Open Thread
April 27, 2010 archive
Apr 27 2010
Late Night Karaoke
Apr 27 2010
Have you ever heard of Wilbert Rideau?
Wilbert Rideau who once offered “Conversations with the Dead” has been in the news a few times over the years. This week on CBS Sunday Morning he was back in the news and sounding so much better.
“My name is Wilbert Rideau. And I guess the best way to describe me is, I’m a very, very fortunate man.”
If few people recognize Wilbert Rideau as he jogs through the streets of his neighborhood, they may soon. This week, Rideau’s memoir, “In the Place of Justice,” will be released.
It’s likely to get people talking…
“I guess I should have been dead, and I’m alive, and I’m here to tell you about it – and I’m still amazed,” he said.
The title of the segment was “Life After Death Row.” Wilbert Rideau was a death row inmate for a murder he committed on February 16th, 1961 and he lived to talk about it. Because of that short period of time where the Supreme Court suspended the death penalty, he was spared and his sentence commuted to life. 44 years after a viscous and stupid act that took a woman’s life, he was set free.
But 44 years was not rehabilitation enough for governor after governor. Even “Life Magazine” calling Wilbert Rideau “the most rehabilitated prisoner in America” was not enough for the privileged elected. In 1990 Governor Buddy Roemer said, “Frankly given the nature of that crime, I’m not sure his debt’s been paid.”
Apr 27 2010
Senate Subcommittee: The Role of Credit Rating Agencies
I saw Krugman on the TVeee over the Weekend. Something he said, made me think the Goldman Email Gate, was a big Mis-Direction.
So I decided to follow up on that hunch; I took to the Intertubes, and began to follow his trail of breadcrumbs …
Berating the Raters
By Paul Krugman, NYTimes — April 25, 2010
No, the e-mail messages you should be focusing on are the ones from employees at the credit rating agencies, which bestowed AAA ratings on hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of dubious assets, nearly all of which have since turned out to be toxic waste. And no, that’s not hyperbole: of AAA-rated subprime-mortgage-backed securities issued in 2006, 93 percent – 93 percent! – have now been downgraded to junk status.
What those e-mails reveal is a deeply corrupt system. And it’s a system that financial reform, as currently proposed, wouldn’t fix.
Apr 27 2010
“We think those few extra words are worth the effort.”
I’m on the levees.org email list and I got a message from them today:
Thanks to you, Levees.org was featured in the New York Times!
The article focused on our success in encouraging national media to report accurately on the man-made causes of the metro New Orleans flood.
And making the true story about the flooding as common knowledge as ‘the sun rising in the east’ will help the region recover.
This fine piece of journalism by reporter Brian Stelter greatly increases the reach of Levees.org message!
And it gives evidence that your ongoing efforts are paying off.
And that’s good because when the American people understand that the flooding was a federal responsibility, they may understand that rebuilding is a federal duty.
Thank you for your support!
We’re winning!
Sandy Rosenthal
Founder, Levees.org
levees.org
Here’s the New York Times story.
Apr 27 2010
Taking out the Trash
I can recall my grandmother carefully peeling the lables from cans after cutting to bottom off and then crushing it flat. It was a habit I guess, born out of the war effort.
http://www.straightdope.com/co…
Apr 27 2010
Boobquake: Baseline 310
Ok, the baseline standard for the test is set. There are 310 earthquakes on record for the morning of Boobquake. Surely we can triple that number. I would love to bring it to a thousand!
Lets see which is stronger the prophesies or the breastesies.
From the creator of Boobquake on Facebook.
“Many women who do not dress modestly … lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes,” Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi was quoted as saying by Iranian media. Sedighi is Tehran’s acting Friday prayer leader.
I have a modest proposal.
Sedighi claims that not dressing modestly causes earthquakes. If so, we should be able to test this claim scientifically. You all remember the homeopathy overdose?
Time for a Boobqauke.
On Monday, April 26th, I will wear the most cleavage-showing shirt I own. Yes, the one usually reserved for a night on the town. I encourage other female skeptics to join me and embrace the supposed supernatural power of their breasts. Or short shorts, if that’s your preferred form of immodesty. With the power of our scandalous bodies combined, we should surely produce an earthquake. If not, I’m sure Sedighi can come up with a rational explanation for why the ground didn’t rumble. And if we really get through to him, maybe it’ll be one involving plate tectonics.
