8.30.2009
8.29.2009
National Briefing | Midwest: Ohio: No Immigration Charges
National Briefing | Midwest: Ohio: No Immigration Charges
Federal authorities say there will be no charges against a Chicago food company whose southwest Ohio plant was the site of a major immigration raid in August 2007.National Briefing | Southwest: Texas: Agents in Raid Are Fired
National Briefing | Southwest: Texas: Agents in Raid Are Fired
The Texas liquor authorities fired two agents and a supervisor after a raid on a Fort Worth gay bar in which the agents roughed up several people.8.28.2009
8.27.2009
UConn Replaces Cheerleaders With Less Athletic "Spirit Squad" [No Cheers]
I'm not sure how i feel about this. isn't cheer-leading a legitimate sport (or as legitimate as say golf). This doesn't say whether a mostly women's varsity team was disbanded for a team of what seems to be smiling, friendly non-athletes. While there isn't anything WRONG with the replacement, per se, if it nixed a collegiate sport, that seems kinda wrong.
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via Jezebel on 8/27/09
Christine Wilson, assistant vice president for student affairs and director of student activities, told The Hartford Courant that the school replaced the cheerleading team with the Spirit Squad because "we want people formerly called cheerleaders to focus in on building spirit at UConn, on spending time working on ways to engage fans and to really spread Husky spirit." The new team will wear outfits similar to what the cheerleaders wore, but will focus on leading crowds in interactive cheers and spend time in "tailgating areas handing out spirit buttons and other kinds of spirit supplies," at football games, men's and women's basketball games, and other school events. According to the Spirit Squad's website, "You will not need to have gymnastics, dance, or cheer experience to be eligible for the Spirit Squad."
Twenty-four men and women were recently selected to be on the Spirit Squad, but many of former cheerleaders didn't make it. Alanna Ferguson said she was selected to be a cheerleader as a freshman last year because of her gymnastic skills, but feels she wasn't picked for the Spirit Squad because the new team isn't looking for people with athletic ability. She said creating the Squad is like, "reverting back to the 1970s or 1980s, when cheering was more about getting with the fans and dancing around... They are disrespecting cheerleaders in general by doing this."
Many cheerleaders have fought to be seen as athletes rather than just sex symbols in recent years as cheerleading has come to involve more physically demanding stunts. (Especially since recent studies say that among female athletes cheerleading is now the leading cause of catastrophic injuries, including death, head trauma, and paralysis.) Neal Kearney, who resigned as UConn's cheerleading coach in June, said that in his 22 years on the job he saw cheering become much more physically demanding and it became harder to make the squad. "A lot of people came to the first day, saw how competitive it was and it dissuaded them from trying out," he said. "They needed to be grounded in gymnastics. You had to be able to do at least a round-off back handspring."
A statement released by the university explained the creation of the Spirit Squad saying,
"By changing the style, and not requiring gymnastics experience, we will be able to offer the opportunity to participate to a broader pool of students. Students who did not have a chance to 'cheer' previously, or students who are not gymnasts, can represent their college as 'spirit ambassadors.'"
According to an article published earlier this year in The Daily Campus, UConn's student newspaper, the cheerleading squad was facing a tough season in 2009-2010 because all six male cheerleaders graduated. While the author seemed most concerned that the female cheerleaders wouldn't be able to hurl free t-shirts past the first few rows of fans, he noted,
Stuntin' will no longer be a habit for UConn cheer. In fact, with such inexperience at the the base positions, it will be awfully hard to pull off the aerial stunts that have defined the squad in the past.
Some have suggested that the school wanted to open up the team to "a broader pool of students" because they couldn't find enough men who were strong enough and wanted to join the squad. But, Michael Downard, a former captain of the cheerleading team who graduated in 2005, said he believes having less emphasis on strength and athleticism will actually make men even less interested in joining the Spirit Squad. Plus, a simple solution to not having enough men to fill the base positions in stunts would be to recruit or train stronger women to do the job, as thousands of squads around the country perform stunts without male cheerleaders. Even if school officials weren't solely motivated by wanting to see less gymnastics and more dancing in skimpy uniforms, the decision was still sexist. Rather than than making the team even more physically challenging for female recruits and those already on the team, they decided that the spirit of UConn has nothing to do with showcasing the abilities of female athletes.
