA-2009 Chart

2010-01-23T02:07:00.010-06:00

In 2003, I started making this chart after a conversation my husband and I had about the fall of the stock market and the odd coincidence with the Opium drug trade being stopped in Afghanistan under the Taliban just before 9-11. We did it as a joke, one of those 'wonder what would happen if..." kind of things late at night bored with a computer in front of us. So we went to the US State department website and pulled the figures back to 1993 then plotted them along with the Dow Jones Industrial average from the last trading day of each year.

The results stunned us, but we thought, well, it must just be a coincidence...

So in about 2004, I sent the chart to my Senator and asked "What do you think about this? Is there anything to it?" Not only didn't I get a reply, but the State Department immediately pulled their drug estimates on Afghanistan opium production from their website. We had to start going to the UNODC which had similar figures and was still posting them to get the information.

In 2005, I started writing a blog.

In 2006, I first got the nerve to post 3 years of collecting data on my blog.

In 2007, I posted the updated figures only to have the chart "disappear" from my blog and have to repost it. That year there was also a story on the news about the new "epidemic" of heroin in the suburbs of Milwaukee that blamed it all essentially on a black guy who was the contact (not the war, not the huge increase in supply, but one black guy...).

In 2008, I posted again noting "The 2008 figures in particular are a bit stunning not just for the fact that the drop in the DJIA is significantly more than the drop in the Afghan opium projected figures."

I wrote a piece a few weeks back about this as well. Read through it. It's got a lot of new information. Interesting to note that one of my readers was a bit skeptical about the role of corruption in the Afghan government. Hmmmm.....

And so here it is, the Afghan Opium production charted with the DJIA annually since 1993.

Clearly, 2008 is a BIG change in the general trend of the chart...an anamoly. Considering that December 2008 was the height of the worldwide financial crash and the market was in a panic independent of rationality, we could draw a line from 2007 to 2009 and you'd see the trend is still pretty accurate. Instead I've added a log line to the chart so you can see the trend mathmatically.

Think we've been way off base and are grasping at straws (or should I say poppies)? This article in The Guardian titled Drug Money Saved Banks in Global Crisis Claims UN Advisor was the first I've found that out and out finally recognizes that the banks are laundering the drug money and the result is that it now directly affects our financial markets worldwide. It's interesting to note that the British government was in control of the worldwide opium market for a hundred years (google Opium Wars).

The winter report is out as well and as predicted, the supply is so huge and stockpiles so large that prices are falling. No surprise there, the basic economic of supply and demand...

So what IS the objective in Afghanistan Mr. Obama? We'd all like to know.

(Note this chart is hard to read on this page, but if you click on it, you'll get a much more readable copy. I will also email it to you with all the sourcing if you send me your email address.

Notes on the data presented:

^ http://www.state.gov/g/inl/rls/nrcrpt/2002/html/17947.htm -- Information was found at this web address. All US information has been removed from the US Dept of State website with no explanation and I did not save the original reports (something I've corrected withthe UN report now included in the figures).

*Potential Yield estimate from the U.S. White House; UN estimate is approx. 3,600 metric tons

http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/11/28/afghanistan.drugs.reut/index.html

**Potential Yield estimate of production thru Sept 2002 based on the 2002 number divided by two for charting purposes

***Close last trading day of December annually unless otherwise** noted

~http://www.unodc.org/pdf/afghanistan_2005/annex_opium-afghanistan-2005-09-09.pdf

87% of the world's opium production in 2004 and 2005 came from Afghanistan eradication efforts led to an estimated 5% reduction in opium production from 2004 to 2005, but the reason for lower amounts of final product are believed to be on the processing and crow yield side more than the growth side of production.

http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/crop_monitoring.html#afg

2006 figures so far are estimated to be at or above the levels in 2006 depending on whether or not any eradication efforts are carried out or successful (coincidentally, the stock market is also expected to rise during the year). http://www.unodc.org/pdf/research/Afg_RAS_2006.pdf

New estimate is that over 90% of the world's opium production came from Afghanistan

http://www.unodc.org/pdf/research/AFG05%20_full_web_2006.pdf

http://www.unodc.org/documents/crop-monitoring/Afghanistan/Afghanistan_opium_survey_2009_summary.pdf

Why the Roberts Decision Yesterday Was Correct (even if it sucks)

2010-01-23T00:13:00.003-06:00

Th panic over the Supreme Court decision yesterday granting full free speech rights to corporations was the correct decision for them to make no matter how much it sucks...

On a true free speech level, and considering current laws and precedents, the ruling is actually more consistent with the constitution and the decision of 1844 when corporations were declared equal to 'persons' having nearly the same constitutional rights.

People are getting upset with the WRONG point of the decision.

Over the years, the courts have expanded on that decision of corporate citizenship in a consistent manner perhaps more than any other ruling of the court in its history.

The court just expanded that ruling further yesterday and it's not inconsistent with the constitution if you let the 1844 ruling stand.

The problem isn't yesterday's decision, it's one made over 150 years ago!

That's where the fix belongs and anything else is just a stop gap until the corporate personage ruling is stripped via constitutional amendment.

We can complain and argue all we want. Under current constitutional law, a corporation equals a human being when it comes to constitutional protections and that's where the core problem lies.

From Wikipedia today: Since the 1800s, legal personhood has been further construed to make it a citizen, resident, or domiciliary of a state (usually for purposes of personal jurisdiction). In Louisville, C. & C.R. Co. v. Letson, 2 How. 497, 558, 11 L.Ed. 353 (1844), the U.S. Supreme Court held that for the purposes of the case at hand, a corporation is “capable of being treated as a citizen of [the State which created it], as much as a natural person.” Ten years later, they reaffirmed the result of Letson, though on the somewhat different theory that “those who use the corporate name, and exercise the faculties conferred by it,” should be presumed conclusively to be citizens of the corporation's State of incorporation. Marshall v. Baltimore & Ohio R. Co., 16 How. 314, 329, 14 L.Ed. 953 (1854).

If you don't like it, here's a suggested fix that will take 2/3rd's votes in both Houses of Congress and adoption by 3/4's of the state legislatures... I'm not necessarily advocating for this, the cost could be terrible, but it's really the only solution for those of you who are freaking out right now ;).

"Corporations are entities licensed by Federal, State and Local Governments and not personages equal to the same constitutional rights of a human being, but subject to the laws, regulations and controls government entities pass in conjunction with the privilege of a corporate charter."

Anyone up for the battle of a lifetime?

As for the conversation (argument?) it sparked, we are US citizens who do have the right to vote (well except for the 5.3 million currently barred under the antiquated Jim Crow statutes of felon disfranchisement) and making excuses that we are all too stupid to see through the b.s. of the corporations is pretty ridiculous and cynical.

I WANT the corporate logos on the candidates' commercials and pins on their lapels, and sponsorship notices as PUBLIC as they can be so I can be BETTER informed as to who's bankrolling them!

You think if Ben Nelson had written all over his campaign "This candidate brought to you by United Healthcare" the DNC would have bothered to spend a dime on his election?

You think if his primary opponent had "This candidate brought to you by Citizens for Universal Healthcare (made that up ;)" the voters could have made an INFORMED choice about who they were casting their ballot for?

I think the problem with our elections is not that corporations are bankrolling candidates. THEY ARE ALREADY. They just do it now through nebulous groups like the Tea Partiers and the Swift Boaters. "The problem is that we DON'T KNOW what corporations are bankrolling who!

MORE SPEECH IS ALWAYS BETTER!

I say bring it out in the open. I WANNA KNOW!

Surprised by the Surprise: Obama and the Afghan War

2009-12-01T01:27:00.003-06:00

I guess I'm the only person in America who's not surprised that President Obama (still love typing that) is going to continue the war in Afghanistan. I feel like the only person who actually listened to him during his campaign in 2008...

I am surprised that we are still in Iraq. I'm surprised that Guantanamo is still not closed. I'm surprised that Don't Ask Don't Tell is still getting people fired in the military.

I am NOT surprised we are going to send more troops into Afghanistan. Not only that as a peacenik Obama supporter, I'm conflicted in my own right as to whether or not this is a good idea.

Keith Olbermann seems stunned and furious tonight and made a great case for Obama changing his mind now. Others are sort of reporting it as if it's a new war. Peace networks are getting ready to hit the streets. All of those are valid reactions to this new escalation of the war in Afghanistan.

What does not surprise me is that we are escalating in Afghanistan and I have two reasons that it could be a less horrible disaster than the liberal peace community (of which I'm a proud life long member) is about to make a really good case for...

First, why am I not surprised? It's pretty simple actually. I listened to almost every campaign speech I could in 2008 by Obama. He must have said on a daily basis for a year something on the line of 'We are fighting the wrong war. We need to get out of Iraq and go back to Afghanistan and finish the job there including catching Osama Bin Laden.' I bet you could find a version of that phrase in almost every speech on the campaign trial... I heard it and voted for President Obama anyway. Apparently others went "la la la la la" every time he said it.

This escalation is a campaign promise pure and simple.

So I'll let the rest of the world argue about and make a fantastic case for all the reasons we shouldn't go back into Afghanistan (as Obama promised us before we voted for him, that he would).

Here are two (the only two I can think of) good ones to just trust Obama as the man we elected to make this decision: opium and real peace

Many of you have followed over the years my posts on the Afghanistan opium and the Dow Jones Industrial Average. In addition I started tracking heroin abuse in the US over the past few years. What I've found is astounding in the least and I encourage you to not only watch for the post again in January this year, but to also Google and find my previous work on this issue.

The part of that project that really bothers me is that the Taliban stopped opium production in its tracks in 2001. Around 700 mt came out of the country that year under Taliban rule. Since then the amount of opium poppy produced in Afghanistan has increased nearly 1000% to around 7000 mt!

The world only consumes about 5000 mt with the average addiction levels. Afghanistan doesn't produce all the opium that's produced world wide. We've seen a proportional increase in addiction levels in the US as the price has plunged due to overwhelming supply, and in search of new markets, the dealers have moved it into the suburbs... Teenage children in the US are dying of heroin addiction now more than ever in history. It's every where. It's cheap and it's easier to get than a bottle of beer or a cigarette. I KNEW some of these children. Lives cut short before they are even of age due to a war being lost for the last 7 years thousands of miles away from the place they first put that needle in their arm...

Still, the world is not consuming the enormous supply that is coming out of Afghanistan to the point where now the UNODC is now saying that about 2000 mt are being STORED around the world annually... Think about that. The UN Office of Drug Control knows that heroin is being stored somewhere in the world, and how much, but doesn't know where??? Apparently it also keeps really well. Nice feature for the drug dealers huh? This means that even the worst case scenario for the drug dealers is that Afghan production is stopped all together again and yet, they will have at least a year of heroin for ALL the drug addicts in the entire world stored up to continue the trade.

Every year, that stock pile gets bigger. The President of Afghanistan's brother is reported to be the most powerful opium dealer in the country. The president himself basically appointed by the Bush Administration is barely legitimate with two questionable elections this year is perilously close to a dictator.

Real peace in Afghanistan is a pipe dream right now. Literally centuries of war and hostile occupation has left that country devastated.

I could be convinced though that if the mission outlined tomorrow is not to fight a war, but to restore the country not to the current leadership or the war lords or the drug cartels, but to the everyday people of that country, and to stop the production of opium and replace it with other more profitable crops, it might be a legitimate effort.

To teach them how to take control, rid the fields of opium, and then leave in a very deliberate and highly outlined way is really the ONLY way the mission is worth it.

Our children deserve a world not flooded with low priced easy to get heroin.

The Afghan people deserve a chance to restore their own country as they see fit without the influence of corrupt leaders and superpowers who don't understand the history of struggle they've suffered.

If President Obama outlines a very narrow short term mission with two goals, to restore legitimate rule to the people and rid the country of opium production, only then could I see this mission being valuable. If he comes out tomorrow night sounding like a Bush Admin official, I don't care what this has to do with a campaign promise, he's going to have me marching in the streets in protest of this expensive, and deadly conflict.

We can only hope at this point that he gets this right. Too much is at stake.

Note I have the hard data on all of this if anyone wants it, let me know or go to the UNODC website....

Updates on the Fight at the Tea Pary Rally in Milwaukee Today

2009-09-20T00:14:00.005-05:00

I posted this blog earlier today and more information has come in, so I want to make sure I keep the facts current.

The blog is my first hand experience at a Tea Bagger Rally on Milwaukee's lakefront today. It's a bit disjointed and more information has come in since I wrote the original post (in the heat of the moment) so I want to relay what's come in since and clarify my comments so far.

I want to start by reiterating my belief that the man was in danger by a large group of angry people. I don't know why, I just know that he was being followed by an angry mob. I still don't know the circumstances prior to the portion I saw. All I know is what I actually saw. Other eyewitness accounts are coming in and I'm not sure what happened before the part I reported on.

I also missed Joe the Plumber's actual involvement in it all and I said that in the original blog. I really don't know personally because I didn't see it, but I suspect from the people who've posted on my blog that he may have been trying to calm down the people attacking the guy.

Unfortunately I missed that part of it and only saw him in the middle of the crowd as previously stated.

One commentor on my blog stated: Joe the Plumber joined in and he WAS BREAKING UP THE SQUABBLE! He had a booth set up and when he saw what was happening he got between the squabbling. So don't slur him. He said to me, "we don't need this." I agree.

This suggests JTPe may have seen the portion of this that I saw and was not happy with the way it looked... similar to my reaction. I suspect more on this story will come out today.

I strongly suggest you read ALL the comments and take my perspective into account as it's accurate to what I saw and experienced, but may not tell the entire story since I freely admitted in the post that I didn't see everything.

I want in particular to discuss the free speech issue. No one from government was quelling free speech today and I'm not saying they should have. The people at this rally had every right to say what they thought, and by God, they took full advantage of that right LOL! I would defend their right to speak and would be the first to say something if their right to speak was infringed on by the government. Anyone can make a comment about anything they want as long as they don't explicitly say, "attack that guy" and a group of people attack that guy.

My question goes to responsibility for your speech and this is a careful line to draw. Just because you have the right to say something, should you say it? That's a moral question that each individual in a free society should make. My questions in the previous blog go to that point.

Vicki McKenna's comments today were horrifying. She called for a "revolution", called the crowd the "people's mob" and said

"When someone says bigot, say thank you when someone says nazi laugh,"

actually I think in both cases she said "calls you a" but was trying to get it posted on my FB account so I didn't forget the gist of it...

This was clearly an irresponsible speech that she had every right to give. Shortly thereafter the scuffle ensued. Is there a cause and effect here? I don't know. I only asked the question.

Is the rhetoric around this anti-government movement out of hand? Again, asking the question. What's really important here isn't whether or not I feel it is out of hand, but if the people using this rhetoric are ready to take responsibility for the results of it whatever those results.

Here's some video that basically confirms the portion of my story after came back from getting the sheriffs. It certainly confirms JTP's involvement in some way. It confirms the mood of the crowd (even the guy videotaping is flipping out and justifying the attack on the guy). It also confirms in particular that walking into that group of people (I was near the guy videotapping and he also missed the take down...) and hearing the anger and the horror at the applause when the guy lifted his head and was his face was full of blood would have scared just about anyone rational. That justifies my own horror with the entire incident.

More video apparently exists that could show why the mob was angry and I'll withhold judgement on that until after I see it. I also suspect it will confirm the first half of my story even if the first half of my story may have been the middle of the whole story.

Most importantly, I want to reiterate that I wrote the story as I personally saw it. I was careful to leave out what I didn't see and point out what I didn't know.

I do know that the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel was able to confirm that there was a fight. Much more will come out around this. I suspect the angry mob will try to justify their behavior in attacking the guy. He was an angry liberal crashing their party after all.

I was terrified by it all. I was appalled at the outcome. I saw the look in the guy's eyes as he realized that the people around him were way outnumbering him, not letting him walk and pushing and surrounding him. This was ugly no matter the final story.

The bottom line is that the guy was pretty spotable with his fuscia backpack. If, as some people are stating, he was out of line, they had one duty and one duty only, to get the police or sheriffs involved. That's what I did. My husband against his better judgement did not try to step in and break it up, but waiting for the authorities to get involved. This is what rational people do. They get professionals only a few feet away, not form an angry mob and attack someone.

I will have more to say on this, but I wanted to make sure I keep my readers up to date on the latest developments. Lots of other bloggers are linking to my original post and I suggest you read their posts on both sides of the story.

Just know that my original report of what I saw is accurate to my perspective as a truly independent and interested observer at the rally. I was not there to cause trouble. I did not and do not know the guy involved in the incident. I was there out of honest curiousity about it all and my opinions on it are my own.

Anti-Govt Rally Masked as Anti-Healthcare Rally in Milwaukee Turns Violent

2009-09-19T18:43:00.006-05:00

I'm sorry I don't have pictures... If anyone who had a camera can post them, please do. My husband and I were going for a drive on the lakefront in Milwaukee and went by an anti-gov't/anti-healthcare rally with about 300-500 people at Veteran's Park.

We decided to double back and go into the parking lot behind the rally and just go quietly watch and check out what was going on. A woman I didn't recognize was on the podium as we approached the rally. The average age seemed to be above 40 and except for one black couple and a black family with 15 children (one of them holding a sign that said something like "We drink juice, not kool aid") it was all white.

Here are my actual Facebook status updates as we walked into the rally:

When someone says bigot, say thank you when someone says nazi laugh, that's an actual quote from the podium at the anti- govt rally at Vets Park.

Th They are calling themselves "the people's mob"

Joe the plummer just gott in a fight and they guy the mob attacked is getting arrested... (here I have to say, I'm unclear as to Joe's role just that he was in the mob)

He had 30 guys surrounbding him and attacking him and HE just got arrested! Blood around his face

The tussle's over...

