Fund Raising Walk In Memory Of Meagan

On the morning of Saturday, March 31 the Make a Wish Foundation is sponsoring a fundraising 5K walk through downtown Ann Arbor, starting at the Detroit Edison Parking Lot, located at the corner of William and Main Streets. Registration can be done on line or on site starting at 8:45 that morning. The walk begins at 10:00.

Emma and Julie and Jon Margerum-Leys would like to form a team of as many people as possible to walk in Meagan's memory. March 16th would have been Meagan's 18th birthday--a walk in her honor for this organization seems to be a fitting way to mark the occasion.

I am going to walk in this event, and I am asking you to consider joining us (and doing some fund-raising of your own!), or sponsoring me (under "Elizabeth Bourquin") through this link:
http://makeawish.kintera.org/faf/search/searchParticipants.asp?ievent=217748&lis=0&kntae217748=61E92DDFC2EC4BEE9F10B62512DAF557

Information on the walk can be found at http://www.wishmich.org/events/walk4kids.shtml . At the Web site, you can also sign up to be part of "Meagan's Team"; we'd like to get at least 50 people to sign up.

Basically, the proceeds benefit Make a Wish, the Ronald McDonald House, the U of M cancer center, and C.S. Mott Children's Hospital. As a family, they benefited directly from the Make a Wish Foundation--they sent them on a Caribbean Cruise
http://www.meaganscorner.org/images/gallery/Cruise/Cruise.html , which was Meagan's wish. Meagan was treated at both the Cancer Center and Mott Children's Hospital, so they have a connection there as well. While they did not need to use the Ronald McDonald House because they live near enough to the hospital, they know how important their work is to families going through circumstances similar to those they faced.

Thank you so much for considering this!

Good Luck Liz ...I love you

Impeachment Morning

(This is another BIGASS sign posted on a BIGASS fence, so it just looks small. I had to use a 8ft ladder to reach the top of the fence)

After seeing what my friend over at http://www.freewayblogger.com/ has done for me, I had to go out this morning & post my last 2 signs. Now it's time to paint some more.

Please stop by http://freewayblogger.blogspot.com/ & say Hi

My Trip To The Dentist

I had to go to the dentist so I threw some signs in my truck for the ride home.

This is the 1st time I've posted outside of A2

This is a BIGASS sign & it was so windy that when I went to post it, it posted it's self right to the fence & didn't even have to hold it as I hooked the cords to the fence...It most likely would of stayed up on it's own.

VOODOO LIMBO TANGO AND WANGO DANCE

Beyond the pale: anti-gay, racist emails from Army recruiter

Published by Pam Spaulding March 26th, 2007 in GLBT, Boggles the Mind, Military

“GO BACK TO AFRICA AND DO YOUR GAY VOODOO LIMBO TANGO AND WANGO DANCE AND JUMP AROUND AND PRANCE AND RUN ALL OVER THE PLACE HALF NAKED THERE.”– U.S. Army recruiter Sgt. Marcia Ramode, using her military email address to respond to Jersey City resident Corey Andrew, after Ramode learned Andrew was gay.
Is this the General Peter Pace policy at work?

Corey Andrew had his profile and resume posted at Careerbuilder.com, and it caught the eye of Army recruiter Marcia Ramode, who contacted him. He wasn’t interested in a position in the military, particularly because of the ban on gays and lesbians in the military.

When Andrew informed Ramode that he is gay, and believed that the DADT policy was wrong, the two engaged in a three-day email exchange that included statements by Ramode, in her official capacity as a recruiter, that boggle the mind. (Jersey Journal):
After more prodding from Andrew on the Army’s recruitment policy, the messages escalated into a bigoted tirade. For example, Ramode told Andrew that “being gay is disgusting and immoral.”

…Steve Ralls, a director of communications for the Service Members Legal Defense Network, which helps victims of discrimination under the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy, says Ramode should be fired.

“The recruiter’s remarks were outrageous and offensive in almost every way,” Ralls said. “Anti-gay harassment throughout the military is well documented but this is particularly egregious because the recruiter’s language is so homophobic and racist.”

Andrew forwarded the emails to SLDN, and, well, it blows your mind to see the calibre of people now being allowed to recruit. This is completely unacceptable, and stains the reputation of those wearing the uniform.

See screenshots of some of the actual emails after the jump. Unbelieveable…Can you believe this brazen filth was sent out under a military domain as official business communication –
and look at this:

And here’s another, where Ramode tells Andrew to “migrate to another country” if he objects to paying taxes to support the military, which discriminates against gay and lesbian citizens, and “if you do not like me writing in caps then delete my email and do not respond I think it scared you to death.”

According to a statement from public affairs officer, Sgt. Douglas Smith, the U.S. Army Recruiting Command’s Staff Judge Advocate has bumped the case up to Ramode’s commander for “review, investigation and appropriate action.” Ramode, as you might imagine, didn’t return calls from reporters.

Our tax dollars are paying for taxpaying citizens to be treated like this; gays and lesbians are fighting and dying for their country right now, while Ramode gets to sit at a desk and tap out homophobic, racist tirades to U.S. citizens while representing the Army. It’s wrong on so many levels.

From a commenter over at my pad:
Having been through and knowing the regulations concerning the military recruitment process, I know that sending out that sort of tirade to anyone, anywhere from a “.mil” account should get any servicemember fired, especially a recruiter. When you are corresponding within your professional military capacity, you represent your unit, your service and the military as a whole. It wouldn’t matter what the other guy said; a recruiter cannot go off on a tirade like those emails. Period.–Cpl B. Porter, USMC discharged under DADT 21Oct2006

http://pandagon.net/2007/03/26/beyond-the-pale-anti-gay-racist-emails-from-army-recruiter/

Be sure to send her an email & let her know how you feel

marcia.ramode@usarec.army.mil

3 More

"Even for a good purpose war is absurd. By its nature, by its technology, war has become so massive and indiscriminate that no possible good can come of it." -Howard Zinn

"Only the dead have seen the end of war". Plato

"Either war is obsolete or men are". R. Buckminster Fuller

Peeps Contest

http://www.marshmallowpeeps.com/


http://www.peepresearch.org/surgery.html

http://www.peepresearch.org/

http://www.peepsshow.com/

http://geekbabe.com/peeps/

We did a few dioramas for The Ann Arbor News Marshmallow Peeps Diorama contest

(This is last years entry, We didn't win)

Morning Mayhem

"I believe in compulsory cannibalism. If people were forced to eat what they killed there would be no more war." -Abbie Hoffman

"The industrial way of life leads to the industrial way of death. From Shiloh to Dachau, from Antietam to Stalingrad, from Hiroshima to Vietnam and Afghanistan, the great specialty of industry and technology has been the mass production of human corpses." -Edward Abbey

(update) this stayed up the whole weekend. It was recovered from the trash with it's flags broke off, Thanx Liz!. Time to REHANG it!

"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar." –Julius Caesar

"You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist." -Indira Gandhi

"We Americans claim to be a peace-loving people. We hate bloodshed; we are opposed to violence. Yet we go into spasms of joy over the possibility of projecting dynamite bombs from flying machines upon helpless citizens." -Emma Goldman

Spring Is Here!

Spring is here & with spring comes a new crop of SIGNS!

History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.
Ronald Reagan
I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.
George McGovern




What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?
Gandhi


The chain reaction of evil--wars producing more wars -- must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official...
Theodore Roosevelt

Because I do it with one small ship, I am called a terrorist. You do it with a whole fleet and are called an emperor.
A pirate, from St. Augustine's "City of God"

A Father's Letter To Bush

Kevin C. Landeck's guest book at Legacy.com

Here is the complete text of Richard Landeck's letter to President Bush:
Feb 4, 2007

Dear Mr. Bush:

This will be the only time I will refer to you with any type of respect.

My son was killed in Iraq on February 2, 2007. His name is Captain Kevin Landeck.
He served with the Tenth Mountain Division. He was killed while riding in a Humvee by a roadside bomb just south of Baghdad. He has a loving mother, a loving father and loving sister.

You took him away from us. He celebrated his 26th birthday January 30th and was married for 17 months. He graduated from Purdue University and went through the ROTC program.

That is where he met his future wife. He was proud to be a part of the military and took exceptional pride in becoming a leader of men. He accepted his role as a platoon leader with exceptional enthusiasm and was proud to serve his country.

