Quote of the Day: Matt Taibi on Tea Party primary wins

Tea Party Rocks Primaries -- RollingStone.com: "Everyone involved with politics understands the current dynamic. It’s not hard to grasp. You take very tough economic times, add them to a heavy dose of political opportunism, and multiply both by the aggravating factor of a nihilistic commercial media, and what you get is ethnic scapegoating on a massive scale."

I think he left out one important ingredient here. The resigned ignorance of the general population.

Islamophobes Butt Out of NYC's Business

I actually feel like throwing up. I cannot add a comment about this pastor's opinions and hateful behavior as leader of a spiritual community, I'll just let his actions speak for him. I am so sad. That is my reaction on a personal level.

But let's look at this from a legal standpoint. After all, Law is what sets civilized countries apart from barbaric or totalitarian states, right?

I'm tired of the debate with regard to Park51 centering on the Constitution. Don't get me wrong, I love the Constitution. But people who do not live here have adopted this question of the Park51 community center and made it into a national issue to be scrutinized somehow in the light of Constituional Law.

Well let me help you all out with a *fact*. The Constitution has absolutely no governance over activities in a building in New York City. The only applicable laws would be New York City zoning code. And Park51 is not in violation of anything in New York City zoning code. Therefore ... THERE IS NO LEGAL BASIS FOR PROHIBITING THE PARK51 COMMUNITY CENTER FROM BEING DEVELOPED. Period! End of story! Shut up already!


What's really getting to me is that people who live hundreds or thousands of miles away from Ground Zero, people who have no idea of what works and does not work in New York City, people who would likely refuse to ride the subways here for fear of the density, diversity, creativity, and especially of the racial and ethnic composition of New Yorkers, people who actually couldn't give a flying fadoodle about New York City and think that it is an evil town full of sinners and criminals ... these same people are the ones opining loudly that "the Ground Zero Mosque" does not belong where it is planned and is "insensitive".

Islamophobes, Butt The Hell Out Of NYC's Business. Your opinion doesn't count for anything here. It might seem strange to you, but the closer the polled population lives to Ground Zero, the MORE people think the community center and mosque should just move forward as planned.

This is our home, 9/11 and the aftermath is something we went through first-hand while you watched your TV commentators, and you just have no clue that what makes NYC great and what keeps us all getting along here is that we live and shop and commute and work and pray-or-don't and send our kids to school right alongside of each other here. All types of us, all colors, all economic classes, all countries of origin, all races, all religions.

Hero for today: Cadet Katherine A. Miller

Katherine A. Miller is leaving West Point to attend Yale University because of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, a discriminatory policy affecting LGBT people. "I can't be closeted anymore. I need to be open with myself and open with others about who I am."

She was in the top 1% of her class at West Point. DADT has resulted in the discharge of 13,500 service members, and now the discriminatory policy is causing young people in whom the military has invested to leave before doing service.

Wake up, America.
(Facebook friends click through to the original to view the vid)

Obama Signs Act To Empower Native Americans to Fight Rape : Ms Magazine Blog

Obama Signs Act To Empower Native Americans to Fight Rape : Ms Magazine Blog

scribi liberati *

Author Ray Connolly explains how to "do the Dickens" in the age of electronic self-publication and syndication.

Why wait for a publisher in an era when an advance can only be obtained for a piece of work considered a "sure thing" by persons who fear taking any risk? Connolly's economic business model is to give away a whole bunch of chapters, published one at a time, for free. Then to read the ending one pays (less than the cost of a paperback) to download the whole book. Then the free chapters come down and the book moves to Amazon's product list.

I hope this works. It sure is a strong impetus to "just write" without worrying about the submission/rejection cycles, editors who might impose unwanted revisions, recouping an advance, and so on. Therefore authors are liberated to simply create and to bring their work directly to market, much as musicians (and not just indie bands anymore) can do by releasing free mp3's.

Publishing houses beware. Adapt or die.

* never did take Latin, is this correct?

Quote of the day: Against DADT discharges

Why and how the hell do we end up firing our best and brightest when we’re fighting in two wars? If Secretary Donley does not step in, this nation will lose a service member worth $25 million in training whose skill sets are desperately needed today.

-- Aubrey Sarvis (in washpost, executive director of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, commenting on the case of Lt. Col. Victor Fehrenbach who filed for a restraining order barring his discharge from the Air Force on DADT grounds.

Cases like this one, though, do have their value. To those who believe a gay man cannot be manly enough to serve with valor, Lt. Col Fehrenbach's 90 flight missions in three conflict zones defy that particular myth. And for those who believe that any gay person in a shower is obsessed with homosexual desires and will start playing games with soap, towels and strap-ons ... GUESS WHAT, you have been showering with gay comrades all along, you just didn't know it!