That poor guy was walking away being chased by an angry mob who was surrounding him, pulling on him, at what point did he have a right to defend himself from 30 people attacking him?

This was SCARY, these people on the lakefront today were being told, this is a revolution, being told they were the people's mob? At what point do the speakers at this rally have some responsiblity for inciting violence? This is an honest question.

I was shocked and sorry for the typos, but here's the full account of what happened.

A woman at the podium was making the statements (exact words above) I was posting as I wandered into the rally. We were on the north entrance and as I was typing her words, I hear a commotion. I looked up and saw an angry mob of angry white men chasing an older white man with a backpack. He was yelling "I have a right to free speech too." The crowd was yelling, "You should die. You're not an American., etc..." They started grabbing at him as he kept trying to leave the event. The crowd was growing (eventually to about 30 people) and the man clearly scared and angry and being grabbed, pushed and surrounded to impede his attempts to escape, I believed was in imminent danger. He was shouting back at them and attempting to defend himself from the crowd and the sheriffs about 300 yards away couldn't see what was going on because of the vendor booths in their way. I made a decision and ran to get the sheriffs.

The man traveled about 300 yards attempting to escape the growing crowd. The crowd was riled up and screaming en masse, continuing to chase the man down, stop his movement, push and pull on his and in general attack the guy.

Then Joe the Plumber joined the tussle. I kid you not. I have no idea his role in it, just that he was IN THE MIDDLE of the crowd. The sheriffs get there, I turn to look at Joe the Plumber and the next thing I know the guy being assaulted by the crowd is bloody on the ground under the knee of two sheriffs and being cuffed. His face was bloody, there was something about a broken camera and I became scared of the crowd who were cheering and congratulating the sheriffs for "doing a great job". There was a girl who said something about someone in that crowd punching her. I decided to walk away from it all because honestly, I saw a sign denouncing the org I work for and was afraid I might be spotted by someone who recognized me and become the next target of the crowd. I just wanted to listen to the speakers and tell what I saw, and I'd seen enough.

After it all dispersed, I did make a statement to the sheriffs telling the same story as above. The sheriffs said to me, "Well, that's a different story than the other people just told us." I bet it was...

So, I'm interested in my reader's thoughts on this entire incident. As we've expected this revolutionary movement that has been calling people to revolution, includes gun-toting nut bags, and overall is promoting violence has turned to violence.

Is the discourse out of control?

At what point do we call this violent "revolution" that's embracing bigotry and nazism from the stage out for their actions?

Do you think there's any connection between the call to violence on the stage and the actions minutes later on the ground?

Will this get any media play or be ignored as an anomoly?

Will the rally leaders denounce the violence or applaud it?

Let's see if we can have a civil discourse here.

The Lion Has Died

2009-08-26T00:49:00.007-05:00

My sadness is overwhelming. I put this short story on my Facebook update:

RIP Teddy. I remember meeting you on the dock at Hyannisport. You were gracious and paused for a minute to watch our husbands play football on the beach... perhaps provoking a memory... You stopped chatted and then sailed off with your granddaughter in a little tiny boat on the vast ocean. I'll always remember you like that on that day. Thanks for everything!!! And God bless!

It is time for the Senate (and the House) to stop screwing around, pass Medicare for all and be done with it! In fact, it should be called the Edward M Kennedy Medicare for All Act.

Let's get this done!!!!!

Some housekeeping, this means the Senate is now at 59. It also means that Deval Patrick the young brilliant African American Governor of Mass is now quite literally the most powerful man in the world.

My love to his family for all the love they have given this nation over the years so they may get through what must be a devastating time to have gotten him back from the years of self abuse only to lose him when he seemed more powerful, respected and brilliant than ever. It must just be terrible for his family (and yes, I'm crying too...)

God bless.

March for healthcare!

When Big Daddies Came to Town...

2009-08-17T21:18:00.004-05:00

Yeah, I'm going here even with one of the principles still in the hospital for unrelated reasons... (I wish him a speedy recovery by the way and am as impressed as Maddow about the superhero behavior ;)

But I gotta do this.

Okay, and when I say this, I'm going to make a lot of liberal white people really angry. I'm going to say it anyway.

What do three white men think they are doing stepping into a primarily African American community and telling them their right to vote doesn't matter? That the three white men somehow know better than the majority minority parents who best represents the children's interests?

Oh yeah... I went there...

If they want to disolve the MPS School Board, what about democratically taking the idea to the voters in a binding referendum is so completely not even considered...

What is going on here???

Oh sorry voters, we've decided you can't make decisions the big daddies like, so we're going to take away your representative government because we don't even trust you to hear our argument for our idea and vote in what we think is your best interest...

Well, they won't win that argument now will they... The voters are not children who don't know what's best for them, boys... They are adults who were presented in most cases with choices and came out of their homes on cold winter days to make those choices. What really stinks is they aren't suggesting this in Madison. Not in Crivitz or Kenosha or Haywood or Manitowoc. No, the big daddies only want control of the largest minority district in the state. Didn't anyone tell you guys HOW BAD THIS LOOKS???

Why don't you try funding MPS and giving the school board something to actually work with?

Why don't you eliminate school choice and put taxpayer dollars back into public schools in Milwaukee? Think it's a coincidence that the least performing schools in Wisconsin also happen to be the ones fighting their defunding by the choice program??? I think not...

Hey liberals, think this sounds good because our Democratic Mayor's in charge?? And what happens when Scott Walker becomes the next Mayor of Milwaukee?

The voters already made the decisions as to their best interests. They can change those decisions every couple years... all up and down the ticket by the way...

Next, someone will tell us that the Mayor will be chosen by a vote of the Common Council, the School Superintendent will be chosen by the Governor and the Governor will be chosen by the State Legislature.... Wait a minute... hmmmm...

Why Obama Failed... So Far...

2009-08-17T20:25:00.003-05:00

So I've ranted. I've called to action. I'm really angry.

I also want to break down here what went wrong.

Obama failed before he started. And don't kid yourself a co-op option (we already have these by the way...) is a pure and utter and absolute failure.

Why?

He failed because he started in the wrong place from the beginning.

The first rule of a successful negotiation is that you always start from your ideal position. You know, if you got to make the decision all by yourself and you thought the best thing in the world would be in your wildest dreams... that's where you start.

In other words, don't cave before you sit down to the table. What is ideal? What should Obama came to the table with?

Single payer healthcare.

It's the cheapest. The most effective. Would cover the most people. It has been proven to work around the world.

That said...

What's the problem with single payer healthcare? The hand full of insurance companies left selling health insurance in this country (and there are really just a handful compared to 20 years ago) would have to work harder on life insurance or go back to nursing school.

So that was mistake number one. Obama caved before he came to the table. In fact, he didn't let the ideal outcome at the table at all. Obama started with a compromise position, had he started with single payer, I'd be ranting that a public option is a cop out to single payer, but an acceptable compromise.... for now...

But now, we are discussing the most ludicrious of options.

Think about this.

Co-ops. So called non-profits pooling resources to negotiate lower rates and setting up partner "advocacy organizations" to lobby congress to help out the insurance industry even more.

Here is what a co-op is not:

It is NOT in any way reform to our health care industry. WE HAVE CO-OPS ALL OVER THE COUNTRY ALREADY. They do not work. They become political organizations in their own right. They may be owned by members, but how many members of a credit union have ever been to a meeting? How many Outpost or Willy Street members have ever been to a meeting?

How many actually care to run for office to help run the organization?

It's all good if it's groceries or books or milk farmers who create a co-op. Negotiating the price of your milk as a group makes perfect sense.

Health insurance is a whole other deal. Primarily because the potential for discrimination in health care in a voting membership organization is way high in this country. For example, what if the co-op in a particular area gets together and says no Asians can be covered under their plan.

Think that's crazy? Well how about they say no gay people can cover their partners?

Not so crazy now is it? How about Obama writes into the plan that they cannot discriminate against gays and their partners? Now he doesn't have enough votes to pass it at all, it fails and he gets to say he tried at least... A co-op will create the tyrrany of the majority in regional areas around the country. This is as Matt Taibi said, "Sick and Wrong".

In a public option this becomes mute. Anyone can get covered regardless of their relationship status. No private rules apply. How fast do you think insurance company executives will get on the boards of those "non-profit co-op organizations"?

This is the most insane of the proposals.

Let's see. Keep every thing the same as far as how insurance is delivered. Add bigger conglomerates that we can control internally. Add requirements to cover everyone so the cost skyrockets for everyone. Finally, sell the new super more expensive package as some sort of "health care reform" and give a discount to approximately 20% more than we pay now... When it all fails as this is no doubt going to in the long run, blame the Dems for the crappy idea to regulate the insurance industry.

Dems are done politically for 20 years if they don't allow a vote on at the very least the public option. Done. Their voters will stop caring for another 15 years. You can't promise the people of this country something this big and then give them a worse product than they started with in the first place. They're DONE if they don't force a floor vote on the public option.

Yes.

This is the B.S. the so-called Dems in Congress and now the White House are trying to sell us. A vote on crap is somehow better than forcing everyone to take sides.

I say vote on single payer (medicare for all), vote on the public option and then on this crap co-op option. I want to know where everyone stands on each option. It's only fair.

MAKE CONGRESS TAKE A STAND.

CALL AND TELL THEM YOU WANT A VOTE ON THE PUBLIC OPTION regardless if it will pass or not, OR YOU WANT NOTHING AT ALL!!!

How can he get this back? Force this vote. I guarantee that if only 43 say privately they will vote for the public option plan an actual VOTE will change that equation significantly.

FORCE THE VOTE. MAKE THEM TAKE SIDES. ALL OF THEM OFFICIALLY.

Broken Backs...

2009-08-17T20:09:00.002-05:00

I can remain silent on this no longer. In fact, I'm so angry right now at the Democratic Party that I'm nearly ready to cancel my membership. I'm DONE with this. After the following rant, I promise my actual take on what's going on here.

This is MY line in the sand.

I want a vote.

I want a vote on the public option in health care.

I want to KNOW who will vote no.

I WANT the American people to KNOW who to vote out of office in 2010 regardless of party. I want that NO vote.

WE DESERVE TO KNOW WHO LIED TO US!

And almost more important:

WE DESERVE TO KNOW WHO TOLD US THE TRUTH!

I can guess that it wasn't Gwen Moore lying to us. In fact, I'm pretty sure it wasn't after her forum the other day. I can guess this is not Steve Kagen or Russ Feingold (considering his PASSIONATE cry to his colleagues to reconsider the public option in a press release today).

The problem is, without a vote. Russ, Gwen and Steve will never get their say. They will never be able to show their voters their loyalty as elected officials to the people who elected them.

EVEN IF THE BILL FAILS, the people of this country who have given sweat and tears for a decade to take back our country and reform our health care system NEED and deserve to know who who's with them and who's against them.

Stop writing about how good co-ops are and aren't. Write the White House and every member of Congress in both houses and DEMAND A VOTE ON THE PUBLIC OPTION.

Even if it loses, we will know where everyone stands. I wanna see the Dems run a campaign on "I voted with the insurance companies and against you" next year. I wanna fight that fight. I can't have that fight if I don't get a vote.

In fact, I first want a vote on single payer, then on the public option, the on the co-op option. I want every single member to have to take a position on every single bill.

I WANNA KNOW!

Think Again...

2009-08-11T13:48:00.001-05:00

Think the anti-healthcare movement isn't overtly tinged with racism
and hatred and threaths of violence?

Think again

http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/index.html

--
Sent from my mobile device

Professor Gates

2009-07-31T16:44:00.003-05:00

This entire episode is getting surreal for me... Those of you who have read my blog know that racism and subtle racism are frequent topics I like to address out here. In fact for several years I tracked the days the Milwaukee Sheriff's Department was on the lakefront pulling over people of color for no reason and giving as many as 80 seatbelt violation tickets a day. He has been less aggressive this year, but then again, it's not an election year...

On one hand, I KNOW for a FACT that when I'm driving in Fox Point or Bayside or WFB or several other communities in and around the Milwaukee area I'm in danger of being pulled over for no reason at all.

Once my "kids were out of their seat belts" only for me to turn around angry at them and see that they had them on and were just as surprised through their scared tears as I was that they were being faulted for the stop.
Another time I was pulled over for having a tail light out. I politely asked to get out and see the problem and the suddenly very nervous cop reluctantly said okay, slowly backed off and when he and I got to the back of the car, it was clear I had no problems with my tail light... "Let me see your driver's license anyway" was his reply. He still wrote the ticket that said I needed to get it fixed in 5 days or so and then bring it back for a police inspection. I drove straight to the police station that night and had another officer check it out and he signed off on the ticket...
Another time, I was accused of "speeding" on the lakefront when I was by far the slowest car on the lincoln memorial...I always am...much to the chagrin of my family and friends...
Another time, I was pulled over headed out of a suburb and accused of running a stop sign. When the officer saw my license he SAID "Oh! You live here! Well, then I'll just give you a warning." Sigh...

The point is that I can do this all day... I can tell you stories of clear, obvious and annoying racial profiling all day long that happened to me personally. My husband never believed in it when we first met. He's a true believer today though...

After being pulled over for no reason over and over and over again (and I have a damn good driving record because once they find out I'm not up to any wrong doing, they DO usually let me go...) my entire lifetime, it's just a fact of life that several times a year if I'm driving in the wrong neighborhoods, I'll be pulled over and checked out.

The bottom line is, that I GET why Gates was ticked off. He's older than I am and male, he's had it worse than I have guaranteed... and eventually, it will happen on the wrong day when you're tired or irritated about something else and yeah, at that point I understand why he might have lipped off to Gates. Unleashed a lifetime longer than mine of irritation and anger with having your life interrupted regularly because your skin's too dark for law enforcement to trust you to be on your way without a check in first...

I also understand that the officer who probably prided himself in his ability to train fellow officers in these encounters and deal with these situations appropriately, lost his cool when he found himself in a situation with an old cranky man accusing him of being heavy handed over the one thing he didn't want to be accused of... racism... and with his career on the line decided to call for back up and take him in rather than risk a he said he said situation.

I more and more think two somewhat reasonable men found themselves face to face in a situation they were not expecting to find themselves in at that moment and both overreacted, both got out of hand and the one with the ultimate power to arrest went too far with it all rather than backing down and letting this one go... Obama is still right the officer did ACT stupidly.

And I'm irritated, confused, and disgusted because as people of color, we have to be good. Not just good, but REALLY good ALL the time or our risk of incarceration is really high. It's just not the same for everyone in this country.

That's the ultimate problem. The inequity in how good you have to be just to survive in this America. Yes, Barack has proven that if you are PERFECT you can achieve ANYTHING in America regardless of your race.

Perfect is a pretty high margin. Professor Gates was pretty damn perfect for a black man in America and he still ended up getting arrested for being in his own home that happened to be in the wrong neighborhood...

Six Black "Prostitutes" and a White "Runaway"...

2009-06-20T00:04:00.004-05:00

I'm just really upset about these serial killings. First, they've completely fallen out of the news. Second, the way the media and the police department handled this (42 dead prostitutes in 21 years in Milwaukee) over the years has me just livid. Could someone please mention when we have two women a year murdered, under similar circumstances in the same community, to us women so we can be aware of this problem a little sooner that 21 years later? Third, we have a failure to communicate.

I keep seeing this "six prostitutes and a runaway with drug problems" description of the victims attributed to this same killer. My cynical side noticed that I only saw the pictures of six black women all over the news and wondered if the "runaway with a drug problem" was white, then my practical side took over and for weeks, I've actually refused to check this out. I just didn't want to go there... really I didn't...

But the AP is asking questions too... questions that are just my speed...

Why is it that the black women are prostitutes and "crack whores" in the media, but the young white girl is a "runaway with a drug problem" who happened to have the same killer who's been killing strictly prostitutes for decades DNA on her? Why is it okay to say the black women were prostitutes, but when describing the white woman, she's a "runaway with a drug problem"? As if she wasn't selling her body to access a drug she was physically addicted to the same as the black women were...

This is my point. I'm not mad that they tried to soften the blow to her family that she was killed by a man while having sex for drug money.

I'm mad that the media and police department have gone OUT OF THEIR WAY to describe her any differently than the black women who were murdered by the same guy doing the same thing! The 19 year old's family and the 35 year old's family and the 41 year old's family, ALL of their families, have the same level of grief, pain and loss. At least two of the black women's family members deny the victims were prostitutes at all.

The loss first of their loved one to drugs that stole her future from her and them. The loss from the betrayal of their love when she no longer could be trusted around their possessions. The loss from watching someone you love descend into the depths of a hellish drug addiction that leads to a dangerous life on the streets supporting your habit with the only thing you have left as a woman...

Your body.

Subjecting it to the highest of the high men and the lowest of the low men in our society all preying on your illness by paying for the use of your body for their own twisted sexual needs.... Completely vulnerable to abuse, and suffering by the men who prey on them and the drugs that enslave them, they were also vulnerable to a police department that dismissed them as useless and unknown not worth more than a quick look at the evidence and an envelope that holds it for 20 years...

No woman chooses to be a drug addict or a prostitute. This is not a life you dream of living as you're growing up. It's the life around you that you endure that eventually leads you to this life. It's one bad boyfriend or abuse as a child that you must dull your mind from to forget because you cannot afford a therapist...

These women were human beings. They were real. They had families and children and once in their lives they dreamed of being doctors, or lawyers or fashion designers or marine biologists. Life didn't yield those careers for them and their illnesses, yes, drug addiction is a physical illness, untreated led them to a dangerous life.

