{"id":1522,"date":"2005-07-06T12:15:27","date_gmt":"2005-07-06T16:15:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.test.bradblog.com\/?p=1522"},"modified":"2007-09-20T10:55:22","modified_gmt":"2007-09-20T17:55:22","slug":"brad-bloggers-taking-action-making-the-news-and-making-a-difference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/?p=1522","title":{"rendered":"BRAD BLOGGERS Taking Action, Making The News and Making a Difference&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We&#8217;ve said it before&#8230;and say it almost everytime we speak anywhere publicly in fact&#8230;but if you need any more proof that the actions of one person <i>can<\/i> make a difference, allow us to offer just a few more recent examples of the actions taken by just a few of the good BRAD BLOGGERS out there.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;re sure we could offer loads of similar examples from several score more of you, but these two folks have jumped out of late and we&#8217;re happy to add to the noise they&#8217;ve already made.<\/p>\n<p>Last week, a frequent <a href=\"http:\/\/www.BradBlog.com\">BRAD BLOG<\/a> commenter (whose name we&#8217;ll leave out, since we didn&#8217;t get express permission to mention it &#8212; they can take credit for here in comments if they are so inclined) made a bit of news after sending a letter of complaint to the Tennessee Department of Health complaining about Sen. Bill Frist&#8217;s videotaped (and incorrect) &#8220;diagnosis&#8221; of Terri Schiavo a few months back.<\/p>\n<p>The letter, apparently, has triggered a review of Frist&#8217;s actions, according to the return letter received from the Director of Investigations for Health Related Boards.<\/p>\n<p>All we can say is: Well done!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ucomics.com\/tomtoles\/2004\/05\/11\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/Images\/ShielaLeavit_Protest_061705.jpg\" hspace=\"6\" vspace=\"3\" border=\"0\" align=\"right\"><\/a>And another <a href=\"http:\/\/www.BradBlog.com\">BRAD BLOG<\/a> commenter, Sheila Leavitt, has been bravely making noise for quite a while. She seems to have little fear when it comes to speaking out rather publicly and for that alone (sadly enough) she deserves a round of applause in this chilling day and age.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s her on the right <a href=\"http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/photo\/050619\/photos_pl_afp\/050619022926_ly6d5azb_photo0\/print;_ylt=AsVsrCob3fmS1pcFbXR81fYKO7gF;_ylu=X3oDMTA3bXNtMmJ2BHNlYwNzc3M-\" target=\"_blank\">as photographed by AFP<\/a> on the day Conyers was delivering the Downing Street letter to the White House.<\/p>\n<p>Today, Sheila made the news again as she was featured in <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bostonherald.com\/columnists\/view.bg?articleid=92630\" target=\"_blank\">a great <i>Boston Herald<\/i> column<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;re not certain, but it may be her car that caught the attention of the <i>Herald<\/i> reporter \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p>In an email exchange we had today, Sheila told us, &#8220;My medium is cardboard, just as yours is words in the computer.  Each of us only needs to do what we do best, and do it with love and persistence, don&#8217;t you think?  Eventually, maybe things will get better.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Yes, we think maybe eventually it will.<\/p>\n<p>Since the <i>Herald<\/i> site is subscription only, here&#8217;s a few more grafs than usual from today&#8217;s article on Sheila, some of the thugs she&#8217;s faced down in the course of bravely speaking out, and, of course&#8230;a must-see EXCLUSIVE BRAD BLOG photograph of&#8230;Sheila&#8217;s car&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<div class=\"media\">You could call Sheila Leavitt a nutty, annoying, unrelenting Newton leftie who home-schools the kids and raises chickens to share eggs with neighbors, not to eat. She is, of course, a vegetarian. <\/p>\n<p>I see her as one of those rare people who puts their convictions on parade, then faces uneasy consequences. Like the beefy, mad, middle-aged guy who followed her around the Esplanade yesterday, before dawn, tearing down her &#8220;Impeach Bush&#8221;&#8216; posters as fast as she put them up. Or the trucker she said rear-ended her at a Mass Pike toll booth, sending her head into the steering wheel of her &#8217;88 Toyota Corolla with bumper stickers saying &#8220;War is barbaric&#8221; and &#8220;Support our troops&#8230;Draft Jenna &#038; Barbara,&#8221; as in Bush.