1970 marked the 350th anniversary of the pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock and like usual the residents of Plymouth, Massachusetts were planning the annual Pilgrim’s Progress festival. The festival included a parade and feast, complete with residents in period clothes. The whole affair was a celebration of American progress. Empire, if you will.

Frank James, a Wampanoag Indian, decided to change the agenda for that year’s Thanksgiving. James and other Indians, including the Narragansets and Passamaquoddies, planned to demonstrate in a “dignified and responsible manner” about the repression and poverty endured by American Indians. ¹

Yet the protest wasn’t going to attract much attention without some theatrics. To help bring more attention to the protest, James invited the American Indian Movement (AIM)–a Minneapolis-based Native rights group that had protested on Mt. Rushmore the same year–to join the protest. By the time the protest started at the foot of Massasoit’s statue, over 200 Indians had assembled. James decried the pilgrims that “stole our corn,” and added, “all that love and brotherhood stuff between Indians and white settlers is a lie!” ² Russell Means, a charismatic leader of AIM, implored the white men to listen

Listen. Listen to us, white men. Plymouth Rock is red. Red with our blood. The white man came here for religious freedom and he has denied it to us. Today you will see the Indian reclaim the Mayflower in a symbolic gesture  to reclaim our rights in this country. ³

Sure enough the group retook the replica Mayflower II moored in the harbor. Once on the ship the group lowered the flag of St. George and symbolically raised an upside down American flag. In a “new kind of Boston Tea Party,” only with real Indians, the group dumped pilgrim mannequins into the harbor. ⁴ After being cleared off the ship by local police officers, the group crashed the feast, overturning tables full of food, and dumped sand on Plymouth Rock. The protests concluded that night with another group sneaking back into the area and painting the Rock red.

One little boy, while watching the Pilgrim procession during the festivities that day, turned to his mother and asked, “Where did all the Indians go?” “They’re not part of this,” the mother replied ⁵

Celebrate Thanksgiving and count your blessings, but remember the cost at which your blessing came.

So asks everybody’s favorite religious idiot Pat Robertson.

Telemarketers are, no surprise, duping caller IDs to get people to pick up the phone. While the article says the issue is mostly confined to landlines, my cell phone gets regular calls from telemarketers, scam artists, and others.

See also: How to get Thomas Home Security to stop calling you.

When I quickly wrote this post the other day I noted that, in addition to the 84 year-old woman pepper-sprayed by Seattle’s finest, they also pepper-sprayed a priest and a three-month pregnant woman. The woman later announced she miscarried due to the injuries she suffered during the protests, which included the pepper-spraying as well as being hit in the stomach on two occasions.

Unfortunately Seattle’s alternative newspaper The Stranger reports that the claims are “increasingly dubious.” According to The Stranger, the woman in question, Jennifer Fox, turned down multiple requests to provide medical records backing up her claims stating she was “too busy” arranging a memorial service for the baby.

If Fox’s story turns out to be false it’s beyond unfortunate. Whether Fox was hoping for attention or just trying to avoid pepper spray, her potential lie undermines the serious issue of excessive police force in relation to the occupy movement.

Seattle pepper-sprayed, among others, an 84 year-old woman, a woman who claims to be two months pregnant, and a priest. Also of note: Obama’s Department of Homeland Security and the FBI apparently had a role in coordinating responses to the protests in 18 cities. Suggestions included showing a massive police force during the evictions (based on whatever legal justification the cities’ could drag up), and conducting the raids when the media was least likely to be present. Hence New York City’s early morning actions. Mike Riggs at Reason with a good response to the whole thing:

The mayors on that conference call are Democrats; the FBI and the DHS are led by Democrats; Obama is a Democrat. The State is not your friend, OWS, it is your master.

Teddy Roosevelt describing the “fun” that was had with a group of beggars during a trip to Italy in December of 1869:

We tossed the cakes to them and I fed them like chickens with small pieces of cake and like chickens they ate it. Mr. Stevens kept guard with a whip with which he pretended to whip a small boy. We made them open their mouths and tossed cake into it. For a ‘Coup de Grace’ we threw a lot of them in a place and a writhing heap of human beings.  We drove on very soon in the moonlight, It was beautiful.…We made the crowds that we gave cake to give three cheers for the U.S.A. before we gave them cake….

From Theodore Roosevelt, Diaries of Boyhood and Youth, page 123.

