“We will lose on legislation. But we will win the message war every day, and every week, until November 2010,” said Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., an outspoken conservative who has participated on the GOP message teams. “Our goal is to bring down approval numbers for [Speaker Nancy] Pelosi and for House Democrats. That will take repetition. This is a marathon, not a sprint.”
The Republicans are engaged in a pseud0-scorched earth policy because they’re sore losers, making it a lose-lose scenario for us. When Republicans are in charge, their policies aren’t particularly helpful to MOST Americans, and when they’re not in charge, they’re trying to eliminate the possibility that Democratic policy could make up lost ground.
Hilary Clinton at least had the maturity to suck it up and take on a constructive, proactive role under the Obama Presidency.
While I’m not entirely satisfied with Obama thus far, you’d think I’d be done with being infuriated by the Bush administration.
Then I get word that wunderkind John Yoo wrote a memo clearing the suspension of first amendment rights after 9/11 because you can’t have those pesky reporters asking awkward questions when you’re trying to invade a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 under the ruse that it did. ARGH!
In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the Justice Department secretly gave the green light for the U.S. military to attack apartment buildings and office complexes inside the United States, deploy high-tech surveillance against U.S. citizens and potentially suspend First Amendment freedom-of-the-press rights in order to combat the terror threat, according to a memo released Monday. . .
In perhaps the most surprising assertion, the Oct. 23, 2001, memo suggested the president could even suspend press freedoms if he concluded it was necessary to wage the war on terror. “First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully,” Yoo wrote in the memo entitled “Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activity Within the United States.”
UC Berkeley had to take Yoo back because he’d just been on leave; he never officially left. But one would hope that after whatever truth commission takes place, someone will see that man disbarred, limiting his influence over young legal minds.
Way to go protecting the Constitution and our Bill of Rights! Clearly, some people need to read up on why the Bill of Rights was drafted. Paging John Yoo!
In 1991, a Georgia jury convicted Troy Davis on the 1989 shooting of an off-duty police officer, and Davis was subsequently sentenced to death, despite a lack of physical evidence (for instance, the murder weapon). Nine witnesses testified against Davis, including Sylvester Coles, who had also been a suspect. Despite a number of questions raised about police procedure, the prosecution’s tactics and the sentencing hearing, Davis’s representatives could not earn him a retrial.
Over the years, lawyers working on his defense have uncovered considerable evidence that points to his innocence (shoddy police work, no physical evidence, the recanting of the testimony of most trial witnesses, new witnesses that identify a different shooter); Davis continues to be denied a new trial. He has been sentenced to death 3 times; each time a stay of execution has been granted, typically within days of his death.
Last year the Supreme Court turned down the his appeal with no explanation. The George Board of Pardon and Paroles refuses to offer clemency in his case.
You can join Amnesty International in asking Governor Purdue to commute his sentence to ensure Davis is not put to death before his defense can finally prove his innocence in a court.
It seems that if you’re going to put a man to death, there should be not a single iota of doubt remaining. In Davis’s case, it’s more like a heavy fog of doubt, with no chance of clear skies forecasted.
Child poverty is nothing new in the United States. Almost 1 in 5 children live in poverty here in the United States. As is typical with disadvantage in this country, a shortage of funds is much more prevalent among minority groups.
Past versions had the Assembly recognize the millions of undernourished people worldwide, which was repeated again in this year’s text. But, the present text also recognized the large numbers pushed into that situation because of the world food crisis.
Acknowledging the right to food would be particularly damning to the United States, since we have the highest child poverty rates in the developed world. If there’s a commodity big business can profit from, the Bush administration has little interest in making sure its least protected citizens get their fare share.
Twenty Set’s Monica O’Brien interviewed several Gen-Y women by e-mail as part of her postmortem of the 2008 election. She just posted a piece on the role female candidates and First Lady-to-be Obama played and the ramifications of their presence on the very public political stage for future elections.
You can find my thoughts on why Hillary lost and what Michelle Obama represents to professional women over at Twenty Set.
Gloria Steinem spoke on a moderated panel at the California Governor’s conference this fall. At one point, moderator Farai Chideya asked feminist Steinem what her little 9 year-old girl self would say to the other panelist’s 9-year-old girl self.
