If this doesn't get you excited about the election...

I don't know what will...

Worst. Cover. Ever.

Well...the second worst...


I happened to see this Seventeen magazine while browsing through Walgreens. (3 weeks after I saw it on GoFugYourself and had forgotten about it) When I saw this in the store, it made me laugh because I never knew that "Fake Tan" was a mask on Photoshop! Also, when I saw this online, I remember thinking that there was something else about the cover that I just rubbed me the wrong way (aside from it being a pretty typical teen fashion mag). I couldn't remember what it was, and I thought maybe I had been thinking of something else.

Then I decided to actually pick up the magazine...

Do you see that tiny little blurb on the corner? No? Neither did I at first; the magazine rack obscured it from view. Here's a close-up:


You, too, can learn 838 WAYS TO LOOK PRETTY with PERFECT HAIR and show off your BEST BUTT in the RIGHT JEANS!!!

But you may have an eating disorder, so...you might wanna check on that.

I Believe Her

from Donna Darko:

NETROOTS, A LISTERS, PROGRESSIVES, DEMOCRATS, FEMINIST BLOG NETWORK, WOMEN OF COLOR BLOGGERS, CLINTON BLOGGERS, TALLAHASSEE PROGRESSIVE COMMUNITY, ASIAN AMERICAN COMMUNITY, PROGRESSIVE FORUMS, FEMINIST FORUMS, ASIAN FORUMS, ALL MY FRIENDS AND RELATIVES PLEASE POST THIS EVERYWHERE. I AM COMPLETELY INNOCENT, a leftist, a progressive, and an extremely good, outstanding person. PLEASE HELP ME AND DEFEND ME. I AM COMPLETELY INNOCENT.

I found this on Open Left:

See Abusing Direct Democracy: Bad Actors in the Signature Gathering Business
November 2007
by the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center
www.ballot.org
About Arno’s massive history of fraud yet they never get in trouble. There are 40 cases in this packet. Why don’t THEY ever get in trouble? If every campaign is investigated, his industry is the problem. Their industry is corrupt with greed but they never reform it. They should pay per hour like ACORN instead of per petition but they’re too greedy to change. They should get in trouble instead of getting the little guys in trouble every time.

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“When we read about some crime in the paper or see it in the “crawl” on CNN, we don’t know the whole story. Everyone LOOKS guilty! It is just the nature of the media coverage. There is inherent bias in the media coverage of alleged crimes. When is the last time you looked at the newspaper and said ‘Wow - this guy must be innocent?’ The Ligon case seemed undefendable to most people, including me. I had prejudged Ligon as someone who didn’t deserve a good defense. Don’t wrote someone off because of your take on a crappy headline and biased news story. We have to take several steps back.”

–from Mickey Sherman, How Can You Defend Those People?

It was a media creation based on a personal agenda.

There are two reasons this campaign got attention. Ion Sancho, Head of Elections in Tallahassee, FL oversaw the Florida Recount in 2000. It took place at the Leon County Courthouse in Tallahassee under his watch. The whole episode was embarrassing for Tallahassee and him. A progressive colleague, Steve Payne, who is now an organizer with SEIU International in Minneapolis, worked close with him and said this whole investigation was to cover his ass after what happened in 2000. Sancho said he would investigate the hell out of any irregularity to cover his ass. This is why the whole thing was unfair to me from the beginning. Imagine my shock when it made the Tallahassee Democrat, someone as straight arrow and transparent as me who never did anything wrong in her life. In fact, I talked about all this to two of the three biggest progressive student leaders in Tallahassee, Alex Joyce and Steve Payne. They graduated and moved to Portland and Minneapolis in 2004. The third, Gabe Pendas, a very well known student activist, was younger and graduated later and never heard my side of the story. Maybe he is in on this because he only knows what the newspaper said and what students learned from the media. It was Ion Sancho’s personal agenda and a media creation that had nothing to do with me so it’s grossly unfair. What’s really strange is Sancho’s 16-year-old goddaughter, Dylan, worked for us and would totally vouch for my integrity. Doesn’t he know I was the well-known progressive in town? That’s what I never understood unless he didn’t know who I was.

Two, it got attention because we did 3000 registrations which is not that many for a four week campaign. The RNC pushed us to do 30,000. The man from the RNC, Clint Fuermann, kept calling and saying the guy down in Tampa did 1000 a day and that we were supposed to work 6 days a week and that we could only take Sundays off. 4.5 weeks, that’s 30,000. 3,000 is only 45 per week for 15 people. JSM also kept calling and saying we were doing way too few. JSM and the RNC, the middlemen should get in trouble for pushing the workers too hard and paying per petition. We only took orders from above and worked hard. I had NO IDEA WHATSOEVER anyone did anything wrong. There were some days they were alarmed because we got zero. I only did a couple hundred, painstakingly in 95 degree heat, and never used the petition. ARNO and middle men like JSM and the RNC should get in trouble not people who only take orders and listen to them.