UConn Replaces Cheerleaders With 'Spirit Squad' [The Hartford Courant]
Spirit Squad FAQ [UConn.edu]
Cheerleading Is Leading Cause Of Catastrophic Injury In Young Women [Science Daily]
Looking Ahead For The UConn Cheerleaders [The Daily Campus]
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8.26.2009
Tim Wise breaks down the health care teabaggers and their racism game
Thank you Mr. Wise. I really wish I lived int he post-racial society that I was told about around the inauguration. That CONGRESSIONAL REPRESENTATIVES are spewing this sort of racism and general hatred without being taken to task is a big way is reprehensible. Where is the MSM on this? Where are they on anything anymore? It seems to be all entertainment and lies. Where is s commitment to facts? To real reporting?
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via Pam's House Blend - Front Page by Pam Spaulding on 8/26/09
Tim Wise, author of "White Like Me," and well-known anti-racist activist and member Anti-Racist Action calls out the obvious gigantic elephant in the room about these over-the-top, hysterical reactions from the winger/teabagger/birther crowd that hates Barack Obama with such a passion that they can't contain their racism as it oozes out of their sleazy pores with abandon. CNN's Don Lemon put him on and Wise didn't hold back.
WISE: Well, you know, not everyone who opposes the president's plan or him as an individual obviously is acting on the basis of racism. My argument is that there is a background noise of the hostility, that is, I think, about what I guess I would call white racial resentment.
Let me give you an example. We know in Missouri the other day, a white man goes, assaults a black woman, rips up her poster of Rosa Parks and then receives a huge ovation from literally hundreds of white folks in attendance for doing that.
And then as they haul her away, the police in the room, the security, haul her away, these white folks are applauding. She was assaulted, a picture of Rosa Parks ripped up. Meanwhile, there are white folks in the room with posters that refer to the president by the "N" word. No one seemed to care about that.
Secondly, we've got right wing radio talk show hosts who for months now have been playing the white racial resentment card to get their forces revved up. You have Glenn Beck saying just the other day on two occasions that the health care bill is really not about health care, it's Obama's way to get reparations for black people.
Now, that's absurd. What kind of reparations do you have to get sick first in order to get paid?
But when you say that and then you send these folks out there or Rush Limbaugh back at the end of May saying that Obama hates white people. Pat Buchanan saying that white men are, quote, "experiencing exactly what black people experienced during segregation" which is, of course, absurd. That kind of rhetoric underlying this opposition makes it very hard for me to think that race is not in the picture.
Have you noticed the MSM has been slow to hold any of the Republican leadership accountable for this outrage? John McCain feebly tried to shut down the crazies at his town hall, but these people are rabid. I mean come on, when is someone going to ask Michele Bachmann or the rest of her birther caucus agrees with their fellow elected birthers that the President needs to disclose whether he's circumsized or not -- as some of their Base has called for.LEMON: OK. So then if we're going to put blame on anyone's shoulders, whose fault is it anyway? Is it -- is it people just buying into the rhetoric? Or is it some of the people that you mentioned, some of the conservative talk show hosts there. Should they be more responsible with their language because people may be buying into what they're saying and not realizing that it's coded racism?
WISE: Well, words have consequences. And I think if you're going to have a microphone and you're going to speak to millions of listeners every day, you have a responsibility to, first of all, do your homework so you don't tell lies about the health care bill and act like they're going to kill grandma and then send Sarah Palin out there with a head full of nothing to tell lies to the American people.
And when you do that, don't be surprised when folks show up at these events and are throwing around buzz words like socialism, fascism, comparing Obama to Adolf Hitler. See, that too, I think, is very telling. Because when you portray Obama as Hitler, as some of these folks at these rallies have done, what you're saying, and this is very interesting, think about Hitler. We think of Hitler as not just a fascist, but a racial fascist.
So if what they're saying is, this man, Obama, is a racial fascist, the question that gets begged in a lot of white people's minds is, hmm, I wonder what race he's going to come for. Oh, yes, us, because Glenn Beck said it's reparations and Rush Limbaugh said Obama hates white people.
It gins up this type of hostility and really white racial paranoia and white racial resentment at a time when we need to be seriously talking about issues that face us as a nation and not being engaged in this kind of racial politics, but that's what's going on.
