Apparently THIS Revolution Will NOT Be Televised

As I watched the National protests in support of Unions and the people of Wisconsin, on-line, yesterday, I kept searching the teevee for evidence of coverage. The local news networks were not covering it, the national news networks were not covering it, the cable news networks were not covering it and – extremely disappointingly – CSPAN was not covering it. I even flipped periodically to Fox “News” to see if they were covering the national response to the attack on the used-to-be-middle-class. Fox had more coverage than any other network, however it was spun towards the myth of the Unions being greedy thugs and the protests as something to be feared. (CNN, sadly, were instead talking about the Tea Party and its two year anniversary.)

When it comes to the used-to-be-middle-class, we are left out of the national dialogue, despite the millions in the streets.

More on the flip side about why these protests matter,why America needs to be informed of them and about them, and why they are occurring.

This morning, watching the Sunday shows, the same black-out of the nationwide protests continued. MTP at least included Rich Trumka; a rare representative of actual people, on the Sunday chat fests. Though he was not given enough opportunity to really talk about what is occurring across the country. Emanuel Cleaver did OK but there is really crappy, if existent at all (though I find no evidence for it) Democratic messaging on the real fight here.

There are numerous reasons for these protests and numerous reasons that we all – left, right, center, independent, Democratic, Republican, Tea Party and Socialist – should be celebrating and supporting the protests and the protestors: they are fighting for the survival of our country which is contingent on the survival of its people.

First of all, this is not a budget fight. Public sector employees are not responsible for our budget deficits.
Bush tax cuts and the second Republican Great Depression are what is driving our deficits (PDF) and what created our massive National Debt. There is only one reason to even be discussing deficits now; the Right wants to blur the line and pretend that cash-strapped governments (state and local and federal) are the reason that the American people are broke. They are interrelated but the cause and effect formula is backwards.

The Right pretends that jobs are some gift from business owners and, now, governments. They have repeated the meme for so long now that business “creates jobs,” that our entire national debate centers around how best to blow the cocks of big business rather than the incredible shrinking wealth of what was once the middle class. Never mind wage stagnation “business needs certainty.” The used-to-be-middle-class would like some certainty too.

No business creates jobs just to create jobs – as evidenced by the shitload of money that the corporations are hoarding. The corporations do not “create jobs”; employees provide services to employers for a fee (payrolls); DEMAND creates jobs. There is no demand because the people are freakin’ broke. Or, I should say, the majority of the people are freakin’ broke.

In addition, lowering the deficit does not lead to jobs – unemployment leads to budget deficits. Somehow the Republicans believe that the more that they fire people, cut their benefits (which are part of a payroll package not some give-away) and lower their payrolls, the lower the unemployment rate will be. How many people do they have to fire before the unemployment rate reaches zero?

There were coast-to-coast protests yesterday. Protests of the American people standing up for the American people. Coast-to-fucking coast. My guess is that very few Americans know this and even fewer understand why the protests affect them and matter to them: Apparently THIS revolution will NOT be televised.


Update: John Nichols breaks down why this all matters much better than I did.

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Truthout Web-A-Thon

I am a fan of Truthout. I think that independent journalists and websites like Truthout are one of the reasons that we were able to win the 2006 midterms and the 2008 Elections.

For the past several weeks I have been receiving fairly desperate emails asking for donations. Apparently Truthout is in really dire straights and at risk of having to lay people off.

They are a non-profit 501 C3 organization, which means that every penny donated is tax deductible.

If you have a couple of extra bucks, please donate. And, for the cash poor among us, please help to spread the word.

Email from Truthout, below the fold.

Monday 12 January 2009

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Guess What? God Causes Teenage Pregnancy!

Jesus causes teen pregnancy
This I know
Because Sarah and Bristol
Tell me so

Not in so many words, but that is what I got from their beautiful statement, that they had to release because the horrible awful press inquired and there was "erroneous" information flowing around.

Bill McAllister, the governor's office communications director, adds: "The governor's office previously declined to comment to honor the family's wishes that the event remain as private as possible. However, the high volume of press inquiries, along with some erroneous information that was published, prompted the governor to make a statement."

The great news is that Bristol and Levi, because they are so blessed with God's Will and are such hard workers, get to set aside any plans that they ever had for their futures, because God saw fit to bless them with a baby. It really has nothing to do with the fact that Bristol's mother is anti-birth control and anti-sex education. Because, if Bristol had been armed with proper information about her body and had the opportunity to approach her mother and father with honest information about her sexuality, she still would not have been able to prevent an unwanted pregnancy. The baby was God's Will; it had nothing to do with lack of communication or shame inducing guilt trips in the Palin household.

"We are over the moon with the arrival of this healthy, beautiful baby," Governor Palin said. "The road ahead for this young couple will not be easy, but nothing worthwhile is ever easy. Bristol and Levi are committed to accomplish what millions of other young parents have accomplished, to provide a loving and secure environment for their child. They are both hard workers, they're very strong, and have faith they've made the right decision in setting aside their own interests to make this child their highest priority."

For that baby's sake, I am happy that they are both hard workers. Extremely pleased. I hope that they will teach their child the things that were denied them.