My dad had two leaf blowers when I was growing up. One was you’re standard electric leaf blower you usually find populating garages across suburbia. The other was one of those gas-powered walk behind blowers that made an exceptional amount of noise and probably infuriated the neighbors. Having been conscripted to help in the leaf removal effort each fall I always appreciated the electric blower, but always wanted to shoot the gas-powered one because it’s ability to make noise was only equaled by its ability to kick up dirt. So I’m not wholly opposed to leaf blowers like some people, rather I’m opposed to stupid leaf blowing. The former is something the University of Tulsa loves to regularly engage in.

Just in the course of the last week I’ve had to put up with the sound of those hideous gas-powered backpack leaf blowers almost every day. This isn’t because the university is removing the fallen leaves, rather it’s because they’re just moving them around. The first instance of this occurred last Thursday when I watched a physical plant employee venture into the courtyard outside my building and start blowing the leaves off the sidewalks. After thirty minutes the employee was content with his work and packed up and left. The leaves promptly returned to where they had come thanks to the moderate wind that have been blowing throughout the day. Yesterday was more of the same, someone showed up, blew the leaves on the grass and then left to do another part of the complex. Today, more of the same. Again, these leaves aren’t being picked up, they’re simply being temporarily moved around. It’s not even like the University planned to mulch them with a mower–the same employee who showed up yesterday mowed before he blew the leaves onto the grass.

If it weren’t for the University’s practice of edging the dead grass in the winter, I’d place their leaf blowing practices at the top of the list of idiotic things I’ve witnessed during my five years on the campus. The practice does, however, get the top spot when it comes to most annoying.

Howard Baldwin, not satisfied with an average of 4,700 per home game this year, is back chasing rainbows and attempting to implant delusions of grander and sugar plum fairies into the minds of Connecticut hockey fans. Want a new arena complex and the NHL by 2017? Howard will do it! If you believe that I still haven’t been unable to unload my ocean front property in Arizona. Call me, it’s heavily reduced.

So what are the issues this time? The biggest is the price tag: $105 million in public dollars. I’m a hockey fan but even I won’t endorse spending money on a new stadium given the record of publicly-financed stadiums. Next? Baldwin wants the NHL to return in six years. Winnipeg opened the MTS Centre in 2004 and saw the NHL return this year–a seven year time span. Howard wants the NHL back in six years and we only have nice pictures of what the new XL Center will look like. With fifteen years of failed attempts at a new arena, do you really think we’ll do it in six?

Like we didn’t see it coming.

How did the child die? The sand she was digging in collapsed in on her. Why did she die? Because she was unsupervised, not because the city uses sand in the park.

Randy Edsall, the man who ditched the UConn football team in Phoenix following their beating by the University of Oklahoma to become head coach at Maryland, is getting a nice serving of humble pie.

In other news, Todd Graham is 4-5 at Pitt this season. Or as they call it in the Big East, competitive.

From a report on a five day operation that arrested over 300 “smurfs:” ¹

No one can explain why meth is so much bigger a problem here than the western half of the state. Agents from over there were blown away by what they saw here.

Shouldn’t we try to figure out an answer to that problem? Then maybe we’d be able to treat the disease and not the symptoms. Or we can just continue making pseudoephedrine-based drugs increasingly hard for the average person to get and hope the methheads just go away.

Getting repeated calls from a number close to (253) 246-8552 or from a spam telemarketing company billing themselves as Thomas Home Security? Adding your number to the Do Not Call list and telling them not to call doing no good? Try this exchange out:

Me: Hello? Who is this and why do you keep calling me?

Him: I’m with Thomas Home Security and I was wondering if you’d be interested in our home security protection plans?

Me: I’d be interested in a house. Do you guys protect cars or will my car alert be sufficient enough because I’ve got everything I own in here and I’d hate for it to disappear.

Him: I’m sorry sir I seem to have got you at a bad time. Good Bye.

Your mileage may vary, but they’ve so far quit calling me.

Surely I can’t be the only one who thinks the answer to the problem isn’t increased enforcement but lower taxes.

A local news report on the “SWAT Olympics” that are being held in Tulsa this week:

Because criminals are more violent and better armed now, SWAT team members are called on more and more to protect innocent citizens. It’s critical their skills are top notch and these challenges are designed to put them to the test.

The funny this is there’s no mention of all the wrong door raids SWAT teams regularly engage in or the fact that the increasingly militarized teams are being called on to serve minor drug warrants in which the threat of violence is barely, if at all, present.

Or to put it another way: A perfectly good town sullied by the University which inhabits it.

