I left music radio for a REASON.
I wanted to be RELEVANT.
At least, in my own mind.
Here at this radio station, we are capable of driving local policy.
And we have done so.
But today…….
Right now, I’m PISSED.
More below the fold.
April 2008 archive
Apr 28 2008
Dumbing Me Down
Apr 28 2008
Standing together, in groups big and small, for peace
From our friends at the Iraq Moratorium:
Reports from Moratorium Day #8, just over a week ago, are still coming in and being posted on the Iraq Moratorium website, and a few got us thinking. One report, our first ever from Point Arena, CA said:
Three of us came out to honor Iraq Moratorium on Friday, April 18, 2008 in front of the local post office.
We carried a sign and displayed it prominently, and we handed out flyers to interested people.
The weather was very cold and exceptionally windy; I think that kept people away. However, we felt really good about joining people all over the U.S. to stand against the Iraq war.
Looked at in a vacuum, three people doesn’t sound too impressive, does it? Well, we Googled Point Arena. It’s a tiny rural town with a population of 486. Not an easy place to build an anti-war presence. And for us, their conclusion gets to the essence of the Moratorium:
“We felt really good about joining people all over the U.S. to stand against the Iraq war.”
Apr 28 2008
Fair and Balanced Supreme Court Upholds Voter ID Laws
In a 6 – 3 vote that surprises exactly no one, the Supreme Court today upheld the laws that support picture identification to be presented at the polling place for states that are effected.
From AP:
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that states can require voters to produce photo identification without violating their constitutional rights, validating Republican-inspired voter ID laws.
In a splintered 6-3 ruling, the court upheld Indiana’s strict photo ID requirement, which Democrats and civil rights groups said would deter poor, older and minority voters from casting ballots. Its backers said it was needed to deter fraud.
It was the most important voting rights case since the Bush v. Gore dispute that sealed the 2000 election for George W. Bush.
Justice Stevens said that the law was justified to protect the integrity and reliability of the electoral process.
I say that the law discriminates against elderly and poor people that do not have a picture ID and often no way of getting to the DMV to obtain one, or no way of paying for one if they did have a way to get there.
But, what do I know. I’m not a Supreme. I’m just a simple American citizen that believes all registered voters should be able to vote without restriction.
Apr 28 2008
Pony Party, Monday Playoff Updates
Currently, the 2nd round series’ stand as follows:
Eastern:
Montreal and Philly are tied at 1 game each. Game 3 tonight, 7 p.m. edt
Pittsburgh leads NY 2 games to 0
Western:
Detroit leads Colorado 2 games to 0.
San Jose trails Dallas 0-2
Apr 28 2008
Combat Vets as Students
The News & Observer has a good report on the returning OIF and OEF Veterans as some transition to Students in Colleges and Universities around the country, reporting on some of the problems they face in that transition from combat soldier to student.
This could have been expanded, as many already have found out as others before you went through the same, to the transition from In-Theater Soldiers to Civilian life not just as Students
.
As tens of thousands of veterans of the fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq try to collect on their promised college benefits, McKinnon and others are finding that their combat experience complicates the transition from soldier to student.
Apr 28 2008
Docudharma Times Monday April 28
When the stranger came to town
All the people watched with wonder
In their tattered clothes
Gathered round and raised their eyes up from the dirt
The blind man who was given the gift of sight by gene therapy
By Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor
Monday, 28 April 2008A pioneering gene therapy trial has helped a blind man to see in a breakthrough that brings hope to millions affected by eye diseases. British scientists have claimed a world first for the revolutionary treatment, which involved a single injection into the retina at the back of the eye.
Steven Howarth, 18, from Bolton, who has a rare inherited eye disorder which has left him with extremely poor vision and completely unable to see in the dark, improved sufficiently after the treatment to be able to navigate a “maze” in conditions similar to street lighting at night.
Apr 28 2008
Muse in the Morning
 Ice
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Please join us inside to celebrate our various muses…
Apr 28 2008
A Political Reform Cleisthenes Could Get Behind
Back in 1999, when everybody from Stephen Jay Gould to Arthur C. Clarke were arguing over whether the 21st Century began in 2000 or 2001, a great deal of discussion was had over what to call the new decade, whichever year kicked it off. But nobody could agree. The Aughts? The Oughts? The Naughts? The Naught-ies? The Zeroes? Personally, I liked the idea of calling it the “ut-oh” decade. I think I have pretty good grounds for claiming that, so far, it’s lived up to that name beyond a progressive’s worst nightmares.
