Category Archives: Public Service, Civics, Government, Activism

Unbelievable: you must be loyal to the President with your heart and soul

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Or no contracts for you! Dallas Business Journal: “HUD secretary’s blunt warning”:

Once the color barrier has been broken, minority contractors seeking government work may need to overcome the Bush barrier.

That’s the message U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson seemed to send during an April 28 talk in Dallas.

Jackson, a former president and CEO of the Dallas Housing Authority, was among the featured speakers at a forum sponsored by the Real Estate Executive Council, a national minority real estate consortium.

After discussing the huge strides the agency has made in doing business with minority-owned companies, Jackson closed with a cautionary tale, relaying a conversation he had with a prospective advertising contractor.

“He had made every effort to get a contract with HUD for 10 years,” Jackson said of the prospective contractor. “He made a heck of a proposal and was on the (General Services Administration) list, so we selected him. He came to see me and thank me for selecting him. Then he said something … he said, ‘I have a problem with your president.’

“I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘I don’t like President Bush.’ I thought to myself, ‘Brother, you have a disconnect — the president is elected, I was selected. You wouldn’t be getting the contract unless I was sitting here. If you have a problem with the president, don’t tell the secretary.’

“He didn’t get the contract,” Jackson continued. “Why should I reward someone who doesn’t like the president, so they can use funds to try to campaign against the president? Logic says they don’t get the contract. That’s the way I believe.”

Now he’s denying he ever said that. More at Google News.

Polices? A potential party platform

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Read Atrios’s “We’re the Decider”. I think it lists what a consensus of the “liberal netroots” believes in admirably, and by the looks of it, that includes me. Let me add however one thing:

Bring focus to the war on terror – bring to justice those that attacked us on 9/11. Now.

The longer they are on the loose, the worst we look and the more unstable the world. It is rediculous that five years down the line we are still getting video tapes by this gang. It is a sign of just how incompetent and unfocussed this Administration has been.

It’s also a sign of how far too many put loyalty to party above what is important to the country. The G.O.P. the party of national security? After these past five years of a consolidated one party rule in Washington – do you feel safer? Really? What is it you smoking then?

Maybe Doc’s Right?

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I have a line in one of my songs that laments that “I learned about life at the age of 3, had it all their on my TV screen” so I can attest what happens when you expose a kid to too much media too soon – that’s me as an early teen on the right btw.

But the web is far more empowering. Not like passive media at all. If MySpace was available when I was a teenager – I would have been all over it. I probably would have found new outlets for expression. I probably wouldn’t have felt so lonely.

But maybe I’m lucky it wasn’t?

The great many things I know I fucked up while learning to be a man, aren’t all over the web, to be findable and usable forever by those that want to do so.

I didn’t have responsible and knowing parenting that would have educated me to the consequences of living life so in the open with so many. And I haven’t grown so old as to forget that my teenage years were messy, confusing, and sometimes downright ugly. I’m happy to have lived them – I wouldn’t change them – they made me who I am – but thank the Lord it’s difficult to exploit them. They are difficult to exploit because because they weren’t public, cached, searchable and available for all to see in perpetuity.

Maybe my childhood is an example of an edge case. But I feel a responsibility to ask if is not.

Back on April 5th I wrote a small piece in response to the concern Doc Searls posted over media consumption and children, including the net. I pretty much agreed with him, but wondered aloud how he would handle it when his son ventures onto MySpace. He came by and replied in a comment:

Ya’ll missed some modifiers. I said,

“I think letting *small* children watch TV is like giving them Quaaludes. I also think kids in their *most *formative years*…”

So I’m talking about young kids here: from 1 to 6 years old; or, to stretch it a bit, through age 9 or 10.

Thirteen year olds are another matter. I wasn’t talking about them, and I’ll gladly defer to the expertise of Danah and others on what MySpace and Xanga and Second Life and World of Warcraft might mean for them.

