She was against teaching condom use in schools before she was for them :

Palin appears to disagree with McCain on sex education - Los Angeles Times

Palin's statements date to her 2006 gubernatorial run. In July of that year, she completed a candidate questionnaire that asked, would she support funding for abstinence-until-marriage programs instead of "explicit sex-education programs, school-based clinics and the distribution of contraceptives in schools?" Palin wrote, "

Yes, the explicit sex-ed programs will not find my support."

But in August of that year, Palin was asked during a KTOO radio debate if "explicit" programs include those that discuss condoms. Palin said no and called discussions of condoms "relatively benign."

"Explicit means explicit," she said. "No, I'm pro-contraception, and I think kids who may not hear about it at home should hear about it in other avenues. So I am not anti-contraception. But, yeah, abstinence is another alternative that should be discussed with kids. I don't have a problem with that. That doesn't scare me, so it's something I would support also."

So now the Alaska governor is for teaching sex education ALONGSIDE sexual abstinence. Doesn't that go against the logic of an extremist right wing government's spending of $1 billion dollars in "abstinence-only" programs?

And by the way, Seema Mehta, the author of the LAT article quoted, notes that "abstinence-only" public health policies were put in place in 1996 as part of welfare reform. As in under the Bill Clinton administration.

Sure, the Gingrich led "Republican Revolution" was in full speed with it's apex hitting the impeachment of Bill Clinton. Yet still, it goes to show that even Democrats need to be smacked around for lapsing in their support of reproductive rights.

Now, isn't it telling that our Republican Fauxminist calls herself "pro-contraception" because she's for condom use? Yet there seems to be no evidence that she is in favor of teaching teenage girls how to use pharmaceutical contraception methods or even fertility awareness education? Let's not even go into emergency contraception or even abortion.

Yah.

Sarah Palin represents the interests of all U. S. women. 

Not.

Exclusive: Heart's Nancy Wilson responds to McCain campaign's use of 'Barracuda' at Republican convention | Current Affairs, Music, Music Biz | Hollywood Insider | EW.com:

"'Sarah Palin's views and values in NO WAY represent us as American women. We ask that our song 'Barracuda' no longer be used to promote her image. The song 'Barracuda' was written in the late 70s as a scathing rant against the soulless, corporate nature of the music business, particularly for women. (The 'barracuda' represented the business.) While Heart did not and would not authorize the use of their song at the RNC, there's irony in Republican strategists' choice to make use of it there.'"

Here's what really pisses me off about the Republicans actions : They've been at the forefront of destroying Fair Use and the Public Domain. Even more hypocritical is the fact the GOP will sue for trademark infringement anybody selling political junk on places like CafePress.

This is not the first time the GOP and the McCain campaign infringe on an artist's copyright : They already have received "Cease and Desist" letters from Jackson Browne and Frankie Valli for using their music without permission.

Remember, when used in political propaganda the fear is that the artist is endorsing somehow the campaign by letting their songs and/or music be identified with the candidates. It's why Nancy Wilson and Heart were forced to vehemently deny any association not just with theMcCain  campaign and Sarah Palin but the extremist Christianist values they flog.

Vanity Fair does the numbers on the "banana look" so you don't have to :

Cindy McCain
Oscar de la Renta dress: $3,000
Chanel J12 White Ceramic Watch: $4,500
Three-carat diamond earrings: $280,000
Four-strand pearl necklace: $11,000–$25,000
Shoes, designer unknown: $600
Total: Between $299,100 and $313,100

I know am coming late to the Campbell Brown party but I just have to post it here because it's so awesome. Campell Brown smacks down McCain surrogate Tucker Bounds for not being able to give not one example of Sarah Palin's alleged experience with National Security.

She goes after him like a pitbull and doesn't back down even as he acts insulted by not being allowed to stick to his talking points. Funny because now the Alask National Guard has responded directly to the question and the answer is, No. Sarah Palin has never had to deploy the Alaska National Guard in any situation akin to a national security crisis. (h/t to Andrew Sullivan)

It's amazing we have to congratulate Campbell for just doing her job.

That "Somebody stole my shoes, so I'll amputate my legs" bit is pure gold :

Selecting Sarah Palin, who was touted all summer by Rush Limbaugh, is no way to attract most women, including die-hard Clinton supporters. Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton. Her down-home, divisive and deceptive speech did nothing to cosmeticize a Republican convention that has more than twice as many male delegates as female, a presidential candidate who is owned and operated by the right wing and a platform that opposes pretty much everything Clinton's candidacy stood for -- and that Barack Obama's still does. To vote in protest for McCain/Palin would be like saying, "Somebody stole my shoes, so I'll amputate my legs."