Being a Gouldian in this affair, it’s my view that since we’ve now just about completed 100 months in the parade of “ut-oh” years, we’re not likely ever to get anybody to agree on a name for this decade. But how about a signature reform before the second decade of this century gets underway?
Ever since the railroad scandals of 140 years ago, Americans have been periodically encouraged to believe that one more round of reformist tinkering will shield elected officials from the bankable temptations of high office and make them all more accountable to us hoi polloi. Fruitless as these attempts to marry politicians and ethics have been, we keep trying. Tinker here. Tinker there.
They’re so clever. Reforms this morning? Loopholes by noon. And before you can say Credit Mobilier or The Keating 5 or Enron or Tom DeLay, some cheeky new crusader is spurring yet another sure-fire reform into the political arena.
Apr 28 2008
Midnight Thought on the Next American Revolution (28 April 08)
Excerpted from Burning the Midnight Oil for the Next American Revolution (28 April 08), 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.
Roiling through the blogosphere in a slow boil is the fact that the Administration has been caught red-handed engaged in the crime of the precise kind of torture that we tried and convicted Japanese for after WWII … and for the mess media, the oligopress, its not really any big deal.
And of course it wouldn’t be. Avoiding absolutes of right and wrong is precisely what the “he said / she said” style of journalism is supposed to avoid. And there cannot be anything more absolute than the question of whether you will engage in torture … no ends every justify means that do not work, so torture is not only an evil, but an evil that can never be justified on the basis of preventing any greater evil.
The only word I can use to describe it is abomination.
Apr 28 2008
The TaleMaster 10 …. Tidbit
This little tale started itself about a dozen years ago. It was originally a couple of pages, a background for a D&D character. Then came a dream or three which added so much more. Life & Death interfered for many years. I’ve begun dreaming of this tale again, recently. This will eventually be a book, I hope.
Link to all of TaleMaster
So please, go get yourself a tall cold beverage, adjust your reading glasses and settle into your comfy chair and join me in the City of Colours…
His conversation with Ylrial, the Goldsmith, of the previous evening replays clearly in his mind as he drifts into that place between reality and dreams. His viewpoint shifts suddenly and he is outside himself, somehow high above and looking down on himself. It is as if he was another being entirely, sitting on a ledge high in the cavernside, looking down on the dwarf and man conversing.
” Well, they are off on their own adventure. It gets harder and harder each time. Maybe I’m just getting old. Let us move to the far side of the fire, it is less damp there. ”
” You! Old? Why you’re just a youngling!” states the old man, settling himself more comfortably into the cushioned barrel chair.
Apr 28 2008
The face and voice of evil.
Thanks to Linda Milazzo at Smirking Chimp for posting these.
That is the Speaker of the House of Representatives, effectively admitting on Larry King’s program that she is chummy with a mass murderer and dictator. That is the Speaker of the House of Representatives, dissing the mother of a soldier killed in her friend’s war of choice, because she has “a day job.”
And what job is that, exactly? Aiding and abetting tyrants — war criminals — as they continue to torture, wage illegal war, spy on us, and collapse our economy. And that’s not even half of the list of crimes committed by the shrub-gargoyle regime.
http://www.shirley08.com/index…
Shirley Golub is a Democrat challenging Pelosi for the California-8th District primary in June. She has the guts to say what no other member of the Democratic Party will: that the Speaker of the House is a craven coward. I think Pelosi is beyond cowardice; she is complicit — an embodiment of evil, the very kind now doing so much damage to our country and our world.
http://www.cindyforcongress.org
Cindy Sheehan was the face of the anti-war movement in America as it helped propel the Democratic Party back into political power for the first time in over a decade. And when she reaized that the Democrats had simply used us to obtain power, that they had no intention of changing the status quo, she was compelled to act in the only way she could: campaign to unseat Pelosi.
I am urging each and every member of this web site to donate to these two Ladies, to make every effort to help them defeat Pelosi and send her sniveling back to the dog house she shares with Barney the Scottish Terrier. No one who professes friendship with the dictator who has wrought so much pain and suffering should be allowed to hold power. No one who so callously and arrogantly dismisses the mother of a slain soldier should be allowed to walk the halls of Congress. No one who so criminally undermines the duties placed upon her by the Constitution of the United States should be allowed to show her face in D.C.
Ms. Golub and Ms. Sheehan are the best chance we have of removing the biggest obstacle to impeachment, and the most prominent enabler of the occupation and the regime that is dismantling our democracy. Let’s help them topple Pelosi.