LEMON: And here's the thing, and what I think many people don't get is that just because you're on the side of the camera that I'm on doesn't mean that you're always going to be objective.
WISE: Right.
LEMON: And I don't mean -- you know, and a lot of people are. But it's a racket. It's a gimmick for some people who are into it to make their names bigger or make money for themselves. And the people who are buying into this stuff may not exactly realize that in this process.
WISE: It's a good point, Don. You know, there's about 40 years of research, for example, which has found that whenever we talk in this country about social program spending for the have-nots or those who have less in our society...
LEMON: Like I had one guest last night, said that it was -- said that it was health care welfare, which was an odd...
WISE: It is. It seems odd, but, see, that's the problem. Whenever we talk about any type of social spending, whether it's income support, housing support, nutrition support, or now health care support, there is a large percentage of white America, again according to 40 years of research, which hears black people. They hear Mexicans. They hear immigrants.
There is a perception, it's often very wrong, but there is a perception that when we talk about government spending for the have- nots, we're talking about taking from hard-working white people and giving to lazy black folks.
I would recommend that folks read Martin Gillen's book from the mid-90s called "Why Americans Hate Welfare," where he shows that the hostility to social program spending of any kind began in earnest in the early '70s which was precisely the moment where the media representations of poor people switched from being mostly white folks during the Depression, Appalachian poor during the Dust Bowl, to being mostly black folks. There is a racial component to that.
LEMON: Tim, I've got to run here, but just real quickly. I was at a town hall yesterday and I really had to take some people to task. They're very nice people, but they're using those buzzwords that I don't think people realize all the time like "real Americans" or "Give Me Back my America" was one of the songs or "Take Back America." It's like where has -- I don't -- what do you mean by that?
WISE: Well, when you stand up and you wax nostalgic and say things like I want the country that the founders envisioned, when the country the founders envisioned was a formal system of white supremacy, excuse me if I found it a little hard to think that race is not perhaps playing a pretty big role.
Hat tip, Racialicious.
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Teddy
I am greatly saddened by the death of Senator Kennedy. I can only hope that this will galvanize Congress to pass a healtchcare bill in his honor.
Teddy, as he was known, was privileged, in every sense of the word. And he made liberal use of his privilege, in ways I admired and ways I did not. The terrible bargain we all seem to have made with Teddy is that we overlooked the occasions when he invoked his privilege as a powerful and well-connected man from a prominent family, because of the career he made using that same privilege to try to make the world a better place for the people dealt a different lot.
Twice, Teddy did despicable things with his privilege, very publicly.
On Chappaquiddick Island, he drove his car off a bridge and made his way to safety; his female passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, drowned. I won't pretend to know if Teddy could have saved her, though I believe he would have if he could. What we all know, because he told us so, is that he fled the scene and did not call authorities until her body was discovered the next day, making it impossible to determine the extent of his responsibility with regard to alcohol consumption. His attorneys argued, and the Massachusetts Supreme Court agreed, that the inquest into Mary Jo's death would be held in secret. In the end, Teddy faced a two-month suspended sentence for leaving the scene of an accident, and no more.
In Palm Beach, Florida, two decades later, Teddy threw around his weight on behalf of his young nephew, William Kennedy Smith, with whom he'd been drinking the night William was accused of sexual assault. Though William had been accused of sexual assault multiple times before (and has been accused again since), Teddy vociferously protested his nephew's innocence and participated in the smear campaign against his accuser, who found herself pitted against the entire Kennedy clan and the enormous privileges its membership carries. Smith was found not guilty of all charges. His accuser's identity was made public.
Teddy's privilege allowed him to pull strings on his own behalf and on his nephew's behalf in criminal situations where one woman ended up dead and another raped. That is one of the many things the sort of limitless privilege like Teddy's allows—and he made use of it.
And I cannot forget it.
I can also not forget the myriad ways in which Teddy used his limitless privilege for the betterment of others, as Mustang Bobby so eloquently detailed. He quite genuinely cared about the poor, the sick, the needy, the dispossessed. He was an authentic progressive, who could acknowledge his own privilege and could stand in front of the Senate and talk about the privilege he had that people of color, LGBTQIs, and women lack. He was a great goddamn Senator—and would that the entire Senate, or even just the Democratic Caucus, was filled with people who were as passionate and progressive as he was.