Why did the police and media recognize that in the white 16 year old girl and so gently treat her murder and so callously treat the murder of the black women who still are not victims, but "murdered prostitutes" in their eyes.

I'm really upset by this and I want the families of all seven victims to know that I look at your family members as who they were women with families, lives and dreams and their skin color, age, addictions don't matter one bit to me. They were human beings with a right to life, a right to have a chance for sobriety and freedom from their hell, and that was stolen for more of them than might have been the case, should had someone actually seen what I see... and more are in danger...

If you have a loved one who is putting themselves in danger due to drug abuse or prostitution call the Benedict Center for help with programs for women you love and feel like you've lost. Hope always exists, some do come back. As desperate as it seems right now, help is out there.

Find it. Save a life. If you know anything about these murders, please call the MPD, this psychopath needs to be stopped now and now that we all know about it, I assume they are actively trying to find him.

SCOTUS Rules Access to DNA to Prove Innocence NOT a Constitutional Right

2009-06-19T23:17:00.002-05:00

That's right. The Supreme Court of the United States said in a ruling this week that if a defendant has had a "fair trial", they have no right after the fact to access the DNA evidence available to prove their innocence.

Let me say that again. If you have been convicted of a crime and you believe you are innocent and a new DNA test method is developed years later that could prove your innocence, you do NOT have a right under the Constitution to test that evidence or test that evidence again even if you pay to do the testing!

In other words, the hundreds of people exonerated on DNA evidence around the country would no longer have had the right to prove their innocence. Even if it means they will die or spend the rest of their life in prison for a crime they did not commit. This means thousands of people in prison or on death row convicted before DNA testing became available or the newest methods were developed, could die or rot in prison if they are innocent.

I just want you to imagine this is you. You KNOW you didn't rape and kill someone. You are convicted of it on circumstancial evidence maybe just wrong place wrong time and sitting in prison every day locked up with people who did commit their crimes and you find out that a new testing method that could prove you did not do it has been developed, but the state you live in says, "No, you can't have the evidence to retest it." They can now do that and you will sit in prison for life or until the state changes it's mind.

Now what the court says is not that you can't have it, just that the STATE can tell you you can't have it. So in some states, the legislature will pass laws that say, yeah, you can have it and in other states they could decide, no, once there's a conviction we're done with it.

Now read this article and think of this ruling in the context of the Milwaukee serial killer. In particular pay attention to the last lines of the article posted below and the lines I bolded:

Police believe the killer had sex with the runaway, but she was killed by someone else.
The developments have prompted officials to form a local, state and federal task force to investigate the homicides. A state lab is working to determine whether the DNA of at least 23 other slain prostitutes matches that of the killer.
"In the past, we might have linked some of these homicides through their method of operation, but theory has given way to technology," said Edward Flynn, the Milwaukee police chief. "Within the last couple of weeks, we have been able to confirm a link."
Flynn, who described the killer as an "unknown suspect who conducts his business in secret," said the investigation would require tips from the community.
"This suspect has been able to avoid and evade law enforcement for these last 23 years. He has never been arrested for a felony as he does not appear in any DNA database," Flynn said.
Police said 42 prostitutes were killed between 1986 and 2007, and that 31 percent of the cases have been solved. There has been a higher clearance rate -- 78 percent -- in other homicides.
Of the seven killed, two were in 1986, three in 1995, one in 1997 and one in 2007. The runaway was one of the three killed in 1995.
Flynn said there have been "patterned homicides" discovered across the country as a result of advanced DNA technology, citing investigations in Los Angeles, California; Mesa, Arizona; and Las Vegas, Nevada. However, he said there is no link with the Milwaukee cases.
In discussing advances in DNA technology, Flynn said there were no matches in 1990s, two around 2000 and the seven have been linked in recent weeks.
"We already have determined that five suspects in murders of other prostitutes -- completely unrelated to this investigation -- have been identified because their DNA match open homicide cases. Three of them already are in prison for cleared homicides of prostitutes," police said in a statement Tuesday.

Three men were exonerated in Wisconsin this year because the state of Wisconsin finally decided to test the evidence with new methods. Those men sat in prison KNOWING they were innocent of rape and murder and yet had what was considered "fair trials" that were wrong.

They happen to be in Wisconsin and Milwaukee's new police chief apparently decided that 42 prostitute murders in Milwaukee in 21 years deserved a second look, but under the new Supreme Court decision, these three men had NO other recourse than to wait for the state to decide to retest evidence, while the real killer kept on killing...

50 states, 50 legislatures, thousands of police departments and each one gets to make up it's own rules on this.

The outrage of this is that the Supreme Court of the United States of America essentially decided that the right to prove innocence is no longer a part of the phrase "due process". Until Congress acts to restore it, this is now the law of this country.

State legislatures must act quickly to restore the rights at the state level. Congress must act to explicitly spell out this right nationally. Before potentially innocent people die on death rows in states that refuse to retest, before another innocent person spends another lifetime locked up for a crime they didn't commit.

Yes, this is the SCOTUS that George W. Bush gave us when he appointed Roberts and Alito to the Court. This is the new nightmare for individual rights in this country, a court that is dismantling them one by one... and the result is that Congress will be running around spending time passing laws trying to undo the damage instead of working on fixing our country's economic mess.

Can you tell I'm just a little upset about this one?

More on the serial killing in the next post... This deserves it's own discussion...

Juneteenth Day: Hope and Promise Delayed

2009-06-19T14:57:00.003-05:00

Since 1865 when Galveston, TX made this day, June 19th an official holiday, the African American community holds this day in reverence as a sign of hope and promise.

It was the day the last slaves in Texas were told they were free. The day about six months after the Emancipation Proclamation, that freedom became a reality for all African Americans in the United States of America.

I never learned about this day in school in the 1970's. It happened after school let out and frankly, it wasn't part of the curriculum. I learned about this day as my father and his father and so forth, and most African Americans learned about this day, the same way most people learned about it (and celebrated it quietly for generations underground), from my father through a story at a seemingly spontaneous picnic as a child. It's become more prevalent in the United States with more and more cities recognizing the day as significant in our history but...

I think in many ways the celebration of Juneteenth Day is a mystery to the majority of the population of the United States.

The first obvious question I hear is why not just celebrate the day of the Emancipation Proclamation when people were legally freed?

The answer is simple really: Because legal freedom does not always equate to actual freedom. If it did the civil rights movement would not have been necessary.

In so many ways this day is symbolic of a nation that was willing to say one thing and do another. While passing the 14th and 15th amendments that gave African Americans full citizenship (well at least men), they quickly passed a slew of local laws that essentially took that citizenship away in the reality of everyday life.

It took 100 years of Jim Crow, the Tuskeegee Airmen, Jackie Robinson, Joe Louis, Hank Aaron, Thurgood Marshall, separate but equal, lynchings, Brown v BOE, and more bloodshed than in the Civil War to pass the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, neither would have been necessary had the 14th and 15th amendments been adhered to in the first place. They were the law of the land, but the enforcement of those laws was all but ignored for a century.

African Americans understand that the laws in this country are always quite far ahead of the ways they are enforced and that they apply differently to different people.

Even today...
(if you read my blog regularly, you have an idea of what I'm referring to here...)

So in our community, we continue to celebrate not the day the laws changed, but the day six months later when the law was finally enforced throughout the Union and freedom was actually achieved by the very last slaves still held captive by their former owners.

I'm still waiting though for full freedom.

Felon disfranchisement, educational disparities, policing disparities, sentencing disparities, economic disparities, literacy, housing inequality, banking inequality, gender disparities, sexual orientation inequities, health care disparities, racially charged immigration "debates", and full freedom still are plaguing minority communities all over this country, despite the feel-goodness of having elected an African American president that we all are experiencing today...

I'm patiently waiting, well, I'm not so patient on these issues actually, but waiting to fully celebrate the actions of a more reasonable President (who happens to have skin just slightly lighter than Boehner's), a more reasonable Congress and someday maybe a more reasonable SCOTUS...

I have hope and promise, I'm ready now for action!

So in the true spirit of Juneteenth Day, let's celebrate the successes and remember to keep an eye on the ball for the hope and promises of a day in the future, not yet established, when every man, woman and child born into this country is truly given a chance for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Not just in law, but also in practice.

Kagen and Erpenbach Take Central Role in Public Health Care Option

2009-06-16T11:05:00.003-05:00

The press release says it all really. A public health plan option is the most doable option right now and while far from what the public is demanding (a single payer system would be the most logical), the PHP option is a good first step in that direction if it's done properly. Senator Russ Feingold spoke eloquently about this on Friday night as well!

Thanks to both the WI Congressman and the WI State Senator for their leadership on this issue on behalf of citizens and businesses nationwide and thanks to the 26 legislators from Wisconsin who have signed onto this legislative demand.

From Progressive States Network:

WISCONSIN STATE SENATOR JON ERPENBACH TO REPRESENT OVER 600 STATE LEGISLATORS IN DELIVERING LETTER TO WHITE HOUSE AND CONGRESS URGING CHOICE OF PUBLIC HEALTH PLAN

As health care battle heats up on Capitol Hill, Wisconsin takes central role in pushing for progressive reform

WHAT: A dozen state legislators will hand off a letter from 600 of their colleagues urging health care reform including a public insurance option to Sen. Tom Harkin and other Members of Congress.
WHEN: Wednesday, June 17, 1:15pm
WHERE: Russell Senate Office Building, Room 385, Washington, D.C.
WHO: Sen. Tom Harkin (D - IA)
Rep. Steve Kagen, M.D. (D - WI)
Rep. Chellie Pingree (D - ME)
Connecticut State House Speaker Christopher Donovan (D - 84)
Texas State Rep. Garnet Coleman (D - 147)
Wisconsin State Sen. Jon Erpenbach (D - 27)
Iowa State Sen. Jack Hatch (D - 33)

As battle lines begin to be drawn around provisions for a public health insurance plan in draft House and Senate health reform bills, Wisconsin State Senator Jon Erpenbach will take up a central role in the debate. At a White House meeting with Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius and a Capitol Hill press conference hosted by Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, Senator Erpenbach will join a delegation of state legislators organized by the national group Progressive States Network as they deliver a letter urging comprehensive health care reform within the year. The letter, which was signed by over 600 legislators from 46 states, including 26 from Wisconsin, calls for any federal reform bill to include the choice of a public health insurance plan, strong affordability protections, and shared employer responsibility for health care costs.

The day's events will highlight an emerging consensus from Main Streets across the country that constituents want the choice of a public insurance plan, and it will call attention to the broadening discussion in which federal leaders are seeking input from a broad coalition at all levels of government. At the press conference, Members of Congress will discuss the importance of hearing voices from outside the Beltway in formulating a uniquely American solution to the health care crisis, and legislators who have been key leaders on state level reform will share how the lessons they have learned from pioneering reform policy at the state level support the drive for a national public plan and other progressive reform priorities.

The full text of the letter is available here: http://progressivestates.org/statefedhealth

Non-Profits, Fundraising, and Tough Economic Times

2009-06-13T18:24:00.004-05:00

I sit on the boards of or work for at least 8 organizations in the state of Wisconsin. Some non-profit 501(c)3 organizations, some non-profit 501(c4) membership/advocacy organizations, some political organizations. For the purposes of this post, none of them will be named, because it's not necessary. This isn't about just my organizations that I care about, in fact, what's most important is that it is an organization YOU care about.

In tough economic times, things get tough for everyone, but for these types of organizations that rely solely or primarily on the generosity of their members, donors and benefactors, your donation means more now than ever before!

Membership and political organizations for example have lots (thousands or 10's of thousands) of small donors, $10-$50 that they give annually because they care about the work the organization does and want to give something to keep it going or just want to be able to say they are a member. These donors are often the hardest hit in a recession (or arguably a depression) because many donors just cannot afford even that level of giving. Often donations to membership organizations are not tax deductible and so, they are the first donations cut in a budget. In even a 10% or 15% drop off in a year, the effects on programs and staffing can be devasting! In off election years, political organizations in particular are forgotten in the donation mix.

Foundations that have tax deductible donations often have much smaller donor bases who give much larger donations. In tough economic times donations are altered by these larger donors. The donations are put off until later in the year, they are similar to the previous year's donation amount and sometimes are even downsized depending on the extent of the fiscal issues the donors are facing.

In times like these, your donations to the organizations you care about most are more critical than ever! Many non-profits are struggling in ways that are dramatic. I know of staffing cuts, program cuts, delayed projects, salary decreases, benefit cuts, and core services barely being preserved in so many organizations right now, it would blow your mind!

So as someone who has causes I care about that are teetering and as someone who knows that no matter your politics or critical issues, your organization is struggling:

Give
Give early in the year (early gifts help to delay disaster planning and layoffs)
Give more than once (this can be done easily by setting up small monthly payments $10/month is $120/year and that's more than your usual $35 annual gift and will help more as a steady stream of income)
Give more than you did last year if you can
Join an organization you care about but have never given to before
Renew your membership
No matter the organization or cause you give to, let them know, you are giving because Crawford's Take asked you

The organizations you are about to give to will be sustained and the work you care about will continue ONLY if you reach a little deeper and give a little more on behalf of those who care, but just cannot.

Conservative Insanity and Sotomayor

2009-05-30T23:06:00.006-05:00

Back in late 2005, George W Bush appointed John Roberts to the Supreme Court to replace Chief Justice Rehnquist. We liberals grumbled internally, but there has been this unwritten presidential political truce...

The first SCOTUS pick is a gimme for the opposition party, after that, all bets are off...

So following the general rule and looking back, these are the president's first picks, all nominated:

Johnson: Abe Fortas

Nixon: Warren Burger

Reagan: Sandra Day O'Conner

Bush: John Roberts (note, the opposition party didn't end the Miers nomination, quite to the Dems surprise, the president's own party did...)

You have to go back to Hoover to find a first nominee rejected by Congress... and that's too far back to apply to my point today. ;)

So for 79 years there has been this unspoken agreement between the parties that the first pick is a freebee. Then comes President Obama who not only picked a highly qualified (although pretty moderate for my taste :) and highly experienced justice to nominate to the court in Sonia Sotomayor.

What happens? Conservatives go ballistic. We liberals waited. Bush won the election, was president and he got the first pick without much ado. In fact, I've searched my blog several different ways and I couldn't find one reference to the Roberts nomination. If you find a post, let me know... We went ballistic over Alito (and my blog history shows that blow back), but the first pick we respectfully declined comment on.

The key word here is "respect". A certain deferrence to the president, but more importantly a deferrence to the voters who elected him.

That said, "respect" doesn't seem to be the GOP talking head's best subject lately.

Conservatives on Sotomayor this week:

Limbaugh: "reverse racist" and a comparison to former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke

Gingrich: "new racism is no better than old racism." and a "Latina woman racist"

Tancredo: When speaking about her called the National council of La Raza "Latino KKK without the hoods and nooses"

Coulter is on the "racist" rant as well, but she's irrelevant as her insanity is well documented

And my personal favorite insane quip of the week was by G. Gordon Liddy:

LIDDY: Let’s hope that the key conferences aren’t when she’s menstruating or something, or just before she’s going to menstruate. That would really be bad. Lord knows what we would get then.

Another choice comment by Liddy is that she "speaks illegal alien".

Makes me wanna show him a real PMSing woman...

Cornyn and Hatch have sort of freaked out and realized that losing the female and the latino vote entirely wouldn't be good for the GOP's attempts to rebuild the party and have condemned these types of attacks to their credit both politically and personally, but the insanity rages.

Info from stories here and here and here

Where is the decency of these men?

The simple answer is that they do not have any decency.

The GOP needs to give up these attacks immediately. They are not substantive, not in any way. They are so revealing to the ugly nature of these men as to be truly nauseating and disgusting. These comments are horrible on their face loaded with blatant racism, sexism and hatred and underneath are just inhuman.

As the false veil of the now clearly dead compassionate conservatism and outreach to women, Latinos and African Americans has been raised, the ugliness underneath is truly stunningly awful and a place more than 57% of Americans never want to return to again...

Just keep digging that enormous hole back to political relevance deeper conservatives...

23 years?????

2009-05-21T20:42:00.007-05:00

So for 23 years someone has been killing women, and mostly black women in Wisconsin and it seems mostly in Milwaukee. All the women were prostitutes. All but one were found on Milwaukee's North Side.

One man has been serving a life sentence, but it is now confirmed by DNA that he's not the killer... Still that man lost 13 years of his life... Thank god, we don't have the death penalty in Wisconsin.

23 women were killed, 7 linked so far. All prostitutes. All but one in a small geographical area.

Someone knew... In fact it was that same man who called Eugene Kane recently to tell him about a police coverup of a local serial killer.

The story scares me and reminds me of another man killing minorities on the fringe of society and ignored by the Milwaukee Police Department for years. Jeffery Dahmer.

My fury is that the public wasn't warned. My fury is that the public wasn't protected. My fury is that who ever these women were in society, they were human beings, women, women of color and they were allowed to be slaughtered for decades, left on the fringes, ignored by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel left defenseless and with slit throats and strangulation. Where were reporters?

Who knows how many others they haven't thought about adding to the list or how many other innocent men sit in prison for this monsters crimes.

I don't understand how this could happen for so long and no one noticed a pattern? How so many people could be dead under similar circumstances and the public, WE weren't warned? A simple, "someone's killing black prostitutes" would have sufficed. They may not have had the DNA, but they definitely had a pattern of behavior. An MO. Did no one compare the files?

The FBI should have been in here decades ago... Decades...

