From Time Magazine: http://ideas.time.com/2011/12/12/transgender-the-next-frontier-in-human-rights/

Being fired for “gender non-conformity” is a violation of the constitution, an important court recently found

By Adam Cohen
December 12, 2011

When Vandiver Elizabeth Glenn was fired from a state job in Georgia, she filed a lawsuit saying that she had been discriminated against for being transgender. Georgia civil rights laws do not cover transgender people, but a powerful federal court ruled last week that Glenn’s firing violated the U.S. Constitution. There was also a second major piece of transgender news last week: a new study shows that a growing number of major American companies are paying for their employees’ gender reassignment surgery. Taken together, the ruling and the study are strong indications that transgender rights are starting to enter the mainstream.

The backstory behind the court ruling: Glenn, an editor with the Georgia General Assembly, was born a biological male but long believed herself to be a woman. After being diagnosed with Gender Identity Disorder, an American Psychiatric Association-recognized condition, she began making the transition from male to female under medical supervision. Glenn was preparing for gender-reassignment surgery by living as a woman outside of work and presenting as a man at work. Eventually, she informed a colleague that she would soon begin coming to work as a woman, and when Glenn’s supervisor found out, he fired her.

From Bitch Magazine: http://bitchmagazine.org/post/the-99-what%E2%80%99s-funny-about-being-poor-roseanne-and-working-class-humor-feminism-TV

by GretchenSisson
December 14, 2011

Can being broke be funny, after all?

Monday’s post on 2 Broke Girls generated a lot of comments—from fans of the show who felt I was being too harsh, and from others who felt I was too forgiving of the show’s many flaws.  One commenter said, “You can’t expect a comedy to be so heavy and grounded in real life struggles.”

Well, yes. I can.

One of my favorite Friends episodes deals directly with socioeconomic difference within the friend group.  Yes, the friend group was all white people from middle to upper-middle class backgrounds who live in preposterously large apartments in Manhattan.  But back on season two, there was an episode that specifically explored the clash between the friends who had more disposable income—Monica, Ross, and Chandler—and the three who didn’t—Rachel, Phoebe, and Joey.  The friends with less money comically order side salads when they go out to dinner at a fancy restaurant, protesting the suggestion to split the bill evenly.  Later, the three who can afford more buy concert tickets for all six of them to celebrate Ross’s birthday, and the others are made to feel like charity cases.  A lot of the humor is derived from the awkwardness of having to talk about money.  The line, “OK…. we can… talk about that” is delivered with the hesitancy of friends that know they’re venturing into a sensitive discussion, but are willing to address the issue openly.  The zinger, of course, is that Monica loses her job at the end of the episode, showing how tenuous financial stability can be.

While Friends may have made a brief acknowledgement of difference within the group, economic disadvantage was certainly never a recurring theme in the show.  I use it only as example to show that entertainment that, superficially, has nothing to do with class doesn’t need to ignore these issues.  Roseanne, though, was about finding the humor in the hardship.  And there was no one better at it.

Roseanne never shied away from real issues families face: social class, of course, but also gay family members, working conditions and job insecurity, birth control and unplanned pregnancy, divorce, domestic violence, mental illness, abortion, and alcoholism.  In fact, not only did it not shy away from these issues, but it embraced them as critical to the show’s comedy and the “working-class domestic goddess” persona of the title character.

Continue reading at:    http://bitchmagazine.org/post/the-99-what%E2%80%99s-funny-about-being-poor-roseanne-and-working-class-humor-feminism-TV

From Common Dreams:   http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/12/17-1

by Michael Winship
Published on Saturday, December 17, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

Have you heard about the great brown cloud? No, it’s not a new nickname for Donald Trump (his cloud is more an intergalactic nimbus of Aqua Velva and Tang), or the ominous menace in a new Stephen King novel. It’s almost as nasty, though.

The Atmospheric Brown Cloud, formerly known as the Asian Brown Cloud, is a mass of air pollution hovering over northern India along the southern Himalayas and down across Bangladesh and the Bay of Bengal. The cloud began growing shortly after World War II, a smoggy mass of soot and sulfates from diesel emissions, wood fires and other burning stuff that’s almost two miles thick.

A new study by scientists from a number of research organizations – including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography – finds that the cloud’s pollutants are making cyclones in the Arabian Sea more intense.

This is a very big deal, because, as Dean Kuipers writes in The Los Angeles Times, “After the apparent recent increase in the number and intensity of hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico, including the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, climate watchers everywhere have speculated whether these storms were made stronger by industrial or man-made emissions. This is reportedly the first study to indicate that human activity may, in fact, affect large storms.”

Wind shear turbulence can help break up cyclones and keep them from becoming bigger storm systems. But shade created by the great brown cloud lowers water temperature, which in turn cuts down wind shear, allowing more powerful storms to form. Since 1998, according to NOAA, there have been five storms in the region with winds greater than 120 miles per hour – killing more than 3500 people and generating $6.5 billion worth of damage.

Continue reading at:  http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/12/17-1

From The Guardian UK: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/18/vaclav-havel-dies

Dissident playwright who led velvet revolution and became first post-communist Czechoslovakian president dies

I am not a religionist.  I am an avowed atheist, who doesn’t like the anti-Muslim bigotry on display by the ultra right wing Christo-Fascists.  They act like a new version of the KKK.

