“I don’t have a problem except for the fact that I said something prematurely that I think taints the process,” said Mayor Frank Jackson of his bungled no-bid, ten-year contract with a no-record company from China.
Wow!
For any other mayor that might be called more than embarrassing. It might be called a major disaster.
“Prematurely?”
No, just plain wrong, Mayor. With tens of millions of city dollars Continue Reading »
The North Carolina Republican Party is going after Tea Party congressional candidate Tim D’Annunzio because he is a druggie, dead-beat dad who once found the Ark of the Covenant (in Arizona). And he’s ahead in polls.
Note to Republicans: you have to dance with the one who brought you to the party.
MetaFilter is all a twitter with the white slavery story of two Russian girls working as hostesses in New York City. Andrew Sullivan got caught up in the story, but one commenter, stepped in with reason a bit of contra Law & Order thinking that gets the story right.
Philogratis writes:
My humble opinion, which may make me hated, is that although sex trafficking exists, and is probably a serious problem in parts of the third world, this idea that thousands of women kidnapped and forced into sexual slavery in the United States is false. For me, it seems suspicious that this story is almost exactly like the “white slavery” panic in the middle of the 20th century. The only difference are the victims: innocent young tourist girls (now) as opposed to innocent young country girls from small Midwestern towns who come to the big city. Back then the criminals tended to be blacks and beatniks, now they are Mexican and Eastern European gangs.
The motivation is real hysteria and a strong impulse to reduce the problem to punishing criminals rather than focusing on the real reasons people become prostitutes: broken homes, poor economic opportunities, abusive consensual sexual relationships, and drug addiction. These problems can’t be stopped by cops and guns.
I don’t see how kidnapping women is worthwhile for pimps. There are millions of women in the world who work in the sex industry, mostly for far lower wages. In Amsterdam a prostitute can be hired for 25-50 dollars. In Eastern Europe that goes down to 10-20 dollars. I’ve heard in Thailand prostitutes can be hired for 5 dollars. I live in Honolulu, HI, where the going rate is 100-250 dollars.
A sex worker who is willing, for whatever reason, to do the work they do is far more useful and profitable for a pimp than a totally unwilling woman who must be kidnapped, drugged, and guarded 24 hours a day. It is true that immigrant women arrested by law enforcement often claim to be victims of sex trafficking. Voluntary prostitutes are criminals who are arrested and deported. Involuntary victims of sex trafficking can claim asylum and are eligible for 5000 visas a year specifically marked for sex trafficking victims. In such cases when the women are obviously not physically restrained, the usual claim is that their families at home are having their lives threatened. It might be true from time to time, but willing sex workers have every incentive to lie,
To help sex workers, we must focus on the real social ills of poverty, domestic violence, drug addiction, and draconian criminalization policies that perpetuate a sad system.
Works for me.
I”m not sure what nimrod thought this letter was a good idea, but this isn”t quite what I had in mind when I was asking Harriet Applegate for a meeting. Silly me, I thought labor would support my candidacy because I got the chance to “explain the importance” of supporting a guy who will fight for them, not the other way around. Not because I first cut a check.
Oh, Tim, they”ll say, this is how the game is played, don”t be so naive. Well, sorry. Homey don”t play that. People are going to jail for playing precisely this game, precisely this way. The stupidity of putting it in writing on party letterhead….well, that”s just entertainment value.
I’m pro-worker. I would very much like to be, and am, for the most par, pro-union. Anybody who reads my daily posts at The Writing On The Wal gets that.
When I read a letter like the one Tim posted on his blog, however, I get why unions in the United States are losing members faster than the Plain Dealer is losing advertisers.
F-16 vs. C-130
THERE IS A MORAL HERE!
A C-130 was lumbering along when a cocky F-16 flashed by. The jet jockey decided to show off.
The fighter jock told the C-130 pilot, “watch this!” and promptly went into a barrel roll followed by a steep climb. He then finished with a sonic boom as he broke the sound barrier. The F-16 pilot asked the C-130 pilot what he thought of that?
The C-130 pilot said, “That was impressive, but watch this!” The C-130 droned along for about 5 minutes and then the C-130 pilot came back on and said: “What did you think of that?”
Puzzled, the F-16 pilot asked, “What the heck did you do?”
The C-130 pilot chuckled. “I stood up, stretched my legs, walked to the back, went to the bathroom, then got a cup of coffee and a cinnamon bun.”
When you are young & foolish – speed & flash may seem a good thing!
When you get older & smarter – comfort & dull is not such a bad thing!
Us old folks understand this one.
I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.
The land is an ark, full of things waiting.
-from A Wet Time, p. 22
Found in my electronic chapbook.
From Farming: A Hand Book by Wendell Berry.