What's really strange is that the 23 doesn't count the other 5 prostitute murders that WERE matched to people in the database. That brings the total prostitutes killed in Milwaukee in the last 23 years to 28 women. 28 women slaughtered in the streets of Milwaukee and no one said anything...

The MPD has taken two decades to live down the disaster of the Dahmer fiasco.

Who knew that instead of learning from the disaster of ignoring the murders in a community on the fringe, they spent those 20 years covering up or ignoring or completely inept enough to notice another man's horrors in the same neighborhood?

Or is that why they covered it up?

We need an independent investigation into the police practices of the MPD. Who's decision was it to keep this under wraps? What police practices broke down? Who didn't care enough to say anything to protect the public? This goes through four or more police chiefs. It goes through a female chief and a black chief. This is a class issue and a fringe community who's cries for help were completely ignored by everyone.

Why Sykes Was Wrong Today...

2009-05-21T00:55:00.006-05:00

I was listening to a ball game and found my car on 620 this morning. Charlie was going on and on about the Obama plan to put emission and mpg standards on the car makers.

The main points he drove home until the callers were in a frantic frenzy were:

Obama's gonna take away your minivan (American car companies won't be able to make minivans that meet the standards and so they won't make them or will make them too expensive for the average family). If Obama lets you have a minivan, you won't be able to afford it.
Obama's gonna raise the price of gas by taxing it to oblivion.
Hybrid cars are flimsy and unsafe.
Electric cars run on electricity, but Obama's gonna cap and trade emissions and add $1800 to your annual electric bill (oh wait, that last part was from the baseball debacle from day before) before you even plug it in.
Obama's a hypocrit because he drove a big American car before he was president.

Let's get an overview of how weird his arguments were...

The American car industry has tanked because no one wants big gas guzzling cars since the Bush Admin let gas prices go over $4/gallon. Toyota and Honda in particular jumped out ahead of the American car companies who were still selling Hummers and cars that get 14mpg and began to introduce gas/electric hybrids that get up to 55 mpg. The Prius in particular is cute, comfortable, full of fun extra toys and you can get to Madison without the gas gage moving and because it recharges itself, doesn't even need to be plugged in... Everyone I know who has one LOVES it.

So you can't buy a Prius without a year or more waiting period. A few years back it was 3 years... And somehow, the American car companies are going bankrupt because Americans still want big cars? No one is going to take away anyone's minivan. You're just going to get a better car that costs a bit more upfront (or maybe not since they still have a market to compete in) and pay a ton less in gas at the pump.

I have a Toyota minivan. It gets 25 mpg city and 28-30 highway depending on how I'm driving it. It's cute, comes with lots of adorable toys, so comfortable my family of 5 can travel to DC in it and it feels like a trip to the Dells, roomy and turns ON A DIME, drives like a dream and I got it two years old with 40,000 for $14,000.... American minis get 12-17 mpg and don't hold their value because after a few years paying high gas prices everyone wants to dump them to get a Sienna or an Odyssey so they can afford the gas.

If everyone's driving hybrid cars, won't demand for gas go down naturally and therefore prices (Economics 101)? If no one needs gas, why bother to tax it?

If Honda and Toyota can make high quality, low mileage, safe cars for affordable prices and can't keep them on the lots paying equal or better wages and benefits to their workers as the American companies, why couldn't revamped and regulated American car companies do the same?

If Obama had been driving a high efficiency hybrid, it would have had to have been a foreign car and you'd be yelling at him for not driving an American car. Catch 22 argument Obama can't win this one...

The Prius system would solve this problem, reverse engineering has been around as long as engineering. Deal with it. As for the cap and trade issue, I much preferred when the government owned the electric and gas companies and prices were controlled by the taxpayers. Prices were stable and without a profit margin to work into the equation, the people got electricity and gas at cost and when grids needed to be upgraded any "profit" was reinvested in the system instead of going into the pockets of anonymous fat cats. This is a great argument for de-privitizing the industry...especially since we'll be bailing them out anyway with taxpayer dollars.

American car companies are just now releasing hybrids and because they gave their profits to their executives and stockholders instead of reinvesting them in the technologies they are so behind on now, they are in a pickle and coming to the American taxpayers for help. This is not the workers fault either by the way. They were building the cars the executives told them to build.

If gas is truly the greatest threat to American security, then aren't I acting like those during WWII by buying a high mileage car, using less and ultimately protecting American security?

Basically all Obama's doing is acting like a sane CEO. Telling the American car companies to build the cars with the highest demand, controlling our investment dollars if they are put in the industry and reorganizing the companies to do what they were incorporated to do. Make the best cars in the world for the best prices, pay their workers enough to buy their cars (H. Ford) and use a fair share of the profits to learn to make even better cars.

If Obama was a CEO or had the last name Bush, the stockholders (and GOP) would be hailing him as the best new car CEO in America. Because he's a Democrat, Sykes is going after him like a rabid dog... sigh...

No one is going to take away anyone's minivan. You're just going to get a better car that costs a bit more upfront (or maybe not since they still have a market to compete in) and pay a ton less in gas at the pump (between needing less and lowering demand). Think of the razor you got as a giveaway at Summerfest, fell in love with because of it's performance and then went to get refill blades only to find that a pack of 4 cost $12! That cheap or free blade's real cost isn't upfront, it's in the continued use of it over time...

Its time to retool, rethink and rejuvenate the great American auto industry! Even if they need a kick in the rear to get it done.

Please try to make some sense with your next argument Charlie.

Shorewood and Chickens

2009-05-20T16:54:00.003-05:00

So some friends of mine started a Google group to get chickens in Shorewood, WI. For those of you not in the Milwaukee area, Shorewood is the first suburb north of the city of Milwaukee. It bills itself as Uptown, Upscale, Uncommon. Well at least that's what the Shorewood BID has to say. The website says At the Edge of Town and the Heart of Everything.

Shorewood is a really great place to live, raise children and has one of the best school systems in the country. Property values are high and have barely dropped...even in this economic catastrophy. The people who live in Shorewood are the heart and soul of the community. Minorities are not only welcomed, but encouraged to live here. Progressive values are a way of life.

The Shorewood soccer and girl scout and band moms I have had the pleasure to raise my family with are by far some of the most dynamic, strong, accomplished and cool women I've ever known in my life, the dads are cool too.

Shorewood is progressive. VERY progressive. Politically and socially this is a wonderful community for a liberal hack like me to live in... Of course not all people in Shorewood are progressive. The former chair of the state GOP lives here as well as a fellow from the Heritage Foundation. The national leader of the abstinence only movement lives here as well as the state head of the anti-abortion movement and a well known conservative blogger too.

This is what I love about my community though! Even with the political differences here and there, Shorewood neighbors for the most part cherish the back yard barbeques, the nightly walks with neighbors and the safety of living in a community hell bent on 3-4 police squads on duty 24/7 in an area that I've mentioned is 1 mile square. We raise our children as a village because we all believe it takes a village to raise a child. I think of Shorewood as a tiny town accidentally plopped into a big city.

So with all of these things that I love about Shorewood comes that saying Uptown Upscale Uncommon. My love comes from the Uncommon part of that saying. I've been a resident here for all but a few years of my entire life. I have Shorewood stories of Atwater Beach with the tram and lifeguards and I remember the go-carts. In particular I remember moving back in 5th grade and being put into Shorewood public schools after being in Harambee, an all black private school in Milwaukee. This was the late 70's only a few years after the equal housing wars in Milwaukee and we were perhaps the only black family here. My father had lived here before and knew it was going to be okay because Shorewood was different and so he moved back. I remember the kids dragging a terrified and crazy shy young me out to play kickball or go ice skating all day and I remember that none of my new friends even seemed to know I was black. If they did, they certainly didn't care and neither did their parents.

It wasn't perfect, but no where is and this was damn close.

So this is my life in this community. A community I love and can't imagine not living in...

When a group of people first started talking about chickens, I had no idea that was even an option in a urban community. My parents had raised chickens in Neenah and Key West and I'd grown up visiting those places. Ever since Mr Gutnik had us hatch chickens at Atwater in 5th grade I've wanted to raise them, but because I live here in Shorewood, I'd long since resigned myself to the fact that, that was not an option.

Then the Shorewood Chicken movement began.

I followed for months as it moved through the variety of board meetings and finally this week, I decided to show up and see how it would all turn out.

The facts about urban hens are a bit surprising!

First did you know they allow people to keep chickens all over the country in large urban settings? Madison, WI and several other communities around the state allow them in urban areas. Also, Portland, Seattle, Austin, and New York City allow urban hens!
Most don't allow roosters (and we don't want them here). Hens will lay eggs without them.
Hens are quiet animals unless scared by predators and then not loud enough to drown out the noise of a poorly trained dog.
Hens are clean. Their waste can be dried and composted because they are vegetarians. Unlike carnivorous dog and cat waste that can leave behind horrible live bacteria in the ground for up to 2 years and so cannot be composted, but is very dangerous.
Hens in small numbers socialize with their owners and make nice pets.
Hens don't smell (unless you have hundreds of them).
Hens are vaccinated before you get them.
They eat vegetarian food scraps and so decrease human waste.
Hens go to vets like all other pets and when its time their time, they are euthanized just like dogs and cats.
They live in a small space comfortably and in an urban setting are kept in a coop that can be closed up to protect them from predators at night (and if they can't see them, then don't squawk.
Hens in urban settings bring neighbors together. Some owners give them to neighbors and teach your own or neighbors children about how their food is raised.
Most cool is the obvious hens lay eggs and you can eat fresh eggs!

I go to the meeting and what grated on me most was two things. First a board member asking what we mean by "progressive"... "I don't know what that word means.", she said. This is an elected official, in office for at least 10 years who I vote for asking us to define a political term for her... The other was a woman who threw out that she "moved to Shorewood for the terms uptown and upscale this only gets to the term uncommon". I don't know how long she's been here, but uncommon is why I live in here. It is upscale and physically uptown, but in so many ways most of the communities that have those traits are unfriendly, and class oriented.

A group of people wanted to redo Atwater Beach to the glory of only 20 years ago and Friends of Atwater Beach was started. We lost our bookstore and the Shorewood Book Coop is well on its way. When people just wanted to get involved, Grassroots Shorewood, now Grassroots Northshore was created to funnel people into cool progressive projects. Our high school has done Urinetown and Rent (first high school in the country) in just that past four years. No one has tried to ban a book here in the 20 years I've lived here; National Coming Out Day is celebrated at the high school with a picnic on the front lawn, bands and comraderie; typically banned books are part of the curriculum for all students.

Shorewood is family, children and community centered. Just the place where a progressive slow food movement like owning a few backyard hens should be embraced.

I was pretty disappointed when board member Dawn Anderson was at least willing to support looking into a pilot program, and Eckman and Hannewall stopped her in her tracks as if that was a ludicrious idea. Frankly I was surprised by the abruptness of their approach and dismissiveness of the 20 or so people in the room supporting the measure.

The "facts" they presented are all countered by the scientists, animal specialists, veteranians, city officials and urban hen owners in other communities as out and out false.

There's a lot more to say about this issue and I'll be blogging about it here and there as well. Milwaukee is also attempting to pass an ordinance to allow urban hens and they are having much more success there than here so far.

After the meeting, I thought I was talking to the activists on the issue about how to get a direct legislation petition (referendum) on the ballot. I was talking to a JS reporter LOL!

So, yes, I'm the Renee Crawford MJS wrote about this week. Yes, I do want chickens. Yes, I will continue to work on the issue. And yes, I'll now be blogging on chickens as well as the many other things I post on when my take is warranted.

Even if...

2009-04-20T09:52:00.003-05:00

Some sick SOB could make a case that some rational person could agree with that waterboarding someone is somehow not torture, this pretty much makes that case a moot point.

186 times in one month. 83 times in one month. That's an average of 6 and 3 times a day EVERY day for an entire month!!! The thought of this no matter who the person is, no matter their crimes, well, this is the Spanish Inquisition level of torture all over again...

Not only was the US torturing (I think we've become numb to this thought, but torture is something serial killers, not humane governments do...), it was torturing with a sadistic fervor and this is NOT excusable because we were hyped up about getting info after being attacked.

This is sick and wrong and MUST be punished so it NEVER happens again. The Obama Administration must bring charges all the way to the top. Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld ARE war criminals and belong in prison for these two incidents alone. Any ruler around the world who justified this level of torture, would be in prison already. This cannot be allowed to stand.

We must demand it, the very soul of who we are as a people is at stake here...

Obama's Stunning Trip to Central and South America

2009-04-19T11:50:00.004-05:00

For two centuries the United States has had at times mildly contentious and at times full out antagonistic and warring relations with Central and South American countries. More wars than all the other wars we've fought as a country have been fought in the nations to our south. We have in one way or another attempted to dominate and impose a regional imperialism upon the peoples to our south since we became a nation.

The antagonism has been such that the mistrust of US intervention policies (especially in the last 50 years) leaves many countries nearly unable to even talk to the US in civil terms, let alone attempt to reach out and build a relationship. From Panama to Cuba to Nicaragua to Columbia to Venezuela, we have time and again proven that our interest in these nations is only to the extent that it serves our needs (in particular our business and economic needs) at the expense of the needs of the people in living in those nations.

It can reasonably be argued that the US has used it's superior military over the decades to impose an economic superiority and as a result enslaved the people of Central and South America to the whims of American priorities. Democracy be damned, if a leader chooses to defy American interests in the interest of the people they are responsible for, rest be assured, the US will intervene and the leader will not be in power long.

I believe I'm being generous here. I also believe I'm way understating the effects our policies have had to our South...

To make matters worse, we have facilited horrendous economic conditions in most of these countries forcing the inhabitants to migrate to places where they have a reasonable chance of survival. Namely, they migrate to the United States. This has created an interesting dilemna in this country. We've forced desperate people to come to the United States for work by any means necessary (including the imminent threat of death in the transport here). Once they are here, the ridiculous situations they came from means they are willing to work for anything, and they do. Suddenly we have this desperate workforce in the United States willing to work, work hard and do what ever it takes to prove they are worthy of staying here and suddenly our economic interests with in the United States have changed...

Employers lured by the thrill of cheap labor hire and hire and hire the immigrants. More immigrants come to the United States as word spreads of jobs. Employers have a huge advantage over the employees for one stunning reason. The employees are undocumented and subject to deportation by a simple phone call and by the current practice of the law (not the meaning of it, but how it's been practiced for the last 8 years), they are returned without even a hearing in front of a judge.

This spreads fear in the immigrant community of deportation. The fear leads to a willingness to accept any wage, and working condition no matter how safe and a willingness to stay in the shadows hiding in a society that only pretends to not want them there, but does want to enslave them as long as they are here.

And that's what they have become by the way... Slaves in America. Working in plain sight. They have been given no access to the legal system, they are paid in cash under the table and at wages not much higher than they would have made in their own country's but well below our current standards. They work in unsafe working conditions, who would tell and risk an ICE enforcement raid on the facility that could result in hundreds being deported, so they are silent...

And we as Americans have one of three reactions. You are either like me and are enraged and want the government to bring them out of the shadows, give them access to the justice system and allow them to work here legally and humanely within our labor laws so they compete on an equal level for jobs with all the unemployed. Or you are completely oblivious to the problem, don't care, don't pay attention and don't want to know about it at all, just want your meat and vegetables to stay cheap and have no idea why they are.... Or you are part of a rabidly racist anti-immigration movement who throws out seriously misinformed rhetoric about how immigrants are "stealing our jobs" or "living off taxpayer dollars" (by the way which is it...) and we should just "send them all home" the Dobbsian theory of immigration in America...

On May 1, 2009 we will again march in the streets of Milwaukee to demand these policies be reformed and human beings living in our country be treated as human beings. Join US!

And into all of this, comes President Obama...

So this is a small snapshot of the context in which our new president made a historic trip to Central and South American and the Cuba. In the middle of a firestorm of immigration issues that have no simple or even reasonable solution on the table on either side, President Obama went south to listen.

Listen. Listen. Listen.

I'm not really sure the last time a US President just sat down face to face with dictators and diplomats and leaders of all political stripes from an entire region and just LISTENED.

No real demands, no real agenda, just listened.

This stunning development in US and Latin American relations is even more than I had anticipated. President Obama of course has a game plan to all of this, but the absolutely amazing tactic of actually listening first before negotiating is a pretty new concept for the American media and people to digest. They are sort of grasping to find something to write about and settling on Chavez giving Obama a book or repeated asking why Obama has had very few comments on the overall summit on on individual things that have been said so far.

Novel thought: Perhaps he's letting them just vent???

Have you ever had a discussion with someone who thinks you haven't been listening to them for a significant period of time? How does that usually go? They generally are angry and just want to have their say. You won't get very far with them just starting in with "here's what I think you should do...", will you? No. The best tactic is to quietly sit, listen to their concerns and let them vent until they are sure you have heard them. They will not hear you until you give their concerns that minimum amount of respect.

And that is the stunningly brilliant new tactic that President Obama has brought to the foreign policy of the United States of America.

Regardless of how this all shakes out individually by country and/or policy, just the simple courtesy he had afforded the leaders of Latin America of listening and letting them fully vent their concerns to his face, to the face of the American people is by far the most significant and important change to American foreign policy in the history of this great country.

Bravo!

Your Vote Is More Powerful TODAY Than It Was Last Fall!

2009-04-02T08:23:00.004-05:00

Why? Because if today is anything like last April's election less than 25% of the people in the state will vote. That means that your vote will count for about 3-4 people who voted last fall and will not vote today.

It's critical that you get out and cast a ballot today! I have 3 main suggestions for you as to whom you should vote for today.

