"If any citizen of the United States shall accept, claim, receive or retain any title of nobility or honour, or shall, without the consent of Congress accept and retain any present, pension, office or emolument of any kind whatever, from any emperor, king, prince or foreign power, such person shall cease to be a citizen of the United States and shall be incapable of holding any office of trust or profit under them, or either of them."
Wake up, Moose! Come on. Stop sleeping. Summer's lease hath all too short a date. It'll be the mid terms soon. Time to shake that shaggy ass and get up off those dusty haunches. You'll be needed come November. Just leave that grass alone (not mentioning anyone by name) and get up onto your hoofs!
Where are they now? Ou sont les neiges d'antan? Where are the snows of yesterday? Bushy Blasky and Prickly Allen? Where battling feminists JJC and Michelle? Where imagistic Kysen and empathetic Sricki? Where hot-hob Hubie and down-under Shaun? Where Gadfly and Btchakir and all my friends beside?
OK. I get it. You're tired. You're bushwhacked. You fought to elect a democratic president and congress... and waddya get? Trouble. Compromise. Legislation. Grey zones. More legislation. Imperfection. Sell outs. Corporatists. Pragmatists. Idealists on a stick. In other words.. Politics.
To use more ponsy French: plus ca change.
But how to goad the somnolent beast out its slumber? What woke it up before? What made the Moose strut, run, and use its horns like a Spanish bull in frenzy?
Hmmm. I know. I remember the most commented diaries. So here we go. This has got everything that gets you going my Moosey Friends. Feminism. Palin. Sexism. Liberalism. And even a bit of I/P in the mix like a Tequila slammer with nitro, triple sec and glycerine.
When Clarence Thomas was seeking confirmation as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, and questions were raised about his fitness based on the claims of his former subordinate, Anita Hill, Thomas launched a bitter counteroffensive, claiming that he was the victim of a high-tech lynching. Many people recoiled at Thomas's expropriation of the term, saying it was beyond the pale. Thomas succeeded in quelling the opposition to his nomination, and we all have seen how that worked out.
Over the past few days, we have seen an attempted high-tech lynching of the good name of a public servant, Shirley Sherrod. Ms. Sherrod has reacted with far more grace than Mr. Thomas did, and the outcome may, for our nation, be far more positive.
I've been reading Jonathan Alter's The Promise - President Obama, Year One, and have come across a number of striking passages that have led me to spend much time ruminating on the monumental challenges President Obama faces in his attempt to pilot the 'ship of state' in the tumultuous political seas of the 21st century.
With your indulgence, I'd like to share a number of these passages in an on-going series. In particular, I'll present snippets that have resonated with me. Some are shocking, some humorous, some awe-inspiring, some infuriating, but I hope you'll find each of them as illuminating as I have.
For a farmer in a hot country like Sudan, a big harvest can end up being just a big waste. A fresh tomato off the vine will only last about 2 days in the stifling heat, while carrots and okra might last only 4 days. Despite being perfectly capable of producing abundant harvests, without any means to store and preserve crops, farmers in Sudan are at risk for hunger and starvation. They are also losing money that could be made by selling surplus produce at markets if they had a way to keep vegetables longer.
The organization, Practical Action-a development non-profit that uses technology to help people gain access to basic services like clean water, and sanitation and to improve food production and incomes- provides a simple solution to this problem in the form of homemade clay refrigerators. Practical Action's clay refrigerators are called zeer pots and can be made out of mud, clay, water, and sand.
At Biloxi, Mississippi, one of the nine public schools to achieve the "Star School" rating based on student achievement is being closed to save $400,000 in a school district budget of $50 Million.
Fiscal Responsibility or Racism?
About 90% of the students at Nichols Elementary are African Americans or Asian Americans...
Jerry Moran and Georgianne Nienaber are in trouble, because they took pictures that BP wouldn't like. What particularly irks me is that they are in trouble with the US Government, the Coast Guard specifically, and are facing felony charges for photographing scenes like a doomed dolphin swimming in oil (Moran) or a pelican wading in crude (Nienaber).
This stinks to high heaven, but you don't have to tell poor Flipper here that.
And there certainly hasn't been any righteous rants as of late. So to fill the void and because it kinda cracked me up watching it. I give you the 100 greatest movie insults of all time.
Warning not for small children, office viewing, people burdened with over sensitivity as to what might be PC and what might not be.
However if you are looking for a verbal round house to hand out to some worthy soul these may inspire.
Protesters marching through downtown Toronto set police cars ablaze and smashed store windows in a show of opposition to the G20 leadership summit, as police in riot gear scrambled to contain the violence.
Black-clad "anarchists" separated from what began as a peaceful procession, fanning out through the core of a city generally known for its civility, and forcing police to rush to keep up.
Police cars were set ablaze in at least two areas, including the city's Bay Street financial district, while protesters on trendy Queen Street smashed storefronts and damaged media trucks.
Late in the afternoon, with a light rain falling, hundreds of protesters faced off with police at the corner of Bay and King streets, an area ringed by the head offices of four of the country's top banks.
Toronto Mayor David Miller condemned the violence, but said it was caused by a small group within the larger protest.
"A relatively small group of people ... came clearly with the intent of damaging property and perpetrating violence," Miller said at a news conference. "They're criminals that came to Toronto deliberately to break the law."
Anarchist groups, which led the violence, had specifically mentioned banks as targets in the run-up to the G20, and a Royal Bank of Canada branch in Ottawa was firebombed last month by a group saying they would protest at the summit.
BP has achieved a new goal: delivering oil to customers after drilling without the intervening hassle of processing and shipping. The new "Direct to Consumer" approach is being tested on the residents of Pensacola, Florida, who can now scoop oil directly off the beach.
I am very happily in Valparaiso, Indiana for my step father's 90th birthday party.
Karl Lutze was born in 1920 in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. As a boy he watched his father and his uncle pull up in the Automobile his father had ordered, picked up at the train station, read the operators manual and driven home. During WWII Karl studied to be a wartime pastor, but by the time he finished seminary school the war was over. Instead of going overseas, Karl was assigned to a poor black parish in Muskogee, Oklahoma. The rest of Karl's life was cast at that moment.
For a farmer in a hot country like Sudan, a big harvest can end up being just a big waste. A fresh tomato off the vine will only last about 2 days in the stifling heat, while carrots and okra might last only 4 days. Despite being perfectly capable of producing abundant harvests, without any means to store and preserve crops, farmers in Sudan are at risk for hunger and starvation. They are also losing money that could be made by selling surplus produce at markets if they had a way to keep vegetables longer.
Karl Lutze was born in 1920 in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. As a boy he watched his father and his uncle pull up in the Automobile his father had ordered, picked up at the train station, read the operators manual and driven home. During WWII Karl studied to be a wartime pastor, but by the time he finished seminary school the war was over. Instead of going overseas, Karl was assigned to a poor black parish in Muskogee, Oklahoma. The rest of Karl's life was cast at that moment.
