in earnest

"We will not fear any longer."

Keith Olbermann gives an impassioned and poignant special comment on his show Thursday, 14 February 2008. Please watch it.

day after super-duper Tuesday

I was incredibly bummed when John Edwards dropped out of the presidential race. I remember reading it on the interweb when I got to work and saying out loud, "OH NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!"

It had taken me quite a while to decide who I was going to support and I really felt like the rug had been pulled out from under me. I was left again as undecided.

However as the days crept on, I started to do more research about my remaining options and finally decided that I could back Obama and not feel THAT bad about it.

I saw the will.i.am video on YouTube and was really impressed with it. In fact, it made me recall hearing that particular Obama speech the night he gave it after the New Hampshire primary. I remember laying in bed in the dark, listening very carefully to the radio and thinking how it was incredible, powerful and inspiring.

In case you hadn't seen/heard it, I'm sharing it with you here...



As of late yesterday I was still considering voting for Edwards in the primary. I wanted to vote with my conscience for the candidate I thought really most deserved it. However, after a terse/tense discussion with a friend I realized... I live in a "highly contested" state and my vote actually did matter. My conscience wouldn't have let me forgive myself if my one vote could have made the difference between Obama and HRC "winning". So I did end up voting with my conscience and voted for Obama. And even though he didn't "win" my state, I hope my vote made the difference in the amount of delegates he got out of the primary.

As an aside... I'm glad the "race" isn't over. If our presidential candidate can be decided this early on it almost seems pointless to have the rest of the primaries or the convention be as late in the year as it is. I'm pleased everyone else out there still has a say in what happens and I hope they're as excited as I am about how important that truly is.

suicide and the military

Back in November, around Veteran's Day, I posted a bit about the skyrocketing suicide rate of our military (See it here.) Today, I see there are two new stories in the news pertaining to this very subject. One on the homepage of the Washington Post dot com and the other an AP story at Talking Points Memo.

This is an important topic that should have a far wider audience than it does and I'm ashamed of our media for not making it so. I understand this is an election year or that Britney Spears needed a police escort and two police helicopters to take her to the hospital (your tax dollars HARD at work, California!!) and that makes for important or entertaining news, but that our Soldiers and Marines killing themselves is a BIG deal and EVERYONE should be talking about this.

This war hasn't touched as many people as WWII or Korea or Viet Nam and maybe that's why not as many people know or care about what's happening. We can't keep pretending this problem doesn't exist.

Please do what you can - try contacting your congress person or senator, letting them know you want them to help make sure our veterans get the care and support they so badly need, write a letter to the editor of your local paper... Please just do SOMETHING.

Thank you.

UPDATE: Sadly, No! and Digby also have posts related to this story.

foggy jerze

Last summer... early morning, foggy surf sesh. No one out but us.

I made a little photo essay of images from this session, please go check it out here. If you vote "YEAH" for my essay it might get published in the next issue of JPG Magazine. I think that would be pretty cool.

puesta del sol en méxico

baking extravaganza

The day before Thanksgiving I baked four-dozen vegan cupcakes. Here are those photos I was talking about.

First, I got all my ingredients out on the counter.
Everything else I need on the table.

A'mixin' and a'stirrin'...

First batch into the oven.

Ding! First batch is done!

Next batch (mmmmmmmm, chocolate)

Three dozen down, one to go.

And finally, the full four-dozen waiting for frosting.

The photos I shot at home of the frosted cupcakes came out so poorly I chucked them away. But here's a nice shot, I took at work, of the very last two cupcakes from the entire four-dozen.

They turned out to be a big hit, so I'll definitely be baking these again.

A special shout-out MUST go to Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero, who wrote Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World. Without their amazing, little book these cupcakes could NOT have been made. And also special thanks to Stephanie, my baking inspiration.

go see this exhibit

If you're in NYC and you have a few minutes to swing by the NY Public Library on 5th Avenue, please go check out this exhibit called "Line Up" by Marshall Reese & Nora Ligorano. It's causing quite a stir and is supposed to be hilarious if you have a sense of humour.

given the gravity of my previous post, i think we sometimes need to be reminded there is still beauty in this world. two weekends ago on 3 november there was a massive swell that came to our new jersey beaches.

this is one of the better shots i managed to get off in the fading light of the day. it's hard to tell, but that wave is about ten feet. it was an amazing day to witness.

It was just Veteran's Day...

