Note: This blog is usually about politics, media, and cultural issues, but I needed to get this off of my chest.

Walking on a sidewalk in a crowded city is much different than in suburbia where you usually have the sidewalk to yourself. Yet, some people are totally clueless about this distinction.

Most of these things should be obvious, but some people just don’t get them. So, here goes.

1) If you are walking slowly, walk at the side of the sidewalk. Slow walkers often will place themselves so that they block as much of the sidewalk as possible. That is comparable to taking up two lanes on an expressway.

2) If you are walking with people, try to walk single-file. Definitely, do not walk with more than two people in a row, no matter how interesting you think your conversations are. Remember, there are lots of other people using the sidewalk to commute.

3) Whenever possible, walk on the right side of the sidewalk. That way, you do not end up getting in other people’s way, and they don’t get in your way (if they are smart enough to do this).

4) A cell phone (or IPod etc.) is no excuse for walking in manner that gets in the way of others. You are not entitled to walk in the middle of the sidewalk, stop suddenly, or do other stupid things because you are distracted. If you can’t handle walking with a cell phone, don’t.

5) It is not cool, tough or any other positive thing to deliberately walk in someone else’s way to make them move. If you do that, you are just an idiot.

6) Do not walk your bike on the sidewalk, and certainly don’t ride it on the sidewalk.

7) Do not lock and leave your bike on a busy sidewalk. It is in the way.

8) If you are walking with your dog, never tie the dog to parking meter (or other thing with a poll) and then leave. This is awful for several reasons. It is cruel to the frightened animal. The dog is in the way of pedestrians. The dog poses a danger to pedestrians. (Remember, it is terrified and alone and won’t behave the way it does when you are around.) Pedestrians also pose a danger to the dog.

9) Don’t break through lines of people waiting for buses to jaywalk. Go around the lines, and then jaywalk.

NARAL has released a report that grades states on the right-to-choose on abortion. Not shockingly, Texas received an F. One particular quote from the report is especially disturbing.

93 percent of Texas counties have no abortion provider.

Other facts about Texas and abortion rights.

• Texas' Governor, Lt. Governor, and Attorney General all oppose the right to choose on abortion.


• The Texas state House and Senate both have anti-choice majorities.


• Texas has a 24 mandatory delay for women after they contact doctors for abortions.


• Texas law requires that abortions be provided by physicians, even though trained midwives, nurse practitioners, physician assistants are perfectly cable of performing abortions safely.


• Texas discriminates against low-income women by refusing to provide abortion coverage with regular medical coverage for the poor.


• Texas law requires parental consent and notice (except with permission of a judge) for teenage girls, despite the fact that many fundamentalist Christians will emotionally and physically abuse daughters who want abortions and many anti-choice judges are dishonest.


• Texas regulates abortion providers more heavily than other medical providers.


• Texas mandates that women seeking abortions be given highly biased information (propaganda) about abortion and Texas law.

The last point is appalling because the mandates discuss the risks of abortions, but not the higher risks of full-term pregnancies. Planned Parenthood points out:

Overall, the risk of death from childbirth is 11 times greater than the risk of death from abortion up to 20 weeks of pregnancy. After 20 weeks, the risk of death from abortion is about the same as the risk of death from childbirth.

If Texas law mandated the kind of accurate, balanced information Planned Parenthood provides, no one would object. However, the Christian Right has gotten Texas to mandate attempting to deceive women on the relative risks of abortion and pregnancy in order to try to intimidate women who want abortions. This is dishonest and morally wrong.

A larger problem is that restrictions on abortion are often presented and covered individually and not in any depth. On first glance, abortion restrictions sometimes seem reasonable, but the details always prove otherwise. Of course, these restrictions do not function in isolation. They are part of a coordinated campaign by the Christian Taliban to make abortion bureaucratically difficult or even practically impossible. When they are combined with the campaigns of intimidation against abortion providers and their landlords by militant, Christian fundamentalists along with outright acts of terrorism, it is hardly surprising that the overwhelming majority of Texas counties have no abortion services.

Learn about your state and other states by going to NARAL's full report. The “State Profiles” are particularly interesting, but there is national and other information as well.

United for Peace and Justice has a listing of protests planned for the fourth anniversary of the Bush regime's terrible war in Iraq.

Look for Events in Your Area

Here is an actual Google Adsense ad:

Beefcake muscle
Browse a huge selection now.
Find exactly what you want today.
www.eBay.com

If only life were this easy. Here is the URL of the page I found by searching for "musclebears" on Google Blog Search.

http://www.shopping-rite.com/gay-muscle-bears/2006/12/musclebears-org-gay-muscle-bears.php

The commercialization of the Web has led to some funny results.

The Christian Right has worked hard to paint Disney as a “liberal” company, despite the facts to the contrary. Disney was the last studio to grant same-sex partner benefits, and then only out of fear that they would lose queer employees they depended on to more enlightened studios. The Christian extremists condemn Disney for Gay Nights at Disneyland and Disney World even though Disney rudely refuses to recognize the unofficial and profitable events. Disney also broadcasted the propagandadrama, “The Path to 9/11” on its ABC television network, falsely claiming the show was based on the 9/11 Commission Report.

In a previous posting of mine, What if Disney Imposed Its Right-Wing Agenda on Its Cartoon Characters?, even a liberal commenter mistakenly opined that Disney was liberal.

