A-Changin' Times (ACT)
Born in the aftermath of 9/11, ACT has become as political as the times.
Now a blog for alternative news, views and rants offered with a twist, a song and a smile. Fair and balanced.

The Times They Are A-Changin'

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize [sic] with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.
 — Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan Copyright 1963
(1991 Special Rider)

"A-Changin' Times: taking the best from the past to make the most of the present and to create a better future."

"What marching through the streets was to the Sixties, walking through the halls of Congress is now."

 — Marianne Williamson

You're visiting a website that incorporates a blogging feature, not "just" a blog.

Blog entries follow, most recent entries at the top

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

	:: Lisa		10/26/2005 03:57:00 PM

MESSAGE TO YOUTH FROM NEWT & AL


THE MEDICINE CABINET — Negotiating a Peace Treaty in the War on Drugs

Check out the rest of the 'Lectric Law Library while you're there!

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Wednesday, October 19, 2005

	:: Lisa		10/19/2005 10:57:00 AM

Let's play "Stump the Biometrics"!


RIGHTS AND WRONGS — Government Takeover of Freedom, Media and Elections


From today's Coffee Break:

British ID system stumped by brown eyes

British government trials of a national ID card system have run into a roadblock, as people who have brown eyes are being misidentified.  Immigration Minister Tony McNulty made the embarrassing revelation on the controversial system, which uses 13 biometric identifiers, the Mirror reported.  "There are difficulties with the technology, not least ... with people with brown eyes rather than other colored eyes," McNulty said.  There have also been reports the system made wrong matches for black, elderly and disabled people, as well as balding men and laborers with worn-down fingerprints.  However, a Home Office spokesman said the database system has an old-fashioned back-up system.  "The database also holds photographs and personal information so an incorrect biometric match would be easily discovered," he said.  


[That seems like a mighty long list of "misses"... –L.]

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Friday, October 14, 2005

	:: Lisa		10/14/2005 10:20:00 AM

The blatant assault on the middle class continues... part deux


MONEY... IT'S NOT JUST FOR BREAKFAST ANYMORE* — Lisa's finger on the Pulse of America



Sorry for doing this in a separate post rather than adding on to the existing post, but the "new and improved" (HA) Blogger won't let me edit anything!


On this morning's Mind Over Money segment, WUSA-TV anchor Andrea Roane was discussing with some guest financial advisors this halfwitted notion of reducing mortgage interest deductions. She did not cite a source for this information*, but said that the general idea behind the initiative was to "spread out" investment rewards over more investment categories — i.e., take the real estate benefit and divvy it up to give more equal treatment to "other" types of investments.

<sarcasm>
Guess who has "other" investments. And guess who doesn't.

Apparently, it just doesn't seem fair to the plutocracy that "other" investments are victimized by the free ride given to real estate.
</sarcasm>

When Andrea threw the financial expert a big softball by asking whether this proposal was wise, the financial expert hit it out of the park with a pointed "NO". She wisely recommended that citizens contact their legislators early and often to express their opposition to this plan.

At best, the panel that recommended this travesty is out of touch. At worst, they have been emboldened by the thusfar unpunished cronyism (FEMA, Supreme Court, Halliburton, etc.) going on around them, and have uncovered yet another reverse-Robin-Hood scheme to line the pockets in their circle.

On a related note — in direct proportion with the increasing brazenness of the thievery and lying, I am increasingly convinced that the current administration has no intention of holding the next scheduled national elections. Why else would they be making it so hard for any potential Republican candidates to have any credibility? Come time for the elections, we'll have either a terrorist attack or a bird flu epidemic to close the polls.

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Wednesday, October 12, 2005

	:: Lisa		10/12/2005 09:56:00 PM

The blatant assault on the middle class continues...


MONEY. IT'S NOT JUST FOR BREAKFAST ANYMORE* — Lisa's finger on the Pulse of America



From tonight's Anderson Cooper 360:

A panel charged with making proposals for tax reform is suggesting cuts in home mortgage deductions. The panel says the changes would address an inherent bias in the tax code towards wealthy homeowners. Opponents say they'd hurt the housing market.

