BMW For Peace

Shutting down

2005-06-21T00:42:00.000-05:00

This summer I have realized that I don't have the time and creativity (especially when lacking my own computer) to run this blog at the level that I want it to be. Therefore I am shutting this blog down, and I am now creating a new one with a co author. My friend David from back home and enrolling at Carelton college next year will be co moderater of the site with me. So everyone reading this should go investigate our new website.

A solution to War

2005-06-09T16:22:00.000-05:00

In my last post, I encouraged everyone to read the book God's Politics. One thing from the book that really jumped out at me was the author's recomendations for how to bring about just world peace. The basic argument is that peace will not exist unless other needs of people are met. This mostly pertains to global poverty and other quality of life issues. At this point in our world poverty is a choice, and it is possible for us to take great steps towards the irradication of poverty if we choose to do so. Once these problems are solved, nations won't be forced into wars for economic purposes. By curing the problems of poverty people will feel that they have a sense of belonging in the world as well as having a share of the responsibility of things running properly. There will no longer be the ideas of hopelessness which lead people to radical violent action. When people are able to have a decent life the need for wars will not exist in our society.

Book

2005-06-09T01:13:00.000-05:00

I would recomend that everyone out there read the book God's Politics by Jim Wallis. It lays out a vision for a different way for our nation to behave in accordance with the teachings of jesus and the prophets. The book is fascinating, and Mr. Wallis has some brilliant ideas for how to solve problems of our nation and our world.

Unfortunate

2005-06-01T01:00:00.000-05:00

Governor Pawlenty has vetoed a bill that would have created a state poet Laureate. His primary reason was that he thought it would open the door to creating a state mime or state interprative dancer (just like how gay marriage leads to people marrying their pets folks). This would have allowed for the governor to appoint a state poet to be both recognized for their artistic acheivments and to compose verse for events that are of special significance to the state. There would have been no cost to the state for this in any way. I think something like this is a great missed opportunity for out state. This is another example of how our state could do better than it is, and it is choosing to give up an oppertunity to let us do better. This is really representative of what kind of governor Tim Pawlenty has been. My best guess as to why he vetoed this is that he doesn't like the type of people that like poetry, but of course Bill Holm says it best.

"Mr. Pawlenty seems to think that if you keep from raising taxes, the imagination will cease to be rambunctious. He's terrified of the imagination rearing up and giving a good, swift kick to his dead ideas."

History in the Making

2005-05-31T16:31:00.000-05:00

W. Mark Felt has announced that he was the source "Deep Throat" for Woodward and Bernstein used during their invesitigation of President Nixon. The information that he provided helped to bring down the presidentcy. Bob Woodward has just confirmed that this is in fact the truth. Felt was the number two person at the FBI during the Nixon years.

He is a man of courage and conviction, and his actions have done a lot to shape the way that our government now opperates. A result of watergate has been the rise of investigative journalism. This has proved to be a double edged sword of society. In some ways it has made it harder for the American government to do bad things in secret (although now they don't let publicity stop them), but on the other hand it has put our elected officials on trial in the media.

Memorial Day

2005-05-30T17:52:00.000-05:00

Happy Memorial Day to everyone out there especially those who are serving our country at this moment.

Tragedy

2005-05-27T14:04:00.000-05:00

The son of MN state senator Becky Lourey was killed in Iraq yesterday. He was the pilot of the helicopter that was shot down. Matthew Lourey was serving his second tour of duty with the army. Let our thoughts and prayers be with their family in what must be an incredably difficult time in their lives.

Friday Song Lyrics

2005-05-27T13:59:00.000-05:00

Shipbuilding - Elvis Costello and the Attractions

Is it worth it
A new winter coat and shoes for the wife
And a bicycle on the boy's birthday
It's just a rumour that was spread around town
By the women and children
Soon we'll be shipbuilding
Well I ask you
The boy said 'DAD THEY'RE GOING TO TAKE ME TO TASK
BUT I'LL BE BACK BY CHRISTMAS'
It's just a rumour that was spread around town
Somebody said that someone got filled in
For saying that people get killed in
The result of this shipbuilding
With all the will in the world
Diving for dear life
When we could be diving for pearls
It's just a rumour that was spread around town
A telegram or a picture postcard
Within weeks they'll be re-opening the shipyards
And notifying the next of kin
Once again
It's all we're skilled in
We will be shipbuilding
WITH ALL THE WILL IN THE WORLD
DIVING FOR DEAR LIFE
WHEN WE COULD BE DIVING FOR PEARLS

This is Bizarre

2005-05-27T00:15:00.000-05:00

I found this from Buy Blue. I'm really not sure what to think of the:

Demcard,=

This sounds like a fun idea

2005-05-27T00:07:00.000-05:00

There have been a good deal of reports coming out to verify what Newsweek said about Koran abuse.

Americablog

has an idea for somethign democrats could do to help make that situation not happen again (theoretically), score political points, and best of all have fun at the expense of congressional republicans.

"Come on, Democrats. The Republicans would crap their pants if you offered this legislation. If they opposed it, they'd be responsible for sending a terrible message to the world - not to mention, I'd love to see them explain to the voters why they refused to vote for the Bible Protection Act. And if they support it, the religious right will crap as they can't stand ANYTHING that even vaguely recognizes Islam as a legitimate religion, thus we'd inflame a greater schism between the Republicans and America's Taliban."

class politics

2005-05-26T00:09:00.000-05:00

The increasingly frusterated members of the working class are more and more often being represended by the far right of the Republican Party. This seemingly impossible paradox has been made possible as a result of uncoordinated shifts in the direction of both parties. Republicans have crafted a media strategy that resonated with working class voters that more and more have felt left behind by the rest of society. This political message has consisted of cultural issues that more likely than not are unwinable such as stopping abortion and gay rights, patriotism, and issues of decentcy. These distract from the realities of most of their support's lives which involved their lives getting worse as a result of republican policy. The current state of the religious right is an example of how this functons. The political battles that they fight are most likely doomed to failure, but it gets enthusiastic support from segments of the population that otherwise wouldn't have anything to gain from them.
The shift in working class political allignment is just as much the fault of the democratic party. Over the past two decades the democratic party has gone from being concerned with class economic issues to being primarily focused on social issues. It springs from the idea from some democrats that by sticking to a hard line socially liberal policy while compromising on economic issues and becoming more pro business will attract more upper class support and money. It was assumed that lower classes would not abandon the party because they would still be better than republicans. Instead of that happening, more socially conservative and less educated working class voters saw no reason to stick with the democratic party because their needs wern't being represented. It can be infered that the result of this failed powergrab is the cause of the democrats recent election woes especially in Ohio and the midwest.

Living Things

2005-05-25T23:58:00.000-05:00

I recently read a review of the band Living Thigns. They were described as a political punk band with a sound similar to the stooges and other early 70s bands. I downloaded their song Bombs Below, and I thought it was a good one. Beyond that I havn't found much of anything else about the band. If anyone out there has information about these guys, I would really appreciate it if it was passed along.

Compromise

2005-05-23T23:35:00.000-05:00

As many of you have already heard the nuclear option has been averted in the senate. The compromise will allow for some of Bush's nominees to get up or down votes while democrats still retain the use of the filibuster. This is a tremendous win. In addition to the obvious preserving of checks and ballances, it also undercuts Bill Frist. Frist was selling this to his far right base as a sure thing, and they are now pissed about it. This means that they won't be giving him the needed edge in the early primaries. Make no mistake about it, this was about Bill Frist running for president.

Star Wars episode 3

2005-05-21T10:47:00.000-05:00

I was rather impressed with this movie. In my opinion, Lucas has made up for making episode 1 now. The story was well thought out, and it did a really good job of tying together the ideas from the other movies. Also the lightsaber scenes were fantastic. I'd recomend that every fan of the series go see this.

Latest from the Senate front

2005-05-21T10:38:00.000-05:00

Frist has schedualed a vote for Priscila Owens on next Tuesday. This should be when the show down happens over filibusters. Both sides have been playing pretty quiet lately about votes. There's also a group of about 12 senators (bi-partisan) that are working outside of both party's leadership to broker a compromise. Assuming Frist does have the votes for this, Kos has a story about what the democrats will do

in opposition>

Friday Song Lyrics

2005-05-20T18:58:00.000-05:00

The Grateful Dead- Uncle John's Band

Well the first days are the hardest days,
Don't you worry any more, 'Cause when life looks like easy
Street, there is danger at your door.
Think this through with me, let me know your mind.
Woh - oh, what I want to know, is are you kind?

It's a buck dancer's choice my friend; better take my advice.
You know all the rules by now and the fire from ice.
Will you come with me, won't you come with me?
Woh - oh, what I want to know, will you come with me?

Goddamn, well I declare, have you seen the like?
Their walls are built of cannonballs, their motto is
Don't tread on me. Come hear Uncle John's Band playing
To the tide, come with me, or go alone.

It's the same story the crow told me;
It's the only one he knows.
Like the morning sun you come and like the wind you go.
Ain't no time to hate, barely time to wait,
Woh - oh, what I want to know, where does the time go?

I live in a silver mine and I call it Beggar's Tomb;
I got me a violin and I beg you call the tune
Anybody's choice, I can hear your voice.
Woh - oh, what I want to know, how does the song go?

Come hear the Uncle John's Band by the riverside
Got some things to talk about, here beside the risin' tide
Come hear Uncle John's Band playing to the tide,
Come on along, or go alone,
He's come to take his children home.
Woh - oh, what I want to know, how does the song go?

Come hear Uncle John's Band by the riverside,
Got some things to talk about here beside the risin' tide.
Come hear Uncle John's Band playing to the tide, come on
Along or go alone, he's come to take his children home.

I had hoped for someone more successful

2005-05-18T17:46:00.000-05:00

but I can't argue with the absolute power

Frist's hypocracy

2005-05-18T17:28:00.000-05:00

Kos has a fantastic quote from the senator floor that just shows what Frist is doing with this. (sorry the computer I'm on won't allow me to using quoting so it'll be in normal text.) Here's the URL

Schumer and Frist

This morning on the floor of the Senate, Sen. Chuck Schumer asked Majority Leader Bill Frist a simple question:

SEN. SCHUMER: Isn't it correct that on March 8, 2000, my colleague [Sen. Frist] voted to uphold the filibuster of Judge Richard Paez?

Here was Frist's response:

The president, the um, in response, uh, the Paez nomination - we'll come back and discuss this further. Actually I'd like to, and it really brings to what I believe - a point - and it really brings to, oddly, a point, what is the issue. The issue is we have leadership-led partisan filibusters that have, um, obstructed, not one nominee, but two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, in a routine way.

Showdown

2005-05-18T00:15:00.000-05:00

It may begin tomorow. Bill Frist is expected to bring up the nomination of a controversial nominee to the courts. This is where the nuclear option would begin once the democrats move to filibuster the motion. Frist would have done this by now if he surly had the votes. It seems that he's backed into a corner, and has no way out on this. His base is expecting results, but two thirds of the nation is opposed to this. Make no mistake about this, it is only about his aspirations for the presidentcy in 08. I really don't think there is any way that he can ride this out. The democrats made many offers to compromise, but Frist shot down each one. Now, they have threatened to shut down the entire bush agenda. That is to say filibustering every piece of legislation that they bring up. Reid has handled the media very well through this whole ordeal so far, and I think it has earned him a lot of points with the public.

New poem

2005-05-16T15:22:00.000-05:00

Nestled in the hills over L.A.
Rests a spectacular abode
A hall for those closer to gods than man
Inside the great house is ripe with decay
Something intangible is just not right
This is know just from stepping inside
To the senses everything is perfect
But the truth isn’t felt
Instead it’s instinct

The first room contains a woman
Naturally she is dead Tragic of course
An empty square bottle rests just out of reach
It is clear that she is beautiful
But that has nothing to do with looks
Her hand clutches a tombstone
In loving memory of Bessie Smith

In the hall lies a poetic man
The blade of outrageous fortunes
Sticks from his heart
He has thick black hair and wore a frown
He was rumored the unhappiest man in town
After living through needles and L.A.
Love or something similar ended his days

Further along, a rainbow black man
Lies supine on a bed
Not many of that color are around
But there could never be a replacement for him
He made it through all of the industrial trappings
Past fires, through haze, and around cross town traffic
But 8 of the good doctor’s pills finished him off

Outside in the garage next to a beat up dodge
Lies a man who has lost his face
Cald in thrift store millionaire flannel
He rented a heart of gold that touched everything
Especially that shotgun resting 36 inches away
His stomach ache was sadly too much
Peace Love Empathy

Light Posting

2005-05-15T19:12:00.000-05:00

Sorry I havn't been saying too much lately. It's been difficult with moving back in and not having a functional computer. I'll be getting going again within the next couple weeks though so keep checking in.

Linking

2005-05-15T18:50:00.000-05:00

I have somewhat reluctantly added Buy Blue to the links on this page. I still have my reservations about focusing so much on getting corperate donations for democrats. I think there are much better ways for the democrats to do business. However big business funding is a political reality, and this is something that we do have to live with. Consumers have a lot of power, and this is one way that the average person can influence the political process. I would encourage everyone to check out Buy Blue, and give some thought to their way of doing things. Also there are some really interesting articles on the site.