1: Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson for Supreme Court

She's been a fair justice who truly respects the rule of the law. She's brilliant, thoughtful and tough and this could be one of the most powerful votes you can cast in your lifetime for fairness and justice.

2: JD Watts for Circuit Court

JD Watts is an amazing guy who I have seen on a regular basis carefully taking the arm of Vel Phillips as he takes her to events she otherwise would not have been able to attend. He really does know and care about our courts, he's a judge already and this is his time to take a seat for the entire county and work for justice.

3: Peter Blewett for Milwaukee Public School Board

What can I say about Peter? Only that he has fiercefully championed the rights of the students at MPS not only to get an education, but to get a quality education, to have equity with the public school students in the suburbs and to have the freedom to learn. Without Peter on the Milwaukee Public School board championing the children first, the board would be in chaos. At times Peter has been one of only 3-4 board members who stood sdtrong for the kids and we need his voice to continue that! Vote to keep the sanity in MPS schools. Vote for my friend and a true leader. Peter Blewett.

Finally, if you are in Port Washington, Doug Cvetkovich for school board. In Madison, Brenda Konkel. I also like Annie Woodward for MPS.

For the other circuit court seat, Ellen Brostrom is my pick!

On a side note, my daughter just turned 18 about a week ago and I'm really excited that she's excited to vote today for the first time!

By the way, election day is April 7th, but you can vote early at your local municipality, so make sure you get out today, tomorrow, Monday or Tuesday and cast that ballot!

Mixed Messages: Can some GOP blogger explain this to me?

2009-03-30T21:41:00.001-05:00

I'm completely confused by listening to Charlie Sykes this morning. He
had several distinctly different positions that are in complete
conflict with each other philosophically in any rational thought
pattern. I couldn't even begin to follow his logic.

First he was upset by the entire idea of bailing out any corporations.
A total waste of our hard earned tax dollars to give our money to
these failing companies. (Nevermind that it was Bush's financial
disasterous ideas in the first place that first got us here, then did
a crappy job of bailing them out in the first round as if he was
leaving office in a few months and couldn't be bothered to do it
right...)

Then he was upset that Obama is even attempting to finish doling out
the money Bush got but gave to him to dole out.

Then he was upset that after Wall Street totally ticked off the
American public by continuing to misappropriate the money, Obama
wanted to add at least the minimum amount of strings to them getting
our money.

Finally he was totally upset that Obama had the nerve to tell the auto
industry to clean up its act before he'd give them OUR money. This is
the strangest argument the GOP has ever made...

I know it all makes so little sense I'm hoping I'm misunderstanding him...

These are TAX PAYER Dollars!!!

If the big corporations don't like being pushed around by the Federal
government when they are looking for a handout, they have two other
choices. Fix the problem themselves or file for bankruptcy.

When I was a teenager and went to my dad for $20, I learned really
quickly that dad wanted to know what I was going to use his hard
earned money for... If I didn't want to have to answer that question
and bring back the receipts or justify the really cool off the
shoulder 80's sweater I HAD to have there was another way to get it.
Get myself a job and earn my OWN money. Which is exactly what I did!
Dad was quick to give me bus fare to get to my job. ;)

These whiny CEO's need to learn that if they need daddy's money, he
wants to know how they're going to spend it.

If they don't want to be accountable to daddy, then they need to NOT
RUN THEIR COMPANIES into the ground!

These spoiled children have never had a daddy who taught them the core
American values of work hard, save money, reinvest to make more money
(including making sure your employees can buy your cars), and only
take a salary from the PROFIT that is left over after all the bills
are paid.

Obama is teaching them that hard work pays, gambling and partying
costs, and daddy is only going to pay the bus fare to get them back to
work. Sounds like conservative values to me...

The GOP is scarily grasping for straws for any reason, no matter how
inane, to have a reason to exist after their grand plan has failed so
astronomically.

Help me out here. What am I missing?

Satellite Crepes! How Cool are my Sister and Bro In Law?

2009-03-29T16:41:00.003-05:00

Look for Satellite Crepes all summer long around Milwaukee! Go to http://www.satellitecrepes.com/ for more information and to see the schedule as soon as the snow stops that is... :)

By the way, they are totally delicious, all natural, made to order and they have been known to make them veggie, vegan, low carb, diabetic friendly... You name it, they've got something you can eat!

WI DP Registry Artfully Explained

2009-03-27T00:34:00.004-05:00

My friend and fellow Center Advocates board member Leonel Marchand wrote a timely and lovely piece on the domestic partnership registry last week and it's worth a read.

Denying the basic human protections of a society to a group of people just because you have made some personal judgement on the morality of their love (as if somehow, you have a right to define love for another human being) based on your own misunderstanding or bigotry is just wrong.

It's time Wisconsin's legislators and Governor Doyle put in place the very basic protections called for in Leonel's piece. Honestly, it's embarrassing that simply because I love someone of an opposite sex, I have some sort of right to protect our love and yet, look into the faces of hundreds of friends and know that their lives are less secure simply because we live in a society that feels it has some right to be all in their business like that...

Any two people should be able to go to a court house and get a legal document providing these protections call it what you like, dp registry, civil unions, marriage, the language is all tied up in knots. The point is, it's a legal document, it's illegal to discriminate on who can get it.

A Rare Day: Angry with a Dem and Praising a Conservative...

2009-03-26T22:49:00.014-05:00

What is this world coming to?

In a 10 minute span of time, I am both bashing

the bejeezus out of a Democratic Senator from WI and compelled to praise Congressman F. Jim Sensenbrenner, my own GOP Congressman!

From his website:

Washington, Mar 25 -
Today, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.), Constitution Subcommittee Ranking Member F. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), Constitution Subcommittee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), Rep. Melvin Watt (D-N.C.), and former Rep. Steve Chabot filed a bipartisan
friend of the court brief in Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One v. Holder urging the Court to defer to Congress’s judgment and uphold the constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). Section 5 is a key provision that prevents discriminatory voting changes.

and Sensy continues...

“The most fundamental right is the right to vote – and that can be seen on the faces of the individuals who are participating in the democratic process,” Sensenbrenner said. “We built an impressive record during the 2006 reauthorization, and the evidence presented to Congress was overwhelming. While progress has been made, much still needs to be done, and the Voting Rights Act remains as necessary as ever in maintaining that progress.”

It's words like these that nearly bring tears of joy to my eyes.

Sensenbrenner has LONG been one of the greatest champions of the Voting Rights Act. He led the expansion in the 1970's, the reauthorization in the 1980's and again he took the lead a valiantly fought off the southern Congressmen attempting to water it down as it was reauthorized in 2006. So this is no surprise to me.

I call it like I see it no matter what letter is after your name and with Sensenbrenner, I have a love/hate relationship as a search of my blog makes quite clear. Scroll through the posts and you will see my attempts to run candidates against him, to criticize his inane support of the PATRIOT Act and the Military Commissions Act, to fight to get to see him when I'm in DC, tease him when he votes to kill wild mustangs, and you will also see towards the bottom a ton of posts in wonder of him as the process of watching him champion the VRA unfolded.

Praise is given where praise is due.

In fact, I had a civil and interesting conversation with him at the Inauguration just two months ago on the VRA and it's implications on the issue of felon disfranchisement. Here is my awesome hubby snapping away to make sure the moment was captured for posterity. ;)

For all his faults, F. Jim has one redeeming quality that I am fascinated by and thankful for...

I think he really DOES put the right to vote above politics.

Now if I can just convince him of the disparate impact of felony disfranchisement laws, maybe he'll go down as the greatest defender of the right to vote in modern American history... ;-)

Kohl is a ConservaDem?

2009-03-26T21:53:00.002-05:00

After my Facebook Flip Out last night, a local blogger picked up my words off the post and shared them beyond my small private group of 921 friends... It's all good though, I was pretty ticked off at the time and I still don't care who knows it...

Friend me! You get all the midnight rants that way ;-)

So the still ticked off, but more rational community organizer me has a few more thoughts on the Kohl betrayal. Having visited Kohl's website today, I see no retraction of his being named as one of Evan Bayh's "ConservaDems" as Rachel Maddow has coined them.

With no quick retraction and no public comments on his being named as one of the 16, I can only assume he has indeed allied himself with this group of DINOS who have made it a priority to represent big business over the demands of the American public who elected them. If for some reason he's "slow on the draw" and decides to deny his being named as joining this group, I will apologize for spreading the rumor. That said, he has not and so the rest of this is under the presumption that he is.

This seems to be a group of Dems who have decided that wealthy and powerful business interests trump the will of the American people to reform our healthcare system and who knows what other mischief they are planning to sabotage the Obama Administration's major agenda items about 2 months into his first term.

Of course my first thought is follow the money. Who made the calls to these 16? Was it the insurance industry? Big pharma? Why did they feel the need to immediately attempt to block healthcare? Of all things? Before it's even introduced! The one thing that could really boost the economy. Give small business a chance to recover. The one thing that could put a significant dent in the pocketbooks of millions of American's who have to choose between healthcare and mortgage payments, food and utilities. Universal healthcare is the answer to so many of American's woes.

It's time, we DEMAND it and no small group of 16 nimwits is going to stop us! We WILL get on the phones and flood their offices. We WILL put down their servers with emails. We WILL stand out side their offices and protest en masse. We WILL vote them out of office and start over again... We will EVEN consider recall elections.

Its no longer business as usual in Washington. These Senators have significantly under estimated our resolve in these matters.

The people have found our voices and we have spoken, LOUDLY, and our representatives will listen and represent OUR interests.

Russ Feingold has continuously and steadfastly stood with the people and his low dollar, no special interest fundraising has been rewarded at the ballot box. The people know and remember who stands with them when it really counts...

Kohl made a major miscalculation that will be remembered... I wouldn't be surprised with a primary challenger, a recall petition campaign or a whole lot of busy Kohl staffers fielding calls from angry constituents.

Not only will the watch begin on how he responds to this crisis in the immediate future. Kohl has raised the red flag high above his head and the scrutiny of his work begins today.

Talk Radio's Direct Conflict of Interest in Public Transportation

2009-03-25T08:54:00.003-05:00

Milwaukee talk radio jocks have been slamming the proposals for high speed rail, medium speed rail, streetcars, a city wide train system, buses, etc...

In fact any and every discussion of public transportation is met by talk radio shock jocks with disdain, horror and digust using any and every excuse they can think of to rile up the public and create a "movement" against ALL proposals to expand the availability and use of public transit in Milwaukee.

I've been wracking my brain trying to figure out why it freaks these guys (and they are ALL guys) out so much and then it hit me...

If everyone's on a train, bus, streetcar, etc..., who's gonna be left to listen to these guys in their cars on the way to work in the morning?

Their listenership will go down. Advertising will go down. Most scary is their INFLUENCE over the thoughts and politics of the Milwaukee public will plummet. Their opinions will become moot points. Their entire livelihood is in jeopardy!

Milwaukee talk radio is against public transportation because it is in direct conflict with their BUSINESS interest. They should do a public disclosure every time they decide to bash it.

But if they did that, why would you need a blogosphere?

I Take Back My Optimistic View of The Economy... We're Screwed...

2009-03-22T01:29:00.001-05:00

The Big Takeover: we're officially, royally screwedThe global economic crisis isn't about money - it's about power. How Wall Street insiders are using the bailout to stage a revolution

read more | digg story

Feel Like Flipping Out?

2009-03-18T23:19:00.007-05:00

Ran across this story today ... Forget about the economic collapse of the world, it's by far the scariest thing I've read this year...

Where is this story in the mass media???

Deadly (60%) highly infectious strain of bird flu virus "accidentally", mixed with a not as deadly, but highly transmittable through normal human contact strain of regular human flu virus, shipped as a harmless flu vaccine to 18 countries around the world by the company (Baxter) who is developing the vaccination for avian flu viruses and seasonal flu viruses. Some scientist thinking it's just a dead virus standard vaccine in Canada routinely tests it on a rat that promptly keels over and sends the scientific world into a tailspin.

The company first tries to call it "trade secrets", then says, Whoops, our bad.

Somehow this is completely under the radar with the mainstream media's fascination with the financial collapse and how they can "catch" Obama doing something, anything wrong...

Now just a note here, this is The Stand kind of stuff. Mix two virus' and the worst case scenario is they merge into one super-virus with the worst traits of each. Millions die worldwide...

The conspiracy bloggers and websites are ALL over it though. LOL! Google it and you'll find every consipracy website on both sides (liberals and conservatives) going nuts. Apparently, both liberals and conservatives read Stephen King.

What happens
Viruses are made mainly of protein and DNA. The DNA primarily causes the illness, but it's the proteins that determine how well it spreads. There are two main proteins on the surface of the virus – hemagglutinin (H) and neuraminidase (N). Theoretically, human viruses that have recombined to express an H protein that humans have no immunity against are more likely to result in quick, sustained human-to-human spread.
If a pig infected with human influenza A virus becomes infected by avian influenza A, the two strains can mix genetic information. This would yield a new virus that has one or both surface proteins from the avian virus, but most of the genes from the human virus. This means it could be both unrecognizable to human immune systems and easily transferable from person to person.
This type of recombination could also occur in a human co-infected with avian and human influenza A viruses.
"We don't know exactly what it would take to make an avian flu strain that doesn't pass very well from person to person into a virus that can pass from person to person. We hope that the virus isn't smart enough to figure it out," said Kathryn Edwards of Vanderbilt University, who is currently running a study on a potential avian flu vaccine.

She may not know exactly what it could take, but could Baxter (an American Pharma...) be trying to find out???

Congressional investigations are in order...

__________________________

And here's my little piece of CT speculation... My mind is racing with what ifs? What if some country vaccinated people with it and its morphing now about to hit the world this summer with a pandemic of 1918 proportions or worse? How much time do we have?

Afghan Opium and the DJIA-2008 Figures

2009-03-09T21:51:00.008-05:00

I have been tracking these figures for 8 years and still don't know exactly why they continue to be so congruent. I'm not even sure why I track this annually, except that I am absolutely fascinated by it and am waiting for the two lines to, at least once, go in different directions.... (Search on the word "opium" on my blog for previous posts on this)

The 2008 figures in particular are a bit stunning not just for the fact that the drop in the DJIA is significantly more than the drop in the Afghan opium projected figures.

What seems most significant to me is that now the figures are released twice a year in the early fall and in the winter (3 winter reports now). What seems significant is that in August 2008 the opium crop came in 19% shorter than expected.

Now, all I really know about commodities trading is what I learned in the movie Trading Places... but I seem to remember the crop reports are pretty important to the stock market... Had I gotten that report early, I would have bet the market was going down, and very soon, based on the trends I've been tracking below.

In fact, it was just a few weeks later that then entire market crashed and our financial system went bust. Hmmm... What's really interesting is if you were trading on the futures market of the opium crop, you would indeed be selling off everything right now.

From the Executive Summary of the UNODC January 2009 Report:

The Afghan drug economy. In 2007 the (farm gate) value of opium cultivation was one of the largest ever, at about $1 billion. In 2008 it dropped by more than a quarter, to $730 million. In 2007 the (potential) export value of opium, morphine and heroin (at border prices in neighbouring countries) was $4 billion. This year’s drug export was valued at $3.4 billion. (Note that these export amounts are potential as they do not account for changes in domestic stocks, unknown to us).

The downturn in the opium economy. Since 2007 opium cultivation declined by 19% to 157,000 hectares this year, for several reasons. First, as shown in our August Report, restraint at planting (but not eradication), has been successful. Pressure by governors, shuras and village elders has kept cultivation down in many provinces. Second, and most importantly, the dynamics of farm prices. As (Afghan) supply has once again exceeded (world) demand, prices for opium (both fresh and old) are down 20% in nominal terms (and much more at constant prices). Third, the terms of trade effect. While opium farmers’ income has declined, the revenue from wheat has tripled since 2007 (partly due to drought).

In other words, if wheat prices stay high, opium production will continue to go down. With Obama's Afghan war, one of a few specific goals being to take out the opium cartels, a serious attempt to decrease opium production in Afghanistan means that if there really is some link between these two indices, the market has responded to a futures forecast that is bleak for Afghan opium and crashed even farther than the actual drop would normally predict.

Or maybe wheat prices have nothing to do with opium production an interesting blurb from the US Dept of State:

Overall agricultural production dramatically declined following severe drought as well as sustained fighting, instability in rural areas, and deteriorated infrastructure. The easing of the drought and the end of civil war produced the largest wheat harvest in 25 years during 2003. Wheat production was an estimated 58% higher than in 2002. However, the country still needs to import an estimated one million tons of wheat to meet its requirements. Millions of Afghans, particularly in rural areas, remain dependent on food aid.

Note in the chart in 2002, 2003 and 2004, opium production began to skyrocket regardless of the "largest wheat harvest in 25 years in 2003). I would seem that wheat production has no effect on whether or not the Afghans grow opium poppy...

So without further delay, I now show you the chart for this year.

I am again making no guarantees that I have any idea what this means. In fact, I make no guarantees that I have any idea what I'm talking about at all, just that the numbers are accurate.

I'll let the chart speak for itself (email me if you need the citations or would like the full spreadsheet to review...)

Cvetkovich for School Board in Port Washington

2009-03-06T17:16:00.002-06:00

A good friend of mine is running for school board in Port Washington and needs your help to raise some funds to get more lit, etc and raise his profile to win the race.

You may remember Doug from last fall when he bravely came just a few votes in just 3 days of campaigning from getting his name on the ballot as a write in candidate last fall to run against F. Jim. When no one else would stand up an run against F Jim, Doug nearly gave him a run for his money! He hasn't given up on asking his neighbors for the opportunity to serve his community...