Therefore I am urging people to sign the petition at:

Change.Org— Sign Petition

From Raw Story:    http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/12/17/big-corn-big-sugar-in-bitter-fight-over-corn-sugar/

By Agence France-Presse
Saturday, December 17, 2011

Big Corn and Big Sugar are locked in a legal and public relations fight in the US over a plan to change the name of a corn-based sweetener that has gotten a bad name.

The fight began last year when Corn Refiners Association, a trade association, proposed changing the name of high-fructose corn syrup to merely “corn sugar.”

The group said the new name “more accurately describes this sweetener and helps clarify food products labeling for manufacturers and consumers alike.”

Sugar producers have filed suit alleging the corn industry has spent $50 million in “a mass media rebranding campaign that misleads the consuming public by asserting falsely that HFCS is natural and is indistinguishable from the sugar extracted from sugar cane and sugar beets.”

Continue reading at:   http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/12/17/big-corn-big-sugar-in-bitter-fight-over-corn-sugar/

From Frontiers LA:   http://www.frontiersla.com/Blog/FrontierBlog/blogentry.aspx?BlogEntryID=10327946

By Karen Ocamb
December 16, 2011

Love Honor Cherish’s ballot initiative proposed by gay attorney Thomas B. Watson to repeal Prop. 8 was cleared on Thursday by the California Secretary of State to start gathering signatures. The Los Angeles-based grassroots group has until May 14, 2012, to collect 807,615 valid signatures in order to qualify for the November 2012 ballot.

The title and summary prepared for the petition reads:

Reinstates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry. Initiative Constitutional Amendment.

Repeals the current provision in California’s Constitution that states only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California. Provides that marriage is between only two persons and shall not be restricted on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, gender, sexual orientation, or religion. Clarifies that the initiative shall not be interpreted to require any priest, minister, pastor, rabbi, or other person to perform a marriage in violation of his or her religious beliefs. Summary of estimate by Legislative Analyst and Director of Finance of fiscal impact on state and local government: Over the long run, this measure would likely have little fiscal impact on state and local governments. (11-0058) (Full Text)

A decision to move forward to at least be prepared to launch a repeal campaign was made by the grassroots group last October after Equality California decided not to lead a repeal effort because of the progress of the federal Prop. 8 case and because they were concerned about community apathy and raising enough money to be successful.

LHC acknowledged that an effort failed in 2010 because it was basically an all-volunteer effort. This time, however, the group has hired former EQCA Development Director Eric Harrison as an interim executive director to help the group raise money and help build and lead the repeal campaign.

Continue reading at:   http://www.frontiersla.com/Blog/FrontierBlog/blogentry.aspx?BlogEntryID=10327946

From The Orlando Liberal Examiner:   http://www.examiner.com/liberal-in-orlando/republican-mayor-admits-he-s-gay-used-taxpayer-money-for-alcohol-and-gay-porn

Robert Sobel Orlando Liberal Examiner
December 17, 2011

If you consider yourself a Republican or even just conservative one of the mottos you are proud of is the label of “family values conservative.” Conservatives love to be the party of morals while labeling “liberals” and Democrats as the ones who are immoral and degenerates. It’s always interesting when you see someone who is so strong in their convictions turn out to be nothing more than a hypocrite and for the Republican party it seems to happen more often than they would like.

Before any macho troll starts carrying on and calling this kid names I want to remind y’all that Governor Goodhair Perry and President George W. were both cheerleaders.

From Yahoo News: http://rivals.yahoo.com/highschool/blog/prep_rally/post/Male-cheerleader-gets-team-disqualified-8230-?urn=highschool-wp10098

By Cameron Smith
Fri Dec 16, 2011

A male cheerleader in Michigan accidentally disqualified his squad from a recent cheerleading competition for the most basic of all reasons: He’s a boy.

Brandon Urbas is like many other American teens: He spent much of his youth dreaming of being a high school varsity athlete. The only difference was the sport he hoped to compete in: Urbas wanted to be a cheerleader.

In 2011, Urbas achieved that dream, joining the St. Clair Shores (Mich.) Lakeview High varsity cheerleading team. Despite being the only male cheerleader on the squad, Urbas said everything was going swimmingly throughout the football season. Urbas fit in with the rest of the squad, and he even said that the Lakeview football team had stepped forward to support him, offering “to get his back” if anyone taunted him or gave him trouble.

Instead, where Urbas has suddenly found himself being discriminated against is precisely where he should have been most protected: In competitive cheerleading. According to Michigan ABC affiliate WXYZ, Urbas unintentionally got the Lakeview cheerleading squad disqualified from its first winter cheerleading competition … because he is a boy. Judges ruled that Lakeview couldn’t compete in the event because they were fielding a boy.

“I cried,” Urbas told WXYZ. “I felt like they were taking away my dream of being able to do it in college and getting scholarships.”

Continue reading at:   http://rivals.yahoo.com/highschool/blog/prep_rally/post/Male-cheerleader-gets-team-disqualified-8230-?urn=highschool-wp10098