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Archive for the ‘women’ Category

Have We (They) Learned Yet?

Posted in 51 Percent, Communications, Feminism, Feminist Majority, Humanism, Justice, Politics, women, Women's Rights, tagged , , , , , , on July 21, 2010| Leave a Comment »

It’s always nice when people agree with and say exactly what  you think; especially when they say it so well over at the Confluence:

My $0.02 on Shirley Sherrod

By Wonk the Vote

UTube and all the other media videos deserve the same scrutiny as your local grown fruit.

Ask these questions: WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN, HOW, and WHY!!! if you can’t answer those questions, you don’t know what you are watching. If you don’t know what you are watching, you can’t make a decision. That sure as heck means you don’t go riling people up and firing them cause, you, Freda, are suffering from information deficit syndrome.

Now, you’d a thunk all those gal’ durned Harvard Grads would know that stuff by now.

Either, they really are a bunch of doofuses, or ?

Try this on:

1) As Wonk alludes, we are a long way from realizing the ageist and misogynist elements of this story. WHO, right now is being asked to take early retirement, or let go in the greatest numbers? Who as a group has earned the highest salary in the last few years, and thus has the greatest impact on the bottom line? If you can’t remove someone because of tenure, what other tactics are used? This is a long running storyline.

2) Liberals, and I am one, should spend a little time pondering a pattern of dispensability of the more liberal political elements and civil rights “Old Guard” on the part of the Obama administration. Van Jones wasn’t the only other example. In case you still don’t get it. Obama is NOT A LIBERAL! He is not on your side. Whatever is wanted must come from you and your actions.

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100719 – Monday Ketchup

Posted in 51 Percent, Children, Communications, Congress, Environment, Health Care, Human Rights, Humanism, Justice, Nature, Politics, women, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 19, 2010| Leave a Comment »

If you haven’t yet done so, The Gray Panthers urge you to SPREAD THE WORD to reinstate and extend unemployment insurance and contact you Senator TODAY:

In Unemployment Benefits Extension, a Logistical Headache for States

Overtaxed State Agencies Struggle to Keep Up

By ANNIE LOWREY 7/19/10 6:00 AM

[People seeking unemployment benefits wait in the lobby of an Employment Development Department office in California. (EPA/ZUMAPRESS.com)

On Tuesday, the Senate plans to vote on a federal extension of unemployment benefits, blocked by Senate Republicans for an unprecedented two months. The swearing-in of Carte Goodwin, the temporary replacement for the late Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), will give Democrats the crucial 60th vote to overcome a GOP filibuster and restore unemployment insurance to 2.5 million Americans….]

http://washingtonindependent.com/91871/in-unemployment-benefits-extension-a-logistical-headache-for-states

For more on Carte Goodwin try HERE and HERE.

The DOL has published a list of products we all want to think twice about purchasing. However, as you read the list you will see some of the difficulties in following through on this kind of a determination.  Take cotton for example; Benin, Burkina Faso, China, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan are on the no-no list. Where did your last tee shirt come from? Do we have anywhere near enough inspection? See the list HERE:

ILAB News Release: [07/19/2010]

Contact Name: Gloria Della Clarisse Young
Phone Number: (202) 693-8666 or x5051
Release Number: 10-0914-NAT

US Labor Department publishes updated list of products made with forced or indentured child labor

[WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs today announced the publication of a final list of products that federal contractors must certify under Executive Order 13126 are not produced with forced or indentured child labor. The list will appear in the July 20 edition of the Federal Register….]

http://www.dol.gov/ILAB/regs/eo13126/main.htm

As an older adult, around age 55?, my father had Whooping Cough and let me tell you, it wasn’t fun.  It is very hard to breath during the coughing attacks. He thought that he had been vaccinated as a child, leading us to believe that the vaccine had lost effectiveness. Check with your doctor about vaccines. Personally, if I were traveling to CA in the future, I’d check with my doctor about getting the vaccine as well.

