Why do pelicans hate capitalism?

How Much Cyber-Parenting Must Schools Do?

by Froma Harrop

A boy has apparently sent filthy text messages to your daughter over the weekend. Both are sixth-graders at the same school. You, the girl's father, coach sports with the boy's father. What would you do?

a. Disconnect your daughter from all texting services.

b. Talk to the boy's father, whom you know.

c. If the father refuses to do something about it, stop socializing with him.

d. Call the police.

e. Do some combination of a, b, c and d.

f. Complain to the school principal.

This is a real-life example, and the parents chose only f.

The two students attended Benjamin Franklin Middle School in Ridgewood, N.J. The principal, Tony Orsini, asked the girl's parents whether they had contacted the boy's family. No. That would upset the coaching arrangement. He asked whether they had called the police. They again said no, making several excuses.

In olden days, the parents probably would have intervened personally. They could have cut off their daughter's texting capabilities and diplomatically called the other parents. Or they might have gone directly to the door of the offending schoolmate's house to make their displeasure very clear.

The more aggressive approach is best done with calm. The parents may have had no idea of their child's activities and would be grateful for the information. Or, the odious messages may have come from someone else who had found the cell phone. That had happened in the above case.

But outsourcing this parenting role to teachers and principals seems to have become the common practice. (By the way, some students also viciously smear teachers and principals on networking sites.)

Most schools understandably don't have the time or desire to monitor their charges' electronic communications. And what's a school to do when one student sends obscene texts to another from home on a weekend? Obtain a search warrant?

Suppose the principal confiscates a cell phone and finds provocative photos of the owner on it, not uncommon for those who do "sexting." The educator risks having an unhinged parent retaliate by charging him (or her) of trafficking in child pornography.

Schools have come up with varied responses to the cyber-bully problem.

A Seattle middle school suspended 28 students who ganged up on a classmate on Facebook. By contrast, a mother asked a school in Fairfax, Va., to punish students involved in a Facebook pile-up on her son and was told there was nothing it could do.

My favorite response was Principal Orsini's. He sent an e-mail to all parents that described their responsibilities.

"There is absolutely NO reason for any middle school student to be part of a social networking site," Orsini wrote. He noted that cruel 12-year-olds pose more a threat to their middle-schoolers's well-being than the adult predators of parental nightmares. And he told parents whose children were attacked through networking sites or messages: "IMMEDIATELY GO TO THE POLICE!"

Typing these words, I feel like reaching for the hand sanitizer.

http://www.creators.com/liberal/froma-harrop/how-much-cyber-parenting-must-schools-do.html

FRANKEN V. ROBERTS

by Jim Hightower

Way to go, Al!

At last, there's a Democrat in the Senate who's acting like a real Democrat in the FDR mold, unafraid and unabashed to go right at the corporate powers who dominate our economy, environment, media, politics, and government. Al Franken, the new Minnesota senator who won the seat once held by the fighting populist, Paul Wellstone, is shaking up the Washington establishment on behalf of regular folks. Instead of going-along-to-get-along, Franken is speaking bluntly about the raw judicial activism and corporate obsequiousness of the Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, a lifelong servant of the corporate agenda.

For years, I've railed about the wimpiness of Democrats who approach every Supreme Court nomination strictly from the viewpoint of such social issues as abortion and gay rights. Of course those are important, but the Dems have given nominees a free pass on the fundamental issues of steadily-rising corporate supremacy. Most Supreme Court cases don't involve hot social issues, but questions of power between moneyed behemoths and the rest of us – things like pollution of our water and air, denial of basic worker rights, abuse of consumers, and usurpation of the People's governing authority.

By not delving deeply into every nominee's record and bias on these populist questions, Democrats have allowed the judicial branch, including today's five-man majority of the Roberts Court, to become a corporate wet dream, with corporatist judges ruling routinely to expand corporate power over the rest of us.

With Al Franken, we have a leader on our side, daring to challenge the enthronement of corporations over our democracy. Of course, the Powers That Be are coming down on him – so let's bolster Al with our grassroots support. Contact him at www.alfranken.com."Excerpts from Sen. Al Franken," www.washingtonpost.com, June 28, 2010.

"Al Franken hit on the truth about the Supreme Court," www.washingtonpost.com, June 30, 2010.

"Another rhetorical strikeout from Al Franken," www.washingtonpost.com, June 23, 2010.

http://www.jimhightower.com/node/7188

Larry Flynt Urges Sen. Vitter (R-Louisiana) to Donate "Diapers and Other Personal Items" to Assist Victims of BP Disaster

 

Hustler Publisher requests Senator to donate "diapers and other personal items" to control costly effects of the disaster. 

