Leftist Politics

The very first time. And it is the first federal law to explicitly protect transgender people. Oh happy day! :) - ProsePetals (aka Denise)

10 years of GOP rule didn't help matters. - Joe Silence is not dead

"Internet Eyes is an online instant event notification system. Utilising Open Circuit Television (OCTV) software, viewers are able to monitor live video feed from our customers and notify them the instant a crime is observed." - joneilortiz from Bookmarklet

Dems will shoot themselves in the foot – and screw themselves in 2010 – if they don’t see the difference In recent weeks, and particularly since the September 12th protests in Washington, a significant number of national commentators have advanced the notion that behind the stated objections raised against Obama by the Tea Bag/Town Hall/ September 12th protesters (and the much larger group that opinion polls indicate sympathize with them) there actually lies a deep undercurrent of racism. - ProsePetals (aka Denise)

Where was this seething racism when Condoleezza Rice was our Secretary of State? Or Colin Powell? The race card will be found to be a very effective tactic. It simply shuts down the debate. Yet another sign that Soros is a total genius...he is certainly funding the right person. - Stephen M. Otto

"Larger-sized women championed by London's cult leader of skinny, cobwebby knitted dressing? Unlikely but true, and when it came to it, Mark Fast courageously followed through on his convictions. "A lot of people think it's not appropriate to use plus-size models," he said. "But I met these girls and I loved their charisma. They're just jewels, you know?" He needed to keep his nerve about it. According to Amanda May, Fast's managing director, his show stylist quit over the designer's insistence on including three models from a plus agency on the runway amongst regular girls." - joneilortiz from Bookmarklet

"Abu Hamizi, 22, spends at least six hours a day searching internet chatrooms linked to gay websites. He is not looking for new friends, but for victims. "It is the easiest way to find those people who are destroying Islam and who want to dirty the reputation we took centuries to build up," he said. When he finds them, Hamizi arranges for them to be attacked and sometimes killed. Hamizi, a computer science graduate, is at the cutting edge of a new wave of violence against gay men in Iraq." - joneilortiz from Bookmarklet

Eeeeeek :o( - Mellissa Jane

"A lesbian who deserted the U.S. military has requested asylum in Canada, claiming she faced harassment and death threats from fellow Soldiers over her sexual orientation, media said Wednesday. Pvt. Bethany Smith, 21, claimed she had asked the U.S. military for a discharge after being outed by another Soldier who spotted her walking hand in hand with a woman at a mall. But she was denied because her superiors wanted to send her to Afghanistan, she told Canadian media. In deferring her case until she returned from Afghanistan, the U.S. military broke its so-called "don't ask, don't tell" policy of discharging openly gay members, she contends. A Canadian immigration panel rejected her refugee claim -- believed to be the first by a lesbian or gay American Soldier. But she appealed Tuesday to a federal court to overturn the tribunal's decision. According to reports, Smith claimed she was badgered daily and received more than 100 threatening notes on her dormitory door, including death... more... - ProsePetals (aka Denise)

"Continuing an occasional series on our formative design influences, this is Elevated Wetlands, a public art project in Toronto, Canada, by landLAB's principal landscape architect Neil Hadley and artist Noel Harding. Long time readers no doubt have noticed our obsession with constructed wetlands." - joneilortiz from Bookmarklet

So a friend of mine (and two others) designed this site for the Apps for America contest and it's been selected as a finalist. They'll be heading to DC to give a talk at the Gov2.0 expo, and will be meeting with the nation's CIO at the White House. I urge you to explore the site: if its goals were realized, it would represent a tremendous leap in govt transparency – so go vote for it and help make that happen! - joneilortiz from Bookmarklet

"These numbers showed how the economy had changed from the first quarter (January-March) to the second (April-June) of 2009. The average number of paid hours worked per employee fell by 7.6 per cent, but the total output fell only 1.7 per cent. That was because the workers who had not (yet) lost their jobs were fearful, so they worked harder and faster doing some of the jobs previously done by laid-off workers. With fewer employed workers doing more, the BLS reported a gain of 6.4 per cent in the productivity of US labor." - joneilortiz from Bookmarklet

"The study found that 26 percent of the workers had been paid less than the minimum wage the week before being surveyed and that one in seven had worked off the clock the previous week. In addition, 76 percent of those who had worked overtime the week before were not paid their proper overtime, the researchers found." - joneilortiz from Bookmarklet

"I go to a private school that is rather strict. Recently, the principal and school teacher council released a (very long) list of books we're not allowed to read. I was absolutely appalled, because a large number of the books were classics and others that are my favorites. One of my personal favorites, The Catcher in the Rye, was on the list, so I decided to bring it to school to see if I would really get in trouble. Well... I did but not too much. Then (surprise!) a boy in my English class asked if he could borrow the book, because he heard it was very good AND it was banned! This happened a lot and my locker got to overflowing with the banned books, so I decided to put the unoccupied locker next to me to a good use. I now have 62 books in that locker, about half of what was on the list. I took care only to bring the books with literary quality. Some of these books are:" - joneilortiz from Bookmarklet

joneilortiz That's AMAZING! What a world we live in when thinking young people are "not allowed" to read things. - Kat Stenson

