Lately HBO and CNN have focused on polygamy as a legitimate lifestyle that nice people might adopt. There are two things that bother me about that. One is the reference to women in these relationships as “wives”. They are no more “wives” than the half-dozen or so women who live with Hugh Hefner are wives. They are mistresses and their children are illegitimate. Indeed, that is why the law cannot prosecute most so-called polygamists, because they generally do not attempt to contract multiple legal marriages. They live together without benefit of a marriage license. It is only when minor girls are forced into these sexual relationships that the state can prosecute the rapist/pedophile. As long as adult women are willing to be these mistresses there is nothing the state can do to protect such fools. But the media needs to stop calling these mistresses “wives”.

There have always been cults where men have had multiple mistresses. There is nothing new about that. But what is new is the corporate media showing these men and their female dupes as “normal” and “nice.” I wonder why the change in the media’s focus and the answer that comes to me is “money.” Saudi money.

Prince Al Waleed bin Talal was recently a guest of the Arab American Anti Discrimination Committee where he pleged millions for a new building for the organisation as well to to other Muslim groups to help Islamise the United States. http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/671

Is that what this is? Have the Saudis bought large shares of TimeWarner (owner of CNN and HBO)? Have they encouraged CNN and HBO to show polygamy as a good thing, a normal thing, as they see it in their male-dominated culture and in their sick and evil religion?

Saudi Prince Al Waleed has bought over 5% of Fox News. When he objected to how Fox was covering the moslem riots and car burning in Europe, he called Fox News and got the coverage changed.

During last month’s street riots in France, Fox News ran a banner during a news segment, reading: “Muslim riots.” Billionaire Saudi Prince al-Walid bin Talal, who owns 5.5% of Fox News, was unhappy with the tagline:

“I picked up the phone and called Murdoch (and told him) these are not Muslim riots, these are riots out of poverty. Within 30 minutes, the title was changed from Muslim riots to civil riots.” (Think Progress, 12/12/05)

As the Saudi-funded Islamization of the US continues, will we be treated to shows focusing on women having no rights as a good thing, that forcing women to veil themselves is a good thing, that mutilating criminals or cutting off their heads or torturing them is a good thing?

I wouldn’t be surprised.

He who has the gold makes the rules.

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© Alllie 2006

Distribution: This article is copyrighted by Alllie, but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, or web media so long as a link is attached, http://newsgarden.org/chatters/homepages/alllie/alllieblog/ .

The cartoons the moslem are rioting about seem mild to me. (See them here.) Almost none of the rioters have even seen what so offends them since the cartoons are hard enough to find on the internet much less in print.

Here’s a cartoon that’s a little less innocent. It’s based on the fact that Mohammed married one of his many wives when she was six and consumated the marriage when she was nine. But we’re not allowed to mention that, right?

Sahih Muslim 817-875 A.D. 261 A.H.
“(3310) ‘A’isha (Allah be pleased with her) reported: Allah’s Apostle (may peace be upon him) married me when I was six years old, and I was admitted to his house when I was nine years old.”

(3311) ‘A’isha (Allah be pleased with her) reported that Allah’s Apostle (may peace be upon him) married here when she was seven years old, and she was taken to his house as a bride when she was nine, and her dolls were with her: and when he (the Holy Prophet) died she was eighteen years old.” Sahih Muslim vol.2:3310,3311 p.716.

2c. “(5981) ’A’isha reported that she used to play with dolls in the presence of Allah’s Messenger (may peace be upon him) and when her playmates came to her they left (the house) because they felt shy of Allah’s Messenger (may peace be upon him), whereas Allah’s Messenger (may peace be upon him) sent them to her.

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© alllie 2006

Distribution: This article is copyrighted by alllie, but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, or web media so long as you tell me where and this credit is attached as well as a link back to this page, http://www.alllie.com/alllieblog/.

What’s the difference between a Redneck and White Trash? If a redneck has a couple of dead cars in his yard it’s because he’s fixing on them or using them for parts. If white trash has a couple of dead cars in his yard, it’s because he’s too lazy to have them hauled off.