Friday Song Blogging

2005-05-14T00:03:00.000-05:00

The semester is done, final papers are turned in, and i'm back at home now. So this song just fits.

The Weight - the Band

I pulled into Nazareth, was feelin' about half past dead;
I just need some place where I can lay my head.
"Hey, mister, can you tell me where a man might find a bed?"
He just grinned and shook my hand, and "No!", was all he said.

(Chorus:)
Take a load off Fanny, take a load for free;
Take a load off Fanny, And (and) (and) you can put the load right on me.

I picked up my bag, I went lookin' for a place to hide;
When I saw Carmen and the Devil walkin' side by side.
I said, "Hey, Carmen, come on, let's go downtown."
She said, "I gotta go, but m'friend can stick around."

(Chorus)

Go down, Miss Moses, there's nothin' you can say
It's just ol' Luke, and Luke's waitin' on the Judgement Day.
"Well, Luke, my friend, what about young Anna Lee?"
He said, "Do me a favor, son, woncha stay an' keep Anna Lee company?"

(Chorus)

Crazy Chester followed me, and he caught me in the fog.
He said, "I will fix your rack, if you'll take Jack, my dog."
I said, "Wait a minute, Chester, you know I'm a peaceful man."
He said, "That's okay, boy, won't you feed him when you can."

(Chorus)

Catch a cannon ball now, t'take me down the line
My bag is sinkin' low and I do believe it's time.
To get back to Miss Fanny, you know she's the only one.
Who sent me here with her regards for everyone.

Waynesville

2005-05-10T23:25:00.000-05:00

The pastor from East Waynesville N.C. that kicked 9 members of his congregation out because they voted for John Kerry has now resigned as a result of the controversy. Before the election he also had endorsed George Bush from the pulpit which is a violation of tax and election laws.

Nuclear Proliferation

2005-05-10T01:43:00.000-05:00

Steve Andreason was the MN first CD congressional candidate, and in addition to that he is a former national security advisor and an expert in the field. He is currently working with the International Institute for Stratigic Studies. He has written a chapter of a fourth comong book on Nuclear proliferation. Here is a summery from this chapter.

Nuclear Proliferation: Avoiding the ‘Greatest Possible Danger’

For over four decades, the international community has worked to
prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. These efforts have
demonstrably curtailed the spread of nuclear arms. Yet, today, there
is a growing belief that the nuclear non-proliferation regime has
reached a tipping point, where in the absence of measures to repair
and strengthen the regime it might unravel altogether. The
near-emergence of new nuclear-weapon states in Northeast Asia and the
Middle East, the proliferation of technology for the production of
enriched uranium and plutonium, illicit nuclear supplier networks, and
a lack of leadership by the nuclear-weapon states all point to a major
crisis that, if not urgently addressed, could lead to a nuclear
catastrophe. The foundation for building a more robust system for
mitigating nuclear threats is an unprecedented degree of cooperation
by the international community and leadership by key states – in
particular, nuclear-weapon states under the Treaty on the
Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). In addition, there must be
action on an urgent set of priorities, including securing nuclear
weapons and materials, a renewed commitment to nuclear
non-proliferation and disarmament, addressing the risks of enriched
uranium and plutonium for civil uses, resolving the North Korean and
Iranian nuclear crises, and strengthened inspection and enforcement.

As I Promised

2005-05-09T21:50:00.000-05:00

Here is the city pages story about Mary Kiffmeyer as best villan of 2004.

f it's true that the current crop of new conservatives are villainous--and it's true, they are--then you've got to hand it to the state GOP for throwing sweet little Mary Kiffmeyer out there. The secretary of state is so aw-shucks Midwestern that she could have materialized from the pages Laura Ingalls Wilder. It's true that in her button-down dresses and pearls, Madame Secretary hardly cuts an imposing figure. And it's also true that there are many good candidates that spring from the same moralistic sewer hole as she does: Last year's winner David Strom (retire the jersey already), state senator and anti-gay marriage obstructionist Michele Bachmann, the self-righteous circle-jerkers over at the Powerline blog, even Governor HockeyPuck himself. The more infantile Republicans in these parts offer us an embarrassment of riches, really. But Kiffie walks off with the booby prize this time. It wasn't so much that she sent a missive to a certain little alternative weekly saying the publication might be in violation of state election laws for encouraging people to vote at a state fair booth (long story; upshot: we weren't), but that her actions seemed so curious--we thought it was the job of the secretary of state to encourage voter turnout. Madame Secretary first insisted on implementing many new (and ultimately confusing) guidelines under the federal Help America Vote Act, even though 41 states opted out for the 2004 election. (This gained her national attention, and not in a good way.) She further muddled up the election process by taking shots at election officials from Ramsey and Hennepin counties, who, it turned out, had followed the HAVA guidelines to the letter. And she placed restrictions on media access to polling booths, which were widely believed to be the most stringent in the country (the term "Freedom Fighter" comes to mind). That she goes through every controversy with an unfailingly smiling visage might mean that she believes that God is on her side. Or that she has no idea what she's doing. Either way, it's apparent that 2004 was Madame Secretary's year for villainous deeds.

Bonus!

2005-05-09T00:30:00.000-05:00

Well it's 12 30 at nightl and my paper is going a lot slower than I would have liked
I can only see one solution to this: Bonus song lyrics!

Satisfied Mind by Johnny Cash
How many times have
You heard someone say
If I had his money
I could do things my way

But little they know
That it's so hard to find
One rich man in ten
With a satisfied mind

Once I was waitin'
In fortune and fame
Everything that I dreamed for
To get a start in life's game

Then suddenly it happened
I lost every dime
But I'm richer by far
With a satisfied mind

Money can't buy back
Your youth when you're old
Or a friend when you're lonely
Or a love that's grown cold

The wealthiest person
Is a pauper at times
Compared to the man
With a satisfied mind

When my life has ended
And my time has run out
My friends and my loved ones
I'll leave there's no doubt

But one thing's for certain
When it comes my time
I'll leave this old world
With a satisfied mind

How many times have
You heard someone say
If I had his money
I could do things my way

But little they know
That it's so hard to find
One rich man in ten
With a satisfied mind

What the Hell?

2005-05-07T01:26:00.000-05:00

Can they even do this? The East Waynesville Baptist Church has just kicked out all of it's members that happen to vote democrat. Kos has the story. Does anyone know where East Waynesville is?

Friday Song Blogging

2005-05-06T23:28:00.000-05:00

Light-Rail Coyote- Sleater-Kinney

Let’s meet in the city where
The rivers cross bridges
thereLet’s float down into the stream
Of rich and poor pioneers
A kid from a western town
Wants to be seen and go out
Let’s borrow my parent’s car
Let’s stay out all night up there
And Burnside will be our street
Where the kids and the hookers meet Diners and strip club junk
Bookstores and punk rock clubs
Water, Building and Sin
(I’m as green as this blade in the grass that bends)
Big Oregon city draws you in
(In the wind that blows on the long weekends)
A promise fulfilled or not
(Where I take the bridge to the water fountains)
Just hang on until the summer, it’s hot
(And to gain the hope that the city brings)
We’ll make our home water-tight
Work all day, play all night
And hope we’re not washed away
By deceit or tragedy
And Joan of Arc rules Northeast
Where the poor and the hipsters meet
The grid that divides us all
The river makes final call
Out at the edge of town
Where airfield runs water down
Coyote crosses the tracksAnd hops on the Light-Rail Max
Water, Building and Sin
(I’m as green as this blade in the grass that bends)
Big Oregon city draws you in
(In the wind that blows on the long weekends)
A promise fulfilled or not
(Where I take the bridge to the water fountains)
Just hang on until the summer, it’s hot
(And to gain the hope that the city brings)
And if you wanna be a friend of mine
Cross the river to the east side
Find me on the eve of suicide
Tell me the city is no place to hide
Take me out into a sunny day
Through the grotto or the promenade
You came to me in the nick of time
Thankful for the things I left behind
Oh dirty river, come let me in (3X)
Oh dirty river

Here's something interesting

2005-05-05T18:15:00.000-05:00

The city pages has named current MN Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer as the best villain in this year's best in the Twin Cities Review. I'm inclined to agree with them. People up here at UMM arn't going to forget what she tried to do anytime soon. As secretary of state, she has aggressively tried to prevent college students from voting. As I mentioned before, her policy was that students must vote at the location on their ID unless they have other means of proving where they live. I'll admit that at first this does sound perfectly reasonable, but this was targeted to attempt to surprise the college student vote. It is not uncommon for students to have difficulty in proving their residentcy. We didn't have any major voting surpressions in Morris because the college democrats went out of their way to make sure that people knew about this rule change and were there to vouch for people at polling places. Another thing that she did was to require that Terrorist warnings be posted at polling places. This was blatantly a tool to stoke fear amongst voters.

The primary job of the Secretary of State is to ensure that elections occur properly. I think it is shameful the way that she has used the office to engage in partisan hackery (or at least attempted to). I already posted an endorsement for Christian Sande a democrat running in 06, and I plan on sticking with this issue. In the past few elections in this country we have seen a disturbing trend of attempting to prevent people from voting. It's disappointing to see that some conservatives don't have enough faith in their own beliefs being right that they resort to preventing people who are unlikely to vote for them from having fair and equal access to the polls.

Unfortunately, the City Pages article is not online at the moment, but I'll post it as soon as it becomes available.

2005-05-04T22:26:00.000-05:00

If you are seeing an ad for something called Crusade Clothing right now on this site please ignore it. I am not sure what it is doing there. Maybe it will go away soon. I'll look into it with google, and see what I can find out, but this is still crunch week for me so I can't gaurentee any immediate result.

Environment

2005-05-04T11:45:00.000-05:00

This is an interesting site about the environment that I found out about through Blah3. I hope you'll all go out and check this one out.

Now that it's gone down

2005-05-03T14:35:00.000-05:00

So the girls back home did their protest and had their fun. Now what?
I hope that this will lead to dialouge within both the local and greater communities about the issues of women's rights and domestic abuse. It's great that everyone is going out and making their voices heard, but i hope that these same people are willing to take the time and energy that is neccesary to follow through on something like this. I am certainly not the best or most qualified person to speak on this, but i've got a few ideas.
Contact your MN elected official s and ask them to support women's rights issues
Help out at domestic violence shelters
Break negative Stereotypes
Ask local businesses to pay women equal wages
Boycott them if they don't
Pay attention to the issues in your own community

Well they did it

2005-05-03T14:33:00.000-05:00

Good luck to everyone involved in this. Hopefully things will all work out for the best.

WINONA, Minn. -- After all the radio interviews, after all the newspaper stories and television stories and hundreds and hundreds of e-mails, Carrie Rethlefsen ended her lesson in free speech and democracy today by doing a simple thing:

She walked into school with her "I [heart] My Vagina" T-shirt's message in plain sight. About 40 classmates had walked in just seconds before after turning their T-shirts inside out.

And, minutes later, she emerged with another lesson learned. The administrators at Winona Senior High School mean what they say. They sent her home for the day.

"I'm happy," said Rethlefsen, 18. "I got my message out there."

What began as a simple act of defiance -- she wore a "I [heart] My Vagina" button to school to raise awareness about violence against women, even after officials told her not to -- evolved into a platform to talk about women's rights, the fight against violence and freedom of speech that she couldn't have imagined two weeks ago.

Carrie Rethlefsen
Renee Jones
Star Tribune

She's been a guest on nearly 30 radio shows. She's been interviewed by two different television news shows. Her story has been carried in newspapers all over the world. Even Fox News' Bill O'Reilly called to have her on his show -- a request she politely declined.

"I pretty much talked for three straight days," she said of her 15 minutes of fame.

It all started after Rethlefsen attended a production of "The Vagina Monologues" at Winona State University back in February. She started wearing the button to school to highlight the issues discussed in the play, such as violence against women.

School officials told her the button was offensive, but Rethlefsen refused to take it off.

She continued to wear the button despite threats of suspension and possibly expulsion.

Other students came up with the idea to wear T-shirts in support of her message. The rally appears to be a middle ground for Rethlefsen and school officials.

Freedom vs. offensePrincipal Nancy Wondrasch thought she had a compromise worked out with Rethlefsen for today. Students would be allowed to wear T-shirts and rally around the flagpole at the front of the school before classes started.

In addition, she said, the school was taking steps to ensure that the issue of violence against women and women's rights will continue to be heard in the school, by encouraging the creation of a women's studies group and inviting the Women's Resource Center of Winona to bring in speakers .

"We hope this isn't just a one day thing," she said.

But wearing the shirts inside the school is not appropriate, she said. In a school of 1,300 students, the word vagina is too disruptive, she said. And teachers and other staff members stood at the doors to make sure students either covered the shirts or turned them inside out before coming inside.

By the time students began arriving at the flagpole at about 8 a.m. today, teachers were out in force, positioned in front of the school and at other entrances. A couple police officers also stopped by. A few minutes before classes were scheduled to begin at 9 a.m., Assistant Principal Ben Johnson stood near the doors with a bullhorn. "The drama" would begin at 9, he predicted.

