What class in high school or college do you wish you'd paid more attention to?Not for nothing (and my mom can gloat to her heart's content), I should have done better with math. But my theory in 1968 was that by the time I needed to know all that, they'd have computers to do it for me. Yeah, well, you need to know math to make the computers do the arithmetic. I also wish I'd taken a class or two in business...
Fetch more...
Fetch more...
- A Blog Around The Clock: Dogs are smart.Readers, feel free to share your own links and leads in the comments.
- archy: when Google ads go bad.
- Bark Bark Woof Woof: the more things change...
- Bloggg: keep an eye on Congress.
- Collective Sigh on the Dems on health insurance.
- Dohiyi Mir rallies.
- Echidne Of The Snakes with some holiday gift ideas.
- Iddybud Journal: "Quarterlife" -- a TV series on the web?
- Left Is Right has a warning about Quick Time from Apple.
- Lefty Side of the Dial on how to watch a Republican debate.
- Liberty Street: criminalizing your thoughts.
- Make me a Commentator!!! - the candidates' review continues. Today: Rudy on Iraq.
- Musing's musings bids farewell to Denny Hastert.
- Pen-Elayne on the Web: Hey, let's go to Disneyland!
- Rook's Rant joins the Christmas Resistance.
- rubber hose on Republican howling.
- Scrutiny Hooligans on how to respond to Republican howling.
- SoonerThought bids goodbye to Richard Roberts.
- Speedkill: fun with biblical parody.
- Steve Bates, The Yellow Doggerel Democrat: shut off the phone or go to jail.
- T. Rex's Guide to Life: Kenneth goes to Washington.
- The Invisible Library: up, up, and away...
- WTF Is It Now?? with another installment of Your Worthless Media.
- ...You Are A Tree: what is this thing?
Fetch more...
Fetch more...
Traverse City High School students Spencer Perrin and Mike Harper, both 17, survey the damage to their car's wheel after it slid off the road and hit the curb at the corner of Pine and West State streets.Been there, done that, got the t-shirt, went through the therapy.
Fetch more...
"Performance for all shows will begin tomorrow night," said Charlotte St. Martin, executive director of The League of American Theaters and Producers.That's good.
"The agreement is a good compromise that serves our industry," St. Martin said.
Negotiations resumed on Sunday and have continued in recent days between the theaters and producers and stagehands Local 1 after talks broke down on November 18, leaving 26 theaters dark through the lucrative Thanksgiving Week.
Most Broadway theaters have been dark for more than two weeks after stagehands went out on strike on November 10. Some two dozen Broadway shows have been suspended including "Wicked," "Jersey Boys," "Chicago" and "Avenue Q." Eight shows, including "Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas!," have remained open because they have separate contracts with the league.
Fetch more...
A Broward minister was charged with sexual battery after he impregnated a teen congregant of a small neighborhood church, authorities said Wednesday.On top of all the issues of a guardian having sex with a minor, note that he wanted her to have an abortion to save his reputation.
Plantation police charged the Rev. Cory Cortezis Lewis, 33, with sexual battery on a victim between 12 and 18 by a custodian.
He was booked into Broward County jail Nov. 20 and bailed out the next day.
The church, at 2889 NW Sixth Ct., is the Fort Lauderdale-area branch of the Church Of God By Faith, in Jacksonville.
Lewis knew the teen her entire life, acting as both her minister and godfather, Plantation police spokesman Detective Phil Toman said. In 2006, he brought her to an empty house and a vacant business in Plantation, where he had sex with her on multiple occasions, Toman said.
Eventually, she got pregnant. At the time, she was 15.
"He was her godfather," Toman said. 'She referred to him as 'Daddy.' He was her minister and neighbor and friend of the family. He was trusted."
Lewis wanted the girl to have an abortion, fearing the baby would damage his religious reputation.
As the victim's pregnancy became obvious, Lewis confessed to the teen's family he had had sex with her, but said the baby wasn't his, according to court records.
He later confessed to the entire church congregation.
Fetch more...
Stunned by play's contentI can't wait until she sees Equus.
To the editor -- My husband wanted to surprise me with tickets to see a Broadway musical, "The Producers," at the Capitol Theatre on Nov. 17. We were both very surprised.
We saw producers, assistants and others endeavoring to produce a play. They were hoping to have a flop, close it down and pick up the remaining finances.
Eventually, after enlisting other people and groups, they did succeed in producing a successful musical called "Springtime for Hitler."
We saw the SS troops with swastika armbands, German soldiers in uniforms and even Hitler sang and danced.
Our President Roosevelt appeared on stage in his wheelchair -- Hitler pushed him off the stage.
Sunday morning I awoke and was sure it had all been a dream. No! That really happened at the Capitol Theatre in Yakima in the United States of America.
A tribute to a monster responsible for millions of deaths.
AUDREY JESKEY
Prosser
Fetch more...
The documents, obtained by Politico under New York’s Freedom of Information Law, show that the mayoral costs had nothing to do with the functions of the little-known city offices that defrayed his tabs, including agencies responsible for regulating loft apartments, aiding the disabled and providing lawyers for indigent defendants.Well, I know that the Republicans want to let government pry into your bedroom and control your sex life, but I didn't know that they were willing to pay for it.
At the time, the mayor’s office refused to explain the accounting to city auditors, citing “security.”
The Hamptons visits resulted in hotel, gas and other costs for Giuliani’s New York Police Department security detail.
Giuliani’s relationship with Nathan is old news now, and Giuliani regularly asks voters on the campaign trail to forgive his "mistakes."
It’s also impossible to know whether the purpose of all the Hamptons trips was to see Nathan. A Giuliani spokeswoman declined to discuss any aspect of this story, which was explained in detail to her earlier this week.
Asked about this article after it was published on Wednesday, Giuliani said: "It's not true."
He said he had 24-hour security during his eight years as mayor because of "threats," adding: " I had nothing to do with the handling of their records, and they were handled, as far as I know, perfectly appropriately."
The practice of transferring the travel expenses of Giuliani's security detail to the accounts of obscure mayoral offices has never been brought to light, despite behind-the-scenes criticism from the city comptroller weeks after Giuliani left office.
