Representative Conyers is Fighting For Our Homes

One last post for the night. Here is a video that Rep. Conyers and David Dayen (of Calitics fame) created to invite people to tell their foreclosure story and explain how Conyers' sponsored legislation is designed to change bankruptcy laws and stop foreclosures. You can read more about it at Brave New Films.

I just passed this link on to a friend. It's via Balloon Juice and it is all kinds of awesome.

Have You Heard? Conservative States are Top Porn Consumers

I just love this.

Eight of the top 10 pornography consuming states gave their electoral votes to John McCain in last year's presidential election – Florida and Hawaii were the exceptions. While six out of the lowest 10 favoured Barack Obama.

Gotta love them family values. Well, it seems to me that the more a healthy desire is suppressed, the more in comes out in the form of projection and shadow. So, name it and claim it, conservatives! Adding to this relatively minor tidbit is the more noticeable idiocy pertaining to sex education going on in the Texas public school system. Their abstinence only programs are a dismal failure if your metric is factually informed teens.

The study was published by Texas Freedom Network and they looked at the study materials from over 900 school programs. Not really surprisingly, they found massive factual errors. The report was called "Just Say Know" and it states,

"The overwhelming majority of Texas schools use scare tactics and spread myths in place of teaching basic sex and health information that students can use to protect themselves and others."

As Steven Benen points out, let's not forget that there is more than an ethical and public health cost to this incompetence. Economically, misinformation is really expensive:

Texas, thanks to its taxpayer-financed confusion, has one of the highest teen-pregnancy rates in the nation, costing the state "approximately $1 billion annually for the costs of teen childbearing.

AIG Bailout Further Explained

I'm no economist so I am trying really hard to understand this mess we're in. It's difficult to find well-written articles explaining in simple language who did what to whom and why. This is the best article I've read yet about why AIG was in such bad shape (specific things they did/did not do and how they communicated to other financial entities about risk/return) and why they continue to need the gobs and gobs of taxpayer dollars they're getting. It doesn't look like it's going to end anytime soon.
Also this:

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

Simple

Check the mouse over at the website. What he says about higher math professors is totally true.

Van Jones Speaks to Congress

I think Van Jones is one of the most important voices for change in our time. Here is a video of him speaking to Congress about how we can create/improve national service.

More Thursday 80's Progressive Rock Blogging

Another music video tonight is of REM from the 80's: Begin the Begin. The lyrics are truly prophetic:

"Life's rich demand creates supply in the hand
Of the powers, the only vote that matters
Silence means security silence means approval
On Zenith, on the TV, tiger run around the tree
Follow the leader, run and turn into butter
Let's begin again like Martin Luther zen
The mythology begins the begin
Answer me a question I can't itemize
I can't think clear, you look to me for reason
It's not there, I can't even rhyme here in the begin"

The photos put to the song are just haunting.

Here's Chrissie. I love her.

Thursday 80's Progressive Rock Blogging

I loved The Mighty Lemon Drops. They were badly underrated. KSJS (local college station) played them and that's how I found most of the great music I enjoyed in high school.

We Must Break The Conservative Majority In Congress

Here is a way that Accountability Now would help ensure our representatives choose policy that is in the interests of everyday people. The cram-downs being considered as part of the housing bill that Obama supports, are being used as a way to hold up the legislation. There is agreement among progressive Dems. Guess who's holding it up? Our moderate and Blue Dog Dems. These are not representatives who are thinking about their constituents. They are thinking about the big cash donations from big corporations that they'll likely lose if they don't tow this ridiculous line. These are not good people and they need to be corrected in their thinking.

What's Accountability Now?

Accountability Now PAC

This is so great. I've been waiting for some sort of coordinated effort that's grassroots in nature and focused on laser beam tracking of Congressional Democrats who vote far more conservatively than their liberal constituencies. Part of what has allowed the Blue Dogs in Congress to wield the power that they do, even when they are out of alignment with their districts' voting trends, is that no one is able to track them and then make sure their respective constituents know about how they are voting/obstructing or whose interests they are representing. This is one important and really effective way to solve that. Also, for all you civil rights lovers out there, Glenn Greenwald is one of the co-founders and he brings good thinking to all his ventures.

Accountability Now has a "single guiding principle," said co-founder Glenn Greenwald, "of challenging the institutional power structures that make it so easy, so consequence-free for Congress to open up the government coffers for looting by corporate America while people across the country are losing their jobs and their basic constitutional rights while unable to afford basic health care."

According to the PAC's Executive Director Jeff Hauser, Accountability Now will "help create the political space needed to enable President Obama to make good on the many progressive policies he campaigned on - such as getting out of Iraq, ensuring access to affordable health care for every man, woman and child, restoring our constitutional liberties and ending torture."