BEVERLY HILLS, CA – July 1, 2010 – As rough seas from Hurricane Alex delay oil clean-up operations on the Gulf Coast, Hustler Magazine publisher, Larry Flynt, in a letter to Republican Senator David Vitter today, urged the Louisiana lawmaker to personally contribute "diapers and other personal items" in an effort to control the costly effects of the eleven week old British Petroleum oil disaster.

Three years ago, Flynt and his team of investigators assisted in exposing Senator Vitter's extracurricular activities with female prostitutes. Others have reported on the Senator's penchant for diapers during his transgressions.  Vitter later apologized for his "very serious sin" after documents released by the D.C. Madam, Deborah Jane Palfrey, revealed that he had patronized her high-end, fantasy escort service.

In the letter to Vitter, Flynt acknowledges the Senator's statement that everyone does their part to solve this catastrophe.  Additionally, he suggests that, when it comes to blocking the oil that's gushing into the Gulf, Vitter might consider donating his extensive collection of diapers, known for their super absorbency, to help stop the leak by creating a giant "plug."

"Senator Vitter has gone on record claiming that the oil spill in the Gulf is 'too big of an endeavor' for one company," said Flynt. "Accordingly, in an effort to protect the coastlines and marshes on the Gulf Coast, I am asking Senator Vitter to use the personal articles that he's best known for to aid in the relief.  His experience in the discipline of 'spills' is unprecedented."

The Letter:

Senator David Vitter

516 Hart Senate Building

Washington DC, 20510

 

Dear Senator Vitter:

Forgive me for intruding on your valuable time.  I know you are a very busy man, especially in regards to the current problems in the Gulf of Mexico. But that's exactly what I want to talk to you about. I concur that everybody must do their part to solve this serious catastrophe.  And that's where I think you, in particular, can be of so much help.

As I understand it, you have some expertise regarding diapers.  I have no idea how many diapers you actually have on hand (quite a collection from what I hear) but as you know, diapers are quite absorbent. So, when it comes to blocking the oil that's gushing into the Gulf, they might be a very effective way of solving that problem. With that in mind, I urge you to donate your extensive diaper collection to BP so they can use them to stop the leak by creating, for want of a better term, a giant "plug."  

It could be a historic moment: An ecological disaster thwarted. And you'll get the credit for it.  In fact, when people hear the word "diaper" they will automatically think of you. Hell, they already do.

Please don't piss away this golden opportunity.

Sincerely,

Larry Flynt
Publisher
Hustler

News release received from Julie Messing, Director of Public Relations for the Flynt Management Group.

http://blog.buzzflash.com//node/11474

'Climategate' review clears scientists of dishonesty over data

'Rigour and honesty' of scientists not in doubt but Sir Muir Russell says UEA's Climatic Research Unit was not sufficiently open

by David Adam

Sir Muir Russell, second left, talks to the media about his report into the leaked University of East Anglia climate change emails today. Photograph: Sang Tan/AP

The climate scientists at the centre of a media storm were today cleared of accusations that they fudged their results and silenced critics to bolster the case for man-made global warming.

Sir Muir Russell, the senior civil servant who led a six-month inquiry into the affair, said the "rigour and honesty" of the scientists at the world-leading Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) are not in doubt. They did not subvert the peer review process to censor criticism as alleged, the panel found, while key data needed to reproduce their findings was freely available to any "competent" researcher.

The panel did criticise the scientists for not being open enough about their work, and said they were "unhelpful and defensive" when responding to legitimate requests made under freedom of information (FOI) laws.

The row was sparked when 13 years of emails from CRU scientists were hacked and released online last year. Climate change sceptics claimed they showed scientists manipulating and suppressing data to back up a theory of man-made climate change. Critics also alleged that the scientists abused their positions to cover up flaws and distort the peer review process that determines which studies are published in journals, and so enter the scientific record. Some alleged that the emails cast doubt on the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Announcing the findings, Russell said: "Ultimately this has to be about what they did, not what they said."

He added: "The honesty and rigour of CRU as scientists are not in doubt ... We have not found any evidence of behaviour that might undermine the conclusions of the IPCC assessments."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/07/climategate-review-clears-scientists-dishonesty

Alyeska CEO Steps Down Following Truthout Exposé

by Jason Leopold

(Image: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: bigweasel, Travis S.)

Kevin Hostler, the chief executive officer of Alyeska Pipeline, informed company employees Wednesday morning that he "plans to retire to Houston and to spend time with his family." 

The announcement comes one day after Truthout published an extensive investigative report that was highly critical of his leadership of the company and revealed details, based on hundreds of pages of internal documents and in interviews with more than a dozen senior employees, of severe cost-cutting measures Hostler implemented that threatened the safety and integrity of the pipeline.

According to one email, "the budget cuts over the last couple of years is creating a large 'bow wave' of deferred projects and program work ... The oversight of the integrity of the system is at risk."

"Reductions in the budgets for the Aboveground [pipeline] program; fuel gas line; and mainline pipe can place the integrity of the system at risk," the email says. "There is a risk ranking exercise that is used and the concern that the risk ranking is being used primarily for budget reductions and although work is shown as lower risk it still should be done to protect the environment."

