tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-115781202024-10-24T17:23:13.849-07:00PLURALISM; A condition of society in which different ethnic, religious, etc. groups preserve their own customs and/or hold equal powerSudihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17668396677126239786noreply@blogger.comBlogger73125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11578120.post-77420676696029691702012-01-14T09:48:00.000-08:002012-01-14T09:48:00.580-08:00

Here's a fun comparison between barking dogs and cable news...

Sudihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17668396677126239786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11578120.post-26392571925755264232012-01-13T09:07:00.000-08:002012-01-13T09:40:10.623-08:00

Rachel Maddow brought up a past incident about Mitt Romney that she says could haunt his campaign if he should get the nomination. It is old news now, but I agree with her that it goes right to the heart of his character. For when does character show up more than in our dealings with the powerless? Dogs, in their total loyalty and devotion, will take any treatment at the hands of their owners

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11578120.post-88344884976440708692009-10-30T06:55:00.001-07:002009-10-30T06:58:51.388-07:00

Why is the far right of the Republican party called the "conservative base" while the liberal end of the spectrum for Democrats is called the "left wing?" If supporters of single-payer were continually labeled the "liberal base" of the party, their ideas would command more respect in the media and the minds of the public.

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11578120.post-39215660339625166862009-10-25T08:27:00.000-07:002009-10-25T08:59:20.151-07:00

Today the headline on HuffPo is "Leaderless" and refers to the White House's lobbying against a robust public option in the Senate in the name of bipartisan cover to the Blue Dog Democrats for their upcoming election. This at a time when Republican identification is at an all-time low. The President and his cabinet are at risk of making the word "bipartisan" as contemptible a word as "

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11578120.post-43578517782988813962009-10-24T15:52:00.000-07:002009-10-24T16:00:32.974-07:00

I'll tell you a story and you guess who did it. A bunch of politicians signed up for Twitter accounts under the names of their political opponents and began sending obnoxious tweets under those false identities. When they were found out and suspended from Twitter (the act is a breach of the user agreement you must check before joining) these same guys complained that their right to free speech

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11578120.post-72254190146055303552009-10-21T06:54:00.000-07:002009-10-21T15:56:50.794-07:00

So it turns out that above ground nuclear testing of the Cold War is directly linked to increased cancer in Baby Boomers. A discovery of 85,000 baby teeth donated for a St. Louis study back in the 50's has provided the means, measuring them for the fallout element, Strontium 90, and correlating that to the lifetime cancer rates of those children. The suprise is not in the findings that, yes,

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11578120.post-60798587372935287122009-10-07T07:12:00.000-07:002009-10-07T07:20:10.887-07:00

I don't see the political debate in the US being between liberals and conservatives anymore. It is becoming clear that what passes for conservatism today is pure reactionary negativism. "I don't like my life and it's all YOUR fault!" Reminds me of how I feel once a month just before my period. The once-conservative Republican party is now the party of perpetual PMS.Conservatism in my mind is

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11578120.post-75085658068203402362009-10-05T07:15:00.000-07:002009-10-05T07:28:15.842-07:00

I'm as troubled as most thinking people are about the yellow journalism style that has become respectable mainstream reporting. Fox News is the standard bearer, but by no means the only one. Calls for a return to the "Fairness Doctrine" reflect this growing unease among liberal intellectuals. The problem with those regulations is that they bump up hard against free speech, one of the liberal

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11578120.post-53704479563144692542009-10-03T14:24:00.000-07:002012-01-10T20:59:33.567-08:00

While I was cleaning today, I accidentally ripped an old graying piece of paper stuck on the side of my refrigerator. Before throwing it away, I read it over. I kept it because of how it presented the ideas of the philosopher, Richard Rorty, on the need for storytellers. If you have a philosophical bent or a belief in the value of storytelling, read on. In his ideal of self-creation ... Rorty's

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11578120.post-59221925041088012822009-09-07T08:43:00.000-07:002009-09-07T10:16:43.491-07:00

Self-help is big business because so many of us want to improve our lives. I see this as good, but there is a dark side to the self-improvement world that can hurt most those who need the most help.I'm bothered by a tendency I see over and over in the self-help world to label and blame critics of any creed or system for their failure to be helped by that system. "Negative attitude" or "

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11578120.post-67245686157388034642009-03-13T14:44:00.001-07:002009-09-07T10:16:09.470-07:00

Thinking about the news of the day, from Madoff, to the Stewart-CNBC dustup, to my personal financial situation, I was struck by this quote of Teddy Roosevelt:The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.Roosevelt took on the monopolies and created our

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11578120.post-23950170048101429132009-03-12T06:42:00.000-07:002009-03-12T06:43:48.771-07:00

All the hoo-ha about Obama signing the spending bill despite the dreaded earmarks...Imagine your truck needs 99 $1 repairs to get back on the road to deliver your load and get paid, but the shop does 100. You think the 100th was unneccessary, but you're no mechanic. Should you refuse the repair, send the truck back to the shop and twiddle your thumbs for days to save a dollar?A veto of all for a

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11578120.post-30628997726443434572009-02-28T09:09:00.001-08:002009-09-07T09:56:13.917-07:00

