Our World

When I first stumbled on The Sunlight Foundation I automatically thought it was a liberal leaning thing disguised to be a bi-partisan watchdog of the U.S. Government.  I’m not so sure my initial impressions were right.  So, having a second cup of coffee I dug a little deeper to look at their “projects”:

• Read The Bill @ http://readthebill.org/ is about a grassroots campaign to require “Congress to post all bills online for 72 hours before they are debated. That gives members of Congress - and you - three days to read legislation and consider how it could potentially affect each of us in our daily lives.”
• Open Congress @ http://www.opencongress.org/ “brings together official government data with news articles, blog coverage, and public comments to give you the real story behind what’s happening in Congress. OpenCongress is a free, open-source, non-profit, and non-partisan web resource with a mission to help make Congress more transparent and to encourage civic engagement.
• Earmark Watch @ http://earmarkwatch.org/ is a site dedicated to looking at congressional earmarks from 2008 and links to another site who is doing the same work for earmarks on bills for 2009.

Reading these changed my mind that perhaps, for once, there is a group that cares about how our government is working for it’s citizens, for the people and by the people, regardless of political affiliation.  Now that really is a ray of sunshine.  You can read all about The Sunshine Foundation and the many projects they are doing to keep government accountable to the people by clicking to their site here.

The election for the President of the United States has felt like the most interesting in years.   One woman has done a nice job of summing up both candidates in one paragraph each.  You can read about them at Kellie’s Web Log by clicking to her article of Thursday, October 9th, 2008 at this link here.

I saw this post at Caprice’s Blog and I laughed and knew I HAD to share her visual insight with our readers … she has a truly good  post.

Send your mousy mouse on over to Caprice’s Blog posting, “Community Organizer vs Governor“to see the difference between the two.

The historic implications of her visual are incredible when you think about … though the players today fall short of the original actors from the time of Jesus and Pilate.

Well our United States Presidential Election draws nearer today and you may or may not be any clearer on who to vote for. Well the Beck’s Cafe baristas have brewed a helpful tool just for you. You should use this only after you get over your New Year’s Eve hangover

The Candidate Calculator will help you determine who may best align with your position! Let’s face it, there are so many choices this time around WHO are you going to pick? It’s a puzzler that’s for sure, but as the Candidate Calculator recommends:

Answer the questions below to find the 2008 presidential candidate that best aligns with your beliefs. More than 1.5 million people have already filled it out. Give it a try!

Mark the column for Yes if you support the issue and No if you oppose it. After that, select how important the topic is to you. If you are unsure or have no opinion on a topic, just mark the Unsure column. You will be scored based upon how well you match the current views of each of the 2008 presidential candidates.

You should go visit the Candidate Calculator and see WHO lines up with you….then vote

I was watching C-SPAN2 live coverage of Senate speeches the other day and walking to the podium comes none other than the honorable Senator from West Virginia, Robert Byrd. At first, I thought he was delirious as he started on this bizarre speech denouncing the rise of Dog Fighting.

Dog Fighting….wtf?? I thought that went out with the middle ages.

Apparently not.

Seeing that I am covered these days in plaster, html and php trying to re-furb Beck’s Cafe I haven’t really been paying attention to the news. But I’ll be darned right there in prime time was a report on Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick, himself involved in a dog-fighting ring (see story on Vic by clicking to Yahoo News here) . Friends, we have now reached a time in history where the bizarre is commonplace.

Senator Byrd went on to say that this truly horrendous bloodsport is on the rise. Clearly some people have WAY too much disposable income and FAR too much disposable time on their hands. But is it really on the rise in general and how about here in Boston?

On the national front, it is just sad. We pulled up an article from CBS that did an expose in Chicago on dog fighting on July 19th, 2007. You can visit CBS2 in Chicago at this link HERE to read the full story, but just read this quote by a “trainer” of dogs for dogfighting…this is just one method they use to get those dogs “ready” to fight:

“We’d get 17, 18 bumblebees and put them in his food so that when he ate it, it would sting his gums he went nuts, driving him berserk,” Chico said.