The employee who wrote the email alleged that Alyeska's 2010 budget was cut from $680 million to $600 million on orders from BP.

Over the past several months, Alyeska Pipeline and Hostler have been under intense scrutiny by a Congressional oversight committee and an independent investigator, who has been probing explosive allegations leveled by managers that severe cost-cutting efforts could put the integrity of the 800-mile Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) at risk.

http://www.truth-out.org/alyeska-ceo-resigns-following-truthout-expose61134

Crack the Code in Cyber Command’s Logo

By Noah Shachtman

The U.S. military's new Cyber Command is headquartered at Ft. Meade, Maryland, one of the military's most secretive and secure facilities. Its mission is largely opaque, even inside the armed forces. But the there's another mystery surrounding the emerging unit. It's embedded in the Cyber Command logo.

On the logo's inner gold ring is a code: 9ec4c12949a4f31474f299058ce2b22a

"It is not just random numbers and does 'decode' to something specific," a Cyber Command source tells Danger Room. "I believe it is specifically detailed in the official heraldry for the unit symbol."

"While there a few different proposals during the design phase, in the end the choice was obvious and something necessary for every military unit," the source adds. "The mission."

With that hint in hand, go crack this code open.

Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/07/solve-the-mystery-code-in-cyber-commands-logo/#ixzz0t6izt7Vf

Resurrection of a Scandal

by digby

So the most famous blogger in the world has been banned from MSNBC after Joe Scarborough pitched a fit about a passing comment on twitter nobody even paid attention to. It's hard to believe that anyone in politics or the media would be so incredibly stupid as to draw attention to the fact that he had a forgotten scandal in his past by forcing a public spectacle of it, but there you go. Of course, he is a Republican.

Those of you who don't know about Joe Scarborough's dead intern problem probably didn't start reading the internet regularly until after 2002. Certainly the mainstream press didn't cover it. You see at the time the entire village was hysterical over the disappearance of congressman Gary Condit's mistress, a woman who happened to work in his office and who seemed to remind everyone of Monica Lewinsky, which naturally made them come completely unglued. The media, with the help of the family, pretty much convicted Condit of murder in one of the most revolting displays of railroading ever seen in American politics. Even when the actual murderer was revealed years later, the worst of the perpetrators refused to back down.

Meanwhile, that same summer, star up-and-coming Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough, recently divorced under charges of infidelity, had unexpectedly decided to resign from office six months after being re-elected. Shortly thereafter an intern on his Florida staff was found dead -- in the office -- under mysterious circumstances with allegations of cover-ups by the local authorities and the quack medical examiner. And nobody in DC even raised an eyebrow. The story went largely unremarked upon and he soon found himself a lucrative perch as a highly paid celebrity gasbag.

 

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/joe-scarborough-r-mensa-has-fit-over.html

Too Old For A Job, Too Young For Medicare Or Social Security

 

By Dave Johnson

Here is a fact: There. Are. No. Jobs. I'm in Silicon Valley where the official unemployment rate dipped in May to 11.2%. This dip was, of course, because of so many people just giving up trying to get a job, certainly not because of some wave of hiring. The underemployed figure, known as "U-6," is 21.7% in California, 16.7% nationally.

You have to know someone to get a humiliating job standing on a corner waving a sign. And if you are over 40, things are even worse than that. Don't give me any conservative Rush Limbaugh-Ayn Rand dehumanizing nonsense about parasitic lazy people who won't look—there are no jobs.

I know so many people here who are over 40, were laid off in the 2000-era dot com crash, still haven't found a regular job and aren't going to. They have had occasional "contract" positions—which means no benefits, no security, a 15% "self-employment" tax and no unemployment check when the job ends. And now, 10 years later they're a lot over 40 and are not going to find a job because so many employers here won't hire people over 40.

And now there are so many more who lost their jobs in the mass layoffs of 2008-2009 and can't find a job. So many of them are also over 40. In fact, many were laid off in obvious purges of over-40 workers, offered a small severance that they could only receive if they promised to take no age-discrimination action against the employer. (I don't say "company" because some of these worked at nonprofits.)

Most of these people will not find another job, but are too young for Medicare and Social Security.

One Person's Story

I ran into a friend this weekend who I hadn't seen for a couple of years. He had been a computer engineer who had been making 6 figures in the dot-com years. Laid off in the 2000 crash, he moved in with his parents back in the Midwest and worked in a bakery. He came back out here when things picked up a bit and worked in one "contract" job after another. (Contracting is just a scam to get around employment laws—but the government doesn't enforce the rules.) But now he just can't find anything. He managed to get unemployment but now that is running out. He has no health insurance. He can't afford a place to live; he "house sits" for people or visits friends, and doesn't know what he is going to do even two days from now.

http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2010072707/too-old-job-too-young-medicare-or-social-security

Olbermann calls on Oprah to ‘crush’ ‘racist’ Limbaugh

By David Edwards

Rush Limbaugh may have met his match if MSNBC Keith Olbermann has his way. Olbermann wants Oprah Winfrey to take to the air and "crush" Limbaugh.