So, who’s with me? I may be a D cup, but that will probably only produce a slight tremor on its own. If you’ll be joining me on twitter, use the tag #boobquake!
Apr 27 2010
Guernica: April 26, 1937
“I urged him [Adolf Hitler] to give support [to Franco] under all circumstances, firstly, in order to prevent the further spread of communism in that theater and, secondly, to test my young Luftwaffe at this opportunity in this or that technical respect”
Herman Goring
Apr 27 2010
Sunday Train: Kasich Lies About Strickland’s 3C Victory, 3C Moves Ahead
Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence
There was recently a fight over the 3C starter line for Ohio’s High Speed Rail system, which Governor Strickland won … and the presumptive Republican nominee for Governor took this position:
… GOP challenger John Kasich, who said money awarded to Ohio for the 3C rail project could be better spent on Ohio roads and highways.
These are High Speed Rail funds. Arguing that they could be “better spent on Ohio roads and highways” is a blatant effort to mislead Ohio’s voters into thinking that this $400m will stay in state if Republican sabotage of the project succeeds.
And it seems that coverage has buried one of the ledes in this story – getting the presumptive Republican nominee on the record as a slimy politician willing to mislead the electorate in his efforts to sabotage investment in Ohio transportation infrastructure.
Apr 27 2010
When is an INSULT actually important?
I’m going to repost a comment I made at Daily Kos from someone who just didn’t get it (at least, the perspective I am coming from as one gay man, less the entire LGBT community), and since certain much nicer thread of conversations have been had also at Docudharma this same fine day, I thought it would deserve a little reiteration:
I’ve stopped talking to people who are all about Obama at all (with yes this one exception) or organization based ideology based group politics as the primary driver.
I have given up and come to the conclusion that you will do what you will do. To me, your hearts (plural, not personal) are hard and it’s all about political support.
The past has shown us (that is, all us GLBT people) that political support, given freely, is ignored and taken for granted. We give political support, we are ignored. Bitch and we are lectured to as if we are children, told that we are whining and wanting a pony.
So, our hearts have to grow hard in turn.
If what is wanted to do is find a way to condescend to gay people and make them subservient to related but not necessarily consonant political demands, well, mission accomplished, but if that makes one feel good, I’ve concluded that people can do it without me. It’s obnoxious, though. It’s homophobic, and irritating enough to make some people give up and say, “whatever, go away”. And I mean that as a phenomenon and as a syndrome.
To dangle other issues and expected support for singular people and personalities and political parties like a carrot using openly suggested homophobia (like making things about an entire class of people in exchange for something else one wants), the price is too high. For me, anyway. I will not eat shit to please some person dangling a hallucinogenic carrot at me for a reward.
If I need someone, that need is not high enough to make me cringe and say, “yes, ok, I’ll do whatever you want, just support us”. Because it’s craven.
I’ll do without your support if that is the price — that I and every other member of a suspect class has to please you as the price. I’ll stop talking to you totally. And less this small exception, that’s exactly what I’ve done. And I’d suggest every other gay person on God’s Green Planet Earth do the same. We will make progress when we are no longer treated like children and rewarded with beads and trinkets.
Just my general philosophy. Not to say all or even most gay people agree, us being, you know, very different people.
Now, of course, I have to (as if I have to paint an obvious picture as if finger painting with colors) I’m not Clark. Gay people are all different.
My question, especially to Democrats seeking political support from gay people, reframed and repackaged as exactly what you might say:
At what point does repeated, systemic insult become political imperative, even with so much that other liberals and GLBT people might have in the way of common cause?
Apr 27 2010
Control & Tax: Legalization of Cannabis
Cross-posted from Sum of Change
On Friday, April 23rd 2010, I got the chance to sit down with Dale Sky Clare, the Executive Chancellor of Oaksterdam University and the Spokesperson for Control and Tax Cannabis 2010. We talked about the upcoming ballot initiative to legalize cannabis in California.
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