(cross-posted to Vermont Watch, here)

*Update*: After doing some further searching, had managed to come across word on the Bring Back Sarah Lavigne Facebook page set up on her behalf which indicates that as of the early evening of Monday, January 31st, Sarah had gained access to her account once again.

*Updated*: (with the usual edits)

Breastfeeding mom wants answers

By JOSH STILTS / Reformer Staff

Tuesday February 1, 2011

BRATTLEBORO — A local woman who had her social networking and business account disabled for posting pictures of her breastfeeding her son wants answers.

Sarah Lavigne, 36, of Marlboro, said she never though she’d be at the center of such a large controversy but that people need to understand that breastfeeding isn’t pornography.

In January, Lavigne had her personal and business pages removed from the social networking site, Facebook, for allegedly violating the website’s Terms of Use by posting a photo of herself breastfeeding her infant son, Basil Leoniak.

[…]

The group Bring Back Sarah Lavigne has 840 Facebook users who “like” the page and it’s growing daily.

Lavigne said she hopes Facebook reinstates her account if for nothing more than to be able to get contact information for people.

[…]

Read the entire article (via Brattleboro Reformer), here.

(the following was posted by me as a comment post to the above article and is shared here to both help raise awareness as well as to attempt to help spread the word to others who might be as concerned and outraged regarding these matters as I am)

Say what!?

Say it ain’t so Facebook.

Am glad I wisely dumped my account a while back or I’d be raging on Facebook for hours about this.

Both my son and daughter, who were born in the mid-80’s, were breastfed by their mother.

As I recall, when there was day-work available from the professional temp service she worked for as a bookkeeper or whatever was the job on a given day or week and it was for day-long, my daughter was oftentimes breastfed at their mother’s workplace around or during lunchtime on those days she had me bring our son and daughter there to pick up breast milk she had pumped out earlier.

This way the breast milk she pumped out could be brought home in our little cooler — that was just big enough to hold the reusable freeze packs and also breast milk — and then stored away when the three of us arrived back home and later used when needed.

Although this was not within Vermont, the city we lived in was a fairly conservative one compared to others elsewhere within Massachusetts at the time. Yet there was never a fuss raised by anyone, ever, at least not as I can best recall anyway.

Yeah, I was a stay-at-home dad during this time period, offering to do so since she wanted to work badly and she could also bring home much leaner bacon and way more of it than myself. No shame in that either. However, when we needed more income and work was available on my end, I also worked night shifts at times during that particular year or so. Anyway, I digress.

Back on the subject, …

Maybe the youngsters at Facebook were never breastfed, either that or they forgot their experience?

Because, if they were breastfed as well as managed to remember anything from their experience, they would well know breastfeeding is not only good as this article mentions, but it is also not something to ban or punish someone for doing.

They would also know, as the mother in this article said, breastfeeding photos are not pornography. Too bad the youngsters at Facebook can’t get a life and quit playing nanny over what is clearly nothing to be shunned.

If those involved in setting and enforcing policy at Facebook were actually breastfed however, it appears they are sorely in need of a lengthy and passionate heart to heart talk with their mothers. Imagine if only their mothers were in charge of Facebook and setting sound policy on such matters?

Who is in charge at Facebook, the lawyers or what? It is high time Facebook revised its “Terms of Use” policies and rules as well as then get all your[their] monitoring nannies on the same page. It also might help if they found one’s who were breastfed or at least have them be screened for whether they find breastfeeding photos as being obscene and as pornography.

Not really wanting too put words in the mouth of my ex-wife and probably catch trouble for doing so, I would not at all be surprised if she were to come across this article or word about it she just might be heard screaming: Get over it Facebook!

— 55-year-old proud Dad to two breastfed, well-raised and now grown and healthy as well as on their own adult, kiddos (their mother deserves all the credit of course).

P.S.

When going over the rusty memories within my mind from way back then again, had found myself not being quite sure whether the breast feeding mentioned happened while our son may have still been breast feeding or later, after our daughter was born. However, whichever is the case, am fairly certain that the rest of the story is as correct as I can best recall.

*Note*: made several, mostly minor, edits for the purposes of clarification and readability; also posted an update (P.S. at bottom of post); last updated on Wednesday, February 2, 2011 at 8:18 AM (EST).

(cross-posted to Vermont Watch, here)

Yesterday, during his interview on Vermont Public Radio (VPR) VT Edition (here) and in defence of Governor Peter Shumlin‘s budget cuts to human service programs, it was rather disheartening to listen to Agency of Human Services (AHS) Secretary Doug Racine make the veiled threat of going before the state legislature to offer alternative cuts to other programs they would find even more unacceptable than the ones already offered.

This would of course merely serve as a Hobson’s choice of sorts in terms of being a way to try to get the state legislature to accept the budget cuts to human service programs offered within Governor Shumlin’s budget or else.