If you want another example of Disney's rightist ideology, look at its talk radio stations. They are nutty right-wing. One of them, KSFO in San Francisco, has gone far enough to generate a major backlash. A show hosted by Melanie Rogers has been caught advocating (sometimes as quasi-jokes) individual murder, mass murder, and torture of people right-wingers dislike.

The blog which brought this to the attention of the public, Spocko's Brain, was shut down temporarily by Disney/ABC's legal threats for using audio clips as evidence of the statements being made on the show and for letting advertisers know what kind of radio programming surrounds their happy, happy commercials. The blog went back up, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation has sent a letter reminding Disney/ABC about the blog's legal rights under fair use.

If Disney is such a “liberal” company, then why is it broadcasting so much rightist propaganda. The Christian Right is wrong as usual.

More on the Controversy from Media Matters

Kucinich was the only Democratic presidential candidate to speak at last weekend's massive peace rally in Washington, DC.

Which Democrat do you think is most likely to stop the war?

I figured this would be a good idea for a web poll.

Stopping the War

Which Democratic Candidate Would Be Most Likely to stop the Iraq War if elected?


Dennis Kucinich
Barack Obama
Joe Biden
Bill Richardson
Wesley Clark
Mike Gravel
Christopher Dodd
Hillary Rodham Clinton
John Edwards
Tom Vilsack




view results

With all of the terrible things religion is doing, a little comic relief is in order. A great place to go for that comic relief is www.churchsigngenerator.com.

You can make a faux church sign that says anything you want.

It is amazing how little has changed with the GOP. 43 Republicans betrayed the working poor in order to pander to business interests. They actually fillibustered a pitifully small minimum wage increase on the grounds that they wanted more tax breaks for business attached to it. Every independent and Democratic Senator voted for the minimum wage increase or did not vote.

After years and years of Republicans showering our nation's treasury on big money donors, you would think that the GOP would be satisfied. Yet, they never stop trying to pander to the corrupt people who fund their campaigns. We desperately need public financing of elections.

Here is the latest GOP Hall of Shame.

Alexander (R-TN)
Allard (R-CO)
Bennett (R-UT)
Bond (R-MO)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burr (R-NC)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cochran (R-MS)
Corker (R-TN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Craig (R-ID)
Crapo (R-ID)
DeMint (R-SC)
Dole (R-NC)
Domenici (R-NM)
Ensign (R-NV)
Enzi (R-WY)
Graham (R-SC)
Grassley (R-IA)
Gregg (R-NH)
Hagel (R-NE)
Hatch (R-UT)
Hutchison (R-TX)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Isakson (R-GA)
Kyl (R-AZ)
Lott (R-MS)
Lugar (R-IN)
Martinez (R-FL)
McCain (R-AZ)
McConnell (R-KY)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Roberts (R-KS)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shelby (R-AL)
Smith (R-OR)
Stevens (R-AK)
Sununu (R-NH)
Thomas (R-WY)
Thune (R-SD)
Vitter (R-LA)
Voinovich (R-OH)

It takes a lot to shock me, but some of Deborah Lipstadt's commentary in the 1/20/07 edition of the Washington Post, “Jimmy Carter's Jewish Problem” left me stunned and outraged.

Now, no one should be surprised that a right-wing extremist would try to say that anyone who criticizes the policies of Israeli governments is “anti-Semitic” or has a “Jewish Problem.” This is standard Karl Rove-style spin meant to demonize people whose points of views do not follow the far-right line.

What really stunned me was that she actually tried to exploit the Holocaust in order to justify Israel's mistreatment of the Palestinians. The Holocaust is completely irrelevant to this. The Palestinians had nothing to do with the Holocaust. The heinous nature of the Holocaust in no way excuses any other injustice.

More importantly, cynically exploiting the Holocaust in a misleading fashion insults the memories of the people killed. Misusing a horrific genocide as a cheezy political ploy is reprehensible.

Many of the people killed in the Holocaust were killed because they were queer. As a queer man, mocking the Holocaust in the way that Lipstadt did in her commentary is a horribly, homophobic, personal insult. It is just as insulting to all people in communities targeted by the Holocaust who actually care about what happened.

I also am offended by the Washington Post's decision to print this outrage. They should have at least strong enough editorial standards not to publish commentaries that mock the deaths of people killed in the Holocaust. I know that the Post is a very rightist, Republican paper, but just how low are they willing to sink?

This is hardly the first example of outrageous homohatred by the corporate media, and I bet it won't be the last.

Hillary Clinton has been public enemy number one of the Christian Right and other Republican partisans. She is a female Democratic Senator representing New York. It might be easy to assume that she is a liberal.

But, the facts are different. She is a pro-war Democrat that is actively involved in the Democratic Liquidation Council, an organization that Bill Clinton and other conservative Democrats started in order to move that party to the right. There is another fact that people who think Ms. Clinton is a liberal should consider.

Hillary Clinton was on Wal-Mart's Board of Directors from 1986-1992.

She has never apologized for being so deeply involved with one of the most heinous corporations. Ms. Clinton has not even expressed any regrets or misgivings.

It is time that people started looking realistically at who Hillary Clinton really is, outside of the paranoia of the right-wing and the Clinton-worship so common among many partisan Democrats.