Y'all know how pissed off I got after La Steinem wrote that horrid anti-Obama Op/Ed for the New York Times and that my beef with her is just not new. This time around she serves her purpose well for, indeed, all what Palin and Clinton share is nothing but a chromosome. Yet Ms. Steinem needs to go further.

White feminists need to zero in on the phenomenon of  Republican women in high offices. It is true they have had more women in higher office in the last eight years than any other administration. Yet what needs to be told over and over again is that most of those women have only one function : to serve as surrogates to the patriarchy, to become the obedient "cultural soldiers" to their male masters and leaders.

That's the difference between faux and true feminism. It's time to vociferously smack down the meme that just because she's a woman and a governor she wants equality for all women and all peoples.

Let me just come out and say this right off the bat : We need more black and latina feminists on TV tearing into the right wing's forced pregnancy frame to reproductive rights.

I had the honor again to participate in Melissa Long's livecasting from the conventions. In the first one at the DNC we barely spoke of women's issues. Ironically here in St. Paul and with Palin's nomination the discussion was almost exclusively about her and about women's rights.

Which is why am being very candid about the need to put more colored feminists into these traditional media settings. Our perspectives on reproductive and women's rights are not filtered necessarily through the need to curtail our ability to have children as much as having the right to not have the government control our bodies by claiming surrogate ownership.

Which is why it is outrageous to me that someone as young and seemingly intelligent as Amanda Carpenter from Town Hall will go on wailing about how Palin is being vilified for not aborting her Down Syndrome child.

Is she serious?!?!

It is outrageous and completely insulting to me that women like her will frame reproductive rights in terms of abortion when black and latina women like me know that one of the biggest battles we have are the various eugenic efforts in the United States of forced sterilization in communities of color.

Meaning, at times there have been efforts to have colored women abort or just not have any children at all whatsoever.

What is an Amanda Carpenter or even a Sarah Palin going to say about that?

I stand by what I had said earlier about Palin's nomination : The Republicans have lost an incredible opportunity. They could have had a real fighting chance at cannibalizing women's votes from the Democratic Party had they picked someone like Christine Todd-Whitman or other socially moderate yet fiscally conservative Republican women. Christine would have been the perfect Republican stand-in for Hillary Clinton and they blew it.

Who do they go with?

A woman who is so to the extreme right of George Bush, who may have had her political baptism in a secessionist and anti-US government party. A woman who doesn't believe women should have access to birth control and who believes that if her daughter were to become pregnant through rape or incest she should be forced to go to term. A woman who not only believes reproductive science education is evil but who went ahead and cut funding to her state's teen pregnancy outreach program all the while hiding her own teenage daughter's pregnancy.

And that's just her values vis a vis women's issues. Don't get me started on her desire to blast the Arctic for oil, on her eagerness to slaughter endangered species and on her belief there ought to be no separation of Church and State.

Seriously, Sarah Palin is the worst that could have happen to Republican women. She's the standard bearer of everything thats wrong with the GOP when there's so much right in some of their women leaders.

What about, again, of Christine Todd-Whitman?

What about Meg Whitman?

What about Carly Fiorina?

Heck, I'll give you even Olympia Snowe.

As a feminist, Palin is a huge mistake and a huge step backwards for women rights. As a Democrat, of course she's a godsend and many like me are ecstatic at the prospect of seeing the GOP ticket implode.

Sarah Palin set the GOP ticket so much to the right of the Bush administration that there is no way they have a chance of winning in November.

So people, start getting used to the words "President Obama".

And be nice by thanking Sarah Palin.

Try as I may, I couldn't make the gentleman stop to speak with me. Actually, when I asked him if he was a Republican, he kind of fast walked away from me. OK ... he did run across the street like I was the plague. So I just started telling him loudly, "C'mon! You can tell me! Don't run away!"; but no, the man was definitely weary of my indentifying him.

So even though he didn't answer my question, I am pretty sure that what we have here is a picture of the "Abjectio Republicanus Africasensis" in the wild.

An endangered political species indeed.

I mean, seriously ... Minne ... APPLE?

 (( groan ))

Hadn't noticed the origamied towels in my bathroom.
I didn't get that in Denver with the dems .... heh.

My life will be complete the day I get Roland and Donna Brazille at the same table to talk about politics over a mind blowing arroz con pollo or some heavenly soul food.

The faux Latinos CNN has on their payroll do not speak to me. It's the people like Roland and Donna that totally rock it for me. I honestly wish they had progressive Latinos on CNN.

Hey! They should hire me!

Go to Martin and read his mini-assessment of Governor Sara Palin, John McCain's pick as his running mate. Here's the money quote

Considering John McCain's age and history with cancer, this pick has extra importance. It's hard to envision Gov. Palin becoming president on short notice. It also undermines McCain's focus on foreign policy and experience. But, McCain had to do something bold. He is going to try to narrow the gender gap. Will women follow?