Limbaugh suggested Tuesday that Winfrey and other African-Americans owe their success to their skin color.

"If Obama weren`t black, he`d be a tour guide in Honolulu or he`d be teaching Saul Alinsky Constitutional law or lecturing on it in Chicago," Limbaugh announced.

"He wouldn`t have been voted president if he weren`t black. Somebody asked me over the -- oh, I need to remember. Somebody asked me over the weekend, why does somebody earn a lot of money, have a lot of money. I said it`s because he`s black," he continued.

Limbaugh then went on to attack Winfrey. "It was Oprah. No, it can't be. Yes, it is. There's a lot of guilt out there. To show we`re not racist, we`ll make this person wealthy and big and famous and so forth," said Limbaugh.

Olbermann named Limbaugh "Worst Person in the World" Tuesday.

There it is. See, the United States is tilted in favor of black people. That`s the premise. We have made it so easy that human beings inferior to the great Rush Limbaugh, the fired by ESPN one month into his dream job, Rush Limbaugh-- inferior creatures like Obama and Oprah Winfrey have been made wealthy and big and famous and so forth. They have not earned it. They aren`t actually talented. They haven`t actually done the job.

Oprah Winfrey and Barack Obama and presumably every other black person in this country has not succeed despite the fact that they`re black, when this country is still filled with racists like this homunculus Limbaugh. They`ve succeeded because they`re black, and only because they`re black.

Well, you heard it. It`s naked, ugly racism. It`s the distillation of Rush Limbaugh`s view of our country.

"The only other thing I can say is, Oprah, please, crush this schmuck," Olbermann concluded.

 

http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0707/olbermann-calls-oprah-crush-limbaugh/

Two More Candidates for the McChrystal Treatment

 

by Robert Scheer

It's not working. Time for the president to concede that the economy is at best stagnating and at worst about to take another steep nose dive. I don't know if we are headed for another Great Depression, as Nobel Prize economist Paul Krugman dared suggest recently, but it is amply clear that the Obama strategy, inherited from George W. Bush, of bailing out Wall Street in the forlorn hope that it would repair the economic damage the fat cats inflicted on the rest of us has not worked.

The housing market remains in dire shape, and with it the nest eggs of Americans who are responding by squelching their appetite for consumption. The Wall Street hustlers were made whole, but not so the people whose home mortgages the banks are foreclosing, or businesses and their customers looking for the credit that the banks had promised to free up.

The president conceded last week that our economy is 8 million jobs in the hole despite his bailout and stimulus program. With deficits running wild, heartless Republicans get to claim that six months more of unemployment insurance to 1.7 million out-of-work people whose benefits have ended is more than we can afford.

Of course it's not. That would be a $34 billion outlay to people who would actually spend the money instead of using it for acquisitions, as the big banks have done with far larger gifts of taxpayer funds. That the Republicans who favor huge military spending and tax breaks for the rich and who launched the Wall Street bailout are being hypocritical scoundrels when they say we don't have the money to help ordinary folks is obvious. But the problem is that Barack Obama embraced the GOP strategy, and the failures of the bailouts to turn the economy around, along with the cost of two wars, are now his problems to explain.

What we need is for the president's economic hotshots, Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers, to grant damaging interviews to Rolling Stone as Gen. Stanley McChrystal recently did in self-destructing. Perhaps then President Obama would have the gumption to fire the misleaders of his economic team. It was always bizarre that those two, who did so much to wreck the economy, were put in charge of the effort to salvage it. Their previous records should have provided ample warning that their economic outlook begins and ends with the demands of Wall Street.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-scheer/two-more-candidates-for-t_b_637407.html

Welcome to Big Brother T-Shirts

The perfect shirts for all you passive-aggressives annoyed at having to take your shoes off. And other Free Speech enthusiasts.

