Join us on the Independence Day Drive to Philadelphia. Email Dave, our fearless trip leader and learn about C.H.U.N.K. Accost people on the street. Admire the Betsy Ross house. And one other thing, I grew up in NJ and I kinda dig the turnpike.

Today's headline story in the Seattle section of the Post Intelligencer recounts the tale of a 15 year old boy questioned by the Secret Service for his gory representations of Bush in his sketch book. Apparently he placed Bush's head on a stick, colored burning flames around the constitution & titled the drawing The End of The War On Error. He probably had some fancy sketches of Bush as Satan, Bush as Bin Laden, Bush as his principal in there too.

Reported by his school officials, he was questioned to see if he was perhaps going to carry out his dastardly plans. The Chief of Police from the town is quoted as saying this is a "cut and dry case." His parents are mortified.

So here we are in a post-9/11, post columbine era. Police can't trust the kids- they might have guns. We must take all actions as a legitimate threat, but it seems to me we've backed ourselves into a corner. The government is giving itself the leeway to call anything it chooses an act of terrorism, or a potential threat towards the president.

The Patriot Act: Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism.

Kids sure are sneaky these days.

Click on this link link to follow the ACLU through a potential scenario involving the Vieques Island protesters as they find themselves in a quagmire of patriotic hell.

Take a look for an in-depth look at what we are up against. Here is an excerpt:

The campaign will use this same precinct-by-precinct design in more than a dozen so-called battleground states, including such critical theaters as Missouri, Florida and Pennsylvania. (If you're lucky enough to live in a less competitive state like Massachusetts or Utah, you'll be spared all the door-knocking and toxic TV ads.) Ohio is the site of the earliest and most intense effort. Already, the campaign has begun holding training sessions for its Ohio volunteers, which are designed to introduce them to the Plan and which have the general feel of a motivational workshop. ''No one is going to walk up to you and say, 'Can I help George W. Bush?' '' Dewey Stokes, the county commissioner for Franklin County, told about 100 volunteers at one of these sessions. ''You have to ask. Why are you all here tonight? Because someone asked you. You've got friends, relatives, co-workers -- ask them to help.''

On this morning, the colonel had come, clipboard under his arm, with the goal of registering 10 new voters, which would count toward the goal of 6,450 that the campaign had set for the county. (Volunteers get points for every voter they register, and these points can be redeemed on the Bush campaign Web site for hats or mugs.) Ashenhurst said he carried the clipboard everywhere he went, and if he saw a moving van by the side of the road in a Republican-rich neighborhood, he would pull over and see if the person was moving in and wanted to register. ''Voter registration isn't just a weekend activity,'' he told me. ''It really is a way of life.''

We spent the first half an hour recounting stories of our favorite Texan- and the next hour strategizing over DV. As a new group, we were out there for the first time talking with people and handing out flyers- to an admittedly very receptive crowd. But we also realized that we need to make it clear to people that even though they may not want to plan a trip, they can still do a couple of other things to help DV.

1. Pass on the information about the site to their friends- especially people living in swing states.
2. Use their own motivation to encourage others to act.

Matt-post two beers and a whiskey, began to wax poetic on the possibility for change- should we each be willing to commit a small personal sacrifice & we discussed the reaction the site has been getting from our friends. Between the three of us we already know of about twenty trips in the works...and we are working on getting up a discussion board so that people who want to plan a trip have an easy way to connect with others. All this and we've only been live for four days!

Briefly:

The Times front page articles focus on authenticity --is it real--and the fact that the truce offer was quickly rejected by our European allies. It also highlights the threats and our reaction to them.

In addition to the above, the BBC also reports on what was in the tape- noting that Osama critiques American policy in Iraq for ignoring the root cause of the terrorist problem, the Israeli occupation of Palestine. BBC goes on to say that the timing of the tape's release is significant, emerging shortly after Bush gave a major news conference defending US policies on Iraq and met Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Washington. See this story for background on that:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3629071.stm

Thats the news update today- got to go to class.

She writes a column in the Texas Observer:
http://www.texasobserver.org/showAuthor.asp?AuthorID=3

and is the recent author of:

Bushwhacked: Life in George W. Bush's America:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0375507523/104-5588546-3868765?v=glance

See you at the Paramount!

To summarize:
The articles analyze a variety of factors to measure why it is that some of our cities have experienced an economic surge in high tech- as opposed to others.... To do this, they measured the geographic concentrations of among other things, bohemian, foriegn born and gay populations as indicators of high tech & knowledge based industry's location and growth. After many a regression, the author finds that the number one correlating index within our 50 largest metropolitan areas is the GAY index.**

What this means:
Economic theorists can look to the number of gay people living within a metropolitan region to predict both the concentration and growth of high tech industry. Tolerance and diversity in lifestyles actually positively effects where innovation takes place.

How cool is that?...What an interesting connection. Affirmation from the economists for what many of us believe anyways! Or as my prof. says, its something you can take to the bank.

What I think is: local politicians would benefit from reading more economic theory to pass policy measures allowing civil unions/gay marriage (ok its a little bit of a stretch but conservatives might actually like to have an economic rational to back them up-)

**I apologize for the geeking out, but I'm a grad student. I spend all day with this stuff.

Our political views are assuredly shaped a great deal by our surroundings- most people have a tendency to simply keep spinning along, exerting only enough energy to maintain and not enough energy to careen off in a different direction. We can only hope that there will be some excellent collisions in the next 6 months.

We are tailored to our news sources, attracted by what makes sense to us in our own particular world view. (I know I am guilty for taking Harpers always at their word. I also don't think I have one friend who is a registered republican.) How many of us read Aljazeera for our coverage of the Iraqi war? Probably only Noam Chompsky, but then he reads the New Republic too as well as 800 other sources. What I am basically getting at is: we all need to question staus quo & in so doing we may find that even our accepted truths are worthy of a stinging critique from the other side. I think that liberals can be exceptionally guilty of holding false assumptions- just as can conservatives.

I feel like this sort of human inertia is something that governments have been exploiting since there were first governments. They expect us to be lazy. They expect us to believe what they say, and not figure out for ourselves where the truth lies. Most important of all they don't think we'll have the power to organize.

I say come on people. Lets have it out. Get loud damn it.

I am sick of GWB + his cadre of folks who consist of a nearly self-sustaining unit of power, operatives, and oil. They stole an election and turned it into a right wing conservative mandate- not to mention our disasterous (an understatement) foreign policy. Secondly, we have a House that is at fault for getting their redistricting done by DEEP BLUE --talk about inertia, this has reduced the possiblity of a competitive race and real dialogue to almost nil.

By teaming up with Driving Votes- and making a trip, I'm hoping to stir up both my own stasis and the stagnant state of our democracy. The hardest part is the rally to the cause, and the beginning of the movement. But, I just want to say that already through speaking with folks who are organizing around the country, I can sense the beginnings of a groundswell.

I am also psyched to get out there and meet people who are living across the country. To hear directly from them what their concerns are unfiltered by any particular source...