Well now that’s a way to train an innocent domestic animal that is 95% of the time docile and man’s best friend. It’s nice to see the human race has reached the pinnacle of civilization and is now de-evolving.

I did a little snooping around over coffee on this heinous practice and thought I’d share the linkie love with you all. Diane Jessup, who started the Law Dogs program, has a gruesome piece on what dogfighting is all about, you can read her article at her site, “Working PitBull” at this link here.. It made my skin crawl. I’m not sure what kind of “men” dogfighting kinda guys are but it’ll make you scratch your head.

But what about the hard numbers on this “sport”. Is this on the rise or was this just an eye catching feature story for a slow July news month? Sadly, according to a CNN report during an interview with John Goodwin, an expert on animal fighting with the Humane Society, there are an estimated 40,000 professional dogfighters in the United States and purses for such fights can reach $100,000.00. Follow the money and you’ll find something. Sometimes what you find is good, this time what you find is bad. You can read the full CNN report on dogfighting at this link here.

What about here in Boston? Surely we are more “sophisticated”? Well, maybe not. Beck’s Cafe had an email exchange with Joanne Mainiero, Director of the Massachusetts Humane Society on this topic. She told us that Massachusetts does indeed have some illegal dogfighting rings around but that they don’t generally last very long. Usually they are caught quickly. But, she told us, the evidence of dogfighting is here even on an amateur basis with dead dogs found in yards. Pretty gruesome.

We asked Ms. Mainiero what could be done to help combat this practice and she had this advice. First, she suggested that all of us contact the NFL to suspend Michael Vick. The Humane Society even has a quick mailer set up so that you can send your sentiments on this subject over to The NFL Commish. You can reach the Humane Society web page with the “NFL, Throw the Book at Michael Vick” emailer at their site at this link here. Second, be on the lookout. The Humane Society has a fact sheet on this subject and you can reach it by clicking to the Human Society “dogfighting fact sheet” as this link here.

“Last Monday in May”©

By…John T. Bird

We pause to remember those who died

With so much courage, so much pride

They’ll never come back, yet memories endure

To remind us of freedom: fragile, pure

We’re worthy of their sacrifice if we pause each day

Not just on the last Monday in May

Links of interest:
Remembering our fallen heroes: remember.gov
U.S. Memorial Day Site: usmemorialday.org

Thank you to any veterans reading this site today. I appreciate what you’re helping to keep our country free.

Every day we risk something.

You walk out the door you risk stepping in a pile of dog poop

You drink a cup of coffee you risk burning a few layers of flesh of your tongue

You kiss your honey and your risk your nose ring getting caught in her braces

and so it goes…

But what about those every day run of the mill disasters like a tornado? Or maybe an earthquake? Have you ever thought “gee, I wonder if I’m at risk for those today”?

Well wonder no more fair reader! I present to you the patented, “Glenn Beck Interactive
Disaster Map”. You’ll find it quite illuminating we think. Just click on over to the map by visiting this link HERE. It will take you to Glenn Beck.com where you’ll learn what YOUR risk is!

( Source data for this post courtesy of our correspondant, “The Southern Man”.  Thanks!!)

They (whoever “they are”) say that the only thing that you can be sure of are death and taxes. Well, now there’s a bit more to fear on the tax side. From the fiends at The fiends at the Inquirer have discovered that revenuers can now use Google Earth to detect those of you defrauding your various governments of their hard sought tax dollars. As seen in the Inquirer,

A PROVINCIAL revenue agency down in Argentina is using Google Earth Pro to find tax dodgers. With this approach, the taxman for the Buenos Aires province detected 1184030 square feet of undeclared property.