Nobody is safer when you take my water It's not really possible to create binary explosives by mixing two liquids together in an airplane's toilet. And you can bring ten tiny bottles, but not one big of equivalent volume. WHY?	Cast Member of Airport Security Theater Bruce Schneier coined the term "Airport Security Theater" to describe the bullshit procedures designed to make you feel safe, not be safe. Here's your chance to be a proud cast member of the Airport Security Theater!
Technology can't solve security problems "If you think technology can solve your security problems, then you don't understand the problems and you don't understand the technology." - Bruce Schneier	You can only detect and respond "You can't defend. You can't prevent. The only thing you can do is detect and respond." -- Bruce Schneier

http://bigbrother.memeresearch.com/

The sensible liberal's guide to sensible liberalism in the age of Obama

© Tom Tomorrow

Take our Jobs

TAKE OUR JOBS There are two issues facing our nation--high unemployment and undocumented people in the workforce--that many Americans believe are related. Missing from the debate on both issues is an honest recognition that the food we all eat - at home, in restaurants and workplace cafeterias (including those in the Capitol) - comes to us from the labor of undocumented farm workers. Agriculture in the United States is dependent on an immigrant workforce. Three-quarters of all crop workers working in American agriculture were born outside the United States. According to government statistics, since the late 1990s, at least 50% of the crop workers have not been authorized to work legally in the United States. We are a nation in denial about our food supply. As a result the UFW has initiated the "Take Our Jobs" campaign. Farm workers are ready to welcome citizens and legal residents who wish to replace them in the field, we will use our knowledge and staff to help connect the unemployed with farm employers. Just fill out the form to the right and continue on to the request for job application.

I want to be a farm worker: First Name: Last Name: E-mail: Zip Code:            ** Job may include using hand tools such as knives, hoes, shovels, etc. Duties may include tilling the soil, transplanting, weeding, thinning, picking, cutting, sorting & packing of harvested produce. May set up & operate irrigation equip. Work is performed outside in all weather conditions (Summertime 90+ degree weather) & is physically demanding requiring workers to bend, stoop, lift & carry up to 50 lbs on a regular basis. http://www.takeourjobs.org/

Donkeygate! Bush Officials Banned the Democrat Mascot

by Randall Lane Info

In the aftermath of 9/11, Congress approved a magazine designed to win over Arab hearts and minds. In an excerpt from his new book, The Zeroes: My Misadventures in the Decade Wall Street Went Insane, Randall Lane describes how Bush officials forbade using photographs of a donkey, in order to avoid any positive reflection of Democrats.

Those of us who were in New York on 9/11—in fact, everyone who was in America—can attest to the overwhelming feeling of needing to do something, anything, to pitch in. In the days and weeks following that awful day, I spent all night feeding rescue workers at Ground Zero, volunteered to give blood that wasn't needed and wrote stories about the heroes and victims. It didn't seem enough. So I put forward the sharpest skill set I had, starting magazines, which put me smack in the middle of the one of the uglier, untold stories of the Bush administration.

As part of a public diplomacy program similar to Radio Free Europe or Voice of America, the State Department had allocated more than $4 million a year to launch a magazine about American culture, which would be translated into Arabic and sold across the Arab world. (A TV station, Al Hurra, and Radio Sawa were launched around the same time.) Other than a corny name, Hi!, the one English word everyone on the planet knows, it was an empty vessel.

The Bush official held up the offending photo, as wholesome as a Norman Rockwell painting, and pointed to a pack mule that, by other names, might be known as a donkey.

To fill it, the State Department hired a highly regarded Washington-based custom media company, TMG, which in turn hired me. Working with a squad of Arab-born Americans, including a smart, opinionated Libyan, a poetic Syrian, and a diligent Palestinian, I would craft America's public face for the part of the world that hated us most, as translated via the cover and substance of a glossy magazine.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-07-06/donkeygate-bush-officials-barred-democrat-mascot-according-to-randall-lanes-the-zeroes/?cid=bs:featured3

Why We Must Reduce Military Spending

by Rep. Barney Frank and Rep. Ron Paul

As members of opposing political parties, we disagree on a number of important issues. But we must not allow honest disagreement over some issues to interfere with our ability to work together when we do agree.

By far the single most important of these is our current initiative to include substantial reductions in the projected level of American military spending as part of future deficit reduction efforts. For decades, the subject of military expenditures has been glaringly absent from public debate. Yet the Pentagon budget for 2010 is $693 billion -- more than all other discretionary spending programs combined. Even subtracting the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, military spending still amounts to over 42% of total spending.

It is irrefutably clear to us that if we do not make substantial cuts in the projected levels of Pentagon spending, we will do substantial damage to our economy and dramatically reduce our quality of life.

We are not talking about cutting the money needed to supply American troops in the field. Once we send our men and women into battle, even in cases where we may have opposed going to war, we have an obligation to make sure that our servicemembers have everything they need. And we are not talking about cutting essential funds for combating terrorism; we must do everything possible to prevent any recurrence of the mass murder of Americans that took place on September 11, 2001.

Immediately after World War II, with much of the world devastated and the Soviet Union becoming increasingly aggressive, America took on the responsibility of protecting virtually every country that asked for it. Sixty-five years later, we continue to play that role long after there is any justification for it, and currently American military spending makes up approximately 44% of all such expenditures worldwide. The nations of Western Europe now collectively have greater resources at their command than we do, yet they continue to depend overwhelmingly on American taxpayers to provide for their defense. According to a recent article in the New York Times, "Europeans have boasted about their social model, with its generous vacations and early retirements, its national health care systems and extensive welfare benefits, contrasting it with the comparative harshness of American capitalism. Europeans have benefited from low military spending, protected by NATO and the American nuclear umbrella."