In fact, his passion for serving his neighbors in office has had him spending the last bitterly cold 4 months knocking doors in Port Washington nearly every night! Doug's grassroots style has moved him into a position to win the race, but he needs our support to finish the last leg. Doug is well known and respected in Port with a young son in the school system and a daughter on the way.

Doug Cvetkovich is also the vice chair of the 5th CD Democratic Party.

Doug grew up in Milwaukee, now lives in Port Washington with his wife and children, and is district manager of a retail service company. He is a veteran of the U.S. Army.

He as a child in the school system and another due very soon!

He is passionate about the education of our children, and will be great advocate for them on the school board.

Please donate anything you can to Doug Cvetkovich and lets get him elected this April.

He's been doing his part, working around the clock, now it's time for us in the progressive community to step up and do ours!!!

Click Here to make a donation.

Seriously, $10, $25, $100... anything will help a really smart and dedicated father get elected to school board this spring.

What a Speech!

2009-02-24T22:23:00.000-06:00

My friend apologized tonight for our race earlier. ;)

It was the first time I've had tears from a Presidential speech in 10 years and yes, I not only was touched, but inspired and yes, at times my entire family and I cheered.

It was truly a masterpiece... and how awesome is it to have an adult in charge again???

Health care this YEAR?
We don't torture?
Close Guantanamo?
A REAL energy plan that makes sense and that he TELLS us?
Education is everyone's responsibility?

"Living our values doesn't make us weaker, it makes us safer and stronger!"

Its stuff like this that makes me want to blog again...

I am floored, stunned and a very happy hippie right now. The GOP on the floor of Congress sighed a collective "shit, we are so screwed..." tonight, and they should have...

As for the republican response... Well, yikes! It was a disaster the moment Keith Olbermann not knowing he was still mic'ed said, "Oh my God" as Jindal sauntered up to the podium. It was all over the place. A complete mess. An embarrassment.

Matthews on the other hand was outta line when he ranted on with an unintentional, but still not okay racial slur by saying that the GOP "outsourced" their response to an "outsider". Who happened to be Indian... What an idiot! This is not of course what he meant, he meant not a Washington insider, it was truly a snafu, still, it was idiotic, and I expect him to get some real shit for it. Too bad, I really like Matthews. He's generally cool as shit, but I call the conservatives on their idiocy and would be a hypocrit to not say something now...

Congratulations Archbishop Dolan

2009-02-24T22:15:00.000-06:00

Milwaukee's Archbishop just got a big promotion to be AB of New York. Congratulations!

On a side note, President Obama called him to congratulate him as well...

Collect...

I didn't even know you could still make a collect call. LOL!

The Archbishop joked that he knew the government was hurting, but he was deeply honored to have gotten the call.

Apparently the Separation of Church and State is again strong. :)

It's The Economy Stupid...

2009-02-24T19:22:00.003-06:00

Several years ago when the stock market hit 14000 I turned to my husband and said, "It's all fake. The housing bubble will burst, the market will crash, the world will go to hell and the dems will have to clean it all up. The bottom of the market is the actual number the stock market was at right after 911 about 7200. Everything since then is fake."

I don't think I ever blogged that (although I'd have to go back and check), but I said it out loud.

I wish everyone, the dems, the gop, the public and especially the media would stop panicking. I don't believe it's as bad as they say.

I was hanging with Rachel Maddow on Saturday night and we were talking about the economy and I flatly stated, "We're at the bottom, it can't go any lower than this." She looked at me a bit stunned and said "Why?"

"Because people aren't cashing in their 401k's yet, they haven't changed their payroll deductions, there's been no rush on the banks and with all the panic in the media, you'd think all of that would have happened by now. It hasn't. We're at the bottom." She didn't really respond to me.

I truly believe that. I think the panic is unfounded. I think companies are panicking, consumers are panicking, politicians are panicking and really the only thing that will send us back into a tailspin is if gas prices go about $4 again.

If I had any money, I'd be buying every thing right now. Especially construction, eco-friendly stuff and yes, banks. The adjustment has happened. People are surviving. Some have lost thier homes some more will, but overall, people have made the adjustments they needed to make.

It is hard out there. It's hard for me financially. Most Americans though don't live off the dividends from their trust funds. Madoff's indiscretions didn't affect them.

Unemployment has been astronomical for years in the cities. People survived.
The good paying jobs left long ago.

Most people who couldn't afford a home will go back to renting. They had the American dream for a short time and it sucks to get duped, but there'll be a lot of bank owned rental property out there, so prices will be cheap.

Gas prices are back to tolerable if still criminal. They are no longer breaking the American public's back though and that will make a difference.

Banks are banks. They aren't going anywhere and at least if they are nationalized, we'll be able to control the way they operate and regulate how they rip us all off at every turn and that will be good, especially for the poor who are relegated to loan sharks masquerading as check cashing places and keeping them poor.

Honestly. Chill out people. The sky is not falling.

At least not until about 3-5 years from now when the baby boomers start to retire. Then the bottom is much lower....

16 Months Starting....... NOW

2009-02-24T19:11:00.005-06:00

actually a month from now...

I have this picture in my mind of being a child and walking up to the starting line with a friend to race to a finish line that is also standard for this type of game. You know, you start at the crack in the sidewalk that splits your front steps and end at the Johnson's house 3 houses down at the pine tree.

It's a standard racing distance. It was decided many summers before and it's always the same. It's accepted as fact.

As we walk slowly to the crack my friend is right in front of me about a step and says "Lets race... Starting... NOW!"

Two steps before the crack and one step ahead of me. I get psyched out and lose another step in my anger at the prospect of not being able to catch up. I want to yell, "That's not fair, that's not how the game is supposed to be played." Instead, I start running in vain and realize my friend's gonna beat me no matter what I do or say. My feelings are a bit hurt, I'm winded, but in the end it will all be okay.

That's what I think about Obama changing the timeline on getting out of Iraq. That's all I think about it. We will still be friends when the game is over. The game will end.

I just feel a little duped...

More on "The" Pig in Northern WI

2009-02-11T16:14:00.003-06:00

I posted this story over a year ago and an employee has been keeping it updated for over a year now in the form of reposting comments. I want to first of thank that employee for their efforts to continue to get the word out about the management at Piggly Wiggly in Appleton's attempts to break the employee's union.

Things have gotten worse. They refuse to take union dues out of the employee's paychecks, and other nasty attempts to break the union like refusing to negotiate, and pretending like the union doesn't exist.

I do wish the poster would stop personally bashing the owner for his personal life. It undermines the really serious union busting efforts that you are attempting you uncover... You should be able to edit those on your own and I hope you choose to do so, so the really important points you are making stand out instead of this looking like a personal vendetta...

I wanted to just repost this and let my readers know that this is still a problem still happening and now strikes may be pending. Read through the comments on the original story. As always, new information from the inside is always welcome!

Post Inauguration Thoughts

2009-02-11T15:20:00.006-06:00

I still have this massive project to compile go through and pick out some pictures from the more than 1000 we took during inauguration week. In the meantime, I thought I'd just toss out some post-inaugural thoughts that have been running threw my mind the past couple of weeks.

First and foremost, thank you to everyone who contributed to allow me the ability to tell you from the ground what was happening. I actually felt like a paid journalist for a week and that is one of those crazy fantasies us bloggers live for ;) And to my cousin and her family who's hospitality in allowing us to live with them (not just stay in their home, but truly live with them as fully welcome members of their home, amazing... thank you and we love and miss you all already!), made the trip possible. She's also a great guest blogger!!! Help me encourage her to start her own!!!

I think what bothers me most about the inauguration, is the way the media covered it. Except for the 2 million people who were there, if you weren't there, you missed something and the media didn't have the staffing or the will to tell you about it.

Think about this. Two million people one of the largest pilgrimages in the history of the world descended on one city for just a few days. Those people came from all over the world, all over the country, every political background (yes, Fox News was there), and every socio-economic status you could ever imagine.

Rich and poor, every race, more languages spoken in one town than perhaps ever in the history of the United States. I saw not one fight. Not one scuffle. Not one disagreement. Not even a scowl (well, I'll cover this in a minute)... This incredible mass of humanity coming together for one purpose, to issue in hope for a new generation.

HOPE is a powerful thing.

The people not only didn't complain or even grumble or push each other when waiting on a platform with 40,000 other people for hours in the cold, but they made it fun. They talked to each other, got to know each other, often danced and kidded around with each other about the various states and countries they came from, in the most good natured way imaginable...or maybe even in a way that is unimaginable.

Let me repeat two million people behaved themselves for an entire week!

It didn't matter the color of your skin. It didn't matter your ethnicity, age, religion, etc... The overall kumbayah attitude of two million people was something I, my husband and children will carry with us for the rest of our lives. I'm not sure you can put into words the energy of two million ecstatically happy people! It just permeated everything and everyone. I could feel pure joy. Everywhere we went.

A few notes about the coverage. The media missed the real story entirely. They missed it...

They didn't talk about the roaring booing when Bush stepped out on the platform. I was pretty horrified (see my comments live as it happened below). This is a noise that started as a groan and grew into deafening boos that lasted until they took him off the screen. I don't believe they showed him again on screen to us until he got on the airplane again. I am quite sure that was deliberate. So, how to describe this guttural reaction has plagued me for weeks. It was not organized, it was not expected, it most certainly was not coordinated. This came from some place else.

A place that made two million people 1.5% of the total people who voted in the 2008 general election make a pilgrimage to see their new leader in person. This was a boo on torture, on rendition, on hatred and division, war, lies, gay bashing, religious persecution, NSA spying, the horrors of Katrina's aftermath, the economic collapse of failed GOP theories, corruption, lack of accountability, and disrespect for our Constitution, our way of life, our ideals and who we are as Americans. This place that that boo came from inside the people around me was not controllable. It was a sheer instinctual show of disrespect earned by a man who held so little respect for us and who we are as Americans. It was the last chance two million people had to tell that man he was and will be judged as wrong... on everything...

It didn't stop with the booing. When Bush got on the helicopter to go, the crowd erupted spontaneously again in two million cheers mixed in with nah nah nah nah, hey hey hey goodbye. Again, I didn't participate, but listened. I wanted to hear what that sounded like. I wanted to remember it.

As Bush flew directly over our heads, I did make a clear and deliberate gesture of my own. I waived good bye. I thought to myself. "Is is true? Is he really gone?" Had I not been there and seen it with my own eyes, I'm not sure I would have believed it.

When the inauguration was over, the crowd erupted again...in spontaneous joy! Literally hundreds of thousands of people dancing with each other to marching band music for what seemed like hours. My daughters noted some children their age in the area picking up garbage bags and starting to clean up the mess. What a mess it was! I think it was CQ that put out a free special edition newspaper that they handed out on the metros and in the streets by the hundreds of thousands before the inauguration. What a mess! Who wanted to hold it? So they ended up in huge piles all over the mall and blowing in the wind. Noodles and Malaika just grabbed garbage bags though and started picking up the trash. They were having so much fun that I had to eventually drag them off the mall. They were excited about doing community service. They'd heard Obama's call to arms on that issue and were shocked they could personally answer by doing something so simple LOL! Man I love my girls... They got pins from a woman as a thank you for their efforts and wear them proudly on their coats to this day.

The questions I've gotten most in the last two weeks have to do with two main topics. Transportation and restrooms. LOL!

After waiting in line for hours for a Summerfest bathroom. We were prepared. We went in advance, tried not to drink much and I found the restrooms immediately when I got there.

I found them completely and utterly without a line. No wait at all. They remained that way the entire event. I think the combination of no food or beverage except what you could carry, and the fact that who would want to leave meant most people just didn't have to go or chose not to.

Transportation was a mess and brilliantly managed at the same time. All I can say is that my husband and children said it was the little things you learned to appreciate, an empty metro car, seeing the end of a line, a line moving, that kept you going. The cars did move, the lines did move and yes, we did get in. I would have changed a few things in retrospect. That said, it was really amazing to see how well DC managed to move and accommodate two million people. My hats off to the the transit authority. They could not have done much more.

What the media missed was this overall sense that we were in this together. That we were celebrating together and that we had together changed the world. They never quite got the magnitude of what was happening all around them. They were stuck in their media booths (all except for Chris Matthews whom I met on the street and got a pic with... notably he was the only commentator I saw who mentioned the people themselves). Or the fact that the president himself called this the People's Inauguration and the people are what it was all about...

On our new president.

My personal thoughts are mixed. It's been a bit rockier the past few weeks than I'd hoped, I am troubled by a few things I may account to you in the next few days. This is long enough though after another few weeks of silence, so I think I'll just say at this point. I'm at about a 70% approval rating on this administration. I'm overall with holding judgement for just a few more weeks, and then I'll be back roaring as usual I'm sure!

CT Breaking News! Compromise Deal Reached on Stimulus Package

2009-02-11T15:11:00.002-06:00

Happened to be calling Harry Reid's office just a minute ago and was told the compromise bill for the President's signature is completed.

I think I just scooped the AP LOL!

No word on it's content. It will be released later today.

Update: Not sure I scooped them... http://www.foxnews.com/politics/first100days/2009/02/11/lawmakers-fast-track-compromise-economic-stimulus/

I checked before running this off and no news by the time I wrote, posted and put it out, this was up... Oh well! I was close LOL!

When We Last Spoke

2009-01-20T16:22:00.002-06:00

Things were pretty hairy! My husband children and I were meandering
into a pretty shaky partof town that was run down enough that the
Humvees and soldiers really did make it look like a war zone.

The poverty so close to our nation's Capitol always surprises me. Rows
of run down housing with one of the most beautiful views of the US
Capitol outside the Mall. What must it be like to literally live in
the shadow of such a huge promise and not be privvy to its
fulfillment? To see the luxury and waste around you and have nothing?
I could ponder these thing all day, but back to the story.

Just when my boot clad feet couldn't seem to get off the ground for
even one more step. We see Nationals stadium and more importantly a
Metro Station WITHOUT a line! Lol! We hop on transfer a few times
and are now comfortably sitting in an IHOP in Ballston rehashing the
day and eating all you can eat pancakes!

I could write a novel about this week! It was fun, exciting,
frustrating, and one of the best weeks of our lives!!!

Congratulations to Joe Biden and our new President Barack Obama!!! You
have some clean up to do, so don't waste a minute! Get to work! Lol!

Thanks for reading to my Take today!

Mike and the girls are having a great convesation about the pure
pleasures in the simple things we've encountered over the last few
days, an empty Metro car, when a line you are in begins to move in
front of you, and Noodles added, getting to the end of a line and we
all laughed in agreement.

--
Sent from my mobile device

Getting out

2009-01-20T14:14:00.001-06:00

Is pure madness!

We've been walking for hours there are literally tens of thousands of
people at every metro, on every block and wandering aimlessly around
the city. There is no place to eat with less than several hundred
people in line. Finally we decided to head south from the capitol on
New Jersey Ave. Found a Mickey D's with less than several hundred
people. The kids need a rest so im stopping to let them sitt and try
to find a cab now that we're out of downtown.

We are now in tour bus hell lol! Hundreds of tthem just
sitting.empty... And all around us are humvees and soldiers. The
security presence is so strong we are not in the least concerned about
our safety. I figure when we see the last militaru check point we can
look aound and see if we need to be worried.

We hAve a gameplan. 3rd and K. And hopefully some food in some place
we can relax and reflect on the day.

Noodles and. Malaika are the rockinest kids on the pant! They spent
45 mins picking up garbage on the mall after the event as part of
Obama's call to service, and are just trouping along with no more than
snack bars and water withut complaint chatting about the event
happily.

--
Sent from my mobile device

The Final Spontaneous Moment

2009-01-20T12:00:00.001-06:00

As Bush entered the helicopter and just flew directly over our heads,
the crowds left in the mall cheered and waved goodbye. Again, the joy
was real...

--
Sent from my mobile device

Impromptu...

2009-01-20T11:45:00.001-06:00

DANCE PARTY!!!

The crowd, just started dancing with the marching band. Pure joy that
had to be released in crazy and wondeful bodily expressions. !!!

Ive never seen so many happy people in my life!!!

--
Sent from my mobile device

Exodus!

2009-01-20T11:30:00.001-06:00

I can't believe all these ppl went through what we just went through
to get here and are leaving before its over!!!

--
Sent from my mobile device

Hope over fear

2009-01-20T11:15:00.001-06:00

I am so comforted to have this man making the big, hard decisions at
this time right here, right now.

My daughters wiped my tears away and are listening intently. This is
what its all about to be a mom, a wife and an activist and an
American. I'm humbled by it all.

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People all around cheering and crying

2009-01-20T11:08:00.001-06:00

And hugging strangers, jumping up and down and now again silent....
Listening...

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The Crowd is Silent listening...

2009-01-20T11:04:00.001-06:00

I can't even describe the sound of 2 million silent people. Wow...

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Cheney's Gone!

2009-01-20T10:59:00.001-06:00

and Aretha rocked the house!

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Warren

2009-01-20T10:50:00.001-06:00

A peaceful and powerful protest of rainbow flags surrounds me and
warms my heart.

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People around us can barely breathe!!!

2009-01-20T10:42:00.000-06:00

The anticipation is crazy!!!

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Be Civil people!

2009-01-20T10:34:00.001-06:00

Bush was met with 2 million boos and groans... Sorry, that was inappropriate...

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It's beautiful out here!

2009-01-20T10:22:00.001-06:00

The people, the excitement is overflowing and the weather! Sunny, 35
and people are starting to shed clothes. We are in the silver area
which is actually 2 areas. The front of which has really bad sight
lines and the back of which has a much better jumbotron, better sight
lines (farther away, but clear), less people and a better sound
system. Kids are climbing trees, overall, this is like a day at
Summerfest with some mystically amazing band that crosses all age,
race, ethnicity and faith lines.