I had many conversations with Kevin before he left to serve as well as during his deployment. The message he continued to send to me was that of incompetence. Incompetence by you, (Vice President Richard) Cheney and (former Secretary of Defense Donald) Rumsfeld. Incompetence by some of his commanders as well as the overall strategy of your decisions.

When I asked him about what he thought about your decision to “surge” more troops to Baghdad, he told me, “until the Iraqis pick up the ball, we are going to get cut to shreds. It doesn’t matter how many troops Bush sends, nothing has been addressed to solve the problem he started.”

Answer me this: How in the world can you justify invading Iraq when the problem began and continues to lie in Afghanistan? I don’t want your idiotic standard answer about keeping America safe. What did Sadaam Hussein have to do with 9/11? We all know it had to do with the first Iraq war where your father failed to take Sadaam down.

Well George, you have succeeded in taking down over 3,100 of our best young men, my son being one of them. Kevin told me many times we are not fighting terrorism in Iraq and they could not do their jobs as soldiers. He said they are trained to be on the offensive and to fight but all they are doing is acting like policemen.

Well George, you or some “genius” like you who have never fought in a war but enjoy all the perks your positions afford you are making life and death decisions. In the case of my son, you made a death decision.

Let me explain a few other points he and I discussed. He said when he and his men were riding down the road in their Humvees, roadside bombs would explode and they would hear bullets bouncing off their vehicle. He said they were scared. He thought “why should we be the ones who are scared?” He asked permission to take some of his men out at night with their night vision glasses because as he said “we own the night” and watch for the people who are setting roadside bombs and “take them out.” He said, “I want them to be the ones that are scared.” He was denied permission. Why? It made perfect sense to me and other people who I told about this.

When he was at a checkpoint he was told that if a vehicle was coming at them even at a high rate of speed he could not arbitrarily use his weapon. He had to wave his arms and, if the vehicle did not stop, he could fire a warning shot over the vehicle. If the vehicle did not stop then, he could shoot at the tires. If the vehicle did not yet stop he could take a shot at the driver. Who in their right mind made that kind of decision?

How would you like to be at a check point with a vehicle coming at you that won’t stop and go through all those motions? You will never know!

You or Cheney or Rumsfeld will never know the anguish, the worry, the sleepless nights, the waiting for the loved one who may never return. If the soldiers were able to do their jobs and the ego’s of politicians like you, your “cronies” and some commanders had their heads on straight, we would be out of this mess which we should not be involved with in the first place.

My family and I deserve and explanation directly from you……not some assistant who will likely read this and toss it. This war is wrong.

I want you to look me and my wife and daughter directly in the eye and tell me why my son died. We should not be there, but because of your ineptness and lack of correct information I have lost my son, my pride and joy, my hero!

Again, you, Cheney and Rumsfeld will never understand what the families of soldiers are going through and don’t try to tell me you do. My wife, my daughter and I cannot believe we have lost our only son and brother to a ridiculous political war that you seem to want to maintain. I hope you and Cheney and Rumsfeld and all the other people on your band wagon sleep well at night….we certainly don’t.

Richard Landeck

Proud father of a fallen soldier

It's Not Just Americans

It's not just Americans saying NO WAR

Candle Light Vigil A2

This was a small candle light vigil held in a2 where the names of all the soldiers from Michigan that have died in Iraq were read aloud. I always wish more ppl would show up... but American Idol must of been on.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Voltaire
As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.
Oscar Wilde

4 Years Of Tears

All these signs were made from the pieces of a head board that was left by a dumpster. It's all pressboard & needed very little painting as it was already white. Hopefully they will stay up, no matter what kind of weather A2 has. I have a few more to do but it's now raining snow or snowing rain.

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
– Martin Luther King, Jr

War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious.
General Smedley Butler

"After a war, a hero is just a man with one leg." —Anonymous

"PATRIOT, n. One to whom the interests of a part seem superior to those of the whole. The dupe of statesmen and the tool of conquerors." — Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

War is the health of the state." —Randolph Bourne, The State

"They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason." —Ernest Hemingway

"War is as much a punishment to the punisher as it is to the sufferer." —Thomas Jefferson

I found this sign as I was looking for places to put my signs, at night it is lite up with Xmas lights