To the redneck work is what life is about. It’s almost a compulsion with them. The worst thing a person can be, worse than dumb or mean or crazy, is lazy. The worst that can be said of any person is “he doesn’t want to work” even though, when asked, they will admit they don’t want to work either – but they do. Constantly. There’s something ant-like about it. Maybe it’s because before the last couple of generations they were almost always farmers. They might have sharecropped or maybe even owned a little bit of land but they never had a boss standing over them to make them work but if they didn’t work, the crop would fail and they and their families would go hungry. So it’s in them to work. Only the hypnotism of TV and beer can lay them out.

The constant activity of the redneck keeps him stupid and powerless because it keeps him from learning. In the olden days rednecks even looked down on lynching and night-riding, not because they thought it was wrong to ride around scaring and killing black people, but because a man who could spend his nights that way “didn’t have enough work to keep him busy.” Night-riding wasn’t suitable for a working man. It was the lazy white trash idea of fun.

That brings us to the worst thing a redneck can be: Lazy.

Main Entry: la·zy
Pronunciation: ‘lA-zE
Etymology: perhaps from Middle Low German lasich feeble; akin to Middle High German erleswen to become weak
1 a : disinclined to activity or exertion : not energetic or vigorous b : encouraging inactivity or indolence
2 : moving slowly : SLUGGISH
3 : DROOPY, LAX
4 : placed on its side
5 : not rigorous or strict

The etymology of lazy shows the true meaning of the word… “Feeble”, “to become weak”. Lazy is not a voluntary choice in redneck culture. It’s a result of illness and reminds me of a chapter of Mark Twain’s Letters from the Earth.

Letter VII deals with some of the illnesses and plagues that afflict humans and cause laziness. Twain describes the kind of chicken-and-the-egg relationship between illness, poverty and laziness. Were the poor tired because their poverty made them susceptible to illnesses that sapped their strength or were they poor because they had no energy because of endemic illnesses and parasitical infections?

The hookworm was discovered two or three years ago by a physician, who had been patiently studying its victims for a long time. The disease induced by the hookworm had been doing its evil work here and there in the earth ever since Shem landed on Ararat, but it was never suspected to be a disease at all. The people who had it were merely supposed to be lazy, and were therefore despised and made fun of, when they should have been pitied. The hookworm is a peculiarly sneaking and underhanded invention, and has done its surreptitious work unmolested for ages; but that physician and his helpers will exterminate it now.
…
The hookworm parasites often so lower the vitality of those who are affected as to retard their physical and mental development, render them more susceptible to other diseases, make labor less efficient, and in the sections where the malady is most prevalent greatly increase the death rate from consumption, pneumonia, typhoid fever and malaria. It has been shown that the lowered vitality of multitudes, long attributed to malaria and climate and seriously affecting economic development, is in fact due in some districts to this parasite. The disease is by no means confined to any one class; it takes its toll of suffering and death from the highly intelligent and well to do as well as from the less fortunate. It is a conservative estimate that two millions of our people are affected by this parasite. The disease is more common and more serious in children of school age than in other persons.

How much of laziness is merely physical affliction rather than character flaw? Hookworms, fibromyalgia, Lyme disease, depression, all produce tiredness, laziness but in redneck culture if you don’t embrace work, you are screwed, regardless of the cause. They never see a justification for laziness. Blacks are maligned using the worst epithet a redneck can conceive which is not “nigger” but “lazy” nigger. It is the supposed laziness of blacks that makes rednecks perceived them as inferior.

When whites came to America if they worked hard they could make their lives better. When blacks were brought to America, if they worked hard they could make someone else’s life better. Today that’s true for most of us, black and white. Our labor enriches someone else, not ourselves. The reason for working hard is gone but the redneck in his stupidity still mindlessly labors to enrich his masters or slips guiltily over into white trash when he loses even the hope that work will allow him to improve his life.