A 37-year veteran of the Winona schools who is set to retire in a couple months, Johnson said of Rethlefsen and the other students gathered nearby: "They are good kids. They just have a different view of what's appropriate. We just feel differently about a particular word being used in school."

Freedom of speech is one thing, he said. Disrupting school with a word many people find offensive is another.

"It has to do with where you draw the line," he said. "We consider public education to be the backbone of America. And we have to draw the line. If you let this in, what's next?"

But Dwayne Voegeli, a social studies teacher at the school, said he admires the stand Rethlefsen and the other students have taken.

"I'm very proud of them and I'm also inspired by them," he said. "She's been really mature and very respectful, both of the school and of the principal. And she hasn't lost sight of the reason for doing this in the first place."

Taking a stand

Mary Thorp, a Winona resident, stood at the flagpole holding a sign. On one side, it read: "Every three minutes, someone is raped." On the other, was the word "Offensive?"

"I think that these young women have taken a stand," she said. Against sexual abuse. Against violence. And against censorship.

Nearby, Jon Heer, 18, a Winona High senior, wore a T-shirt saying, "I support your Vagina." His sister is a student at the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, he said. He's been raised "with the belief that people are equal."

As the minutes ticked away, students held signs and handed out fliers, explaining Rethlefsen's stand. Then, just before 9 a.m., the group moved to the door. Almost in unison, they took off their shirts, turned them inside out, and put them back on again. Then they walked past the teachers and into school.

Rethlefsen, however, strode inside without changing her shirt. She was immediately escorted to the office. A few minutes later, she was joined by another student. Katelyn Delvaux, who wouldn't change her shirt either. She joked that her mother was expecting the call from the principal's office.

Outside, the young women said they probably won't wear the shirts Wednesday. There are only a few weeks left to school and both are looking forward to graduating.

Still, Rethlefsen, who plans to study women's studies and journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison next year, said she believes her efforts will have a lasting effect.

"Even if people disagreed with me," she said. "At least they were talking about the issues."

Finals week Drama

2005-05-02T22:49:00.000-05:00

Today was the first day of my last week of college. It started off very well, I turned in my big russian paper, and I aced a sociology test. This evening my computer broke. The lcd screen is what broke so I am still able to save my important files (ie novel, poetry, and homework) Thank god for good friends, understanding family and open acces campus computer labs. Between the three I should be able to the 4 papers I still have to work on and my creative writing portfolio in on time.

Stand by for Best Buy ranting

New poem

2005-05-02T14:05:00.000-05:00

All my hometown’s stars are dead
The sky’s spirit is held back
The progress of man preempts it.
Everything has gotten so much better
All night stores and out of place lights
These pleasures for one and all
Only the passing viewers and damn hippy kids
Shout how it has gotten worse

This shouldn’t be the way it is
Going down every street it is the same
The sheer black sky is molested
by factory made enlightenment
A radioactive haze clutches the starry night
It grasp obscures all that is natural and true

Burning in neon, the nights over Winona rest
Bastard rays of light pierce serenity
Looking down on the town; the nights glow uneasily
Neon signs and SUV lights are the new beasts
That steal the skies from overhead

Christian Sande

2005-05-02T00:08:00.000-05:00

Last thursday Christian Sande, a candidate for MN secretary of state, came out to Morris to speak with the college democrats. He is an environmental and election lawyer from the the Twin Cities. I was very impressed with this guy. It was clear that he wasn't just coming out to tow the dlf line in the midterm elections. He spoke to us about issues of election fairness and making sure that all people have the right to vote. In the past five years, this has become a major issue throughout the nation. Last year, the current secretary of state tried to take measures to prevent college students from voting by taking steps to say that college students may only vote from where they can prove they live from (ie what your driver's license says). For the most part, we were able to avoide problems fromt his in Morris because the college dems were able to get people out to vouch for people at polling places. Sande was articulate and really seemed to be familiar with the issues. I plan on doing what I can to help him out, and I would encourage everyone else that reads this to check out his website and give him your consideration.

Oops

2005-05-02T00:03:00.000-05:00

I've been really busy lately. This is my last week of classes out here at Morris. I just finished a paper on The Brothers Karamazov, and now I only have one final portfolio and 4 papers left to do. I realize that I havn't had a post since last wednessday, and I even forgot my friday song blogging. You can probably expect that posts will be light for the next week and a half to two weeks, but I will never again forget Friday song blogging. I think i'll treat you guys to some Bright Eyes today
Make War

Our love is dead but without limit
Like the surface of the moon
Or the land between here and the mountains
It is not these hiding places that have kept us innocent
But the way you taught me to just let it all go back
So we learn to be as faithless
Stand behind bulletproof glass
Exchanging our affections through a drawer
It was always horribly convenient and happening too fast
You should count your change before you're even out the door
Well, yes you should, but please return, return
To the person that you were, and I will do the same
'Cause it's too hard to belong to someone who is gone
My compass spins, but wilderness remains
Once too often I've retreated into the depths of my despair
I built a barricade to block you on the road
But standing there with all of my possessions piled higher than a house
I felt closer to you than you ever would have known
So let's let all these tiny acts of charity become ground on which to build
A monument to commemorate our time
And though you say you've found another who will surely speed you on your way
Don't let the forest grow over that path you came there by
But you will, so, so hurry up and run to the one that you love
And blind him with your kindness
And he'll make war, oh, war, on who you were before
And claim all that has spoiled in your heart
But now I tell myself I've mended under these patches of blue sky
There's still a few holes that let in a little rain
And so it's crying on my shingles
My floorboards moan under my feet
The refrigerator's whining so I've got reason to complain
But I'm not gonna bless you with such compliments
Some degrading song of praise
Like the kind that converted you to me so long ago
Because the truth is that gossip's as good as gospel in this town
You can save face but you won't ever save your soul
And that's a fact so, so hurry up and run to the one that you love
And blind him in your likeness
And he'll become, become, oh, the prisoner I was
And know all that has spoiled in your heart
Yeah, he'll know it all
He'll know all that has spoiled in your heart
so hurry up and run to the one that you love
And blind him with your kindness
And he'll make war, oh, war, on who you were before
And claim all that has spoiled in your heart

MO-town news

2005-04-28T00:13:00.000-05:00

Christian Sande a candidate for the DFL nomination for secretary of state will be in Morris tomorow. He will be in Louie's lower level at the campus student center at 6:15. This event is being put on by the campus DFL but everyone is welcome to attend.

Nuclear Option

2005-04-28T00:02:00.000-05:00

Al Gore gave a fantastic speech today about the importance of the Filibuster. Apparently there's a blog encouraging him to run for President in 2008. While I don't want to make any committments this early, I'll say that if he would have spoke durring the campain the way he has been since it our nation wouldn't be in the mess that it is in now.

Primary Colors

2005-04-27T23:13:00.000-05:00

I would encourage everyone to go and check out a copy of Primary Colors (Book or the Movie) Without giving away to much, the general story is that a young man from an important political family gets a job working as a campain advisor to a charasmatic southern governor. He works hard to help out the candidate and becomes highly emotionally invested in the outcome of events. Not long after he begins working, he learns that the candidate that he works for is not the most moral person. He did a lot of shady things in his personal life, and it appeared most of the time that he was mostly concerned with his on personal success, and the issues that he spoke of while he did believe in them were not his primary concern or motivation.

This is not something which is isolated just to the pages and scripts of contemporary fiction. It's not on common at all in politics for the people at the top, the movement leaders and big shot politicians, use a cause to further their own success. Some peole just love to see their name in the headlines or their voice on the radio. Obviously I consider this something that is both immoral and not healthy for social and political movements. I can infer that when someone is more concerned with their own social status and career than the ideas and values that they are supporting they would potentially be more willing to change their political values or organization's agenda in order to help their own cause. I think that this is something that is a part of why we have such a negative political culture at this time. People feel that it is ok to exploit causes for their own gain. I'm not trying to advocate any sort of mass retribution against movement leaders or anything, but wouldn't it be nice if we could start teaching people that such behavior is not culturally acceptable, but then i suppose it would be nice if behavior like that wasn't culturally acceptable.

Polling

2005-04-26T21:06:00.000-05:00

A lot of people in politics (especially web bloggers) live by the mantra that it is always election season. This is both good and bad in different ways. It's good because it helps keep attention on the issues that are important to people's lives. For example a lot of the major debates that are going on in D.C. are going to have major political ramifications in the next election cycle. The reason that a lot of these issues (i.e. Shivo, filibuster, Bolton nomination, Tom Delay) are getting as much publicity as they are is that one and or both parties feels that they can use it to their political advantage in the midterm elections. Polling indicates that each one of the issues i mentioned could potentially be a big winner for democrats to campain on. Other recent polls show that the popularity of both President Bush and congress have been droping for the past few weeks. This is another legitimate use of Polls. It is a good idea to have approval polls on the current government. This lets elected officials know if they are doing a good job representing their constituents, and it lets voters cut through political spin and get a better idea if their views are in the mainstreem or not.

What I have a problem with is the way that polls are already being put in the field for specific 06 head to head races. I don't think this serves much purpose other than to let the media serve as early kingmakers for who runs in the next series of elections. I've noticed a lot of the big name progressive bloggers have been posting poll results for hypothetical races almost daily. It is my humble opinion that this isn't doing anything. There is a lot of work that needs to be done in order to make big gains in the midterm elections. I believe that influential blogs should to more to reach out to regular people (not just their base readers) and work to raise issues that truly effect people's lives. I'm not trying to imply that isn't already being done, but I just think that putting more effort into that instead of to talking about polls and pimping out candidates for 06 so early would give much better long term results

Affirmative Action

2005-04-24T21:29:00.000-05:00

In my sociology class last week, we spent some time discussing affirmative action. The first thing I learned from this was that I didn't know much about how it works. Based on what I thought that I knew about Affirmative Action, I had always been uncomfortable with it because I thought that it was lowering standards to compensate for society's racism. I had always seen it as something of a cop out because it didn't change the structure of an unequal society.

The first thing about Affirmative Action that most peole (myself included) are unware of is that it is not a quota based federal program. Under title VII of the 1964 civil rights act Quotas are illeagle. Workplace Affirmative action functions by works by broadening the applicant pool for any openings. It mandates that elligable companies take steps to get more interest in jobs from under represented groups whenever they are underrepresented in that field. The purpose of the program is to prevent on going employment discrimination. This isn't intended as something for only racial and ethnic minorities. Military veterans and people with disabilities have been greatly benefited from it as well.

Many times affirmative action is scapgoated by people when they are unable to find work. It has been found that overall White Males have not been hurt in the job market as a result of the program. This is not to say that there have been absolutly no incidences where a white man has not gotten a job because of affirmative action, but that is in no way the norm. Another thing that most people do not know is that most jobs in our nation's work force are not applicable to Affirmative Action laws. The only private sector jobs that are mandated to abide by these laws are companies that both employ at minimum 50 indaviduals and hold contracts with the federal government in excess of $50,000. Government organizations and offices are also required to participate in Affirmative Action programs. In very rare cases of severe pervasive discrimination, the federal courts may intervene and integrate a work place often by means of implementing hiring quotas. This is probably where a lot of the confusion about quotas being required in Affirmative Action got it's start from.

A substancial ammount of criticism of Affirmative Action programs is that they are either ineffective or only there to compensate for past racism that no longer exists. First off, it is important for people to understand that racism is still very prevalent in society today. Secondly, Affirmative action has not had any noticable detrimental affect on the economy nor that of indavidual workers. In fact, 41% of CEO's responed to a survey with the opinion that Affirmative Action has actually helped to remove cronyism in personal decisons and increase productivity.

The Pope

2005-04-24T13:14:00.000-05:00

There's been a lot of hating on the new pope recently. This is something that really bothers me a lot even though I'm not a catholic. I think everyone should give the guy a fair shake before they go off trying to discredit him. In the rush to do so, I think this's something that people have missed about him that could make things very interesting in the future. The new Pope is a very dedicated peacemaker.

The election of Benedict XVI brings hope for the continuation of peacemaking as central to the papacy. Just as John Paul II cried out again and again to the world, “War never again!” the new pope has taken the name of the one who first made that cry, Benedict XV, commonly known as “the peace pope.”

The name is no coincidence. In fact, Cardinal Justin Rigali, Archbishop of Philadelphia said Tuesday that the new pope told the cardinals he was selecting Benedict because "he is desirous to continue the efforts of Benedict XV on behalf of peace ... throughout the world."

As a Cardinal, the new pope was a staunch critic of the U.S. led invasion of Iraq. On one occasion before the war, he was asked whether it would be just. "Certainly not," he said, and explained that the situation led him to conclude that "the damage would be greater than the values one hopes to save."

Another Editorial

2005-04-23T21:36:00.000-05:00

Our good friend Pharyngula has a wonderful editorial in the Star Tribune about evolution and ID (intelligent design). This has been somewhat of a big deal both in Morris, and in a lot of the blogs I follow. I havn't weighed in on it myself because I'm not familiar enough with the topic, but I would encourage everyone to read this and theck out his site. Also, he has a good piece offering a different perspective on Vaginagate.