As I was driving home Tuesday night from the bus and listening to the news on my local CBS AM radio station, I caught the tail-end of a story they were simulcasting from the CBS Evening (TV) News. It was about the suicide rate among Iraq "War" Veterans and the information CBS News uncovered is astounding.

("CBS News did an investigation - asking all 50 states for their suicide data, based on death records, for veterans and non-veterans, dating back to 1995. Forty-five states sent what turned out to be a mountain of information. And what it revealed was stunning. In 2005, for example, in just those 45 states, there were at least 6,256 suicides among those who served in the armed forces. That’s 120 each and every week, in just one year.)

I know this subject is kind of a bummer; However it gives me pause to think about the soldiers and Marines who managed to make it out of Iraq alive only to come home and kill themselves because of the inadequate support offered by the Veterans Administration, our government and the current administration who SWEARS they "Support the Troops"

It is clearly NOT okay that our returning troops don't get the care and support they so desprerately need and the information gets swept under the rug. This should be headline news!! EVERYONE should know about this!

That's why I'd like you (all three of my readers) to PLEASE go (I'm seriously begging here) read this story from CBS News and tell as many people as you know who will listen about this awful, awful thing. Ideally, the more people that know, the less the government can cover up what they're NOT doing for our armed forces.

And, if you happen to be a vet reading this, please check out Vets 4 Vets. It was started in 2005 "by a Marine Corps combat veteran of Vietnam" FOR other Veterans as a means of support. Who better to talk about your experiences in Iraq or Afghanistan with than your fellow troops?

If you claim to support the troops, this is something you CANNOT turn your back on.

Namaste

i heart cupcakes

I got to eat this today. Liz bought it for me because she's my friend and she loves me. It came from The Little Pie Company on 14th Street.
I loved it so much I took a photo of it at work.
I haven't finished the whole thing.... yet.

UPDATE: I never did eat the whole cupcake. I can't believe I'm saying this, but it was just too much.

these people are crazy!!!

And not in a "had-one-too-many-margaritas" fun way kind of crazy. But actually a dangerous and sociopathic sort of crazy!

Seymour Hersh, the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, wrote a recent article in the New Yorker titled "Shifting Targets - The Administration’s plan for Iran"

In Hersh's lead he says... "In a series of public statements in recent months, President Bush and members of his Administration have redefined the war in Iraq, to an increasing degree, as a strategic battle between the United States and Iran."

This is scary stuff going on here! Instead of our government taking responsibility for our role in creating this "war" in Iraq, they are now trying to blame Iran for what ails us in this quagmire of all quagmires. In fact, our government recently voted to classify a branch of Iran's military as a terrorist group (I refer to the Lieberman-Kyl Amendment).

The passing of the "Sense of Senate" makes me ashamed. And!!! I am wholly aware the implications this kind of vote will have toward starting a "war" with Iran.

Seymour Hersh is one of the Administration’s more outspoken critics and has been waaaay ahead of the curve when it comes to calling out their warmongering.

Please take some time to read this very important article. I don't think you'll regret the time.

P.S. You can also watch Seymour Hersh on Countdown with Keith Olbermann here.

wall of death

Work has been so insanely busy that I have hardly felt the urge to sit for further minutes/hours in front of the computer. In fact, I have such an aversion to extra time at the computer that I haven't edited any of my work since August. Here is ONE photo from my (not so) recent trip to Sturgis. Once things quiet down I'll be posting more images and writing, so until then, I hope you enjoy this one photo.

be offensive by going on the offensive

There's a great read over at Fire Dog Lake (one of my favorite blogs, I might add) where a person with the moniker Ghostman wrote the following comment responding to a post by Christy Hardin Smith:

"What hangs in the balance is the fate of the nation — and it is time that we all started to tip the scales. And I’d like to talk about some ways that we can do just that…"

1. For many months now, I have advocated a hard, aggressive, indeed, a nasty approach. I've called it, from times of old, "getting down in the weeds". Finally, about a week ago, a fella...?Welsh?...wrote at fdl a lengthy article which essentially set forth in long, flowery language what I have advocated for quite some time. If you missed the article, I strongly encourage you to find it, and read it. If you did read the article, I strongly encourage you to go back and read it. The ONLY way to deal with these R teamers is to...get down in the weeds.

