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Uploaded by “OUtsidethenine4eva”
From the youtube blurb:
My first project, it's a Norwegian public service announcement for gay teens. It says ‘You don't need to be so tough.’
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Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Young Cowboy Faces Death at St. Paul’s
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[An email from Bart Vincelette – Vancouver, British Columbia]
I’m just back from St. Paul’s Hospital where I had the last of a series of blood work done. I stopped at Palliative Care to say hi to my friend Harvey, the head of social work at the hospital. Outside the nursing station was a family with their 12 year old son, the kid all dressed up in a smart cowboy outfit. He’d apparently been getting ready for a rodeo being held in a few weeks in the suburbs of Vancouver. The kid was cute as a bug. He and his family stopped by so he could show off his new cowboy gear to his best friend who was in St. Paul’s for cancer treatment.
But when he and his family arrived he was told that his best buddy had just died. The poor kid totally fell apart, in tears with his hands covering his face. It was his first experience with death. Everyone, including the family of the boy who died, was trying to console him. Two police officers who happened to be on the ward learned what happened and they came over to offer their condolences to the little guy. To a kid, of course, cops are all-powerful. So, when he sees them he reaches out his hands and cries “can you save him, can you save him?” Well, then the cops were in tears. It was one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen. We were all in tears. Harvey, though, stepped up with his experience and compassion to comfort the little cowboy. A double tragedy at St. Paul’s – a young man lost his life and his friend faced death for the first time in his young life.
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Wednesday, April 20, 2011
The Regressive Republican Bulldozer Budget Bill
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April 17, 2011
The New Republican Landscape
Six months after voters sent Republicans in large numbers to Congress and many statehouses, it is possible to see the full landscape of destruction that their policies would cause — much of which has already begun. If it was not clear before, it is obvious now that the party is fully engaged in a project to dismantle the foundations of the New Deal and the Great Society, and to liberate business and the rich from the inconveniences of oversight and taxes.
At first it seemed that only a few freshmen and noisy followers of the Tea Party would support the new extremism. But on Friday, nearly unanimous House Republicans showed just how far their mainstream has been dragged to the right. They approved on strict party lines the most regressive social legislation in many decades, embodied in a blueprint by the budget chairman, Paul Ryan. The vote, from which only four Republicans (and all Democrats) dissented, would have been unimaginable just eight years ago to a Republican Party that added a prescription drug benefit to Medicare.
Mr. Ryan called the vote “our generation’s defining moment,” and indeed, nothing could more clearly define the choice that will face voters next year.
His bill would end the guarantee provided by Medicare and Medicaid to the elderly and the poor, which has been provided by the federal government with society’s clear assent since 1965. The elderly, in particular, would be cut adrift by Mr. Ryan. People now under 55 would be required to pay at least $6,400 more for health care when they qualified for Medicare, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Fully two-thirds of his $4.3 trillion in budget cuts would come from low-income programs.
In addition to making “entitlement” a dirty word, the Ryan bulldozer would go much further in knocking down government programs to achieve its goals. It would cut food stamps by $127 billion, or 20 percent, over the next 10 years, almost certainly increasing hunger among the poor. It would cut Pell grants for all 9.4 million student recipients next year, removing as many as one million of them from the program altogether. It would remove more than 100,000 low-income children from Head Start, and slash job-training programs for the unemployed desperate to learn new skills.
And it would do all that while preserving the Bush tax cuts for the rich, and even expanding them. Regulation of business and the environment would be sharply reduced.
The mania for blindly cutting has also spread to statehouses, many with new Republican governors and legislatures. Several states have cut their unemployment benefits below the standard 26 weeks. Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona has proposed removing 138,000 people from Medicaid. Many recession-battered states, including some led by Democrats, have been forced to cut other services because Republicans have made it so politically difficult to raise taxes. Education, mental health and juvenile justice funds have been particular targets.
In Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, Maine and Florida, Republican governors have used the smokescreen of a poor economy to pursue a long-held conservative goal of destroying public and private unions. This has nothing to do with creating jobs, of course, and it has shocked many blue-collar voters who are suddenly second-guessing their support for Republicans last November. Several states are also adopting Arizona-style anti-immigrant laws.
President Obama, after staying in the shadows too long, is starting to illuminate the serious damage that Republicans are doing. Their vision, he said last week, “is less about reducing the deficit than it is about changing the basic social compact in America.” Other Democrats are also beginning to stand up and reject these ideas, having been cowed for months by the electoral wave. Their newfound confidence will give voters a clearer view of this bare and pessimistic landscape.
