Shit
Piss
Fuck
Cunt
Cocksucker
Mothterfucker
Tits

An amazingly simple legacy of free speech, civil disobedience, philosophy of language and culture criticism all wrapped up in the guise of stand up comedy.

New York City to me has rarely been to me the voice of Woody Allen or Seinfeld. New York City has always been the voice, the "tawk" and the raunchy wit of George Carlin.

Shit
Piss
Fuck
Cunt
Cocksucker
Mothterfucker
Tits
Fart
Turd
Twat

To celebrate George Carlin as a champion our civil rights and the integrity of the US Constitution I give you thee the original stand up skit that went into the Supreme Court Decision of FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION v. PACIFICA FOUNDATION, 438 U.S. 726, 98 S.Ct. 3026 (1978).

Pam Spaulding alerted me to the demotardic shenanigans of Andrew Cuomo. My quick response is ending up being a larger piece on race, so let me just get the news out first.

Andrew Cuomo, the Attorney General for the State of New York and Hillary Clinton supporter, has earned not just a culturekitchen Demotard award. He also gets to hang on his door a Reappropriate "Racism Fairy" badge and enjoy a video prelude from Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing :

Andrew Cuomo (who could easily be played by John Tuturro, the italian guy in the video clip) said of the primary process that, “You can’t shuck and jive at a press conference ... all those moves you can make with the press don’t work when you’re in someone’s living room.”

His response to criticism for the quote? Well, what he really meant was "bob and weave" your way through a situation. That it was never meant as a reference to Barack Obama.

Yes, because "shuck and jive" is really all about bobbing and weaving.

Geezus.

I have more respect from Klansmembers than from Europeanoid liberals with repressed racist tendencies that get manifested in curiously inappropriate moments like, you know, when they're talking up their white candidate who's poised to lose the nomination to a black man.

A travesty of justice has taken place in Brooklyn. Debbie Almontaser, the woman who created the vision of a dual-language Arabic-English school in Brooklyn has been forced to resign from her position as the principal of the Khalil Gibran International Academy (KGIA) as a result of a smear campaign carried out by an organization known as “Stop the Madrassa Coalition” (SMC) with a great deal of support by the New York Post and a surprising dearth of support by the Department of Education.

Debbie is a woman who personifies peace and interfaith connections, yet articles in the Post and statements by the Stop the Madrassa group have portrayed her as supporting violence and wanting to create an Islamic school. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Rubyji is not the only one to have noticed the John McCain ads that have been popping on the site lately.

Last week I got pinged by Azi Paybarah, of the New York Observer's Politicker fame. I guess Azi needed to check out how babelicious I am and was perusing my (soon to be updated) bio and photo at lizasabater.com.

To his horror, he found this :

Yes, that's a John McCain ad right next my mug.

Now, there's the "sensible" explanation for this freakish political mashup and then there's the conspiracy theory. The explanation, though, will shed light into some of my web development skills and the techniques I have used to develop my sites.

So grab yourself a cup of coffee, pull up a chair and get yourself comfortable. Some major geekatude is coming your way.

In school your payoff comes from giving up your personal responsibility, just doing what you're told by strangers even if that violates the core principles of your household.
Shocking Origins of Public Education, John Taylor Gatto

I will be coming out soon from a gag order I've been on about anything having to do with education. I have been reticent about writing on the subject for a whole variety of reasons. When we were homeschooling, or may I say "unschooling", life became our learning platform and as many of you know by my writing there's not a lot I write about my private life, especially when it comes about my kids. It's hard to write without including massive details about the spawnage. I do believe children have a right to privacy.

Now that my kids have been in school since September, I am ready to explode. I have been biting my fingers and tongue because, grock, I hate the culture of schools.

Homeschooling in New York is a double full time job for secular parents with no church groups to pick up the slack of classes, workshops, study groups or just plain old playtime and baby-sitting. If you are one of the thousands of evangelicals, mormons or conservative jews homeschooling in New York, you will have a church, tabernacle or temple as a support system that's got your back. If you are an atheist like us, good luck.