When our democratic allies are menaced by larger, hostile powers, there is a strong argument to be made for supporting them. But the notion that American taxpayers get some benefit from extending our military might worldwide is deeply flawed. And the idea that as a superpower it is our duty to maintain stability by intervening in civil disorders virtually anywhere in the world often generates anger directed at us and may in the end do more harm than good.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-barney-frank/why-we-must-reduce-milita_b_636051.html

Wrongly citing New York law, NBC’s Today rejects same-sex couples from wedding contest

by Karl Frisch

Once again, NBC is holding a wedding contest in which the winning couple will be awarded a wedding aired live on the network's highly-rated Today morning show and an all-expense paid honeymoon.

Unfortunately, Today's "Modern Day Wedding Contest" isn't open to same-sex couples.

In a statement from NBC given to the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), the network said:

For the TODAY show wedding, the couple must be able to be legally married in New York, which is where the wedding will take place.

But, as GLAAD noted in response:

This is not a valid argument since New York State legally recognizes same-sex marriages licensed in other states. Same-sex couples can now legally obtain marriage licenses in Iowa, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Washington D.C. NBC is mistakenly equating the marriage license with the wedding celebration. Same-sex weddings are entirely legal in New York State.  As long as the marriage license is conferred upon the same-sex couple by another state, New York State recognizes the marriage as a fully valid and legal one. NBC's exclusion of same-sex couples from its contest is not motivated by the law, but bias against these couples.

http://mediamatters.org/blog/201007060026

Separating Church and Hate: Irrationality and Anti-Muslim Stereotyping

by Cynthia Boaz

(Photo: Beth Rankin)

"Anger and intolerance are the enemies of correct understanding."

- MK Gandhi

Within minutes of learning that last November's Fort Hood shooter had an Arab name and an Islamic background, commentators at the major media outlets were engaging in wild speculation that the killer's motive was "jihad" and that the murders fell into the category of political terrorism. For many Americans, these reflexive conclusions also confirmed what they'd decided long ago: that Muslims want to do them harm. Although it is more appropriate to try and understand perpetrators of terrorism by their political (rather than religious) identifications and grievances, the tenacity with which interchangeability of the concepts of Islam and terrorism holds on - and is perpetuated in mainstream discourse - is doing damage to the idea that the United States and its people represent the most open, tolerant society the world has to offer.

Awhile back, I attended a conference at Boulder's Naropa University on "Human and Women's Rights in Islam," at which we discussed the most persistent stereotypes about Islam and Muslims held by Westerners generally - and Americans particularly - that demand closer examination. Individually, these misconceptions are the source of grave misunderstandings between individuals. Collectively, they form the basis of a worldview so distorted that it drives some of its proponents to openly and brazenly call for the use of violence against their fellow citizens, including, in the most stunning cases, the president himself (who, although not Muslim, is regularly and pejoratively cast as such by his detractors.)

Let's just be frank. The demonization of Islam as a religion and of its adherents as individuals has reached the level of hysteria within the United States. Although the fear of Muslims is usually cloaked in condescension or indignation, the source of this most recent version of bigotry is transparent and utterly predictable. There must be a nameless, faceless, sinister "other" upon whom we can hang our deepest anxieties and frustrations as a people. This kind of paranoia is not unique, but as its perpetrators on right-wing radio, FOX "News" and the far-right blogosphere can attest, it still works like a charm.

I would offer to Americans that if you've come to believe that it's Islam that's the source of our problems, you might as well pack it up and go home because the terrorists have already won.

http://www.truth-out.org/separating-church-and-hate-a-plea-sanity60819

Nut? What Nut? The Squirrel Outwits to Survive

By NATALIE ANGIER

I was walking through the neighborhood one afternoon when, on turning a corner, I nearly tripped over a gray squirrel that was sitting in the middle of the sidewalk, eating a nut. Startled by my sudden appearance, the squirrel dashed out to the road — right in front of an oncoming car.

Before I had time to scream, the squirrel had gotten caught in the car's front hubcap, had spun around once like a cartoon character in a clothes dryer, and was spat back off. When the car drove away, the squirrel picked itself up, wobbled for a moment or two, and then resolutely hopped across the street.

You don't get to be one of the most widely disseminated mammals in the world — equally at home in the woods, a suburban backyard or any city "green space" bigger than a mousepad — if you're crushed by every Acme anvil that happens to drop your way.

"When people call me squirrely," said John L. Koprowski, a squirrel expert and professor of wildlife conservation and management at the University of Arizona, "I am flattered by the term."