If it weren’t enough to actual find the deadbeat properties, there are a few more tricks the eneterprising taxmen can employ:

A list of alleged debtors is published by the provincial Public Revenue Service on the web, but as is usual in him, he pressed for more. Google’s Earth Pro subscription allows the agency to import site plans and property lists, and export high-quality images. It also allows to transfer “up to 2,500 locations by address or geospatial coordinates from a spreadsheet” and includes measurement tools -square feet, mile, acreage, and the like- by point and clicking on the screen.

Ah, so what you may say as you quaff down another espresso. Well the “so what” is that other governments IRS Agents will likely pick up on this little convenience and add it as a tool in their auditor’s briefcase. Look up, the Taxman Cometh.
You can read of this diabolical development for dollars at The Inquirer by visiting them at this link here.

There’s a few generally accepted things you can guess you should not do in while driving in your car, among them:

• Never clean some freshly caught fish whilst driving in you car
• Be sure not to apply eye makeup and drag race down a major highway
• When approaching a large puddle of unknown depth after a flash rainstorm, never hope that your car is either tall enough or the puddle not too deep.

Finally, do not use your laptop computer while drivingin your car. Apparently a gentleman was driving down the wrong side of the road while using his laptop, perhaps he was blogging? In any event, the gentleman was a computer teacher and his four door sedan collide with a Hummer. The couple in the Hummer escaped with some bruises, the computer the chap in the car was using was fine and still operating after the crash. The computer using teacher died though.

You can read the reports at CBS news here or at The Inquirer here.

The latest report from Technorati shows that, as of November 2006 there were 57 MILLION blogs in existence with 100,000 new blogs being created per day. That’s alot of writing. Don’t you wonder if any of this matters?

As a writer I do wonder at times and I’m always happy when I find that something I wrote sparked a comment, made someone laugh, or cry, or think differently, or even opened up a conversation that wasn’t there before (whether I agree with the viewpoints expressed or not). It’s all good. I think I would still write even if I didn’t self-publish.

But sometimes don’t you wonder if any of this writing and self-publishing matters? Well I’m here to tell you it does. Check out these tidbits. I’m going to put some of the content from these news reports in my post because you never know when the report might come down. The common thread here is that these mere bloggers are being watched. Why are they being watched? Because people are reading their blogs, hearing their viewpoint and they are thinking.

• Egypt arrests another blog critic: Police in Cairo have detained a blogger whose posts have been critical of the Egyptian government. Rami Siyam, who blogs under the name of Ayyoub, was detained along with three friends after leaving the house of a fellow blogger late at night…In recent weeks, bloggers have been exposing what they say was the sexual harassment of women at night in downtown Cairo in full view of police who did not intervene. Mr Siyam’s host on Saturday night, Muhammad Sharqawi, was detained for several weeks earlier this year. (see the post for as long as it remains up at Natasha Tynes, “Mental Mahem” by visiting her story HERE.

• Egyptian blogger jailed for four years for insulting Islam: In a landmark case for freedom of expression in Egypt, a young blogger has been jailed for insulting Islam and President Hosni Mubarak, drawing angry condemnation at home and abroad.Abdel-Karim Nabil Suleiman, 22, a former law student at Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, was sentenced to four years in prison by a court in Alexandria yesterday after being arrested last November over eight articles he posted on his blog. (see the post for as long as it remains up at The Guardian, by visiting the story HERE.

• Bloggers Harassed by Authorities: The Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA) is raising concerns over what appears to be growing harassment of individuals who use online blogs to express views and share information in Malaysia. The IFEX member says the government’s policing of the Internet is reaching a critical stage that needs to be recognised and confronted by free expression advocates.In the past two months, three bloggers have been questioned by authorities for posting information on their personal web diaries. On 14 March 2005, Mack Zulkifli was questioned in his home by police officers and unidentified government officials who asked him to help them “understand the latest developments of weblogs,” according to the independent online news service Malaysiakini.com. (see the post for as long as it remains up at The International Freedom of Expression eXchange, by visiting the story HERE.