Editorial

2005-04-23T19:28:00.000-05:00

The Star Tribune has a nice piece on vagina gate in today's edition

Young people probably won't have seen him, but there once was a funny guy named Allen Funt who had a TV show called "Candid Camera." The gimmick was to put people in awkward or embarrassing spots, film their reactions with a hidden camera and then at the end say, "Smile, you're on Candid Camera!" In 1970, Funt released a hilarious film called "What Do You Say to a Naked Lady?" Naked women would show up in unlikely places, such as a crowded elevator or at a secretary's desk in an office, and the camera would film reactions.

In the film's most poignant sketch, Funt had a naked woman teach a sex-ed class to a group of teenagers. The students were quite interested in what the teacher had to say. No one cut up.

Then Funt had the teacher give the same class to a bunch of the students' mothers. The mothers were tittering and guffawing and totally beyond learning anything. The question was obvious: Who were the mature people here and who were the adolescents?

We thought of Funt and his naked-lady project when we read of the dustup at Winona High School over two very bright young women who wore buttons to school that said, "I (heart) My Vagina." They were ordered to remove the buttons, Star Tribune reporter James Walsh wrote, because "the discomfort it causes trumps the girls' right to free speech. The girls disagree. And despite repeated threats of suspension and expulsion, [Carrie] Rethlefsen has continued to wear her button."

Who's being mature here? Our vote would go to Rethlefsen and her friend Emily Nixon. In the context of their age, they are showing quite a lot more maturity than school officials.

The whole thing started when Rethlefsen saw a performance of "The Vagina Monologues," a play by Eve Ensler. The point of the play is to get people to thinking about vaginas and their place in women's (and men's) lives, to remove the taboo from the word and the complex organ it names. It is an intensely political play, designed to empower women and get the sympathetic, supportive attention of men. For a young woman, a button saying she loves her vagina is about as perfect an expression of the play's intent as you could find.

This confrontation should never have been allowed to develop. It did because the adults in this drama, trained educators, seem to have missed two important lessons: Beware of getting involved in a head-to-head power struggle with kids, because one way or another you will lose, and when unexpected "teachable moments" come along, grab them.

The first lesson is now coming home in spades as fellow students by the score line up to support Rethlefsen and Nixon. They are planning, under threat of expulsion, to wear T-shirts carrying the "I (heart) my vagina" legend or, for boys, "I support your vagina." Will someone please call a truce before anyone gets hurt here?

As for the "teachable moment" idea, this presented a terrific opportunity to explore with students the ideas undergirding "The Vagina Monologues" and the larger questions surrounding social embarrassment over naming body parts that everyone has. Every boy has a penis and every girl has a vagina, and every teenager can give you at least six names for each. What teenagers are less well equipped to understand are the awesome responsibilities that go with an ownership certificate for either one; that was part of the lesson to be taken from this.

Teenage rebellion is a necessity in the transition to adulthood. The form of rebellion that Rethlefsen, Nixon and their supporters have chosen strikes us as among the healthiest. We wish them, and their educators, well as they work to sort this out. Caring for one another will take everyone a far piece beyond what they can achieve through confrontation.

2005-04-22T22:48:00.000-05:00

As many of you know i'm a poor college student. I feel kinda bad signing my blog up for ads, but I need to pay the bills. So i'd ask you all to go and check out the adds on here. I may still tweak around the style and location of the adds.

Happy Earthday!

2005-04-22T22:26:00.000-05:00

Alright so it's earth day....now what? I could go on and say that we should all go out and not drive today or do some other thing like that. In reality that'll do nothing; come tomorow or the next day we'll all be back to doing things the way they are now.

There are two big things that need to be done. First off we need to start investing in Green technologies and general science in order to make current products better.
Secondly, I think we're all going to have get into the mindset that our lifestyles may have to begin changing drasticly. At some point down the line we all may need to sacrafise things that we consider important to our daily lives, routines, and way of life. This should be on our mind every day; not just for earth day.

Friday Song Lyrics

2005-04-22T10:46:00.000-05:00

Alright i've been focusing a lot on Vagina-gate lately, and I still will focus heavily on the story. Also there's been plenty of other things going on as well that i'm going to try and discuss here. But first, it is friday and time for some lyrics. I was raised by a very devout and loyal union family. Two things they tought me young were first the importance of unions and second a love of folk music. So today we have a wonderful old song by Pete Seeger

Which Side Are You On

Come all of you good workers
Good news to you I'll tell
Of how that good old union
Has come in here to dwell

(Chorus)
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?

My daddy was a miner
And I'm a miner's son
And I'll stick with the union
Till every battle's won

They say in Harlan County
There are no neutrals there
You'll either be a union man
Or a thug for J.H. Blair

Oh, workers can you stand it?
Oh, tell me how you can
Will you be a lousy scab
Or will you be a man?

Don't scab for the bosses
Don't listen to their lies
Us poor folks haven't got a chance
Unless we organize

Latest from the Front

2005-04-22T00:30:00.000-05:00

The Winona Daily News finaly gets in on the story. It looks like there are a few new developments to what is going on. Most notably the school has backed down from their threat to Expell the two students. The quotes from the Principal in the interview give me the sense that this could be the beginings of backing down now that this is becoming an issue.

Here's an interesting part of the article on what other students in Winona are wearing to school.

Some students claim the school has focused on the button, while ignoring other controversial attire.

Junior Ian Nicholson said students wore shirts Wednesday that had the numerals 88—representing the H in Hail Hitler— to commemorate Adolf Hitler's birthday, but he didn't know any who were reprimanded.

Other students said their peers often wear shirts that say "Pet my pussy," "I got lucky in Kentucky" or attire bearing Hooters or Playboy bunny logo without consequence.

"They just saw the word vagina and got freaked out," said Nicholson. He plans to wear the male version, "I support your vagina," T-shirt to support Rethlefsen because he believes the issue is one of free speech.

With 1,400 students at the high school, Wondrasch said it is impossible to spot every student wearing offensive clothing.

Speak up (even if your voice shakes)

2005-04-22T00:07:00.000-05:00

Just being outraged by these events are not enough. To effect positive social change, people need to take action. For this situation, the most appropriate thing to do would be to in a RESPECTFUL manor to contact the administration at the Winona Senior High School or write a letter to the editor of the Winona Daily News to express your feelings on the issue. Here is the Open letter that I wrote to the administration of the Winona Senior High School.

To whom it may concern.
I was very disappointed to read in the Star Tribune about the way students have been treated at Winona Senior High School. I am a graduate of the 2004 class from WSHS, and in my years there I have known the school administration to be reasonable and level headed. I am shocked at the way that the school is handling the current debate on women’s rights. Surely there must be a better solution to the situation than threatening to expel students for wearing something as innocuous as a pin that says “I [heart] my vagina” In this age where the media sends all sorts of messages to young girls that they should hate the way they look and try to change. I think it is incredibly commendable that they are willing to stand up and say that have pride in themselves. Schools are places that young people learn how to fit into society as a whole. Right now it appears that WSHS has a choice whether to embrace the idea that it is ok for girls to be proud of themselves. I sincerely hope that the schools make the right choice.
Aside from the issues of morality, I have other issues with the school’s actions to censor their speech. As I’m sure that you are aware in the case of Tinker v. Des Moines, the supreme court ruled that students have the right to free speech. Another part of this ruling was that students may protest as long as they are passive and not disruptive. Now I remember what high school was like, and I can assure you that there are plenty of things more distracting than a girl wearing a pin that says I [heart] my vagina.
Thank you for taking the time to read this
Chris Yard
Class of 2004

Free Speech in Schools

2005-04-22T00:05:00.000-05:00

The Supreme Court has ruled that students and teachers have the right to free speech, and they may also engage in protests that are passive and not disruptive such as wearing black armbands to protest the vietnam war (or I [heart] my vagina pins).

Petitioners, three public school pupils in Des Moines, Iowa, were suspended from school for wearing black armbands to protest the Government's policy in Vietnam. They sought nominal damages and an injunction against a regulation that the respondents had promulgated banning the wearing of armbands. The District Court dismissed the complaint on the ground that the regulation was within the Board's power, despite the absence of any finding of substantial interference with the conduct of school activities. The Court of Appeals, sitting en banc, affirmed by an equally divided court. Held:

1. In wearing armbands, the petitioners were quiet and passive. They were not disruptive and did not impinge upon the rights of others. In these circumstances, their conduct was within the protection of the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth. Pp. 505-506.

2. First Amendment rights are available to teachers and students, subject to application in light of the special characteristics of the school environment. Pp. 506-507.

3. A prohibition against expression of opinion, without any evidence that the rule is necessary to avoid substantial interference with school discipline or the rights of others, is not permissible under the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Pp. 507-514.

Links

2005-04-21T23:20:00.000-05:00

I now have links to various other blogs or websites that I think are worth while. I would encourage everyone to check them out.

More on the Winona Issue

2005-04-21T17:17:00.001-05:00

It looks like this story is starting to grow. One of the twin cities newscasts WCCO has a story on it that I found by way of the Village Voice. Also the Star Tribune story that I posted yesterday is now being carried on Fark's news list.
This is an issue that I deeply care about both because very close friends of mine are being affected by it, but also, I think issues of free speech and womens rights are becoming more and more overlooked at times when they should be more important to our society.
I am incredably proud of these girls. Best of luck to them.

Way to go girls

2005-04-20T19:21:00.000-05:00

I'm really proud of the girls back in Winona for this one. I think issues like this are exactly what is wrong with education in America, and especially with the ways things work in Winona.

Two Winona Senior High School students, Carrie Rethlefsen and Emily Nixon, have found themselves in hot water with school officials. Why? Because after Carrie attended a performance of the play "The Vagina Monologues" last month, they wore buttons to school that read: "I [heart] My Vagina."

School leaders said the pin is inappropriate, that the discomfort it causes others trumps the girls' right to free speech. The girls disagree. And, despite repeated threats of suspension and expulsion, Rethlefsen has continued to wear her button. Their efforts have won support from other students and community members, so much so that more than 100 students have ordered T-shirts bearing "I [heart] My Vagina" for girls and "I Support Your Vagina" for boys.

"We can't really find out what is inappropriate about it," Rethlefsen said of the button she wears to raise awareness about women's issues. "I don't think banning things like that is appropriate."

Their case could become another test of whether high school students have the right to express their views in school. Charles Samuelson, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota, has offered to help the girls if they want it.

"It's political speech," he said. "And students have free speech rights at school."

Samuelson acknowledged that school officials can limit speech considered detrimental or dangerous to the school. But he said this case is similar to Tinker v. Des Moines, a 1969 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that followed a case where students were forbidden by their schools to wear black armbands to protest the Vietnam War. The court ruled that First Amendment rights are, indeed, available to teachers and students and that administrators' fear about how others might react is not enough to squelch those rights. The ACLU currently is fighting schools in Ohio and Missouri for censoring student T-shirts supporting gay rights and same sex marriage.

I've kept in contact well enough with friends back home to hear how things are going, and I definativly know that there are much bigger problems going on in our schools than something like this. I do find it strange that the schools are choosing to go after these girls while letting neo nazi ensignia on clothing go by without any problem. I know many of the people that are connected to both sides of this story. As for the school administrators, the ones that I know i have never had any sort or problem with before. They are perfectly reasonable people, and I have no idea what their logic is with this.

I'm not planning on stopping here with this one; i'm going to do what I can to spread the word about this. Students should not be threatened with expulsion for opposing violence towards women.

American Taliban

2005-04-19T19:22:00.000-05:00

I am becoming very concerned with the way our government is going. As we have all witnessed with the Tom Delay scandals, the Taliban wing of the republicans are not to be trusted. The actions of these right wing extremist groups are very unsettling. The far right has been calling for a war on judges. Ironically many of the judges that they are slandering are actually republicans. The way that these judges are being scapgoated for upholding the constitution scares me. There are two highly possible outcomes from this situation. The first being that right wing wackos are going to start coming after judges they way they came after abortion doctors a decade ago. The fact that a US Senator said in a speech on the senate floor that he can understand why people want to do this sounds to me like a thinly veiled call to arms. The second and perhaps more dangerous result would be that judges become forced to think about their own personal safety first and their duty to fairly interpret the law second. This level of disregard for the rule of law is probably par for the course given all the other abuses of power that have been going on throughout the administration, but at the same time I think that this type of open hostility toward the courts is exceptionally dangerous.

more on the Pope

2005-04-19T17:37:00.000-05:00

Upon further investigation it appears that the new pope was a member of the Hitler Youth at the time when it was compulsory so that should be a non issue. It appears that however that this guy will be pretty hardline. Kos has a good piece on this. This to me doesn't look good, but i'm not a catholic, and I'm going to wait and give the guy a chance and see what he does before I say anything else.

updates

2005-04-19T14:43:00.000-05:00

I'm sorry about the light posting lately. I spent the weekend visiting friends and family back home, and now that i'm back in Morris, I've got a lot of work to do for the next three weeks till classes are done. I'm not sure how much I'll be saying. Also, I'm planning on doing some reformating and adding links and a site counter at some point, possibly this coming weekend. I'm hoping to not do as much posting of news stories (at least national ones). I'm gonna refrain to just really big stories and minnesota related ones. Also I will have the promised death penalty post up at some point.
In the mean time while i was back home I was able to see some wonderful concerts.
On saturday Sandman the postmodern rapping cowboy played at the Green Lantern I would encourage everyone to check him out.