When I first read her name on Memeorandum, all I could say was "Who?" followed by a "WTF?!?!" Is an anti-choice, hunting loving semi-nobody from Alaska the best the Republicans could muster to be their stand-in for Hillary Clinton.

WHAT THE HELL WAS HE THINKING!

If I were a Republican, I'd be totally pissed. If there is anybody who would be the perfect Republican Hillary Clinton stand-in, it would be Christine Todd-Whitman. And yes I know how she fudged the studies from the EPA after 9/11 and I know how she short of lied in order to make it impossible for civilians and first respondents demand better health care after the World Trade Center tragedy. Yet Christine Todd-Whitman was an excellent governor for New Jersey who wowed Democrats across the state with her moderate to liberal stance; especially as one of the rare breed of envirnmentalist republicans who believes we need to put carbon caps and who was disgusted when the Bush administration didn't sign the Kyoto agreement.  And let's not forget she is an avowed civil rights defender for women, minorities and gays. Oh and did I say she's pro-choice?

Yet it's the fact she left the Bush administration in disgust over their environmental policies and that she stood up to George Bush that would have made her not only the perfect pro-choice Clintonista magnet but the perfect anti-Bush Republican super-shero who would reform the GOP by taking it back to its fiscal conservatism yet moderate socio-political roots. 

I am speaking right now from the point of view of a political strategist and as a feminist. This is an amazingly lost opportunity for the GOP and it shows how in decline they are as a political and social force. Had they understood the phenomenon of the Clintonistas and particularly the small portion of the disgruntled Democrats who they need to win over, they would have seen in Todd-Whitman the perfect Hillary Clinton surrogate.

Yet it goes to show they can't even get their Republican feminist icons straight.

Wow.

If I were a Republican, I would indeed be totally pissed.

Why am I posting this video? Not only is it a brilliant juxtaposition to The Hipster Olympics, there is an actual hipster sighting at 0:38 seconds.

Also, it was created by my "find of the day" Make The Road : "Make the Road New York* promotes economic justice, equity and opportunity for all New Yorkers through community and electoral organizing, strategic policy advocacy, leadership development, youth and adult education, and high quality legal and support services."

read more

"I haven't seen performances like these since last year's Douche Bag Summer  Games out in sunny Santa Monica, California".

Ahem ...

:: cough ::

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Snif, cough, sigh.

Good times. Gooooood times.

This is a talk Lawrence Lessig gave at TED in 2007 in which he makes the connection between the weakining of democracy in the United States and "John Philip Sousa, celestial copyrights and the 'ASCAP cartel'. "

It's an important presentation that encapsulates, at least within the context of copyright law and digital rights, what extremism has done to our democracy by weakening, through the "rule of law" our freedom to create.

I have to agree with Al Giordano, 2008 is the year of the viral video.

The freedom loving sheriff of Denver aided and abetted by the city's major, has created a detention pen full of cages just in time for the DNCC. The place is not even a correctional facility --it's is cages inside an abandoned warehouse with no visible water, bathrooms, ventilation or access to phones and lawyers.

Oh, did I mention this detention place full of human cages was supposed to be a secret?

Denying due process to people without US citizenship, residency papers, green cards or a visa is becoming a business racket for private prisons and private security (aka paramilitary) companies.

The more people are thrown into those jails, the more money the concentration camps make.

Welcome to the new American economy.

h/t American Humanity

M is for monsoon, which is what's like here in NYC right now.

M is for mojitos, which is what am going to be downing with my amigos.

If you don't follow me on Twitter or haven't friended me on Facebook, you wouldn't know that am going to be at Yuca Bar (First Avenue and 6th Street), ensconced from 7PM onward, sipping my lime-minty sensations.

Yuca Bar
Corner of Avenue A and Six Street
7PM

I just wrote a post about López Lomong for Awearness blog over at Kenneth Cole's. I am waiting for it to be published. It's a bit of a recap of his life as a Lost Boy from Sudán and now, not only an Olympic athlete, but an American citizen and the flag bearer for the US Olympic team in China.

While writing his Cinderella story I couldn't help but think of Hiu Lui Ng's horror story.

Hiu Lui Ng died in the custody of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs' Enforcement agency. Actually, he was documented : He had a job as a computer programmer. He had a wife and children and a home in Queens.

His crime? His visa had expired.

Yet instead of expediting this man's residency papers, they threw him in a "detention center", the United States' version of the internment camps in Kenya from where López Lomong comes from.

Hiu Lui Ng died with a fractured spine and a body riddled by untreated cancer.

