The Skunk and Tiger: March 2006

Well, today we have accepted the counter offer for the house we wanted in Mason. Things are moving quickly but we will not be closing until the middle of May.

Our friends at Rhino Home Video have sent us a sneak peek at the cover art for the Mystery Science Theater 3000 Collection: Volume 9 DVD set. Click on the image at the right for a larger view.

The list of episodes to be included in the set is:.

104- WOMEN OF THE PREHISTORIC PLANET
207- WILD REBELS
613- THE SINISTER URGE (with short: KEEPING CLEAN AND NEAT)
812- THE INCREDIBLY STRANGE CREATURES WHO STOPPED LIVING AND BECAME MIXED-UP ZOMBIES
As a bonus for "Women of the Prehistoric Planet," Rhino has taped a short intro to the episode with Irene Tsu, who played Linda in the movie. There will also be a bonus intro to "The Sinister Urge" with Conrad Brooks, who played Connie.

The projected release date for the set is May 16.

Also check out Mystery Science Theature 3000

Some more of my photos from Michigan this winter.

Anne, Sam and I went house looking today. We may be getting closer to our own house. I can't believe it! What do you think of this house. It is a totaly remodled turn of the century (1900's) home. It is like an old and new house at the same time. What do you think?

One too many energy bars for Sam

Found another interesting site regarding the religious right and theocracy. Check out Talk To Action

Great article by Mainstream Baptist and I love this painting

By Mainstream Baptist Wed Mar 22, 2006 at 09:45:56 AM EST

Those on the right are constantly searching for someone that they think speaks prophetically every day. They identify the voice of prophecy with unyielding moral denouncements and they think they hear it in the voice of televangelists, fundamentalists, and dominionists.
Those on the left are reluctant to identify anyone that might speak prophetically. Experience has taught them to be suspicious of anyone who presumes to speak for God.

Those in the mainstream or middle believe that, on occasions, God speaks prophetically through one of his servants. At times the prophet speaks in the tones of unyielding morality, but more often the prophet gives voice to an unrelenting demand for justice.

On occasions the voice of the prophetic speaks both in the tones of unyielding morality and the unrelenting demand for justice. Today is one of those days. Today, Ethics Daily has published an essay by Miguel de la Torre in which he speaks out against the Southern Baptist academics who have offered justifications for the use of torture. Here's a little of what De la Torre says:

When this past January the president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (along with three of his professors) defended the use of torture, they represented the antithesis of Jesus' mission found in John 10:10, to "give life and give it abundantly."
To be satanic is to exchange the glory of God for the pride of humans. Religious leaders serve the forces of darkness when they justify death, destruction, torture and thievery with high-sounding words like democracy, liberty and patriotism.

Like the false prophets of old, who prostrated themselves before kings and tickled their ear with flattery so as to carve out for themselves a sphere of power and influence, today's leaders of the Religious Right have traded serving the Prince of Peace for the emperor of war.

Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle

ON or off the bench, Supreme Court justices tend to be discreet about the court's relationship to politics. So when a former justice breaks her dignified silence — as Sandra Day O'Connor did in a startling speech last week — the comments carry gravitas. Her words bore even more weight because she cited specific acts by politicians and warningly employed the word "dictatorship."

O'Connor, who resigned last month, spoke March 9 at Georgetown University. No tapes or transcripts were released, and the lone reporter present was Nina Totenberg of National Public Radio. Totenberg reported that in her speech O'Connor, a Republican, savaged Republican threats to punish the court for its interpretations of the law.

The courts, O'Connor reportedly said, expect at times to make lawmakers and the president angry, but the courts' effectiveness "is premised on the notion that we won't be subject to retaliation for our judicial acts."

O'Connor then singled out by deed, though not by name, two Texas politicians for their verbal attacks upon the court for doing its job. Last year, criticizing federal and state court rulings that allowed Terry Schiavo's vegetative state to end in death, then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said, "The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior."

Read whole article at Houston Chronicle

From Media Matters

Bill O'Reilly is the host of Fox News Channel's The O'Reilly Factor and Westwood One's nationally syndicated The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly. He is also a syndicated columnist for Creators Syndicate and the author of five books, including Who's Looking Out for You? (Broadway, 2003) and The O'Reilly Factor for Kids (HarperEntertainment, 2004). O'Reilly is a former host for the tabloid-style news program Inside Edition (where he did not win a Peabody award) and a former correspondent for ABC News.