Really fabulous... Fabulous!

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Sent from my mobile device

"Ladies and Gentleman

2009-01-20T10:15:00.001-06:00

Please be seated" was met by 2 million people standing shoulder to
shoulder and laughing in unison. Priceless!

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We Made it!

2009-01-20T09:53:00.001-06:00

What an odyssey this has been! We left at 5 am drove, metro'd and
walked and just got in here about 15 minutes ago!!! They never even
asked to see our Silver tickets by the time we got to the area!!

The biggest cheer so far was a tie between Colin powell and Teddy.
Lieberman was met with the loudest boo. It was much less cordial this
morning. People cutting lines and people yelling at them line
confusion and general frustration. The line was 2 miles long!!!

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Sent from my mobile device

Welcome to History!!!

2009-01-19T22:57:00.004-06:00

Hi, I'm Pam, Renee's cousin. I wanted to also convey my thoughts about the many visitors here in Washington, DC to all of you. Having lived in the DC metro area for years, I'm so invigorated by the mood of the visitors here for this historic inauguration. Everyone is so excited, happy and just glad to be here. The energy and enthusiam is incredible. I bet this is how Woodstock or the Million Man March felt. People joined together in a common celebration.

I always believe that everyone should visit the Nation's Capital once in their life especially if you have kids. What better way for them to see the foundations and institutions of our democracy. Sometimes, those of us who live in the DC metro area take these things for granted. So, its great to see some many people making their first trip to this great city to see this inauguration. All of the folks that I met today from those in line in front of the Longworth building to those at the Wisconsin delegation reception at the Rayburn building were wonderful folks. I told them that I hope they continue to enjoy their visit to Washington, DC and the inauguration. We're so glad they're here!

The Tickets are BEAUTIFUL!

2009-01-19T21:52:00.002-06:00

What a day! First off, forgot to charge my Blackberry last night, so had just enough charge to get off one post earlier today and it died as I hit send. So my apologies for not posting all day after that.

Mike, Pam (my cousin), her daughter (6, what a doll!), Noodles, Malaika and I all stood in line with the other 240,000 people for almost 3 hours and finally got into the building. The Congressman's staff was gracious and sweet and accommodating and we had just a blast picking up the tickets. The ticket packet is amazingingly beautiful and tears ran down my face as I pulled it out. Think wedding invitation/graduation program with a tad of political rally and beyond anything you've ever seen in your life. It has beautiful inlays, pictures, a program, directions and instructions, and I will be taking pictures and posting them.

Wisconsin's Dave Obey threw a post-picking up your tickets party in the Rayburn Office building for all Wisconsinites connected enough or lucky enough to have a Golden Ticket (yes, Willy Wonka's been running through my head for days LOL). What a bash!!! The WI people know how to throw a party!

First a rundown of the celebrities in attendance while we were there (sorry Boris and Doris, to take your gig, but just have to this time). I spoke with, Ron Kind (who was just in the best mood, friendly excited, happy and even a bit cautious "We have a lot of work to do, what a mess he is stepping into!"), and we walked into the party with him as he stopped and took time to introduce himself to the girls.

As we walking into the party, the first person I in the packed room was none other than F. Jim Sensenbrenner! What a surprise that was! You have to give him credit. Dude represents everyone in his district and whether or not he agrees with the democrats he represents, it was really a classy move for him to be there! On top of that, he was really friendly and in a great mood and we had a genuine discussion about voting rights that was interesting and important and I appreciated him taking a moment to spend with me letting me know his thoughts. More on that in another post on another day. Thank Sensy for your graciousness today of all days. It was noticed.

Others I ran into included some cool union and progressive activist folk, and some politicians like Tom Barrett, Willie Hines, Dave Obey, Mike Sherman, Tammy Baldwin, Steve Kagen and his awesome wife Gayle, I missed Gwen Moore although know she was there and had dinner with her a a mutual friend's house the night before and a great conversation with her, so it was still okay. A few other notable names here and there, but really the most amazing thing about the event was that there were hundreds of people I didn't know there!!!

Congresspeople really only gave a very few tickets to a few people "in the know" and really did run what seems to me a fair and equitable lottery! This was the most awesome thing about the event! Kudos to all the Wisconsin Congresspeople! They made sure that the people got the tickets and I've never been so happy to go to a party and not know 90% of the hundreds of people there. My cousin meet a 62 year old woman from northwest Wisconsin who had never been to DC and was beaming about even coming here for the first time and over the top about the reason. People were beyond in a good mood. I have not met one cross, angry, frustrated or upset person since I hit the road for DC!!!

The love in this city is contagious, palatable, honest and real. I've never seen anything like this. Let me give you an example. We walked into a coffee shop to get the kids some sustenance before hitting the long lines we'd already scoped out. I was ordering, paying and collecting stuff, Pam was collecting stuff and Mike took a short break. The girls just went and sat down at a table and we paid no attention to them as it was a bit of a zoo in there. The chair backs were under a ledge and I didn't even think about the girls sitting down in an otherwise packed coffee house. I started dropping food on their table and the next thing I knew a woman smiled at me, a said to one of the girls, "Dear my coat is on your chair." I was horrified and began to apologize profusely. She stopped me and said, "Don't worry about it, its really fine." and walked to the other side of the coffee house and sat down at an empty table. 15 seconds later a guy did the exact same thing to the other girl's chair and again realizing the full scope of the fact that our children had basically stolen (however innocently) someone else's table in a packed room... Again, apologizing profusely again met with, "It's really not a problem, we're happy the children are comfortable." and walked away with a smile. I thanked them as we went out the door and again they smiled and said "No worries".

I imagine a totally different scenario where they yell at me, I gather my children and embarrassed run out of there, but not in Obama's DC. Not this weekend. I don't believe anything could rattle the mood in this city at this time. It's pure ecstasy.

We are truly honored to be experiencing the majesty of this week and to be able to share it with you. We have taken so many pictures, we will have to upload them all at once when we return because we have been hurrying up to wait since we got here and getting back to late to be able to upload them and sleep to be ready to hurry up and go the next day. If I don't get to bed soon, I won't be up at 4 AM to get to the ceremony and that's just not an option.

Our cell phones are in the chargers. We have our layers laid out to keep warm. We have a plan to get into the city and to get out. We are ready to watch history and more excited than ever in our lives!

Tomorrow, I'll be blogging again as it happens and hope you'll stop out to get my take!!!

Ticketing Insanity!

2009-01-19T16:10:00.001-06:00

All 534 members of Congress told 240000 people to pick up their
tickets at the Congressmembers office on Monday. Sure, no problem
right?

Wrong! The Congressional office building require full security checks
just like getting on an airplane!!! So for hours now we've been
standing in line with not just 240000 people, but with friends, family
etc waiting to get in the building! Its about 20 degrees (warm for us
lol) and everyone in line is really happy and friendly.

The Capitol Police are saying the the information we were all given
was incomplete. Apparently, Congressional staff were in the building
all weekend waiting for people to come get tickets...

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Sent from my mobile device

Nah Nah Nah nah..

2009-01-18T16:05:00.001-06:00

Standing in front of thw White House at the starting point, several
thousand people just spontaneously broke out into a chorus of that
song.

In fact been here 10 minutes and it happens in smaller groups almost non-stop.

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Sent from my mobile device

Wow

2009-01-18T15:17:00.001-06:00

The greatest gift to us is the hope he inspires when he speaks. We are
all standing here in tears.

What Obama reminds us all the that hope and love will always triumph
over fear and hatred.

Thank you for reminding the millions and millions here and at home
what hope feels like!

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Sent from my mobile device

Garth

2009-01-18T14:50:00.000-06:00

The crowd was really subdued here in the over flow. A combination of
disappointment for now getting in and the sound system being largely
inadequate for a crowd this size.

Then Garth hit the stage and suddenly everyone arounf us lost it! One
woman shouted out we're at a concert let's act like it! And everyone
started dancing! Gg Stevie!!

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Sent from my mobile device

The Insanity

2009-01-18T14:26:00.001-06:00

Of getting to this concert today was unbelieveable! Hours waiting
line line just to get nearly there and be sent to the overflow with
more people than I've ever seen in my life!!

There's no way to describe the number of people around us!!! I'm not
sure this many people have ever been in one place at any time in
history. I'm estimating 2 million in the overflow alone!

The crowd is peaceful and happy and we met Chris Matthews among the
crowd. The entertainment is great, but the majesty of being here
outweighs the program itself.

And the people keep coming and coming!!! Behind us more and more and more.

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Sent from my mobile device

Crossing the Mason Dixon Line

2009-01-17T18:51:00.001-06:00

As we head for our destination this evening in Virginia, we just
crossed the Mason Dixon Line and a big sign told us so. A chill went
down my spine as I pointed it out to the girls and said, "that means
we are in former slave territory".

The significance of that on this particular trip was not lost on any
of us. What a long way this country's come in a century and a half.
How many people fought, suffered and died to give us the opportunity
to see this man become POTUS?

As we drive through West Virginia (the only state on our trip Obama
didn't win), I still have that sinking feeling that I have when
driving through Fox Point, hoping that I won't be pulled over for a
tail light violation wen my lights work just fine. With all the
progress, we still have a long way to go.

More later my navigation services are needed! :)

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Sent from my mobile device

Ohio is a Wide State!

2009-01-17T11:37:00.001-06:00

We finally broke down and stopped at a rest stop on the Ohio Turnpike.
As we pulled up, we saw an African American family taking pictures at
the rest stop. They had Illinois plates on a nice Benz and I couldn't
help but ask the patriarch "Are you going?" With a huge smile on my
face. "We sure are!" He beamed!

"Us too!". I yelled out in full pride.

He instantly said, "Well then, we need a picture for our scrapbook!".

Next thing I knew, he gathered my girls, threw his arm around my
shoulder and as I looked up and laughed, his wife snapped a picture of
us all. That's when I noticed the "44 th President OBAMA" baseball cap
on his head. He said to me just like he was my own grandpa. "We expect
to get to DC by 7 or 8 tonight, you drive safe now and have a great
time."

His wife hugged me his grown kids waived goodbye as if we were family
and I went into the rest stop about as giddy as if I'd just met the
next predisent himself! As I walked out of the rest room of the same
place, a young caucasian woman grabbed my arm with the biggest smile
across her face. "Are you going?". She said (I kid you not, my exact
words from 8 minutes earlier) barely able to contain her glee.

"Of course!" I said, again beaming from ear to ear.

"No way I was going to miss this. I've waited my whole life for this!'
She replied.

It struck me. The great beauty of those two moments. The irony of that
last sentence coming from a lovely young white woman instead of the
lovely elderly black man who so deserved those words and yet never
dared to say them even now.

The awesomeness of the election of Barack Obama to be the next POTUS
is that it took the votes of both of these amazing people to make it
happen. If I didn't have the sense that this will only get better as
this week goes on, I could go home right now, knowing that our country
has blown its own mind!

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Sent from my mobile device

And We're Off!

2009-01-17T06:00:00.001-06:00

Only about 4 or 5 hours later than planned, but me in my infinite
wisdom decided not to jinx the trip by being practical and actually
doing laundry LOL!

A few bummers in the packing phase. One camera battery and the charger
got left at school and another of my angels left her snow pants at a
friends, so another bag was packed (more laundry) with some extra
layers for her legs.
And since we left at 5 am instead of 1am, of course we hit blowing snow sigh.

Regardless, we are all bubbly and happy to finally be on our way!!!

A few logistics. My Blackberry does not take pictures or video, so
that will be done from cell phones during the day and the better
quality photos and video will be uploaded as we can get access to
computers during the trip. We're going to experiment with digital
audio as well just in case we happen to meet someone really cool, I'll
try to get them to do a digital shout out to the CT readers.

My youngest (I don't like to use my kids names out here, so she wants
to be called Noodles) and I just counted and we'll be driving through
9 states and over mountains! She's really excited about that. My
middle daughter (who wishes to be known as Malaika) is quietly reading
(her passion) as we head out into history!

And James, if I had a Widgy T-shirt, I'd wear it! LOL

Gonna catch a bit of sleep before its my time to take the wheel.

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Sent from my mobile device

THANK YOU! DC OR BUST!!!

2009-01-16T15:17:00.002-06:00

So, I'm totally blown away! Who knew I had such loyal readers and friends?

I promised when I wrote this originally that I would let everyone know when I met my goal. Well after several really generous donors giving amounts from $10 to $500, I've reached my goal ($1000-1500)! We leave tonight around midnight! I've been in tears many times over the last 24 hours and thank everyone profusely for their help.

Here's our schedule for the week.

Saturday night: Get to my cousin's and let the kids get some sleep.

Sunday morning: Get to DC early to scope out the Lincoln Memorial concert, parking, etc and then grab a bite to eat in the city
Sunday afternoon: The coolest inauguration party in town! Major musical stars, cool poets and speakers and one amazingly awesome (although freezing) time.
Sunday evening: A way cool congressional insider's party! It's gonna be a blast and I'll dish the fun stuff right here!

Monday morning: The mad rush to pick up tickets from Congress. Then a bit of siteseeing with my girls, lunch and more sightseeing or possibly a Day of Service activity (any ideas? post them as comments here)
Monday night: Chill with my awesome cousins and possibly my uncle

Sometime super early on Tuesday: Head to the inauguration!!! I start shaking with excitement when I think about it and I'll tell you everything as it happens!
Tuesday afternoon: Headed to some awesome museums. The girls are huge fans of Night at the Museum so Natural History is totally on the list.
Tuesday night: NO TICKETS TO ANY BALLS! Any donors or extra tickets to especially the Midwest ball are of course welcome. Post out here!

Wednesday: More sightseeing with the girls (maybe Georgetown!) and then more family time!!! Yeah!!! I have awesome family in VA.

Thursday morning: Back in the car and home.

I know, a lot of sightseeing, but my daughter is at the same age (11) I was went a close friend's mother went to DC to lobby for the Equal Rights Amendment and took us both along with her. I'll never forget that trip and dedicated my life to protecting that document that so blew me away all those years ago. The youngest is 9 and finally old enough to appreciate what she's about to see. I'm totally bummed that my oldest (17) has final exams next week and can't join us, but well, she and I went DC together on a work trip a few years ago, so maybe it's not as much of a tragedy.

What I do know:
This is going to be a totally fun trip just as it's planned right now.

What I don't know:
How many other cool things I may end up getting invites to along the way!!!

And THANKS to all of those who donated to this adventure. The donate button has been on this blog for over a year now and I've never thought to ask people to use it. I'm leaving it up, for anyone who just wants to support Crawford's Take in the future, so although I'm no longer asking for money for this trip, you can always donate to or advertise on Crawford's Take.

Stay tuned. More to come.

Still Need Help for the Inauguration! Donate today!

2009-01-14T15:41:00.002-06:00

Below is yesterday's post. I have had some real success in raising money for the trip to DC to blog the inauguration for you. I've raise $535 so far. I found out today that the train tickets are going to be $100 on that day for all of us to get into the city and now I'm panicking a bit because after the generous donations yesterday, I made the mistake of telling my girls they are going to the inauguration thinking I just may have some other generous donors today and found out about this new cost today!

The girls jumped and screamed for joy at the thought that they could seeObama get inaugurated live and in person. They are probably bragging about it at school right now, and sigh, ooopppsss... Not so much... Not one donation today! After yesterday's flood of donors, not one today :(

I am posting donations as they come in (the amounts) on the right side bar under the donate button. Help me get there!

Are you interested in reading my take on the inauguration live as it happens from DC?

Please help me raise the $500 or so more I need to make sure I can get to DC and back, and feed us all while we're there.

I have lodging, I have a transportation plan and 2 back up plans for the day of to get into DC, I've confirmed that the tickets are waiting for me, I've even confirmed a really cool "insider's congressional party" that I'll give you the scoop on as it happens on Sunday night!

I have quite a bit of access to some really cool stuff! I just need to make sure I can get there and eat there!

Can you help me blog the inauguration?

The donation button on the right will do. Any amount will help. $5, 10, 25, 50, 100, 500. Whatever you can give is much appreciated!!

Thanks and hoping I'll be able to give you the scoop first hand in my take!
______________________

From Yesterday's plea:

I posted this yesterday and will be posting daily in hopes that I can raise enough to attend the inauguration. I need gas and food money for a week. Which I'm estimating to be somewhere between $1000 and $1500. So far, I've received 2 donations for a total of $35 and I'm really getting nervous that I won't be able to raise enough to go. I am taking my husband and 2 youngest daughters and so will need to drive on our own.

I'm not accustomed to begging, but here goes: PLEASE HELP ME BLOG THE INAUGURATION! The donation button on the right will do. Any amount will help. $5, 10, 25, 50, 100, 500, whatever you can do to help me raise enough cash to physically get there.

I have the tickets! I have a place to stay! I just need money to get there and eat all week! I want to leave Saturday so I can make it to the Lincoln Memorial event on Sunday. In return I promise to blog the entire event right out here! You'll have a front row seat to my take on all the happenings.

HELP ME BLOG THE INAUGURATION!

Daily Plea! Help Me Blog the Inauguration!

2009-01-13T09:37:00.003-06:00

I posted this yesterday and will be posting daily in hopes that I can raise enough to attend the inauguration. I need gas and food money for a week. Which I'm estimating to be somewhere between $1000 and $1500. So far, I've received 2 donations for a total of $35 and I'm really getting nervous that I won't be able to raise enough to go. I am taking my husband and 2 youngest daughters and so will need to drive on our own.