Regardless of my snark, at least Sarah Palin has made it clear that God turns "circumstances" (circumstances are unfortunately defined as "an unessential or secondary accompaniment of any fact or event; minor detail") into blessings. I have a really difficult time referring to a "baby" as a circumstance; but, hey, I am just not as close to God as the Palins.

Palin added, "When Bristol and Levi first told us the shocking news that she was pregnant, to be honest, we all at first looked at the situation with some fear and a bit of despair. Isn't it just like God to turn those circumstances into such an amazing, joyful blessing when you ask Him to help you through?"

God's Will - the greatest excuse for shitty parenting, evah!

Crap.

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What Does this Say?

Yesterday kiddo and I were working out in the yard (believe it or not our grass is still growing – I even have a very confused Easter Lily that is ready to bloom. I have covered her at night for the last month so that she does not freeze, but we did not have our first actual frost until Saturday.) Anyhow, kiddo and I were working out in the yard and he said to me:

“My friend Anthony’s mom is a big-time Democrat too. She stays in her pajamas and blogs all day when she isn’t working too…[this was not the purpose of his story – his story was actually about Anthony's shirt] …He has a t-shirt that says ‘THINK – it’s still allowed – for now’.”

What does this say? I am still not sure if it is a good thing or a bad thing or if it is just a terribly funny reality.

I did not ask him if Anthony’s mom was sick as well, I just said that he should “hook us up because we would probably get along great,” (as long as we could do it via IM and not actually have to talk to each other, or anything as radical as that.)

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Taking Bets: How Long Until it is Pulled

(Picture courtesy of Whitehouse.gov via Politico. By now, though, you can probably find it all over the web...it has been out for a few hours already.)

Dubya has never been known as "bright" - he is, contrarily, quite gullible. Not bright plus very gullible, leads to pictures that one will regret for the rest of one's life.

I saw this in Politico.

The comments led me to the definition of "the shocker." Unbelievable. When I read the definition, I too, spit coffee.

If I were in college and had the opportunity to meet the Pres and get my photo taken and the President were Dubya....I imagine that I might have done the same.

Holy Fuck.

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Some Doctor's Offices Have Better Magazines Than Others (And Some Doctor's Receptionists Let You Take Them if You Ask!)

(note from id - I edited this for size, it was driving me nuts!)

(Picture courtesy of "Discover" magazine.)

Sometime within the last few weeks I was in my Rheumatologist's office and found my way to an issue of "Scientific American." It was a current issue, which is a really big deal in a doctor's office.

This issue, October 2008, has the article "Web Science: Studying the Internet to Protect Our Future." Very cool article with some fascinating charts.

In summary, the article outlines a relatively new science, beginning in late 2006, of studying the Web.

The article defines it as

“This new discipline will model the Web’s structure, articulate the architectural principles that have fueled its phenomenal growth, and discover how online human interactions are driven by and can change social conventions. It will elucidate the principles that can ensure that the network continues to grow productively and settle complex issues such as privacy protection and intellectual-property rights. To achieve these ends, Web science will draw on mathematics, physics, computer science, psychology, ecology, sociology, law, political science, economics, and more.”

The article then goes into the mathematical algorithms involved in “PageRank” and the need to “engineer out” properties such as “link farms.” The article continues discussing how the study of the Web and the understanding of scale-free networks has led to a cross application of disciplines by applying “power-law degree” distributions to business alliances and even using it at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to

“improve its models of sexual disease transmission and has helped biologists better understand protein interactions.”

As if the above weren’t fascinating enough, the article then began to discuss the impact of blogs. The leading graphs discuss the origin of the phrase “six degrees of separation” [damn I love Etymology] and then goes on to admit that no one really knows the size of the blogosphere.

"It is difficult to estimate the size of the blogosphere accurately. David Sifry’s leading blog search engine, called Technorati, was tracking more than 112 million blogs worldwide in May of this year, a number that may include only a mere fraction of the 72 million blogs purportedly in China. Whatever the size, the explosive growth demands an explanation. Arguably, the introduction of very simple mechanisms, especially TrackBack, facilitated the growth. If a blogger writes an entry commenting on or referring to an entry at another blog, TrackBack notifies the original blog with a “ping.” This notification enables the original blog to display summaries of all the comments and links to them. In this way, conversations arise spanning several blogs and rapidly form networks of individuals interested in particular themes. And here again large portions of the blog structure become linked via short paths—not only the blogs and bloggers themselves but also the topics and entries made."

The article goes into the rise of “Semantic Web.” From my vantage point this is nothing more than drilling down information to get you as close as possible to what you are actually looking for. However, for Web Scientists and Web Designers it has actually led to a new programming language,

"Engineers have devised powerful foundations for the Semantic Web, notably the primary language—the Resource Description Framework (RDF)—which is layered on top of the basic HTML and other protocols that form Web pages. RDF gives meaning to data through sets of “triples.” Each triple resembles the subject, verb and object of a sentence. For example, a triple can assert that “person X” [subject] “is a sister of” [verb] “person Y” [object]. A series of triples can determine that [car X] [is brand] [To¬yota]; that [car X] [condition is] [used]; that [car X] [costs] [$7,500]; that [car X] [is located in] [Lenox]; and that [Lenox] [is located in] [western Massachusetts]. Together these triples can conclude that car X is indeed a proper answer to our query. This simple triple structure turns out to be a natural way to describe a large majority of the data processed by machines. The subjects, verbs and objects are each identified by a Universal Resource Identifier (URI)—an address just like that used for Web pages. Thus, anyone can define a new concept, or a new verb, by defining a URI for it on the Web."