I’ve had a Kindle since the end of August and hadn’t used it much until recently when I decided to use it to read a book written by a guest lecturer coming to the university. After using it for one day I went to use it and found the screen broken once I woke it up (evidence). The thing had hardly been used, let alone dropped, had nothing fall on it, or had anything spilt on it.  A quick Google search revealed it’s an issue that seems to be a rather common for Kindle owners.

The Kindle was purchased from Staples, but given that it was covered under Amazon’s one-year limited warranty I figured I’d contact Amazon and they’d send me a new Kindle and I’d send them the broken one. After deciding to use the online chat feature (why waste phone minutes on hold?) I talked with an Arun A. who looked up that I hadn’t purchased the Kindle from Amazon and I’d need to contact the company I bought it from. Huh? Just because I bought the Kindle from a third-party licensed seller means the manufacturer’s warranty is invalid? Nope Arun is just an idiot:

Because your Kindle was purchased from a retailer other than Amazon.com, you’ll need to return the item directly to that retailer. Amazon.com cannot directly accept the return of Kindles purchased from other retailers.

Please contact the retailer from which you bought your Kindle for more information about their policies.

If you need help using your Kindle or need service under the terms of the Limited One-Year Warranty, you can find information at the Amazon.com Help pages…

That’s from an email Arun sent after I politely told him to shove it and closed the window. I’m not sure how Arun managed to turn “My Kindle screen is broken” into “I want to return this Kindle I didn’t buy from you” but he did. At any rate I called up Staples ¹ and they processed my request and are sending me a cash card to buy a new one. Whether I use the 200 dollars to buy a new Kindle or a lot of office supplies is still undecided.

Unlike Napster or Friendster, Qwikster won’t even get off the ground:

It is clear that for many of our members two websites would make things more difficult, so we are going to keep Netflix as one place to go for streaming and DVDs.

Spend your Friday night looking at scared people in a haunted house. ¹

Some good ones:

How you like dis nuts?

Justin Bieber!

Mom?!

Bunny Ears

Congo Line!

Yes, you do look Disturbed.

RAWR!

An Assisted Heisman.

Indy! Woody!

O Canada!

Having spent the last six months wading through stereotypes of Indians for my thesis on the second Wounded Knee Incident in 1973 I’m both shocked and not watching this monstrosity of a video. While the savage, evil Indian stereotype has been around since contact, this is high up on the list of disgustingly, over-the-top ones in recent memory.

(Via ICTMN)

In watching the final installment of Ken Burns’s “Prohibition” documentary I noticed a picture that was notable solely because I watch too many old reruns of “Cheers”:

“Saturday Night in a Saloon,” Russell Lee, Craigville, Minnesota, 1937 (LOC)

And as it appeared in “Cheers”:

Still from the opening credits of “Cheers,” Season 7 (Youtube)

Thanks to the fine folks at Shorpy, who highlighted the photograph last year, you can find out more about the town, and catch another view of our lumberjack turned Cliff Clavin stand-in.

Spoiler: TU isn’t one of them.

If the University needs some help in figuring out why, allow me to offer a hint: look at the trees. The campuses don’t look like country clubs with little cloned trees surrounding wide expanses of barren grass.

Just another day in Arkansas.

Your Nobel Peace Prize and supposed supporter of civil liberties and change at work. Ok that’s a little too harsh, Obama did indeed change from Bush policies, because even Bush wasn’t willing to go so far as to kill a US citizen.

Addendum

The United States seems to have killed two citizens in the attack. The second American citizen killed appears to be Samir Khan, the person reported to be behind Al-Qaeda’s magazine.

Jurassic Park + Mad Max + Lost + Dawson’s Creek + Generic Family Drama + millions of dollars = one clusterfuck of a television show.

I probably missed some variables in the formula, but suffice to say, the television show feels like a bunch of dudes threw everything they ever loved into one show. Then the network stepped in and told them they couldn’t spend millions without appealing to everyone. So they threw in some sappy drama at the last minute (but made sure it included booze).

Also of note is the size of the cell the two men were housed in. CBS News categorized the cell as roughly the same size as a mid-sized U-Haul van.  Yet the average American prison cell is less than 100 square feet, with some being doubled-up due to overcrowding.

60 Minutes kicked off a new season tonight with what can probably be best described as a glorification of New York City’s counter-terrorism activities since 9/11. Spending billions of dollars, New York City has created a police force that dresses like soldiers, stations officers around the world, and randomly floods parts of the city with hundreds of police cars just because it can. It’s all quite unsettling, even for a city that is a prime target for terrorist attacks.

All of that money has recently been put to use protecting the city from a terrible menace: peaceful protesters. For example:

More images and links here.