The expenses first surfaced as Giuliani's two terms as mayor of New York drew to a close in 2001, when a city auditor stumbled across something unusual: $34,000 worth of travel expenses buried in the accounts of the New York City Loft Board.
Fetch more...
Rarely has a debate left me so troubled about the future of the nation. By now, I should have learned not to be shocked when Republicans like Mitt Romney, who spent the Vietnam War doing missionary work in France, pretend to believe that they have more expertise about waterboarding and other forms of torture than John McCain who spent five and a half years being abused and sometimes tortured in a North Vietnamese prison. I should have also learned not to be dismayed that the standard Republican position on immigration (McCain and Mike Huckabee excepted) now seems to be Emma Lazarus in reverse: "Take my tired and poor, please. I never want to see those shiftless bums again."If it's any consolation at all, the questions at the Democratic debates have been just as calorie-free. Maybe the next debate should be hosted by Paula Abdul, Simon Cowell, and Joey Fatone.
No, what sent me into a free fall of depression was CNN's instinct for the fatuous in choosing the debate questions. It is a disgrace that in a two-hour debate (it felt longer) there was not a single question about the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, the power keg in Pakistan or Iran. The fault is not with the earnest YouTubers who sent in questions. The blame entirely rests with Anderson Cooper (a debate host who seemed incapable of asking a relevant followup question) and his CNN cohorts who seemed more concerned with goosing the ratings than with grasping the world that the next president will inherit.
Fetch more...
What's the one vote in a state or federal election you wish you could take back?Mine is my vote for Ed Muskie in the Ohio primary in 1972. That's not because I didn't believe in him or his ideas. It's because I voted absentee and two days after I mailed in the ballot, he dropped out of the race. (And to make things even worse, it was the first time I ever voted in an election.)
Fetch more...
Huckabee. Funny, improbable name; funny, improbable candidate. How funny? Well, have a look at the first Huckabee for President campaign commercial, aired last week in Iowa and now ubiquitous on the Web. In it, the former governor of Arkansas trades straight-faced non sequiturs with Chuck Norris, the B-list action star. (Norris: “Mike Huckabee wants to put the I.R.S. out of business.” Huckabee: “When Chuck Norris does a pushup, he isn’t lifting himself up, he’s pushing the earth down.”) It’s an unusually entertaining spot—or, rather, meta-spot, the subtext of which is its own absurdity and, by extension, that of the whole genre.We're hearing a lot of talk about the election of 2008 being a "change" election, as if that makes it somehow different than every other election in the past. The idea, I suppose, is that the choice is between "stay the course" and "change," but since everybody -- in both parties -- seems to agree that sticking with the policies of the current administration would be a disaster, the alternative has to be "change." I can't argue with much of that; but ironically, the candidates, especially the Republicans, don't seem to represent much of a change. All of them pretty much represent the spectrum of the modern GOP; white, rich, anti-abortion, indifferent or hostile to gay rights, and completely sold on the idea that scaring the populace with warnings of invasions of brown-skinned people, be they Mexicans or Arabs, is the easiest way to win the election. And they all seem to be saying, "I'm not George W. Bush, but I stand for just about everything he does." Some change.
How improbable? Well, up until the tail end of the summer, polls had Huckabee’s support for the Republican nomination hovering between zero and three per cent, usually closer to zero. In October, he broke into a trot, in November into a Gallup. In a poll released on Thanksgiving eve by Reuters/Zogby, he is in third place, at eleven per cent, nosing past not only John McCain but also Mitt Romney and narrowing the gap with the fading Fred Thompson to four points. In Iowa, where actual voting will occur on January 3rd, he has surged into what is essentially a tie with Romney for first place.
Huckabee, who at fifty-one is the youngest Republican running, spent half of his adult life as a Southern Baptist minister. Most of his support, so far, comes from the Evangelical Christian right. Yet to those who are not in that category his affect is curiously unthreatening. “I’m a conservative, but I’m not mad at anybody,” he likes to say. His manner and appearance are reassuringly ordinary. When he smiles or laughs, which is often, his dimpled face looks interestingly like that of Wallace, of Wallace & Gromit.
[...]
To all appearances, Huckabee’s gentle rhetoric is a reflection of temperament, not a stylistic tactic. Arkansans caution that he is capable of churlishness. But his history suggests that he prefers consensus to confrontation, that he regards government as a tool for social betterment, and that he has little taste for war, cultural or otherwise. He seems to regard liberalism not as a moral evil, a mental disease, or a character flaw—merely as a political point of view he mostly disagrees with. That may not seem like much, but it makes a nice change. If talk radio hears about it, though, it might be enough to keep him from the top of the ticket.
Fetch more...
Fetch more...
Conservative columnist Ann Coulter is nationally notorious for vitriolic broadsides, but she has been unnerved by invective she received at her Palm Beach home. So much so that she got the county property appraiser to remove her name from public records identifying where she lives.Sheesh.
In doing so, she won an exemption from public disclosure of her address, allowed by law for victims of stalkers or harassment.
Coulter, 45, has called Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards a "faggot" and said she wished he would be killed by terrorists. She once said President Clinton "could be a lunatic" and wrote of a group of widows of men killed in the World Trade Center that she had "never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much."
So maybe it came as no surprise when somebody delivered a greeting card to her home in March with this salutation: "You self-aggrandizing -- sociopath!! The only thing left after a nuclear war are you and cockroaches."
[...]I don't condone this kind of stuff no matter who it is. I think it's stupid and pointless -- not to mention illegal. Writing a column or a blog or speaking on TV is one thing, but everyone has a right to their privacy. Besides, if we progressives can't make our case without resorting to terrorizing someone at home, we're no better than the jerks who do this stuff as a matter of course.
In June 2006, Coulter received several nonthreatening but antagonistic phone messages from an Alameda, Calif., man whom she did not know.
"Hey, Ann, now that you've moved to Florida and you're in your 40s, did you know that you can join the Florida National Guard?" the man, later identified as Brian Hatoff, 58, said in one message.