The physical magazine has a very cool map of the blogosphere, which I had to find in Discover Mag so that I could post it. The Discover article explains it better anyway. (It also reminds me of the cartoon map of the blogosphere that I have spent so long looking for now, because I do not remember where I saw it, that I am now bored to death with this entire post.)

This science of new science might lead to a discipline devoted to studying exactly how Obama won the election. Funny how science works that way.

For more information on next generation web technology, I found this forum of forums while doing this research.

If I were more ambitious (and maybe more well) then I might be interested in pursuing something in this direction. I find the convergence of sociology, poli-sci, psychology, math and technology pretty cool. However, since I am not that ambitious (and tend to get bored easily) maybe I will just pursue a subscription to “Scientific American.” Kiddo wants it for Christmas anyway, so I could kill two birds with one stone [that was a metaphor, never would I advocate the killing of any birds with any number of stones.]

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"I've Never Had to Forge My Own Signature Before"

So said my husband, as he scribbled his signature, over and over again as it appears on his driver's license, on scratch paper.

Our paranoia about this election being stolen and our votes being thrown out is palpable. We were especially wigged after husband's name was purged from the voter rolls, less than a month after he had voted in the primaries. This story just reinforced the fear.

You see, in Washington State, some Republican dumb ass got the great idea that if your signature on your absentee ballot does not exactly match the signature on your driver's license then they will pull your ballot, investigate and probably throw it out.

So, after my husband took great pains to make certain that he used the right pen and filled out every bubble perfectly, he attempted to make his signature look exactly like it does on his driver's license.

Voting should not be this difficult. The Republicans have always wanted to decrease the votes counted. Thom Hartmann always plays the clip from one of the founders of the neo-cons, speaking in a church, saying "all you Christians out there suffering from goo-goo syndrome, the "good government syndrome" need to understand that elections have never been won by a majority of voters....we don't want people to vote." (Or something to that effect, I was too lazy to look it up.)

My favorite State Rep says that elections are more about people who don't vote than people who do. This is true. If everyone who cannot get time off work to go vote, or everyone who suffers from the policies of bad government went to the polls, we would have Democratic landslides - always.

This study proves that Democratic Presidents raise the incomes of average Americans whereas Republican Presidents raise the incomes of the wealthy. Republicans do not want the people to figure this out, they do not want the people to be educated, they do not want the people to vote.

Although this article and its accompanying chart helped ease my paranoia, it did not change the fact that husband had to practice signing his own fucking name for fear that his vote would be thrown out. It should not be this way and I hope that the first thing that the Progressive Blogosphere pushes through the Congress is a new law to protect our vote, return to paper ballots and take away the involvement of private corporations in our franchise.

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The Most Psychological Projection Ever! Quote of the Day

Early this morning John McCain's spokespeople were on the TV decrying all of Obama's "questionable" associations. One of them pointed to the article in today's NYT regarding Obama's "relationship" with Bill Ayers.

I dutifully went to NYT.com to see what kind of relationship was portrayed. Obviously, the article says that there was no relationship, no friendship, no association other than the fact that they both cared about improving education. (OMG what a terrible person that Obama is!!)

What is most hillarious (or terrifying) about the article in the Times, is this quote from John McCain:

“How can you countenance someone who was engaged in bombings that could have or did kill innocent people?”

Seriously, John, are you fucking kidding me? What was it that you were doing in Vietnam all those many years ago? You dick. See a therapist, now John. Then drop out of the race and save the country from your craziness.

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I Have a Lot of Respect for this Guy

Suspended without pay is a little extreme, I think. But then, again, I think that he deserves a medal.

My kid starts the WASL today. I spent the morning cutting up cantaloupes, so that I could send "healthy snacks" to school.

Luckily, my kid is a lot more relaxed about it than a lot of kids. The teacher, Mr. Chew, says that he has had kids throw up on their tests and get physically ill in other ways, because the test is so stressful.

He stated, on the news last night, that his biggest objection to the test was that it was "cruel".

I was glad that the article linked to an organization against the WASL. ('Cause I certainly need to get on another mailing list...)

I have spoken with state Senator Eric Oemig about eliminating the WASL. This was when he was running for office, so he said something to the effect of "retooling" it. And he also has worked very hard to repair the NCLB, which I also think should be scrapped. Senator Oemig is a tremendous asset to our legislature; in addition to making education his central concern, he immediately introduced an impeachement resolution his first month in the Senate.

Personally I feel that there are so many regulations put on our educators that they have lost the ability to actually educate.

I hope that Mr. Chew's message gets out. I hope that this country recognizes the wisdom behind his civil disobedience.

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