Time to reverse the Great Schlep

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Monday October 25, 2010 · 11:49 AM PDT

2010/10/25 · 11:49

My friend Ronni Bennett at Time Goes By is calling for what she calls the "The Great Elder Email Schlep." In 2008, comedian Sarah Silverman urged young voters to trek to Florida to encourage their grand parents to turn out for Barack Obama.

This year, older people are more likely to tell pollsters they intend to vote than younger people. So it's time to turn the Great Schlep around.

janinsanfran

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Monday September 20, 2010 · 6:46 AM PDT

2010/09/20 · 06:46

Members of a new alliance of community groups, San Francisco Rising, rallied in the Outer Mission on Saturday before taking to the streets to talk with voters about several November ballot propositions.

They support two measures that would raise revenue for the cash strapped city. As is true of all levels of government, the recession has lowered tax receipts. Many services, especially those vital to low income residents, have been badly hurt by budget cuts -- these folks think the appropriate response to civic poverty is to raise more money from people who have it.

janinsanfran

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Tuesday August 31, 2010 · 9:51 AM PDT

2010/08/31 · 09:51

On an email list where folks are discussing how to encourage our rulers to wind down their farflung wars and stop starting new ones, somebody mused the other day:

General Petreaus is essentially playing this administration like a fiddle with the "surge" in Afghanistan and our President is basically hapless to rein him in. ...The situation reminded me of how in Pakistan it's the military who has the upper hand in terms of "public confidence" and often openly undermine their civilian leaders.

Am I making too much out of this? The similarity sadly seems to be kind of striking.

When empires are declining, losing their grip, historically their generals have often stepped in to prop up and then take over inept central governments -- think Rome, the Ottoman Turks, etc. After all, the army bled for the empire; if the civilians can't run it properly, don't the generals almost have a duty to push those dithering politicians into a back seat? Or so many come to believe. We shouldn't think this is entirely a phenomenon of the distant past among "less modern" people -- it nearly happened in France in the late 1950s.

janinsanfran

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Tuesday September 01, 2009 · 8:03 PM PDT

2009/09/01 · 20:03

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee phone-banked me for money tonight. Hot dog: I got to tell a befuddled telemarketer what I think of them at the present time.

janinsanfran

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Thursday August 13, 2009 · 11:19 AM PDT

2009/08/13 · 11:19

Calling all Elderbloggers -- let's show the country that not all folks over 50 in the United States are ignorant nitwits opposed to health care reform. If you've got a blog, post your support for reform on Thursday, August 20.

janinsanfran

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Tuesday May 26, 2009 · 11:22 PM PDT

2009/05/26 · 23:22

My sentiments exactly. But as long as there are folks who will treat LGBT people as less than equal, we'll keep protesting.

janinsanfran

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Sunday May 17, 2009 · 4:12 PM PDT

2009/05/17 · 16:12

Yesterday I got a call from a solicitor for a charity. It was not one I regularly give to, but a couple of years ago when a huge earthquake shook mountainous regions of Pakistan, I did some research and discovered that Mercy Corps seemed to have some ability to deliver aid, so I made a small donation. As a resident of San Francisco, I'm attuned to people needing help after earthquakes.

This time they sought cash to help the nearly one million people driven from their homes by the Pakistani Army's offensive in Pushtun areas of their country. The army proudly announces they killed 1000 "militants" and they won't rest until they've "flushed out" every Taliban adherent.

This offensive is something the Pakistan Army has undertaken under intense pressure from the United States. Pakistan's President Zardari visited Washington last week and evidently Obama laid down the law. The groups the U.S. lumps together as "Taliban" must go. So one million people -- people who used to have homes and lives -- are now on the move, many crowded in refugee camps, while Army tanks charge around trying (probably fruitlessly) to eliminate 15000 guerillas.

janinsanfran

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Saturday December 20, 2008 · 9:26 PM PST

2008/12/20 · 21:26

Four men beat and raped a woman and left her naked on a central Richmond street last weekend, punctuating their 45-minute attack with comments that made clear why they chose her as their victim — she is a lesbian, police said. ...

"I've lost sleep over this. I am sickened," said police Chief Chris Magnus. "While every sexual assault is a terrible crime, this particular case is especially horrific because multiple individuals acted together in the commission of this assault, and because of the hate-crime aspect." ...

Throughout the attack the men, all strangers to the victim, made comments about her sexual orientation, police said. They also took her wallet and keys, which they used to open her car.
Contra Costa Times
December 19, 2008

janinsanfran

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Thursday December 18, 2008 · 10:41 PM PST

2008/12/18 · 22:41

President-elect Obama insists that, despite the Warren invitation,

I am a fierce advocate for equality for gay and lesbian Americans ...

Would he like to prove it?

How about announcing that when he takes office, he'll sign the UN declaration calling for worldwide decriminalization of homosexuality?

The Bush Administration today refused to back the measure.

janinsanfran

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Wednesday June 06, 2007 · 7:05 PM PDT

2007/06/06 · 19:05

Martin Scheinin, a Finnish professor of international law, holds the cumbersome title of "Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights while countering terrorism" of the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights. From May 16-25, he visited the United States to "undertake a fact-finding exercise, and a legal assessment of United States law and practice in the fight against terrorism, measured against international law."

On May 29, he issued some preliminary findings. I haven't seen much of anything on the progressive blogs about his report, so I am going to quote extensively here. We need to know how we look to the rest of the world.

janinsanfran

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Tuesday May 29, 2007 · 9:35 PM PDT

2007/05/29 · 21:35

This afternoon I joined a constituent delegation organized by Peace Action West that met with Dan Bernal, director of Rep. Nancy Pelosi's district office, and Melanie Nutter, deputy director, in the San Francisco office.

Not surprisingly, we wanted to know where the Democrats left their spines when they gave Bush his Iraq supplemental funding.

As we expected, we were politely stonewalled. It is amazing the degree of weakness Democrats in power are willing to embrace. This guy clung to their sad inability to deliver like a limpet. It sounded something like this: "Really, we did our best but the mean Republicans wouldn't go along -- yet." (To be fair, that's my paraphrase, not his words.) The first part is for grown-ups like the media; the "yet" was for us, slightly irritating constituent peace activists.

Still the meeting was not completely uninteresting...

janinsanfran

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Wednesday May 16, 2007 · 9:05 PM PDT

2007/05/16 · 21:05

Thomas Burke, a lawyer who worked on our lawsuit about the no-fly list, wrote today to let me know that he is now trying to find out what the U.S. government is doing with yet another huge list of "suspected terrorist" names. Assisting the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights (LCCR), he has sued the Treasury Department for denying access to public records about the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) watchlist of some 6,000 people and entities, mostly overseas, all labelled dangerous suspected terrorists, drug traffickers, and other "specially designated nationals."

This is not harmless bureaucratese...

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Treasury Dep't. sued over watchlist