There are seven groups of people who victimized me. The third is Arno which does thousands of campaigns and every other one is investigated. This means his industry is corrupt and that he has to reform it. The most important reform would be to pay per hour like the leftist grassroots groups such as ACORN which requires a reasonable quota of 45 petitions a day. Arno’s industry has tons of fraud because it pays per petition. He never gets in trouble. Only the little guys get in trouble. His industry is corrupt and fraudulent so he should get in trouble or reform it instead of getting the little guys in trouble. He’s a crook. I’m not a crook IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM. I’VE NEVER DONE ANYTHING WRONG IN MY LIFE! WHAT A JOKE! Meanwhile, Arno, JSM and Mark Jacoby are career criminals. This was 24 days of my life (I was out of town for the last 7 days).

JSM came up with the scam and petition. They gave us a script about a medical marijuana petition as a lead in to register voters. It’s quite simple and not illegal. It goes like this. “Would you like to sign a petition to legalize marijuana to help sick people? Finally, do you mind registering as a Republican? They’re paying for this campaign. Libertarian Republicans support the legalization of marijuana.” I had NO IDEA if anything went wrong and truly believed everyone was asked. I asked EVERYONE who gave me paperwork three times if they did it right while looking at them right in the eye. I drive people crazy with my straight-arrow ways and transparency. JSM pushed us to do many more than 3000 in 4 weeks. Maybe people are good at lying to me but I really don’t think anyone did anything wrong. Everything seemed perfectly fine. It’s a scam but nothing illegal. There’s no proof of anything illegal. Supposedly, having voters’ initials next to the R box is extra prove it’s legal. There’s no proof registrations without initials next to the R box weren’t asked. That’s like saying 99% of the people in a town killed someone because there’s no proof they didn’t. Steve also said 15 voters were called and asked if they were asked if they were Republicans and that he made this blanket statement about the rest. That’s really unfair. He said the answer also depends on the way the question is asked. They may have simply been asked if they were Republicans. If 15 voters said no, they weren’t asked or they weren’t Republicans it’s wouldn’t be fair to say the same for the rest. That season there were about 10 different petitions going around and he said someone might remember a petition about medical marijuana but have a hard time remembering the last thing they were asked which is whether or not they would mind registering as a Republican.

Mark Jacoby has been in the business for many years and literally teaches all his workers how to cheat or bait and switch. Ours was a very straight forward operation as I described and we never bait and switched. Everything was out in the open. I learned on the internet Jacoby uses bait and switch meaning people did not even know they were registering to vote. He and his entire crew spent one of the four weeks in Tallahassee and turned in registrations. Mark always seemed to always want to screw us over because he was competitive with Clark so I don’t know if he screwed over registrations he turned into the Leon county office. He did 900 in Gainesville. Again this is a guy who literally teaches his workers how to cheat and trick people. He should get in trouble cheating year after year, campaign after campaign. If 4000 registrations from us and Mark are being investigated, isn’t it Arno’s responsibility? And JSM’s? Shouldn’t it go to the top if every other campaign is investigated? It’s a corrupt business with corrupt players. Of course, I had no idea going into it that it was run by Republican backers. I knew NOTHING. ACORN’s minimum wage campaign ended and we met people in the field doing petitions. I had no idea if these petitions were liberal or conservative. It seems half were liberal, half were conservative.

So far we have Ion Sancho, Arno, the RNC, JSM and Mark Jacoby. Six, Clark took advantage of me. We met at ACORN. I recently posted about how I have a 1.5 paged, single spaced list of leftist activities from 2003-2005. I’ve been a radical leftist since I was 24 and have done hardcore leftist activism pretty much every day for the last 16 years. This is cosmic injustice considering how much I influenced the progressive narrative over the years through daily, leftist activism. I worked at ACORN for six months, from Feb-July 2004. We won the minimum wage campaign, the organizer of the entire campaign, Brian Kettering, thanked me personally for my work on the campaign. There are two kinds of people who work at ACORN. Activists and people who can’t get a job elsewhere. I worked with other ACORN workers in the private petition industry for only two months, July-Sept 2004, which we learned about through people in the field who said you can do petition work on a private basis. Half the petitions were liberal, half conservative. It was hard to tell. I didn’t know who funded campaigns or JSM until later. Do you judge a life on 24 days of that campaign or even 2 months compared to 16 years of daily, leftist activism? The progressive blogosphere is familiar with my daily, hardcore leftist activism on the web. This is how I’ve worked for 16 years since I became a liberal even before blogs. I used to write editors of progressive magazines to praise them, tell them off or make suggestions just like I do on blogs. He’s the only Republican I ever dated and NEVER would have done this Republican campaign at all or participated in anything resembling a scam. I’ve never participated in any kind of scam in my entire life and certainly have never been in ANY kind of trouble. I am also not the type of person who’s ambitious enough to do these big campaigns or be a coordinator. I hate Republicans in general. I hate scams. He never really paid me but took me to Disney World and bought me some simple jewelry. I was his secretary for this and he went out of town to work and did not realize until recently my name might be on this campaign. This is the ultimate cosmic injustice. I’m someone’s secretary for three months, never a coordinator, he goes out of town during a one month campaign, and I’m stuck with this? To this day, I don’t know if I was a coordinator. Ironically, JSM hired him as a coordinator because they said his girlfriend had integrity and they needed people like me in the business.

Seven, I can’t tell if workers lied to me. I am a very straight-forward person. I look people in the eye and ask them questions but still don’t know if people looked me in the eye and lied to me. I am naïve because I grew up sheltered. As far as I know, nothing was wrong with this campaign. Everything seemed fine. Imagine the shock when I read in the Tallahassee Democrat Ion Sancho said there were irregularities. Ironically, I was in the Tallahassee Democrat twice for good deeds that season. My picture was in the paper for being the leading voter registration person in Tallahassee and for raising Florida’s minimum wage. Many people came up to me and said they wanted to be like me. To give you some context on how progressive I am, I registered voters for eight progressive organizations OUTSIDE of this within the same six months and each boss from each progressive organization would vouch for my high integrity and validity rates. I registered voters for EIGHT DIFFERENT PROGRESSIVE ORGANIZATIONS: FSU student groups, ACORN, America Coming Together/The League of Pissed-Off Voters, The Tallahassee Voter Participation Program, The Tallahassee Practical Law Enforcement campaign, The League of Women Voters, The League of Conservation Voters and Coalition of Active Voter Education. Each praised me for my integrity and high validity rates. Each would vouch for me because I drive people crazy with my integrity, honesty and high standards. They can each be my defense witnesses for GOOD CHARACTER ON VOTER REGISTRATION ALONE. Anyone who knows me can vouch for my high integrity, honesty and standards. This is outrageous and must be a personal vendetta.

Eighth group of people who victimized me: This has to be a personal vendetta. The prosecution is unreasonable and biased. This person might live in Metarie, LA. Please prosecute this person. We will sue.

A final sticking point is a third or more of the registrations were from the black campus, FAMU. All the registrations done at FAMU were done by black guys because they REFUSED to work anywhere else, because they knew it was easier to get other blacks to help them. They did not like working on the white campuses because they did not do as well on white campuses. No white workers worked at FAMU. A couple tried but it was too hard so they went back to the white campuses. So it’s not what it looks like.

I am an absolute victim in all this. This is COSMIC INJUSTICE. I am the absolute, innocent victim. It’s extremely unfair Ion Sancho’s personal agenda makes me suffer. This was always HIS PERSONAL AGENDA. Investigate him instead and charge him for psychological distress and torture. I spent every day for the last 16 years on hardcore leftist activism and 24 days of my life doing something I HATED which doesn’t mean anything ESPECIALLY since I had NO IDEA anyone did anything wrong. You cannot establish mens rea. I had no idea anything was wrong. I can call up ten defense witnesses vouching for my good character ON VOTER REGISTRATION ALONE.

Seven Songs Meme!

Yay! I was tagged by joankelly!

List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your spring summer. Post these instructions in your blog along with your seven songs. Then tag seven other people to see what they’re listening to.

Lemme see...

1. "Ye Ishq Hai", from the movie Jab We Met (have yet to see the movie)
2. "Koi No Dance Site", Morning Musume
3. "Brown Skin Girl", Santana feat. Bo Bice
4. "Let It Roll", Group 1 Crew
5. "Kiwi", Maroon 5
6. "Amore (Sexo)", Santana feat. Macy Gray
7. "New World Symphony", Miri Ben-Ari feat. Pharaoh Monch & John Legend

I tag Latoya Peterson, Angry Black Woman, Donna Darko, Tom, YeYe, and you! ^_~

I want to take him home!