Wow!

2005-04-19T13:54:00.000-05:00

A former member of the Hitler Youth has just been elected Pope. I really don't know what to think about this one especially since i'm not a catholic myself. Americablog has been going off on this one though. He's pissed

Friday Song Lyrics

2005-04-16T00:00:00.000-05:00

Darkness Between the Fireflies by Mason Jennings

I woke up before you in the total darkness
Early morning
I could hear the wind in the trees
I was looking for the light to bring you out
From the shadows
Redefine you now for only me
And honey i'm sure
That you've been in love before
Plenty of men have held high places in your eyes
And jealousy has got no use for me
The past is beautiful
Like the darkness between the fireflies
I was driving faster through the appalachians
I could see the world go out below me in the sun
You should know by now
That someone's always been there
Long before you
You're never going to be the only one
And honey i'm sure
That you've been in love before
Plenty of men have held high places in your eyes
But jealousy has got no use for me
The past is beautiful
Like the darkness between the fireflies
Beautiful like the darkness between the fireflies

Wages

2005-04-11T21:15:00.000-05:00

If trends like this continue; things could get very bad for a lot of people in the future. Hopefully people's better nature will prevail and this won't be the case for much longer.

For the first time in 14 years, the American workforce has in effect gotten an across-the-board pay cut

The growth in wages in 2004 and the first two months of this year trailed inflation, compounding the squeeze from higher housing, energy and other costs.

The result is that people like Victor Romero are finding themselves falling behind.

The 49-year-old film-set laborer had to ditch his $1,100-a-month Hollywood apartment because his rent kept rising while his pay of $24.50 an hour stayed flat.

"There's no such thing as raises anymore," Romero said.

This is the first time that salaries have increased more slowly than prices since the 1990-91 recession. Though salary growth has been relatively sluggish since the 2001 downturn, inflation also had stayed relatively subdued until last year, when the consumer price index rose 2.7%. But wages rose only 2.5%.

The effective 0.2-percentage-point erosion in workers' living standards occurred while the economy expanded at a healthy 4%, better than the 3% historical average.

removing any last doubts

2005-04-11T14:21:00.000-05:00

As if we need another remind of what this war is really about

In the few weeks before its fall, Iraq's Ba'athist regime made a series of increasingly desperate peace offers to Washington, promising to hold elections and even to allow US troops to search for banned weapons. But the advances were all rejected by the Bush administration, according to intermediaries involved in the talks.
As US and British troops massed in the Gulf, Iraqi intelligence sent out a range of compromise feelers through a number of channels in the apparent hope of forestalling the invasion or at least buying time.

The messages were sent through Syrian intelligence, and French, German and Russian diplomatic channels, and as the countdown to invasion ticked away, through retired CIA officials and a Lebanese-American businessman who met the Washington hawk, Richard Perle, in a London hotel.

The first approach appears to have been made last December through the CIA's former head of counter-terrorism, Vincent Cannistraro.

"I was approached by someone representing Tahir al-Tikriti - the Iraqi intelligence chief also known as [General] Tahir Habbush - who said Saddam knew there was a campaign to link him to September 11 and prove he had weapons of mass destruction," said Mr Cannistraro. "The Iraqis were prepared to satisfy those concerns. I reported the conversation to senior levels of the state department and I was told to stand aside and they would handle it," he said. He later heard the Iraqi offer had been "killed" by the Bush administration.

Patriot Act

2005-04-10T01:15:00.000-05:00

By now it's really a given that that Patriot Act is bad. I'm glad to see that some people have finally got going on making some vitally needed changes to it. The Star Trib. has a good editorial on this.

What a useful irony: The very week that Rep. Tom DeLay turned a brewing attack on the judiciary into an all-out assault, cooler heads in Congress -- both liberal and conservative -- took steps to safeguard Americans' rights and liberties by seeking additional judicial checks on government power.

Those checks, embodied in the Security and Freedom Enhancement (SAFE) Act of 2005, were crafted by Sens. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., and Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, to rein in the worst excesses of the USA Patriot Act. That law was hurriedly passed shortly after 9/11 to help fight terrorism; once legislators actually read the act they'd passed, it became clear that the newly granted powers could easily and routinely be misused against ordinary American citizens.

For example, the Patriot Act notoriously gave law enforcement broad authority to secretly order library and other records to be turned over -- with no opportunity for challenge and with the recipient (i.e., a librarian or other holder of personal information) bound by a permanent nondisclosure rule. This section was recently ruled unconstitutional in federal court; to fix it, the SAFE Act would require "individualized suspicion" for obtaining such an order from a court, and would grant the recipient the right to challenge it in court. It would also require the government to show that a gag order was necessary, place a time limit on that order, and allow for challenges to it.

The scope of law enforcement's authority in this section of the Patriot Act not only demonstrates the breadth of the act's powers but also shows that it is impossible to know just how those powers are being used; the orders for personal information can be conducted in secret -- and kept secret permanently.

Something we all can do

2005-04-08T14:09:00.000-05:00

I would encourage everyone out there to to go the hungersite. It allows you to make donations without having to pay yourself. I'm not sure how the system works exactly, but for someone of limited disposable income like myself, it is a great way to help out.

Friday Song Lyrics

2005-04-08T13:55:00.000-05:00

I would encourage everyone out there to check out Saul Williams. He is an incredably talented poet and hip hop artist.

Saul Williams : : Not in my Name - Pledge of Resistance (DJ Spooky remix)

We believe that as people living
in the United States it is our
responsibility to resist the injustices
done by our government, in our names

Not in our name
will you wage endless war
there can be no more deaths
no more transfusions of blood for oil

Not in our name
will you invade countries
bomb civilians, kill more children
letting history take its course
over the graves of the nameless

Not in our name
will you erode the very freedoms
you have claimed to fight for

Not by our hands
will we supply weapons and funding
for the annihilation of families
on foreign soil

Not by our mouths
will we let fear silence us

Not by our hearts
will we allow whole peoples
or countries to be deemed evil

Not by our will
and Not in our name

We pledge resistance
We pledge alliance with those
who have come under attack
for voicing opposition to the war
or for their religion or ethnicity

We pledge to make common cause
with the people of the world
to bring about justice freedom and peace

Another world is possible
and we pledge to make it real

Something we can all enjoy

2005-04-07T22:33:00.000-05:00

Bush's time left

Good News

2005-04-06T23:59:00.000-05:00

I don't have much good news to post on here unfortunatly, but this one sure is refreshing to hear. Because of this decision I am through with my boycott of the Taco Bell company. I think that we need to reward good behavior from corperate america as much as we need to stop bad behavior.

AND now a word of good news from the world of fast food.
Last month, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a group that represents farm workers in southern Florida, announced that it was ending a four-year boycott of Taco Bell. The most remarkable thing about the announcement was the reason behind it: Taco Bell had acceded to all of the coalition's demands. At a time of declining union membership, failed organizing drives and public apathy about poverty, a group of immigrant tomato pickers had persuaded an enormous fast food company - Yum Brands, which in addition to Taco Bell owns KFC, Pizza Hut, A&W All American Food Restaurants and Long John Silver's - to increase the wages of migrant workers and impose a tough code of conduct on Florida tomato suppliers. "Human rights are universal," said Jonathan Blum, a senior vice president of Yum, adding that under Taco Bell's new labor rules "indentured servitude by suppliers is strictly forbidden."
The need for a corporate edict against slavery in the United States reveals just how bad things have become for farm workers. But it also suggests that the fast food companies now sitting atop America's food system can prevent the sort of abuses that state and federal officials seem unwilling to address.

Migrant farm workers have long been the nation's poorest group of workers. Although wages and working conditions greatly improved during the 1970's, thanks to the efforts of Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers, the rise of illegal immigration and anti-union sentiment later eroded those gains. In California, where more than half of America's fruits and vegetables are grown (and mainly picked by hand), the hourly wages of some farm workers adjusted for inflation have fallen by more than 50 percent since 1980.

Today the majority of America's farm workers are illegal immigrants. They often live in run-down trailers, sheds, garages and motels, where a dozen or so may share a room. Their status as black market labor makes them fearful of being deported, wary of union organizers and vulnerable to exploitation. The typical migrant farm worker is a young Mexican male who earns less than $8,000 a year.

Not surprised at all

2005-04-05T22:38:00.000-05:00

When your former ap government teacher is also your home town state representative it's not uncomon to see him being interviewed by the star tribune, but when something like this comes around all you can do is smile.

U.S. Rep. Matthew Santos goes into the Democratic National Convention tonight with a probable majority of Minnesota DFLers' support and is likely to win the presidential nomination, say legislators who have seldom missed an episode of "The West Wing."
(...)
Rep. Gene Pelowski, DFL-Winona, also rates Santos as his favorite and the best bet to win, owing to his "practical approach to education" instead of "testing students to death."
(...)

Either way, Pelowski, who teaches advanced placement courses in government at Winona High School, intends to keep using "West Wing" videos to inspire his students. He says "The West Wing" is one reason why they are excelling at events such as the Model Legislature, an exercise that gives teenagers a chance to play the roles of elected officials.

One group of girls, inspired by the dialogue in a "West Wing" episode that Pelowski showed in his class, formed into a group called the Alpha Females and has been particularly active and motivated in civic activities.

"These episodes motivate students, especially when it ties into elections," Pelowski said.

Wait there's more

2005-04-05T22:30:00.000-05:00

This is becoming little more than a death watch I think. It would be nice if he would remain in congress for another year in order to give us an easy target for the midterms, but he probably won't make it that long. It seems that he's now got enough people in the GOP worried about their own survival.

The wife and daughter of Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, have been paid more than $500,000 since 2001 by Mr. DeLay's political action and campaign committees, according to a detailed review of disclosure statements filed with the Federal Election Commission and separate fund-raising records in Mr. DeLay's home state, Texas.
Most of the payments to his wife, Christine A. DeLay, and his only child, Dani DeLay Ferro, were described in the disclosure forms as "fund-raising fees," "campaign management" or "payroll," with no additional details about how they earned the money. The payments appear to reflect what Mr. DeLay's aides say is the central role played by the majority leader's wife and daughter in his political career.

We've got the bastard

2005-04-05T21:34:00.000-05:00

via rawstory

A six-day trip to Moscow in 1997 by then-House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas, was underwritten by business interests lobbying in support of the Russian government, according to four people with firsthand knowledge of the trip arrangements.

DeLay reported that the trip was sponsored by a Washington-based nonprofit organization. But interviews with those involved in planning DeLay's trip say the expenses were covered by a mysterious company registered in the Bahamas that also paid for an intensive $440,000 lobbying campaign...

The expense-paid trip by DeLay and three of his staff members cost $57,238, according to records filed by his office. During his six days in Moscow, he played golf, met with Russian church leaders and talked to prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, a friend of Russian oil and gas executives associated with the lobbying effort.

DeLay also dined with the Russian executives and two Washington-based registered lobbyists for the Bahamian-registered company, sources say. One of those lobbyists was Jack Abramoff, who is now at the center of a federal influence-peddling and corruption probe related to his representation of Indian tribes.

Damn, another one

2005-04-05T19:44:00.000-05:00

2005 has just not been a very good year for authors
Update: This is strange, there is no mention fo this anywhere on the CNN website. MSNBC was running it as their top headline.
Update 2: they've finally got one up now

Nobel laureate Saul Bellow, a master of comic melancholy who in "Herzog," "Humboldt's Gift" and other novels both championed and mourned the soul's fate in the modern world, died Tuesday. He was 89.
Bellow's close friend and attorney, Walter Pozen, said the writer had been in declining health, but was "wonderfully sharp to the end." Pozen said that Bellow's wife and daughter were at his side when he died at his home in Brookline, Mass.

Bellow was the most acclaimed of a generation of Jewish writers who emerged after World War II, among them Bernard Malamud, Philip Roth and Cynthia Ozick. To American letters, he brought the immigrant's hustle, the bookworm's brains and the high-minded notions of the born romantic.

"The backbone of 20th-century American literature has been provided by two novelists — William Faulkner and Saul Bellow," Philip Roth said Tuesday. "Together they are the Melville, Hawthorne, and Twain of the 20th century."

He was the first writer to win the National Book Award three times: in 1954 for "The Adventures of Augie March," in 1965 for "Herzog" and in 1971 for "Mr. Sammler's Planet." In 1976, he won the Pulitzer Prize for "Humboldt's Gift." That same year Bellow was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature, cited for his "human understanding and subtle analysis of contemporary culture." In 2003, the Library of America paid the rare tribute of releasing work by a living writer, issuing a volume of Bellow's early novels.

What a way to go

2005-04-05T19:40:00.000-05:00

Seriously, I could never think of something this cool.