Hallucinant. Trop cons les mecs ;-) - Sébastien Freudenthal from Bookmarklet

Yeeesh...he's too stupid for words. - ProsePetals (aka Denise)

Graphic comparison between US healthcare and the rest of the world. - joneilortiz from Bookmarklet

"Not every experiment is a hit. Two Decembers ago, Highmark Inc. unveiled its new, just-in-time-for-Christmas gift idea -- a Visa "healthcare gift card." It could be loaded with as little as $25 and as much as $5,000, to be spent at the doctor's office, the gym, the local pharmacy or anywhere else health-related." - joneilortiz from Bookmarklet

"I wrote, at the time, that there would have been thunderous outrage if someone had separated potential victims by race or religion and then shot, say, only the blacks, or only the whites, or only the Jews. But if you shoot only the girls or only the women — not so much of an uproar…We have become so accustomed to living in a society saturated with misogyny that the barbaric treatment of women and girls has come to be more or less expected. We profess to being shocked at one or another of these outlandish crimes, but the shock wears off quickly in an environment in which the rape, murder and humiliation of females is not only a staple of the news, but an important cornerstone of the nation’s entertainment." - joneilortiz from Bookmarklet

"I've been on the trail of this historical nugget for a few years now. Until recently, the earliest known appearance of Ms. was nearly half a century later, from 1949. In The Story of Language, Mario Pei wrote: "Feminists, who object to the distinction between Mrs. and Miss and its concomitant revelatory features, have often proposed that the two present-day titles be merged into a single one, 'Miss' (to be written 'Ms.')." Pei states that Ms. had been "often proposed," but where were the proposals? The closest precursor that had been found was a 1932 letter to the New York Times where the title M's is suggested, not quite the same as Ms" - joneilortiz from Bookmarklet

"Mousavi is something entirely different: his name stands for the genuine resuscitation of the popular dream which sustained the Khomeini revolution. Even if this dream was a utopia, one should recognize in it the genuine utopia of the revolution itself. What this means is that the 1979 Khomeini revolution cannot be reduced to a hard line Islamist takeover – it was much more. Now is the time to remember the incredible effervescence of the first year after the revolution, with the breath-taking explosion of political and social creativity, organizational experiments and debates among students and ordinary people. The very fact that this explosion had to be stifled demonstrates that the Khomeini revolution was an authentic political event, a momentary opening that unleashed unheard-of forces of social transformation, a moment in which “everything seemed possible.” What followed was a gradual closing through the take-over of political control by the Islam establishment. To put it in... more... - joneilortiz from Bookmarklet

"1. It is claimed that Ahmadinejad won the city of Tabriz with 57%. His main opponent, Mir Hossein Mousavi, is an Azeri from Azerbaijan province, of which Tabriz is the capital. Mousavi, according to such polls as exist in Iran and widespread anecdotal evidence, did better in cities and is popular in Azerbaijan. Certainly, his rallies there were very well attended. So for an Azeri urban center to go so heavily for Ahmadinejad just makes no sense. In past elections, Azeris voted disproportionately for even minor presidential candidates who hailed from that province." - joneilortiz from Bookmarklet

"Since 2001, Congress has appropriated about $830 billion to fund U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Over that period, America’s reliance on contractors has grown to unprecedented proportions to support logistics, security, and reconstruction efforts related to those operations. More than 240,000 contractor employees—about 80 percent of them foreign nationals—now work in Iraq and Afghanistan, supporting the Department of Defense. Additional contractor employees support the Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development." - joneilortiz from Bookmarklet

"Lakhdar Boumediene is an Algerian (and Bosnian citizen) who, while living in Bosnia and working for the International Red Crescent, was arrested by the Bosnian government (at the behest of the Bush administration) shortly after 9/11 on charges of plotting to blow up a U.S. and British embassy, but was then quickly cleared by Bosnian courts of any wrongdoing and ordered released. But as he was about to be released -- in January, 2002 -- he was abducted by the U.S. military inside Bosnia and shipped to Guantanamo, where he remained without charges for the next almost 8 years, and was clearly tortured." - joneilortiz from Bookmarklet

"In mid-2008, the U.S. Supreme Court -- in a case bearing his name -- ruled that the Military Commissions Act of 2006 was unconstitutional because it denied Guantanamo detainees the right of habeas corpus (i.e., to have the validity of the accusations against them reviewed by a court). When, pursuant to that decision, Boumediene finally had a U.S. court review the accusations against... more... - joneilortiz

"Ed Whelan, a lawyer and conservative law pundit at National Review has been making the rounds criticizing Sopreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, largely for her statements regarding judges making policy. publius, a pseudonymous legal blogger, wrote a harshly critical post of Whelan's behavior, accusing him of being a willing stooge of the right-wing - a "legal hitman" In response Whelan outed publius, publishing his identity on the National Review website. publius added his side of the story. It's also worth reading Volokh's take on the original policy debate, which publius and Whelan each use in defense of their position." [Links provided at article.] - Steven Perez from Bookmarklet