Only took 32 years and a civil rights movement happening to coincide with it, but some of my work is finally in print, sorta. The Stranger used three of my photos November 20, 2008 edition, on the “Anatomy of a Protest” (click for the online version) article on page 16. It’s in the free news boxes now all over the Seattle metro area, and the photos are from my Prop 8 Seattle protest photos. Silly little thing, but it made me happy.
“It shows me that public opinion is really changing,” said Robin Levine-Ritterman, the first in line at City Hall in New Haven to get a marriage license with her partner of 17 years, Barbara, who already shares the same last name as a result of their prior civil union, as she clutched red roses.
The official start of gay weddings, a month after the state’s top court struck down a gay-marriage ban, underscores a steady expansion of gay rights in the U.S. Northeast in sharp contrast to California’s November 4 vote to ban such marriages, which sparked weekend protests by thousands.
Government by proposition, referendum, and initiative is great up to a point–but sometimes you need a neutral and bipartisan judiciary to tell the people crafting illegal and unconstitutional laws, well, when they’re crafting illegal and unconstitutional laws.
How does this work? The Church moved to import millions (tens of millions?) of advertising dollars across state lines from Utah to California to ensure Proposition 8 and the banning of marriage rights for same-sex couples passed, and they’re upset now that others are using their free speech rights to protest the free speech that the Church used. That’s only extremely hypocritical, boys. Did the Churches honestly think they were exempt from scrutiny and criticism here…?
It is disturbing that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is being singled out for speaking up as part of its democratic right in a free election.
Members of the Church in California and millions of others from every faith, ethnicity and political affiliation who voted for Proposition 8 exercised the most sacrosanct and individual rights in the United States – that of free expression and voting.
While those who disagree with our position on Proposition 8 have the right to make their feelings known, it is wrong to target the Church and its sacred places of worship for being part of the democratic process.
The Federal Reserve is refusing to identify the recipients of almost $2 trillion of emergency loans from American taxpayers or the troubled assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.
Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in September they would comply with congressional demands for transparency in a $700 billion bailout of the banking system. Two months later, as the Fed lends far more than that in separate rescue programs that didn’t require approval by Congress, Americans have no idea where their money is going or what securities the banks are pledging in return.
This is lovely. I can see the value of not naming to the general public which banks are receiving the money–it would be an invitation to have runs begin on those banks. But to refuse to name them to lawmakers, who need to know these things? And to refuse to name non-banking institutions that received the public money? Uh uh, no way. The Bush administration again oversteps it’s bounds, and provides further demonstration of how they run America as a tinpot dictatorship.
In case you somehow haven’t heard this yet, Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) was convicted today on seven counts of failing to report more than $250,000 in improper gifts. The reporting oversight was blamed on a series of tubes getting clogged.
As an addendum to this post, about Wikipedia’s secret harassment mail lists, it looks like the genie is well and truly out of the bottle now. It’s getting posted on blogs non-stop, and that means that there is a good 50/50 shot that it will hit the mainstream media. Once that happens, its going to get a bit ugly for Lise Diane Broer, Jimmy Wales, and Wikipedia in the press spin department.
On top of all that, it gets better. Read this. It appears that Lise Diane Broer, who can be seen in this YouTube interview about Wikipedia, leaked the name of a Congressional staffer that edited Wikipedia, and the man was fired. Lise Diane Broer, aka Durova, is the admin that was part of the secret list that was used to harass and cyber-stalk real people, and was the main admin in the Register story that blew this latest stupid scandal into the public eye.
If you want to see the “secret evidence” that was used to ban a user, go look here. It’s awfully sad and pathetic, for supposedly a person who primped herself up as some Sherlock Holmes of Wikipedia, who was able to ferret out evildoers out to destroy the encyclopedia or some nonsense. For people that have never followed the comedy that is the behind-the-scenes or making-of Wikipedia, it’s a pretty funny ongoing thing to watch. I detached myself from that nonsense ages ago, and don’t regret it. Its too funny not to watch, though. Its almost as good as John Bunnell’s Wildest Police Chases for Nerds.
To read up on this behind the scenes comedy (or tragedy, as people in Real Life Get Hurt By Wikipedia Editors), the best places are:
“On-Wiki” they are already in spin control. The best thing about the secret mail list is that it is hosted on Wikia.com servers, the private for-profit company owned by Jimbo Wales, which is legally supposed to be seperate from registered charity the Wikimedia Foundation. Various people have already informed the IRS.
Direct link to The Register article is here. If nothing else, read this news article.
From Digg. Why are we in Iraq, again? Oh, that’s right: Because Saddam wanted to take a potshot at Georgie’s dad when H.W. was President. Let’s get ‘im, he tried to whack my pappy. Meanwhile… we’re in the wrong country ‘fighting back’: “Thousands of protesters are dead and the bodies of hundreds of executed monks have been dumped in the jungle, a former intelligence officer for Burma’s ruling junta has revealed. The most senior official to defect so far, Hla Win, said: “Many more people have been killed in recent days than you’ve heard about.”
In response to being sued and humiliated on the internet over their “secret website,” Best Buy has added a disclaimer that warns customers that the in-store kiosk doesn’t display the same prices as the public website. Best Buy was caught using a duplicate website to fool customers who tried to compare internet prices with in-store prices.
From Digg. Yessir, they’re all about them family values… “Moreover, when Thompson married his first wife, Sarah Lindsey, at Lawrenceburg Methodist Church in 1959, she was already two months pregnant with their first child.”
Slow news day, I suppose… “She does let her hair down. Once at a party Blacker threw, Condoleezza Rice kicked off her shoes and started dancing. Wanting to show his partner how firm Rice’s behind was, Blacker postulated that if he aimed a quarter at her butt, it would bounce right off like a rocket.”
“Thank you for calling San Francisco 311, this is Kyle speaking, how may I help you?”
“Yes, there’s a skunk with his head stuck …”
“Hello, how long does it take to build a cable car?”
“There’s cocaine all over my clothes! There’s cocaine everywhere!”
Screw this, I’m moving to the middle of the Olympic Peninsula with Andi or central Oregon, away from high-value targets. Good lord. Is it November 2008 yet? Can we get this maniac out before he destroys us all?
RENO (Thomson Financial) – US President George W Bush warned today that letting Iran acquire atomic weapons risked putting the Middle East ‘under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust.’
‘Iran’s active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust,’ he told a veterans group here.
What a stupid idea: “With warrentless wiretapping sweeping the US, a leading congressman is proposing similar measures for the Internet. This isn’t an attempt at ‘fighting terror’ but instead a new measure to reduce so-called ‘piracy’ by making the ISPs the police force.”
Awesome! But I’m still waiting for my FLYING DeLorean, ‘k? “Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need roads.”
James Espey, VP of DeLorean Motor Company: “Job one will begin the third quarter of this year, with delivery by Q1 of 2008. We’re aiming for $57,500 as the sale price.”
Ever since Wired News first wrote about WikiScanner last week, Internet users have spotted plenty of interesting changes to Wikipedia by people at nonprofit groups and government entities like the Central Intelligence Agency. Many of the most obviously self-interested edits have come from corporate networks. More from the New York Times, now. The jig is up!
“Hot off the presses: Judge Dale Kimball has issued a 102-page ruling [PDF] on the numerous summary judgment motions in SCO v. Novell. Here is what matters most: [T]he court concludes that Novell is the owner of the UNIX and UnixWare Copyrights.”
This is really it, then? I wonder who’ll finance and drive the next assault on OSS et al, now that SCO is about to fade, er, burn away…
