ACORN – Day 4

OK kids, this is the last day of Rachel Maddow’s coverage of, “The Truth About The Lies About ACORN” on MSNBC.

Sept. 29: “Who’s Next?”

Listen people the revolution is happening, it is time. This is a very important time in our history, we need to find a balance, we need to get along and take care of each other…all of us. It is not OK for some to have and for others to have not. When there are large media publicized tragedies that happen like a hurricane, a tornado, a tsunami, people all around the world come together to help each other. These tragic stories are fine for the media to cover as their is not the fear of a monetary or power loss to anyone. They are tragedies happening all around us that are trying to be seen through this mass media haze…you need to look and see.

The one thing I know is when I do the right thing, my life is better. I want that better life for everyone. I don’t want people to have to continually fight for what’s right, I just want people to do right so they to can have a better life like the rest of us.

-Cara

ACORN – Day 3

I am out of town right now, so I am a little behind in ACORN the third day post! I also hove quite a few comments to review, post, and respond too in regards to these ACORN posts, so all those who may think I am ignoring or not publishing their comments hold tight. ;]

Alright enough talk, here is segment 3 of Rachel Maddow’s coverage of, “The Truth About The Lies About ACORN” on MSNBC.

Sept. 28: “GOP seeks wedge issue in ACORN”

I want to make it clear that I get that there are people that work for or have worked for ACORN that are not good, just like there are people who work for Fox are not evil (like the janitors, security guards…A JOKE!!!!)

I say lets make a plan to help fix ACORN and Rupert Murdoch and that FOX News gang. Who’s in?

-Cara

Wanna Watch Something Funny?

Kinda…

Sorry to everyone I could only find  this video with annoying ads. I try to avoid this whenever possible.

Kill your MySpace. Delete your profile.

I said it.

-Cara

In Local News – TechnoTrash

If you live in New York City and have electronics you want to get rid off in a green, eco, recycling way. Here are two upcoming events I found on the Lower East Side Ecology Center’s website:

April 26th, 2009
Central Park
West 67th Street and Central Park West

and

May 2nd, 2009
119 W 23rd Street at Tekserve between 6 & 7th Avenues
Manhattan

Here is what techotrash consists of:

Working and non-working:

Computers (laptop & desktop),
Servers, mainframes
Monitors
Printers, scanners, fax-machines, copiers
Network devices (routers, hubs, modems, etc.)
Peripherals (keyboards, mice, cables, etc.)
Components (hard drives, CD Roms, circuit boards, power supplies, etc,)
TVs,VCR & DVD Players
Audio visual devices
Radios/Stereos
Cell Phones, pagers
PDAs,Telecommunication (phones, answering machines, etc.)
Media (floppies, cd’s, zips, VHS tapes)

I have a bag of stuff I have been saving up for the next techno recycling gala event. This is such a sweet deal.

Goodbye old and improperly burned cds, printer ink cartridges, old laptop batteries, etc…goodbye.

-Cara

GlobalPost is Coming

One of my former co-workers, Guillaume, brought this site to my attention. The video makes it sound like it is the start of an awesome site. There is a blog about the coming of GlobalPost. There is also a registration page, where you can sign up for the launch on January 12th.

I hope it is not an illusion or distraction. We will see.

Observe your surroundings and discover the truth.

-Cara

Today’s Heroine – Janeane Garofalo

For no particular reason, I always liked the actress/comedian Janeane Garofalo. There is just something about her that interests me, maybe it’s her anger, or her glasses, or her general dislike of idiots and the fact she is not quiet about it. Anyway, it was no big deal, just a general liking that if asked, “Hey, do you like that actress Janeane Garofalo?”, I’d say, “Yeah, she is great in Wet Hot American Summer. I love that flick.”

Then the other day I watched this documentary narrated by Janeane Garofalo entitled, “Dangerous Living: Coming Out In The Developing World“. It is about the lives of gays, lesbians and transgender people living in the Global South in the present time and the homophobia and injustice they face. I found it interesting that a heterosexual comedian/actress was narrating this indie documentary about homosexuals. I remembered someone telling me awhile back that she was a part of this liberal internet radio station Air America and was crazy political, so it made some sense I guess. I was interested and decided to do some Garofalo investigating. What I found out is she is no longer with the station and is acting on some TV shows [not sure which and it doesn’t matter as I don’t have a television]. The station itself was sold to some corporation that recently suspended this host Randi Rhodes for calling Hillary Clinton, a whore over and over again at some Air America, San Francisco event she was doing some shtick at. Here is my opinion on this; I feel whore is a negative term created by men to degrade women. I personally am not into women degrading women in an unproductive way, but I am into people having the right to say whatever they want, I just prefer it to be intelligent. Anyway, after the station suspended her, she resigned. I would have staid and fought, but not knowing the whole story I shouldn’t really say that…but I will anyway!

OK, sorry back to Janeane. During my Garofalo investigating/stalking I found this video on YouTube of Janeane in an interview on Fox News with Brian Kilmeade and two other reporters I don’t care enough to find out the names of, from February 2003.

This is why she is today’s heroine, not only is she well read and intelligent, she did not jump up and sucker punch Brian Kilmeade, who was trying desperately to silence her voice and make her out to be an anti-American, Saddam supporter. Fox news is disgusting. The reason they were number one at the time is they are an entertainment, fluff network. Their news is a joke, and yes all network news is a joke, but Fox News is the champion of crap.

Do not support America’s televised news! It only exists to sell you crap and distract you from the truth.