The Washington Post is still trying to contain the read-rage of its subscribers over George Will’s denial of global warming. The furor has centered on some arcane bits of data from 1978. The Post is hiding behind its claim that many fact-checkers misread the data summary. The question in the debate should not focus on whether George Will or the Washington Post misrepresented the facts, but on

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11578120.post-79731683855597585022009-02-12T18:23:00.000-08:002009-09-07T10:33:33.520-07:00

I was listening to O’Reilly spin about the Helen Thomas kerfuffle that resulted from his tasteless remarks. His rhetoric was a wonderful template for insult and propaganda. To prove there is no substance but just abuse, I took out the key words and made a kind of mad-libs game with it. I have supplied some suggestions for each category, but feel free to substitute your own mad-as-hell-libs to

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11578120.post-5645046706910382382009-01-25T09:19:00.000-08:002009-09-07T10:04:11.139-07:00

The GOP “ideas” about the economy and the country have nothing to do with governing in a post 11/4 world. The country voted to change the game, and the Republican Congress keeps arguing that we must adhere to the rules of the old one. It’s as if Bush had a baseball team, and the people voted for Obama because he promised them basketball, and the GOP is still insisting that we enforce the

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11578120.post-45624644078452589162008-12-28T07:46:00.001-08:002008-12-28T08:08:07.630-08:00

Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight is working on a fabulous citizen resource that I think is going to take away a lot of the relative anonymity of congressional voting and drive a boom in blogosphere citizen-journalist awareness of Congress. He is working on a cartogram, a kind of map that shows every single congressional district so that voting records will be immediately available. Much more

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11578120.post-16611342566536924892008-12-22T09:36:00.000-08:002009-03-14T16:19:26.441-07:00

The web is buzzing with the news that a Saudi judge has denied a divorce plea on behalf of an 8-year-old girl married without her knowledge to a 58-year-old man by her father in exchange for a $5000 dowry - apparently, he needed the cash. This is not merely a Saudi or Islamic crime against a girl-child’s right to liberty. Women in virtually all traditional societies are sold to men who pay “

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11578120.post-67732873293830516912008-11-05T12:43:00.000-08:002009-03-14T16:20:27.262-07:00

Palin kept saying the clothes bought for her would be donated to charity after the election. However, it now seems that some of those clothes have been 'lost.' 'Lost' as in once having found their way into the Governor's Mansion closet, they are now unable to remember how they got there or which way Neiman Marcus is from Alaska.What I want to know is which charity will be receiving the clothes

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11578120.post-57768849930288859892008-11-02T18:03:00.000-08:002008-11-02T18:05:58.735-08:00

Democrat or Republican, if you find yourself unable to vote or confused about something at your polling place, you can call these people. Election Protection is non-partisan and will help you deal with whatever comes your way so that everyone's vote can be counted.866-OUR-VOTE

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11578120.post-72052981444232294912008-11-02T06:59:00.000-08:002009-03-14T16:21:14.904-07:00

The clock is running out on the "permanent Republican majority" so sweepingly orchestrated over the last generation. This grandiose plan resembles the rise of every tyranny in history, combining public rhetoric that idealizes tribalism with backroom powergrabs that care nothing for anyone outside the inner cadre of rich and powerful influence peddlers. Whoever wins the presidency on Tuesday,

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11578120.post-31646869737202978272008-10-31T06:47:00.000-07:002008-10-31T07:22:59.187-07:00

All this talk about Obama being a socialist for wanting the wealthy to pay higher taxe rates than those in the middle ignores the realities of society. After all, it was Abraham Lincoln himself who introduced a tiered income tax to pay for the Civil War "... with taxable incomes up to $10,000 taxed at a 3 percent rate and higher incomes taxed at 5 percent." (From the US treasury website) Higher

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11578120.post-21168569091303531422008-10-22T21:39:00.000-07:002008-10-22T21:41:43.860-07:00

McCain and Palin crying foul on Obama wanting to redistribute the wealth. But since Reagan, this is just what their party has been doing.From Daily Kos:Between 1983 and 2004 the net worth dramatically shifted as follows:The top 1% net worth went from $8,315,000 to $14,786,000 - a 77.8% change.The next 4% net worth went from $1,375,000 to $2,645,000 - a 92.3% change.The bottom 40% net worth went

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11578120.post-49624735276484992632008-10-15T17:03:00.000-07:002008-10-15T17:06:30.738-07:00

A great McCain/Obama debate parody written in a time warp 40 years ago for the old Batman TV series. Were television audiences smarter back then? Check it out and have a laugh before the main event tonight.Watch it here.

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11578120.post-85017850686312805102008-10-12T13:23:00.000-07:002008-10-12T13:25:37.309-07:00

HuffPo reports that RedState co-founder Joshua Trevino wrote in his blog that he filled in his CA absentee ballot intending to vote a straight Republican ticket but in the end he couldn't vote for McCain. He wrote in Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana.How about that for a kick in the teeth to McCain!

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11578120.post-23035421515606083382008-10-11T07:08:00.000-07:002008-10-11T07:17:51.538-07:00

The legislative report that Palin abused her power in trying to get Trooper Wooten fired has some pretty damning conclusions about her character. Many of her claims described Wooten as dangerous, that he had threatened her and her family, and that she was afraid. The investigator, Branchflower, concludes:I conclude that such claims of fear were not bona fide and were offered to provide cover

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0