Go. Join. Donate. Get this venture off the ground. Help. If you care about Obama's efforts in progressive policy making, support him in this way. He will be MUCH more likely to make a difference with support in Congress! (h/t)

Finding teh Funny with Mr. Stewart

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Unusual Suspect

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Funny Political News
Joke of the Day

Ellen Tauscher-CA 10 Needs to Hear From CA Residents On HR 200

This is a super easy action item. The House is voting on HR (House Resolution)200 tomorrow. This is Conyers' bill that allows homeowners to renegotiate the terms of their loans in bankruptcy court. As it currently stands, if you own a second home, fancy car, yacht or other such thing, that is something that may be renegotiated during bankruptcy. But not your primary residence. The laws are clearly designed for the wealthy and Conyers is trying to address that massive inequity by allowing those who are in crisis to have flexibility in the courts dealing with their mortgages. These types of modifications are often referred to as "cramdowns" (and if anyone knows why I'd be ever so grateful for an explanation).

Anyway, here is the action item. As Chris Bowers (via Calitics) writes:

Tomorrow, the House will vote on Representative Conyer's bankruptcy cram down. The whip count is unclear right now, but some Blue Dogs and New Democrats, including Melissa Bean (D-IL), Dennis Moore (D-KS), and New Democratic chair Ellen Tauscher (D-CA), are working on behalf of the financial services industry to water down the legislation. Tauscher in particular is problematic, both because of her leadership role in one of the ideological caucuses, and also because rumors are that she has organized up to two dozen members thus far. It is about time that Tauscher, and the Representatives she is organizing, stop listening to industry lobbyists who do not have the public interest in mind.

So, let's make Representative Tauscher listen to someone else right now. Contact Ellen Tauscher, and urge her to stop organizing other Democrats to water down HR 200. She needs to listen to honewoners, not to the financial industry that got us into this economic disaster.

Here is the contact information for Tauscher:

Email form

(California residents only)
D.C. office: 202.225.1880

It's super easy. I just sent an email. Sometimes just 20-30 people sending an email or making a phone call can have an enormous impact. Most of the time, they don't think anyone is watching. Let's make sure Ellen Tauscher knows we're watching.

Monty Python-Philosphers' World Cup

It is indisputable that in order to fully understand the nature of the universe, one must find this funny:

Hotel California Cosmology

More on this later, but for now-does anyone relate to this characterization of the funky spirituality endemic to California? Because I can't believe how much I relate to it. The blog looks really interesting too.

A Bunch o' Stuff

Tab Dump:
For some reason, parents sometimes have a harder time giving up on their own prejudices than their children do. /snark
The problem I have with this is that the parents blame their children for their own prejudices. Not cool. I love the tree analogy.

Britain seems to be having it's own reaction to the global economy meltdown, and it's not pretty.

Earmarks for me but not for thee.

And on the lighter side, Bobby Jindal reminds me of someone...hmmm, who could it be...?

I'll Be Post Feminist in a Post Patriarchy

What the...?!?

Gender Neutrality is in da HOUSE

Some may feel that this is no big deal but I have always felt the inherent disrespect and being made invisible aspect of using the male pronoun in supposedly gender neutral ways. I felt it from the first time I heard god spoken of as male (with a "geez, can't you just read it as gender neutral" kind of response to my feeling left out) and I felt it when I learned that in Spanish (probably in other Romance languages as well) all it took to turn a group of women from feminine to masculine was 1 male. You could have 1 million women, but if there were one male in the group, and he was worth recognizing, the pronouns (and, in Spanish, adjectives and every other word that carries masculine or feminine identifiers) would switch from female to male. I have been told by many women (I think of them as patriarchy enforcers) that it's no big deal. There are bigger fish to fry. If I don't disappear myself then I won't disappear in the language. I'm over sensitive. I shouldn't care so much. Etc...

Given my history of frustration with this issue, I am DELIGHTED to announce that the House has switched to a gender neutral language system. Via Congress Matters:

As part of its Rules change package adopted on its opening day, the House has opted to make its rules and other official language gender neutral.

"Chair" instead of "chairman." Rewriting sentences that use masculine pronouns, etc.

I am thrilled. It's about time. Now, Senators, are you listening?

Another Example of Change We Can Believe In

Via Jack And Jill Politics, this is Marc Ambinder describing the change in our culture in real time:

I was reminded of how President Barack Obama is changing our culture when reading a pool report yesterday on First Lady Michelle Obama’s hosting of 180 students from D.C. elementary schools at the White House. The White House’s Chief Usher (An African-American, the first Black Head Usher of the White House) reminded the children — most of them black — that the nation’s executive mansion was built by slaves. That’s something he couldn’t have said, wouldn’t have said, and would have made headlines if he’d uttered the phrase if the president were white and the first lady wasn’t a direct descendant of those slaves Amid the economic crisis and the daily scrum, one can quite easily lose sight of the importance of this juxtaposition.