This is a profile of someone I've neither met, nor have any particular liking or disliking of. It may well be that others here have had dealings with him; would welcome your comments thereof. But this fellow went from trying to design a nuclear bomb all the way to unlocking the secrets of voter lists - so it's worth a look (after the jump).
Not something I took notice of before - but being in politics can wear oneself down ...
YOUNGER-OLDER BROTHERS? - former UK prime minister Tony Blair and New York mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Gadzooks - well, why not stop in for a look at news items outside the headlines, in the arts and sciences; foreign news that generates little notice in the US media and ....well, just plain whimsy.....
The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy,
and after all our most pleasing responsibility.
To cherish what remains of it
and to foster its renewal is our only hope.
I apologize. My belly, my bloated body, only belatedly do I understand. It never was in the genes. The abundant meat that weighed heavily on my bones was not caused by my chromosomal structure; it was piled on by Congressional and corporately funded campaigns. Mommy and the husband who helped make me, much to my embarrassment, today I acknowledge my error. I was spoon-fed, and not by the two of you. Legislators, Lobbyists, and big businesses that place misleading labels on chemically cooked up cuisines put corn fillers on my every plate. I chowed down. My little body bulged out. From the inside out, I grew bigger and wider.
(BREAKING! Prop. 8 overturned!! - promoted by puzzled)
As you look at today's Prop 8 ruling, I want you to think back a few weeks to the Massachusetts Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) rulings for a bit of legal logic that will make a huge difference as this case moves through any appeals process.
What I want you to think about are two moderately obscure concepts: "strict scrutiny" and "rational basis". The difference between the two will tell us how hard Prop 8 will be to defend, and we'll quickly walk through what you need to know, right here, right now.
A new study conducted by UCLA, and to be published in the journal Cancer Research has shown that cancer cells absorb and metabolize fructose much differently than glucose.
On the eve of President Obama's birth date, thoughts turn to his time in office. As a man, countless admire the person, Barack Obama, and yet, feel that they cannot fully celebrate his performance. Hope has all but disappeared. Audacity appears vanquished. Still, some are sure that there is reason to believe. People ponder potentials not fully realized. Prospects for change loom large. Several may be shared in the sentiments offered on this auspicious occasion.
Dreams have yet to die. The desire to write to the President on the anniversary of his birth or converse with him personally is strong. Most will only be able to meet Mister Obama circuitously. Nonetheless, millions will try to talk to the man in the White House. People, such as esteemed Educator, Doctor Cornel West has addressed the President profoundly though the airwaves. "One of America's most provocative public intellectuals," West speaks of what is needed for a genuine success. The Princeton Professor ponders aloud; if only President Obama advanced classlessness.
... I couldn't help but recall Monday nights from my youth when Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In would come on.
In those 1968 pre-cable TV days: you could come in to school the next day, ask a classmate "Hey, what did you think of "Laugh-In" last night?" - and get a response 4-out-of-5 times, or else hear "Dang, I had school band practice!" as a lament. Some thirty-seven years after it left the air in May 1973: it's worth a quick look back (after the jump).
Well, it's been a while since I've done a QotD, and since Rachel was here a couple of weeks ago (or so, hell if I can remember), and dropped a topic in my lap, I figured it's time to type some gibberish put up a Question.
Since I've already given away the ending, I'm not going to spend a lot of time typing a bunch of senseless crap leading up to the Question. I'm more interested in the answers and the conversation than I am reading my own blatherings.
I am so fucking sick to death of the left accusing the right of the most heinous shit possible. I hate it. The left constantly accuses the right of being fascistic, evil, warmongers. Inhuman monsters. These church-going neighbors of yours, who want, like you, to build a decent life for themselves and their children, are demeaned and dehumanized and rhetorically spat upon by the left. It's disgusting. It's revolting. And it undermines the integrity of your political positions, as well as the integrity of the progressive movement.
It alienates the very people... the stupid sheeple... that you need to reach.
Sometimes images from the past fade ..... except when they don't:
DIRECT DESCENDANTS? - Canadian film star Keanu Reeves and Russian composer Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky.
Roll over Beethoven, and tell ..... you-know-who to stop in for a look at news items outside the headlines, in the arts and sciences; foreign news that generates little notice in the US media and ....well, just plain whimsy.....
On June 27, 2002, the US Supreme Court rendered a verdict on a case brought by Lindsay Earls, a member of the Cherokee Nation, whom I refer to as a great American heroine. Even though she is an Oklahoma resident, her case received a great deal of coverage in my region (Vermont/New Hampshire border) as she was by then a student at Dartmouth College (whose medical center I am employed at).
I wrote about this several years ago; alas, several links which I cite here no longer work. But here first is her story of courage, followed by what she is doing today.
In the political world, doppelgangers seem to be more the norm than ever. Exhibit A:
SEPARATED at BIRTH - Politico's Mike Allen and Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.)
Our men in Washington, indeed. For now: stop in for a look at news items outside the headlines, in the arts and sciences; foreign news that generates little notice in the US media and ....well, just plain whimsy.....
I grew up in the 70s and 80s and when I was a tiny Karmafish I loved baseball and the New York Yankees. Yes! The Yanks! I loved Billy Martin and Reggie Jackson and Thurmon Munson (I cried) and Micky Rivers. That team, the '77 team, filled my world. I was a kid and I followed that season like I have no other. I loved the drama and pathos of that year. I loved the fights between Martin and Steinbrenner and Martin and Jackson. It all seemed so vital at the time. Baseball just seemed a vital, normal, and an everyday part of the world. We played it in backyards and in the street. Some of us were Yankees fans and some of us rooted for the Sox, but when I was a kid we all watched baseball and cared about it. Coming out of the Connecticut burbs at the time it was as natural as breathing. All of my friends followed the game.
