Fifty years as a warrior, and she’s still out there fighting. Jane Goodall is one of the few people I’ve tried to treat as a role model, not very successfully, but even my feeble efforts have made me a better citizen of this tiny, beleaguered planet.
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Rule #1 For Conservatives- You Are Always, ALWAYS the Victim
Here’s an interesting take on the phone call from Ginni Thomas to Anita Hill:
Getting the FBI involved is just the height of silliness. Though it may have been a dumb thing to do, there’s nothing in that voicemail that objectively constitutes a threat. However, by doing so, Hill and her colleagues at Brandeis have found another way to embarrass Clarence Thomas, and that’s something that Anita Hill has a history of doing.
So a couple decades ago, you believe you were sexually harassed. You testify honestly and truthfully, and are smeared and attacked for coming forward. You let things go, and twenty years later there is a voice message on your office phone. The message claims to be from Ginny Thomas, and if that wasn’t odd enough, she’s asking YOU for an apology? After her husband sexually harassed YOU! After they tried to destroy YOU for simply telling the truth. Thinking no one is that stupid, you decide it must be a prank, and pass it off to Campus Security.
But in the world of Doug Mataconis, you’ve just “found another way to embarrass Clarence Thomas.” Pro-tip, Doug: Ginni Thomas was the one who found another way to embarrass her husband.
I seriously don’t understand how half this country ties their shoes in the morning.
Rule #1 For Conservatives- You Are Always, ALWAYS the VictimPost + Comments (346)
It Gets Better:”Please Stick Around to Make Those Happy Memories for Yourself”
It’s easy to make jokes from a safe distance about giving Texas back to Mexico, but there are still brave souls there defending the legacies of Texans like Don Yarborough, Ann Richards, Barbara Jordan, and Molly Ivins.
Warning: Absolutely NSFW (not safe for work), unless you have a preternatural ability to conceal your reaction to others’ distress, and liable to be what therapists call ‘triggering‘ for those of us who still can’t recall our high-school days without flinching. Well worth watching, but in privacy and with one finger on the pause button. Just remember, it does get better.
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(h/t commentor BDeevDad)
It Gets Better:”Please Stick Around to Make Those Happy Memories for Yourself”Post + Comments (86)
Phone Banking?
Got an email from commentor Bill D:
With 3 weeks to go until the election I’m wondering if Balloon Juice might put up a link to phone banking sites for GOTV. I’ve broke, but do have some time to help elect candidates and a cell phone. I expect I’ll make over 100 calls over the next 3 weeks, roughly 25 for Alan Grayson, 25 for Russ Feingold, 15 for Raul Grijalva, and 35 for Prop 19.
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http://calloutthevote.com/ is one such site. (I’m using it for the House and Senate candidates, will be using Justsaynow for Prop 19).
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it would be cool to get a couple hundred people making calls via a referral ad from Balloon Juice.
I am a tech-idiot, but I signed up on the Call Out the Vote website, and will dutifully log in Thursday evening for my first shift. Anybody with more experience want to recommend other options, or give advice?
Liu Xiaobo Wins Nobel Peace Prize
From the NYTimes, “Chinese Dissident Awarded Nobel Peace Prize“:
BEIJING — Liu Xiaobo, an impassioned literary critic, political essayist and democracy advocate repeatedly jailed by the Chinese government for his writings, won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday in recognition of his pursuit of nonviolent political reform in the world’s most populous country.
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Mr. Liu, 54, perhaps China’s best known dissident, is currently serving an 11-year term on charges of “inciting the subversion of state power.” He is the first Chinese citizen to win the Peace Prize.
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In awarding the prize to Mr. Liu, the Norwegian Nobel Committee delivered an unmistakable rebuke to Beijing’s authoritarian leaders at a time of growing intolerance for domestic dissent and spreading unease internationally over the muscular diplomacy that has accompanied China’s economic rise.
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The prize is an enormous boost for China’s beleaguered reform movement and an affirmation of the two decades Mr. Liu has spent advocating peaceful political change in the face of unremitting hostility from the ruling Chinese Community Party. Blacklisted from academia and barred from publishing in China, Mr. Liu has been harassed and detained repeatedly since 1989, when he stepped into the drama playing out on Tiananmen Square by staging a hunger strike and then negotiating the peaceful retreat of student demonstrators as thousands of soldiers stood by with rifles at the ready.
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“If not for the work of Liu and the others to broker a peaceful withdrawal from the square, Tiananmen Square would have been a field of blood on June 4,” said Gao Yu, a veteran journalist who was arrested in the hours before the tanks began moving through the city.
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“One Nation Working Together”
From the Washington Post, “‘One Nation’ rally draws unions, progressives to Mall to counter tea party“:
Tens of thousands of people gathered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday, part of the “One Nation Working Together” rally – an effort by progressive activists hoping to serve as a counter to the conservative tea party movement and energize the electorate amid fears that the Democrats could lose control of Congress.
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The four-hour event was the culmination of months of planning by civil rights organizations and labor unions. More than 400 supporting groups signed on for the four-hour rally that kicked off around noon and featured speeches, poetry and musical entertainment. The rally drew participants from the Washington area, but also from New York and Detroit.
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The groups behind the march – including the National Council of La Raza, the NAACP, the AFL-CIO, the Service Employees International Union, USAction and the U.S. Student Association – hope to make a political statement in response to conservative commentator Glenn Beck’s rally in August. That gathering partly filled the Mall with tens of thousands of his supporters, and tea party groups across the country have held anti-tax rallies. But fewer people than in August gathered at this march.
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Many of the groups involved in Saturday’s event stepped outside their usual parameters. Socially conservative African American church groups joined with marchers that supported equality for gays and lesbians. A miners union endorsed the rally along with several environmental groups.
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In putting together the rally, the “One Nation Working Together” groups focused on three issues: jobs, justice and education. They define those in a set of principles that also laid out a list of causes largely supported by liberals, such as ending discrimination in the criminal justice system, protecting Social Security, spending federal money to create jobs and improving public education.
Right now this story is at the top of the “Most Read” box. There’s also a photo gallery. (And 1,170+ comments, which I have no intention of looking at, because I’m not gonna spoil my good mood.)
“Even the Invisible Hand Doesn’t Want to Pick Beans”
Goddess bless Stephen Colbert, this time for testifying in support of the ‘guest workers’ who are one step ahead of the rest of us on the Invisible-Hand-of-the-Market’s escalator to hell:
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And while blessings are being distributed, may suitable judgements also befall the two people in the next clip:
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Rep. Steve King, of course, holds the coveted Wonkette ‘Biggest Asshole in Congress‘ award, for being the lone vote against putting a plaque in the Capitol Visitors Center mentioning that the Capitol was built by slaves. Perhaps Rep. King is afraid that, given Republican wetdreams, his status in the only category at which he’s ever liable to be considered a winner might be threatened by a wave of incoming Teabaggers even more racist, narrow-minded and intolerant than himself?
Jim Newell at Gawker has the best anecdotes about the Colbert / King smackdown.
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“Even the Invisible Hand Doesn’t Want to Pick Beans”Post + Comments (46)