Roldo Bartimole writes:

Clevelanders over the years have taken over the Yankees, the Knicks, the Nets, the Rangers, Madison Square Garden. If sports, why not the book industry. Well, not quite that ambitious but Bill Gunlocke who gave Cleveland the alternative paper The Edition, has started a blog and wonders if New York City is really a Book City.

Bill, who also ran a book store in The Arcade when was The Arcade, questions whether it”s true that N. Y. C. is the Book City. Maybe it”s Cleveland, he wonders.

Anyway, Bill has always had the ability to bring maybe a quirky, but wise and different view. It is what he brought to Cleveland with The Edition and I wish he was still here and not in New York.
His love of school kids comes through. It”s a passion that keeps him looking for a new way to inspire and provoke.

Other projects kept me from earlier recognizing my 9 November bloggiversary this week, but I’ve reposted my very first blog post for anyone who would like to see where I began.

Over the past five years I have published just shy of 9,000 posts — 8,922 to be precise — and responded to 3,884 comments from a readership that has reached as high as 21,495 unique visitors in one month generating 750,312 hits.

I’m ready for kindergarten!

…Why the feck we learn about this gross disception by a major news organization on a comedy show? Where are CNN, ABC, CBS and NBC on this story?

Via Eric @ Plunderbund…

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.

A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money. — G. Gordon Liddy

Warning: never trust an Internet quote without checking something other than Google. I’m willing to bet that less than 10 percent of these are real or accurate.

Found in my electronic chapbook.

Maugham explained that as a young man he wrote with the stunning confidence of youth, adopting the omniscient third-person viewpoint. But when he grew older, he reported, he found it much more secure to write in his own voice and from a fixed point of view. (In Maugham”s particular case, the limitations of the first person have less effect than gravity on a soaring hawk. If you want to see the agility with which the master can bend the first person to his ends, dealing with events at which his narrator is not present, swimming to and fro in the currents of time, give some attention to The Razor”s Edge [One of the 18 Books That Have Influenced My Life, JH.], Cakes And Ale, and The Moon And Sixpence.) p. 156

From Telling Lies for Fun and Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers by Lawrence Block.

I wrote 1,667 words yesterday morning and my total word count is now 18,674.

Previously…

Reality is all in the qualifiers, in this case an adverb. When President Barak Hussein Obama sits down with the heads of the ten member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations this weekend, he will reiterate the U.S. call for the release of all political prisoners in Myanmar. All, of course, includes Aung San Suu Kyi.

Here’s where the qualifier comes in. According to the Voice Of America:

A White House spokesman said Tuesday that Mr. Obama will reiterate U.S. calls for the release of all political prisoners in Burma, and will probably mention Aung San Suu Kyi by name. [Emphasis mine, JH.]

In diplomatic speak that means that U.S. diplomats are working furiously behind the scenes to negotiate Suu Kyi’s release and that if they can obtain guarantees that Myanmar’s Prime Minister Thein Sein will acquiesce to President Obama’s request, then he will make that request during the meeting.

Last week, a senior U.S. official was in Burma for talks with the country’s ruling generals, putting in motion the Obama administration’s new policy of “pragmatic engagement” with the isolated southeast Asian nation. The talks are part of an effort to press Burma’s military rulers to hold talks with opposition parties and ethnic minorities.

But the administration also has vowed to maintain sanctions on Burma until it makes progress toward democracy.

Suu Kyi is the quid to the lifting, at least in part, of the sanctions quo.

Tuesday evening our Socrates Café met at the Mayfield Road Phoenix Coffee House and the question we pulled from the box was:

What does it mean for the media to provide balanced coverage?

My initial reaction was that the concept of balanced coverage was a chimera, a serious bit of smoke and mirrors created by the broadcast media to hide the reality that as long as humans are involved in selecting the stories, who gets to answer questions, how much time they are given to state their views and what images are chosen to accompany a story, there can be no balance; humans are by our very nature biased. We can’t help that fact.

In the past, before broadcast media, the fairness doctrine and licensing of the public airwaves, journalists made no attempt to present themselves as fair and balanced. Newspapers were blatantly associated with particular politics and ideologies. Generally people subscribed to those publications Continue Reading »

Roldo Bartimole writes:

Were there failures or absence of institutional and community structure that helped make the mass murderer of Imperial Avenue get away with the killings so easily? Yes, there were.

People ask the question, why didn”t someone notice what was happening? How did this happen right under the noses of the police and the community? Where”s the “community?” What”s the matter with people?

Cleveland neighborhoods have been deprived of many things but likely most destructive has been the purposeful neglect and sometime suppression of community activism over a long period of time here. It has worked its destructive way.

You can”t have an aware, alive community that”s a repressed community. Continue Reading »

It’s been a busy week in Wally World: the Universe’s source of cheap plastic crap. On The Writing On The Wal — the blog USA Today says should be on its readers’ radar — Jonathan Rees and I continue our work dedicated to drawing back the curtain on the Bentonvile Behemoth’s corporate disinformation and other flackery.