It was Joe Bageant’s Revenge of the Mutt People that got me to thinking about rednecks and white trash (my culture). I don’t call myself a mutt. I consider myself mixed breed and think that is a good thing. Growing up the only dogs we ever had get sick were purebred. The only mean or crazy dogs we had were purebred. All our mutts were great dogs. Now all my dogs and cats are mixed. Mixed breed animals generally have more strength, stamina and disease resistance than purebred. It’s called hybrid vigor or heterosis. The interbreeding of purebred strains blocks the expression of damaging recessive traits and increases disease resistance. So I take mutt over pure strains such as European royalty with their innate diseases and madness (called “Inbreeding Depression.”)

I recognize the people Bageant describes. I recognize their meanness and stupidity. I recognize their serial killer attitude toward animals. I was raised with and by them but the meanness didn’t take on me nor the right wing politics. I think that was because I always loved animals. When you love animals in a culture that considers them disposable, you see the creatures you love suffer and die a lot. You hate it and are saddened by it. Pity stirs in your heart, first for the suffering of animals and then for the suffering of people. Add a fondness for books and by adulthood you are a fair way to producing a commie or at least a liberal. Rednecks and white trash cannot abide that kind of softness. Also books are anathema. At least to rednecks. Life is about work and anyone who spends their time reading is described as crazy. Maybe when life is very difficult, when it is hard to feed yourself and your family, maybe reading is too much of a self-indulgence to be tolerated. So ignorance must be embraced as the price of eating regularly.

But mean or not, stupid or not, mutt or not, the rednecks and white trash are my people and I want them saved. I want them enlightened. I want them educated. I want them lifted up. How this is to be done I don’t know but I know it must be done. If we lefties can’t convert them, convince them, save them, then what good are we?

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© alllie 2006

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Here’s an image of the carnage in Iraq inspired by Goya’s Executions: The Third of May, 1808

© by Alllie 2006 (click image to enlarge)

Click here for 2250×1400 px image suitable for printing.

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© alllie 2006

Distribution: This article is copyrighted by alllie, but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, or web media so long as you tell me where and this credit is attached as well as a link back to this page, http://www.alllie.com/alllieblog/.

I’m reading a book about New York state during the American Revolution. It covers the years from 1760 to 1790 and so far what strikes me is two things: There were a LOT of riots long before the Declaration of Independence was signed; and the people involved often seem to be having fun. The increasing number of riots and protests before 1776 generated the “sustained militancy” required for “fully revolutionary politics.”

We need more protests and American protests are not fun so I’ve been thinking how we can make them fun. I saw the video of a New York City protest made during the Republican National Convention. Huge crowds of bicyclists dressed up in tri-corner hats rode around ringing bells and yelling “The Republicans are coming!” like Paul Revere. It looked like great fun, a protest that involved more than self-sacrifice. We need more protests like that.

Another thing revolutionary groups were big on was effigies. They loved to make effigies, hang effigies and burn effigies. Today if we burned an effigy they would probably arrest us for arson but there are legal things we can do with and to an effigy.

Many protests include big puppets, often effigies. I think protests should have effigy contests. Effigies of Bush and Cheny and their minions and the effigies should be like piñatas and stuffed with candy. The candy should be labeled “Freedom,” “Democracy,” “Separation of Powers” and “Privacy” and after the judging people should be allowed to smash the effigies and get the candy!!!

That sounds militant and fun!!!

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© alllie 2006

Distribution: This article is copyrighted by alllie, but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, or web media so long as you tell me where and this credit is attached as well as a link back to this page, http://www.alllie.com/alllieblog/.

Was 1776 a real revolution? Some people say no because it lacked the violence and disorder characteristic of the later French and Russian revolutions. Some say yes.

