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The link Raymmmondo posted this morning on a local give-away list [like freecycle, but not] brings me to his websitepackratmom.com where he starts off telling his mother’s eBay saga with the phrase, “My mother is insane.” Raymmmondo proves that statement with pictures showing every room in the house where he lives with his mom overflowing - just filled to bursting point - with boxes, paperweights, dead plants, empty bird cages and a few years of saved junk mail. Everything, bought from eBay.

Shades of the Collyer brothers who up to now, held the pack-rat world record. Maybe they’re going to have to move over.

Here’s a sample look at Ray’s home life

Into the kitchen. Underneath the center pile is the dining room table, and underneath the dining room table is more boxes. A bunch of the food in here is several years old, and from a dollar store, but my mom still won’t throw it away.

On Twitter Dave Winer mentioned that Obama was calling Pennsylvanians’ - and the nation’s - attention to the fact that it’s true that rural American people are angry and bitter as a result of patiently waiting 25 years for politicians they elect to stop selling them out and help them get their lives and their jobs back. I guess Obama became one of my heroes twice this weekend, because he told a really uncomfortable truth about American politics and refused to back off it. Then he admitted he was wrong for having made a poor choice of words when he originally made the statement.

Actually admitted he was wrong and apologized. I thought I was going to faint.

It seems like Hillary jumped as hard as she did onto the bandwagon playing the ‘Obama has made a mistake let’s crucify him’, song, because she’s made some pretty big mistakes of her own lately. What are those mistakes? Obama tells it much better than I can. Watch out for him saying at a bit after minute 4 that Hillary is making it sound like she’s Annie Oakley . . .

More in AP article and at DailyKos

Carl Bernstein wrote a book about Hillary Clinton, and this week he published an article about her presidential campaign. Below are a couple of paragraphs from the article. It’s well worth reading.

It happens that Mark Penn, the campaign manager Hillary recently fired, is the brother of a guy who was my physician for a long time. Deane Penn retired from practice maybe two years ago, but for many years I knew him as a thoroughly decent person, a committed activist in the Jewish community and an excellent doctor. Dr. Penn always referred to his brother’s work as one of the nation’s major pollsters, with great pride.

The Clinton folks asserted to donors and reporters alike that this second “shake-up” in eight weeks at the very top of the campaign apparat represents some kind of great electoral moment, an opportunity for Hillary to state her case “more positively,” as if the negative approach had been forced on her; the beginning of yet another “turnaround” as if Penn, rather than Hillary (and Bill), has been the big problem. As if Penn were not an appendage of his two patrons, as if he were some kind of independent contractor twisting the candidate’s arm to do what comes unnaturally to her. The willingness of so much of the press, sensitized to the Clintons’ off-center complaints about one-sided coverage, to buy into this line is stunning.

In fact, the demotion of Penn –- like the departure of Hillary’s acolyte Patty Solis Doyle as campaign manager –- is a confession that, for all her claims of “experience” and leadership abilities, Hillary Clinton has now presided over two disastrous national enterprises, the most important professional undertakings of her adult life, both of which she began with ample wind at her back: the healthcare reform of her husband’s presidency, and now her own campaign for the White House. These two failures -– and the demonizing of her opponents in both instances –- may be the best indication of the kind of President she would be, especially when confronted (inevitably) by unanticipated difficulty and/or entrenched opposition to her ideas and programs.

It is exactly under such circumstances that she usually resorts to the worst excesses that mark her in full warrior-mode — and all its scorched-earth, truth-be-damned manifestations. Bosnia, anyone? Smearing the women involved (or even thought to be involved) sexually with her husband.
Responding to Barack Obama with the same mindset, disdain, and arsenal as she did Karl Rove and Lee Atwater, as if Obama’s politics and methodologies were as mendacious and vicious as theirs–and her own. Tax information kept secret (in 1992 to hide her profits from trading in cattle futures; in 2008 to shield the identities of Bill’s foreign clients.) A campaign that openly boasts of throwing “the kitchen sink” at her opponent.

Seton Hall Law School’s Center for Social Justice and Lowenstein Sandler, PC, filed suit today in federal court, alleging that federal law enforcement officials violated the ten victims’ constitutional privacy and due process rights under the Fourth and Fifth Amendments by entering their homes without consent or a judicial warrant during pre-dawn “raids.”

. . . immigration agents forced their way into each plaintiff’s home in the early hours of the morning without a judicial warrant or the occupants’ consent. Most of the plaintiffs were awakened by loud pounding on their doors and answered the door, fearing an emergency. ICE agents subsequently either lied about their identity or purpose to gain entry, or simply shoved their way into the home.  During each raid the agents swept through the house and, displaying guns, rounded up all the residents for questioning. In some cases they ordered children out of their beds, shouted obscenities, shoved guns into residents’ chests, and forbade detained individuals from calling their lawyers.  In at least half the raids, the officers purported to be searching for a person who did not even live at the address raided.

The complaint asserts that these practices are not isolated violations, but are examples of a clear modus operandi typical of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) program called “Operation Return to Sender.”  Under this program, the complaint alleges, ICE agents have been ordered to meet dramatically increased immigrant arrest quotas using grossly outdated address information and without having been trained on lawful procedures.

. . . According to the complaint, the constitutional violations did not cease once agents had entered the homes.  For example, plaintiff Maria Argueta, a legal resident, was arrested in her home at 4:30 in the morning and detained for 24 hours without food or water; the agents lied to get into her home then refused to even to look at her immigration papers proving her status.

Jump to full Sun Herald article.

