Tag: Politics

Politics and commerce

I saw relatively few retail stores with either Obama OR Romney signs this year. Seems like a no-win action, to possibly alienate a good chunk of your potential market over politics.

Jaquandor is back with his Sentential Links, which he had temporarily discontinued during the election season because he feared that he’d “do nothing but link political stuff.” Interestingly, though, the link that caught my attention did have to do with politics, of a sort.

John Scalzi, in his Whatever blog, which is often entertaining, wrote: “There are places that don’t get my business, or will ever get it, because I find their corporate beliefs or practices problematic. But I’m not going to stop going to the local ice cream shop because the owners put a Romney sign in their window.”

That got me thinking about how I felt about that. I can imagine that, if it were 1972, and someone had a sign for noted segregationist George Wallace in the window, I might have decided to take my money elsewhere. But I don’t recall whether I even saw business establishments with Richard Nixon signs.

Locally, I see lots of stores with signs of a local candidate or another. I’ve often wondered, especially in those more transient stores, whether the sign REALLY represents the proprietor’s position, or did he/she just stick the sign in the window because the first person in that race asked?

I saw relatively few retail stores with either Obama OR Romney signs this year. Seems like a no-win action, to possibly alienate a good chunk of your potential market over politics.

The ABC Wednesday post for R was about voting for Romney/Ryan. I suppose I could have put the kibosh on it, but I was disinclined. I did make comments, such as West Virginia has only five electoral college votes, not six, and that it has gone red every year that begins with the number 2.

In the last month, I went to the barbershop. Folks in some barbershops really DO talk like people do in the Barbershop movies. One of the other barbers asked my barber, who is the shop owner, whether he would “perform a gay marriage.” I am unaware that he is even licensed to marry anyone. The answer was “no”, which was disappointing. Yet I fully agree that a Catholic priest should not be forced to marry a Catholic to a Protestant, e.g. I support the premise, and it was a “what if” question; still, the response bugged me. I haven’t been back, but I haven’t gone anywhere else yet either, and I’m overdue for another trim.

I’m perfectly willing to boycott big businesses over their policies – I’ve done it for years – yet, on the local level, I’m a bit more…pragmatic? Forgiving? Or maybe the sin hasn’t been egregious enough.

November Rambling: Legacy of fools, and Facebook rejection

Please move the deer crossing. I had heard this one some time ago, but I thought it was a prank.

I have a friend who actually is in great pain much of the time. But she doesn’t “look” sick, or injured, and people dismiss her level of discomfort. So this graphic is for her.

Troy, who participates in ABC Wednesday, and has designed the last several logos for the rounds, and his wife Diann, have undergone a terrible family ordeal, which they describe in painful detail. Then Troy explains that injustice runs in the judge’s family.

The Unmitigated Disaster Known As Project ORCA, which was “a massive undertaking – the Republican Party’s newest, unprecedented and most technologically advanced plan to win the 2012 presidential election.”

Letter to a future Republican strategist regarding white people. “My name is Eric Arnold Garland and I am a White Man.”

Marriage equality legal precedents.

Paul Rapp believes we’re missing the most important story in the David Petraus case. Also, An interesting letter, which may or may not relate to Petraeus affair; the second letter.

I could list Amy Barlow Liberatore’s Sharp Little Pencil just about every month. Her poem Interview With Sgt. Davis, Kabul, 2012 addresses what we are fighting for, while Bitter Silence is a more personal reflection.

Ken Levine wrote about Social Network Rejection when two or three people unsubscribe from your Twitter page or someone unfriends you on Facebook. I realize that this is a real issue for some people. It just isn’t for me. I did sign up for something that tells me when someone has unfriended me. A couple were people discontinuing Facebook altogether, and the other two were friends of friends I didn’t know personally anyway. I suppose I should care, but I just don’t. Of course, I don’t even go on Twitter anymore unless there is a weather emergency or some other urgent item I feel needs to be posted. The only other things I put there are the automatic posts from my blog. See also this piece.

Levine talked with Warren Littlefield, who was the NBC President of Entertainment during the ’90s and was Brandon Tartikoff’s key lieutenant in the ’80s. Part 1; Part 2.

Levine’s lovely story about Shari Lewis, who I AM old enough to remember.

The grandfather of the Planet of the Apes.

Why People Think Christians Are Crazy.

One Shade of Grey.

Advice to so-called “aspiring” writers.