It is much discussed that he felt burdened by being the torch-carrier for his fallen brilliant brothers, whose deaths and truncated potential haunted the entire nation. He had to do more than any other individual man, because he was living the life of three.
I suspect that Teddy, who knew himself well and could stare his flaws in the face, who carried the shame of his misdeeds in the furrow of his brow that never totally lightened even with a smile, also felt burdened by his own abuses of the privilege he knew he hadn't earned. It was there; he couldn't help himself using it, even when he knew he shouldn't have. And it hung on him, as well it should have.
He'd made a terrible bargain with himself, too.
Teddy's legacy, then, is complicated. A man of privilege, who used it cynically for his own benefit. A man of privilege, who used it generously to try to change the world and. And maybe to salve his own conscience. Even as he believed fervently in the genuine rightness of his endeavors—and certainly would have, even if there wasn't a scale to balance.
I have no tidy conclusion. It is what it is.
RIP Teddy. Thank you for your excellent service in the United States Senate.
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via Shakesville by noreply@blogger.com (Melissa McEwan) on 8/26/09
Senator Edward Kennedy was a tough guy. He was smart, tenacious, opinionated, strong in body, mind, and spirit. And I think because he was such a tough guy, he won't mind if I don't share my real and uncensored thoughts on the occasion of his passing.Teddy, as he was known, was privileged, in every sense of the word. And he made liberal use of his privilege, in ways I admired and ways I did not. The terrible bargain we all seem to have made with Teddy is that we overlooked the occasions when he invoked his privilege as a powerful and well-connected man from a prominent family, because of the career he made using that same privilege to try to make the world a better place for the people dealt a different lot.
Twice, Teddy did despicable things with his privilege, very publicly.
On Chappaquiddick Island, he drove his car off a bridge and made his way to safety; his female passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, drowned. I won't pretend to know if Teddy could have saved her, though I believe he would have if he could. What we all know, because he told us so, is that he fled the scene and did not call authorities until her body was discovered the next day, making it impossible to determine the extent of his responsibility with regard to alcohol consumption. His attorneys argued, and the Massachusetts Supreme Court agreed, that the inquest into Mary Jo's death would be held in secret. In the end, Teddy faced a two-month suspended sentence for leaving the scene of an accident, and no more.
In Palm Beach, Florida, two decades later, Teddy threw around his weight on behalf of his young nephew, William Kennedy Smith, with whom he'd been drinking the night William was accused of sexual assault. Though William had been accused of sexual assault multiple times before (and has been accused again since), Teddy vociferously protested his nephew's innocence and participated in the smear campaign against his accuser, who found herself pitted against the entire Kennedy clan and the enormous privileges its membership carries. Smith was found not guilty of all charges. His accuser's identity was made public.
Teddy's privilege allowed him to pull strings on his own behalf and on his nephew's behalf in criminal situations where one woman ended up dead and another raped. That is one of the many things the sort of limitless privilege like Teddy's allows—and he made use of it.
And I cannot forget it.
I can also not forget the myriad ways in which Teddy used his limitless privilege for the betterment of others, as Mustang Bobby so eloquently detailed. He quite genuinely cared about the poor, the sick, the needy, the dispossessed. He was an authentic progressive, who could acknowledge his own privilege and could stand in front of the Senate and talk about the privilege he had that people of color, LGBTQIs, and women lack. He was a great goddamn Senator—and would that the entire Senate, or even just the Democratic Caucus, was filled with people who were as passionate and progressive as he was.
It is much discussed that he felt burdened by being the torch-carrier for his fallen brilliant brothers, whose deaths and truncated potential haunted the entire nation. He had to do more than any other individual man, because he was living the life of three.
I suspect that Teddy, who knew himself well and could stare his flaws in the face, who carried the shame of his misdeeds in the furrow of his brow that never totally lightened even with a smile, also felt burdened by his own abuses of the privilege he knew he hadn't earned. It was there; he couldn't help himself using it, even when he knew he shouldn't have. And it hung on him, as well it should have.
He'd made a terrible bargain with himself, too.