Homeland Security's ICE's has become notorious for its violent disregard of Human and Civil Rights for non-resident immigrants. It is due to their cynical treatment of immigration as a felony and crime the Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) was prompted to introduce the Detainee Basic Medical Care Act of 2008: A bill to require the Secretary of Homeland Security to establish procedures for the timely and effective delivery of medical and mental health care to all immigration detainees in custody, and for other purposes.

I hope it passes.

Not everybody has guardian angels like Lopéz Lomong. Yet there's many decent people like Hiu Lui Ng being thrown into makeshift jails, deported or even dying at the hands of ICE when all they were trying was to make a life for themselves and there families here in the United States.

The description of the video included is as follows : This video, from federal Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials, shows various views of the temporary detention facility at the National Cattle Congress grounds in Waterloo, Iowa, after the immigration raid at the Agriprocessors meat processing plant in Postville, Iowa, on Monday, May 12, 2008.

The white supremacist created Center for Immigration Studies has release a "study" that says immigration causes global warming.

Yeah. Immigrants are melting the polar ice caps.

They have such incredibly stupid "data" includes factors like "immigrant emissions". Tell me they're not talking about José's and Tanya's farts?

Included is the press release they're releasing today. I want you to come back to this post and link to each article that appears on traditional media. Because it's not the first time the likes of The New York Times uses this white supremacist group as a source for "experts".

CAUTION : Stupidity appears after the jump.

####

Contact:
Vicki Robb,
703-329-3356

Steven Camarota
(202) 466-8185, sac@cis.org

EMBARGOED: 12:00 a.m. Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Study: Immigration to U.S. Increases Global Greenhouse-Gas Emissions

U.S. immigrants produce annual emissions equal to Great Britain and Sweden combined

WASHINGTON (August 13, 2008) - The findings of a new study indicate that future levels of immigration will have a significant impact on efforts to reduce global CO2 emissions. Immigration to the United States significantly increases world-wide CO2 emissions because it transfers population from lower-polluting parts of the world to the United States, which is a higher-polluting country.

The report, entitled "Immigration to the United States and World-Wide Greenhouse Gas Emissions," is available at http://www.cis.org. Among the findings:

. The estimated CO2 emissions of the average immigrant (legal or illegal) in the United States are 18 percent less than those of the average native-born American.

. However, immigrants in the United States produce an estimated four times more CO2 in the United States as they would have in their countries of origin.

. U.S. immigrants produce an estimated 637 million metric tons of CO2 emissions annually - equal to Great Britain and Sweden combined.

. The estimated 637 million tons of CO2 U.S. immigrants produce annually is 482 million tons more than they would have produced had they remained in their home countries.

. If the 482-million-ton increase in global CO2 emissions caused by immigration to the United States were a separate country, it would rank 10th in the world in emissions.

. The impact of immigration to the United States on global emissions is equal to approximately 5 percent of the increase in annual world-wide CO2 emissions since 1980.

. Of the CO2 emissions caused by immigrants, 83 percent are estimated to come from legal immigrants and 17 percent from illegal immigrants.

. Legal immigrants have a much larger impact because they are more numerous than illegal immigrants and because they have higher incomes, and thus higher emissions.

. The above figures do not include the impact of children born to immigrants in the United States. If they were included, the impact would be much higher.

. Assuming no change in U.S. immigration policy, 30 million new legal and illegal immigrants are expected to settle in the United States in the next 20 years.

. In recent years, increases in U.S. CO2 emissions have been driven entirely by population increases, as per capita emissions have stabilized.

Discussion: Some may be tempted to see this analysis as "blaming immigrants" for what are really America's failures. It is certainly reasonable to argue that Americans could do more to reduce per capita emissions. And it is certainly not our intention to imply that immigrants are particularly responsible for global warming. As we report in this study, the average immigrant produces somewhat less CO2 than the average native-born American. But to simply dismiss the large role that continuing high levels of immigration play in increasing U.S. (and thus worldwide) CO2 emissions is not only intellectually dishonest, it is also counterproductive. One must acknowledge a problem before a solution can be found.

One can still argue for high levels of immigration for any number of other reasons. However, one cannot make the argument for high immigration without at least understanding what it means for global efforts to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. Some involved in the global-warming issue have recognized immigration's importance. For instance, chief U.S. climate negotiator and special representative for the United States, Harlan Watson, has acknowledged that high immigration to the United States is thwarting efforts to reduce the nation's emissions. "It's simple arithmetic," said Watson. "If you look at mid-century, Europe will be at 1990 levels of population while ours will be nearing 60 percent above 1990 levels. So population does matter." This research confirms Watson's observation.

# # #

The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent research institute
which examines the impact of immigration on the United States.