The Eastern gray tree squirrel, or Sciurus carolinensis, has been so spectacularly successful that it is often considered a pest. The International Union for Conservation of Nature includes the squirrel on its list of the top 100 invasive species. The British and Italians hate gray squirrels for outcompeting their beloved native red squirrels. Manhattanites hate gray squirrels for reminding them of pigeons, and that goes for the black, brown and latte squirrel morphs, too.

Yet researchers who study gray squirrels argue that their subject is far more compelling than most people realize, and that behind the squirrel's success lies a phenomenal elasticity of body, brain and behavior. Squirrels can leap a span 10 times the length of their body, roughly double what the best human long jumper can manage. They can rotate their ankles 180 degrees, and so keep a grip while climbing no matter which way they're facing. Squirrels can learn by watching others — cross-phyletically, if need be. In their book "Squirrels: The Animal Answer Guide," Richard W. Thorington Jr. and Katie Ferrell of the Smithsonian Institution described the safe-pedestrian approach of a gray squirrel eager to traverse a busy avenue near the White House. The squirrel waited on the grass near a crosswalk until people began to cross the street, said the authors, "and then it crossed the street behind them."

In the acuity of their visual system, the sensitivity and deftness with which they can manipulate objects, their sociability, chattiness and willingness to deceive, squirrels turn out to be surprisingly similar to primates.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/06/science/06angi.html?_r=2&th&emc=th

The Epic of America, Still

By Scott Burns

In his bathtub, Napoleon decided to sell the Louisiana Territory.

His goal wasn't lofty. He just needed cash for his various wars. Fortunately, President Thomas Jefferson did have a lofty goal— a vision of a coast-to-coast America. So he made the Louisiana Purchase.

The bathtub tidbit comes from "The Epic of America," historian James Truslow Adams' 1931 history of the United States. "The character of our new acquisition to the west of "the river" was not yet well known, but the exploring expeditions of Lewis and Clark in the Northwest and of Zebulon M. Pike in the Southwest had indicated that the prairies and plains were not of much use to settlers, and thus the western half of the country was to retain its reputation as the great American desert until after the Civil War," Adams wrote.

Today, the population center of the United States is well west of "the river." It continues to move further west with each census report, as it has since 1790. Back then it took the Lewis and Clark expedition two years and much hazard to get to the Pacific Ocean from Pittsburgh.

Today, Southwest Airlines flies from Pittsburgh to Seattle three times a day. Each flight covers the 2,483 miles in about 7 hours, including time to change planes in Chicago. And the flight will set you back as little as $244. The average American worker earns that much in two days.

The fare figures to about 10 cents a mile. According to the American Automobile Association that's a bit less than it costs per mile to buy gasoline for the typical American car.

We've come a long way, and gone a great distance.

Today, the greatest hardship on a trip to the Pacific Ocean is the lack of food or a seat that is a tad narrow, but that is hard to complain about when you have a full cash bar, free snacks and flight attendants with a sense of humor.

Steve Penner, a friend in La Jolla, sums it up nicely: "I'll go anywhere Southwest goes. I won't go anywhere else." I share that preference. I only fly other airlines when absolutely necessary.

http://assetbuilder.com/blogs/scott_burns/archive/2010/07/02/the-epic-of-america-still.aspx

Arizona GOP candidate calls for cutting off illegal immigrants’ utilities

By Stephen C. Webster

Arizona's campaign against Mexican immigrants seems to intensify with every passing week. This latest round of escalation, however, has even some proponents of getting tough on illegal immigrants wondering if it's just gone a bit too far.

The state has been at the very epicenter of America's immigration debate ever since the passage of Senate Bill 1070, which allows police the right to detain anyone suspected of being undocumented. In spite of the rapid, loud backlash against the move, from all appearances the laws have only sparked greater emphasis on -- and increased hatred of -- immigrants in public life.

Enter former Republican State Representative Barry Wong, who hopes to win a job atop the Arizona Corporation Commission, which oversees the state's utilities.

His plan to get elected: promise to cut off electricity, water and gas to all illegal immigrants, even though his idea is completely unenforceable.

"I'm sure there will be criticism about human-rights violations," Wong said, according to the New York Daily News. "Is power or natural gas or any type of utility we regulate, is that a right that people have? It is not a right. It is a service."

http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0705/arizona-gop-candidate-calls-cutting-illegal-immigrants-utilities/

Clay Shirky: 'Paywall will underperform – the numbers don't add up'

The internet guru on the death of newspapers, why paywall will fail and how the internet has brought out our creativity – and generosity

by Decca Aitkenhead

Clay Shirky. Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian

If you are reading this article on a printed copy of the Guardian, what you have in your hand will, just 15 years from now, look as archaic as a Western Union telegram does today. In less than 50 years, according to Clay Shirky, it won't exist at all. The reason, he says, is very simple, and very obvious: if you are 25 or younger, you're probably already reading this on your computer screen. "And to put it in one bleak sentence, no medium has ever survived the indifference of 25-year-olds."