But what is clear is that the Civil War was a real revolution. In 1861 there were 5,140,000 non-slave-holders in the slave states, 3,500,000 slaves and about 310,000 slave holders.
http://pbsvideodb.pbs.org/resources/civilwar/mapsandgraphs/

Some southern states (South Caroline & Mississippi) had more slaves than free men. After the revolution we call the Civil War, all these slaves became free and most of the southern plutocracy lost its wealth. That was revolutionary. I wonder if any revolution before or since freed so many. True, after the end of reconstruction there was a counter revolution that put many black (and white) citizens into an economic slavery but a man could still walk away from his employer and his employer had no right to rape or whip them.

How did this all happen? It wasn’t so clean as we imagine it and labor was important in the freeing of slaves just as the southern Oligarchy (oligarchy: a small group that exercises governmental control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes) was important in forcing the southern states to succeed as they attempted to protect their right to own men’s bodies.

Reading about the history of this time is interesting. Especially since I only got propaganda in the southern schools I attended. Read this. It starts with how slaveholders and their minions tried to force Kentucky to succeed.

From the south-west and south-east its corps of free-booters simultaneously invaded the “neutral” state. Kentucky awoke from its dream of neutrality, its legislature openly took sides with the Union, surrounded the traitorous Governor with a committee of public safety, called the people to arms, outlawed Breckinridge and ordered the secessionists to evacuate the invaded territory immediately. This was the signal for war. An army of the Southern Confederacy is moving on Louisville, while volunteers from Illinois, Indiana and Ohio flock hither to save Kentucky from the armed missionaries of slavery.

…

In the State Convention of Louisiana, meeting on March 21, 1861, at New Orleans, Roselius, the political veteran of the state, declared:

“The Montgomery Constitution is not a constitution, but a conspiracy. It does not inaugurate a government of the people, but a detestable and unrestricted oligarchy. The people were not permitted to have any say in this matter. The Convention of Montgomery has dug the grave of political liberty, and now we are summoned to attend its burial.”

Indeed, the oligarchy of three hundred thousand slaveholders utilised the Congress of Montgomery not only to proclaim the separation of the South from the North. It exploited it at the same time to reshape the internal constitutions of the slave states, to subjugate completely the section of the white population that had still preserved some independence under the protection and the democratic Constitution of the Union. Between 1856 to 1860 the political spokesmen, jurists, moralists and theologians of the slaveholders’ party had already sought to prove, not so much that Negro slavery is justified, but rather that colour is a matter of indifference and the working class is everywhere born to slavery.

The goal of the slaveholder’s wasn’t just succession.

What would in fact take place would be not a dissolution of the Union, but a reorganisation of it, a reorganisation on the basis of slavery, under the recognised control of the slaveholding oligarchy. The plan of such a reorganisation has been openly proclaimed by the principal speakers of the South at the Congress of Montgomery and explains the paragraph of the new Constitution which leaves it open to every state of the old Union to join the new Confederacy. The slave system would infect the whole Union. In the Northern states, where Negro slavery is in practice unworkable, the white working class would gradually be forced down to the level of helotry. This would fully accord with the loudly proclaimed principle that only certain races are capable of freedom, and as the actual labour is the lot of the Negro in the South, so in the North it is the lot of the German and the Irishman, or their direct descendants.

The present struggle between the South and North is, therefore, nothing but a struggle between two social systems, the system of slavery and the system of free labour. The struggle has broken out because the two systems can no longer live peacefully side by side on the North American continent. It can only be ended by the victory of one system or the other.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1861/11/07.htm

Oh, them commies are good at analyzing things. They may not have the best solutions but they always have the best analysis. The above analysis was written by Karl Marx and published in 1861. They left this stuff out of the propaganda class I took in high school that they called American History.

But this brings up an idea from those days. In opposition to those who wanted slavery were those who wanted Free Labor. There was a whole movement.

To many reformers, central to the ideal of transforming the human personality was the promise of free labor and upward social mobility (opportunities for advancement, rights to own property, and to control one’s own labor), which they considered central to American democracy.

