Weds. night - THIS Weds. night - is the first night of the Ralph's Picket at Ralph's from 5-7pm. And Please also remember that you and other protestors will be able to swill at happy hour prices ALL NIGHT LONG at the BroHo on Weds. Night. SO, PLEASE show up at Ralph's, fight the good fight, swill at will and tell all your friends why they should double invest in the coop!

Blessings - wishing I was at the Broho tonight... but writing a paper instead.

I'd like to write about something I've never written about here before. Nazis. I know, I know, I really should learn something about them. In an effort to remedy this situation, I have a question.

The Nazis don't like our local law enforcement. They don't like our newspaper. They don't like our school system. They don't like our music. They don't like our movies. They don't like what we think. They don't like how we look. They don't like who we are. They don't like us. They don't like Olympia.

So why are they visiting? Why are they coming to a city they don't like......... to shout at people they don't like.......about how much they don't like them?

We can easily predict that after all this, the Nazis will then write at length about how the whole thing sucked, about how we all did it wrong, and that they.......yes........really really don't like us.

I find this interesting in that Republicans are engaging in a rare act of open public dissent within their own ranks. Traditionally, they have not been very good at this. For the Dems, well, open warfare is just part of being a Dem. This looks interesting.

Bush ignores laws he inks, vexing Congress

By LAURIE KELLMAN, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record) thought he had a deal when President Bush, faced with a veto-proof margin in Congress, agreed to sign a bill banning the torture of detainees. Not quite. While Bush signed the new law, he also quietly approved another document: a signing statement reserving his right to ignore the law. McCain was furious, and so were other lawmakers.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is opening hearings this week into what has become the White House's favorite tool for overriding Congress in the name of wartime national security.

"It's a challenge to the plain language of the Constitution," the committee's chairman, Sen. Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record), R-Pa, said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I'm interested to hear from the administration just what research they've done to lead them to the conclusion that they can cherry-pick."

Apparently, enough to challenge more than 750 statutes passed by Congress, far more than any other president, Specter's committee says. The White House does not dispute that number, but points out that Bush is far from the nation's first chief executive to issue them.

"Signing statements have long been issued by presidents, dating back to Andrew Jackson all the way through President Clinton," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Monday.

Specter's first hearing Tuesday is about more than the statements. He's been keeping a laundry list of White House practices he bluntly says could amount to abuses of executive power — from warrantless domestic wiretapping program to sending up officials who refuse on national security grounds to answer questions at hearings.

I have a pack of caimans that I've been starving for weeks. Weeks! Can you imagine how hungry they are? The choice is pretty simple, actually: come down to the Broho and engage in wild and edifying discussion with your fellow OlyBlogsters, or get eaten by caimans. Maybe it's just me, maybe I'm just eccentric... but this one seems like a no-brainer to me. I guess it would literally be a no-brainer if I had zombie caimans. I'll work on that for next week.
In other news: do fantastical online threats yield action? Stay tuned.
^@^

I got outside this morning around dawn, took a walk down a quiet alley. My footsteps sounded extra loud and decisive because there wasn't the usual roar of traffic to drown them out.

It seemed like most everyone was asleep. Deeply asleep now that the air had cooled enough for comfort. Usually various neighborhood cats come out to greet or stare at me, not this morning. I could hear birds and some delivery trucks, not much else.

My footsteps sounded decisive yet my mind was anything but decisive, I wasn't really awake, and I wasn't thinking about anything much in particular.

I took a walk this morning in Oly and knew that I was home.

I've played around with this browser Flock for awhile now, sometimes I was enthused, sometimes not so much. I just downloaded their first beta version, Flock 0.7, (I use the one for Windows but Mac and Linux available too) and I'm impressed.

Here is their blurb:

Flock is a free, easy-to-use web browser built on fast and secure Mozilla technologies. Share photos, get your news, blog freely, and search your world with Flock. Flock makes it easier than ever for you to connect with your friends. Download the first beta and let us know what you think.

You can set up their blog editor to work with a wide range of blogs, including OlyBlog.

There is this cool application they call Snippets that enables drag and drop of images and text, Flock even creates the html for publication. And there are all sorts of other goodies I haven't played with yet, including built in support for Flickr and Photobucket.

Blogged with Flock

My theory is that NSM members simply need something different to do. Since they universally display confusion about what they believe is garbage: they see garbage everywhere even where it is not, plus they then dump garbage all over the place in the form of hate flyers.........I figure the best community service for them would involve garbage training.

Often the best training is experiential. So I propose that the NSM contribute to our community by picking up litter downtown. At first their labor will correct a previous wrong of their own litter bug habits, then eventually their labor will bring them into the plus side of service.

To assist we need only point out useful garbage bags, gloves, and cans. As an incentive I suggest that we photograph and praise happy NSM trash team members and display accordingly, to encourage others to follow in their helpful footsteps.

^@^

From the Olympian:

Counteracting hate

Here are some things that South Sound residents can do to support cultural diversity and educate themselves about hate groups:

Visit www.olympiaunityinthecommunity.org.

Attend two panel discussions on "Gender and Sexuality" and "Poverty and Racism," sponsored by the Olympia Movement for Justice and Peace, at 7 p.m. June 29 at the Traditions Cafe, 300 Fifth Ave. S.W., Olympia.

See the documentary film "Not in Our Town" on TCTV, cable channel 22, at noon June 27 and 1 p.m. July 1.

Watch "Affirming Diversity & Equality for All" on the Olympia Fellowship of Reconciliation's monthly television program, which airs Mondays at 1:

30 p.m. and Thursdays at 9 p.m. through July 31 on TCTV, cable channel 22.

The City of Olympia Police Department has a web page for their current news and notifications. Currently they have a reminder to lock up those vehicles. Vehicle break-ins/prowls are continuing to be a problem, especially in the northeast section of Oly.

In this heat it can be easy to forget to lock cars up. Lock it up and don't keep valued stuff in the vehicle.

In the spring of 2003, four young white supremacists murdered a 42 year old homeless disabled man named Randall Mark Townsend, in Tacoma Washington.

Excerpts of letters the four wrote later while in jail are available here.

 
Hate Crimes against the Homeless