Today, 25 May, is Towel Day. What is Towel Day, you might rightly ask? Well it’s a day for all of us to remember the literary genius of Douglas Adams who gave us the answer to Life, The Universe, Everything. (And no, I’m not going to tell you, if you don’t know you probably need to read the directions on a box of tooth picks.
But why a towel? Because, as the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy informs us:
A towel, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker can have. Partly it has great practical value:
you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta;
you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours;
you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon;
use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth;
wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat;
wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you — daft as a bush, but very ravenous);
you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course
dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.
More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc.
Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.
For more Adam’s goodness, take a look at this four-part trilogy of interviews: part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4.
Thank you Douglas.
What we ought to be, here in the United States, is the gold standard for freedom and universal human rights. We come closer than most, if not all, other countries, but we have much still to do. Yet, for a weekend, in Buffalo, New York, Myanmarese expatriates reveled in their freedoms as guaranteed by our Constitution.
From The Buffalo News:
Dozens of exiled Burmese activists committed acts in Buffalo over the weekend that they say would have got them imprisoned – or worse – had they done so in their Southeast Asian homeland.
They assembled.
They organized their protest movement.
They participated in political debate.
And they talked about a day when the current military rule in the country will come to an end.
Some of those attending the two-day conference at Buffalo State College tell of how soldiers chased them from their homes two decades ago for leading student uprisings. Others have arrived in the United States more recently after spending years in refugee camps along the Thailand-Burma border.
Now resettled in this country, some traveled to the Buffalo conference from as far away as San Francisco; others from as close as Ithaca.
By Sunday evening, representatives from nearly a dozen pro-Burma democracy organizations from across the country agreed to form a coalition and to pick priorities and strategies together.
Beyond all our faults, past all our errors, Americans are better than we think we are, but not yet as good as our potential.
GEOGRAPHY OF A WOMAN
Between 18 and 22, a woman is like Africa: half discovered, half wild, fertile and naturally beautiful.
Between 23 and 30, a woman is like Europe: well developed and open to trade, especially for someone of real value.
Between 31 and 35, a woman is like Spain: very hot, relaxed, and convinced of her own beauty.
Between 36 and 40, a woman is like Greece: gently aging but still a warm and desirable place to visit.
Between 41 and 50, a woman is like Great Britain: with a glorious and all conquering past.
Between 51 and 60, a woman is like Israel: has been through war, doesn’t make the same mistakes twice, takes care of business.
Between 61 and 70, a woman is like Canada: self-preserving, but open to meeting new people.
After 70, she becomes Tibet: wildly beautiful, with a mysterious past and the wisdom of the ages, an adventurous spirit and a thirst for spiritual knowledge.
GEOGRAPHY OF A MAN
Between 1and 90, a man is like Iran, ruled by nuts.
I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.
After death, willing or not, the body serves,
entering the earth. And so what was heaviest
and most mute is the last raised up into song.-from Enriching The Earth, p. 21
Found in my electronic chapbook.
From Farming: A Hand Book by Wendell Berry.
In the world of political unrest, oppression, death and destruction, unintended consequences are easily lost and lives changed for the worst. Red Shirt protesters in Thailand had no idea that gamblers in Myanmar could be affected by their actions and few, if any, numbers runners in Mandalay were paying attention to the Red Shirts.
From The Irrawaddy:
On Wednesday, the Thai bourse shut down its operations after Red Shirt protesters set fire to the SET building in Bangkok.
In Burma, where the unrest in Thailand has received scant attention in the state-run media, the result was the sudden halt of an informal lottery that is a major income generator for many. From the poor to underpaid civil servants and members of the struggling middle class, many people in Burma earn a living off of sales of the tickets.
“All of us rely on this gambling for our daily income,” said one dealer in Mandalay.
The winning numbers in the lottery are based on the last two digits of the SET Index, and are picked four times a day: at 9:30 in the morning, 12:10 in the afternoon, 2:00 pm and 4:30 pm, when the stock exchange closes.
They could use the NYSE, I suppose.
Some oh so clever marketing dweeb at Cramer Sweeney — I know the spelling is wrong, but I can just see Cosmo at the brainstorming meetings — came up with the idea of making a game out of identifying marketing icons, tag-lines, mascots and audio signatures. The goal is to gather free information from consumers and sell that information at hundreds of dollars per hour of billing to the companies named in the quiz.
Want to have some real fun? Take the quiz and answer all the questions wrong! Screw up the dweebs results and skew the results.
Strike a blow against marketing idiots.
And what’s really great, is that you can take the test as many times as you like and really skew the numbers. Strike a blow against Madison Avenue, the real evil genius behind Wall Street.