"Oh, I forgot, you and your rotund buddy down the street [an apparent allusion to radio commentator Rush Limbaugh] and the vice president, you're all registered chicken hawks. You love war until you have to put your own ass on the line. I don't call that patriotism. I call it cowardice."
Coulter told police the calls were made to an unpublished phone number that only a few people knew.
After subpoenaing phone records, Palm Beach police traced the calls to Hatoff.
[...]
The month of March, however, was the most vexing for Coulter, who did not return a phone message asking for comment.
The evening of March 25 she heard somebody screaming from a vacant lot next door: "Ann Coulter is a big [expletive]."
Coulter called police, then went downstairs and locked a door. When police arrived, the person was gone. Coulter opted not to file a report. But police placed a "special watch" on her home.
Coulter called again a few days later. She had checked her mailbox and found an apparently hand-delivered pink and white envelope inside. It read, "Ann Coulter!!" Below her name was a cupid heart with an arrow drawn through it.
On the greeting card inside was written: "Go [expletive] yourself."
Fetch more...
What's the one piece of Christmas music you really love?When I was a kid we had an LP of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing Christmas carols, and the first song on the album was Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming. The melody and the amazing choral sound of the choir always reminds me of childhood Christmases. I credit the late Edward Catton of Interlochen Public Radio for furthering my education in Renaissance and other traditional holiday music, but "Lo, How a Rose..." is the one that sparked my love of it.
Fetch more...
Bush-bashing is not enough. Unless one of the Democratic candidates finds the courage to step up and offer a vision of an American future so compelling that voters head to the polls with a sense of excitement and great expectation, the Republican Party could once again capture the White House (despite its awful performance over the past eight years) with its patented mixture of snake oil and demagoguery.
Fetch more...
Washington Redskins defensive back Sean Taylor died Tuesday morning, a day after he was shot by an intruder at his home in Palmetto Bay.My deepest sympathies to his family for their loss.
He was 24.
The onetime standout with the Miami Hurricanes died at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, where he was airlifted after the shooting Monday morning.
Shot in the groin, he suffered massive blood loss from a severed femoral artery. Surgery conducted later in the afternoon could not save him, although he was able to squeeze a doctor's hand, giving his family reason for hope.
That hope was crushed before dawn Tuesday.
[...]
Taylor, a graduate of Gulliver Preparatory School in Pinecrest, was chosen by the Redskins as the fifth pick overall in the National Football League's 2004 draft.
He signed a seven-year, $18 million contract after his junior year at UM, when his nine interceptions were the most in the Big East Conference and second in the nation.
At UM, he was an All-American, a Jim Thorpe Award finalist for best defensive back in the nation and the Big East Defensive Player of the Year.
Fetch more...
Fetch more...
Fetch more...
NBC News has learned that Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., the minority whip is in the midst of informing close allies that he plans to resign his senate seat before the end of the year. It's possible a formal announcement of his plans could take place as early as today.So he's giving up his Senate seat and working for the people of his state just in time to make a pile as a lobbyist.
Lott's office initially denied that he he would step down, but subsequent requests for information about his plans went unanswered.
While the exactly reason Lott is stepping down before he finishes his term is unknown, the general speculation is that a quick departure immunizes Lott against tougher restrictions in a new lobbying law that takes effect at the end of the year. That law would require Senators to wait two-years before entering the lucrative world of lobbying Congress.
Fetch more...
What's the one piece of Christmas music you hate the most?My all-time favorite is The Little Drummer Boy. I've despised that little bastard since I first had to sing about him in Grade 3 and I still do. Feh.
Fetch more...
It's been a stormy few years for William Gray, Philip Klotzbach and other scientists who predict total hurricane activity before each season begins, which raises fundamental questions as the 2007 season draws to an end on Friday:Not to mention the fact that they boost sales of plywood, generators, bottled water, granola bars, and blue tarps.
Why do they bother? And given the errors -- which can undermine faith in the entire hurricane warning system -- are these full-season forecasts doing more harm than good?
"The seasonal hurricane forecasters certainly have a lot of explaining to do," said Max Mayfield, former director of the National Hurricane Center.
"The last couple of years have humbled the seasonal hurricane forecasters and pointed out that we have a lot more to learn before we can do accurate seasonal forecasts,' he said.
[...]
Even mid-season corrections issued by both teams in August -- somewhat akin to changing your prediction about a baseball game during the fifth inning -- proved wrong.
Their pre-season predictions in 2005 and 2006 were even worse.
The teams defend their forecasts, saying they are based on the best science available, were closer to the mark in prior years and serve an important public service.
"The seasonal forecasts are quite good," said Gerry Bell, NOAA's lead seasonal forecaster. "Last year, we over-predicted and this year we over-predicted, but our track record, I think, is excellent."
Klotzbach, who now is the lead forecaster of the Colorado State team created more than two decades ago, said long-range predictions satisfy the public's "inherent curiosity."
Fetch more...
Former Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.) suggested on Sunday that Fox News is biased against his campaign, charging that the network highlights commentators who have been critical of his run for the presidency.Just wait until he finds out that the world is round...
In an interview on "Fox News Sunday," host Chris Wallace pressed Thompson on how some conservatives have lambasted Thompson's campaign and showed clips of Fox conservative commentators Charles Krauthammer and Fred Barnes criticizing the former senator.
Thompson said, "This has been a constant mantra of Fox, to tell you the truth." He noted that other conservatives have praised his bid for the GOP nomination and took issue with a Fox promo that focused on polling in New Hampshire, where Thompson is registering in the single digits.
He said he is running second in national polls and has been leading or tied for the lead in South Carolina for "a long, long time."
Thompson, in a firm, but measured tone, scolded Wallace: "...for you to highlight nothing but the negatives in terms of the polls and then put on your own guys who have been predicting for four months, really, that I couldn't do it, kind of skew things a little bit. There's a lot of other opinion out there."
Fetch more...
The Bush era has drawn various comparisons with the Nixon era, but what seems forgotten from that time is the courage exhibited by a handful of lawmakers, once fiercely loyal to the president, who ultimately decided to impeach him. In recent interviews with Salon, some of those former congressmen spoke about their reasons for risking their political career and taking a principled stand, the kind that seems so unlikely on Capitol Hill today.Of course, when the Republicans had the chance to impeach a president, they went at it hammer and tongs because as we all know, a blow job is much more of a threat to the Constitution than starting a war based on lies, instituting warrantless wiretapping, and condoning torture in violation of the UCMJ and the Geneva Convention. It was also all about Bill Clinton, and this time it's our Dear Leader. But remember, IOKIYAR! (It's OK If You're A Republican.)
[...]
One them was M. Caldwell Butler of Virginia. In Nixon's 1972 landslide reelection, Butler's district had voted 73 percent in Nixon's favor. In an interview given for a 1984 PBS documentary titled "Summer of Judgment: The Impeachment Hearings," Butler said that when the Judiciary Committee began its deliberations, he was "still very defensive of the president." Yet, by the end of that summer, he became one of the decisive Republican votes that sealed Nixon's fate.
Behind his large, Coke-bottle glasses, Butler gave a rousing and emphatic speech to the committee that today seems both resonant and remote:If we fail to impeach, we have condoned and left unpunished a course of conduct totally inconsistent with the reasonable expectations of the American people. We will have condoned a presidential course of conduct designed to interfere with and obstruct the very process he has sworn to uphold. We will have condoned and left unpunished an abuse of power totally without justification. In short, a power appears to have corrupted. It is a sad period in American history, but I cannot condone what I have heard, I cannot excuse it and I cannot and will not stand still for it.Now 82, Butler told Salon in a recent interview that impeachment was "warranted because of the president's conduct." From his perspective, the impeachment was never a partisan issue. "I didn't have any problem separating the Republican problem," he said. "It was my first term in Congress, and I wasn't all that crazy about the job anyway ... I think it would have been a terrible thing if we had decided to vote strictly along party lines in the committee."
However, Butler did feel pressure from his constituency to vote against impeachment. "Everyone one of us Republicans and Southern Democrats were from areas that had strong Nixon support in the previous election, so we all felt in jeopardy."
Other Republicans who voted for articles of impeachment were Tom Railsback of Illinois, William Cohen of Maine, Harold Froehlich of Wisconsin, Lawrence Hogan of Maryland, Robert McClory of Illinois and Hamilton Fish of New York.
[...]
It should not seem far-fetched for a politician to put conscience before party loyalty or political prospects. As Butler and Railsback put it, and as Mann Jr. said about his father, they and the other lawmakers who held Nixon accountable were only doing their job. But it is hard not to label their efforts as heroic in light of today's inaction on Capitol Hill.
Near the close of the Watergate committee's proceedings, James Mann Sr. issued a prophetic statement. He said, "If there be no accountability, another president will feel free to do as he chooses, but the next time, there may be no watchmen in the night."
Fetch more...
Fetch more...
After six years of state of emergency, the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, continual war and occupations, our Constitution is deeply in crisis. Americans are in danger of losing our system of government and civil rights if they do not roll back the Bush administration's assault on the rule of law.The Republicans believe that impeachment is reserved only for the worst crimes that a president or a vice president can commit, such as getting a blow job. All else pales in comparison.
Allowing Cheney and George W. Bush to finish their terms without being impeached means future presidents are free to copy their lawless behavior. Of course many important issues deserve the attention of Congress. But the Constitution is the foundation of our democracy, not just an issue. Without the Constitution, we have nothing.
Polls show that 74 percent of Democrats and the majority of American adults support impeaching Cheney. "Never in our history have the high crimes and misdemeanors been so flagrant, and the people of our country know it," writes local author Richard Behan.
Kucinich has targeted Cheney first, but investigations will implicate the president as well. For the first time in the history of the Gallup Poll, 50 percent of respondents say they "strongly disapprove" of the president. Richard Nixon had reached the previous high, 48 percent, just before an impeachment inquiry was launched in 1974. With these numbers, why aren't Bush and Cheney gone already?
[...]
"The most conservative principle of the Founding Fathers was distrust of unchecked power. Centuries of experience substantiated that absolute power corrupts absolutely. The Constitution embraced a separation of powers to keep the legislative, executive and judicial branches in equilibrium," Bruce Fein, a constitutional lawyer and associate deputy attorney general in the Reagan administration, said in the October 2006 edition of Washington Monthly.
If Congress were serious about oversight, there already would be dozens of bills and resolutions calling for impeachment of Bush and Cheney. The "Unitary Executive Theory" violates the principle of balance of power in the Constitution. The president cites this "unitary" power in hundreds of signing statements that say he can ignore laws passed by Congress.
The First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments are all now subject to the caprice of government officials. The Military Commissions Act allows U.S. citizens to be detained without due process if they are declared enemy combatants. Without our permission, this country has become an exporter of torture.
Congress has failed to provide oversight and exercise its authority to rein in a criminal administration. Only swift action on impeachment can redeem it now. The people have done the heavy work of bringing impeachment forward. Representatives need only ask if the allegations are serious enough to warrant investigations.
George Bush and Dick Cheney promote an imperial presidency. They assert that the executive is the most powerful branch of government, undermining the judiciary and Congress in violation of the Constitution's bedrock principle of shared power among three co-equal branches. This subverts the very nature of our system of government.
"This is an attempt by the president to have the final word on his own constitutional powers, which eliminates the checks and balances that keep the country a democracy. ... That's a big problem because that's essentially a dictatorship," Fein said.
[...]
The issue is not about removing Bush and Cheney as much as it is about preserving the Constitution and redeeming the office of the executive. The Constitution is the contract of governance between the people and the government. What happens when major portions of the contract are violated?
New Mexicans like to hold on to their United States senators.- Class Warfare: If you flew this weekend or are flying home today, chances are you had a harried and uncomfortable trip, and that's after having gone through the lines at the ticket counter or the self-serve kiosk, been examined by an underpaid TSA agent working overtime, and after sitting in the gate area listening to the toddlers going through their vocal exercises as they warmed up to remind you every ten seconds that the screech of one cranky two-year-old will convince five banshees to get out of the business. Then you have to troop aboard the plane and wedge yourself into a seat that was taken out of the front seat of a 1969 Volkswagen and had the stuffing removed. You will have to bring your own food, and worst of all, somebody already did the crossword puzzle in the in-flight magazine -- in ink. Fly the friendly skies, indeed.
Their junior senator, a Democrat, has been in office since early in the Reagan administration. Their senior senator, a Republican, was elected the year Richard M. Nixon defeated George McGovern.
Now that seat, occupied for 35 years by Senator Pete V. Domenici, is up for grabs. The state’s three members of Congress are battling for it, surrendering their House careers and setting off a domino effect of political consequences for incumbents and newcomers alike — and for political influence in Washington.
“It’s blown the state wide open,” said Joe Monahan, whose daily blog is among New Mexico’s most closely followed political journals.
For political buffs, it was almost too much to fathom, Mr. Monahan said, adding, “We’ll never see it again in our lifetime.”
The scramble was set off Oct. 4 by Mr. Domenici’s announcement that at 75 he was suffering from an incurable brain disease and would not seek re-election in 2008. It was a pivotal moment for an important swing state, where 366 votes spelled victory for Al Gore in 2000 and 5,988 votes handed New Mexico to President Bush four years later. The balloting and the state’s electoral votes have gone the way of the top vote-getter in every presidential election since statehood in 1912, except for 1976.
Doug Fesler, an executive at a medical research group in Washington, wasn’t expecting much in the way of amenities on his American Airlines flight to Honolulu in September. In fact, knowing the airline no longer served free meals, he had packed his own lunch for the second leg of his flight from Dallas to Honolulu. But he said he was shocked at the lack of basic services and the overall condition of the cabin.Which is why I save -- and use -- my frequent flier miles...while they're still valid.
On that flight, the audio for the movie was broken. The light that indicated when the bathroom was occupied was squirrely, causing confusion and, in some cases, embarrassingly long waits for passengers in need of the lavatory. And though food was available for purchase, it ran out before the flight attendants could serve the entire cabin, leaving some fellow passengers looking longingly at the snack he had packed.
His return flight was just as disappointing. This time the audio for the movie worked — but only in Spanish — and his seat refused to stay in the upright position. “I was just appalled,” Mr. Fesler said. “You pay $500 or $600 for a seat, and you expect it to be functional.” He said he has considered refusing to fly airlines with such poor service, but added that “if you did that with every airline that made you mad, you’d never get anywhere in this country.”
Mr. Fesler is hardly alone in his antipathy toward the airlines, as anyone who has spent time reading the angry customer postings on Web sites like flyertalk.com, airlinerage.com and flightsfromhell.com knows.
The fact is that airlines, flying so close to full capacity today, have realized that they really don’t have to cater to economy passengers — most of whom are booking on price alone, and who increasingly have no real airline loyalty — because the cost of doing so would never be worth it in pure bottom-line terms.
Does that sound harsh? Well, an unexpected — but not totally surprising — insight into how airline executives think these days came this summer when B. Ben Baldanza, chief executive of the aggressively bare-bones Spirit Airlines, hit “reply all” to an e-mail message from a passenger who wished to be compensated for a delayed flight that caused him to miss a concert he was planning to attend. Mr. Baldanza’s response, which seemed to be intended only for a Spirit Airlines employee but subsequently appeared on multiple travel blogs, said: “Please respond, Pasquale, but we owe him nothing as far as I’m concerned. Let him tell the world how bad we are. He’s never flown us before anyway and will be back when we save him a penny.”
While Mr. Baldanza may regret the manner in which his e-mail statement was delivered, his position hasn’t changed. “The point that I was making in that e-mail, maybe not as politically correctly as I should have, is let’s not over-obsess or spend a lot of money dealing with customers with completely unrealistic expectations,” he said, pointing out that the delay was due to weather and that the passenger was offered a $200 voucher toward future flights even though he had paid only $73 for two round-trip tickets. “When the fare’s this cheap, we’re going to get another customer,” he said.
Thus airlines are increasingly cutting back services in coach or charging passengers for things that used to be free, like meals ($5 for a snack box on United) or drinks ($2 for a 16-fluid-ounce bottle of water on Spirit) or, in the case of Delta, US Airways, Northwest and Continental, starting to use narrow-body planes more frequently on trans-Atlantic flights, making those long-haul flights more cost-effective, albeit at the expense of passenger comfort.
It’s all simple economics. In January, United removed half-ounce pretzel snack mixes from the economy section of flights that are less than two hours long, about 29 percent of its flights, to save what it says is about $650,000 a year. (Cutting out pretzels has reportedly saved Northwest $2 million a year.) Meanwhile, American has estimated that it would save $30 million a year by eliminating free meal service in coach. Last September, in a move that extinguished any hope of hot meals returning to coach, the airline removed the rear galleys — including the oven — from its MD-80 aircraft and replaced them with four seats. That change, the airline told The Washington Post, will be worth an additional $34 million a year. Overall, the amount of money the nine largest passenger carriers in the United States spend on food per passenger has been slashed to about $3.40 from $5.92 in 1992, according to the Department of Transportation.
And wonder why it’s almost impossible to get a pillow anymore? Again, it comes down to money. American has said it saved $300,000 when it removed pillows from its MD-80s in November 2004. In February 2005 it began removing pillows from 737s, 757s and Airbus 300s on nearly all flights within the continental United States, Canada, the Caribbean and Mexico, with the airline explaining that the change saved it $600,000.
The story is much different in the front of the plane — and it’s not just things like the four-course meal (served on china, with real utensils, and with a choice of four wines) that American now serves its business-class passengers on overseas flights and the fact that, yes, a pillow and a blanket still await you.
Passengers flying business class on United from Washington Dulles to Frankfurt, for example, are now offered “180-degree lie-flat” seats. The upgraded seats, which are part of a multimillion-dollar makeover of its international premium cabins, transform into 6-foot-4-inch beds and feature larger personal TV screens, iPod adapters and noise-canceling headphones. Delta Air Lines and American are also upgrading their upper-class cabins on international flights with such features as wider, bedlike seats, improved in-flight entertainment, and new food options. And Delta and United have turned to celebrity chefs — Michelle Bernstein for Delta and Charlie Trotter for United — to create menus for its business- and first-class customers.
Fetch more...
He's a revolutionary liberal from right of the left of center who resists reactionaries, and believes in the Bush Doctrine to project American power, expand freedom and, uhm, seek out new worlds and new civilizations and boldly go where no man has gone before.I love good snark.
Also, when he finds himself a-fallin' for some girl, he hops right into his car, and drives around the world because he's the wanderer. Or maybe I'm thinking of Dion.
Ron Silver counts himself "firmly in the tradition of Wilson, FDR, Truman, Kennedy... Reagan and George W. Bush." Except, of course, they're all presidents, and he's the bad guy from Timecop.
So far - and he only just started - Silver Bullet is about 50% tragic tough guy palaver, like a small dog barking at the fridge, and 50% Kingfish-style pseudo-formalize, the kind used by actors who've played too many lawyers.
Fetch more...
Fetch more...
"My fellow Australians, a few moments ago I telephoned Mr Kevin Rudd and I congratulated him and the Australian Labor Party on an emphatic victory," Mr Howard told the crowd.As Glenn Greenwald notes, it is the end of a government that had been sycophantic in its echoing of President Bush's pro-war policies and nearly as obnoxious in injecting itself into the politics here in the U.S.
Mr Howard said he harboured no ill will to Mr Rudd.
"I wish him well in the task that he will undertake," Mr Howard said.
But nothing captures the core corruption and dishonesty of John Howard -- and that of other blind supporters of the war in Iraq generally -- quite as vividly as a May, 2003 speech he delivered to the Australian parliament, in which Howard hailed the Greatness of George W. Bush and praised Bush's "Strength and Determination" for having led the "American-led coalition" to "Decisive Victory" in Iraq.Howard mocked the "infantile" objections of war opponents and "all of the[ir] doomsday predictions," which -- he boasted -- were not realized. After all, Howard roared: "there were not millions of refugees" and "there was no long-drawn-out, bloody, Stalingrad-style, street-to-street fighting in Baghdad"
In doing so, Howard gloated about how wrong war opponents were, specifically condemning:the way in which speaker after speaker [from the Labor Party] impugned [Bush's] integrity, assaulted his judgment, and called into question his ability to lead the U.S. in this very, very difficult conflict. History has proved them wrong.
Fetch more...
Fetch more...
Federal officials are routinely asking courts to order cellphone companies to furnish real-time tracking data so they can pinpoint the whereabouts of drug traffickers, fugitives and other criminal suspects, according to judges and industry lawyers.Just because technology makes it possible to track people down doesn't give the government the right to do it unless they've got a good reason. That's what they mean by "probable cause."
In some cases, judges have granted the requests without requiring the government to demonstrate that there is probable cause to believe that a crime is taking place or that the inquiry will yield evidence of a crime. Privacy advocates fear such a practice may expose average Americans to a new level of government scrutiny of their daily lives.
Such requests run counter to the Justice Department's internal recommendation that federal prosecutors seek warrants based on probable cause to obtain precise location data in private areas. The requests and orders are sealed at the government's request, so it is difficult to know how often the orders are issued or denied.
The issue is taking on greater relevance as wireless carriers are racing to offer sleek services that allow cellphone users to know with the touch of a button where their friends or families are. The companies are hoping to recoup investments they have made to meet a federal mandate to provide enhanced 911 (E911) location tracking. Sprint Nextel, for instance, boasts that its "loopt" service even sends an alert when a friend is near, "putting an end to missed connections in the mall, at the movies or around town."
In a stinging opinion this month, a federal judge in Texas denied a request by a Drug Enforcement Administration agent for data that would identify a drug trafficker's phone location by using the carrier's E911 tracking capability. E911 tracking systems read signals sent to satellites from a phone's Global Positioning System (GPS) chip or triangulated radio signals sent from phones to cell towers. Magistrate Judge Brian L. Owsley, of the Corpus Christi division of the Southern District of Texas, said the agent's affidavit failed to focus on "specifics necessary to establish probable cause, such as relevant dates, names and places."Nobody in their right mind would want to deny law enforcement every possible means of arresting criminals or preventing a crime from happening. That's not the point. We have laws in this country that protect citizens from overzealous police officers and the authorities from violating the rights of citizens to be secure in their persons and their property. It's what makes us different from the thugs and dictators, and to attempt to justify it in the name of fighting terrorism or some other buzzword excuse is as much a violation of the spirit of the Constitution as the violation itself.
Owsley decided to publish his opinion, which explained that the agent failed to provide "sufficient specific information to support the assertion" that the phone was being used in "criminal" activity. Instead, Owsley wrote, the agent simply alleged that the subject trafficked in narcotics and used the phone to do so. The agent stated that the DEA had " 'identified' or 'determined' certain matters," Owsley wrote, but "these identifications, determinations or revelations are not facts, but simply conclusions by the agency."
Fetch more...
- A Blog Around The Clock with an appropriate quote for the day.If you get it, have a nice long weekend.
- archy reports on finding the home of Romulus and Remus.
- Bark Bark Woof Woof on music for all ages.
- Bloggg: Moi has a computer meltdown.
- Collective Sigh sends best wishes to the Windsors.
- Dohiyi Mir with another phony soldier.
- Echidne Of The Snakes gives thanks for the visual arts.
- Grateful Dread Radio: transgendered day of remembrance.
- Iddybud Journal: what is "success" in Iraq?
- Left Is Right: what's the dollar worth?
- Lefty Side of the Dial: Lefty shows off the latest in earwear.
- Liberty Street on how to save money.
- Make me a Commentator!!! on lazy soldiers.
- Musing's musings: what the bishops said.
- Pen-Elayne on the Web catches up with... well, just about everything.
- Rook's Rant: Rook gives a quick thanks and heads for home.
- rubber hose: what do you call it when you hear that someone you already thought was dead has died?
- Scrutiny Hooligans: Buy Nothing.
- SoonerThought on what Scott McClellan knew and when.
- Steve Bates has a book to recommend.
- T. Rex's Guide to Life has some good choices for weekly awards.
- The Invisible Library on what is wrong with helping people.
- WTF Is It Now?? and the famous WKRP turkey drop.
Fetch more...