Vaccine urged as whooping cough epidemic grows

By Bobby Caina Calvan

bcalvan@sacbee.com

Published: Monday, Jul. 19, 2010 – 12:37 pm

Last Modified: Monday, Jul. 19, 2010 – 1:02 pm

[State health officials today urged more Californians to get vaccinated for whooping cough, as the disease grew to epidemic proportions…]

http://www.sacbee.com/2010/07/19/2900460/vaccine-urged-as-whooping-cough.html

Border security and Immigration reform are two separate issues.  The former is used as a ploy to prevent the latter from happening. Ruben Navarrette shows how the two issues rotate around each other:

Politicians posture over U.S.-Mexico border

Ruben Navarrette Jr.

[“What do you mean I’m out of money?” says the bumper sticker. “I still have checks left!” In the immigration debate, some folks use the same logic to raise the issue of border security.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/06/29/EDAP1E6NQ5.DTL

You may remember that President Obama issued an Executive Order on May 22, 2010 directing the institution of a “ National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling”. The Commission released it’s final report today.  I guess it will be my evening read:

Final Recommendations of the Ocean Policy Task Force Announced

Posted by Phil Larson on July 19, 2010 at 02:23 PM EDT

Obama Administration officials today released the Final Recommendations of the Ocean Policy Task Force, which would establish a National Policy for the Stewardship of the Ocean, Coasts, and Great Lakes (National Policy) and create a National Ocean Council (NOC) to strengthen ocean governance and coordination.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/ceq/initiatives/oceans

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Julia Gillard – Australia’s new PM is a Sheila!

Posted in 51 Percent, Election, Feminism, Politics, women, tagged , , on June 24, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Another first – not from the United States. Julia Gillard was voted in as the first woman  Prime Minister of Australia today. She stood unopposed after Kevin Rudd was dumped.

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Happy Anniversary Title IX!!

Posted in 51 Percent, Communications, Feminist Majority, Justice, Politics, women, tagged , , on June 24, 2010| Leave a Comment »

In time for the Anniversary of Title IX, The National Women’s Law Center has put out a new Guide entitled: “It’s Your Education: How Title IX Protections Can Help You”. It’s going to be on my reading list for this week. What we don’t know is what can hurt us.

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6.6 Turkish Earthquake

Posted in Children, Disaster, Humanism, Politics, women, tagged , , on March 8, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Lighting a candle for the folks in Turkey today.

Quake Topples Homes in Eastern Turkey, Kills 51

[A strong earthquake struck villages in eastern Turkey Monday, killing at least 51 people.The government initially said 57 people had died, but later lowered the death toll to 51.  It gave no explanation for the change. The 6.0 magnitude earthquake hit Elazig province before dawn, sending residents rushing into the streets….]

http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/usa/At-Least-57-Killed-as-Quake-Strikes-Eastern-Turkey-86783302.html

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Yeah, Baby!

Posted in 51 Percent, Election, election reform, Feminism, just say no deal, Justice, NOW, Politics, women, tagged , on March 7, 2010| 3 Comments »

What Riverdaughter SAID.

And get rid of the State Caucuses!

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This You????

Posted in Communications, Politics, women, tagged , on February 25, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Graham Cluley over at Dark Reading reminds us that Twitter has it’s own phishing problems:

Twitter Phishing Attacks Asks, ‘This You????’

Posted by Graham Cluley, Feb 24, 2010 09:47 AM

[The wave of phishing attacks against Twitter users continues to catch unwary surfers.

The latest attack seen spreading across the microblogging network asks a very simple question:

This you????

followed by a shortened link pointing to a bogus Web page that is posing as the Twitter login screen….]

http://www.darkreading.com/blog/archives/2010/02/twitter_phishin.html?cid=nl_DR_DAILY_2010-02-25_h

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This ‘n That

Posted in 51 Percent, Congress, Feminism, Finance, Health and Food, Health Care, Justice, Politics, War, women, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 24, 2010| 1 Comment »

I’ve just been so busy with some home remodeling and the new shop, I really haven’t had time to post.  However, I hope you all are keeping up with events.