WEALTHY homeowners don't NEED that tax break to keep their houses... MIDDLE CLASS homeowners DO!

For those who are not old enough to remember... back in the day, you could deduct ANY interest... INCLUDING your CREDIT CARD, CAR LOAN, COUCH PAYMENT, whatever. Can you IMAGINE how much $$$ you'd save on your taxes if you could do that TODAY?? Now think how much more your mortgage interest is compared to your credit card interest, and you begin to see the dent this could put in one's budget!

And you can bet BUSINESSES will still be able to deduct the interest on THEIR loans.

These slimeballs are just hacking away at the soccer moms and NASCAR dads, who lick their master's boots and ask for more!

Really, I'm not bitter.

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Friday, October 07, 2005

	:: Lisa		10/07/2005 07:03:00 AM

Wal-Mart gives student a (not good) civics lesson he'll never forget


RIGHTS AND WRONGS — Government Takeover of American Freedom, Media and Elections


I didn't always understand what the big deal was about Wal-Mart. (Michele from Buffalo, I get it now... thanks for planting the seed!) Once I caught on to its unsustainability (what an understatement), I vowed to avoid the place like the plague. Unfortunately, a recent work assignment took me there. I was struck by the atmosphere: disaffected, alarmingly unhealthy-looking employees (pallor, bad teeth, etc.); cluttered aisles and merchandise strewn about as if picked through by desperate, panicked customers; and long lines at the checkout, a reminder that You Are Po' And Your Time Doesn't Matter.

If you browse the ACT archives, you'll see plenty of ranting from me about the dysfunctional corporate culture at Wal-Mart — most prominently, bullying of suppliers, employees, communities (who opposed new Wal-Mart locations), and taxpayers (who are picking up the health care bill for Wally's undercompensated work force*).

I don't consider myself a conspiracy theorist, but I've always wondered how ALL levels of government have allowed Wal-Mart to get away with various things over the years. However, even I am left agape by their transformation from bully to spy. Please, PLEASE don't support this (IMHO) criminal enterprise with your hard-earned dollars!


Civics Student...or Enemy of America?

By Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive.
Posted October 7, 2005.


Selina Jarvis is the chair of the social studies department at Currituck County High School in North Carolina, and she is not used to having the Secret Service question her or one of her students.

But that's what happened on September 20.

Jarvis had assigned her senior civics and economics class "to take photographs to illustrate their rights in the Bill of Rights," she says. One student "had taken a photo of George Bush out of a magazine and tacked the picture to a wall with a red thumb tack through his head. Then he made a thumb's-down sign with his own hand next to the President's picture, and he had a photo taken of that, and he pasted it on a poster."

According to Jarvis, the student, who remains anonymous, was just doing his assignment, illustrating the right to dissent. But over at the Kitty Hawk Wal-Mart, where the student took his film to be developed, this right is evidently suspect.

An employee in that Wal-Mart photo department called the Kitty Hawk police on the student. And the Kitty Hawk police turned the matter over to the Secret Service. On Tuesday, September 20, the Secret Service came to Currituck High.

"At 1:35, the student came to me and told me that the Secret Service had taken his poster," Jarvis says. "I didn't believe him at first. But they had come into my room when I wasn't there and had taken his poster, which was in a stack with all the others."

She says the student was upset. "He was nervous, he was scared, and his parents were out of town on business," says Jarvis. She, too, had to talk to the Secret Service.

"Halfway through my afternoon class, the assistant principal got me out of class and took me to the office conference room," she says. "Two men from the Secret Service were there. They asked me what I knew about the student. I told them he was a great kid, that he was in the homecoming court, and that he'd never been in any trouble."

Then they got down to his poster.

"They asked me, didn't I think that it was suspicious," she recalls. "I said no, it was a Bill of Rights project!"