In the 1830s and 1840s, the rise of the anti-slavery movement coincided with the height of Jacksonian democracy, feeding on the same “anti-aristocratic” and egalitarian ethos. Anti-slavery men exalted “free labor,” meaning labor working because of incentive instead of coercion, labor with education, skill, the desire for advancement, and also the freedom to move from job to job according to the changing demands of the marketplace. Behind such expectations, the changing economic structures of the era helped to encourage the growing appeal of “free labor” ideals.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_the_American_Civil_War

Those were good days for free men. There was enough open land, enough need for labor, that any hard working man could better his life. (Too bad those days are gone.)

While the leaders of the free labor movement were not generally the leaders of the labor union movement, many of their ideas about the nobility of labor spread throughout the laboring classes.

“The party of free labor” was the revolutionary party. At that time, for a brief time before it was taken control of by the northern plutocracy, by the whigs, for a brief time the party of free labor, of revolution, was the Republican Party. Sadly the Republican Party went from the party of free labor to the party of wage slavery.

But the Civil War itself, that was the second American Revolution.

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© alllie 2006

Distribution: This article is copyrighted by alllie, but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, or web media so long as you tell me where and this credit is attached as well as a link back to this page, http://www.alllie.com/alllieblog/.

In chat today we were discussing the dumbing down of the American public, offering various explanations: public schools, teacher’s unions, the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, education majors, when something came to me, something about cretinism… and fluoride.

cre·tin·ism
Pronunciation: -t&n-”i-z&m
Function: noun
: a usually congenital abnormal condition marked by physical stunting and mental retardation and caused by severe hypothyroidism

I’d read that fluoride causes hypothyroidism. If severe hypothyroidism causes severe retardation, could hypothyroidism caused by the fluoride in our water and food be causing a small but real decline in our intelligence?

I took to reading about fluoride.

Starting in the 1930s and extending through to the 1970s, fluoride was utilized by European and South American doctors as a drug to treat HYPER-thyroidism (over-active thyroid).

Of concern today in the United States, and other highly fluoridated countries, is the fact that some people are now regularly receiving doses of fluoride that overlap, and exceed, the doses once shown to reduce the activity of the thyroid.

Whereas doses of 2 to 5 mg/day of fluoride were shown effective at depressing thyroid function, adults in fluoridated communities in the U.S. are now regularly receiving between 1.6 and 6.6 mg/day according to a 1991 report from the Department of Health and Human Services.

While it may be that the thyroid in a patient with hyperthyroidism is particularly susceptible to the anti-thyroid actions of fluoride, there is concern that current fluoride exposures may be playing a role in the widespread incidence of HYPO-thyroidism (under-active thyroid) in the U.S.

Hypothyrodisim, most commonly diagnosed in women over 40, is a serious condition with a diverse range of symptoms including: fatigue, depression, weight gain, hair loss, muscle pains, increased levels of “bad” cholesterol (LDL), and heart disease.. The drug (Synthroid) used to treat hypothyroidism is now one of the top five prescribed drugs in the U.S.

http://www.fluoridealert.org/health/thyroid/index.html

Up until the 1950s, European doctors used fluoride to reduce the activity of the thyroid gland for people suffering from overactive thyroid (hyperthyroidism). (24) The daily dose of fluoride which people are now receiving in fluoridated communities (1.6 to 6.6 mg/day) (25) actually exceeds the dose of fluoride which was found to depress the thyroid gland (2.3 to 4.5 mg/day).

Hypothyroidism (under-active thyroid) is currently one of the most common medical problems in the United States. Synthroid, the drug doctors prescribe to treat hypothyroidism, was the fourth most prescribed drug in the US in the year 2000. Symptoms of hypothyroidism include depression, fatigue, weight gain, muscle and joint pains, increased cholesterol levels, and heart disease. http://www.shirleys-wellness-cafe.com/fluoride.htm

Damn, I have that myself. Could it be due to the fluoride in my water? And I’ve been wondering why Americans of European descent are so much fatter than Europeans. We have the same genetic background. We both have TVs and fast food and junk food and cars and computers and couches. So why are so many more of us fat than them? Could it be because we have fluoride in our water and they don’t?