Teddy's legacy, then, is complicated. A man of privilege, who used it cynically for his own benefit. A man of privilege, who used it generously to try to change the world and. And maybe to salve his own conscience. Even as he believed fervently in the genuine rightness of his endeavors—and certainly would have, even if there wasn't a scale to balance.
I have no tidy conclusion. It is what it is.
RIP Teddy. Thank you for your excellent service in the United States Senate.
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Just a stone throw from LA :: Color Me Green Nail Salon gets you off on the ...
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via The Organic Beauty Expert by Andrea Kane on 8/19/09
Money may be tight for some, but that hasn't stopped us ladies from making sure our hands and feet look good for sandal weather. Those of us out here on the left coast, know that every month is sandal month and luckily for eco savvy chicas in Manhattan Beach, CA there's Color Me Green Nail Salon.
Let me spell this out for you so you can your purse can understand... right now I spend $20 bucks for a pedicure where I bring my own nail polish, lotion and accessories. All this to insure that I have a green experience. You could say that I could simply do my own nails at home... unless you've seen the tragedy that are my feet after I wield the savage nail brush. Not pretty!
So what I wouldn't give to be able to pay $27 bucks for this salon's Fresh treatment. Matter of fact, their whole service menu is so reasonably priced and offer such wonderful treats, like soaking in bubbles of comfrey, aloe and chamomile, soy bamboo scrubs or a green tea foot masque... Oh baby, oh baby!
Sisters and Co-founders of Color Me Green, Helen Shelby and Sandra Miller, created a uniquely relaxing and environmentally conscious nail salon so you could pamper yourself while keeping your body and the earth just a bit safer. If thinking green means getting pampered by the world's best nail technicians, in a nail salon that resembles your living room, while you drink tea and eat fresh homemade cookies, why not?
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diy project: casey’s wallpaper file cabinet
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via Design*Sponge by grace on 8/26/09
casey at fossil (who is responsible for these great sneak peeks!) sent over this fun office-related diy project. looking to spruce up her drab file cabinet, casey used new handles and a wallpaper sample and a little mod podge to create a chic home-office friendly file cabinet. file cabinets are definitely an area designers have yet to really tackle, so it's great to have a fun way to spruce them up until we start seeing cuter options on the market. thanks, casey!
CLICK HERE for the full project after the jump!
Design*Sponge, 2009. | Permalink | 15 comments | Add to del.icio.us
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Islay to be entirely powered by tides
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via Environment news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk by Tim Webb on 8/26/09
Exclusive: ScottishPower is to build turbines in the Sound of Islay that will generate enough electricity for the island's 3,500 inhabitants – and its famous distilleries
ScottishPower is planning a tidal energy project that will supply all the electricity for one of Scotland's most famous islands, the Guardian can reveal.
The company is close to signing a supply contract with Diageo, the drinks group, to provide electricity from the project to eight distilleries and maltings on Islay – including the makers of the renowned Laphroaig and Lagavulin whiskies.
The 10MW tidal project, one of the world's largest, will provide enough electricity for Islay's 3,500 inhabitants for 23 hours a day.
ScottishPower will submit a planning application in the next couple of months and expects the ten 30-metre underwater turbines to be operational in 2011. The turbines will cost about £50m to install.
The tidal waters in the Sound of Islay, the channel dividing Islay from the Jura, move at up to three metres a second.
Energy companies and representatives from the Scottish government will publish on Wednesday a "marine energy roadmap" outlining how to reach the target of generating up to 2GW (2,000MW) of electricity from tidal and wave power by 2020. It will call for more grants and revenue support to enable developers to build commercial scale demonstration projects, such as the Islay installation, over the next two years.
The renewable energy industry admits the techniques to generate electricity from marine energy are in their infancy. Morna Cannon, from Scottish Renewables, said: "This makes it very hard to pin down the costs of the technology at the moment."
Alan Mortimer, head of renewables at ScottishPower, admitted tidal energy is more expensive than offshore wind, which costs up to £3m for each megawatt built and itself is only barely economic. Tidal developers earn more subsidies under the Renewable Obligation Scheme than offshore wind, but only once schemes are operational.
Marine energy developers such as Martin Wright, managing director of start-up company MCT, complain that few investors want to risk their money. But the Islay project has heavyweight backers. ScottishPower is owned by Spanish group Iberdrola and has teamed up with Norwegian oil firm StatoilHydro to develop and finance the project.