At the end of the meeting, they told her the incident "would be interpreted by the U.S. attorney, who would decide whether the student could be indicted," she says.

The student was not indicted, and the Secret Service did not pursue the case further. [Sorry, this doesn't make me feel better. He didn't get his poster back (he should be entitled to its return if it will not be used as evidence — annoy the hell out of 'em, kid, petition to get your poster back!)... and nobody can ever give him back his sense of security. –L.]

"I blame Wal-Mart more than anybody," she says. "I was really disgusted with them. But everyone was using poor judgment, from Wal-Mart up to the Secret Service."

When contacted, an employee in the photo department at the Wal-Mart in Kitty Hawk said, "You have to call either the home office or the authorities to get any information about that."

Jacquie Young, a spokesperson for Wal-Mart at company headquarters, did not provide comment within a 24-hour period. [Of course the underhanded cowards have no comment! –L.]

Sharon Davenport of the Kitty Hawk Police Department said, "We just handed it over" to the Secret Service. "No investigative report was filed." Jonathan Scherry, spokesman for the Secret Service in Washington, D.C., said, "We certainly respect artistic freedom, but we also have the responsibility to look into incidents when necessary. In this case, it was brought to our attention from a private citizen, a photo lab employee."

Jarvis uses one word to describe the whole incident: "ridiculous."


Matthew Rothschild is the editor of The Progressive.


__________
* At least one study showed a negative local economic impact from new Wal-Mart stores — oversimplified a bit, it means the local taxpayers laid out more in Medicaid (yes, plenty of hard-working Wal-Mart employees make so little they qualify for Medicaid!) and other social support than they got back in sales taxes and such.

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Monday, September 19, 2005

	:: Lisa		9/19/2005 11:05:00 PM

WELL IT'S ABOUT DAMN TIME!


RIGHTS AND WRONGS — Government Takeover of American Freedom, Media and Elections



It is not lost on me that these comments are being made by a mainstream media "star", and being reported by a mainstream media feed! The light at the end of the tunnel may not be an oncoming train, after all...

...MAYBE.


NBC's Williams: Journalists' Gloves Off


NEW YORK (AP) - NBC's Brian Williams says the lasting legacy of Hurricane Katrina for journalists may be the end of an unusual four-year period of deference to people in power.

There were so many angry, even incredulous, questions put to Bush administration officials about the response to Katrina that the Salon Web site compiled a "Reporters Gone Wild" video clip. Tim Russert, Anderson Cooper, Ted Koppel and Shepard Smith were among the stars.

The mute button seemingly in place since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has been turned off.

"By dint of the fact that our country was hit we've offered a preponderance of the benefit of the doubt over the past couple of years," the "Nightly News" anchorman said. "Perhaps we've taken something off our fastball and perhaps this is the story that brings a healthy amount of cynicism back to a news media known for it."

Williams spent much of the past two weeks in New Orleans, huddling in the Superdome with suffering residents and giving one of the first warnings on the "Today" show that the levees had been breached.

Hundreds of reporters, in all media, did heroic work on the Gulf Coast in the deadly storm's aftermath. None arguably was as financially and symbolically important to his company as the job turned in by Williams.

It could solidify his spot as network news' top anchor. He was NBC News' point person at a time its rivals had none, since replacements haven't been named for the late Peter Jennings at ABC News or Dan Rather at CBS.

"Nightly News" viewership the week after the storm jumped 2.5 million from the week before, its lead over second-place ABC increasing to 1.1 million from 300,000, according to Nielsen Media Research. A Williams-anchored "Dateline NBC" special about Katrina was the most-watched program all week.

When ABC and CBS settle on succession plans, they'll be playing catch-up.

Williams increased the value of his stock by aggressively seizing an opportunity, said Jeff Alan, author of "Anchoring America: The Changing Face of Network News."

"Brian handled this as professionally as any of the reporters down there and maybe more so," Alan said. "Brian knew how much was at stake here. Brian took his anchor hat off and put his human being hat on in a lot of the broadcasts that I saw."