This was a tactic often employed by the Douglas administration and is pure Douglas 2.0 on the part of the current administration. Shame on them!

As far as making other recommendations of what to do in terms of attempting to address the FY2012 budget shortfall, my own recommendations can be found, here (via vtdigger).

However, looking on the brighter side of things, it just warms the heart to know how much as well as how hard the Governor and his administration has been working on one of his recent top priorities in ensuring that small amounts of real maple sugar will be offered with servings of Fruit and Maple Oatmeal at McDonald restaurants located within Vermont (*updated*).

How sweet it is! — save for anyone who is diabetic or whom otherwise must refrain from consuming added sugars and the like.

I was in the Statehouse last week and bumped into long-time single-payer health care advocate Dr. Deb Richter. I was very curious to get her “review” of the report by Dr William Hsiao which laid out health care reform options – particularly her sense of the value and viability of his third option, a “public-private” implementation of what he terms a “single payer” system (that would involve more than a single payer). I asked her to send her review along so that I could share it with the GMD readership.

Let me add before there are complaints, that I’m not trying to suggest to suggest that Richter or any other activist or advocate has a monopoly on gospel-truth (I, for one example, was opposed to the Richter-driven attempt to implement full coverage of ER hospital care as stand-alone reform, and was particularly troubled by the messaging campaign). Nevertheless, no one should argue that Richter isn’t the most committed, passionate, clear-headed and competent of single-payer advocates one will find anywhere.

Dr. Richter:

“Although I have some concerns about  the 3rd option, I understand why he (Dr. Hsiao) did the things he did. It is not a true single payer, that’s true. But it is a single spigot and the reimbursement rates will be uniform, making it administratively far less complicated for docs and hospitals. The Governor is likely to wrap them all into one in his plan anyway and hope for the best with the waivers.”

“I love the independent board (ED. NOTE: The ‘public-private single-payer plan’ would create a board made up of stakeholders to manage rates and other concerns, and pass those recommendations to the legislature for approval, rather than simply leave it all to the highly politicized budget process in the legislature). It has been used in the US in years past. The most famous for it’s effectiveness at cost containment in Rochester NY in the 80’s. They had an entity called a health systems agency that managed to keep costs 30% below the national average and 45% below the state average.”

“In sum, I am on board with the third option because it establishes a true health care system which makes health care a public good. One that includes everyone, is publicly financed, publicly accountable, and has an overall costs containment mechanism. This allows us to fix problems that arise.”

Richter also calls Hsiao a “genius” and indicates she has shared her concerns with him. Her underlying message was, whatever the particular analysis of any shortcomings to the Hsiao preferred model, the fact is that it would be the creation of a deliberate, functional system of health care, as opposed to the dysfunctional mess that has filled our lack-of-a-system vacuum. Any kind of reform is going to be more possible in the context of a true system, and this one – if not perfect – has a lot going for it.

To read the report, click here. For a good back and forth about the report, check out the VT Edition interview with Dr. Hsiao.

Per Governor Shumlin’s FB Feed:

We’ll have new information about Vermont Yankee at our 10:30 a.m. press conference TODAY in the Ceremonial Office.

Update from Twitter:

We are creating a #VT Yankee oversight committee to plan for its closure next year

This is actually something that should have been done years ago– an actual plan for the closing of VY?  It’s about time.

I just walked out to my mailbox and received  “Important Information Regarding Your Privacy” from Verizon Wireless.  You probably got one too.  Usually I throw these out.  You probably do to!

I guess it is lack of sunshine or some related malady, but I actually decided to read the damn thing.  Verizon was telling me that it wanted to share my call history with its “Verizon family of companies” but not “unrelated third parties”.  Wow, how nice of them.  They claimed that they want to share this personal data “to better serve (my) communications needs…”.  What great folks at Verizon!

But here is the kicker.  Verizon was not asking me to OPT IN to this wonderful opportunity to have my phone records shared.  Verizon said that if I did nothing, they would send my private information to their “family of companies”.  The Privacy Notice actually required me to OPT OUT by “calling us at  800-333-9956 and following the recorded directions.”.

That’s right.  By ignoring the letter, Verizon “… assume(s) that you give us the right to share this information among our affiliates…”.   Doing nothing will cause my Privacy Rights to disappear.  

I always thought that I retained my rights unless I consented to give my rights away.  Well dear reader, it appears that is not the case.  It appears that I yield my privacy to corporations unless I actively stop them from   taking it.

800-333-9956… CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?

While it Won’t Publicly Call for Mubarak to Step Down After Nearly 30 Years in Power — Yet — White House Already is Making Preparations to Deal With a New Post-Mubarak Era in Egypt

EGYPT ON THE BRINK? — Egyptian army soldiers take positions in front of the Giza Pyramids Monday as protesters, continuing to defy a nationwide curfew — and emboldened by a promise by military leaders not to use force against them — called for an indefinite strike to add more pressure on President Hosni Mubarak to resign. Meanwhile, in Washington, the Obama administration appears increasingly to be preparing for a new, post-Mubarak era in Egypt, even as it continues to avoid calling for the strongman to step down after almost 30 years in power. (Photo: Marco Longari/Agence France-Presse)

(Posted 5:30 a.m. EST Tuesday, February 1, 2011)

(Updated 8:45 a.m. EST Tuesday, February 1, 2011)

By JIM LOBE

Inter-Press Service

WASHINGTON — With new anti-government demonstrations expected in Cairo and other Egyptian cities Tuesday, the Obama administration appears to have concluded that the 29-year reign of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is coming to an end.

But it hopes to avoid calling publicly for Mubarak’s departure, even as U.S. officials are scrambling to engage the different parties to the newly formed opposition coalition whose nominal leader, Mohamed ElBaradei — the Nobel Peace Prize-winning former head of the United Nations’ nuclear agency — has urged Washington to be more explicit in urging the 82-year-old leader to step down.

That was the assessment of a number of independent foreign policy and Middle East specialists who met with senior administration officials at the White House Monday.

========================================

========================================

OBAMA FOCUSING ON WHO WILL TAKE OVER FROM MUBARAK, SOURCES SAY

Their meeting followed a statement issued by the White House Sunday that Obama had told several foreign leaders over the weekend that he “support[ed] an orderly transition to a government that is responsive to the aspirations of the Egyptian people,” a phrase that was repeated verbatim Monday by a second statement about a conversation between Vice President Joseph Biden and Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa.

“I got the impression that they’re very focused on what will follow Mubarak,” said one of Monday’s White House visitors who asked not to be identified because the meeting, which reportedly included deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes and two senior National Security Council staffers, was officially off the record.

“There was general agreement that no orderly transition could take place with Mubarak and that it was highly questionable whether Soleiman could be part of any credible transition, too,” the source told Inter-Press Service. He was referring to General Omar Soleiman, the former intelligence chief whom Mubarak named as his vice president on Sunday.

“A number of people commented that Soleiman was himself disdainful of the kind of democratic reforms we’ve been urging and that his accession to the presidency [if Mubarak resigned] was unlikely to diminish the ranks of the protesters,” the source said.

EGYPTIAN ARMY VOWS IT WON’T USE FORCE AGAINST PROTESTERS

Monday’s meeting came amid calls by the opposition for a general strike and a “march of a million” in Cairo today (Tuesday) and the publication by the Egyptian armed forces of a statement in which they pledged not to use force against protesters.

“To the great people of Egypt, your armed forces, acknowledging the legitimate rights of the people …have not and will not use force against the Egyptian people,” said the statement, which also “affirm[ed] that freedom of expression through peaceful means is guaranteed to everybody.”

Despite that promise, however, Internet service, which was cut last week, has not been restored in Egypt. Train service has also reportedly been canceled, presumably to prevent protesters from bolstering their ranks in Tuesday’s demonstrations.

Whether the military’s pledge, which is consistent with repeated exhortations by top Obama administration officials, including the president himself, since last Tuesday’s massive turnout for the first “Day of Rage” against the regime, will be respected remains to be seen.

PENTAGON IN CLOSE CONTACT WITH TOP EGYPTIAN MILITARY LEADERS

But it appears clear that the Pentagon, which hosted Egypt’s top military officials last week, is conveying the same message as the White House.

“I would say that the judgments in the Obama administration …are solidifying in the direction of advocating a managed transition to democratic election with the sponsorship and protection of the Egyptian armed forces,” wrote Colonel Pat Lang,  a retired former top Middle East analyst at the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) on his “Sic Semper Tyrannis” blog Monday.

“One can be sure that the lines of communication between the Pentagon and the Egyptian General Staff are wide open,” he noted, praising the selection of both Soleiman and former Air Force Commander, General Ahmed Shafik, as the government’s new prime minister.

But Mubarak’s latest efforts to save his presidency by creating a new, supposedly reform-minded government are widely seen by Mideast experts here as far too little and too late.

“This is not a government of reformers,” wrote Blake Hounshell, managing editor of ForeignPolicy.com, who worked for the Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies in Cairo.

“In fact, the reformers …won’t be in the new government,” he noted, adding that the latest calls by both the U.S. and the European Union (EU) for a “transition”, combined with the armed forces’ statement, are likely to mean “Goodbye, Hosni.”

ADMINISTRATION WALKING A FOREIGN-POLICY TIGHTROPE OVER MUBARAK

Still, the administration is strongly resistant to calling explicitly for Mubarak’s departure, although officials and independent analysts appear worried that the longer he clings to his office, the greater the risk that the current unrest will take a more radical turn.