Incredibly–and I know this will be shocking–the CBS evening news found no time to cover this use of New York City’s police forces during their Sunday newscast. Likewise, the network found no time on Saturday. Of course peaceful protesters getting maced and slammed to the ground were forced to deal with the “shocking news” of Hermain Cain winning a straw poll in Florida; whether that would open the door for Chris Christie or Sarah Palin to jump into the race; Dana Nyad’s attempted swim from Cuba to the US; and the happiest town in America–Somerville, Massachusetts.

Oddly, the inability to cover police attacks on peaceful protesters seems to be a new thing for CBS News. After all, CBS found plenty of time to cover protests in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, and Yemen among other places. Yet when the news is less than five miles from the network’s main headquarters they can’t seem to find their way to the story.

The actions carried out by the NYPD aren’t exactly equal to the actions carried out by the dictators around the world we so love to chastise (at least when it’s beneficial for us)–as far as we know the NYPD hasn’t killed anyone yet. However, their actions to end the protests have the same driving motive as their counterparts around the world: deterring protesters from exercising their rights. Is protesting Wall Street’s practices worth a face full of pepper spray and a mountain of legal fees? New York City certainly hopes you’ll answer no and stay home next time you get the foolish idea of protesting.

I’m a little confused by Mark Bittman. One month he’s writing about the need to subsidize staple foods through a junk food tax because corporations are “incapable of marketing healthier foods.” In that world buying fruit  loops was easier than buying actual fruit, and “chips and Coke are a common breakfast.” One of the clear ideas of the piece to many people (me included) was that people were passing over healthier alternatives because they were more expensive than the hyper-processed junk food Mark Bittman would love to ban from this glorious land of ours.

Not so says Bittman in today’s front page op-ed in the Times’s Sunday Review:

This is just plain wrong. In fact it isn’t cheaper to eat highly processed food: a typical order for a family of four — for example, two Big Macs, a cheeseburger, six chicken McNuggets, two medium and two small fries, and two medium and two small sodas — costs, at the McDonald’s a hundred steps from where I write, about $28. (Judicious ordering of “Happy Meals” can reduce that to about $23 — and you get a few apple slices in addition to the fries!)

In general, despite extensive government subsidies, hyperprocessed food remains more expensive than food cooked at home. You can serve a roasted chicken with vegetables along with a simple salad and milk for about $14, and feed four or even six people. If that’s too much money, substitute a meal of rice and canned beans with bacon, green peppers and onions; it’s easily enough for four people and costs about $9. (Omitting the bacon, using dried beans, which are also lower in sodium, or substituting carrots for the peppers reduces the price further, of course.)

The evilness now is that Americans see cooking as home as work rather than a joy. Likewise us Americans are getting shoved loads of “behavior manipulation of addictive substances” (read: advertising). To fix the issue with need a variety of cultural and political policies that will turn our kids into like anti-junk food fascists who boo every time they drive by a McDonald’s (I’m not actually making that up, it’s in the article):

Political action would mean agitating to limit the marketing of junk; forcing its makers to pay the true costs of production; recognizing that advertising for fast food is not the exercise of free speech but behavior manipulation of addictive substances; and making certain that real food is affordable and available to everyone. The political challenge is the more difficult one, but it cannot be ignored.

Wait after a whole article lecturing me on how affordable good food is (“The fact is that most people can afford real food.”), we need the government to step in and make sure “real food is affordable?” Huh?

New York Times story on the increased number of weather delays in college sports this year including an interview with Bubba Cunningham, Tulsa’s Athletic Director (or the man who stupidly agreed to play a game that started at 12:16AM).

Former University of Tulsa linebacker George Clinkscale died on Wednesday night at a local Tulsa hospital after being transported from a boxing match where he fell ill. Clinkscale was taken to the hospital following the first round of a one minute round, three round unsanctioned boxing match at a local Tulsa “church.” Clinkscale was conscious and walked to the ambulance that was called to the church after an off-duty Tulsa police officer requested medical assistance for Clinkscale, who was described as suffering from a possible concussion.

Even if Clinkscale’s death is found to be unrelated to his boxing activities, it’s sad that a “church” would go so far as to sponsor an unsanctioned, and thus illegal, boxing match. The church claims to have had an experienced referee along with medical personnel onsite along with Tulsa police and church security. There was, however, no ambulance on site as required by law and the participants seem to have not had the required pre-fight physicals.

The “church’s” pastor posted a photograph of the event which he described as “Spontaneous cheers, laughter, & relentlessly punching – a gr8 night!”: