Thank you, gerard, for the very kind words. If I wasn’t a sorry mess physically, I’d like to be Mother Jones’s reincarnation, but I’ve come to realize that Mother Jones wouldn’t be very popular these days. Much of the left seems to value bourgeois politeness over TRUTH and PASSION. “Can’t you express your outrage over rape and murder in a nicer way?”

So many people are so worried about offending someone, they tiptoe around and manage to be nearly completely ineffectual. I particularly love the idea of not offending “our allies on the right.” Huh? You mean the people who are anti-affirmative action, anti-abortion, anti-homosexual, anti-national health care, anti-just about everything, and FOR a state that would closely resemble the former East Germany?

Toby’sgirl sounds like she’s got a lot of marbles left and is using them for one of the best of causes—the rights of people who can’t stand up for their rights as easily as the rest of us—if we only would!  Kudos to her!

Hope she passes up that other option for a long time yet. The entire human race needs her to stick around!

Tobysgirl, I’m glad you are comfortable with the word “handicapped”. It’s OK for yourself, as is cripple.  Many people who are disabled prefer “disabled”.  The law, Americans With Disabilities Act reflects a large majority view, as does the name of the NY group I support, http://www.disabledinaction.org and the Disabled Artists’ Network, which I started almost 25 years ago.

gerard, March 17 at 3:40 pm;

One of the best posts I’ve read on Truthdig.
Nicely done.

My long experience at different levels of involvement with educational institutions has led me to believe that field of endeavor welcomes more than its share of bigots and cranks.  From loyalty oaths to “intelligent design”, from city public schools that hired a teacher who threw a Bible half way across the room and slammed it into a kid"s desk as a reprimand for not paying attentioin, to ... but need I say more?  Yes, I need.
  As long as schools are overcrowded, underfunded, controlled by idiots and constrained by “public opinion” they can’t possibly educate anybody beyond the bare fundamentals of reading, computer keyboard work, and simple math.  Meanwhile the enormous and fascinating possibilities of young human beings remain undeveloped, frustrated, killed.
  Kids are pushed and dragged through 12 years of politically correct cant and end up not knowing how to think or what to believe.  Sorry, but the only bigger waste is the military—and the connection is not coincidental.  When people are well educated, they usually don’t go in for killing other people and you can’t even pay them to do it.
  I could go on, but I’ll grit my teeth and stop.

I don’t mind handicapped. I’m disabled and have no problem referring to myself as a cripple!

And to heck with the global market! Let’s start growing food, making clothes, manufacturing life’s necessities for ourselves. Perhaps then we would stop pushing the illusion that every child is going to go to college to become a member of the professional-managerial class.

It makes me wonder about the people involved in the Almontaser character assassination . Is this intolerance of religion, or ethnic racism?
Religion combined with war will be the end of civilization. For the zealots of religion, is this not their most desired, self-fulfilling prophecy?
Religion is belief in the Invisible. Debbie Almontaser’s belief in building bridges across the desert god religions is a noble idea doomed by the fervent ones who will always use Invisible authority to justify whatever actions taken. Whether it is jihad or “God gave this land to me”, it is still the same old violent irrational crock of nonsense.

I liked the interview.  My favorite bit of video (as I also listened on WBAI…note: there’s been a coup at WBAI, see http://www.takebackwbai.org) was

the universal wheelchair access symbol on the school door.  Wheelchair users can get inside.

Today’s show’s last segment, Amy Goodman used “handicapped” again, instead of disabled.  Sigh. Sanda

In her usual style and panache, Amy Goodman has reached into the heart of the matter and shown the world that there still exists prejudice and bigotry in the United States.
The reporters take on the matter shows the ‘mainstream media’ how a report should be done, without bias and without prejudice on the part of the reporter.
In America today, this kind of thing should not have happened, yet, we are faced with continuing prejudice of all kinds, whether that person be Arabic, Jewish, African-American, Latino, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual or Transgendered just to name a few of the existing bias’ that exist in an America, that is supposed to be ‘christian’ and tolerant of other people.
How can America face the world’s population and state
unequivocally that America is, ‘the land of the free and the home of the brave?’ It cannot with standing armies and the existence of a minority, that is pushing the majority around. We are being lead around
like bulls with rings in our noses by the very people
who claim to follow the ‘Prince of Peace.’
How should we respond to actions and happenings like this? With a certain amount of our own pressure and tolerance towards those who are ‘sick in the head,’ with a ‘G-d’ virus.

That was a great show today, she seems like a wonderful
person…  and thank you for the jounalist that did
an excellent job explaining the problems in Mexico.