Chuck Miller: It was a “I thought it would last forever” relationship, and I thought this new prospect would work out. And it did at first. It worked out better than I could have ever imagined, ever in my wildest dreams.

From Y’all To Youse, 8 English Ways to Make “You” Plural, a topic which I touched on almost two years ago. Yinz?

Please move the deer crossing. I had heard this one some time ago, but I thought it was a prank. The woman later admitted she didn’t understand who was being directed by the signs.

The first result for YouTube search of scream of frustration.

Debbie Harry explains how to pogo.

ABBA v. Van Halen

From Annette Funicello to Johnny Carson, via Paul Anka.

EGOT winner Rita Moreno

What if Marilyn Monroe had survived?

Twinkies in the Movies. A couple are NSFW.

Chuck McCann has a joke for you. It’s the one about the guy carrying the crate…

Alan David Doane’s year in review. My only objection is that we’ve still got another month. Unless the Mayans were right.

Dustbury gets older.

R.I.P. Spain Rodriguez, truly a “pillar of the early underground community.”

Basil Wolverton Superhero Comics.

Canvas Sneakers: Cheaper Than A Security Guard

FROM MY OTHER BLOGS, plus

My life: the plan, and the reality

One six-year Presidential term? More snollygosters

Three Myths about Copyright Law and Where to Start to Fix It.

Our church choir performed a concert this month. Here are some pictures; I’m in a couple of them.

GOOGLE ALERTS

Statistics | Roger Green and Associates, Inc. – Significance Testing: What Happens If We are Wrong? It is a critical question in risk assessment. A wrong decision has implications, sometimes small and inconsequential, sometimes …

Sera Cahoone knows what it’s like to have Thom Yorke hold your hands and sing to you
By the time she was in middle school, she was playing drums for gigging bands, and in the early ’90s, she formed the experimental rock band Idle Mind with her friend Roger Green. Although one of the more promising local acts of the time, the pair split …

Angmering family’s fright over Hallowe-en candle bag fire. By Roger Green
Hallowe’en began with a frightening experience for an Angmering family when a candle bag left on a bedroom window sill started a …

Dogs that are lifeguards By Roger Green.

Graphics stolen from Facebook, the latter from George Takei.

VOTE Tuesday, America…even if it’s for Blutarsky

If you want to make a statement, vote. Vote for every office, even in those races where there is a candidate running unopposed.

I am always feeling a bit conflicted around Election Day. From a partisan point of view, I want people to vote for MY candidates, which means I’d prefer that supporters of opposing candidates would stay home.

On the other hand, I truly believe that the right to vote is far too precious not to exercise. After the Bill of Rights, there are only 17 amendments to the Constitution, and two of them, regarding Prohibition, cancel each other out. This means at least 1/3 of these amendments specifically address voting.

I know a lot of folks who have said to me that they don’t vote because it doesn’t matter, or because it encourages “them”, i.e., the politicians. Or worse, they don’t vote, because “they” will see it as a protest vote. Please allow me to set you straight; “they” don’t care. “They” see your uncast ballot as a sign of laziness or indifference.

If you want to make a statement, vote. Vote for every office, even especially in those races where there is a candidate running unopposed. Ever since we’ve gotten our new ballot machines in this part of upstate New York, I have realized that it is MUCH easier to cast a write-in vote.

Consider if you will, John “Bluto” Blutarsky. He had the lowest grade point average at his Faber College fraternity, Delta House, with a 0.0. Yet he went on to become a U.S. Senator. He is no more lamebrained than that Republican state representative from Arkansas who asserted that slavery was a “blessing in disguise”.

So vote. Vote in all races. Vote for my candidates if you would. Vote for third party candidates, if you must. And if you have some folks running unopposed, write in someone. Even Bluto Blutarsky, who you can see in this classic (NSFW) video.
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OH, the FUN Elections can Occupy in Classrooms: Overview of Awesome Ideas and Websites

Religious Freedom and the Presidential Election

An odd Quora question: 2012 U.S. Presidential Election: Do you think President Obama truly wants a second term, or is he just running because he feels like it’s his duty to keep the presidency in Democratic hands?

 

40 Years Ago: My 1st Presidential Vote, for George McGovern

I got to see George McGovern at a rally at my college, SUNY New Paltz in the autumn of 1972.