• French blogger harassed by right wing dynasty: A French blogger, Christoph Grébert, is going to court this afternoon to defend himself of accusations of defamation brought against him by the city of Puteaux, a wealthy suburb of Paris.His crime? Writing about what’s happening in his city, taking pictures of construction sites, and commenting on the latest city council (public) meetings. (see the post for as long as it remain up at The European Tribune, by visiting the story HERE.

So blogging, in fact writing, does appear to make a difference. Let’s hope that for every voice silenced 100 more spring up.

In the words of Thomas Jefferson, what makes Democracy possible?

It’s information.

“Information is the currency of democracy.” Thomas Jefferson

It’s free flow, it’s free access and, perhaps most importantly, the free debate about it without fear. That’s why public libraries, the internet, blogs, radio, short wave, the local coffee house, on-line forums, are all vitally necessary to be kept and to be preserved. And why censorship of that information by governments, groups, communities, individuals, and even corporations should be resisted.
(photo courtesy of ukanda’s photos, used under Creative Commons License)

With the current election behind us it might be useful for us all to think about if the current crop of congressmen are going to be pro-transgender rights, neutral or against them. At some level, being transgender is just a small part of who we are and frankly it shouldn’t matter. We go to work, school, and church. Pay our taxes, our bills and pretty much live like anyone else would. But, sadly,it does matter. So it’s important that people in Congress are in favor of protections for us for equal (not special) rights.

And so let’s look at House Speak Nancy Pelosi. Ms. Pelosi is the first woman to be made Speaker of the House and as such that is an amazing achievement. What is so remarkable about the being the Speaker of the House, what power does she wield that should matter to us?

The Speaker of the House has the following roles and responsibilities:

• Presiding office of the U.S. House of Representatives
• Is second in line to replace the President after the Vice-President
• Is generally the highest ranking member of their respective party
• Insures that the House passes legislation supported by the majority party (though presumably they think about all our country’s interest first).
• Runs the debate on the House floor. Before any member of the House of Representatives may speak in the house, the Speaker of the House must acknowledge the person wanting to speak.
• The Speaker may call on people as she pleases, thus controlling the flow of debate
• The House Steering Committee is also chaired by the Speaker. The Steering Committee chooses the chairmen of standing committees.
• The Speaker determines which committees consider bills

All in all, the Speaker has direct impact on what bills get to be seen, voted on and debated. And that would include transgender protections and rights.

So what would make us in the trans community optimistic about her being there and wielding that power? Well, there is some evidence that’s positive and that should point to positive action for us or at least positive consideration. Check out this quote from Ms. Pelosi here:

“I am pleased to co-sponsor the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2005, the first federal hate crimes legislation to explicitly protect transgender individuals and to add gender identity to the federal hate crimes statute. As with past versions, the new hate crimes prevention legislation covers crimes motivated by discrimination based on sexual orientation and disability. Hate crimes have no place in America, and I will fight hard to pass this legislation. (see source from her press release at her House of Representative’s web site by clicking here.

I was encouraged reading that, and then I did some more digging to see where Ms. Pelosi has stood historically. Sure enough, her history on transgender people’s rights looks encouraging supporting transgender rights over a 16 year period,including the support of $250,000 for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Community Center in San Francisco, CA (see source at U.S. House of Representative web site here). You can see more of her record over at the U.S. House of Representatives Web Site by clicking to that site at this link here.

So it’s early yet. While I am a Republican, there was little to vote for in my party frankly. But the Democrats have an opportunity now, and I’m pulling for them. For the transgender population, small as it is, there’s a good chance the equal protections we need will be put in place and maintained.

Like the JFK assassination a generation before us, our generation will always remember where they were on 9-11-2001. The day the United States was attacked on it’s own soil for the time since World War II.