O'Reilly uses his position as the centerpiece of Fox News' prime-time lineup to serially misinform his audiences, consistently skewing his presentation to advance conservative viewpoints (though he did admit on July 19, 2004, that Fox News "does tilt right"). As Media Matters has documented O'Reilly's tactics and false statements, he has derided the organization on numerous occasions, at one point describing Media Matters employees as "the most vile, despicable human beings in the country." Media Matters named O'Reilly as its 2004 Misinformer of the Year.

O'Reilly frequently denounces "cowards" who refuse to face him on-air, saying, for example, "If you attack someone publicly, as these men did to me, you have an obligation to face the person you are smearing. If you don't, you are a coward." But O'Reilly has repeatedly attacked Media Matters while refusing Media Matters President and CEO David Brock's request to appear on The O'Reilly Factor.

Click here for more video, clips, and analysis »

(March 6, 2006, Louisville, KY) -- Revered white anti-racist southern activist Anne Braden died at the age of 81 on Monday morning, March 6, at Jewish Hospital in Louisville, ending nearly 60 years of unyielding action against segregation, racism, and white supremacy. Braden was hospitalized on Saturday, March 4, and had been treated for pneumonia and dehydration.

Braden catapulted into national headlines in mid-1954 when she and her husband Carl Braden were indicted for sedition for their leadership in desegregating a Louisville, Kentucky, suburb. Their purchase of a house in an all-white neighborhood on behalf of African Americans Andrew and Charlotte Wade violated Louisville’s color line and provoked violence against both families, culminating with the dynamiting of the house in June of 1954. A subsequent grand jury investigation concentrated not on the neighborhood’s harassment of the Wades, but looked to the Bradens’ supposedly communistic intentions in backing the purchase, and they were indicted for sedition that fall. The couple’s sedition case made national news and earned them the ire of segregationists across the South, which was reeling from the U.S. Supreme Court’s condemnation of school segregation in its Brown ruling earlier that spring. Only Carl was convicted, and that conviction was later overturned. The sedition charges left the Bradens pariahs, branded as radicals and “reds” in the Cold-War South, and they became fierce civil libertarians who openly espoused left-wing social critiques but would never either embrace nor disavow the Communist Party publicly because they felt that to do so accepted the terms of the 1950s anticommunist “witch hunts.”

Read whole article at Subversive Southerner

( From Agony Booth )

For those of you who haven't heard, washed-up martial arts action star Steven Seagal recently decided to branch out into the energy drink market. He's released his very own black-canned competitor to the likes of Full Throttle and Rock Star, a beverage going by the name of Steven Seagal's Lightning Bolt. "While other energy drinks try to just throw a bunch of cheap caffeine and other drugs into your system," the official website declares, "Steven Seagal's Lightning Bolt provides you with the TRUE ENERGY you need."

Clearly, this was the most preposterous thing anyone had ever seen or heard, judging by the number of blogs that spent several days debating whether or not it was all an elaborate hoax.

Well, I'm here to tell you it's for real. Steven Seagal, former bodyguard turned actor, who once claimed to have worked for the CIA, and who now claims to be a reincarnated Tibetan lama (though not a reincarnated llama, which is probably closer to the truth), has taken time out from his busy direct-to-video acting career and burgeoning singing career [!] to develop a brand new kind of energy drink. I know this much is true, because I've purchased and consumed exactly two (2) cans of Steven Seagal's Lightning Bolt in both of its powerful flavors: "Asian Experience" and "Cherry Charge".

Read Whole Article Here

A friend gave me this quote. I think it is very fitting to the times we are living.

"All the lessons of history in four sentences: Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power. The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small. The bee fertilizes the flower it robs. When it is dark enough, you can see the stars."

-Charles A. Beard

Time: 11:00am

Location: Veterans Park - Corner of Fulton and Sheldon

There will be a rally and march at 11:00am followed by a 1:30pm teach-in with break-out sessions and tools for organizing future actions against the war. The protest is being organized with the following demands:

stop the war
stop the war on the working class
justice for Hurricane Katrina survivors
an end to all occupations and torture
to bring the troops home now

More Information: Justiceandpeacecoalition.org