March 2008 archive

Out in the streets inspiration comes hard

The joker in the deck keeps handin’ me his card

Smilin’ friendly he takes me in

Then breaks my back in a game I can’t win

Monday’s Headlines:McCain Faces Test in Wooing Elite Donors: Remains found of U.S. soldier captured in Iraq: Shia cleric orders followers to end Iraq clashes: Israeli play makes link with Palestinians:  Killing Fields photographer Dith Pran dies: Violence in Nepal as Tibetans protest Olympics: Turkey court mulls party ban case: Putin critic disappears in Berlin: Farc’s prize hostage is ‘ill and losing will to live’: Steep price for a free trip to Peru: Mugabe: the writing’s on the wall

Who Are We? New Dialogue on Mixed Race

Jenifer Bratter once wore a T-shirt in college that read “100 percent black woman.” Her African-American friends would not have it.

“I remember getting a lot of flak because of the fact I wasn’t 100 percent black,” said Ms. Bratter, 34, recalling her years at Penn State.

“I was very hurt by that,” said Ms. Bratter, whose mother is black and whose father is white. “I remember feeling like, Isn’t this what everybody expects me to think?”

Being accepted. Proving loyalty. Navigating the tight space between racial divides. Americans of mixed race say these are issues they have long confronted, and when Senator Barack Obama recently delivered a speech about race in Philadelphia, it rang with a special significance in their ears. They saw parallels between the path trod by Mr. Obama and their own.

Chip Litherland for The New York Times

Eric Hall, an Iraq war veteran, disappeared last month after having a flashback.

The following needs no commentary, Visit the article and Read the whole report, Absorb and Learn!

Well, Richard Gilmore will not be so happy about this and neither am I since we’re both Formula 1 fans.

Actually me not so much, since I’ve really always been partial to American open wheel road track racing, especially during the glory years of CART when their turbocharged 8s kicked the ass of the effete normally aspirated 10 and 12 cylinder sewing machines that powered the effeminate aerodynamic computerized robo-cars of Formula 1.

Those days are gone and all that remains is turning left bumper cars to amuse the tailgating brain dead beer drinking NASCAR bozos who think professional wrestling is a real sport.

Well goodbye dinosaurs and your petroleum polluting global warming antics.

Gone the way of polar bears and penguins you no longer amuse me.

(h/t Atrios)

cross posted from The Dream Antilles

The beautiful game

This isn’t about America’s so-called pastime, major league baseball, which begins tonight with the Braves playing the Nats and Commander Codpiece McFlyboy throwing out the ceremonial first ball. No. This is about something smaller, more intimate, and in many ways, much more a game of the People.  It’s about futbol, soccer, and how anti-immigrant local legislation in Northern Virginia has destroyed the local leagues.

It’s an infuriating story.  I’m angered not just because I love to play this game, but because of the important role it plays in the community.  I doubt you’ve heard about this before.

Please join me in the goal box.

Kinks

You Really Got Me

Excerpted from Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence, in the Burning the Midnight Oil blog-within-a-blog, hosted by kos, though to the best of my knowledge he doesn’t know it.

I just recently discussed Tiny Houses as one extreme end of a range of a more sustainable approach to housing. And, because they strike me as really cool, the examples I focused on where the kind of Tiny Houses that can be picked up, put on a trailer, and hauled around, like an old fashioned Shepherd’s Wagon, except with inside plumbing, excellent insulation, and 11 foot ceilings in the main living space.

Mind you, I always thought that the old-fashioned Shepherd’s Wagon was kind of cool, so add all those “except for’s”, and its no surprise I thought these were cool.

However, just as cool in their own way are the Tiny Houses intended to be built from modular parts on a foundation on site. And as a one-time Mother Earth News reader (back when it was more of a back to the land for dirty stinking hippies magazine), I was interested when the Tiny House Blog mentioned that the post-80’s yuppified “Mother Earth News” has been recently focusing heavily on SIP’s, or Structural Insulated Panels.

We’ve become embarrassed to speak of it, but love is what it’s all about: love of country, justice, peace, humanity…and love of one’s fellow Americans – one’s fellow protesters.  In contemplating my most recent experience demonstrating against the war in Washington DC, that’s what comes to me, the overwhelming love I feel for those who care enough to stand up and be counted.  

My son Daniel and I flew out of Atlanta late on Tuesday, the 18th so I could get in a full day of work.  As we approached our hotel in DC my phone rang.  It was Victory Coffee.  She explained that she had brought a friend and that they’d be in McPherson Square at 7:30 in the morning.  Daniel and I settled in to try and get a good night’s rest but could hardly sleep for the anticipation.

The alarm went off at 6:00 AM.  I got up, showered, and jumped into my best protest Levis with my gen-u-ine Ben Masel ‘Impeach Cheney First’ button and my ‘No Blood for Oil’ button and then fiddled with cameras and batteries and whatnot while Daniel got himself ready.  I carefully laid out the IGTNT flyers and bags that snackdoodle had mailed me the previous week.  I had promised to find people to hand these out at the protest as a way of honoring America’s dead in the Iraq war.  I got the flyers divided into roughly equal stacks, placed them in the bags, stacked them neatly on top of the TeeVee and promptly went off without them.  We were in McPherson Square by the time I realized my mistake.