There is also strong support on the island, although it is by no means universal. Kevin Sutherland, manager of the Islay group of Diageo distilleries, works at the Caol Ila distillery, which overlooks the Sound. The distillery, like the rest of the island, gets the majority of its electricity from the Hunterston nuclear reactor on the mainland. But the reactor is being decommissioned in 2016 and the distillery suffers frequent power cuts in stormy weather when pylons are blown over.
When the tidal project is built, the distilleries on the island will enjoy a much more secure electricity supply, confounding critics of renewable energy – primarily wind power – who say it is intermittent and unreliable.
One of the biggest obstacles for renewables in Britain has been planning permission. Onshore wind applications are frequently rejected because locals object to the visual impact. Because the Islay generators will be on the seabed, no one can see them and the Scottish government will have the final say on planning.
Operating underwater brings its own problems, says Cannon from Scottish Renewables. George J Gillies is a local fisherman who fishes for crab and lobster at either end of the channel in winter. He complains that his lobster nets could get tangled in the turbines and says the project threatens the livelihood of eight local fishing families. But he seems resigned: "If it's going to generate money, it will get the go-ahead."
The Islay Energy Trust, a community organisation chaired by Philip Maxwell, has been helping to lobby local politicians and opponents of the project. In return, it will receive a small slice of the revenue to fund community projects on the island, such as a swimming pool.
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8.24.2009
"We’ll continue to have this kind of blatant discrimination against all women (even those that don’t plan on having children) until it’s equally possible and likely that a man will take parental leave as a woman is to take it. Sweden is on such a path. Couples get to split 18 months of leave any way they see fit. It’s part of the culture in Sweden that men should have just as much responsibility for raising a child as women (they’re not exactly there yet in practice, but they are making significant progress). It’s refreshing, it’s fair, and I think it makes the lives of families here that much better.
Trying to get the birth rate up may be one reason that European family policies are so generous, but it’s certainly not the only concern. Since WWII, most European citizens have come to a consensus that its the state’s responsibility to improve people’s quality of life and to provide a generous safety net. As their country’s get richer, their lives become tangibly better (more vacation time, more leave, shorter work days, free higher education, not to mention health care). In the U.S., our country has become richer and richer, yet it seems that only businesses and the already wealthy in our society benefit. The rest of us work longer and longer hours, pay outrageous amounts for health care (or are tethered to our employers just for the health benefits), pay more and more for higher education, make do with 10 days of vacation, if that, and take almost no parental or sick leave.
You can continue to believe that all of this self-sacrifice is what makes America so prosperous. But what exactly is prosperity if we have a much higher poverty rate in this country than almost any country in Europe? What does prosperity mean to the average worker, if in America you get 10 days off to enjoy that prosperity, but in Europe you get at least 4 weeks? How much better off are we, really, if American men almost never get the opportunity to nurture their own children at the very beginning of their newborn’s lives? I think we can do better."
From a commenter, Yelizavetta Kofman who works for the Lattice Group, on this entry at Matthew Yglesias's blog at ThinkProgress.
Trying to get the birth rate up may be one reason that European family policies are so generous, but it’s certainly not the only concern. Since WWII, most European citizens have come to a consensus that its the state’s responsibility to improve people’s quality of life and to provide a generous safety net. As their country’s get richer, their lives become tangibly better (more vacation time, more leave, shorter work days, free higher education, not to mention health care). In the U.S., our country has become richer and richer, yet it seems that only businesses and the already wealthy in our society benefit. The rest of us work longer and longer hours, pay outrageous amounts for health care (or are tethered to our employers just for the health benefits), pay more and more for higher education, make do with 10 days of vacation, if that, and take almost no parental or sick leave.
You can continue to believe that all of this self-sacrifice is what makes America so prosperous. But what exactly is prosperity if we have a much higher poverty rate in this country than almost any country in Europe? What does prosperity mean to the average worker, if in America you get 10 days off to enjoy that prosperity, but in Europe you get at least 4 weeks? How much better off are we, really, if American men almost never get the opportunity to nurture their own children at the very beginning of their newborn’s lives? I think we can do better."
From a commenter, Yelizavetta Kofman who works for the Lattice Group, on this entry at Matthew Yglesias's blog at ThinkProgress.
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