Monday, February 4, 2008

Odds and Sods - Super Tuesday eve edition

Check out RESIST IN MARCH, for national anti-war activities, as well as Iraq Moratorium.

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Local folks, don't forget our Greenville Antiwar Society action, scheduled for March 16th:





Sunday, March 16 in Bergamo Square
Downtown Greenville at Coffee & Main St.


- candle lighting starts at 8:00 PM
- 3900+ candles to be lit - for each American soldier who has died
- hundreds of thousands of beads for the Iraqi dead.

Be there or be square.

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Reading around the intertubes

Ren does some digging, and is shocked--shocked! ...to discover Melissa Farley's sex worker research ain't what it's cracked up to be.

The New York Times featured an in-depth follow-up on Saturday about the pit bulls rescued from Michael Vick's dogfighting enterprise. If you love animals, beware, tough reading. But it is fascinating how animals react to abuse and trauma much the way humans do.

Anti-Barbie continues to offer us her short, but wonderfully-twisted trips of horror.

On Saturday, Oregon finally cleared the way for gay civil unions after a long legal battle. More from Little Light and Gay News Blog.

Disabled blogger BrainHell has died. I had only read his blog a few times, but always remembered how brilliant he was. Two of his regular readers, Kay and Bint, tell us more. We send him all of our love, peace, goodvibes and novenas for the dead. Please remember us when it is our turn to cross, BH.

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Super Tuesday reading

Beyond Symbolism: the Obama dilemma - Great analysis from Peace Arena.

Heart, aka Cheryl Lindsey Seelhoff, the radical feminist who is running for president against Hillary Clinton, nonetheless approvingly reprints on her blog Robin Morgan's fascinating tirade against anyone NOT voting for Hillary. (Yes, I know, that doesn't make a lot of sense, but welcome to Heartworld.)

My Court TV jones has taken a back seat to Super Tuesday prognosticating. I also enjoy assorted campaign nonsense, such as watching video clips on MSNBC of Stevie Wonder sing Barack Obama's name before large crowds. Other fun trivia: Maria Shriver has endorsed Obama, while her husband, the Governator, is backing Senator John McCain. (And I wonder what they talk about?)


Left: Mr Natural by R. Crumb

It's been fun hearing all of the inside-stories of the campaign, but by far, my recent favorite has been the one about Mitt Romney taking the skin off of his fried chicken, Little-Lord-Fauntleroy-style. Huckabee was all over it:
PENSACOLA, Florida (CNN) – Mitt Romney's failure to eat fried chicken with the skin on is nothing short of blasphemy here in the South, according to GOP rival Mike Huckabee.

Romney, of Massachusetts, dug into a piece fried chicken at KFC while campaigning in Lutz, Florida on Saturday, but not before peeling off what most would consider the best part — the crispy skin.

Admittedly, KFC's chicken doesn't exactly stack up against the delectable kind that comes out of deep fryers in kitchens around the South, and Romney said he was looking for the healthiest option available to him for lunch.

Huckabee, looking ahead to a flotilla of southern states up for grabs on Super Tuesday, was told about the move by a reporter here in the Florida panhandle.

"I can tell you this," he said, "any Southerner knows if you don’t eat the skin don’t bother calling it fried chicken."

"So that's good. I'm glad that he did that, because that means I'm going to win Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma … all these great Southern states that understand the best part of fried chicken is the skin, if you're going to eat it that way."
I don't think it's a health issue (they were in a KFC, after all)--I think it's a class issue, and the way Mitt doesn't realize how he comes off to other (regular, middle class) people when he does something that might be perceived as snooty. George Bush the First had these same sorts of gentility-giveaway problems, famously asking for "a splash more coffee" whilst campaigning and once showing genuine surprise at a common UPC scanner at a grocery store. After that, his PR droogs (Mary Matalin, in particular) made sure he emphasized his common tastes, such as pork rinds. Look for Mitt's people to start Romney chowing down on some common foods, ASAP. (If any of them KNOW of any common foods, that is.)

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Don't forget the DEADHEADS FOR OBAMA concert, streaming live tonight from San Francisco at 7:30 PM PST!

Do we keep on coming or stand and wait
with the sun so dark and the hour so late?

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Listening to: Grateful Dead - I Know You Rider
via FoxyTunes