Turns out fluoride has been linked to more than hypothyroidism. It’s been linked to reductions in IQ. High levels of fluoride in combination with low levels of iodine have been found to cause a greater reduction in IQ than low levels of iodine in combination with low fluoride levels. http://www.fluoridealert.org/health/brain/idd.html

But it’s good for our teeth, right? Except that studies have shown it isn’t and can even cause dental fluorosis.

Canadian studies do not provide systematic evidence that water fluoridation is effective in reducing decay in contemporary child populations. The few studies of communities where fluoridation has been withdrawn do not suggest significant increases in dental caries as a result.

What else? It’s been shown to cause the early onset of puberty.

A subsequent animal study found that fluoride interferes with the pineal gland’s production of melatonin, a hormone which helps regulate the onset of PUBERTY. In the study, animals dosed with fluoride had reduced levels of melatonin metabolites in their urine and had earlier onsets of puberty than the controls.

But everyone accepts it’s good for us, right? Well, no.

Arvid Carlsson, a Swedish pharmacologist who shared the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine… Carlsson writes: “Fluoride is a pharmacologically very active compound with an action on a variety of enzymes and tissues in the body already in low concentrations. In concentrations not far above those recommended it has overt toxic actions.” Carlsson was one of the scientists who helped persuade the Swedish Parliament to ban fluoridation of drinking water in that country. http://pubs.acs.org/cen/books/8233/8233books.html

Turns out most countries don’t allow fluoride in their water.

Well I guess we know now why kids are going in to puberty so early. Why Americans are getting so fat, why so much of the American population seems so dumb and docile.

In November 1978, Judge John Flaherty, later Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania was quoted after 2800 pages of testimony and documentation was recorded and studied. As saying “In my view, the evidence is quite convincing that the addition of sodium fluoride to the public water supply at one part per million is extremely deleterious to the human body, and, a review of the evidence will disclose that there was no convincing evidence to the contrary….Prior to hearing this case, I gave the matter of fluoridation little, if any, thought, but I received quite an education, and noted that the proponents of fluoridation do nothing more than try to impune (sic) the objectivity of those who oppose fluoridation.” http://miraculewater.com/WaterLibrary/Fluoride.html

Why the hell is it in our water?? Good intentions gone astray? Or the chemical control of an entire country? Both the nazis and soviets are reported to have used fluoride as a tranquilizer in prison camps.

What does all this mean? It means I want to avoid fluoride, but given its ubiquitousness – in water, in processed food and in toothpastes, how can I? It takes money to avoid fluoride. Maybe that is why the rich started not just drinking bottled water but eating free range beef because even if you drink bottled water, there would still be fluoride in the flesh of animals given fluoridated water. And in processed foods. You can even absorb some of it from the water you use to bathe.

Maybe fluoridated water explains a lot. Like why we haven’t risen up in revolution.

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© alllie 2006

Distribution: This article is copyrighted by alllie, but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, or web media so long as you tell me where and this credit is attached as well as a link back to this page, http://www.alllie.com/alllieblog/.

NO CHILD’S BEHIND LEFT: THE TEST
By Greg Palast

New York — Today and tomorrow every 8-year-old in the state of New York will take a test. It’s part of George Bush’s No Child Left Behind program. The losers will be left behind to repeat the third grade.

Try it yourself. This is from the state’s actual practice test. Ready, class?

“The year 1999 was a big one for the Williams sisters. In February, Serena won her first pro singles championship. In March, the sisters met for the first time in a tournament final. Venus won. And at doubles tennis, the Williams girls could not seem to lose that year.”

And here’s one of the four questions:

“The story says that in 1999, the sisters could not seem to lose at doubles tennis. This probably means when they played

“A two matches in one day
“B against each other
“C with two balls at once
“D as partners”

OK, class, do you know the answer?

