Monday 30 January 2012
The point is that successful companies — or, at any rate, companies that make a large contribution to a nation’s economy — don’t exist in isolation. Prosperity depends on the synergy between companies, on the cluster, not the individual entrepreneur. But the current Republican worldview has no room for such considerations. From the G.O.P.’s perspective, it’s all about the heroic entrepreneur, the John Galt, I mean Steve Jobs-type “job creator” who showers benefits on the rest of us and who must, of course, be rewarded with tax rates lower than those paid by many middle-class workers. Paul Krugman ☀
The Founders’ True Foresight ☀
The Right’s neo-Confederate assault on the Constitution also comes at a time when innovative national solutions are desperately needed for the American people, both to respond to the economic recession caused by the Wall Street crash of 2008 and to address long-term problems that threaten the welfare of the nation, from the health-care crisis to a decaying infrastructure to cataclysmic climate change.
To take on these pressing national challenges through unified national action would be precisely what George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and James Madison had in mind.
I must say that among educated people, politics occupies far too great a proportion of their time…Questions of higher spirit cannot even be compared to the sort of blinking frivolity of politics. The ultimate problems of life and death show the colossal nature of this difference even more…People are prepared to stuff their heads with anything, and to talk on any subject, while actually blocking off any true contemplation of the [whole] issue. This is the reason for the increased pettiness of our society, and our concentration on the small and the irrelevant. Alexander Solzhenitsyn ☀
But Joe Paterno’s sin was not apathy. Joe Paterno participated—consciously or not—in a cover-up and a conspiracy. And in the pile of good things and the pile of bad things that is Joe Paterno’s life, covering up child rape is a pretty weighty “bad thing.” Far weightier, I believe, than the good that was his football coaching record. To define and defend what Joe Paterno did as “apathy” is to erase the victims, to ignore the very real consequences of very real actions. Saying, “If it is true that Joe Paterno is a bad man for not doing more (and maybe it is) …” is to allow equivocation where there should be none. Apathy isn’t what makes Paterno’s actions despicable. Over the course of more than 3,500 days, Paterno actively decided not to say anything, not to follow up and to continue to allow Sandusky access to Penn State facilities, knowing he had never been formally charged with his abuse of children. Paterno chose silence over action, when he knew that his action could stop sexual abuse. Why I Am Not Joe Paterno ☀
Probably the most horrifying scientific lecture ever ☀
The Professor wanted to make his case in the most convincing style possible. He indicated that, in his view, no normal person would find the experience of giving a lecture to a large audience to be erotically stimulating or erection-inducing. He had, he said, therefore injected himself with papaverine in his hotel room before coming to give the lecture, and deliberately wore loose clothes (hence the track-suit) to make it possible to exhibit the results. He stepped around the podium, and pulled his loose pants tight up around his genitalia in an attempt to demonstrate his erection.
At this point, I, and I believe everyone else in the room, was agog. I could scarcely believe what was occurring on stage. But Prof. Brindley was not satisfied. He looked down sceptically at his pants and shook his head with dismay. ‘Unfortunately, this doesn’t display the results clearly enough’. He then summarily dropped his trousers and shorts, revealing a long, thin, clearly erect penis. There was not a sound in the room. Everyone had stopped breathing.
But the mere public showing of his erection from the podium was not sufficient. He paused, and seemed to ponder his next move. The sense of drama in the room was palpable. He then said, with gravity, ‘I’d like to give some of the audience the opportunity to confirm the degree of tumescence’. With his pants at his knees, he waddled down the stairs, approaching (to their horror) the urologists and their partners in the front row. As he approached them, erection waggling before him, four or five of the women in the front rows threw their arms up in the air, seemingly in unison, and screamed loudly. The scientific merits of the presentation had been overwhelmed, for them, by the novel and unusual mode of demonstrating the results.
We need to let President Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and my dear friend the chairman of the Democrat National Committee, we need to let them know that Florida ain’t on the table. Take your message of equality of achievement, take your message of economic dependency, take your message of enslaving the entrepreneurial will and spirit of the American people somewhere else. You can take it to Europe, you can take it to the bottom of the sea, you can take it to the North Pole, but get the hell out of the United States of America. Allen West (via sarahlee310) ☀
Gingrich: No role model for students? ☀
In a 1995 profile for Vanity Fair, author Gail Sheehy discovered that Gingrich financed his own education largely via the hard work of this then-wife. And when things got tight, finding a job was not high on his to-do list. Sheehy wrote that Gingrich turned first to his adoptive father for help, and then to his biological one:
Newt, who avoided Vietnam with student and marriage deferments, resisted taking a job. During his college years, Newt called up his father and stepmother to ask for financial help. His stepmother, Marcella McPherson, can still hear his exact words: “I do not want to go to work. I want all my time for my studies… Bob Gingrich told me he will not help me one bit. So I wondered, would you people help me?” Big Newt began sending him monthly checks.
Dolores Adamson, Gingrich’s district administrator from 1978 to 1983, remembers, “Jackie put him all the way through school. All the way through the PhD …. He didn’t work.”
I had to leave a job I loved in my early career for fear of being found out. For the first half of my life I was closeted so I could keep my job. I lived in a small community that did not accept GLBT people as teachers, coaches or principals. After moving to Denver in the late ’80s, I sat in a hospital room with a gay friend (who was a terrific elementary teacher). He had been cornered by several young people who were trolling for a gay person to beat up. They beat him with a baseball bat and kicked him in the head until his eyes were so swollen he couldn’t see. For three days he was in a coma. I stayed with him until the swelling went down in his face and he wasn’t afraid someone would come back and kill him. He was a small man, and one of the kindest people I have ever known. His father was a Baptist preacher, and he was excommunicated from the family (with the exception of his sister). He thought moving to a bigger city would help. The charge for nearly killing Mark was reduced to a misdemeanor. Those who beat him paid a $50 fine and were turned back out on the street to harm another day. Although animal abusers still don’t receive harsh enough punishments, you can get a lighter penalty for committing a hate crime against gays, even today. We are often treated as less than animals by those who are there to protect the innocent. That is the life we live, rather than the one God intended for us. For some of you, this is preaching to the choir. For others, I am glad you can’t relate. No one should have to understand it. Why do gays want the right to marry? Simple: freedom (Support the Mayors for the Freedom to Marry) ☀
Mitt Romney would rank among richest presidents ever ☀
Just how rich is Mitt Romney? Add up the wealth of the last eight presidents, from Richard Nixon to Barack Obama. Then double that number. Now you’re in Romney territory.
Sunday 29 January 2012
I could harp on forever as to why we need to push the little ones in to falling in love with the written word, but let’s draw to a close with this. The written word has a huge advantage over what we say. By that I mean the writer gets to convey exactly what they really want, exactly how they want to convey it. And one of its many and appealing secrets is that it allows us the luxury of consideration, of almost sounding better than we really are. Of course it’s still entirely us but I can’t tell you how many published authors I have met who can barely string two words together. Give them a keyboard and they can take on the world. Chris Evans ☀
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