When I was a kid growing up outside of Toledo, we had some relatives in the area, and we also belonged to a local tennis and social club that served as a gathering place for a group of families like ours and we often went there for holiday dinners. It relieved my mom from cooking one of the two big meals at the holidays; if we had Thanksgiving at home, then we went to the club or another relative's place for Christmas, or vice versa. We also would have the Thanksgiving meal later in the day -- usually around the normal dinner time -- because we had season tickets to the Detroit Lions football team, and we would go up to Detroit to sit in the freezing cold bleachers to watch the Lions play their traditional Thanksgiving Day game, then come home to the dinner.Fetch more...
Fetch more...
January 20, 1961
Vice President Johnson, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Chief Justice, President Eisenhower, Vice President Nixon, President Truman, Reverend Clergy, fellow citizens:
We observe today not a victory of party, but a celebration of freedom -- symbolizing an end, as well as a beginning -- signifying renewal, as well as change. For I have sworn before you and Almighty God the same solemn oath our forebears prescribed nearly a century and three-quarters ago.
The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe -- the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.
We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution. Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans -- born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage, and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
This much we pledge -- and more.
To those old allies whose cultural and spiritual origins we share, we pledge the loyalty of faithful friends. United there is little we cannot do in a host of cooperative ventures. Divided there is little we can do -- for we dare not meet a powerful challenge at odds and split asunder.
To those new states whom we welcome to the ranks of the free, we pledge our word that one form of colonial control shall not have passed away merely to be replaced by a far more iron tyranny. We shall not always expect to find them supporting our view. But we shall always hope to find them strongly supporting their own freedom -- and to remember that, in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.
To those people in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required -- not because the Communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.
To our sister republics south of our border, we offer a special pledge: to convert our good words into good deeds, in a new alliance for progress, to assist free men and free governments in casting off the chains of poverty. But this peaceful revolution of hope cannot become the prey of hostile powers. Let all our neighbors know that we shall join with them to oppose aggression or subversion anywhere in the Americas. And let every other power know that this hemisphere intends to remain the master of its own house.
To that world assembly of sovereign states, the United Nations, our last best hope in an age where the instruments of war have far outpaced the instruments of peace, we renew our pledge of support -- to prevent it from becoming merely a forum for invective, to strengthen its shield of the new and the weak, and to enlarge the area in which its writ may run.
Finally, to those nations who would make themselves our adversary, we offer not a pledge but a request: that both sides begin anew the quest for peace, before the dark powers of destruction unleashed by science engulf all humanity in planned or accidental self-destruction.
We dare not tempt them with weakness. For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed.
But neither can two great and powerful groups of nations take comfort from our present course -- both sides overburdened by the cost of modern weapons, both rightly alarmed by the steady spread of the deadly atom, yet both racing to alter that uncertain balance of terror that stays the hand of mankind's final war.
So let us begin anew -- remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.
Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belaboring those problems which divide us.
Let both sides, for the first time, formulate serious and precise proposals for the inspection and control of arms, and bring the absolute power to destroy other nations under the absolute control of all nations.
Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths, and encourage the arts and commerce.
Let both sides unite to heed, in all corners of the earth, the command of Isaiah -- to "undo the heavy burdens, and [to] let the oppressed go free."
And, if a beachhead of cooperation may push back the jungle of suspicion, let both sides join in creating a new endeavor -- not a new balance of power, but a new world of law -- where the strong are just, and the weak secure, and the peace preserved.
All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days; nor in the life of this Administration; nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.
In your hands, my fellow citizens, more than mine, will rest the final success or failure of our course. Since this country was founded, each generation of Americans has been summoned to give testimony to its national loyalty. The graves of young Americans who answered the call to service surround the globe.
Now the trumpet summons us again -- not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need -- not as a call to battle, though embattled we are -- but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, "rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation," a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself.
Can we forge against these enemies a grand and global alliance, North and South, East and West, that can assure a more fruitful life for all mankind? Will you join in that historic effort?
In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility -- I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it. And the glow from that fire can truly light the world.
And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.
My fellow citizens of the world, ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.
Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us here the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own.
Fetch more...
What are your plans for Thanksgiving?
Fetch more...
The U.S. Military is demanding that thousands of wounded service personnel give back signing bonuses because they are unable to serve out their commitments.What I'd like to know is if there is anyone out there, either at the Pentagon, in the Congress, or in the blogosphere actually defending this heinous and parsimonious policy. After all, there has to be somebody that came up with it, somebody who wrote the letter, somebody who approved it, and somebody who will go around and collect the "indebtedness." I'd like to hear their logic behind it. I'd listen patiently to their reasons for demanding the money back. And then I'd make them go to each injured soldier, whether at home or in the VA hospital, and try to collect it. I'd like to see them ask for the money back in person.
KDKA contacted the Pentagon. Investigators there took a look. A military spokesman told KDKA's Marty Griffin the bill sent to Fox was a mistake.When in doubt, blame the System. That usually works. The problem, however, is that the System is run by people, presumably people who are alert enough to see what's coming out of the System. I speak from experience; I work in a large bureaucracy and I know that stuff like this can happen. I also know that if you're paying attention, shit like this can be stopped before it causes this kind of clusterfuck, and if, for some reason, it gets out to the public, you can make amends as soon as possible. It looks like the Pentagon has the second part down; now they just need to figure out how to stop it from happening in the first place.
Griffin asked Army Spokesperson Major Nathan Banks if the government was taking on Fox's case.
Banks said via phone, "We are. We are ... definitely working it out. We have seen where the problems have been made, the system, and we're just making - you know, give us the opportunity to make a wrong a right."
Major Banks says Fox will not have to pay back his bonus. Fox says "fine," but he wants more.
"Hopefully this will turn into change for not only me but many other soldiers that have lost limbs, you know, become permanently deaf," he said. "I hope to see a change for everybody."
The Pentagon will not comment on allegations that thousands of other soldiers just sent home from Iraq and other invasions, including Afghanistan, will not receive these sorts of bills. They cannot comment on those cases.
Fetch more...