2. Let me educate all on another benefit of taking the offensive. It's called: Pressure. Whenever you attack, and carry the attack forward, you put the other side Under Pressure. (Indeed, there's even a R&R song, I'm terrible at song names and band names, but the refrain, the chorus goes "Under Pressure")

And when you put the enemy on their heels, they start to make mistakes. They REact, instead of taking the initiative. You put them, cue the music: Under Pressure. When you attack, and carry the attack forward, the enemy is confused. A mild but growing panic sets in. In the political context, the enemy now says and does things it otherwise wouldn't have. You've put the R team, cue the music: Under Pressure.

The R team will then say silly things which only further weakens their cause and their stance and their defenses. They are now: Under Pressure.

"Stunts" such as Harry closing the Senate months ago, or our recent Senate all-nighter, are NOT stunts at all. They are the purest form of surprise, deadly, and hard-hitting aggressive ATTACK. And "down in the weeds" as well. Each time, the R teamers gurgled in indignation, whined in a hissy fit, and did and said things they otherwise wouldn't have. The R teamers were: Under Pressure.

These are the tactics that must be used. Get used to being called names; get used to alot of whining, get used to MSM for a time, siding with the R teamers; get used to a roar of indignation. But pay them no attention.

Their volume of complaint only documents what they feel: Under Pressure. Keep up the attack. Do not let up, do not show mercy. Always keep these lizards where they deserve to be: Under Pressure. This is how you WIN."

Ghostman

Please click the links to take a look at the well-written, thoroughly linked piece. We DO need to go on the offense. The Repubs have, for far too long, commandeered a position of "superiority" when it comes to framing the arguments and making points and we've allowed this to happen. We need to remember that we too can frame the arguments and turn their tactics back on them, particularly by asking the right questions and using the facts and the truth. We're not playing "dirty" when honesty is our weapon. The truth hurts and we need to get these people where it hurts with THE TRUTH! We should remember this from our reading of Crashing the Gates, How Would A Patriot Act and 50 Simple Things You Can Do To Fight the Right.

cherry picking history

In one of the last pieces veteran reporter David Halberstam wrote for Vanity Fair before his untimely death in April of 2007, he examines how "Bush's "history," like his war, is based on wishful thinking, arrogance, and a total disdain for the facts."

"We are a long way from the glory days of Mission Accomplished, when the Iraq war was over before it was over—indeed before it really began—and the president could dress up like a fighter pilot and land on an aircraft carrier, and the nation, led by a pliable media, would applaud. Now, late in this sad, terribly diminished presidency, mired in an unwinnable war of their own making, and increasingly on the defensive about events which, to their surprise, they do not control, the president and his men have turned, with some degree of desperation, to history. In their view Iraq under Saddam was like Europe dominated by Hitler, and the Democrats and critics in the media are likened to the appeasers of the 1930s. The Iraqi people, shorn of their immensely complicated history, become either the people of Europe eager to be liberated from the Germans, or a little nation that great powerful nations ought to protect. Most recently in this history rummage sale—and perhaps most surprisingly—Bush has become Harry Truman." Read the rest by clicking this sentence...

dems, git off yer butts!

I am linking to a short yet great post by John Aravosis @ America Blog about why the country is so unhappy with our Democratically lead legislative branch. Click this sentence to go read it. And please do go read it, you won't be sorry.

givin' it to wolf

Click this link to watch a great video of Michael Moore blasting CNN's Wolf Blitzer...

staten island ferry

shot on 22 June 2007 from the Temptress during the Weakerthans Rocks-Off boat cruise.

alex

i shot this photo two years ago of my work-friend alex. i like the photo.

initials

ironically, coincidentally, fatefully someone had already carved this into the seat we happen to ride on the ferris wheel.

lobster fest 2007

This weekend was Lobster Fest with the Palaitises, the Martins and the Ottingers in Ocean City, NJ. Stephanie, Peter, Dave, Karen, Deville, Maria, Miles,(we were missing Fred) Matty and me. We ate a TON of food and had a great time. Stephanie is going to blog more about the food on Yum Yum Kid Cupcake really soon... I'm just going to post a few images now and maybe a few later on.

Overall it was a fantastic time well-spent with friends we don't get to see enough of, hanging out, talking, laughing, drinking, and eating.
A LOT of eating...
There was Mack & Manco's pizza
There were doughnuts, .
We steamed our own clams

and lobsters.


Saturday night we went to the boardwalk where we also went on the ferris wheel

IMPEACH cheney?

Click the link to vote.
Should Vice President Cheney be IMPEACHED?

tell us the mission

http://tellusthemission.org/

scara

me & christina