If you’re one of the four-or-so frequent readers of this here blog, chances are you also occasionally check out the New York Times op-ed page. You may even know the names: Thomas “Friedman’s Just Another Word For Nothing Left to Lose” Friedman, Gail “The Colander” Collins, Nicholas “The Dark Crystal” Kristof, &c. This is a daily feature dedicated to these folks: one line that is either awesome, funny, insightful, intelligent, ridiculous, or utterly divorced from reality. Today\’s is from Gail \”The Colander\” Collins, who in her column \”Waiting for Somebody,\” writes: I’m still haunted by a debate...
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Poem of the Week: The Rain
The Rain by Robert Creeley All night the sound had come back again, and again falls this quiet, persistent rain. What am I to myself that must be remembered, insisted upon so often? Is it that never the ease, even the hardness, of rain falling will have for me something other than this, something not so insistent— am I to be locked in this final uneasiness. Love, if you love me, lie next to me. Be for me, like rain, the getting out of the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi- lust of intentional indifference. Be wet with...
Continue reading...New York Times Columnist Line of the Day
If you’re one of the four-or-so frequent readers of this here blog, chances are you also occasionally check out the New York Times op-ed page. You may even know the names: Thomas “Friedman’s Just Another Word For Nothing Left to Lose” Friedman, Gail “The Colander” Collins, Nicholas “The Dark Crystal” Kristof, &c. This is a daily feature dedicated to these folks: one line that is either awesome, funny, insightful, intelligent, ridiculous, or utterly divorced from reality. Today\’s is from Thomas \”Tommy Boy\” Friedman, who in his column \”The Tea Kettle Movement,\” writes: How can you take a...
Continue reading...The Politics of Birth Control
Pop Quiz: Match the country with its government\’s birth control news: 1) In Country A, the president pledges to provide birth control to poor couples who want it. 2) In Country B, the legislature hedges on making any commitments to providing low-cost birth control to women who want it, in the face of loud opposition from Catholic Bishops. Ok, from the set-up of the question, you might already have guessed that Country B is the U.S. (come on, President Obama making pledges about birth control? Sounds like something Candidate Obama might have said…) The surprising part is that Country A is...
Continue reading...Atheists, agnostics, Jews and Mormons know more about religion than you do
The Pew Forum on Religion and Public life released a report today on America\’s religious knowledge, and the findings were…pretty surprising? Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons are among the highest-scoring groups on a new survey of religious knowledge, outperforming evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants and Catholics on questions about the core teachings, history and leading figures of major world religions. On average, Americans correctly answer 16 of the 32 religious knowledge questions on the survey by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life. Atheists and agnostics average 20.9 correct answers. Jews and Mormons do...
Continue reading...Moody's "double agent" ratings: How the game is rigged
RJ Eskow: Despite all the evidence, Moody\’s is still treated as a credible player … and one that\’s powerful enough to send a warning shot across the bow of the United States government. It threatened to downgrade the US government\’s debt last March if more wasn\’t done to reduce the government\’s debt. That\’s the kind of rigged game we\’re facing: One of the biggest sources of the government\’s debt is the economic collapse. That collapse was enabled in large measure by the bad ratings issuing by rating franchises like Moody\’s. Now Moody\’s wants to hamstring the government\’s...
Continue reading...Great Moments in Campaign Advertising: Morning in America
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EU-IBF8nwSY&w=560&h=445] \”Prouder/Faster/Stronger\” A Reagan/Bush ad from 1984 featuring the famous tag-line \”It\’s morning in America,\” was one of the—if not the—most effective campaign advertisements in U.S. history. A simple message—things are better now than they were four years ago, so why change?—yet, thematically very interesting. \”Morning\” both symbolizes the disappearance of the dark age of the 1970s, as well as the very real and non-symbolic message of people going to work. IMDBish fun fact of the day: The ad was directed by John Pytka, whose brother Joe Pytka directed \”Space Jam.\” Full text of the ad after...
Continue reading...New York Times Columnist Line of the Day
If you’re one of the four-or-so frequent readers of this here blog, chances are you also occasionally check out the New York Times op-ed page. You may even know the names: Thomas “Friedman’s Just Another Word For Nothing Left to Lose” Friedman, Gail “The Colander” Collins, Nicholas “The Dark Crystal” Kristof, &c. This is a daily feature dedicated to these folks: one line that is either awesome, funny, insightful, intelligent, ridiculous, or utterly divorced from reality. Today\’s is from David \”Yawny-Pants\” Brooks, who opines for California\’s heydays in his column \”Tom Joad Gave Up,\” writing: As jobs...
Continue reading...Florida and Gay Adoption Laws
Kudos to Florida\’s Third District Court of Appeal, which last week overturned the state\’s thirty-year-old blanket ban on gay adoption. According to NYT, Florida was the last state in the country to have such a law, and Newly Progressive Gov. Charlie Crist came out in support of the decision, saying it was \”a great day for children.\” It was an especially great day for plaintiff Martin Gill and the two boys (biological brothers) who he had been trying for years to adopt. Ironically, the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF) strongly urged Gill to take in...
Continue reading...New York Times Columnist Line of the Day
If you’re one of the four-or-so frequent readers of this here blog, chances are you also occasionally check out the New York Times op-ed page. You may even know the names: Thomas “Friedman’s Just Another Word For Nothing Left to Lose” Friedman, Gail “The Colander” Collins, Nicholas “The Dark Crystal” Kristof, &c. This is a daily feature dedicated to these folks: one line that is either awesome, funny, insightful, intelligent, ridiculous, or utterly divorced from reality. I hope you enjoy. Today\’s is from Roger \”Life of the Party\” Cohen, who in his Globalist column \”The New American...
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