Hunter S. Thompson's ashes will be blasted from a cannon mounted inside a 53-foot-high (16.15 meter-high) sculpture of the journalist's "gonzo fist" emblem, his wife said Tuesday.
The cannon shot, planned sometime in August on the grounds of his Aspen-area home, will fulfill the writer's long-cherished wish.

"It's expensive, but worth every penny," Anita Thompson said. "I'd like to have several explosions. He loved explosions."

Thompson, 67, shot himself in the head on February 20 after a long and flamboyant career that produced such new journalism classics as "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" and cast his image as a hard-charging, drug-crazed daredevil.

The cannon shot will be part of a larger public celebration of Thompson's life. Some details remain to be worked out, including the exact date, what kind of cannon will be used and the specifics of the gonzo fist, his wife said.

cool website

2005-04-04T14:30:00.000-05:00

Anyone interested in poetry should have a good look at this one. There's a lot there, and I'm planning on submitting some of my compositions at a later time.

fiscal responsibility my ass

2005-04-04T14:28:00.000-05:00

But in all fairness I guess it is a good way to preserve low government spending.

It's a distant memory for most of the country, but President Bush's campaign swing through Southern Oregon is fresh for hotel owners still waiting to get paid nearly $19,000 for expenses incurred by the administration last fall.

Three hotels, including the Rogue Regency, the Red Lion and the Jacksonville Inn, report they have been waiting almost six months for bills generated mostly by the U.S. Secret Service during President Bush's whirlwind tour through Jackson County, according to an article by the Mail Tribune newspaper.

Owed $3,332.72, the Red Lion Hotel in Medford sent a letter on March 28 to the president at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

The letter written by the hotel's accountant Kirsten Yunuba Stephens, said: "My question to you: Is this how you help balance the budget at the White House by ripping off retailers in the towns you visit? If that is the case please do not come back to the Rogue Valley."

Some pope quotes

2005-04-04T00:33:00.000-05:00

Social justice cannot be attained by violence. Violence kills what it intends to create."
-- July 3, 1980

"This determination is based on the solid conviction that what is hindering full development is that desire for profit and that thirst for power already mentioned. These attitudes and 'structures of sin' are only conquered - presupposing the help of divine grace - by a diametrically opposed attitude: a commitment to the good of one's neighbor with the readiness, in the gospel sense, to 'lose oneself' for the sake of the other instead of exploiting him, and to 'serve him' instead of oppressing him for one's own advantage."
-- Pope condemns excesses of capitalism, December 30, 1987

"We cannot pretend that the use of arms, and especially of today's highly sophisticated weaponry, would not give rise, in addition to suffering and destruction, to new and perhaps worse injustices."
-- Pope opposes Gulf War, Message to George H.W. Bush, January 15, 1991

"Modern society has the means of protecting itself, without definitively denying criminals the chance to reform. I renew the appeal I made most recently at Christmas for a consensus to end the death penalty, which is both cruel and unnecessary."
-- Pope speaks out against capital punishment, January 27, 1999

"NO TO WAR! War is not always inevitable. It is always a defeat for humanity."
-- January 13, 2003

"When war threatens humanity's destiny, as it does today in Iraq, it is even more urgent for us to proclaim with a loud and decisive voice that peace is the only way to build a more just and caring society. Violence and arms can never solve human problems."
-- Pope condemns Bush's invasion of Iraq, March 22, 2003

This could be big

2005-04-03T20:27:00.000-05:00

The tourture scandles just keep on growing. Kos has this one.

Taxex

2005-04-03T18:01:00.000-05:00

This is really a bad sign for the future of our state. Things like this are putting Minnesota's quality of life in great danger. The state needs to reverse this trend soon if we want to keep Minnesota as one of the best states in the Union to live in. The state needs to raise enough revenue to cover the neccesary expenses that we have, but we should not be doing it in a way that puts the burden on the little guy.

The cost of government in Minnesota today is significantly lower than a decade ago, but the little guy is picking up a greater share of the tab.

State and local revenue this year will represent 15.7 percent of total Minnesota personal income -- a drop from 17.7 percent in 1995, according to a projection by the state Department of Finance. Over that 10-year period, the tax burden has shifted gradually toward people of average and small means and away from the state's most prosperous residents.

The trend is likely to continue.

"The tax system is expected to become slightly more regressive from 2002 to 2007, because for higher deciles [the highest-earning groups of Minnesotans] income growth is expected to outpace growth in tax liability, while the reverse is true for middle to lower deciles," the Department of Revenue said in a report released in March.

Put simply, taxes -- in particular, property taxes -- are growing faster than the incomes of most people. But the incomes of Minnesota's most prosperous residents have climbed faster than the cost of state and local government. That's why, as a share of Minnesotans' total income, the tax burden is in decline.

"Even as income goes up and up, even if you have a second home, eventually there's only so much property" that can be taxed, said Dick Gebhart, director of tax research at the state revenue agency. The same goes for purchases -- sales taxes claim a lesser share of incomes as incomes rise.

"If you're in the middle-income category, you're paying 2½ times more than if you're at the top," said Wayne Cox, executive director of Minnesota Citizens for Tax Justice, a group financed mostly by labor unions.

Friday Song Lyrics

2005-04-01T14:06:00.000-06:00

American Tune by Simon and Garfunkel

Many’s the time I’ve been mistaken
And many times confused
Yes, and often felt forsaken
And certainly misused
Oh, but I’m alright, I’m alright
I’m just weary to my bones
Still, you don’t expect to be
Bright and bon vivant
So far a-way from home, so far away from home

I don’t know a soul who’s not been battered
I don’t have a friend who feels at ease
I don’t know a dream that’s not been shattered
Or driven to it’s knees
Oh, but it’s alright, it’s alright
For we lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the
Road we’re traveling on
I wonder what’s gone wrong
I can’t help it, I wonder what’s gone wrong

And I dreamed I was dying
I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly
And looking back down at me
Smiled reassuringly
And I dreamed I was flying
And high up above my eyes could clearly see
The statue of liberty
Sailing away to sea
And I dreamed I was flying

We come on the ship they call the mayflower
We come on the ship that sailed the moon
We come in the a-ge’s most uncertain hours
And sing an american tune
Oh, and it’s alright, it’s alright, it’s alright
You can’t be forever blessed
Still, tomorrow’s going to be another working day
And I’m trying to get some rest
That’s all I’m trying to get some rest

might cause a few problems

2005-04-01T12:20:00.000-06:00

As someone who goes to college six hours away from my home town, I tend to consider high gas prices to be rather problematic. I understand and in many situations agree with the liberal idea that high gas would have a long term benefit to our society. It will force the advent of more green technologies along with a dramatic increase in public transportation. I hope at some point all of that does happen, but can't it just wait until after i'm done being a poor college student? That being said, this could really throw a monkey wrench into things.

LONDON (Reuters) - Oil prices could touch $105 a barrel in the next few years, the influential investment bank Goldman Sachs said Thursday.

The bank's analysts said in a research report that the world energy market is in the early stages of a "super-spike" period that could see 1970s-style price surges. The bank called its forecast "conservative."

Decision

2005-04-01T00:18:00.000-06:00

Last sunday, when my friends were visiting up here, a group of us made the trip to Benson MN in order to go to Burger King. We did this because I had given up fast food for lent, and Easter sunday marked the end of lent. We decided that Burger King was far better than the fast food options that existed in Morris, and therefore, we had no problem making the drive. I have also recently read the book fast food nation for my sociology course. The book has made quite an impression on me. A lot of what the industry does for lack of a better term is just plain evil. I have decided that I am now done with fast food until major changes are made to the industry. I realize that this small act of personal protest most likely won't acomplish much by itself, but I feel that there is no other moral option for me to do.

TREC

2005-03-31T22:46:00.000-06:00

I am currently an employee of the TREC (tutoring, reading, enabling children) program at the Morris elementary school. I work as an inclass tutor for a third grade class. This job as been very satisfying to me. It has given me a chance to see what a teacher's jon is like as well as be able to help out some kids who need it. I would encourage anyone currently attending UMM to get involved with this program. It is a great way to be involved with the rest of the Morris community.

Howl

2005-03-31T22:35:00.000-06:00

Howl

For Carl Solomon

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by: madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn: looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly: connection to the starry dynamo in the machin-; ery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat: up smoking in the supernatural darkness of; cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities; contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and: saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tene-; ment roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes: hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy; among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy &: publishing obscene odes on the windows of the; skull,
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burn-: ing their money in wastebaskets and listening; to the Terror through the wall,
who got busted in their pubic beards returning through: Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,
who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in: Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their; torsos night after night
with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, al-: cohol and cock and endless balls,
incomparable blind; streets of shuddering cloud and: lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of; Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the mo-; tionless world of Time between,
Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery: dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops,; storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon; blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree; vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brook-; lyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind,
who chained themselves to subways for the endless: ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine; until the noise of wheels and children brought; them down shuddering mouth-wracked and; battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance; in the drear light of Zoo,
who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford's: floated out and sat through the stale beer after; noon in desolate Fugazzi's, listening to the crack; of doom on the hydrogen jukebox,
who talked continuously seventy hours from park to: pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brook-; lyn Bridge,
lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping: down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills; off Empire State out of the moon,
yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts: and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks; and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars,
whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days: and nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the; Synagogue cast on the pavement,
who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a: trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic; City Hall,
suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grind-: ings and migraines of China under junk-with-; drawal in Newark's bleak furnished room,
who wandered around and around at midnight in the: railroad yard wondering where to go, and went,; leaving no broken hearts,
who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing: through snow toward lonesome farms in grand-; father night,
who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telep-: athy and bop kabbalah because the cosmos in-; stinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas,
who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking vis-: ionary indian angels who were visionary indian; angels,
who thought they were only mad when Baltimore: gleamed in supernatural ecstasy,
who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Okla-: homa on the impulse of winter midnight street; light smalltown rain,
who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston: seeking jazz or sex or soup, and followed the; brilliant Spaniard to converse about America; and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship; to Africa,
who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving: behind nothing but the shadow of dungarees; and the lava and ash of poetry scattered in fire; place Chicago,
who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the: F.B.I. in beards and shorts with big pacifist; eyes sexy in their dark skin passing out incom-; prehensible leaflets,
who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting: the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism,
who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union: Square weeping and undressing while the sirens; of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed; down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also; wailed,
who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked: and trembling before the machinery of other; skeletons,
who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight: in policecars for committing no crime but their; own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication,
who howled on their knees in the subway and were: dragged off the roof waving genitals and manu-; scripts,
who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly: motorcyclists, and screamed with joy,
who blew and were blown by those human seraphim,: the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean; love,
who balled in the morning in the evenings in rose: gardens and the grass of public parks and; cemeteries scattering their semen freely to; whomever come who may,
who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up: with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath; when the blond & naked angel came to pierce; them with a sword,
who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate: the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar; the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb; and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but; sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden; threads of the craftsman's loom,
who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of: beer a sweetheart a package of cigarettes a can-; dle and fell off the bed, and continued along; the floor and down the hall and ended fainting; on the wall with a vision of ultimate cunt and; come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness,
who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling: in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning; but prepared to sweeten the snatch of the sun; rise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked; in the lake,
who went out whoring through Colorado in myriad: stolen night-cars, N.C., secret hero of these; poems, cocksman and Adonis of Denver-joy; to the memory of his innumerable lays of girls; in empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses'; rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or with; gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely pet-; ticoat upliftings & especially secret gas-station; solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too,
who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in: dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and; picked themselves up out of basements hung; over with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third; Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemploy-; ment offices,
who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on: the snowbank docks waiting for a door in the; East River to open to a room full of steamheat; and opium,
who created great suicidal dramas on the apartment: cliff-banks of the Hudson under the wartime; blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall; be crowned with laurel in oblivion,
who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested: the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of; Bowery,
who wept at the romance of the streets with their: pushcarts full of onions and bad music,
who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the: bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in; their lofts,
who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned: with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded; by orange crates of theology,
who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty: incantations which in the yellow morning were; stanzas of gibberish,
who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht: & tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable; kingdom,
who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for: an egg,
who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot: for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks; fell on their heads every day for the next decade,
who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccess-: fully, gave up and were forced to open antique; stores where they thought they were growing; old and cried,
who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits: on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse; & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments; of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the; fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinis-; ter intelligent editors, or were run down by the; drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality,
who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually hap-: pened and walked away unknown and forgotten; into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alley; ways & firetrucks, not even one free beer,
who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of: the subway window, jumped in the filthy Pas-; saic, leaped on negroes, cried all over the street,; danced on broken wineglasses barefoot smashed; phonograph records of nostalgic European; 1930s German jazz finished the whiskey and; threw up groaning into the bloody toilet, moans; in their ears and the blast of colossal steam; whistles,
who barreled down the highways of the past journeying: to each other's hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude; watch or Birmingham jazz incarnation,
who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out: if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had; a vision to find out Eternity,
who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who: came back to Denver & waited in vain, who; watched over Denver & brooded & loned in; Denver and finally went away to find out the; Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes,
who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying: for each other's salvation and light and breasts,; until the soul illuminated its hair for a second,
who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for: impossible criminals with golden heads and the; charm of reality in their hearts who sang sweet; blues to Alcatraz,
who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky: Mount to tender Buddha or Tangiers to boys; or Southern Pacific to the black locomotive or; Harvard to Narcissus to Woodlawn to the; daisychain or grave,
who demanded sanity trials accusing the radio of hyp: notism & were left with their insanity & their; hands & a hung jury,
who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism: and subsequently presented themselves on the; granite steps of the madhouse with shaven heads; and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding in-; stantaneous lobotomy,
and who were given instead the concrete void of insulin: Metrazol electricity hydrotherapy psycho-; therapy occupational therapy pingpong &; amnesia,
who in humorless protest overturned only one symbolic: pingpong table, resting briefly in catatonia,
returning years later truly bald except for a wig of: blood, and tears and fingers, to the visible mad; man doom of the wards of the madtowns of the; East,
Pilgrim State's Rockland's and Greystone's foetid: halls, bickering with the echoes of the soul, rock-; ing and rolling in the midnight solitude-bench; dolmen-realms of love, dream of life a night-; mare, bodies turned to stone as heavy as the; moon,
with mother finally ******, and the last fantastic book: flung out of the tenement window, and the last; door closed at 4. A.M. and the last telephone; slammed at the wall in reply and the last fur-; nished room emptied down to the last piece of; mental furniture, a yellow paper rose twisted; on a wire hanger in the closet, and even that; imaginary, nothing but a hopeful little bit of; hallucination
ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and: now you're really in the total animal soup of; time
and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed: with a sudden flash of the alchemy of the use; of the ellipse the catalog the meter & the vibrat-; ing plane,
who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space: through images juxtaposed, and trapped the; archangel of the soul between 2 visual images; and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun; and dash of consciousness together jumping; with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna; Deus
to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human: prose and stand before you speechless and intel-; ligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet con-; fessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm; of thought in his naked and endless head,
the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown,: yet putting down here what might be left to say; in time come after death,
and rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in: the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the; suffering of America's naked mind for love into; an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone; cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio
with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered: out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand; years.

