Thoughts on Media, Politics, Religion, and Technology
Rapaport is Jewish – the first Jewish person that Nkulu, a devout Christian, has ever met. Rapaport's grandparents fled Germany during the Holocaust. They came to the United States with nothing and settled in Kansas City, Mo.
"They had to build themselves up from square one," Rapaport said. "So, we're both relative newcomers to this country, and we both want to make America a stronger place."
Rapaport is one of six Williams College students who are living with local immigrant families and working with students who are learning to speak English in Portland's public schools.
The administration says Congress accepted at least $6.9 billion of the $11.3 billion in discretionary spending cuts Mr. Obama proposed for the current fiscal year. An analysis by The Washington Times found that Mr. Obama was victorious in getting Congress to slash 24 programs and achieved some level of success in reducing nine other programs.The Raptor was an economic boon to Georgia, but when the Pentagon doesn't want the plane, it's time to end the project. I'll be taking bets on if the conventional wisdom ever acknowledges this little factoid (and indeed, I don't even know if it matters, considering how much new spending was proposed.)
Among the president's victories are canceling the multibillion-dollar F-22 Raptor program, ending the LORAN-C radio-based ship navigation system and culling a series of low-dollar education grants. In each of those cases, Mr. Obama succeeded in eliminating programs that Mr. Bush repeatedly failed to end.
Hi, I saw that you posted on Sarah Palin's Facebook wall, and I wondered if you might like to hear a few things about her. There was a piece on 60 Minutes last night with McCain's Campaign Manager, and he said a lot of things that I didn't know about her, and that were very worrying.
Sarah did a lot of great things in Alaska. She was a hugely popular governor, and was willing to resign from an Ethics committee in protest of ethic violations. I admire that. But she LIED, and lied repeatedly during the campaign. I cannot tolerate that in leaders that I support, and hope that you will join me.
During Troopergate, she said on a press call that she had been cleared of "any wrongdoing" when the report stated that she had "abused her power." She said she refused the Bridge to Nowhere when she campaigned for it. She denied a quote she made on the record about human responsibility for climate change, and said that she improvised her convention speech when she did not. She thought the First Amendment (Freedom of the Press) allowed her to avoid any tough questions, and when on the world stage, you can't win by avoiding a problem: you have to face it head on.
Even more importantly, she wanted to be next-in-line to the Presidency of the United States of America while thinking that Saddam Hussein attacked us on 9/11 (he had nothing to do with it), without knowing why North and South Korea were separate nations (the Cold War with the USSR), and didn't know what the Federal Reserve did (it manages all of the money in the US). Every aspiring President MUST know these things. Our leaders must be our best, and our best should know who was responsible for 9/11!
The person who compiled the list below is biased, and some of these points are bogus, but most are true. It makes me very sad, because I think she represents America better than most politicians, but I cannot support a liar. Remember the 9th Commandment, and God Bless.
I surely hope that America can find a strong, conservative politician, but I don't think we have that in Sarah Palin. We MUST do better. Thanks for reading.
Will Slack
Decatur, GA
Biased reference: http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/11/the-odd-lies-of-sarah-palin-a-roundup.html
Fifty years ago, a brief letter to the editor of a student newspaper led to a national furor over academic freedom. When it broke in 1959, the Leo Koch Case dominated front pages and newscasts. It remained a story for three years. Today it is so thoroughly forgotten that not even Wikipedia, which knows everything, has heard of it.The professor was fired immediately for expressing what is now a commonly held view. I also really like Ebert's last sentence, and have found it to be quite true in my own experience. Read the whole thing.
"With modern contraceptives and medical advice readily available at the nearest drugstore, or at least a family physician, there is no valid reason why sexual intercourse should not be condoned among those sufficiently mature to engage in it without social consequences and without violating their own codes of morality and ethics. A mutually satisfactory sexual experience would eliminate the need for many hours of frustrating petting and lead to happier and longer lasting marriages among our young men and women." - Leo Kosh
You should be horse-whipped for the insult you have paid to the highest office of our nation.
Having followed President Obama's suggestion and donated money to the Red Cross for relief in Haiti, I was offended to hear you suggest the President might be a thief capable of stealing money intended for the earthquake victims. [...]
This conversation came 48 hours after many of us had seen pitiful sights from Port au Prince. Tens of thousands are believed still alive beneath the rubble. You twisted their suffering into an opportunity to demean the character of the President of the United States.
You have a sizable listening audience. You apparently know how to please them. Anybody given a $400 million contract must know what he is doing.
That's what offends me. You know exactly what you're doing.
Don't have time? Shut your mouth. It's winter study.
There is something conservative about much of Pixar's output, but when I say conservative, I mean a small “c” conservative that sees the world along the same lines as Edmund Burke: “A disposition to preserve.” I'm going to call this “social conservatism,” by which I don't mean the religious or moral conservatism of modern political discourse, but a conservatism that is interested in preserving traditional social features - in particular, the idea of “family” - but which sees such preservation as ultimately futile. The family will dissolve, eventually, and so we must do what we can to keep it going as long as possible. It is a worldview based not on progression but on loss.
As Palmieri predicted, the Nightline interview did nothing to rehabilitate Edwards—and the months thereafter only brought him more misery. Isolated, scorned, turned into a national punch line, Edwards slipped into a dark place. His weight plummeted. His countenance turned sickly. Some of his former aides began to fear that he might kill himself. And though the extent of his ruin didn’t reach that depth, the nightmarishness of his circumstances remain hard to overstate. A North Carolina grand jury is expected soon to reach a conclusion in its investigation of whether Edwards or his associates illegally used campaign cash to cover up his affair. Hunter is suing him for child support. And next month Andrew Young will publish a tell-all book that promises to give new definition to the term sordid.
As for Elizabeth Edwards, she is reportedly now urging John to accede to Hunter’s demands and take responsibility for his paternity of Frances Quinn—a dramatic and no doubt painful turnabout from her position eighteen months ago. Confronted then with the Enquirer photo of her husband cuddling Hunter’s baby, she insisted to Palmieri that she still believed he was not the father. “I have to believe it,” Elizabeth said. “Because if I don’t, it means I’m married to a monster.”