There were a LOT of people running for the Democratic nomination for President against Richard Nixon in 1972. The general consensus early on, though, was that Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine would be the selection. He had been the Vice-Presidential nominee in 1968 and had been a credible candidate in a close race. But he was sunk early on by the crying incident, which, to this day, I find utterly bewildering, and dropped out of the race early on.

This seemed to give segregationist Governor George Wallace of Alabama some momentum, much to the chagrin of all right-minded people. An assassination attempt in May paralyzed him and effectively ended his campaign.

Many of the leading candidates – Muskie, and other 1968 candidates Hubert Humphrey and Eugene McCarthy – would have been OK to me. I was suspicious of the hawkish Scoop Jackson, though, especially after he later led an “Anybody but McGovern” coalition “that raised what would be known as the ‘Acid, Amnesty and Abortion’ questions” about the South Dakotan. My preferred candidate, though, was Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm of New York, the first black woman to win a primary (New Jersey), though, by the time of the June primary in New York, the race was all but over.

Still, I liked McGovern. He was one of the early opponents to the war in Vietnam and having flown nearly three dozen missions over Nazi-occupied Europe, he had a lot more credibility than today’s chicken hawks, who haven’t seen a war they don’t want to fight, or rather, would send our young men and women to fight.

Unfortunately, his Vice-Presidential pick of Thomas Eagleton proved to be a disaster, when it was revealed the junior senator from Missouri had received psychiatric care, which was bad enough in those days but also had twice been given electroshock treatments, which brought up unfair comparisons to Frankenstein’s monster. This incident reflected poorly on McGovern’s decision-making, and eventually, he forced Eagleton off the ticket, to be replaced by Kennedy in-law and former Peace Corps head Sargent Shriver.

As you can see from these not-too-great pictures, taken by me with a point-and-shoot camera, I got to see McGovern at a rally at my college, State University College at New Paltz in the autumn. That was one of the first of many times I saw Pete Seeger perform, too.

Of course, McGovern lost that election badly, carrying only one state, plus the District of Columbia. Many folks, in 1973 and 1974, during the Watergate scandal that McGovern had complained about during the campaign, had bumper stickers that read, “Don’t blame me, I’m from Massachusetts,” referring to the one-state the senator carried, whether they were or not.

George McGovern died this week at the age of 90. It seems, though, that he saw vindication of his positions in his lifetime, and never sold his soul.

For instance, from his acceptance speech for the party’s nomination:
“The tax system today does not reward hard work: it penalizes it. Inherited or invested wealth frequently multiplies itself while paying no taxes at all. But wages on the assembly line or in farming the land, these hard-earned dollars are taxed to the very last penny. There is a depletion allowance for oil wells, but no depletion for the farmer who feeds us, or the worker who serves us all.”

Sounds – unfortunately – VERY Current.
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A much wiser Arthur@AmeriNZ re: his feeling about McGovern, then and now.

A political false equivalence

Romney has apparently followed the law. But to those have been given much, much is expected.

There’s this blogger I came across who I like. But I was puzzled by a comparison made between President Obama’s birth certificate and Gov. Romney’s tax returns, as being similarly not newsworthy.

In the case of the birth certificate, it was authenticated to a degree acceptable to anyone who isn’t a conspiracy theorist.

Whereas the tax returns are interesting because they were not released, save for the last two years, though a self-provided “summary” was made available. Truth is, I don’t care whether Romney releases the documents or not. It DOES, though, speak to his transparency, or lack of same, for his father George set the bar when he ran for President back in the 1960s and put out a dozen years of returns.

The Gospel lesson a couple of weeks back was Mark 10:17-27, about the rich young man who followed the law. In verse 21: “And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, ‘You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.’ Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.”

Further, “And Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, ‘How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!’ And the disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said to them again, ‘Children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.”

Romney has seemingly followed the law, doing the absolute minimum of what is required. But to those who have been given much, much is expected. I believe it is reasonable that he makes a good-faith, and precedented, attempt to show us whether he is a tax dodger, since it might give us some insight into the fiscal policies he would initiate, were he become President.

Not incidentally, the sermon addressed this 9th-century explanation/rationalization of this Scripture, suggesting that it was referring to a place called The Eye of the Needle, where a camel could get through, but not if it were overburdened by lots of stuff. But as my pastor indicated, and this article agrees: “There is no evidence for such a gate, nor record of the reprimand of the architect who may have forgotten to make a gate big enough for the camel and rider to pass through unhindered.”

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