II
What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open: their skulls and ate up their brains and imagi-; nation?
Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unob: tainable dollars! Children screaming under the; stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men; weeping in the parks!
Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the: loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy; judger of men!
Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the: crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of; sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgment!; Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stun-; ned governments!
Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose: blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers; are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a canni-; bal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking; tomb!
Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows!: Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long; streets like endless Jehovahs! Moloch whose fac-; tories dream and croak in the fog! Moloch whose; smokestacks and antennae crown the cities!
Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch: whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch; whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch; whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen!; Moloch whose name is the Mind!
Moloch in whom I sit lonely! Moloch in whom I dream: Angels! Crazy in Moloch! Cocksucker in; Moloch! Lacklove and manless in Moloch!
Moloch who entered my soul early! Moloch in whom: I am a consciousness without a body! Moloch; who frightened me out of my natural ecstasy!; Moloch whom I abandon! Wake up in Moloch!; Light streaming out of the sky!
Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! invisible suburbs!: skeleton treasuries! blind capitals! demonic; industries! spectral nations! invincible mad; houses! granite cocks! monstrous bombs!
They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven! Pave-: ments, trees, radios, tons! lifting the city to; Heaven which exists and is everywhere about; us!
Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies!: gone down the American river!
Dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole: boatload of sensitive bullshit!
Breakthroughs! over the river! flips and crucifixions!: gone down the flood! Highs! Epiphanies! De-; spairs! Ten years' animal screams and suicides!; Minds! New loves! Mad generation! down on; the rocks of Time!
Real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all! the: wild eyes! the holy yells! They bade farewell!; They jumped off the roof! to solitude! waving!; carrying flowers! Down to the river! into the; street!

III
Carl Solomon! I'm with you in Rockland: where you're madder than I am
I'm with you in Rockland: where you must feel very strange
I'm with you in Rockland: where you imitate the shade of my mother
I'm with you in Rockland: where you've murdered your twelve secretaries
I'm with you in Rockland: where you laugh at this invisible humor
I'm with you in Rockland: where we are great writers on the same dreadful; typewriter
I'm with you in Rockland: where your condition has become serious and; is reported on the radio
I'm with you in Rockland: where the faculties of the skull no longer admit; the worms of the senses
I'm with you in Rockland: where you drink the tea of the breasts of the; spinsters of Utica
I'm with you in Rockland: where you pun on the bodies of your nurses the; harpies of the Bronx
I'm with you in Rockland: where you scream in a straightjacket that you're; losing the game of the actual pingpong of the; abyss
I'm with you in Rockland: where you bang on the catatonic piano the soul; is innocent and immortal it should never die; ungodly in an armed madhouse
I'm with you in Rockland: where fifty more shocks will never return your; soul to its body again from its pilgrimage to a; cross in the void
I'm with you in Rockland: where you accuse your doctors of insanity and; plot the Hebrew socialist revolution against the; fascist national Golgotha
I'm with you in Rockland: where you will split the heavens of Long Island; and resurrect your living human Jesus from the; superhuman tomb
I'm with you in Rockland: where there are twenty-five-thousand mad com-; rades all together singing the final stanzas of
the Internationale
I'm with you in Rockland: where we hug and kiss the United States under; our bedsheets the United States that coughs all; night and won't let us sleep
I'm with you in Rockland: where we wake up electrified out of the coma; by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the; roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the; hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls col-; lapse O skinny legions run outside O starry; spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is; here O victory forget your underwear we're; free
I'm with you in Rockland: in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-; journey on the highway across America in tears; to the door of my cottage in the Western night

In news

2005-03-30T23:52:00.000-06:00

Ross got a Tort out of food service tonight; it was good. Way to go Ross we're all proud of you

New poem

2005-03-30T23:50:00.000-06:00

I just finished writing this poem for my creative writing class. Tell me what you think

It’s not hard to make an eye cry.
The tears of tragedy flow willingly.
But they only stay a short while.
A tear my burn its way down the cheek easily.
Tormenting its owner in the agony of emotion.
But only for a moment then it evaporates.
Tears do not scar the soul, they only mar the surface.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the trail of tears stayed part of us?
Just as a simple little reminder.
Something to keep us all on our good side.
To present to the world around us proof of our ability to feel.
As well as letting us see the rest of humanity’s to.
And to let our thoughts run to where they need to be.

oh the things we learn

2005-03-30T21:48:00.000-06:00

I found this over at blah3

18 Things We've Learned From The Schiavo Case

1. Jeb Bush, George W. Bush, and Tom Delay are all world renowned neurologists.

2. 22 successive court battles that all ended in exactly the same way means there is something wrong with the courts, not the Schindler's case.

3. Michael Schiavo is after money which is why he turned down 1 million dollars and 10 million dollars to sign over guardianship.

4. Congress and the State Legislature of Florida has nothing better to do than pry into the private medical affairs of others.

5. Pulling life support is bad in Florida when authorized by the legal next-of-kin, but pulling life support is good in Texas when you run out of money and the mother pleads not to pull the plug on her baby.

6. Medical diagnoses are best performed by watching highly edited videotape made by Randall Terry rather than in person by trained physicians.

7. Minimum wage making nursing assistants are more qualified to diagnose a persistent vegetative state than experienced neurologists.

8. Cerebral spinal fluid is a magical potion that can mimic the entire functions of a missing cerebral cortex.

9. 15 years in the same persistent state is not really enough time to make an accurate diagnosis.

10. A feeding tube that infuses yellow nutritional goop is not really "life support".

11. Jesus was wrong when he said that a man and woman should leave their parents and cleave only to each other.

12. Marriage is the most sacred of all unions, except when it isn't.

13. Interfering in a family's private tragedy is a great reason to cut short a vacation, but getting a memo that warns a known terrorist is determined to strike inside the US is cause to relax and finish up some R&R.

14. Pro-lifers are really compassionate people, which is why they are hoping that Michael Schiavo dies a horrible, painful death.

15. The Supreme Court of the United States and the State Supreme Court of Florida mean "Maybe" when they are saying "No!".

16. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is a bleeding heart liberal.

17. 7 Supreme Court Justices were appointed by Republican Presidents, so it's obviously Clinton's fault.

18. A judge who makes rulings based on the law is obviously an atheist, liberal, democratic activist even though he is a Conservative, Republican, Southern Baptist.

Way to go Bob

2005-03-30T01:05:00.001-06:00

There is not a whole lot that I agree with my old state senator Bob Kerlin (R winona) on. However, every once in a while he comes out on the right side of things. I've met him a couple times before, and he seems to be a perfectly reasonable man.

State Sen. Robert Kierlin of Winona has co-authored a bill to protect seriously ill people from prosecution for using medicinal marijuana. Although federal law bars all use of the drug, states have passed laws to exempt seriously ill patients from state-level prosecution. Minnesota would become the 11th state to enact such a measure if Kierlin's bill, introduced Tuesday, passes the Legislature.

"It's a question of compassion," the Republican said. "With terminal illnesses, if there's any chance to solve any of the pain problem with any drug we should give it a shot."

Weekend

2005-03-26T14:21:00.000-06:00

Posts will be slow again this weekend; I've got some friends from home visiting. One thing they did though was bring up the most recent Northern Sun catalouge. I was really taken by one of the bumper stickers in it. "I oppose the Death Penalty; Look what happened to Jesus" So you all can expect a post on the Death Penalty sooner or later.

On the English disipline

2005-03-24T22:38:00.000-06:00

I am no longer an English major, instead i've switched to political science. I enjoy reading a lot, but I've found that studying books in the way that english majors must is really not my thing. For the most part I read for enjoyment and to learn new things or stories. Analyzeing every little detail of stories just isn't something that I enjoy doing. My main interested with an English major was creative writing. This is not an interested that I am giving up on. I still plan on working on my novel, and when I have time I'll be working on other projects as well. As always I'll keep posting my works on here; I've got a good one in the works now for my class.

Poetry

2005-03-24T22:08:00.000-06:00

I'm reminded of this poem by the Red Lake tragedy. I wrote it sometime in back in high school. I really don't remember when or why. Mine was the first generation taught to fear our own peers at school, and it probably had an effect on me

Tek-9

The lights black out
Mortified masses begin to shout
Shocked I stumble around a corner
A defining blast reminiscing of a mortar
Chunks of plaster crash onto my back
Though my feet are lead I run

Two pops ring out and I fall to my knees
Blood hemorrhages into my hands
He runs past me with eyes wide
Just an angry child with a Tek-9
The holes in my back over take me
I wonder

Why this choice; why not law school?
Couldn’t he know this was just four years
Or was that the problem right there
I never saw him before and I’ll never know
I was just struck down by a scared little boy with a Tek-9

This is interesting

2005-03-23T23:49:00.001-06:00

More attention needs to be paid to rural america in every way not just this one., but this could be a crucial thing for protecitng us.

As Congress begins to shift more anti-terror money toward big cities and the coasts, a group of public health experts released a report Tuesday highlighting potential threats to the nation's food and water supply that they say are "unique to rural America."
Based on the recommendations of a national conference in St. Paul last September, the report concluded that "rural America is vulnerable to bioterrorism and other serious public health emergency threats," and that rural health care systems must be strengthened.

The report was sponsored by the University of Minnesota's Center for Public Health Preparedness and seven other organizations, including the Harvard School of Public Health.

"Though many perceive rural areas to be just farm land, plains and dense forest, much of the nation's water supply, food supply and critical industries -- power plants and water treatment facilities -- are located in rural areas," said Joshua Frances of the Harvard School of Public Health, who helped prepare report.

Rural members of Congress, who often vie with urban politicians for a share of public health and emergency preparedness funding, welcomed the report in Washington.

"We've never had this kind of back-up before," said Rep. John Peterson, R-Pa., who co-chairs the Congressional Rural Caucus.

"More resources are clearly needed," said Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D. "The misguided decision to redirect [Centers for Disease Control] bioterrorism funds away from states to select cities will have real, detrimental effects on public health preparedness."

The report -- "Meeting the Challenges of Rural America" -- argues that rural hospitals must prepare not only to care for rural Americans, but also to handle city dwellers injured in urban terrorism attacks.

This is interesting

2005-03-23T23:49:00.000-06:00

More attention needs to be paid to rural america in every way not just this one., but this could be a crucial thing for protecitng us.

As Congress begins to shift more anti-terror money toward big cities and the coasts, a group of public health experts released a report Tuesday highlighting potential threats to the nation's food and water supply that they say are "unique to rural America."
Based on the recommendations of a national conference in St. Paul last September, the report concluded that "rural America is vulnerable to bioterrorism and other serious public health emergency threats," and that rural health care systems must be strengthened.

The report was sponsored by the University of Minnesota's Center for Public Health Preparedness and seven other organizations, including the Harvard School of Public Health.

"Though many perceive rural areas to be just farm land, plains and dense forest, much of the nation's water supply, food supply and critical industries -- power plants and water treatment facilities -- are located in rural areas," said Joshua Frances of the Harvard School of Public Health, who helped prepare report.

Rural members of Congress, who often vie with urban politicians for a share of public health and emergency preparedness funding, welcomed the report in Washington.