Meanwhile, I’ve got a 9-year-old kid who still believes in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, and who loves to swim and play basketball and read books. From what I can tell so far, the stories and lessons he’s getting from those books, and from his Waldorf School (where none of his peers, for what it’s worth, watch much TV or use computers… yet), will help equip him to be a discerning and independent soul in the Connected World where he and his peers will spend plenty of time in their teenage years and beyond.

I definitely missed the modifiers. Read his post again. He did make a distinction between being a teenager and not.

In September 1985: Frank Zappa’s Letter to His Fan Club

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In 1985 Frank Zappa sent a letter to his fan club to warn them about the “Wives of Big Brother” – the PMRC.

There is very much I agree with Democratic party on, but whenever some of its leaders find common cause with social conservatives, most likely in pursuit of middle America, it drives me to a place where I find both parties bereft of principal and unworthy of my vote. The 90s seemed to be a time we were past such things, even if I know people who didn’t vote for Al Gore because of Tipper Gore’s involvement in the PMRC. But the echoes in Hillary Clinton’s Family Entertainment Protection Act are too strong to ignore. The legislation Senator Hillary Clinton, Senator Joe Lieberman and Senator Evan Bayh is sponsoring would fine the sale of labeled games – it does not propose labeling. No one would argue over the constitutionality of labeling these days. Our view of our constitutional rights has grown far narrower.

Following is Frank Zappa on Crossfire in 1986, debating censorship and rock music. It’s an eye opener. He called himself a conservative. Do you think he still would consider himself one since the fundamentalist wing of the Republican party holds so much sway? Since the non-invasive government, balanced budget, rule-of-law conservative is effectively extinct (they’re Democrats now)? For humor, the exchange between Washington Times columnist John Lofton and Frank Zappa over the “obscenity” of Van Halen’s “Hot for Teacher” is priceless. Or then again, you could find it depressing.

The exchange from 08:45 in the video to 11:40 is as timely today as it was in 1986. Zappa said that America was on a march toward a “fascist theocracy”. Well what do you think?


link

This exchange should speak to many locally involved folks I know:

Q: What would you tell a kid he aught to hope for now a-days Frank?

A: What I tell kids and what I’ve been telling kids for quite some time is first, register to vote, and second as soon as you’re old enough, run for something.

Damn straight. And that’s just what is taking place. Look out establishment.

More at Metafilter. Read the testimony committee testimony on record labeling from back in September 19, 1985.

Stephen Colbert White House Correspondents Dinner BitTorrent

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Download a high quality version here. Colbert’s piece begins at 0:52:10. 625 Seeders and 1677 Leechers so far. Wow. This will be remembered for a long, long time.

My thoughts: the negative reaction coming from many on the pro-Bush bandwagon is, unfortunately, par for the course these days�as is the celebration of Bush�s �bravery,� especially when there are no real consequences for engaging in meanspirited political humor other than, say, being thought a dick.

Politically, I think it�s fair to observe that we�ve reached that point of partisan purity wherein a certain activist segment of the American Right has decided, en masse, to pretend to believe a whole number of things that are objectively false (including, in this case, Bush�s genius)�and they have decided to do so in order to build consensus and then use groupthink as a political bludgeon, even it comes at the expense of their integrity and intellectual honesty.

Ends justify the means, man. Ends justify the means�

And yes, these three paragraphs are a complete reversal of Jeff Goldstein‘s words, simply replacing “fawning” for “negative”, “Bush” for “Colbert” and “Right” for “Left’.

I need to write a bookmarklet that anyone can use on any blog post by those that follow their party no matter where it goes, even if it’s off a cliff, fighting to defend its brand over facing reality.

A question for Bush supporting friends

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If everything was okay with the administration, why the major shake up? Don’t you think a few admissions of error or fault are going on here? If not, do you mean to say that the administration is bowing pubic sentiment? Really? So you admit that the majority of the American people are upset with the Bush administration? Really?