12.2
Two Laments on Mumbai
The Anonymous Antagonist, “muse awoken”, pens a response to one woman’s lament on the violence that exploded in Mumbai last week.
11.27
Happy Thanksgiving
I’m thankful for the avoidance of what could have been …
… the passing of what we have all been forced to suffer through (gettim Gobbly!) …
… and the hope of what can be.
Have a hopeful holiday.
11.10
Learned Helplessness
The theory of Learned Helplessness fits perfectly — on a macro, more social level — with the sentiment I intended to express in “A Period of Adjustment”. Here’s to serendipitous discovery.
11.4
Pride
After a long, arduous wait, finally, a President I can believe in. Congratulations, Preseident-elect Obama. Congratulations, America. You’ve made the right choice.
Tonight, I love my country more than, I think, I ever have before.
10.16
Factually Biased
Facts continue to hold a liberal bias.
– John Gruber, “Bulls, Bears, Donkeys and Elephants”
10.13
The Race Card
From the start, there have always been two separate but equal questions about race in this election. Is there still enough racism in America to prevent a black man from being elected president no matter what? And, will Republicans play the race card? The jury is out on the first question until Nov. 4. But we now have the unambiguous answer to the second: Yes.
– Frank Rich, from the op-ed “The Terrorist Barack Hussein Obama”
10.10
What if He Loses?
The Obama campaign has been the anti–O.J. trial, a 24-hour ongoing drama about a black man cast not as a problem but, potentially, as the solution
– Ta-Nehisi Coates, “What if he Loses?”
10.8
The Gloves
Yes, folks, it, indeed, appears that the gloves are coming off in the waning hours of the 2008 race for President of the United States. These final weeks are a test of character, sort of a national Milgram experiment where we see, when given the chance and the implicit permission to do whatever needs to be done, the real ugliness comes out for all to see. All of the base and mean thoughts held at bay, in the hopes that one will be victorious at this point and therefore able to hold the victor’s pose and have no need of making a tool of one’s hatred, are let loose on the public in the hopes that those base and mean thoughts will touch on people’s fears and prejudices and so turn around one’s flagging campaign for the highest office in the land.
And so it goes in Virginia, where McCain’s campaign chair in Buchanan County, Bobby May, shows us what he, and, by extension, John McCain, are really made of. This exploitive, bigoted, ignorant and hate-filled piece, published in a local paper in Buchanan County, Virgina should have never seen the light of day but now that it has, it is easy to see why McCain represents a past we should all be happy to leave behind.
Update: Bobby May has been relieved of his post inside the McCain campaign.
10.6
Edification
Two take-away quotes from an article in The New Yorker entitled “The Choice”. The negative:
The longer the campaign goes on, the more the issues of personality and character have reflected badly on McCain. Unless appearances are very deceiving, he is impulsive, impatient, self-dramatizing, erratic, and a compulsive risk-taker. These qualities may have contributed to his usefulness as a “maverick” senator. But in a President they would be a menace.
The positive:
At a moment of economic calamity, international perplexity, political failure, and battered morale, America needs both uplift and realism, both change and steadiness. It needs a leader temperamentally, intellectually, and emotionally attuned to the complexities of our troubled globe. That leader’s name is Barack Obama.
Regardless of how you are leaning, weather you still need to make up your mind or, as in my case, simply like some buttressing, some reinforcement to your already strongly held opinion as to who would make the better president, regardless of these things, an edifying read.
9.28
America the Gift Shop
Products as disturbing as the people, places and events that inspired them: America the Gift Shop
9.17
More of the Same
Sarah Palin knows a little something about God’s will, knowing God quite well, from their work together on that natural-gas pipeline, [...]
More of the same, indeed, for, Palin, like Bush, not only has the gift of talking to the regular folk — Not down to them but straight at ‘em, you know — but she also has that kind of special, close relationship with the G-O-D that one is going to need if they expect to secure a win in The Great Terror War of the Millennia.
9.15
9.11
Mean Spirited
Is the United States mean-spirited enough to elect a president form a party that mocks public service on a massively public scale? I want to say no … I really do. via Powazek