Did you read Dakinikat’s financial innovation post, HERE, over at the Confluence?

BlueLyon reports the stats that Nevada now has the highest percentage of underwater home loans in the Country at 70% – truly an astonishing figure. California, by comparison, only comes in at 35%.

Marching and petitioning are at the top of the list today.

The AFL-CIO is asking for signatures to their petition HERE, to keep Whirlpool from closing their last shop in the US that makes refrigerators. The Evansville plant has a long history and a fine working base. Whirlpool took Stimulus money and now wants to move the plant to Mexico.

BlueLyon is asking you to boycott FedEx. (I think that would also mean Kinko’s since they are the same company.) HERE is why.

The Women’s National Law Center is asking you to do a virtual march and send an email HERE to Congress. Let them know that being a woman is not the same is a “pre-existing medical condition”.

Send your thoughts to Senator Carl Levin on Blackwater (XE Services). It’s hilarious, in a deeply twisted way, that Blackwater (now XE Services) was able to divert hundreds of guns, including 500 AK-47 assault rifles intended for the Afghani Police, and pass them out like popcorn amongst themselves. Remind me again, for whom these people are working and why we need mercenaries? Blackwater’s contract to protect diplomats in Afghanistan ends this year, but the Defense Department is looking at them to train Afghan police. In the way of things political, I imagine the reason we are now addressing these complaints are those upcoming contractual events. Blackwater still hasn’t returned all the weapons. I’ll bet they can’t, with reports about that some weapons were sold on the black market.

Here is Senator Levin’s latest statement on the hearings being conducted today.

The Senate passed their version of the jobs bill this morning. I’ll have more on it later.

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Thoughts about Howard Zinn

Posted in Feminism, Human Rights, Humanism, Politics, women, tagged , , , on February 10, 2010| 3 Comments »

“If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

Frederick Douglass

(From the People’s History website)

Last week when Hubbie and I were out scrounging for items to put into a little shop we have begun, we ran across a copy of Howard Zinn’s time honored book, “A People’s History of the United States 1942-present”.  As everyone knows, Zinn died last month at the age of 87.

He was a member of the “Lost Generation”.  Though some are now attributing that term to the young of the current day, affected by our current economic crisis, the term was first used by  to Gertrude Stein via her mechanic, and usually referred to those born in the wake of WWI.

Perhaps, only those souls remaining of that period can really understand it, but imagine what it meant growing up then. First, families were traumatized in WWI, with many who made it home broken and bent, then, the loss of financial stability and so much more of the Depression, and then the growing certainty that you were born just in time to die in WWII.  So many of the writers of this period echo this kind of angst and pain, from Steinbeck to Hemingway to Wolfe.

From unfolding European events to: suffrage for women, the tent cities, and the lynchings, and the forced labor of African Americans in the aftermath of the Mississippi Flood, to the Dustbowl, hatred of the Japanese Americans on the West Coast, and the effects of Prohibition, mobsters and the FBI, the period lasted only 24 years. Even as international actors strutted their way toward the hurricane that would be WWII, it was yet, most assuredly, a period in which there was plenty of focus on the struggles of the common woman and man.

So much was experienced in a direct and visceral way by the Lost Generation. Perhaps it was a natural thing then that, as a common man himself, Howard Zinn, would develop the historical viewpoint that he did.

I thought Ralph Nader had the best idea for his commemoration. That is, we should remember him by organizing.

