The Progressive Connection

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Babaloo shows how local blogging is done.

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James Watson: racism alive and well in the USA

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I've spent the last 24 hours reading as the fires ignited by Nobel laureate James Watson have spurred hundreds of racist comments on message boards across the world . The racial views espoused by Watson are not simply pernicious, they are unamerican. The premise that you could walk out your door in the United States and make the claim, with a straight face and in a public place, that you presume that someone is less intelligent than you because of the color of their skin or ethnic background is abhorrent. Watson claims that everyone with Black employees “knows that they are not the equals of Whites” and, somehow, that is supposed to be acceptable? We are supposed to take him seriously…as a scientist? I don’t think so. Watson is about to lose his job and what was left of his reputation. The equality of every citizen, respect for each other including our differences and a sense of the potential inherent in each and every citizen, especially our children, is essential to what it m...
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titanic and iceberg

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The Titanic has hit an iceberg . Judith Miller and her lawyers, in concocting this self-serving excercise in elision and obfuscation, and the editors of the New York Times , in delivering it to their readers, have sent a clear message to the broader public: find a life raft, quick. A newspaper has no higher obligation to its readers than the timely reporting of the truth. The New York Times just officially said goodbye to all that. Whether we look at Miller's hiding behing her notes, her hiding of her notes, her obfuscation of her sources even as she purported to reveal one, or that misspelled name... Valerie Flame ...written on a note pad, but, essentially, according to Miller, signifying nothing ...there could hardly be a more sordid or less satisfying outcome to the "paper of record" coming clean. If this is the best they have to offer, and indeed, that seems to be the case, their readers shouldn't be the only ones looking to the life boats. "the notes...
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the corner booth

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Every union organizer has a ritual.  It might be where you stand near the gate where the cars drive up to the job site. It might be how you hold the clip board when you get ready to knock on a door. It might be how you sort and re-sort your list, going over names of workers, shifts and departments until you know them like they were permanently etched inside your skull. For me, in this case, it was a table, in a cafeteria, in a hospital.  I'd order a cup of coffee and sit in the same chair, facing the same direction with my materials carefully tucked away and my ball cap sitting on the chair beside me. And then I'd wait... It was a big city Children's Hospital serving kids from all over. If you live anywhere near me, you've seen it from the freeway, Life Flight helicopters occasionally touching down yards from traffic. I'd sit at a central table, facing the entrance, cashiers and serving stations to the right of me and salad bar at my back. I'd be there morning...
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