“We can’t be seen as picking a winner. We can’t be seen as telling a leader to go,” Rhodes was quoted by ForeignPolicy.com’s “The Cable” blog as telling Tuesday’s White House visitors, a number of whom, according to the Cable’s sources, urged the administration to explicitly call for Mubarak’s departure.

“What we were trying to tell them is that change is coming, the status quo is passing away, and the question is do we want to shape that change constructively or not,” Michelle Dunne, co-chair of a bipartisan Egypt Study Group based at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told the Cable. “For a long time, a lot of people have felt that question was just too hard.”

Indeed, a number of analysts sympathetic to the opposition have urged Obama to err on the side of caution.

“[I]f there is any lesson to be learned from Tunisia, and from the U.S. policy in the region in the past few years, it is that these historic and indigenous events in Egypt must not become about the United States,” Shibley Telhami, a Brookings Institute Mideast specialist, wrote Monday on Politico.com.

Telhami, an expert on Arab public opinion, reportedly was invited to Monday’s meeting but was unable to attend.

U.S. IN ‘NO-WIN’ POSITION WITH ARAB PUBLIC OPINION REGARDLESS

“If and when the U.S. does take a forceful position, we must have no illusion about how it will be spun by many Arabs,” he warned. “Washington is likely to be seen as attempting to control events — moving to pre-empt the public will and engineering an outcome to its liking.”

But, concerned that the longer Mubarak resists the tide against him, the stronger Islamist groups — notably, the Muslim Brotherhood, whose close ties to the Palestinian Hamas have earned it the strong opposition of the powerful “Israel lobby” here — will become, the administration may indeed be forced into making its position more clear, at least privately.

“I would say if the United States could essentially weigh in privately, calling for political change, and get other Arab leaders to basically tell Mubarak that you don’t want to undermine or see destroyed all you contributed to Egypt and the last thing you can do that can help your country is to step down,” according to Richard Haass, president of the influential Council on Foreign Relations. “Time is now the enemy.”

# # #

Special Report Copyright 2011, Inter-Press Service. Republished under Creative

Commons License 3.0.

The ‘Skeeter Bites Report Copyright 2011, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved

Rep. Mark Larson (D-Burlington), lead sponsor of H.97, explains why his bill that would allow Early Childhood Educators to organize and be represented at the table when decisions are made that affect the children in their care (and their own profession) is an idea whose time has come.

(Full disclosure: I’m doing some communications consulting with VEEU/AFT on this effort)

We begin with Media Matters:

Wait for it…

Wait for it…

And…  

Now, far be it for me to critique the general public’s knowledge of geography.  When I was in high school, I had Europe memorized and now I can’t remember what’s where because a good chunk of it as changed.  So if Fox News is incapable of remember where Egypt is, it’s probably because of the recent changes in the area that have caused confusion.  

We can all understand that, right?

Except that Egypt’s existed for thousands and thousands of years.

I know Fox doesn’t care for all that learnin’ stuff that well, so I’m going to explain things from the “Egyptian History!  For Kids! site.

First, they say:

Because it is surrounded by deserts like the Land of Oz, Egypt is pretty hard to invade. So a lot of the time Egypt was at peace. But not all the time….The Egyptians also sometimes fought off invasions from the Libyans to their west, or from the Nubians to their south (and sometimes they lost to these invaders too). Around 1700 BC, there was a big invasion of Hyksos from the north.

1700 BC… that’s like… lots and lots of years ago.  Probably even before I was born.  

So a little more about Egypt:

As in the rest of Africa…

Dude.  Egypt’s in Africa?.  When the &*%@ did that happen?

Of course, as you’ve now probably figured out, that is not, in fact, Egypt that’s labeled as Egypt.  Egypt would be that unlabeled part that’s part of Africa, just to the left of (literally, not figuratively) Syria and Jordan.  The part marked as Egypt?  

That’s just an obscure little country no one would know about called… Iraq.

For what it’s worth– I don’t think this is part of some fiendish plot of some sort on the part of Fox to push some talking point or another.  I think they’ve simply become so fact-averse that they don’t bother checking.  I’m guessing this was done by an Intern (or, possibly, Tom Delay in some prison furlough program) and no one paid enough attention to actually double-check anything.  Which, I believe, illustrates the Fox News motto:

F*$! it, we’ll do it live!

The keynote speaker at the Vermont Democratic Party’s March 19th fundraising event (the “David W. Curtis Leadership Awards”) will be Minnesota Senator and SNL alum Al Franken. It was announced at the State Committee Meeting that Senator Leahy had secured the participation of the Democratic Party superstar* at the VDP’s annual event (no word yet on who the award winners will be).

Crap. Now I have to shell out the money and go.

[corrected per comments]