-Cara

Reason 88 from, 101 Reasons Why I Am Vegetarian:

Just as smokestack emissions result in acid rain, toxic fumes from decomposing livestock waste in open-air lagoons on factory farms become poisonous to fish when returned to waterways via rainfall. The errant ammonia also ravages terrestrial ecosystems. Since Earth’s plant species evolved to efficiently use scarce amounts of nutrients, today’s gluts will generally kill them. Fallout can degrade environments as far away as 300 miles.

Turned Off

A couple weeks ago Marine and I were talking about turning off our DirectTV DVR service. There is really nothing worth watching and I, just speaking for myself, am not strong enough to not turn it on and watch if given half a chance. I learned this when we said Tuesdays would be a no TV day and then proceeded to watch TV every Tuesday unless we went out! :) One main reason for no TV Tuesdays is there are millions of other things to do like read, go to the park, walk, create, write, talk, volunteer, make a difference, take a class, etc. instead of watching said TV. Now with no TV at all, who knows I might have time to run for President!

Originally, we got the DirectTV DVR to put an end to channel surfing, only record what we wanted to watch, and to avoid commercials. What I learned from this experience is, yes we stopped channel surfing, but now we show surf off the guide instead, we pretty much only watch crap, and because of TIVO/DVR services, every show has commercials in the actual show. This makes the shows I thought had some standards complete whores for advertisers. I understand it has always been that way, but now it is worse, before, I could walk away from commercials, but now to escape you must walk away from TV…so I am.

Another reaction to the turning off of DirectTV is we will not be using the biggest consumer of electricity in the house, our TV. I don’t know how big our carbon footprint is, but is it much smaller now. I was thinking this morning if our electricity bill will go down as in NYC ConEd averages your bill. They say they do this because 9 out of 10 times they can’t get to the meter. In this day and age the fact that the meter does not communicate with their database is ridiculous. This is something I will look into. I don’t want to pay what the average consumer of electricity pays, because I use way less then that guy! ;)

The Direct TV service was supposed to be turned off on April 6th, so to celebrate, Marine and I and some friends went out on Sunday to raise our glasses to the end of TV in our home [of the two friends, one has no TV and the other has no cable, just a TV for when she wants to watch DVDs.] When we came home the DirectTV was still on. I thought about calling and reminding them, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Then the next day it was on and the next till I turned it on today and it was gone, just gone. I don’t know who reading this has a DVR, but there is a list of saved shows you can watch, so Marine and I filled it, that way when they turned off the actual service we could slowly wean ourselves off the boob tube. I thought that even without the service you could still watch the saved shows, but I was incorrect. Now, I am like a drug addict forced to go cold turkey without any warning, but like that drug addict I know that if I stay off the crack, life will only get better.

I am excited to see how it changes me.

Crack is whack!

-Cara

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Reason 54 from, 101 Reasons Why I Am Vegetarian:

Fish and shellfish farming, or aquaculture, is no less disruptive to the environment than taking fish from the wild. Shoreline pens replace mangroves, that is, the habitats where wild fish would otherwise reproduce. Some farmed species will not breed in captivity, so fish farmers must steal juveniles, who never get a chance to reproduce, from the wild. There are numerous cases where farmed fish have escaped into the wild, corrupting the genetic purity of native species and spreading disease. Indiscriminate biomass fishing for fishmeal threatens ecosystems. Feed-to-flesh ratios soar in some farmed species to 25 to 1. Nitrogenous waste poisons the seabed floor below cages that hold fish in unnatural densities.

Stop Big Media Dot Com

A topic I have left alone so far is big media. It is such an enormous issue to discuss, much less conquer, that I am brought down just thinking about it. I was doing research today on who own what media firms. Who has their little dirty fingers where and in the process I found this site StopBigMedia.com.

What’s So Bad about Big Media you may ask, well according to StopBigMedia.com,

• Big Media fail local communities. Big Media companies get a sweet deal from the government. They get to use the public airwaves — for free — to make billions in profits. In exchange for this government handout, broadcasters are supposed to serve the public by offering quality programs that meet the needs of local communities. Instead, Big Media companies gut local newsrooms and ignore local issues.
• Big Media ignore diversity. Big Media have limited ownership opportunities for women and people of color, pushing them off the public airwaves and stifling vital voices. Coverage of issues that matter to people of color, women, the middle and working class, and rural communities has disappeared. The result? Media that fail to represent our nation’s diversity.
• Big Media are bad for democracy. Democracy can’t exist without an informed public. We rely on unbiased news from independent sources to stay informed and to hold our government accountable. But media consolidation means fewer sources of news, opinion and information. Instead of hard-hitting critical journalism, Big Media give us a junk diet of celebrity gossip and sensationalism.

I like what I have seen so far, but I haven’t spent hours on it. I think is cool and their site is not saturated with ads for crap pens and free credit reports like most media companies’ sites.

Turn off the news, stay off their web sites. They are perpetuating the belief that the world is much worse than it is, but wouldn’t you feel better if you bought something…anything…

I would prefer a hug.

Turn off your TV!

-Cara

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Reason 26 from, 101 Reasons Why I Am Vegetarian:

Birds are cheap and cages are expensive, so battery hens live out their dreary days in space just about the size of their own bodies. No hen gets to run, build a nest, enjoy a cleansing dust bath, protect a chick, forage in the sun, perch, fly, or even lift a wing. Instead, this creature will crouch and suffer and fend off the feather pulling of cage mates. And every egg that is laid will roll away down the slope of a wire floor, which will also cripple her legs and feet.