In deference to Ralph, however, I think too many of us don’t even know who Howard Zinn was.  We must pass this knowledge forward. Knowledge is one of the critical elements of organizing. History that is not taught, is lost. Education lacking the People’s History is not full education.  Read or reread, Zinn’s books. Visit the links Ralph provided in his blog:

www.zinnedproject.org

http://www.peopleshistory.us/

http://www.thepeoplespeak.com/

www.howardzinn.org

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100208 – Monday Ketchup

Posted in 51 Percent, Congress, ERA, Feminism, Finance, Justice, LGBT, Politics, women, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 8, 2010| 1 Comment »

Yesterday, a coin initiated the Super Bowl XLIV. Today it blasted into outer space. NASA still has panache.

Photo by nasaimages.org

Space Shuttle Blasts off on Last Night Flight

Shuttle Endeavour blasts off on last planned night launch, taking new room to space station

By MARCIA DUNN

The Associated Press

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.

[Endeavour and six astronauts rocketed into orbit Monday on what’s likely the last nighttime launch for the shuttle program, hauling a new room and observation deck for the International Space Station….]

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=9774512

You know, I really don’t care what plastic Best Foods/Helmann’s is using, or what the reduced shelf breakage is; I want glass mayonnaise jars back!! Yes I know, glass takes energy to produce, but so does plastic, Every time I pick up a jar, I want to fling it down the aisle.  Who really knows what’s in this flavor of the month container? So, in light of that little tantrum,  I found that Mother Jones has put out an interesting article on the corrolation between Bisphenal ingestion in mothers and increased asthma in children.

Moms Get Plastic, Kids Get Asthma?

— By Julia Whitty| Wed Feb. 3, 2010 6:18 PM PST

[More bad news on the health effects of bisphenol A (BPA), that organic compound used as a building block in many plastics—including in plastic water bottles, food packaging, sunglasses, and CDs….]

http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2010/01/moms-get-plastic-kids-get-asthma

On February 4th, after waiting for more than nine months, and without the vote of yet to be sworn Scott Brown, M Patricia Smith, was finally confirmed as the Solicitor for The Labor Department. The vote was 60-32, with 3 not voting. Republicans have opposed Smith over the HELP (A wage watch effort.) program in New York.  One wonders however, after the final vote tally, what the game was really about. Would a filibuster have lasted any longer? If the 60 votes were there, why not get it over with?

OSHA inspectors were on site in Middletown Conn. this weekend, in the aftermath of the construction site explosion where at least 5 workers were killed and 12 were injured. The Solicitor is arriving at a momentous time.

Also, on February 4th, Martha Johnson was finally confirmed as Administrator of the General Services Administration (GSA). The Senate gave her the green light in a vote of 96-0, with 4 not voting.

Johnson waited ten months because of a concern Senator Kit Bond had about whether the GSA should close a federally owned building and relocate to leased space. Ridiculous!  Why should this have happened? What was the Senate game?

Finally, the Iowa Independent reports, that in a flurry of inanity and bad timing, (Didn’t the POTUS just tell the world that “don’t-ask-don’t-tell” had to go?) two State of Iowa Republican legislators are attempting to get certain forms of  bullying excluded from their anti-bullying bill passed in 2007. Apparently these two don’t think the words sexual orientation or gender identity ought to be in there. Jason Schultz and Matt Windschitl, shame on you!!! These Repugs have got to go!

GOP lawmakers want to exclude gay students from anti-bullying bill

By JASON HANCOCK 2/8/10 1:15 PM

[A pair of Republican state legislators has introduced a bill that would remove protections for gay, lesbian and transgender students from an anti-bullying law passed in 2007.

State Reps. Jason Schultz, R-Schleswig, and Matt Windschitl, R-Missouri Valley, sponsored the legislation to remove sexual orientation and gender identity as definitions used for purposes of protecting students in public and nonpublic schools from harassment and bullying…]

http://iowaindependent.com/27342/gop-lawmakers-want-to-exclude-gay-students-from-anti-bullying-bill?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+IowaIndependent+%28Iowa+Independent%29

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