<br \/>\n&#8230;<br \/>\nWell, you should&#8217;ve seen Sheila Leavitt&#8217;s in-your-face Toyota yesterday as this 54-year-old trained physician and mother of four in sundress and flip-flops did her &#8220;one-person protest parade&#8221; through the Back Bay and South End.<\/p>\n<p>She&#8217;d spray-painted the car black like a hearse. On its roof, a cardboard Uncle Sam lay in state atop a black-and-white-painted cardboard coffin. &#8220;Fake Elections. Fake President. Real Lies. Real War,&#8221; the coffin read. &#8220;Got Kids?&#8221; read another sign. &#8220;I want yours for cannon fodder.&#8221; And another, the Lily Tomlin quote: &#8220;No matter how cynical I get, I just can&#8217;t keep up.&#8221;<br \/>\n&#8230;<br \/>\n&#8220;I like the car,&#8221; said Jack Davis, 38, passing by it yesterday. &#8220;Why are all these young kids going over there to a war we can&#8217;t win?&#8221;<br \/>\n&#8230;<br \/>\nLeavitt apparently is a once-regular suburbanite who&#8217;s been radicalized and can&#8217;t just go quietly anymore. She&#8217;s thought Bush should be impeached since the war began. &#8220;He lied about it.&#8221;<br \/>\n&#8230;<br \/>\nNow she&#8217;s convinced GOP operatives stole the election and that the press has ignored it.<\/p>\n<p>I think she&#8217;s wrong, by the way &#8211; about the press, and Bush stealing the election and lying. To me, he heard what he wanted to hear, and then botched things big-time. Yet some new polls put me in the minority, Leavitt in the majority, though she&#8217;s the first middle-age mother I&#8217;ve seen willing to drive around town making a spectacle of her ire. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I can&#8217;t understand why everybody doesn&#8217;t, why they&#8217;re just sitting on their butts watching fireworks,&#8221; she said as four jet fighters zoomed by over head. &#8220;My God, real people are being blown up.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>So Sheila Leavitt made yet another sign just for the fireworks set. &#8220;July 4, 2005, as we watch from our chairs Bush&#8217;s Bombs bursting in air, should we feel patriotic, or merely psychotic?&#8221;<\/p><\/div>\n<p>And now, as promised&#8230;Sheila&#8217;s now-infamous car&#8230;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/Images\/ShielaLeavit_Car_070405.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">\n<p>Sheila gave us a few more details today, &#8220;On either end of the coffin it says &#8216;Impeach Bush&#8217;; on the top of Sam&#8217;s hat it says &#8216;After Downing Street?&#8217;.  The graph on the Sam-Mobile&#8217;s flank is from the Mitofsky report analysis by Josh Mittledorf et al.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>And, if I&#8217;m not mistaken, I believe Sheila told us some months ago that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.BradBlog.com\">The BRAD BLOG<\/a> was mentioned somewhere on the vehicle as well. Don&#8217;t know if it&#8217;s still there or not. Or if our mind is even more clouded with delusional grandeur than usual. But either way, we couldn&#8217;t be prouder!<\/p>\n<p>Those letters, those emails, those protest signs&#8230;they <i>all<\/i> make a difference!<\/p>\n<p>Keep making noise out there! This democracy is <i>not<\/i> going to save itself! But, of course, many of you already knew that!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We&#8217;ve said it before&#8230;and say it almost everytime we speak anywhere publicly in fact&#8230;but if you need any more proof that the actions of one person can make a difference, allow us to offer just a few more recent examples of the actions taken by just a few of the good BRAD BLOGGERS out there. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1522\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}