I'm not accustomed to begging, but here goes: PLEASE HELP ME BLOG THE INAUGURATION! The donation button on the right will do. Any amount will help. $5, 10, 25, 50, 100, 500, whatever you can do to help me raise enough cash to physically get there.

I have the tickets! I have a place to stay! I just need money to get there and eat all week! I want to leave Saturday so I can make it to the Lincoln Memorial event on Sunday. In return I promise to blog the entire event right out here! You'll have a front row seat to my take on all the happenings.

HELP ME BLOG THE INAUGURATION!

Obama Invites Openly Gay Episcopalian Minister to Pre-Inaugural Breakfast!

2009-01-12T15:15:00.003-06:00

Ahhh... Ye of little faith. ;-)

Word is that Barack Obama has now invited openly gay Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson to deliver the opening prayer at an important Sunday pre-inaugural event at the Lincoln Memorial.

(Although it would have been better in my eyes to invite Warren to the Sunday event and Robinson to the inauguration itself, but honestly, I'm not splitting any more hairs over this....)

UPDATE: Okay the Sunday event is the TOTALLY COOL event that will have more people than the inaugural itself since the entertainment is better and it's totally free and open to the public. (This was a good call overall after the Warren pr disaster.)

Desperation! Help Me Blog the Inauguration!

2009-01-12T13:24:00.003-06:00

Well, this is a really uncomfortable and odd thing for me to do out here. I've never done it before and I'm a bit hesitant to do it now, but I'm in desperate straights on this and was encouraged by a friend to try it out, and so, I'm asking you, my readers for some help!!!

Here the exchange I'm proposing...

Help me get to the inauguration, and I'll blog it for you out here!

I have been generously given two tickets for the inauguration ceremony of Barack Obama next week. One problem still keeps me from getting there... I need some cash to go!

I've figured out that between gas and food, I'm going to need somewhere around $1,000 to 1,500 to make the trip work.

Can you help me out even with a small donation to Crawford's Take to get me there (and feed me), so you can read my take on the inauguration AS IT HAPPENS?

If so, I ask you to click the Donate link to your right and make a donation of any amount. $5, $10, $50, $100 or whatever you can give to get me there!

HELP ME GET TO DC and in return I'll BLOG THE INAUGURATION!!!

Another way to help out and get something in return:
http://washingtondc.craigslist.org/doc/vac/990028529.html

What to Do about Rick Warren... Sigh...

2008-12-23T14:26:00.004-06:00

Well, so I promised to give praise and criticism where due on the Obama administration. Here goes and my take is probably going to surprise everyone...

I am a fierce supporter of the rights of the LGBT community as I am of the rights of all disadvantaged and marginalized communities. It's what I do. It's what I care about. It's been my life to fight for those who are shut out of society, my entire life.

I along with many of my friends was horrified that of all people, Obama chose to invite Pastor Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration. What was he thinking? Starting off with intolerance and pain when the sorrow of election day for the LGBT community with their losses in California, Arizona, etc were still so raw and painful seems to me the most insensitive thing Obama has done to date. I was furious for days. I didn't want to even hear what Pastor Warren has to say, because what I have heard come out of his mouth was hateful and angry and un-Christian.

He to me is the epitome of what's wrong with this country. Hatred packaged in faith and a young, energetic person who does just enough good to make his hateful message seem palatable to a vast and unsuspecting audience of followers who just need a bad guy to blame for their troubles. He exploits that. He exploits the pain of others by pointing to a nameless and faceless bad guy (in this case those who are attracted to people of their same sex) and telling his followers that if that bad guy just behaved better, god would look more favorably on them... It's disgusting.

As if god plays favorites among his children. As if god ever said we had the right to judge each other. As if god would have made a person he couldn't find love and compassion for in his world. As if we had some sort of superiority over ANY of god's other children and had a right to tell them they were less of a person than we were because of the way god made them... We do not have that right. All of god's children are in his image. Only he has a right to judge them and only he will in the end.

Any pastor who claims to know god's will absolutely is a fraud in my eyes. Unfortunately, many do. Beware of false profits...

So then why am I no longer fiercely angry with Obama for this decision? How could my rage turn to some level of understanding when he so clearly offended and hurt my friends, neighbors, colleagues, my fellow human beings, and in doing so myself? So why am I no longer surprised by his decision at all?

Obama promised a new kind of leadership.

To throw away the divisiveness and find our common ground and work together with all Americans to make our lives better is how he put it or something very much like that...

It seems to me he really meant it.

I'm not sure I or any progressives really understood that he REALLY meant that...

You have to understand.

As progressives we have a lot of anger, disappointment and vengence in our hearts. We have been the recipients of all of those feelings from the conservative movement for so long that our first reaction is to say to each other things like:

"It's payback time."
"Let's pass the craziest stuff we have on our lists first and do the practical stuff next."
"Let's fix everything now"
"Let's behave just like they did when they got in office, let's just do whatever the hell we want and damn what they think about it."
"They never listened to us, why should we even open the door and let them speak."

Guess what friends. We didn't elect a president who said he was gonna do that, so we're going to have to get used to him doing what he said he was going to do... Pulling our country together in ways that may make all of us uncomfortable at times.

Don't get me wrong. I still don't agree with the decision to give hate such a prominent platform. He could have asked him to speak at some breakfast or luncheon during the week and accomplished the same goal of reaching out.

In addition, I fully expect "don't ask, don't tell" to be repealed and replaced with a phrase that states that "the US military does not discriminate based on sexual orientation" on his first day.

Especially now...

But I am already impressed that he was able, in one act of graciously reaching out to a section of America with a vastly differing opinion on social issues, to tick off all the progressives and all the conservatives at the same time. That takes skill.

I have seen something really interesting happen though. The news is discussing the rights of LGBT Americans a LOT as a result. That can't be all bad. Prominent LGBT Americans are all over the news discussing and demanding equal rights in articulate and meaningful ways that I think pre-Prop 8 and the Warren disaster were completely ignored by the mainstream media.

At the very least, he has raised the issues to the forefront, made us ALL discuss them in the daylight and as they say, "sunlight is the best disinfectant".

Could there be some advantage to giving hatred the light of day?

He has somehow managed to make us face head on our shame. Not just those of us who are enlightened, but also those who disagree with us, ALL of us are forced to discuss a subject that until now has been hidden in the prejudices and lies that have only been expressed in the privacy of a voting booth...

For those who claim to be conservative people of faith, the shame of judge not, lest ye be judged...

For those of us who claim to be progressive people of faith, the shame of not opening our hearts to all of our friends and neighbors, even when we disagree with them...

For those of us who claim to be neither, well, the shame of supporting the suppression of speech in a society where we have proven over and over again that allowing all speech in a free society is the only way to shine a light on the bad stuff and disinfect society from it...

I'm still mad, but...

Maybe we should be paying more attention... he could be onto something...

Update:

One other thing crossed my mind... could this be symbolic in a way none of us have considered??? Yes, Pastor Rick Warren and his intolerance and hatred are the opening of the ceremony, but one of my personal heroes and the complete opposite of intolerance and hatred, Pastor Joseph Lowery will be closing the ceremony.

Pastor Joseph Lowery is an African American pastor who has fought for civil rights as Dr. King's closest partner in the struggle all the way to the rights of LGBT Americans. He once said to me in an email:

"(the) Issue of same sex marriage is among the toughest (like abortion).... concept and culture of marriage is so firmly fixed in our minds and hearts as between boy-girl, man-woman, husband-wife that it sends folks into cultural shock to think otherwise...

Somehow we must deal with the civil-human rights aspect of partnerships-unions in order to refute the so called need for using the Constitution to deny rights... and that such sacred issues are used as weapons of mass distraction politically.

It is particularly distressing to see our people distracted by "wedge" techniques....our major focus should be on school dropouts, AIDS-HIV pandemic; self hatred that expresses itself in violence, guns, and greed expressed in drug trafficing, etc.

I do not claim to have the whole answer but should I err I want to err on the side of equal rights... inclusiveness, compassion... love... not exclusion, denial, hate, selective granting of rights, etc..."

Could Obama starting with Warren and ending with Lowery be signaling to us all that the days of the rhetoric of hate end with Warren and a new era will begin with Lowery? Hmmm.... something to ponder...

Long Time, No See...

2008-12-23T10:38:00.003-06:00

I've been missing for oh about 2 months now from the blogosphere... I had no idea why after the most historic election in the history of the United States of America I was completely and utterly unable to blog about anything. It's not that I didn't have a ton of things to write about, thoughts and stories to share, etc... I did. I just couldn't for some reason actually write about them. My apologies to all of you who have asked me why I've been silent; to all of you who so graciously took a few moments of your precious time to tell me how much you missed my insight in this the most interesting political time in our history. I think my silence had mulitple dimensions. I generally don't like to blog about my family. I have, but in general, I try to separate them from my blogging for personal reasons. That said, I couldn't do that in this case. My family was so integral in how and why I felt as I did about this election, that not including them and their reactions was not possible. So here goes, family and all, with all my love for them, and how much this meant to us all...

First, the night of the election, I went to a watch party early with my girls. The youngest, just 9, said to me "Mom you've talked about this so much I'm actually interested in what's going to happen tonight." I was tickled that my daughter as such a young age, got it. Later as we were at the party, I got this twitch, I needed to be home with my family and in particular, my father. I turned to my girls and said, "We're going home to watch the final results with grandpa.", The youngest replied, "Yes, mommy, grandpa going to be really emotional tonight and you're right, he needs us with him." So we went home.

My husband and I watched the 10:00pm pronouncement of our new president alone in our bedroom. We just sat there silent, he grabbed my hand as the tears started to run down my face and we let it sink in. After about 15 seconds though, I heard my father scream and we met on the stairs with him shouting and cheering and then, he grabbed me and broke down into tears. Watching my 77 year old father fall into sobbing tears when Barack Obama was elected president by the people of this nation was an overwhelmingly emotional thing for me personally.

My father actually started crying that morning. When I came down the morning of November 4, 2008, my father was watching the television with tears in his eyes. I plan to write an entire blog on my parents at some point (although this really should be a novel), but suffice to say that a 77 year old African American man who served his country as a hero in the Korean War only to come home to the severe racism of the late 1950's in America, who 10 years later married a white woman from Neenah, WI when that was illegal in 38 states, who raised 4 successful biracial children in a time when the national was in unbelieveable turmoil, who has been personally discriminated against more times than any human being should ever have to endure, and through all of it, became a leader in his community, fought on the front lines of the civil rights movement with his children at his side, a man admired and respected by all who know him, a suburban soccer dad, a grandpa extraordinaire, a father to all he knows, a husband of 42 years to my lovely and strong and beautiful mother, always keeping his sense of humor, his love for all of humanity and his love for living, to see a man I've only seen cry a few times in my 41 years and only at the loss of his closest and most adored relatives. To see my father openly sob as he said, "I never thought I could live long enough to see this." All those years of disappointment that he held to himself just poured out of those tears.

The tears were not entirely sad, they were full of joy, love for our country, patriotism beyond patriotism and love for all Americans. They were tears that all those who came before, those my father knew and worked with to make this country look beyond skin color, that their work was not in vain. They did something then so profound that the fruits of their sacrifices had taken longer than they hoped and shorter than they imagined. The tears were full of hope and optimism and dreams and they were followed by dancing, cheering, setting off fireworks, and we laughed and listened to our neighbors, friends, the students on UWM's campus as they did the same.

On top of all of that, a friend, a young African American man, emailed me shortly after the election with utter dismay. His father who was all the things my father was, did not live to see this day. He died just a few years ago, "If he could have just held on a little longer... " he said. "I so badly want to celebrate this with only one person, my father who gave me a love for my country when that same country didn't love me." He was torn to shreds inside that his father didn't make it.

Another emailed me that the night of the election, when the rest of the world was partying hardy, he grabbed 10 bottles of champagne and went to the local primarily African American cemetary in Milwaukee and poured just a bit on every grave.... these stories still bring tears to my eyes and still make me stop typing...

Well, I've been silenced by it all.

Next, my silence came from my wonder as to what I could possibly say that would be profound enough to even give this moment in history it's due. How could I possibly thank those who worked so hard over the last 8 years to bring the truth to light? How could I possibly thank those Americans who went with their gut and their upbringings of fear and suspicion of people who don't look like them, who took a chance and voted for Obama when all they had to go on was hope...? How could I possibly put words on something so beyond words?

Finally, in the end, the election of Barack Obama to be our next President touched us all in ways we cannot even begin to describe at this point in history. This country needed a jump start. A fresh look at how we do things, how we treat each other, how we work together and how we deal with the world. I will not always be all rosy about Obama in the future. I will continue to tell it like I see it out here and give praise and criticism where due. The higher purpose, a more just and free society for ALL people, is always my concern and will always be my concern. Where Obama is right I will cheer him, when wrong I will criticize. This is necessary and I have no qualms about it. I am so excited though to have HOPE again. To have a president where right or wrong, he will always listen to all sides, he will always take into account all the factors and he will always ask one question before he makes a decision. "What's best for all of us?"

This is all I will have to say on the subject of the election, as I'm still pretty choked up.

Republican Defaces US Flags on Election Day

2008-11-04T08:33:00.001-06:00

UNITED STATES CODE

TITLE 36

CHAPTER 10

§176. Respect for flag

(b) The flag should never touch anything beneath it, such as the ground, the floor, water, or merchandise.

(k) The flag, when it is in such condition that it is no longer a fitting emblem for display, should be destroyed in a dignified way, preferably by burning.

All four flags are set up to touch the ground...

Of course, they have a right to do whatever they want with the flag, but it bothered my parents so much, I thought I'd point it out... All four flags out of respect for our country, should be burned in a flag burning ceremony.

This Will Make You Sick To Your Stomach... Someone Tell Me This Can't Happen in 2008!!!

2008-11-01T21:02:00.003-05:00

We always knew Ohio was stolen and hence the presidency of the United States of America from John Kerry, but George W. Bush.

Now we know HOW!!!

Documents reveal how Ohio routed 2004 voting data through company that hosted external Bush Administration email accounts

Pretty disgusting huh?

The Bush Administration's email host (the people they pay to get email accounts from) received raw data from Ohio electronic voting machines before the votes were counted.

Can EVERYONE PLEASE vote Democratic straight down your tickets this year??? I'm just completely disgusted that they have so little respect for US as voters as to change our votes after we cast them just to win an election!!!

The GOP is UN-AMERICAN, UN-PATRIOTIC, FASCIST AND INSANE!!!

Flashback? Gas Prices Fall Dramatically Just Before an Election...

2008-11-01T20:01:00.008-05:00

As we were driving around today, something occurred to me... Gas was at $2.29/gallon just 3 days before an election.

I had this flashback to Oct/Nov 2004 when I seemed to remember noting that just before the election, gas prices fell. I remember it, because with Cheney and Bush in the White House the world's oil barrons, I was suspicious that gas prices were being pushed down to ease people's wallets just before they went to vote. Then I remembered them skyrocketing just after the election.

Now I thought maybe I was paranoid at the time. At the time, I did not have a blog to record my thoughts, so I have nothing to show that I really was irritated by what I thought was a deliberate and manipulative way to make the American public forget that the oil companies had been stealing from us for 3 years.

So I looked it up. Here are my results:
Charts here and here seem to confirm my thoughts, but I wanted to check further. So I went here.

Milwaukee Historical Gas Price Charts Provided by GasBuddy.com

Just as I suspected, gas prices fell in the weeks just prior to the 2004 election and spiked immediately after it! Coincidence? Maybe. Interestingly though, gas prices seem to be just about 30-40 cents more now than they were in late Oct/early Nov 2004. After shooting up to over $4.00/gal just earlier this year!

It makes you wonder... The oil and gas industry had one of their own in Dick Cheney. They have price gouged under this administration for 8 years now and with Palin (the Oil Queen) on the ticket again, it seems they are poised to have one of their own in the White House to make sure the record high quarterlies continue to skyrocket.

Now, if I were one of them (I have a soul, so never will be...), and thought I could get away with it, and saw it make just a slight difference in the rage against this administration in 2004 to have possibly made voting for Bush/Cheney just palatable for the independents, I just may drop gas prices at the pump as well for a few weeks to help ease American anxiety for just enough time to affect the American election, so I get my 4 more years of cash cow... especially if I thought I could just spike them up again after the election and have no one stepping in to stop my madness.

Also interesting to note, prices fell in the days before the 2006 election as well, obviously to lesser affect.

DON'T BE FOOLED! They've done this before and we should be scholars of history and make sure we don't let them manipulate us once again. Vote for the candidate they don't want. Surely that will be better for all of us after the election when they are more afraid of a government ready to step in at the first sign of price gouging!

Vote for Obama/Biden and let's altogether kick the oil barrons out of OUR White House for good!

And in the odd chance that McCain wins on Tuesday, I highly recommend you fill up all you gas tanks!

Think I Was Angry Charlie? Check Out Olbermann's Special Comment Tonight

2008-10-14T19:29:00.003-05:00

It seems my post last week was right on. You know the one Charlie Sykes attacked me about all day. I almost started to think I was overreacting just a bit, but tonight, I got my confirmation that I am not so far off with this.

Keith Olbermann tonight made a Special Comment that addressed exactly what I addressed in that blog. He called the campaign rallies "lynch mobs" as I did and called McCain to task for not stopping the rage at his events. I almost want to wonder, just wonder if maybe one of my 20-50 readers is Keith... I doubt it (wow, would I be honored if that was the case, wow, but alas, pipe dreams). I'm he sure thinks like I do. I've said before that Keith makes me feel sane. Once again, I thank him for my sanity tonight.

James T Harris justifies your anger. I get Keith Olbermann. Take a minute to watch. He's definitely angrier than I was...