No, it’s not a chapter from Paul Reubens’ autobiography.  It’s an opportunity to spread the word on knowing your rights when encountering the long arm of the law.  From the organization Flex Your Rights, which puts out an infotaining video on surviving police encounters titled Busted:

"This message is for the hardcore BUSTED Super Fans. Many of you have asked what else you can do — in addition to hosting local screenings or ordering volume discount copies — to get more people to see the movie.

A great and simple idea for expanding BUSTED’s circulation comes from Super Fan

Brian Schwartz

from

Boulder,

Colorado

. Brian made a donation for two DVDs and donated one to Video Station, his town’s biggest independent video rental store.

Interestingly, according to Brian, the owner initially said he wasn’t interested. Undeterred, Brian checked back a few weeks later and BUSTED was somehow in the store’s system — and it had been rented out three times! Also, the owner forgot that Brian donated the DVD and offered to pay him for it!

Chances are that you’ll have an easier time getting BUSTED into your local independent video store than Brian did. Such outlets often pride themselves for their wide selection of quirky titles, which, like BUSTED, aren’t backed by a big studio distributor.

I just donated a DVD to my local store, and the manager seemed very open to making it available. (I’m a regular customer, which might help warm them up to the idea.)

Now every time I rent or return a DVD I’ll ask the manager on duty if they’re renting BUSTED. If not, I’ll ask if the DVD is still on hand and if he or she has seen it yet. Once BUSTED makes it to the shelves, I’ll make sure the DVD case is prominently displayed whenever I rent or return a video.

Tip #1: When pitching the manager, it might be helpful to mention the great response you or your group received from your local BUSTED screening. (Check www.flexyourrights.org/busted/event#screenings to make sure we’ve posted your past or upcoming screenings.)

Tip #2: Try these same tactics with your local public library.

We’ve reduced our required donation amount to $19.99 for single DVDs, so visit www.flexyourrights.org/busted/order to order more today, and check out our quantity discount rates at www.flexyourrights.org/busted/order?select=quantity.

Thank you for helping to create a society where every citizen is prepared to assert his or her constitutional rights during police encounters.

Steven Silverman

Executive Director

P.S. This alert is the latest entry on our new Flex Your Rights blog (www.flexyourrights.org/blog). So visit the site regularly for news and other updates, and post your co

mm

ents about your efforts to make BUSTED available at your local video store.

P.P.S. Your support makes a big difference. Please consider placing a tax-deductible credit card donation at www.flexyourrights.org/busted/contribute, or send a check or money order donation to: Flex Your Rights Foundation, 1623 Connecticut Ave. NW, 3^rd Fl.,

Washington

,

DC

20009

.

… in The Daily Pennsylvanian’s 34th St. weekend section, about Bob & Barbara’s, one of my favorite watering holes.  If you’ve ever been there before, you just have to read this to believe it.  Ms. Julia Ludwig must need some sort of device to keep her from choking in her own ignorance.  I say this as a "fat, balding and socially awkward middle-aged man" of but 34 years, a year shy of my right "to party."

Not that I mind the crappy review the least little bit.  The more Penn brats she keeps from my establishments of choice, the better.  By all means, let her write about every one of my food and drink locales of preference!  Heck, let her review Philadelphia as a city and let’s hope all the undergrads transfer to Princeton… fuck you, Julia!  The man in the fedora was living, damn it.  He’s old and he still plays in a jazz band in a bar, in a neighborhood you could never appreciate.  You, my little Quakerette, with your fake-ass world-weary pose, are the one waiting to die.  Go do it.

The bipartisan House Ways and Means Committee is sending a bill for U.S. withdrawal from the World Trade Organization to a general vote with a negative recommendation.  By now anyone reading this is well familiar with the critiques of the undemocratic nature of the organization (that link is to a hilarious parody of the childish actual WTO defense pages) and how this manifests itself in overturning environmental and labor legislation, etc.

The bill was cosponsored by Ron Paul (R-TX) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT).  Once again a renegade libertarian Republican and the lone independent are out front on the issue, with support from the ‘liberal’ Democrats nowhere to be seen.  Last time a WTO withdrawal bill was introduced, in 2000, it lost 363-56 with broad bipartisan support… for the WTO and the transnational corporations.  Republicans actually outnumbered Democrats in voting the right way on the issue (33-182 on the Republican side and 21-181 on the Dems’) with 3 Dems chickening out and voting "present."  At the time there were 2 independents in the House, and they both voted with democratic process over capital.  The 12 non-voters were evenly split between the parties, and included a fellow named DeLay.

One can only hope for better this time around; the next vote is expected in June.  Contact your Congressrat and tell ‘em we want out.  Any international trade agreement lacking the US would crumble, and the world would have to go back to the drawing board.  Hopefully any new agreement would include sovereignty for the decision-making powers of citizen action to control their own labor and environmental practices, instead of secret deals arranged by corporate lobbyists.

That’s about the long and the short of it.  All 8 non-voting representatives were Democrats, including 1st District PA Rep. Bob Brady, who has probably taken off for the Jersey Shore already.  Brady has already expressed a desire for additional Homeland Security money, and even if you think that’s a good idea this is hardly the way to go about it.  Link to vote tally.

The only national security apparatus opponent in the 435 member body is Libertarian-leaning Republican Ron Paul of Texas.  Link to some of what he has to say about the DHS.  Paul is also one of the only reps who has spoken and voted time after time in favor of the constitutional imperative that Congress alone has the ability to declare and fund war.

How pathetic is the Democratic Party that they won’t muster a single vote in opposition?  Not one.  Bernie Sanders (I-VT) also let us down on this one.

It was a dismal primary day in Philadelphia.  Somewhere in the neighborhood of 12% of registered voters bothered, a new local record in voter apathy.  The shocking part is that that many of us did bother to cast ballots.  As arranged, DA Lynne Abraham cruised to a victory over Seth Williams.  Machine candidate Alan Butkovitz won 95% of the vote in the City Controller’s race, with more progressive opponent John Braxton managing to get around 5% of the vote through the write-ins he asked voters to try following getting bumped from the ballot on filing technicalities flagged by the Butkovitz campaign.

I encourage everyone to write-in Braxton and Williams in November.  With a 4.5:1 city registration ratio between Dems and Reps, you risk nothing in terms of electing Republicans by casting a thoughtful, gutsy vote for either fellow.  The completely craven manner in which most of the city’s ‘liberal’ endorsing organizations hold on to machine candidates which don’t hold their avowed views in the face of this "risk-free" factor is positively infuriating.

As usual, judges are bribing their way to the bench (this from the Philadelphia Daily News):

"The endorsed candidates shelled out $35,000 to the [city Democratic] party and much more than that to "consultants" and individual ward leaders as "insurance." "

These powerful positions pay in the range of $180,000 annually for a 10 year term; a good investment in one’s financial picture, no?  From the same article:

"Democratic City Committee Chairman U.S. Rep. Bob Brady attributed the results to the good fortune of lucky ballot positions for the challengers.

"In a low turnout election like this, it was just ballot position," Brady said. "A bunch of people came in and voted for the top four or five. There’s nothing you can do."

All four of the unendorsed candidates who won were among the top eight ballot positions."

This is hypocrisy in the extreme.  Brady himself is the automatic recipient of the # 1 position in balloting for his Congressional position.  You may recall that my position running against him was # 7, even though only 3 candidates were in the race, and although we had to gather 3x the number of signatures for ballot access that the Brady campaign needed.  No bitching about your bribers not winning a rigged game now, Bob.

The party is now whining that we need to switch to "merit" selection of judges, seeing as 4 of the 8 judge hopefuls who ponied up a minimum of $140,000 in protection money to the Democrats’ coffers were tripped up by a semblence of democracy, however anemic and random.  Precisely how would "merit" be measured and who would do the measuring?  Given that the aim appears to be to give party bosses even more control over the judge selection process, having 1 in 10 Philadelphians hit buttons based upon names and randomized ballot locations suddenly begins to look good in comparison.

Fewer than 1 in 10 registered Philadelphians (meaning something like 1 in 15 adult city residents) voted to petition the Commonwealth to let us pass more restrcitive gun laws, seeing as the poor and non-white presumably need to have their access to firearms restricted in ways that richer and whiter suburbanites do not.  In the twisted logic of primary day this constitutes a "landslide" in reportage.

Even that initiative may come to little; the very commission Ed Rendell put together to study gun violence came out against the notion of seperate laws for city residents:

"In a report issued yesterday, the divided commission recommended the legislature commit more funding for gun violence prevention programs, enact tougher penalties for those who violate state gun laws, and create better tools for prosecutors to pursue gun traffickers.

But the commission failed to endorse the most controversial proposals: limiting an individual’s gun purchases to one a month, and allowing Philadelphia and other municipalities the right to approve local gun laws."

The commission seems to have done a pretty good job of suggesting voluntary measures that government could support without trampling individual rights.  You can read their report here.

Unfortunately no one is interested in addressing the real roots of violence in our society, whether a gun is involved or not.  Poverty and inequal opportunities result in street crime (which has, incidentally, been dropping in the U.S. for deacdes; the poor have actually become less strident as the prison population soars, presumably from longer sentences tacked on to fewer crimes.)

If nothing else, these results should encourage progressives interested in maintaining democracy to push for an end to the practice of placing general ballot initiatives in primary elections.  That’s at the very least; there’s no reason at all to hold the internal power struggle functions of private parties at the public expense.

So… is everyone looking forward to a half year of two right-wing DA candidates trying to outflank each other?

CounterPunch reprinted this great passage from the letters of President Dwight D. Eisenhower:

From a letter to his brother, Milton, written November 8, 1954"

"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history.

There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things.

Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas.

Their number is negligible and they are stupid."

Apparently western scientists have encountered a curious mammal prevously unknown to them in Laos.  Pretty interesting all by itself, but there’s more.  Quotes from article:

"The kha-nyou, as local people call it, was discovered by a team of scientists in a hunter’s market in central Laos, according to a news release from the New York-based group.

"It was for sale on a table next to some vegetables. I knew immediately it was something I had never seen before," Robert Timmins, a WCS researcher, was quoted as saying of his find.

Another colleague, Mark Robinson, later discovered other specimens caught by hunters…"

From a few dictionaries I’ve culled the following definitions for discover:

"to find out about, recognize, or realize for the first time"

"to gain knowledge or awareness of something not known before"

"make a new finding"

Etc.

Now, there are some senses of the word in which it is possible to say that someone discovered something as first in their peer group:

"To be the first, or the first of one’s group or kind, to find, learn of, or observe"

This seems to call for clarification that the new noun in question is novel to that particular peer group, not to humanity as a whole.  Deep sea vent worms can be discovered, as can viruses and the like.  We’re probably just about out of mammals as far as human discovery goes, although they haven’t all been cataloged in the western science libraries.  There’s a difference.

Some Lao people clearly not only had a word for this critter, but know how to hunt it and prepare it as food.  At the very least these folks discovered the animal, if not the people inhabiting that area of SE Asia before them.  Claiming anything else is a form of haughty racism one would hope would have been drummed out of the biological sciences by now.

Maybe next month we can fly some Lao hunters to Birmingham, Alabama.  They can visit a Piggly Wiggly, and discover an animal which local people call "cow," right in between some veggies and the frozen waffles.  It reminds me of the scheme of some American Indian activists some years ago to fly to Rome and claim the discovery of Europe.  They planned to declare it terra nulla and claim it for themselves in the name of the Great Spirit.