Since last October, Singulair allergy and asthma medication labels have warned that the drug is linked to, “suicidal thinking and behaviour.” The Wall Street Journal reports:

Singulair, made by Merck & Co., is approved to treat asthma and allergy symptoms such as sneezing and stuffy noses, as well as to prevent exercise-induced asthma. The FDA said in a so-called early communication that it is reviewing postmarketing reports of behavior and mood changes, suicidal thoughts and actions, and actual suicides by patients who took Singulair. The regulator also asked Merck to look at its own database for signs of trouble.

Early communications are a recently developed tool the FDA uses to tell consumers and health-care professionals that the agency is looking into a particular safety concern but that it hasn’t reached any conclusions.

Jump to full WSJ article.

Casting for Recovery is physical therapy for women after breast removal surgery. Fly-fishing requires the same range of motions traditional therapy offers to strengthen and develop muscles in the upper arm and body. CFR operates in the United States, Great Britain and Canada.

More info at Casting for Recovery.

Fox effectively fired Montel Williams after he stated during a televised interview that we ought to be at least as concerned about the 28 boys of ours who have died in Iraq since January, as we are about Heath’s death. He also shared the idea that the media community shouldn’t be discussing Ledger as an object in order to drive up ratings. This “young man . . . has not even been buried yet,” Williams admonished. He was, “somebody’s child, somebody’s father.”

When Montel refused to be guided by three colleagues back into a discussion on Ledger, one of the interviewers interrupted him, saying, “More Montel after this commercial break.” But, Montel wasn’t brought back after the break. Next, four days later CBS Television Distribution announced that “The Montel Williams Show” will not be back in production this year. Stations are being offered 52 weeks of the “Best of Montel” reruns to replace the live episodes.

Nellie Andreeva, of the Hollywood Reporter, quotes Williams: “After spending the last 17 years as a talk show host and 22 years prior in the military, I’m looking forward to the opportunities the next 17 years bring.”

See more at
Daily Kos
Blackvoices.com
Variety Magazine

Youtube video of Montel during the Fox interview

Fair Lawn, Dec. 9 - An 8-foot-tall menorah has been placed in a yard across from Borough Hall, but even after all its electric candles are lighted, it will not outshine the Borough Hall and its tree, which have hundreds of lightbulbs.

A sign on the menorah - symbol of the Jewish festival of Hanukkah, which began Tuesday night - reads, “There will be liberty and justice for all when I am across the street.” Rabbi Levi Neubort of the Anshei Lubavitch Outreach Center in Fair Lawn has erected what he calls a “defiant menorah” on private property facing the municipal building, because borough officials have consistently refused to allow the menorah on town property.

I found this story so delightful! My family happens to know personally the “rabbi who beat borough hall,” but we didn’t know all that his fight entailed. Eventually, the rabbi was able to begin lighting a Chanukah menorah on city hall grounds in 2006. And The Wei family was there for the first lighting!

Jump to full Beliefnet article. Originally appeared in The Record.

by Star Ledger Staff and wire reports
January 02, 2008, 5:07 PM

California sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today for denying its first-in-the-nation greenhouse gas limits on cars, trucks and SUVs, challenging the Bush administration’s conclusion that states have no business setting emission standards.

New Jersey joined the lawsuit and other states were expected to follow. The legal challenge was anticipated after the EPA on Dec. 19 denied California a waiver it needs under the federal Clean Air Act. The lawsuit was filed in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson denied California the waiver, saying new federal regulations would be more effective than a patchwork of state laws. At least 16 other states had been expected to follow California’s lead and adopt the state’s tougher emission limits.

New Jersey and the other states cannot act without EPA approval.

“We need the waiver enabling California’s proposed greenhouse gas emission standards for new motor vehicles, which are vital to the health and well being of New Jersey residents,” state Attorney General Anne Milgram said.

Jump to full Star Ledger article

The myth is simply this: that if an individual will work hard, follow the rules, and be patient that they can be successful. . . The truth is that in accumulating wealth hard work plays a very small role . . . no group has worked harder than the slaves that built this country, the Chinese that built the railroad, or the Mexicans that continue to do the menial labor that drives our information society.

Today, as Tim Wise writes in “The Mother of All Racial Preferences” white baby boomers are benefiting from the largest transfer of wealth in American history as they inherit their parents’ estates. Some of that wealth dates back to the years of slavery, when Blacks were forced to work for free while their white owners and the American economy accumulated the benefits of their toil. Another large category of the transferred wealth is land, much of it stolen by the American government from Native Americans and Mexicans and sold for a pittance to white settlers. For the average white family, however, some of the largest sources of wealth are the result of racial preferences in government policies that were started in the 20th century.

. . . it was a fact that I worked the hardest on the jobs that paid me the least . . . How can we in good conscious claim that the person[s] working for minimum wage or working two menial jobs is not working hard enough and are therefore responsible for their lack of wealth?

Critics of affirmative action lean heavily on the myth that people make it on their own in the United States based on hard work and individual effort. They also maintain that government intervention in the wealth creation process is not just unprecedented, but un-American. Simply put, they ask: Why should the beneficiaries of affirmative action be the recipients of preferential governmental policies when whites acquired their wealth through hard work? The answer is simple: in reality governmental policy has played an absolutely crucial role in determining the racial character of the haves and the have nots in America.

. . . The majority of personal wealth in America is based on home ownership, if governmental policies provided funds for one group and not all groups equally then that is favoritism. With the government condoning and encouraging “red-lining” in mortgage loans by the FHA, it allowed whites to receive low interest loans on their mortgages thus providing them with the needed equity to begin the process of wealth accumulation. This is just one of many government policies that helped to decide who was going to be well-off in America and who wasn’t.

Jump to full article