My story is like so many others. I travel alot for work but on this day I just wasn’t, though many of my colleagues were. Working in high tech you have to spend time travelling to certain areas such as Silicon Valley, Shanghai, China, Texas or India. It’s just part of our world. But on 9-11-2001 I wasn’t travelling I was working in my office when one of my co-workers came in and said a plane, a passenger jet, had struck one of the World Trade Center towers. That was it. What a knucklehead I thought to myself. Air traffic must have messed up or maybe there was a malfunction in the instrument panel of the plane and with heavy fog well anything could happen. I shook my head and just thought, “damn” and went on with work. I figured it was bad but not horrible. Until I tried to reach some other co-workers for some information. They were not to be found.

So I stepped out of my office and headed down the hall then I saw them. All 50+ of them, crowded around a small portable radio. And they were listening intently. As I drew nearer a women looked up at me, terrified, and said, “they’ve attacked New York City”. I looked at her trying to understand what she meant as I strained to make sense of the radio broadcast.

Who attacked New York City? As I was thinking it through, my mind flooding with more and more bits of data, another man turned to me to say that “there are planes all over, no one knows how many more will go down”. Still a third person, their hands over their mouths, said, “it’s rush hour, there are 25,000 people in those buildings”.

Finally I understood what was happening. A chill went through my body, and it does still today, the United States was under physical attack from an outside entity, an unnamed (at that point) enemy.

I sat with the others, all 50+ of us, around a small radio listening as the second plane hit, as the Pentagon burst into flames and as the confusion, fear and terror of the day wore on. It wasn’t a productive day. It was a day I’ll always remember though. And something I will never forget.

More stories and pictures of that sad day have been archived the 9-11 Digital Archives. In case you don’t know about this site, it is, in their words, about:

The September 11 Digital Archive uses electronic media to collect, preserve, and present the history of the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania and the public responses to them. Funded by a major grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and organized by the American Social History Project at the City University of New York Graduate Center and the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University…

(Photo courtesy of Babasteve’s Photos, used under Creative Commons License)

Reading a blog post by Kellie posted on July 16, 2006 on the topic of smearing got me thinking. I’ll repost a snippet here but you should go back to her site to read the full story (at this link HERE) and her excellent thoughts:

Read this news story [Ed.-from Boston.com regarding a new intolerance that is sweeping Provincetown]. Now, consider for a moment what the response would be from certain quarters were/when equally bigoted, insulting, derogatory comments are made toward the lgbt community by a handful of equally bigoted, insulting, derogatory folks. Inevitably the usual (read: Left-leaning) suspects would decry and tar the entire- take your pick- conservative/Republican/Christian/traditionalist communities for the ignorant bigotry espoused by some within their midst. Should we now equally decry and tar the entire lgbt community as ignorant bigots based upon the despicable acts of some as accounted in the above story?

I think Kellie is on to something very important in her post on this case of potential reverse discrimination in Provincetown, MA. I was at a Gender Coalition meeting for tolerance and rights for transgender folk about two months ago. In the midst of that meeting someone said that the “right” really hates transgender folk and will try to put a stop to any actions we might take to gain equal rights (not special ones, just the same old rights we all had before some of us came out as transgender - which if we do that we do generally to make other people feel comfortable with us; talk about catch-22). I had to stop and (politely) challenge this person saying that not everyone on the right is bigoted or small minded and unable to see that being born with the incorrect birth anatomy or being somewhat off center from the standard issue gender is a horrific event. Indeed, there are many who have no issue with us at all and would happily defend us, why? By and large, most of us aren’t doing anything to harm anyone else, we’re just seeking a little balance and normalcy in our lives and many on the right see that as well.

Bottom line? Neither the right nor the left should be whitewashed for the extreme activities of some of their members. I would argue those extreme elements need to exist in their groups to actually ignite change and to cause open debate, but to whitewash ALL the left or ALL the right unfairly with the extreme (and many times wrong view) is just that, it’s unfair.

