I woke up last night feeling like I was suffocating, because in my dream I was. It began in a church, or an old university lecture hall. Antique. And everyone in attendance was being asked to say little prayers honoring Jesus. Everyone was reciting little prayers that are common among the devout. But when it was my turn, I stood and exclaimed: Jesus was a ph […]
For those who are interested in the New Jersey Governor’s race, Fox News is offering a live stream of tonight’s candidate’s debate. According to Fox News’ homepage, you can watch it here. At the moment, I’m just getting a discussion about the debate on The Strategy Room. They are discussing the issues and candidates.
Use this thread to comment on the debate or anything to do with the NJ Governor’s race.
UPDATE 1: The debate is just starting now (7:09PM Eastern)
The conventional wisdom is that President Barack Obama was embarrassed by the patently ludicrous award to him of the Nobel Peace Prize. And to be fair it did seem so when he accepted the honour (a term I use loosely) last Friday, quoting his daughter Malia as saying: “Daddy, you won the Nobel Peace Prize, and it is Bo’s birthday!” (call me a cynic but that’s a fabricated quote if ever I heard one).
Since then, however, it’s become abundantly clear that Obama isn’t even faintly sheepish about the award. Yeah, there’s all the usual guff about him being humbled, it’s about us not him blah blah blah. But this can’t mask the fact that he’s as pleased as punch about landing the prize. He’s lapping it up and seems to view it – sadly and mistakenly – as a major validation.
Apart from the clue that he’s going to skip over to Oslo to pick up the gong personally (great opportunity for a wonderful speech), consider the emails his White House is sending out. No opportunity to shoehorn in a mention of the Nobel prize is being missed.
Yesterday, it was: “Earlier today, President Obama spoke with President Felipe Calderon of Mexico, President Oscar Arias of Costa Rica, and President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia. In addition to thanking each for their respective calls regarding the Nobel Peace Prize, the President…”
The day before it was: “Late Saturday morning, President Obama returned Indian Prime Minister Singh’s phone call. Prime Minister Singh had called President Obama on Friday to congratulate him on having won the Nobel Peace Prize. The President expressed his appreciation for the call and congratulations. He noted that he was humbled and grateful for having received the Nobel, and that he saw it as a call to collective action on shared challenges.”
[…]
All in all, it’s a hilarious display of vanity and self-absorption masquerading ineptly as humility and selflessness.
But there’s a serious question: What does it say about Obama’s character when such an empty symbol means so much to him?
You didn’t really fall for all that humilty bullshit, didja?
This is the guy who:
Decided he was qualified to be president after only two years in the Senate
Wrote TWO memoirs by his mid-forties (and without having accomplished anything worthy of note)
Ran a campaign that was based on a cult of personality
Rented a stadium and built his own faux-temple just to give one speech.
The battle rages on between feminists over whether a “women-only” or “liberal women-only” strategy is the best path to upending the current patriarchal system. This system is one that deprives the female gender of appropriate representation in the power structures of our nation. I believe this is *the* question of our generation for women who witnessed the simultaneously positive and negative experience of the election of 2008. Two strong female candidates, each from supposedly diametrically opposed ideologies, became political lightening rods; both were revered and ravaged at the same time. Many of us saw the awesome potential of finally cracking that political glass ceiling and it excited us. When the dust settled in the ashes of the political aftermath, a smoldering question remained — who should crack that ceiling? or more accurately, who deserves our support?
But, to my intended point here – are we focusing too narrowly on politics in our pursuit of social equality? I’ve previously discussed the theory of social dominance as the fundamental explanation for women’s barriers to this social equality. (It may be helpful to read the following posts here, here, and here, which provide the foundation for what follows.) The basic premise of social dominance theory is that a socially dominant group establishes through its power, institutions that perpetuate their dominance. This is accomplished through the the promulgation of legitimizing myths. (legitimizing myths = beliefs, norms, doctrines, ideologies, dogma, memes, etc.) The socially dominant therefore use their power over institutions to promote legitimizing myths that are used to persuade the non-dominant group to accept their subservience. The only effective antidote to specific areas of social dominance is to mount a successful counter-movement for the purpose of gaining access to the power structures of the institution and to erode the legitimizing myths.
Good morning Conflucians! You know it’s a slow news day when the top story on all the popular news sites is a about a six-year old boy who may or may not have helped his family fake a crisis in order to get on TV. The New York Times even had this story linked on its front page! Supposedly, the boy, Falcon Heene of Fort Collins, CO., had been carried off by a helium balloon, and there was a frantic search until the boy was found hiding in the attic of his parents’ house in fear of punishment. According to the NYT The Lede blog,
But on Thursday evening, after Falcon and his family appeared on CNN, the blogosphere was skeptical. The Internet — from social networking forums to comments on news media Web sites — came alive with suggestions that the balloon incident might have been staged.
Here is a clip from the family’s interview with Wolf Blitzer, filling in for Larry King last night:
The suspicions began after the family was interviewed on the CNN program “Larry King Live,” which was being hosted by Wolf Blitzer.
As law enforcement personnel searched frantically for the boy, Falcon Heene said he had heard people in the house calling his name, calling for him to come out. When asked on camera by his father, Richard Heene, why he hadn’t responded, the boy said, “You guys said we did this for the show.”
Richard Heene looked uncomfortable upon hearing the comment, but later in the program said he was “appalled” at any suggestion that the incident had been staged.
I can testify from personal experience that six-year-old boys are not very good at keeping secrets. We’ll have to wait and see how this thing plays out, I guess.
The kind that chases storms for fun, volunteers for “Wife Swap,” and brags that their kids have no fear.
Amateur scientist Richard Heene and wife, Mayumi, were bucking convention long before the youngest of their three sons untethered a silver balloon and sparked panic across Colorado.
The 48-year-old dad has no formal science training but is obsessed with extreme weather and extraterrestrials and fantasizes about meeting “real aliens from outer space” on his MySpace page.
We didn’t know the Heenes were weather chasers (who slept in their clothes to be at the ready) or extraterrestrial chasers or, for that matter, ABC reality-TV chasers.
Or that ABC would describe the family for its “Wife Swap” audience this way: “Richard calls Mayumi his ‘ninja wife’; she maintains equipment, drives the storm-mobile, films tornadoes and waits with the kids while Richard . . . heads into the eye of the storm and launches rockets to measure magnetic forces. At home the family are as chaotic as a twister: The kids have no table manners and throw themselves around the house, and while Richard devotes every moment to his research, he expects Mayumi to cook, clean and run the house without any help.”
And here’s the LATEST BREATHLESS UPDATE: the balloon boy threw up twice in two different TV appearances! You’ll have to google it, because I’m afraid to link to AP stories. Continue reading →
This complete rainbow was photographed at 30,000 feet by Lloyd J. Ferraro. "The 'Private Sector' Is Government 'Contracting Out' Its Functions: We live in a society, and getting things done for society is what government is for. Government is society's way to make decisions about society's resources, economy and future. Per […]
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