Anyone out there with ideas about transportation? Now's your chance to tell our President-Elect what you think. In one year, the legislation that decides how the federal government funds and supports transportation will end.

The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, AASHTO (ash-toe), has created a website, IToldThePresident.org where you can see what your fellow citizens are saying and submit a comment or even a video!

chickens that is, fresh, local and organic. These birds are going for $3.50/#.

The farmers are taking orders now for pick up next week, December 8, 9, 10 between 5 and 7 pm. They ask for a small deposit.

If you too seek the same call (360) 867-9331 and order today.

WHAT A DAY!

I picked up my copy of the Our Money Matters Buy Local Savings Book at the Washington Center for the Performing Arts.  I'm at #9, on the first page of perforated coupons right below Harlequin Productions and right before KAOS.

I got a lot of comments on my discount of 3.14159265% OFF Any Premium or Deluxe visit.  Marie Poland, the director of the Buy Local Campaign, had to do a double take.  She thought it might have been a typo or computer error until she cracked the code: it's Pi, of course.  I don't even want to do the math on that discount!

Antonia Juhasz sits down to talk with The Real News about oil politics and the potential for changes with an Obama Executive Administration.

Part One: "Antonia Juhasz: Clinton-era deregulation helped big oil get bigger"

Part Two: "Antonia Juhasz on the breakup of Standard Oil and its revival as Big Oil in the United States Pt 2/2"

TRNN: Will Obama Reign in Big Oil?

Antonia Juhasz

I found this sign posted on the door of the Capitol Center Building.

Maureen Dodd's column in today's New York Times is about an online local paper in Pasadena which now has its local coverage outsourced and written in India! And about speculation that this might become common...

It's Rick's recent story about ordinary people in Mumbai writing for the rest of the world turned inside out.

Best,
Thad

From the NYT:

From his terrace on Colaba Causeway in south Mumbai, Arun Shanbhag saw the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower Hotel burn. He saw ambulances leave the Nariman House. And he recorded every move on the Internet.

Mr. Shanbhag, who lives in Boston but happened to be in Mumbai when the attacks began on Wednesday, described the gunfire on his Twitter feed — the “thud, thud, thud” of shotguns and the short bursts of automatic weapons — and uploaded photos to his personal blog.

Mr. Shanbhag, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, said he had not heard the term citizen journalism until Thursday, but now he knows that is exactly what he was doing. “I felt I had a responsibility to share my view with the outside world,” Mr. Shanbhag said in an e-mail message on Saturday morning.

The attacks in India served as another case study in how technology is transforming people into potential reporters, adding a new dimension to the news media.

At the peak of the violence, more than one message per second with the word “Mumbai” in it was being posted onto Twitter, a short-message service that has evolved from an oddity to a full-fledged news platform in just two years.

Those descriptions and others on Web sites and photo-sharing sites served as a chaotic but critically important link among people across the world — whether they be Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn tracking the fate of a rabbi held hostage at the Nariman House or students in Britain with loved ones back in India or people hanging on every twist and turn in the standoff while visiting relatives for Thanksgiving dinner.

i am disgusted at the vandalism downtown. i think the right wing fasco-terrorists do it to cause damage to the righteous causes.

12 mini-reviews for the short attention span, taken from dark corners of stevenl's video vault:

Go Fish / directed by Rose Troche (1994, VHS). Guinevere Turner. A first movie for both director Troche and main star Turner. Filmed in black and white, the production is obviously very low budget and has an experimental feel. The story centers around the complicated relationships of a small group of lesbians. Several different methods of storytelling are quilted together here, never giving the audience a chance to settle into the tale. Also, this film has the highest concentration of just plain bad acting I've seen short of an Ed Wood motion picture. Really bad. Really. Bad. There are moments of brilliance in some shots, reminding me this work was no doubt a labor of love rather than an attempt at commercial profit. And although I strongly sympathize with such motives, the final product is hard to watch.

I Love You to Death / directed by Lawrence Kasdan (1990, VHS off-air). Kevin Kline, Tracey Ullman, Joan Plowright, River Phoenix, William Hurt, Keanu Reeves, James Gammon, Victoria Jackson, Phoebe Cates (uncredited), Lawrence Kasdan (uncredited). When a devoted wife and mother discovers the womanizing ways of her man, she and her small band of supporters decide to bump him off. The problem: he's more difficult to kill than Rasputin. A macabre comedy about one of Tacoma's more dysfunctional families. Although the story is pretty thin, the characterizations are very funny by all the principal cast members. Includes Italian and Yugoslavian ethnic roles, as well as a couple stereotypical drug space cases. At one point Kline, with his comic Italian accent and red plumber clothes, along with the soundtrack, brought to mind one of Nintendo's Mario Brothers off to save the Princess. I always enjoy seeing movies, such as this one, where a key moment in the plot takes place in a library. Everyone in this story apparently has to learn the hard way.