(image courtesy of Emdot, used under Creative Commons License)

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, gasoline is getting more, not less expensive. Indeed, on a per gallon basis we’ll like hit $3 by the Summer high driving season here in the United States. Of course, Europe has always had expensive gasoline, but in the U.S. we sort of take pride in our ability to get up and go, and to have as few barriers in our way when going.

The need for gasoline drives the need for the oil to make it of course. With oil reserves reported to be falling, logic says that the time to think through our alternatives is now, (see counter argument that we have more not less oil at this link here or go see an interesting article that oil may actually be a renewable resource at this link here) Those alternatives could and likely should be in alternative energies that are (a) more sustainable, (b) get the U.S. more energy independence.

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Link: Missing pregnant woman found dead - Yahoo! News.

I was pretty surprised to read this actually.  I knew there was bias in media, but I guess I hadn’t thought about how much of it there really was until this article and the linked one here at USA TODAY opened my eyes.   As  I mentioned in my post regarding D (please click here to scoot back to that post) it’s really not so important that D was transgendered or that Ms. Figueroa was Hispanic.  What matters is that these are people.  They are valuable, they are not throw away.  They all deserve to get as much respect, attention and justice as we can give them seeing that their perpetrators preferred to treat them as objects of contempt.

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disclaimer: I am a Christian, a born again Christian at that.

CNN ran a spot on Anderson Cooper 360 tonight featuring Alison Fahey, Editor of Ad Week, and, Bishop TD Jakes. The topic was on a current trend of corporations sponsoring of Christian events. Alison’s had two points, but the one that stuck out for me was that the advertiser may be sponsoring a Christian event one day, then an event with completely divergent values & views the next. Bishop TD Jakes’s view was that this trend was okay, that they didn’t want to “discriminate” against advertisers and that the money of Christians appears to be worth advertising too.

The real question, at least in this woman’s mind, is, what impact does this have on the message of the event? Does the sponsorship compromise the message? Is the sponsorship even necessary at all? If the costs are covered, is it necessary at all? Surely, marketers can slice the demographic up any way they wish and target market via whatever vehicle that is most effective. But the sponsoring of a specific Christian event smacks of more than an group of smart marketers choosing a demographic then going after it. It smells like the Christians working in league with the marketers. It smells like the money changers being let into the temple. While that may be a stretch (the money changes after all were selling sacrifices - a far cry from what Coke is doing. See John 2:12-22 & this article, The Cleansing of the Temple) it just doesn’t feel right, sort of like saying “Coke” is the soda of all Christians or “Delta” is the airline for the Born Again set. Why would any energy be spent even considering this kind of activity? Perhaps instead of sponsoring a Christian Music festival, those same sponsors could step up their support of feeding the poor, showing mercy to the downcast, and building homes for the homeless (Micah 6:8) - those are true directives from God worth sponsoring.

I love people because they are what make up the world. It’s not so
much the html code that is the backbone of this blog nor the 0100101
that my typing is converted to and then moves along an Ethernet cable
to some servers that are then served up yummily to your browser when
you click on this link - no. It’s really all about people. Connecting
and interacting. Knowing and being known.

Groups of people can either be a gang, a rabble or…a community. A
community is (in the words of the Wikipedia): “an amalgamation of
living things that share an environment…What characterizes a
community is sharing and interaction in any number of ways.” There
have been some very cool things recently that mark our community, I’m
proud to say that these came from trans-women helping other
trans-women. I hate to “classify” us really. But given that we are
trying to change the view of society of trans-folk (for both the men
and the women) from societal
pariah to really just people, I thought these bore out some highlighting:

* Just recently a sister of ours is heading to get FFS (Facial Feminization Surgery). The word went out into our community that she needs support, encouragement and love as she goes through this very difficult operation. Many sisters responded to cheer her on!!! Image how it makes her feel

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