This link, supplied by Randolph for Congress stalwart Jim Flanagan (take a bow, Jim!  Thank you!), just goes to show ya that once every several years Jay Leno is worth watching.  And there I was claiming once every 20!

Bright Eyes is an enterprising young fellow and I appreciate his candor.  I suggest he make sure his tax papers are in order this year, and I’d double check to make sure he doesn’t have nail clippers in his carry-on.

Sounds to me like in ending his song the dude quoted an appropriate chunk of Arabic.  In reponse to the question [paraphrasing]: "Does the president smell his own bullshit?" he replies [bukra?] fil mishmish.  The 12 of us who caught the reference thank you, B.E.:

"… bukra fil mishmish meaning: ‘tomorrow, when the apricots bloom.’ It may be taken to be a mythical tomorrow, though the author may have intended it to be a real and not a ‘mythical’ one. She may have indeed meant to convey the idea that the mishmish will bloom, fleetingly, and that the Arabs, perhaps in this case more specifically the Egyptians, ‘needed to seize the time’ to bring change. However, in Arabic, the title of this literary masterpiece (completed in 1958 but not published until 2002) could be Filmishmish, a more widespread usage of the term, the closest equivalent to it in English I can think of is ‘wishful thinking.’ This expression is one of the many ways in which Arabs show their cynicism in the colloquial. When someone promises or predicts something which is found by others unfeasible, their comment would be filmishmish, meaning that this may happen when the time of apricots comes, as if saying ‘it will never happen’ or ‘a figment of imagination’ or ‘wishful thinking.’ "

At the school I taught at in Qatar, some of us teachers reassigned ourselves silly names for the kids classes so they could remember us better.  I was Mr. Sheesha; my Canadian housemate Mike was Mr. Mishmish.

The latest Travel image comes from the far-off exotic land of 13th & Bainbridge Sts. in Philadelphia.  What better place than the gentrified edge of a depressed African-American neighborhood to stick a liquor billboard on the side of an abandoned topless go-go bar-turned-crack house?  And what better message to impart than the mythos of the American Dream; that all one needs to do to "GET RICH" is to will it so.  And, perhaps, to glug some overpriced mass-bottled cognac.  The billboard is on the south side of the building, where whitey is less likely to see it.  As always with these postcards from the edge, clicking on the image only makes it bigger.

One of the few sane and reasonable members of the US House of Representatives is Congressman Jim McDermott  (D-WA) (check this out!), who doesn’t have a perfect voting record by any means, but appears to be a thoughtful legislator.  The country would be much better off with more like him.  McDermott has been vocal in opposition to the Iraq war and on the REAL ID Act, No Child Left Behind, and other enormities.

Knowing who he is, I was interested to see his name as being in the minority of the 409-10 vote on the so-called Faster and Smarter Funding for First Responders Act, which purports to provide "priority assistance to first responders in communities facing the greatest risk. The bill streamlines the funding process for terrorism preparedness grants and requires the establishment of specific, flexible, and measurable goals for first responders. It also encourages states and localities to pool resources for regional benefit."

McDermott and the 9 others who voted against the bill must smell a rat, in the civil liberties implications of the act, in the funding abuse potential, or both.  I plan to write his office and find out the roots of his opposition to the act, and will publish any response here.  Nine of the 10 voting negative were Democrats, and the 10th was Barbara Cubin (R-WY), the only Wyoming rep in the House.  Some 181 Democrats voted with the GOP on this one, and my usual dudes Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) and Ron Paul (R-TX) may well have missed something on this one.  Of the 16 non-voters, 14 were Democrats, 1 Republican and 1 was Republican Speaker of the House Hastert, who sits out the non-close votes as has become tradition.

As an aside, the band Anti-Flag, referenced on McDermott’s website, once came to Eastern State Penitentiary to do a photo shoot while I was working there.  An intern/tour guide who knew who they were took them on a tour and interviewed them for her zine.  Apparently they’re nice guys.