I believe I’ve finally scrubbed all of the historical political speeches from my ipod. I’m such a political nerd I had hours and hours of them, but no matter what I did I couldn’t keep them out of the shuffle. Nothing wrecks the rhythm of a run more than having your ipod shuffle from White Zombie to Richard Nixon.
Tag Archives: politics
Screening of "The Garden" to benefit DC's 7th Street Garden
Eva sent me the link to the website for, The Garden, which won best documentary at SilverDocs this year. If you missed the movie at SilverDocs this year, you can catch it November 19th when it will be screened in DC as part of a fundraiser for the 7th Street Garden Project.
About the film:
The fourteen-acre community garden at 41st and Alameda in South Central Los Angeles is the largest of its kind in the United States. Started as a form of healing after the devastating L.A. riots in 1992, the South Central Farmers have since created a miracle in one of the country’s most blighted neighborhoods. Growing their own food. Feeding their families. Creating a community.
But now, bulldozers are poised to level their 14-acre oasis.
The Garden follows the plight of the farmers, from the tilled soil of this urban farm to the polished marble of City Hall. Mostly immigrants from Latin America, from countries where they feared for their lives if they were to speak out, we watch them organize, fight back, and demand answers:
Why was the land sold to a wealthy developer for millions less than fair-market value? Why was the transaction done in a closed-door session of the LA City Council? Why has it never been made public?
And the powers-that-be have the same response: “The garden is wonderful, but there is nothing more we can do.”
If everyone told you nothing more could be done, would you give up?
About the fundraiser (from the 7th Street Garden website):
Screening at the Goethe Theater (812 7th Street, NW).
Doors 6pm.
Film Starts 6:30pm.
Seasonal foods and drinks will be served.Tickets $20 each (though more is appreciated). Available at the door OR online at America the Beautiful Fund’s web site. **If buying online you must write in the Comment box that you are purchasing tickets for The Garden movie.**
Sounds like great event, I hope to be there.
Sarah Palin & the Secret Service Report
I’ve just started reading Newsweek’s Secrets of the 2008 Campaign series and I haven’t come to the part that the Telegraph refers to in, “Sarah Palin Blamed by the U.S. Secret Service for Death Threats Against Barack Obama.” Normally I’d wait and pull my quotes from the source, but this has agitated me so much I want to post about it now because I’m sure there’ll be much more to agitate me in the Newsweek.
The attacks provoked a near lynch mob atmosphere at her rallies, with supporters yelling “terrorist” and “kill him” until the McCain campaign ordered her to tone down the rhetoric.
But it has now emerged that her demagogic tone may have unintentionally encouraged white supremacists to go even further.The Secret Service warned the Obama family in mid October that they had seen a dramatic increase in the number of threats against the Democratic candidate, coinciding with Mrs Palin’s attacks.
Michelle Obama, the future First Lady, was so upset that she turned to her friend and campaign adviser Valerie Jarrett and said: “Why would they try to make people hate us?”
The revelations, contained in a Newsweek history of the campaign, are likely to further damage Mrs Palin’s credentials as a future presidential candidate. She is already a frontrunner, with Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, to take on Mr Obama in four years time.
I don’t know which disturbs me more – that this may well be true, or that it’s so easy to believe that it could be true.
It’s truly a shame to see the Republican Party continue it’s decline because of politicians willing to behave like this. Yeah, you just heard me bemoan the degradation of the Republican party, and no, I’m not on any prescription painkillers tonight.
It genuinely saddens me to see the way the party has highjacked by Evangelicals and xenophobes. Vigorous political discourse is dependent on a spectrum of perspectives and ideals and while those discussions occur between individuals, political parties serve an important role in our society. I’m not saying we need only two, I’m not saying that the religious should stay out of politics, but religion and narrow-mindedness and hate have no place in American politics and Republicans are the only ones who can fix their party and work to heal the damage that the last decade has inflicted on it, and on all of us.
This Telegraph piece came to my attention after the Queen of Spain tweeted it. Checking her site I see she’s got a good post up reacting to the report.
Continue reading
President-Elect Obama seems to be real…
I’ve checked about two dozen papers now, plus CNN. President-Elect Obama is a real and for-true thing. It makes me cry all over again.
I refuse to think about how Ted Stevens possible victory in Alaska could bestow upon the nation Senator Palin.
No, I’m going to go back to reading all of the happy stories, like the New York Times, “Obama Is Elected President as Racial Barrier Falls” and the Washington Post, “Obama Makes History” and FOXnews, “For President-Elect Obama, a ‘Steep’ Climb Ahead”. The Onion gave us, Daily Beast and Huffington Post.
What a good day.
I’m saying it right now: we can only (semi)comfortably accommodate 10 out of town guests for the Inauguration and Jungle and Mrs. Pete have already claimed the best spots so make up your minds sooner rather than later.
House of Frankenstein (13, etc. etc. ad infinitum)
Last night we only had time for one (so-called) fright flick – House of Frankenstein. Boris Karloff is back, but now in the role of mad scientist Dr. Niemann, who got in deep trouble with some villagers for transplanting the brain of a man into a dog. Or the brain of a dog into a man. Or something. Ygor seems to have stayed dead after Ghost of…but Bela is nowhere to be seen. The role of Dracula is now played by John Carradine, who can keep a straight face through pretty much anything. This one must have seriously tested his limits.
House of Frankenstein is where the Frankenstein mythology picks up a hunchback, who Karloff’s Niemann takes with him in the most improbable jailbreak ever and then forces to do his bidding by promising a new and improved body.
Niemann and his sidekick get control of a traveling Horror Show and cart their skeleton of Dracula to the Village that threw Niemann’s ass in the dungeon in the first place. Niemann removes the stake in Dracula’s heart and then wanders off to chip the Wolfman and Frankenstein out of the ice they’ve been preserved in since the end of Ghost. Lon is back as the Wolfman and Glenn Strange makes his debut as the Monster.
Intent on reviving the Monster, Niemann promises to cure the Wolfman by transplanting his brain into a new body. How that’s going to cure a werewolf is never explained, especially after we get the latest twist on the werewolf mythos – that it’s not enough to shoot him with a silver bullet, the gun needs to be fired by a woman who loves him. Luckily there’s a love triangle between a beautiful gypsy girl, the hunchback and the Wolfman, and Pretty Girl is quite the expert ammunition forger.
I won’t spoil the ending, mostly because I have no idea what happened at the end. Also because these movies are good goofy fun and I wouldn’t want to ruin it for you. But mostly because I have no idea what was going on.
Then we watched Countdown, The Daily Show, Colbert, and skipped through the Saturday Night Live special, which wasn’t especially special. I’m still agitated by this chilling Sarah Palin monologue.
One last thing – Hooray for Samer, who was featured as the DCist Election Day photo of the day!