Williams said he's focused on a story that will preoccupy the country for many months and probably play a key role in deciding the nation's next president.

"I have not seen an inch of my own coverage," he said. "I have very little sense of it and I'm probably the last judge of my own work. I tried to call them as I saw them. And if I let my emotion or anger get the better of me, what some would have called a failing of a journalist I think should be taken the other way around on this story."

Pointed criticism of the government response has been posted on his daily Web log, particularly on Labor Day when he wrote about food and water being dropped to survivors: "There was water, there was food, and there were choppers to drop both. Why no one was able to combine them in an air drop is a cruel and criminal mystery of this dark chapter in our recent history. The words 'failure of imagination' come to mind."

His blog also reprinted in full a National Weather Service bulletin from the morning before the storm struck that gave a prescient road map to the destruction, including power outages and water shortages that "will make human suffering incredible by modern standards."

Williams said he sensed trouble brewing already that Sunday, Aug. 28. At the Superdome, he saw National Guardsman barking orders at people seeking shelter, and patting down small children and the elderly for weapons. [Iraq- or Afghanistan-hardened Guardsmen, perhaps? Hmmm, maybe that's another underhanded purpose of of this W-ar! –L.] The crowd was angry about being forced to stand in line in the rain even though there was a large overhang a few yards away, he said.

"I went back to my hotel to get a few hours of sleep before they sealed the Dome at 6 the next morning thinking, 'This is not good,'" he said.

He was one of a few reporters stationed at the dome as it degenerated into a house of horrors, and used his cell phone to snap a picture of its damaged roof that was widely circulated on NBC and MSNBC.

"I can't shake the belief that I got to know people who aren't with us anymore," he said.

One imaginative piece was produced simply by using a camcorder at the Baton Rouge airport on Labor Day when Williams and a crew returned, illustrating how the airport itself was filled with hundreds of compelling human stories.

About the only blemish on Williams' record was NBC's failure to lead its Aug. 30 "Nightly News" with the levees breaking in New Orleans, said Andrew Tyndall, a consultant who studies news content. NBC says that criticism is unfair, since the levee breaches were one of several angles Williams touched upon at the opening of that newscast.

Williams has had a hellish travelogue the past year, including Banda Aceh after the tsunami and a battleground in Mosul, Iraq, filled with the dead and dying. He never thought he'd see such suffering in his own country.

"I measure my words very carefully," he said. "I guard my opinions very carefully. To me, this was life and death.

"I refuse to believe that anyone I met at the dome has lesser value than anybody in my family that I go home to. I don't believe that about this country. I don't want that to be the lesson in this. I was angry. People were going without and dying in the wealthiest country the world has ever known."

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	:: Lisa		9/19/2005 10:07:00 PM

Queen Barbara of Houston: "LET THEM EAT CAKE"


SOMETHIN'S HAPPENIN' HERE — World or U.S. News or Commentary



Well, not exactly... the REAL quote is actually WORSE:

"Almost everyone I’ve talked to says we're going to move to Houston. What I’m hearing — which is sort of scary — is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this—this (she chuckles slightly) is working very well for them."

~ Barbara Bush, commenting on refugees staying in places such as the Astrodome

From Editor and Publisher
Also seen at Discourse.net, who gets a hat-tip for the cake line...

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Friday, September 09, 2005

	:: Veralynne		9/09/2005 02:21:00 PM

Ever More to Mourn


RIGHTS AND WRONGS — Government Takeover of American Freedom, Media and Elections

Ever More to Mourn

I don't believe there's ever been a U.S. administration that's given the U.S. population (to say nothing of the world population) more pain and loss to mourn than the current Bush thugs admin. And it gets worse every day! More incompetence, more lies, more outright racism and genocide right here in America. Here we are at another anniversary of "the big one" while the Southern states are struggling to recover from their "big one." Too sad.


MORE DETAIL

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