"We've never had this kind of back-up before," said Rep. John Peterson, R-Pa., who co-chairs the Congressional Rural Caucus.

"More resources are clearly needed," said Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D. "The misguided decision to redirect [Centers for Disease Control] bioterrorism funds away from states to select cities will have real, detrimental effects on public health preparedness."

The report -- "Meeting the Challenges of Rural America" -- argues that rural hospitals must prepare not only to care for rural Americans, but also to handle city dwellers injured in urban terrorism attacks.

This is good

2005-03-23T22:26:00.000-06:00

I was a supporter of John Edwards since the first dem primary debate when I heard him talk about the issues. I'm very impressed by this, and I hope that he will be the party nominee in 2008. I think he is the best person to lead America in a new Direction.

Edwards, who represented North Carolina for one term in the Senate, began work Tuesday by moderating a panel discussion on the importance of savings and assets in moving families out of poverty.

"We have millions of Americans who work full time and still live in poverty, and that is absolutely wrong," said Edwards, a Democrat.

Edwards will earn $40,000 a year from the state university to head the center and has made a two-year commitment. His salary is paid from private funds raised by the university.

In an interview Wednesday on NBC's "Today," Edwards called poverty "one of the great moral issues in America today." He said more people live in poverty now in the United States than 30 years ago.

Asked if he had made a decision on whether to run for president in 2008, Edwards said no.

"I have a campaign and a cause right now and this is it. This is where I'm going to spend my passion and my energy."

My thoughts exactly

2005-03-23T18:37:00.000-06:00

Here's an editorial from the Winona Daily Newsthat raises another interesting point on the Schiavo matter.

I guess George meant it when he said he was compassionate.

For the president to fly all the way from Crawford to D.C. just to be sure Terri Schiavo wouldn't go without food or the best medical care possible might be an indication that some of us have been wrong about Dubya.

And wrong about Tom DeLay and Bill Frist and Rush and the Ditto heads and the fairly unbalanced Fox newsies. They pushed through an actual act of Congress so a woman could be assured of food and medicine, and that can only be considered an act of extraordinary decency — one that ought to resonate though our whole country for lifetimes to come.

I have to admit, I was skeptical of what looked like the transformation of a horrible family tragedy into a political circus of the lowest sort. But perhaps, just perhaps, I was wrong — maybe the TV preachers and GOP politicos haven't turned Terri's deathbed into a bully pulpit and glorious grandstand to play for the right-wing vote. What may have begun as cheap politics might lead to an outcome that is decent and profound.

There is still the possibility that the suffering and sacrifice of this one person might lead us to the earthly salvation of many.

The president and the Congress have demonstrated their compassion. As the president said, they chose to "err on the side of life." They have set a precedent, and it can be a very good one.

By their rhetoric, by their votes and with a presidential signature, they have written into law that in this country we do not let people go without food. We do not let people go without medical care. To do so is wrong. It is immoral and it will not be allowed to happen in the United States of America.

The president and the Congress finally made the connection that seemed so obvious to so many for so long — the lack of adequate food and the lack of adequate medicine is incompatible with the protection of any individual's right to life. It is extraordinarily clear that if the president and Congress can draw that conclusion on behalf of a 41-year-old white woman confined to a Florida health-care center who hasn't made a voluntary move, uttered a comprehensible sound or thought a conscious thought in more than 15 years, those same rights, those same protections are shared by every one of us.

If Congress enacts and the president signs a law intended to assure that Terri Schiavo has the food and medical care she needs to live, what about the south Chicago teenager — black, poor, hungry and pregnant? Don't she and her child have a right to life equal to Terri Schiavo?

Shouldn't we expect Congress to pass and the president to sign a measure to assure the family refrigerator is stocked and the kids' dental checkups are paid for when the breadwinner's job is outsourced to India and Wal-Mart's not hiring?

Shouldn't old people no longer have to choose between filling their stomachs or filling their prescriptions?

Isn't that the compassion George Bush and Congress want to show to Terri Schiavo — that in this country we help those who need help, care for those who need care, without concern for cost or inconvenience — that no one will go without life's necessities even if it means hauling the president and Congress back from vacation to make a federal case of it?

That's what they did for Terri Schiavo. If they believe she must be fed, all must be fed. If they believe she must be cared for, all must be cared for.

And if they follow through on that pledge, Terri's suffering, her family's suffering, will have brought forth another Easter miracle.

And if they don't, for the sake of Christ let the poor woman have her peace.

It's the compassionate, Christian thing to do.

Back Door Draft

2005-03-23T18:33:00.000-06:00

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Army is ordering more people to serve in Iraq (news - web sites) and Afghanistan (news - web sites) involuntarily from a seldom-used personnel pool as part of a mobilization that began last summer.

They are part of the Army's Individual Ready Reserve, made up of soldiers who have completed their volunteer active-duty service commitment but remain eligible to be called back into uniform for years after returning to civilian life.

The Army, straining to maintain troop levels in Iraq, last June said it would summon more than 5,600 people on the IRR in an effort to have about 4,400 soldiers fit for duty in Iraq and Afghanistan after granting exemption requests for medical reasons and other hardships.

Lt. Col. Pamela Hart said on Wednesday the Army has now increased the number of IRR soldiers it needs to about 4,650, which means a total of about 6,100 will get mobilization orders.

The IRR differs from the part-time Army Reserve and Army National Guard, whose soldiers train regularly as part of units. People on the IRR have no such training requirements.

Hart also said 370 IRR soldiers had not reported to the Army by the date ordered and have not requested an exemption from service or a delay in reporting. Hart said none have been declared absent without leave, or AWOL, and the Army was trying to determine whether all of them actually had received their mobilization orders.

"We're giving them all ample opportunity to comply with their orders," Hart said.

The Army has approved 1,866 requests for exemptions or delays in reporting, Hart said.

Just absurd

2005-03-23T18:16:00.000-06:00

There's no other way to describe what's going on in our government now. Terri Schaivo is dead feeding tube or not. I've remained quite on this matter for a while because think that this should be a personal issue for the Schaivo family, and not something that the government and especially a simple Minnesota web blogger should get involved in. So instead I have a few things to say about what this has turned in to.

I think what the Republican Party is doing is incredibly shameful. Using a dead woman for political gain (and taking the heat off of Tom Delay) is immoral and disgraceful. The republicans are showing us here that they are willing to go against their principals of government in order to score cheap political points. This is BIG INVASIVE GOVERNMENT at it's worst. The matter had already been resolved by the Florida Suprime Court, but congressional republicans jumped on this in order to try and get some good press. Unfortunatly for them, most of the public is seeing through this charade. Around 2/3 of the population opposes what congress is attempting to do. I hope this will be a lesson to those in power that people are more concerned with real things than phoney political crusades.

Costs of war

2005-03-22T23:09:00.000-06:00

It's always the innocent bystanders that get it the worst.

Last fall, a major public-health study appeared in The Lancet, a prestigious British medical journal, only to be missed or dismissed by the American press. To the extent it was covered at all, the reports were short and usually buried far from the front pages of major newspapers. The results of the study could have played an important role in future policy decisions, but the press’s near total silence allowed the issue to pass without debate.
The study, though scientifically robust, had several elements working against it. One was its subject matter: Researchers had done a door-to-door survey of nearly 8,000 people in thirty-three locations in Iraq to estimate how many people had died as a consequence of the U.S.-led invasion and occupation. Americans, and their media, were reluctant to accept the study’s conclusions — that the number was likely around 100,000; that violence had become the primary cause of death since the invasion; that more than half of those killed were women and children.

Adding to the scent of propaganda was the fact that The Lancet had rushed the study into print at the lead author’s request. Some reporters may have guessed that the rushed publication — with the U.S. presidential election looming — meant that the study itself was essentially political. But medical journals often fast-track papers that have immediate importance to doctors or to public-health policy. When I was working on a follow-up article about the study for The Chronicle of Higher Education in January, I made three phone calls to other major medical journals and quickly discovered that the manuscript’s turnaround time, about four weeks, was not outside the norm for fast-tracked papers and did not necessarily mean that editing and peer review had been compromised.

But there’s more to the matter than ideology. The way the researchers presented their results made it difficult for statistics-shy journalists to grasp their significance. The scientists, from Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University, and Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, reported a so-called 95 percent confidence interval. They said that they were 95 percent sure the number of deaths lay between 8,000 and 194,000.

Eight thousand and 194,000? What’s a reporter to make of such a broad range? The lower end of that range overlaps well with previous, nonscientific estimates, but the middle and upper range seem outrageous. True, had the researchers surveyed more houses in more neighborhoods, the interval would have been narrower. But each day spent traveling within Iraq for the study presented grave dangers to the American and Iraqi researchers.

Reporters’ unease about the wide range may have been a primary reason many didn’t cover the study. One columnist, Fred Kaplan of Slate, called the estimate “meaningless” and labeled the range “a dart board.”

But he was wrong. I called about ten biostatisticians and mortality experts. Not one of them took issue with the study’s methods or its conclusions. If anything, the scientists told me, the authors had been cautious in their estimates. With a quick call to a statistician, reporters would have found that the probability forms a bell curve — the likelihood is very small that the number of deaths fell at either extreme of the range. It was very likely to fall near the middle.

Darkest Day

2005-03-22T18:19:00.000-06:00

What happened yesterday in Red Lake has been a great tragedy. I'm not going to use this as an excuse to go off on the need for gun control or this or that. The problems are deeper than our laws. First let us pray for all the victims of this terrible event. Secondly, there's been a lot of violence in our society of late from wars to public shootings to everything else. I think we all need to examine our lives and those of the people around us to make sure we're not fostering an environment of violence ourselves. Beyond that, I've got nothing; I'm sure there's more that can be done but I sure don't know what.

more abuse

2005-03-22T18:05:00.000-06:00

Something is truly wrong here. Madjon just sent me this link that discusses more prisoner abuse from Gitmo. When we're going around doing things like this we are just as bad as the people that attack us! This is terrible and there are no ways in which it can be justified. As a consequence it is also surly teaching another generation of arab youth to hate America.

VIDEO footage of the treatment of prisoners by the US military at Guantanamo Bay would reveal many cases of substantial abuse as "explosive as anything from Abu Ghraib", a lawyer said today.

Adelaide lawyer Stephen Kenny, who represented Australian David Hicks during the early part of his detention at the military prison in Cuba, told a law conference today 500 hours of videotape of prisoners at the US base existed.
(...)

Abu Ghraib is the prison outside Baghdad from where pictures emerged of US guards abusing prisoners while some of them were forced into humiliating, sexually suggestive poses.
Mr Kenny said the US military videotaped the actions of the Immediate Reaction Force (IRF) who were responsible for prisoner control at Guantanamo Bay.
He said evidence of the violence used by the IRF came to light when a member of the US military, whom he identified as Specialist Baker, applied for a medical discharge after being involved in a training session.
"He was dressed in an orange jump suit and the IRF squad was instructed that he was a detainee who had abused a guard and was to be moved to another cell.
"What happened to him only came to light in Specialist Baker's later hearing for a medical discharge from the military for the brain damage he suffered in the beating he received at the hands of that trainee squad."
Mr Kenny told the conference the American Centre for Civil Liberties was pressing for the tapes to be released after an American journalist reported that a secret military review of 20 hours of the tapes had identified 10 substantial cases of abuse.
But he said the Government was refusing to release the tapes because of "privacy concerns".

This is bad

2005-03-21T19:07:00.000-06:00

Second major school shooting in MN in recent years. Not good at all.

RED LAKE, Minn. - A gunman opened fire Monday at a high school on an Indian reservation, killing six people and wounding two critically, with the suspect believed among those dead, authorities said. Before the school shootings, a man and a woman were shot in their home and died later.

Reuters Photo

Six people died in the mid-afternoon shooting at Red Lake High School in far northern Minnesota, including four students. Also killed were a teacher and a security guard, FBI (news - web sites) spokesman Paul McCabe said at a news conference in Minneapolis.

He declined to talk about a possible connection between the suspect and the couple killed at the home, but Red Lake Fire Director Roman Statley said they were the grandparents of the shooter. Stateley told several media outlets that the grandfather was a police officer whose guns may have been used in the shootings.

All of the dead students were found in one room. One of them was a boy believed to be the shooter, McCabe said. He would not comment on reports that the boy shot himself and said it was too early to speculate on a motive.

Iraq by the Numbers

2005-03-20T02:01:00.000-06:00

200: Lowest estimated number in billions of U.S. taxpayers dollars that have been spent on the war in Iraq

152,000: Estimated number of troops currently deployed in Iraq

1,511: U.S. troops killed in Iraq since the invasion

11,285: Americans wounded since the invasion was launched two years ago

21,100-39,300: Estimated number of Iraqi civilians killed since the invasion by violence from war and crime

176: Non-U.S. coalition troops killed in Iraq since the invasion

339: Coalition troops killed by Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs)

70: Daily average number of insurgent attacks on coalition forces in February 2005

14: Daily average number of insurgent attacks on coalition forces in February 2004

18,000: Estimated number of insurgents in Iraq today

5,000: Estimated number of insurgents in Iraq in June 2003

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