Today's big stink is centered around a 4 minute piece on The Today Show, produced by Matt Lauer. Take a look :

In many of my presentations about blogging I have made the point that right now we are in the middle of a semantic warfare and that Google and blogs are the tools of semantic guerrilla warriors like me.

Here's the deal : Big Media was the tool of the powerful. When people talk about "Top-Down Politics" or hierarchical politics, it really doesn't start in Washington DC. Top-Down politics starts in New York City addresses like One Rockefeller Plaza and 229 West 43rd Street.

The magazines, TV shows and advertisments produced over at Madison Avenue, 6th Avenue (or Avenue of the Americas) and 10th and 11th Avenues have only one purpose : To influence "the demographics". It isn't a coincidence that politicos and advertisers use the same term to describe "the people" who end up shopping with their votes and voting with their wallets. The delusion is that Power in the United States is purveyed only by those who have control over what "the demographics" read, listen, wear, eat, like.

If you control desire/information/knowledge, the maxim used to go, then you control Power. So how are we to understand Matt Lauer's move?

Howard Kurtz on the linguistic missile :

I'm still working on the part where NBC gets more power if the conflict is viewed as a civil war. Because the network would be seen as galvanizing support for a pullout? All because of the use of the C-word? Is American support for the war so shaky that a single network's phraseology can cause that support to crumble?

[...]

I have no problem in using the phrase. But I don't think every news outlet needs to have an edict from on high.

I continue to believe that the day-to-day coverage of the carnage in Iraq is more important in terms of swaying public opinion than the label that the MSM chooses to slap on the conflict. Did most people think this wasn't a civil war before Lauer et al made the switch? I don't think so.

Es que ando escribiendo la madre de los primeros ensayos en español. Mientras tanto, ando buscando samaritanos bilingües.

Tengo una lista de las entradas más populares de nuestros blogs que me gustaría que fueran traducidos al español. Quiénes estén interesados, por favor dejen sus señas en los comentarios.

Si têm traductores portugueses, façam o favor de pegar uma mesagem nos comentarios.

Miles gracias.

Obrigadinha.

En la red, nadie sabe si eres un perro, aunque todo el mundo se entera que eres una perra. On the web, nobody knows if you're a dog but everybody finds out you are a bitch.

Por eso cuando oí que el 1ro de mayo será la huelga "un día sin immigrantes", me pregunté : "¿Cual es la versión en la red de este evento?" That's why when I heard May 1st is the "day without an immigrant" strike, I asked myself : "What's the net version of this event?"

Bueno, en el caso de un blog ... en vez de desaparecerme es imperante entonces el reaparecerme comjo ... ahem ... la bitch latina que soy. ¡Ja! Well, in the case of a blog, instead of disappearing it's imperative that I reappear as the perra latina I am.

This blog has jumped the proverbial bilingual tiburón.

This is just one more of those "loose change" projects that only benefits administrators. I mean, are they reimbursing teachers who may already doing translations themselves --just as I did when I taught Bi-lingual high school history eons ago? I sincerely doubt it.

[via Mayor agrees to expand multilingual schools services -- Newsday.com]:

Advocates applauded the expansion announced Monday, which adds $2 million to the unit's existing $10 million budget. The expanded program will be labeled "chancellor's regulations," which carries more enforcement weight. Under the widened program, more documents will be translated for parents on health and policy initiatives coming out of schools.

Wayne Ho, executive director of the Manhattan-based Coalition for Asian American Children and Families, who pushed for changes, said he was pleased by the development but disappointed by what he views as a loophole in the upcoming chancellor's regulations.

According to the regulations, services will be available "to the extent practicable," he said, adding that schools could use that to justify ignoring the regulations.

"We could not get that taken out," Ho said.

These projects end up being like the money you'd steal from your grandmother's cookie jar. It all goes for shit you want not necessarily need.