You have probably never even heard of Shirky, and until this interview I hadn't either. When I ask him to define what he does, he laughs, and admits that often when he's leaving a party someone will say to him, "What exactly is it you do?" His standard reply – "I work on the theory and practice of social media"– is not just wilfully opaque, but crushingly dreary, which is funny, because he is one of the most illuminating people I've ever met.

The people who know about Shirky call him an "internet guru". He winces when I say so – "Oh, I hate that!" – and it's easy to see why, for he is the very opposite of the techie stereotype. Now 46, his first career was in the theatre in New York, and he didn't even own a computer until the age of 28, when he had to be introduced to the internet by his mother. Arrestingly self-assured and charismatic, his conversation is warm and discursive, intently engaged yet relaxed – but it's his rhetorical fluency which bowls you over. The architecture of his argument is a Malcolm Gladwell-esque structure of psychological and sociological insight, analysing contemporary technology with the clarity of a historian's perspective and such authority that were he to tell you the sun actually sets in the east, you might almost believe him. At the very least, you'd probably want to – and if a guru is defined by the credulous deference he commands from others, then Shirky unquestionably qualifies. Within minutes I found myself hanging on his every word – despite being temperamentally hostile to almost everything he believes.

Shirky has been writing about the internet since 1996. As the chief technological officer for several web design companies during the 90s, he was quickly hired as a consultant by major media companies – News Corporation, Time Warner, Hearst – all curious about this new thing called the world wide web. In 2000, following "an intuition that the internet was turning social", Shirky turned to the fledgling phenomenon of online social networking – an obscure concept back then, but which has since evolved into MySpace, Facebook and Twitter, to become the web's primary purpose for billions of people all over the world. Shirky now teaches new media at New York University, and in 2008 published his first book, Here Comes Everybody: How Change Happens When People Come Together, which celebrated individuals' new power to communicate, organise and change the world via the web.

His predictions for the fate of print media organisations have proved unnervingly accurate; 2009 would be a bloodbath for newspapers, he warned – and so it came to pass. Dozens of American newspapers closed last year, while several others, such as the Christian Science Monitor, moved their entire operation online. The business model of the traditional print newspaper, according to Shirky, is doomed; the monopoly on news it has enjoyed ever since the invention of the printing press has become an industrial dodo. Rupert Murdoch has just begun charging for online access to the Times – and Shirky is confident the experiment will fail.

"Everyone's waiting to see what will happen with the paywall – it's the big question. But I think it will underperform. On a purely financial calculation, I don't think the numbers add up." But then, interestingly, he goes on, "Here's what worries me about the paywall. When we talk about newspapers, we talk about them being critical for informing the public; we never say they're critical for informing their customers. We assume that the value of the news ramifies outwards from the readership to society as a whole. OK, I buy that. But what Murdoch is signing up to do is to prevent that value from escaping. He wants to only inform his customers, he doesn't want his stories to be shared and circulated widely. In fact, his ability to charge for the paywall is going to come down to his ability to lock the public out of the conversation convened by the Times."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jul/05/clay-shirky-internet-television-newspapers

Police: Conn. priest stole $1M for male escorts

 

This July 6, 2010 booking photo released by the Waterbury, Conn., police department shows the Rev. Kevin Gray, 64, former pastor at Sacred Heart/Sagrado Corazon Parish in Waterbury, who has been charged with stealing more than $1 million in parish funds to use for male escorts, expensive clothing and luxury hotels and restaurants. (AP Photo/Waterbury Police Department) (Anonymous - AP)

By JOHN CHRISTOFFERSEN

NEW HAVEN, Conn. -- The Rev. Kevin J. Gray was a popular priest who appeared to live humbly, forgoing a car and walking to Mass from another parish where he lived so that a Catholic charity could use his space at the rectory. Parishioners thought he had cancer and admired how he helped immigrants in his largely poor parish in Connecticut.

But after a routine audit of the church's finances turned up discrepancies, authorities began a criminal investigation that they say unraveled a secret double life of male escorts, strip bars and lavish spending on the finest restaurants, luxury hotels and expensive clothing, financed with money stolen from the parish.

"About a million," Gray told authorities without hesitation when asked how much he took from the church account, according to his arrest affidavit.

Gray, former pastor at Sacred Heart/Sagrado Corazon Parish in Waterbury, was arrested and charged with first-degree larceny, accused of stealing $1.3 million over seven years from the church, police said. He was arraigned Tuesday in Waterbury Superior Court and was being held on $750,000 bond, court officials said.

"Up until this investigation he had an excellent reputation," police Capt. Christopher Corbett said. "The life he was leading in New York City was much different than the life he was leading in Waterbury as a priest. He's certainly an example of someone who was leading a double life."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/06/AR2010070601918.html?hpid=moreheadlines

The Facebook Economy

Don't stop me

© Tom Toles