WALMART: THE SITCOM…? At the level of George M. Cohen – I don”t care what you say about me, as long as you spell my name right – a weekly 30-minutes comedy about a Walmart Faux Big Box associate drone could be good for Walmart the Faux Big Box Retailer. Keep reading…

A HAPPY, BLOGGING WALMART SHOPPER… I asked readers to send me links to blogs that featured posts from happy Walmart shoppers. So far no one has raised their hand, but in the interest of fairness, I did find a happy Walmart blogger in Amman, Jordan. Well, she”s at least writing from Amman. Keep reading…

HOW TO DESTROY THE PUBLISHING INDUSTRY… Has Walmart, along with Target and Amazon (and now Sears), crossed a line in their rush to steal business from each other, are they about to kill a little goose that still produces a few golden eggs? The American Booksellers Association thinks so. Keep reading…

PROOF POSITIVE THAT GREENWASHING WORKS… If you tell a lie loud enough and long enough, that portion of President Abraham Lincoln”s foolable people will believe that black is white, up is down, war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength and on and on and on. Keep reading…

SHOULD ANDY GO TO WORK FOR WALMART…? When given the chance to think of the four worst places self-described spokesjerk Andy should go after being fired from Blue Cross Blue Shield for well, telling the truth, he came up with: Blackwater, Walmart, Goldman Sachs and Faux Fox News. Keep reading…

WALMART”S THEATRE OF THE ABSURD… I read the tale of Walmart, Joe Paolucci and Thomas Hitchcock three times and I”m still not convinced that it isn”t a farce. But I can”t find anyone calling bullshit on the story so I”ll leave to you readers to decide if Walmart can really be this batshit crazy. Keep reading…

WALMART, CHILD HUNGER AND NUTRITION…? Blogger Jill Richardson asks: What does Walmart have to do with improving school lunch and fighting child hunger? Richardson was responding to the witness list for a Senate Agriculture Committee hearing next week chaired by Walmart Senator Blanche Lincoln. Keep reading…

333 WAYS…? REALLY…? REALLY…! I”ve seen similar lists posted on the Interwebs before, but I”ve never known anyone with so much free time on their hands that they could amass a list this comprehensive. For the record, I don”t endorse any of these juvenille pranks. Keep reading…

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.

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul. — George Bernard Shaw

Warning: never trust an Internet quote without checking something other than Google. I’m willing to bet that less than 10 percent of these are real or accurate.

Found in my electronic chapbook.

It is a temptation for novice writers to over-report such subway rides because they”re easy to write about while skimping on more important scenes which are trickier to write. When that subway ride is important – when the hero gets beaten up in its course or shinnies up the third rail or whatever, that”s when you can”t cheat. You”ve got to write about it. p. 153

From Telling Lies for Fun and Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers by Lawrence Block.

I wrote 1,667 words yesterday morning and my total word count is now 18,674.

Previously…

While President Barak Hussein Obama has no plan for a bilateral meeting with Myanmar’s Prime Minister Thein Sein during the South East Asian Nationssummitt in Singapore, observers are expressing great interest in what might transpire when Obama meets with the 10 ASEAN members.

From AFP:

“The US has decided that its ASEAN policy will not be determined by its policy towards Myanmar,” Singapore Foreign Minister George Yeo said, referring to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

“It’s a breakthrough because previous attempts at hosting a summit meeting were prevented because of the Myanmar issue.”

Yeo was speaking to reporters at annual meetings of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Singapore, culminating in a weekend summit of 21 APEC leaders including Obama.

After the APEC summit concludes on Sunday, ASEAN’s 10 leaders, including Myanmar Prime Minister Thein Sein, are scheduled to hold an unprecedented meeting with the US president.

I cannot help but remember the reception that President George W. Bush received at his last meeting with the G20. I expect this meeting will be very different.

Roldo Bartimole writes:

The reason we don”t know why the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority dumped its chief executive Adam Wasserman is because the real leader of the board – John Carney – believes it”s none of your business.

The Port Authority is one of those governmental bodies set up to avoid public input. It has an unelected board. The public, in fact, knows little if anything about its members. Probably cares less.

One aspect of the board has remained rather fixed over the years – the name Carney.

The political head of this powerful family, the late James M. Carney, twice unsuccessful candidate for mayor (once dropped out, once defeated), was chairman during the Port”s early years.

Presently, his nephew John Carney, son of the late judge John Carney, has been on the board for some years. He was chairman. To avoid the limelight or the spotlight, Carney resigned as board chairman. However, it seems he”s still Continue Reading »

Jeffrey Goldberg writes:

I am not arguing, of course, that American Muslims, as a whole, are violently unhappy with America (I’ve argued the opposite, in fact). But I do think that elite makers of opinion in this country try very hard to ignore the larger meaning of violent acts when they happen to be perpetrated by Muslims. Here’s a simple test: If Nidal Malik Hasan had been a devout Christian with pronounced anti-abortion views, and had he attacked, say, a Planned Parenthood office, would his religion have been considered relevant as we tried to understand the motivation and meaning of the attack? Of course.

Ta-Nehisi Coates replies:

Jeff asks what we’d say if a devout Christian had attacked Planned Parenthood. Fair enough–we have a pretty good corollary in George Tiller. I could be wrong, but I don’t recall a lot of “media elites” trying to divine what Tiller’s death said about Christianity, itself. Again, beyond the fact that some wacko interpreted Christianity to mean he had the right to shoot people, what else would there be to say?

There is an ongoing debate, a debate that is gaining attention and passion, among Atheists about whether or not Atheism ought to take a militant position, that is, if, given our current reality, we perceive a real threat to our society from militant religionists, is the proper response to push back with greater militancy; in a phrase, to get all medieval on their asses?

That’s a loaded question with a lot baggage. Continue Reading »

0709: AFA: No More Muslims in the Military

0636: RNC Chairman suggests his party is racist