A great woman blogger is our own Rebecca and due to a problem at 2 high schools and 1 middle school (a filtering program), some readers were finding her site blocked this fall at the school libraries. "Sex, Politics, Screeds and Attitude" being the title apparently sent up a flare because "Sex" was in it. And, you know, under the Bully Boy, young adults must never, ever learn about sex. To make her blog accessible she attempted to change it to "Six, Politics, Screeds and Attitude." That didn't fool the filter due to the fact that the web address still had "sex" in it. So she now has a mirror site at Blogdrive. I set that up for her Thursday and it's entitled "Politics Attitude." Why so short? Apparently that's as much as Blogdrive allows people now. She hadn't carried Friday's post over and I assumed (when e-mails came in about that) it was because school was out until Tuesday. No. She forgot the user name. She also forgot the password. As did I. She's now crossposted. And her backup site is on the permalinks to the left. The backup site is linked to by all other community sites. So if you're reading this at home but, come Tuesday, you'll be in school, you can go to any community site and look through the links. I believe everyone's billed it as "Politics Attitude (Rebecca's mirror site)" or something similar so you should be able to find it. Rebecca says she'll cross post there regularly (provided she remembers her username and password).
On The Wilder Side is a site that Kimberly Wilder (and, I believe, her husband) run. The Wilders are Greens and I've added their site to the permalinks right below the link for the Green Party. My apologies because I thought that was actually already on the links. (I did add it to The Third Estate Sunday Review's links and thought I had added it here as well.) There is an e-mail about something to do with the Green Party (I haven't read it yet) that we'll include tomorrow night. (We could so so now but talking entries aren't formal, obviously.) My apologies on that as well but due to the nature of recent e-mails, I pulled everyone off the public account. So there is a huge pile up of e-mails that I still have to read and e-mails that I'm honestly not going to answer more than likely. When that nonsense resulted in pulling everyone off the public account, I had thought I could read all the e-mails (ha!) myself and that I could reply to ones needing a reply. I created a "To reply" folder and moved the ones that should have gotten a reply into it. The thought was that at some point during that first week time would materialize and I'd be able to use it to reply. Didn't happen the first week, hasn't happened since.
A right-winger who e-mails about once a month e-mailed to ask if he calls me a "bitch," does that get him in trouble. He's referring to the note that went up sometime ago. The note basically was covered in entries but I was told it needed to be up prominently since the wack job was e-mailing threats. (The wack job is not a right-winger, he's a centrist. And are any of us surprised?) To the right-winger, this isn't about name calling, it's about threats. If you're name calling me, let it rip. I really don't care. If you're making threats, I do care.
And if you're trashing friends of mine, I do care.
We'll repeat this again, if you don't like something at another site in this community, e-mail them. Don't e-mail me. I don't need like tattelers to begin with. But as Trina pointed out to me, the screamer who went bonkers wasn't even talking about things up here in his last bit of bonkers. He was blowing a gasket at me for things that others had written at their own sites.
At some point (hopefully soon), I'll bring others back in to work the public account. I'll probably start with Ava because she's tough and won't get upset by it. (It really bothered Jess to read those threats and he took them very seriously and was very worried for me. There was no reason to worrry. And, of course, it bothered Ruth. It really upset her.) When that happens, we'll be moving at a faster pace again in terms of the public account.
If you're a visitor e-mailing something to get it noted here, your first question to yourself should be: What does this have to do with Iraq?
That is the focus, as determined by members. If it's not Iraq related, it's very likely never going to be noted. If it's foolish about Iraq (such as claiming a War Hawk has seen the light when they're just doing the smoke & mirrors trick), it probably won't get noted. From time to time, I am able to work in other things. But there's no promise on that. And I may hold something until I can fit it in. If it's a daily paper you're noting, chances are it won't get noted if it doesn't get noted within a day of you e-mailing it. And, unless it's the Washington Post, there's no point in noting it in most cases because either the article's gone or it's now asking for a log in before anyone can view the article (a pay money log in). (The Washington Post's archives are open to anyone who registers -- free registration.)
A common question right now is what's the weekend schedule? Sunday is the same schedule for me. I've told Isaiah if he wants a day off, take it. He's doing multiple comics for community newsletters. I've also told him if he wants Sunday off but to do a comic on Labor Day, that's fine as well. Right now, I have no idea what he's decided. Ruth's planning to do a report on Monday. We'll have that, the article everyone's working on and I'll do an entry before noon (my time) on whatever news from Iraq (it won't be a snapshot). Kat's going to post her review Monday as well. (It's technically finished. She just wants a fresh eye on the editing. She worked on it while we were on the road this week. And the editing is needed because she wrote, basically, two reviews and needs to meld into them into one.) Tomorrow, I'll do an entry after we're done at The Third Estate Sunday Review and I'll do "And the war drags on . . ." If Isaiah's taking the day off, I'll do another entry as well at some point. Both Polly's Brew and El Espirto will go out tomorrow morning.
Marshall asked if we could note what Democracy Now! has scheduled for Monday:
On the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Jack Kerouac's "On theRoad," we spend the hour with Lawrence Ferlinghetti, poet, bookseller, bookpublisher, artist and activist, leading literary figure of the BeatGeneration.
So that will be Monday on DN! -- over the airwaves (TV and radio), on satellite and cable TV and online.
Talking entry, so I'll just note CounterPunch. We're going to do a mailbag at Third and Ty said this was a common question. Since it's about this site, we'll put it up here and get it out of their mailbag. Alexander Cockburn wrote a piece that resulted in him being slammed. We didn't link to Pollitt's slam. Phyllis Bennis' critique (which I still haven't read) made it into a snapshot this week because a rebuttal speech was given and in it there was a link to Bennis' critique. A number of e-mails went into Third asking why I linked to Benis but not Cockburn? The link was in Common Dreams' piece and in the section of the speech we were quoting from. We did link once to Cockburn's piece. Not in a snapshot. In an "And the war drags on" entry. Why no snapshot? I really wasn't in the mood to type a "Warning" note as I had when we noted it in "And the war drags on." The photo of the nude woman didn't offend me. I did think it could have been (his column) just as fine without the nude photo. But we've got community members who only have computer access at work or in a library and we have community members who check at work even though they have their own computers. I'm not putting anything in the snapshot (even with a warning) that's going to take someone to a page where they could get written up for it. As it was, many members avoided CounterPunch the Monday after I noted Cockburn's column because (as I noted in the warning), the page featured a photo of a nude woman.
With "And the war drags on," I was able to start with that and include the Warning very clearly. With the snapshot, if Cockburn had been quoted, it would have come further into the snapshot and people reading clearly might have missed the "Warning". It's also true that every community site repost snapshots. And while I can bold a "Warning," they usually bold the entire snapshot so someone could read it at another site and miss the warning.
We've kept it work safe here from the start and that's due to concerns of members getting written up at work if we didn't. I use much stronger language in my own conversations than I do up here. But we take that policy seriously at this site. So when someone includes a nude photo in the article they really shouldn't be linked to in the first place. That's reality. Because of what he was saying, it got linked to but it got a very clear heads up "Warning" for members so they'd know what would happen if they clicked on the page. As cheesecake goes, it was what would be termed a 'tasteful nude'. But nude photos in the work place can get a person written up or fired. I honestly think including it in that column cut down on the chances for Cockburn to be read. And some members, who normally check CounterPunch on Monday mornings, stayed away. This wasn't about "prude" or anything like that, it was about them avoiding a write up.
That's why that Cockburn column didn't get linked to in a snapshot.
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