In the ensuing discussion, Steinem suggested that “who you are at 9 or 10 is who we are at 60.” She noted that young kids at nine or ten have absolute clarity about their passions. They’re climbing trees and exploring the world and haven’t yet added the word impossible to their vocabularies. Tweens are “full of wonder.”
Given I’m in a major career transition, and have spent more than a year struggling with the notion of what Ishould do versus what my passions could fuel, Steinem’s comments gave me pause.
My inner child
As I hit middle school, I became thoroughly obsessed with social activism, in particular, saving the planet. I read about recycling and ocean pollutions and worried endlessly about the plight of sea turtles eating plastic bags, which is probably why the Santa Monica Plastic Bag Monster stunt tickled me recently.
While communities were just beginning to offer curbside recycling programs, our family always had the most recycling bins out in our neighborhood. In fact, my mom’s best friend used to tease her about the extent of our recycling: stacks of newspapers; bundles of junk mail and magazines; glass, aluminum and tin bottles, jars and cans. Though I realized that one family recycling wasn’t putting a dent in the landfill problem, I dreamt of a day when everyone recycled as much of their garbage as possible.
In the 5th grade, I also began to realize that not everyone was equal, which lit my interest in social justice, as well as equitable and utilitarian treatment of all people. I wanted to be unwaveringly fair in my actions, not just self-serving. I sought to do what was right for everyone, even if it meant a temporary dip in my own life. My experience staying silent while another kid was tease mercilessly for being different definitely contributed to that philosophy.
Full Stop
But I hit the metaphorical brick wall in high school.
At fifteen, I helped lead the charge against a 6-community referendum to break up a school district. Adults rallied support for break up of the district using socioeconomic snobbery and even mock seances — yes, seriously. After forming a student group, we attended public meetings and canvassed the neighborhood, though derided by local school administrators and parents on the other side. The teenagers fighting the referendum spent hours in the library researching the economic and social costs of breaking up the district; in reality, more regionalization made fiscal sense than less.
And we fought the good fight. I remember the day one classmate approached me and told me that she could never do what I was doing, but she was 100% behind me. Someone needed to take a stand, it just wasn’t going to be her.
But we lost. And the district was dissolved. Ironically, the prognostications of teens came to be. Over the next five years schools taxes shot up, the performance of the athletic teams (with slimmer pickings) diminished, and the number of courses offerings declined. While we were satisfied to be right, we wished we had been wrong.
A few tiny details slammed the breaks on activism for me. Afterwards, a story trickled down through the ranks. A lot of favors were owed all the way up to the governor’s office. One way or another this district was being dismantled, even though it completely contradicted the Governor’s very public support of regionalization to streamline costs throughout the state. When people questioned the legality of using a referendum to dissolve the district, all copies of the district charter mysteriously vanished.
Powerful forces beyond our control worked hard to ensure the appropriate “democratic” outcome. The people were squelched. The little guy was silenced. The power brokers made a decision, and the die were set. And at 15 and 16, I just wasn’t ready to maneuver the shady back room dealings of politics. Though I fight fair, I hadn’t yet accepted that most at that level are just playing to win. It’s personal, not community- focused.
Waking up
This year, I found my spark again. Watching Obama’s team out campaign the GOP made me realize that I am no less capable of gaming the system in the name of the greater good. Sometimes you have to play by the other team’s rules just to get in the game, but you don’t have to dump your own values in the process.
Excessive volunteerism allowed me to develop the skill sets I need to reconnect with activism. I’ve revisited the development and ongoing review of the strategy that can take me from A to B. As much as I hate public speaking, I’m more comfortable rallying the troops and inspiring people to act than anytime in recent memory. And I’m well-versed in the nitty gritty of data management and manipulation.
At the moment, my search is on for the right opportunity to splice with my aptitude, because I’m pretty sure that who I was at ten is who I’ll be at thirty. What feels like a quarterlife quagmire seems to be me coming full circle.
But enough about me; take your own trip down memory lane. What motivated your ten-year old self to act? Who did you want to be when you grew up? Are you there yet?
Posted by zak 
Posted by zak 
Posted by zak 