Once you label me you negate me. ~ Søren Aabye Kierkegaard [Danish Philosopher 1813 to 1855]
The much acclaimed Roland Martin, a Cable News Network Analyst, reacted to a partial report. Apparently, Mister Martin, acknowledged for his insightful and provocative assessments, heard but a bit of an edited video and responded on a national stage. Admittedly, barely informed, and unaware of the background, the CNN Correspondent spoke of his antipathy for what he defined as a racist reality. The frequently featured Journalist offered his fervent judgment of Federal Department of Agriculture Director Shirley Sherrod's actions, none of which occurred. On Tuesday, July 20, 2010, late in the afternoon, given an opportunity to listen to and speak with the object of his scorn, Shirley Sherrod, the righteous Roland Martin refused to open his mind and ears. Mister Martin avowed racism is racism regardless of when it occurs or if it is repeated years later. The consequence, tears and fears flourished. These were my own.
Commencement speeches were invented largely in the belief
that outgoing college students should never be released into the world
until they have been properly sedated.
If there is one thing that I have learned from reading the gibberish of on-line political activists, it is that political labels have become pretty much meaningless. Liberal Fascists, no less than Conservative Hippie Zionists, have stretched the meaning of political labels out of any and all proportion. In so many instances, rather than arguing the merits of whatever case they wish to make, Progressive Right-Wing Socialists simply fling around ad hominems like confetti in order to delegitimize their vegetarian opponents. Hippie Liberal Communists, from across the political spectrum, love to suggest that Left-Wing Progressive Fascists are not merely wrong, but bad, bad people. Progressive Conservatives, much like their Right-Wing Liberal opponents, constantly argue that the other side is just filled to overflowing with Anti-American Warmongering Pacifists.
The Elizabeth Warren "Collapse of the Middle Class" video from 2007 has shown up in severaldiaries lately, as the debate over who will head the new Consumer Protection Agency begins. I have no intention of re-litigating her case here, but would like to address some of the substance of her remarks, in light of economic developments since she made them.
She outlines the increased pressures on families in the past thirty years. Income for adult males has actually decreased in inflation-adjusted dollars, and though she doesn't give the reason, I'd be willing to bet the loss of union jobs, and offshoring of manufacturing has resulted in reduced earning opportunities. She also notes that thirty years ago, it was possible to enter the middle class with only a high school diploma (my note: via union jobs, again) but now it requires a college education, the costs of which are borne by the individual, not the taxpayers as a whole.
In an age, when nature is besieged and the political landscape blighted, and one stands, stoop shouldered and wincing into the howling wasteland of epic-scale idiocy extant in the era, a solitary person can feel lost ... marooned inside an increasingly isolated sense of self. Whether urban, suburban, or rural dwelling, the sense of alienation, for an individual, is profound ... as discernible to the eye as the constellations of foreclosure signs stippling overgrown front lawns across the land ... as hidden as the abandoned dreams within.
The fraying ligature of the landscape of the United States reveals an inner geography of alienation and anomie. Living on the island of Manhattan, I daily negotiate an urban layout of practical, but identity-decimating grids -- a cityscape of harsh, inhuman right angles ... a geography that renders street encounters abrupt, curt and intrusive.
After a time, one begins, by reflex, to buffer oneself against such intrusions, withdrawing inward ... becoming a self-enclosed, walking fortress, shielding oneself from the degradations of these impersonal affronts (that feel altogether personal) -- with I-Pods, Blackberries, and other vestments attendant to the muttered prayers of the self-absorbed.
While above the street -- corporate towers -- that are steel and concrete kingdoms of blind, willful ascension -- blot the skyline ... these structures flee upward, as if to escape the implications of life lived at street level and sharing in the consequences of decisions made within their sterile, insular sanctums of power and cupidity.
Nothing like the separation between the distant past and the present, huh? Well ... not so fast ....
DIRECT DESCENDANTS? - English TV star Ricky Gervais and French composer Claude Debussy.
Keep this crazy train rolling - and stop in for a look at news items outside the headlines, in the arts and sciences; foreign news that generates little notice in the US media and ....well, just plain whimsy.....
The topic below was originally posted on Sunday, July 11th, on my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal.
I've been a loyal Democrat and devoted liberal my entire life. Even as a teenager when Reagan was popular with my generation, intuitively I knew his vision was wrong. So I worked my butt off for the party and registered voters. I did this on faith that the Democratic Party would be a vehicle for economic and social justice.
Yet a lingering disenchantment with the party always lurked like a nagging conscious and whispered doubts in my ear. Personal friends from my youth may recall how I often quipped that Republicans were the party of evil and Democrats the party of gutlessness. Alas, our winner take all system reinforces the two party duopoly, so I saw no viable alternative. And perhaps there never will be.
The books that help you most are those which make you think the most.
The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading;
but a great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought,
deep freighted with truth and beauty.
I have to work fast over the next two days to get you this story, but it is a good one.
We are all aware of the Federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), championed by former Congressman Bob "I'm A Libertarian If It Doesn't Involve Your Penis Or Vagina" Barr; we now have two rulings, released on the same day by the same Federal judge, that will render the Act moot, if they're either upheld throughout the appeals process...or if the Obama Administration decides to end that appeals process right now.
There's a lot of ground to cover, and time is short.
In the early-mid 90s, I was going through trauma. I had recently moved to Phoenix, where I was managing the Borders Cafe on Camelback Road... and I was sad.
Bumper Stickers & MORE