The discovery that it is possible to create equivalents to embryonic stem cells without destroying embryos has the potential to reshape -- and perhaps defuse -- the acrimonious political debate that has raged ever since human embryonic stem cells were discovered in 1998.It would be great if the skin cells could do what embryonic cells could do; getting the politics and the religious nuts out of the scientific area would be as much of a breakthrough as the science itself. But until it's proven that this new method is just as effective as the embryonic, they should continue to research both, and Congress should fund it.
Even before the research was officially published yesterday, White House officials began making the case that the studies vindicated the president's unwavering six-year opposition to funding for embryo-cell research and his long-standing position that scientific progress is possible without offending the morality of millions of Americans.
"The science has overtaken the politics," Karl Zinsmeister, the chief domestic policy adviser to President Bush, said in an interview yesterday. "If you set reasonable parameters and offer a lot of encouragement and public funding, science will solve this dilemma, and you don't have to have a culture war about this."
Others involved in the stem cell debate cautioned that much work remains to be done to prove the value of the new cells. No one yet knows, for example, whether the new cells will be as effective as conventional embryonic stem cells may prove to be against certain diseases, or whether the new cells will even prove safe for use in people.
For those reasons, several said, it would be wrong to halt efforts to loosen the president's controversial restrictions on federal funding for stem cell research, which prevent federal dollars from going to research on cells from embryos destroyed after Aug. 9, 2001.
Fetch more...
“I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the seniormost aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby,” McClellan wrote.Whether or not this leads to anything more than something to argue about with your crazy right-wing uncle over the turkey carcass remains to be seen. For what it's worth, the right wing is already letting slip loose the dogs of smear against Mr. McClellan:
“There was one problem. It was not true.”
McClellan then absolves himself and makes an inflammatory — and potentially lucrative for his publisher — charge.
“I had unknowingly passed along false information,” McClellan wrote.
“And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice president, the president's chief of staff and the president himself."
McClellan says he was in that position because he trusted the president: "The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.”
What Republican remembers him, let alone would want to buy a book he wrote? We were spoiled with Ari, bored to tears by Scott, and then watched with pride as Tony gave as well as he got from the Press Corps.A few people are asking why Mr. McClellan waited until he was out of the White House and writing a book before he dropped this little bomb. It's pretty simple: a book deal gets you an advance, but a subpoena can be expensive.
Fetch more...
Fetch more...
What are the pre-sets on your car radio? Okay, for you party poopers who don't listen to the car radio, what do you listen to on the CD, the MP3, (or whatever else they've invented) when you're in the car?For me, I have the local NPR outlet, the new Miami classical station, oldies (60's and 70's), Classic Rock (hard rock 60's and 70's), and one talk station.
Fetch more...
Van Zandt fell for the Beatles and discovered the blues and early rock music that inspired them. He played in a series of bands on the Jersey shore, and when a friend wanted to draw on his encyclopedic blues knowledge for a song called “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out,” Van Zandt wound up as a guitarist for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.Okay, once you get over the rather jarring notion of David Brooks and rock music, you can probably agree that he has a point. When I was growing up in the 1960's, the rock stations (all invariably AM) were playing everything from the Beatles, the Supremes, Jimi Hendrix, Neil Diamond, Simon and Garfunkel, and the Beach Boys. Genre radio didn't exist, and it really didn't matter to the kids I hung out with what group was playing as long as it was good.
The 1970s were a great moment for musical integration. Artists like the Rolling Stones and Springsteen drew on a range of musical influences and produced songs that might be country-influenced, soul-influenced, blues-influenced or a combination of all three. These mega-groups attracted gigantic followings and can still fill huge arenas.
But cultural history has pivot moments, and at some point toward the end of the 1970s or the early 1980s, the era of integration gave way to the era of fragmentation. There are now dozens of niche musical genres where there used to be this thing called rock. There are many bands that can fill 5,000-seat theaters, but there are almost no new groups with the broad following or longevity of the Rolling Stones, Springsteen or U2.
Van Zandt grew up in one era and now thrives in the other, but how long can mega-groups like the E Street Band still tour?(You knew he'd have to stick politics in there somehow.)
“This could be the last time,” he says.
He argues that if the Rolling Stones came along now, they wouldn’t be able to get mass airtime because there is no broadcast vehicle for all-purpose rock. And he says that most young musicians don’t know the roots and traditions of their music. They don’t have broad musical vocabularies to draw on when they are writing songs.
As a result, much of their music (and here I’m bowdlerizing his language) stinks.
He describes a musical culture that has lost touch with its common roots. And as he speaks, I hear the echoes of thousands of other interviews concerning dozens of other spheres.
It seems that whatever story I cover, people are anxious about fragmentation and longing for cohesion. This is the driving fear behind the inequality and immigration debates, behind worries of polarization and behind the entire Obama candidacy.
Van Zandt has a way to counter all this, at least where music is concerned. He’s drawn up a high school music curriculum that tells American history through music. It would introduce students to Muddy Waters, the Mississippi Sheiks, Bob Dylan and the Allman Brothers. He’s trying to use music to motivate and engage students, but most of all, he is trying to establish a canon, a common tradition that reminds students that they are inheritors of a long conversation.This is one of the consequences of living in a world with a lot of choices. Whereas thirty years ago a town might have five or six radio stations (enough to fill the pre-set buttons in your Dad's Buick Roadmaster) and you had your choice of rock, easy listening, or country, you didn't have the luxury of listening to a station that played only one kind of music. Now we have 500 stations on XM, Sirius and the internet to broaden our horizons and give us these dizzying choices. Even the over-the-air stations break themselves into tiny little facets: adult contemporary, adult-oriented classic rock, oldies, "dance" (which is updated gay disco from the '70's), rap, hip-hop, and here in Miami, Latin, salsa, Latin dance, Latin rap, Caribbean (and the many varieties thereof), and on and on. Each genre has its faithful listeners...and its advertising demographics.
And Van Zandt is doing something that is going to be increasingly necessary for foundations and civic groups. We live in an age in which the technological and commercial momentum drives fragmentation. It’s going to be necessary to set up countervailing forces — institutions that span social, class and ethnic lines.
Music used to do this. Not so much anymore.
Fetch more...
Stop That Noise!
