 Muse in the Morning |
and insight within his or her heart.
Let us help each other touch these seeds in ourselves
so that everyone can have the courage to speak out.
–Thich Nhat Hanh
Phenomena XXVIII: planting
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August 2, 2010 archive
Aug 02 2010
Muse in the Morning
and insight within his or her heart.
Let us help each other touch these seeds in ourselves
so that everyone can have the courage to speak out.
Aug 02 2010
FSZ First….
So, I made something.
Android 2.2 is coming out for newer Android phones in the Fall so I got a little bit ahead of the curve and started coding this shizznit to see what it can do.
And now, when anyone with an Android Phone updates their phone to Android 2.2, they can now convert Celsius to Fahrenheit and vice versa on their new phone.
No need to thank me, thank open source.
Aug 02 2010
A Birth Date Plea; Presidential Power in a Democracy
Cornel West discusses President Obama’s administration on Real Time With Bill Maher
copyright © 2010 Betsy L. Angert. BeThink.org
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.
Aug 02 2010
TREASON.
You argue that American workers, and the American People, who have not yet lost their jobs, who have not yet lost their uttermost ablility to buy cheap plastic trinkets from China, that they are somehow at fault for somehow undermining the American Economy.
If you argue this, you are guilty of TREASON.
People are responsible, for the productivity and thus the wealth of the RICH, to pay their electric bills, their home and office power, their initernet, their heat .. that they should instead, buy trinkets from Corporations.
If you argue this, you are a TRAITOR.
I’m sorry if this is a difficult pill to swallow. Really, I’m not.
The fact is, corporations have run wild with their profits and their banks of money.
The making of a false equivalency is non-operative.
You cannot want to scrape the bottom of the barrel from an American female worker with two kids, without being a TRAITOR.
And if being a TRAITOR is what you are, and what you want to do is send American ingenuity, products, and all of our futures to China is what you must do, why not be proud of it?
I am DONE with being DIPLOMATIC.
I am DONE with CUSHIONING MY WORDS so that those that argue for the stealing of even more of our money can feel good and righteous and just about themselves.
I HAVE HAD ENOUGH.
Stop both outsourcing American Jobs and American Ingenuity and playing both ends against the middle as if this is a CIVIL ARGUMENT and admit what you want.
If you want to enrich the Communist Chinese as per your Republican Wont is, admit you want to Enrich the Communist Chinese, and let the American Public make their own decisions.
For me, you called Martin Luther King a TRAITOR. You called anyone who didn’t want more war a TRAITOR.
If you want to argue that we should send money to our foreign benefators, then you are a TRAITOR.
What’s good for the goose, is good for the gander.
Shut the fuck up and admit what you are.
Aug 02 2010
Playing Politics With 9/11
At times like these you gotta love the peoples House.
ast Thursday the US House took up the vote on H.R.847 – James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010.
As the name identifies the bill would have provided $3.2 billion over the next 10 years to fund free health care for 9/11 rescue and recovery workers who have fallen ill from toxic smoke and debris they breathed at the World Trade Center site. The bill would have also provided $4.2 billion in compensation over that same span.
Seems pretty clear enough, who wouldn’t want to compensate those that were involved in responding to the worst attack on America since Pearl Harbor? Amazingly enough … the “party of NO!” … Most Republicans refused to back the measure, calling it a “slush fund.”
Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), arguing that it would be raided by undeserving scammers with tenuous links to 9/11. Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) cast it as a money grab for New York because the bill would pay for care at higher rates than Medicare. “This fund is bloated,” said Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.).
Aug 02 2010
Pique the Geek 20100801: Lincoln One Cent Pieces
Many of you who read my posts regularly know that I am a very dedicated numismatist, and that I have written many posts about coin collecting. I have also written about the history of United States coins extensively.
What you may not know is that I specialize in Lincoln one cent pieces, minted from 1909 to the present day. This is the longest running series of all United States coins by a large margin, lasting 101 years now with little change on the obverse, but with some.
This post will let you know a bit more about them, and also some of my passion for what most people think of as something insignificant. They are far from insignificant.
Aug 02 2010
Sunday Train: A Dime A Gallon Tariff on Imported Oil for Energy Independent Transport
Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence
The big news from July was: Senate’s energy bill: What a disappointment (LA Times Editorial):
Amid tough fights over healthcare and financial reform, Obama’s push for cleaner energy ran out of gas long ago. It looked like a losing battle anyway; with Senate Republicans universally opposing a cap-and-trade program or other efforts to reduce greenhouse gases, and some Democrats in heavy manufacturing states also opposed, it may have been impossible to round up the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster on a Senate energy bill as strong as the one passed by the House last year. But that doesn’t excuse Obama or Reid for surrendering so easily, or so completely.
So we need to do something. And the strategy to stitch together a complex, multiple part, massive sprawling suburb of an Energy Bill that would be all things to all people has failed in precisely the way its opponents intended it to fail: this is a big reason why Big Oil was so heavily invested in the fight against health care reform, to make sure that it took so much time that the Energy Bill would run into election year politics and their direct lobbying efforts and come unglued.
Treason? Well, given that we are far more exposed to a disruption of our energy imports than to any threat to be found in Afghanistan, and are far more exposed to catastrophic climate change than to any threat being secured by our bases in Japan, Germany or any of the balance from the 687,347 acres of overseas military bases … sure.
But what to do about it?
Aug 02 2010
Just Because
I’m re-reading a two-volume biography of Elvis Presley by the famed rock & roll writer Peter Guralnick and in one part of the book Elvis’ father, Vernon, supposedly wanted Elvis to record “From a Jack to a King.” I only knew the lead-in line and it started going round and round in my head, you know how that goes.
It’s a great bio, by the way.
Originally recorded by the author, Ned Miller. I don’t believe Elvis ever did get around to recording it (correction – Elvis did indeed record it.).
Aug 02 2010
Three years later and still nothing has been learned
Three years ago this past Saturday the economic crisis struck.
That’s why the comments by Alan Greenspan on the very same day on Meet the Press are worth noting.
“There is no doubt that the federal funds rate can be fixed at what the Fed wants it to be but which the government has no control over is long-term interest rates and long-term interest rates are what make the economy move. And if this budget problem eventually merges to the point where it begins to become very toxic, it will be reflected in rising long-term interest rates, rising mortgage rates, lower housing. At the moment there is no sign of that because the financial system is broke and you can not have inflation if the financial system is not working.”
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
The financial system is still broken three years later!?! Think about that for a moment. We’ve thrown trillions of dollars at the financial system and we’ve fixed nothing.
The obvious conclusion from this reality is that we haven’t addressed the real causes of the crisis, and instead are only dealing with symptoms. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s recent “unusually uncertain” comments before Congress proves that the so-called experts simply don’t understand what the problem is.
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