(By the way, I didn’t cheat: there’s nothing else about “doubles” in the text.)

My kids go to a New York City school in which more than half the students live below the poverty line. There is no tennis court.

There are no tennis courts in the elementary schools of Bed-Stuy or East Harlem. But out in the Hamptons, every school has a tennis court. In Forest Hills, Westchester and Long Island’s North Shore, the schools have nearly as many tennis courts as the school kids have live-in maids.

Now, you tell me, class, which kids are best prepared to answer the question about “doubles tennis”? The 8-year-olds in Harlem who’ve never played a set of doubles or the kids whose mommies disappear for two hours every Wednesday with Enrique the tennis pro?

Is this test a measure of “reading comprehension” — or a measure of wealth accumulation?

If you have any doubts about what the test is measuring, look at the next question, based on another part of the text, which reads (and I could not make this up):

“Most young tennis stars learn the game from coaches at private clubs. In this sentence, a club is probably a

“F baseball bat
“G tennis racquet
“H tennis court
“J country club”

Helpfully, for the kids in our ‘hood, it explains that a “country club” is a, “place where people meet.” Yes, but WHICH people?

President Bush told us, “By passing the No Child Left Behind Act, we are regularly testing every child and making sure they have better options when schools are not performing.”

But there are no “better options.” In the delicious double-speak of class war, when the tests have winnowed out the chaff and kids stamped failed, No Child Left results in that child being left behind in the same grade to repeat the failure another year.

I can’t say that Mr. Bush doesn’t offer better options to the kids stamped “failed.” Under No Child Left, if enough kids flunk the tests, their school is marked a failure and its students win the right, under the law, to transfer to any successful school in their district. You can’t provide more opportunity than that. But they don’t provide it, the law promises it, without a single penny to make it happen. In New York in 2004, a third of a million students earned the right to transfer to better schools — in which there were only 8,000 places open.

New York is typical. Nationwide, only one out of two-hundred students eligible to transfer manage to do it. Well, there’s always the Army. (That option did not go unnoticed: No Child has a special provision requiring schools to open their doors to military recruiters.)

Hint: When de-coding politicians’ babble, to get to the real agenda, don’t read their lips, read their budgets. And in his last budget, our President couldn’t spare one thin dime for education, not ten cents. Mr. Big Spender provided for a derisory 8.4 cents on the dollar of the cost of primary and secondary schools. Congress appropriated a half penny of the nation’s income — just one-half of one-percent of America’s twelve trillion dollar GDP — for primary and secondary education.

President Bush actually requested less. While Congress succeeded in prying out an itty-bitty increase in voted funding, that doesn’t mean the extra cash actually gets to the students. Fifteen states have sued the federal government on the grounds that the cost of new testing imposed on schools, $3.9 billion, eats up the entire new funding budgeted for No Child Left.

There are no “better options” for failing children, but there are better uses for them. The President ordered testing and more testing to hunt down, identify and target millions of children too expensive, too heavy a burden, to educate.

No Child Left offers no options for those with the test-score mark of Cain — no opportunities, no hope, no plan, no funding. Rather, it is the new social Darwinism, educational eugenics: identify the nation’s loser-class early on. Trap them then train them cheap.

Someone has to care for the privileged. No society can have winners without lots and lots of losers. And so we have No Child Left Behind — to produce the new worker drones that will clean the toilets at the Yale Alumni Club, punch the cash registers color-coded for illiterates, and pamper the winner-class on the higher floors of the new economic order.

Class war dismissed.

**********
See a clip of the actual practice test at www.GregPalast.com
**********
Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. Read his investigative reports at www.GregPalast.com

Help release these actions into the wild: Please distribute this one far and wide:

ELECTION 2006: Now is the time to start. Join the Black Box Voting “Candid America” project. Grab your video camera and catch vendors and public officials in the act of being themselves — the good, the
bad and the shameless.

It’s a Black Box initiative, but we’re setting this one free. It is crucial for all citizens to re-learn how to act independently of any organization. This is the best way for true citizen oversight to become a national habit.