(Just in case you need a little assistance, my wrong answers were: New Balance, Mitsubishi, Telex, Whirlpool, Chicago Bulls, Visa, Ferrari, World Bank, Pizza Hut, Mr. Clean, Stay Puff, Miller Brewing, San Diego Zoo, James Bartles, Cadbury Eggs, American Express Travel, Procter & Gamble, FedEx, Apple and Faux, )
Are you honest? This test only has one question, but it’s a very important one.
By giving an honest answer, you will discover where you stand morally. The test features an unlikely, completely fictional situation in which you will have to make a decision. Remember that your answer needs to be honest, yet spontaneous.
Please scroll down slowly and give due consideration to each line.
You are in Miami, Florida. There is chaos all around you caused by a hurricane with severe flooding. This is a flood of biblical proportions. You are a photojournalist working for a major newspaper, and you’re caught in the middle of this epic disaster. The situation is nearly hopeless
You’re trying to shoot career-making photos. There are houses and people swirling around you, some disappearing under the water. Nature is unleashing all of its destructive fury.
Suddenly you see a woman in the water. She is fighting for her life, trying not to be taken down with the debris. You move closer. Somehow the woman looks familiar. You suddenly realize who it is. It’s Hillary Clinton! At the same time you notice that the raging waters are about to take her under forever.
You have two options:
You can save the life of Hillary Clinton or you can shoot a dramatic Pulitzer Prize winning photo, documenting the death of one of the country’s most powerful women.
Here’s the question, and please give an honest answer:
Would you select high contrast color film, or would you go with the classic simplicity of black and white?
To pontificate a little, while Rand-Paul bashing is fun, I worry that those of us on the liberal side have too much of a tendency to strike the obvious target, the one that lets us divide ourselves into us good guys and them bad guys. Not saying that Paul is anything but a political opportunist. Just that, like Sarah Palin, he gets way too much attention for what he”s accomplished.
You “welcome” my “interest”? Marlboro country, here I come. Did Shirley Smith ever hear of, you know, voters? Another cigarette. Heaping amounts of profanity strewn end to end like Christmas garland. More smokes.
Compared to the daily stress over 8-plus years of wondering when you will be fired from which job you begged for, watching your friends disappear one by one, wondering who will take a shot at you from what anonymous email to whom, State Senator Shirley Smith is small potatoes. But I made State Senator Shirley Smith an occasion for a cigarette, a legitimate measure of my life’s stresses.
Enough. Churchill once said when you’re going through hell, keep going. The smoking, among other wallowing behaviors, kept me standing still. Merely coping, not living.
Time to start moving. Little steps at first, like writing about it all on a blog, or walking into a room of people without staring at the floor. Maybe lead with the conviction in job interviews, rather than wait for it to come up. How can I expect anyone else to treat my conviction as irrelevant, old news if I don’t do so myself?
Get a haircut, shoot some Youtubes, start wearing nice shoes, maybe don a sport coat, take on the nicotine and kill it, one thing leads to another, next thing you know, I’m campaigning in a well known establishment in Little Italy watching a prominent business owner reflexively, upon sight of my last name, put my campaign flyer in the front window of his Mayfield Road shop, and I stop him, myself, with other people looking on, saying with a laugh, “um…ya might wanna check me out online before you do that…but thanks!”
Woulda been a cigarette moment once.
I once was a three-pack-a-day smoker. In my quest to Go Up From Egypt, I’ve realized that I substituted food for my smokescreen of tobacco. Interestingly enough, people don’t ask me why I’m supporting Tim Russo for Cuyahoga County District 7 Councilman. I like to think that is because I’ve repeatedly attempted to make it clear why I stand with him.
How Tim concludes his post has always been a large part of my rational for supporting him. Repetition, however, can be good when the message is important:
I don’t give a damn whether I win or lose. I’ve already won the unpredictable battle I wanted and needed to fight. Winning an election, hell, I already know how to do that.
And if I can win this race — and I think I can — it will mean that if you pick your spots, work hard, fight like hell, and seize your own dignity, then anyone, can accomplish anything, in Cleveland. And it doesn’t matter how many people, however powerful, root against it happening, either. In fact, the more rooting against it, the more standing in the way, the better. When’s the last time you saw that happen in Cleveland?
Run Tim, run.
By Jeremy White:
Tea Party Protestors believe Obama not US-born
115,407 views
Filmed by Tim Russo, a longtime Democratic operative and current County Councilman in Ohio’s Cuyahoga County.
Russo interviews tea party protestors and challenges their contention that Obama was not born in America. As with the NewLeftMedia video, the tea partyers interviewed, when pressed, seem to be unable to substantiate.
Of course, Jeremy missed Tim’s magnum opus: The McCain-Palin Mob which captured the proto tea baggers for all the world to laugh at.
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