There can be NOTHING MORE DAUNTING to any corrupt public official than an autonomous ordinary citizen with all-American ingenuity. Take courage. The truth is you do not need any group, coalition, master plan or agenda. You can do this thing and Black Box Voting will be there with encouragement and guidance if ever you should need it.

HOW TO:

- Start now, and keep it up as often as you can on the road to Election 2006
- Keep your battery charged
- Keep extra blank tapes available

VIDEOS ARE LIKE AN AMERICAN EXPRESS CARD & A BOX OF CHOCOLATES

Don’t leave home without it, because you never know what you’re gonna get.

THROUGHOUT THE 2006 ELECTION CYCLE, CAPTURE ANY PART OF::

– public meetings
– certification hearings
– testing
– ballot preparation
– election-related activities by third-party vendors
– any meetings you are able to schedule with vendors or public officials
– early voting procedures
– election training activities
– pre-election equipment and materials transport and handling
– voting day activities
– VOTE COUNTING (all phases including videotaping chain of custody)
– “depots” and drop-off sites
– “spot check audits”
– absentee ballot processing
– mid-election and post-election equipment and materials transport and handling
– explanations policies and procedures
– explanations of any “glitches”
– post-election canvassing meetings
– any obstructive behavior, intimidation tactics, evasive or nonresponsive actions

GENERAL TIPS:

- The goal is to get public officials and vendors on record by asking the right questions and observing what they do.
- Show others what good public servants look like, and document the difficult ones.
- Especially for meetings, prepare ahead of time by writing questions designed to elicit definitive answers regarding voting procedures.
– Avoid over-general questions that lead to speeches, evasion and nonresponsiveness.
- If you happen to capture something that has evidenciary value (which happens more often than you think), be prepared to execute a formal affidavit and/or testify if needed.

Examples of situations where video cameras were unexpectedly important:
- Volusia County garbage altercation
(http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/2197/6737.html)
- Vendor statements/misrepresentations to public officials
(http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/2197/14298.html)
- Confession of violating state recount law in Ohio (in the prosecutor’s hands)
- Careless or non-observable handling of voting machines, memory cards or election materials
(http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/2197/14299.html)

All of the above examples now constitute evidence that can stand up in a court of law to hold vendors and officials accountable.

WHY THIS IS SO IMPORTANT

We have heard that “once this problem is solved” people can “all go home again.” The truth is, you can never go home again. You should never again cede your oversight to public officials, vendors, scientists, or even any voting rights group. Freedom carries a great responsibility, and it turns out that “We the People” means YOU!

MORE HELP:
For personal mentoring on specific situations, go to our 1 on 1 Consulting Area
(http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/73/73.html)

“A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” — Margaret Mead

A “small group” can be one person. We want this to be an equal opportunity project with YOU, the citizen, in charge of your own inspirations. You can upload your video on the new “Google Videos” service, or your Web site.
You can send links to Black Box Voting or any organization.

Now, go capture the best and worst of America in action. Black Box Voting is not going to organize you, monitor you, direct you or take credit for your excellent actions. We trust you.

Now shoo. Go!

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Quickies:
Photocopy of Diebold check stub/financial, payment to Jack Abramoff’s Greenberg Traurig firm:
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/2197/15714.html

Photocopy of Diebold General Ledger document that deserve explanation, including a vague $100,000.00 “unspecified security expense” made out to no one in particular on Oct. 31, 2003 and a $200,000 “additional consulting success fee”:

http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/2197/15715.html

Beginning info from an ES&S leak:
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/73/15687.html?1136337574#POST15514

Black Box Voting is a nonpartisan, nonprofit 501c(3) elections watchdog group supported entirely by citizen donations. We are fighting for your right to oversee every bit of your own elections.

If you believe our work should continue, go to http://www.blackboxvoting.org/donate.html or mail to 330 SW 43rd St Suite K PMB 547 Renton WA 98055

-Black Box Voting