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Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Donald Trump in Upper Blowhardia
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April 18, 2011
Why Trump Soars
By DAVID BROOKS
Very few people have the luxury of being freely obnoxious. Most people have to watch what they say for fear of offending their bosses and colleagues. Others resist saying anything that might make them unpopular.
But, in every society, there are a few rare souls who rise above subservience, insecurity and concern. Each morning they take their own abrasive urges out for parade. They are so impressed by their achievements, so often reminded of their own obvious rightness, that every stray thought and synaptic ripple comes bursting out of their mouth fortified by impregnable certitude. When they have achieved this status they have entered the realm of Upper Blowhardia.
These supremely accomplished blowhards offend some but also arouse intense loyalty in others. Their followers enjoy the brassiness of it all. They live vicariously through their hero’s assertiveness. They delight in hearing those obnoxious things that others are only permitted to think.
Thus, there has always been a fan base for the abrasive rich man. There has always been a market for books by people like George Steinbrenner, Ross Perot, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Bobby Knight, Howard Stern and George Soros. There has always been a large clump of voters who believe that America could reverse its decline if only a straight-talking, obnoxious blowhard would take control.
And today, apparently, Donald Trump is that man. Trump, currently most famous for telling people that they are fired, has surged toward the top of the presidential primary polls. In one poll, he was in (remote) striking distance in a head-to-head against President Obama. Many people regard Trump as a joke and his popularity a disgrace. But he is actually riding a deep public fantasy: The hunger for the ultimate blowhard who can lead us through dark times.
He is riding something else: The strongest and most subversive ideology in America today. Donald Trump is the living, walking personification of the Gospel of Success.
It is obligatory these days in a polite society to have a complicated attitude toward success. If you attend a prestigious college or professional school, you are supposed to struggle tirelessly for success while denying that you have much interest in it. If you do achieve it, you are expected to shroud your wealth in locally grown produce, understated luxury cars and nubby fabrics.
Trump, on the other hand, is utterly oblivious to such conventions. When it comes to success, as in so many other things, he is the perpetual boy. He is the enthusiastic adventurer thrilled to have acquired a gleaming new bike, and doubly thrilled to be showing it off.
He labors under the belief — unacceptable in polite society — that two is better than one and that four is better than two. If he can afford a car, a flashy one is better than a boring one. In private jets, lavish is better than dull. In skyscrapers, brass is better than brick, and gold is better than brass.
This boyish enthusiasm for glory has propelled him to enormous accomplishment. He has literally changed the landscape of New York City, Chicago, Las Vegas and many places in between. He has survived a ruinous crash and come back stronger than ever.
Moreover, he shares this unambivalent attitude toward success with millions around the country. Though he cannot possibly need the money, he spends his days proselytizing the Gospel of Success through Trump University, his motivational speeches, his TV shows and relentlessly flowing books.
A child of wealth, he is more at home with the immigrants and the lower-middle-class strivers, who share his straightforward belief in the Gospel of Success, than he is among members of the haute bourgeoisie, who are above it. Like many swashbuckler capitalists, he is essentially anti-elitist.
Now, I don’t mean to say that Donald Trump is going to be president or get close. There is, for example, his hyper-hyperbolism and opportunism standing in the way.
In 2009, Trump published a book with a very Trumpian title: “Think Like a Champion.” In that book, he praised Obama’s “amazing” and “phenomenal” accomplishments. “Barack Obama proved that determination combined with opportunity and intelligence can make things happen — and in an exceptional way,” Trump gushed.
Now he spouts birther nonsense and calls Obama the worst president in American history. Now he leads rallies that make Michele Bachmann events look like the League of Women Voters. Even angry American voters want some level of seriousness, prudence and self-control.
But I do insist that Trump is no joke. He emerges from deep currents in our culture, and he is tapping into powerful sections of the national fantasy life. I would never vote for him, but I would never want to live in a country without people like him.
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Sunday, April 10, 2011
Monday, April 4, 2011
Off the Cuff – 4/4/11
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Commentators have taken a narrow view of protecting the people of Libya under Security Council Res. 1973. Doesn’t protecting the people include precluding the reality of a blood bath if Khadafy remains in power? How couldn’t it? That means regime change in Libya no matter the terminology of the day. The United States remains unshaken from demanding that Khadafy must go, a position on which US NATO allies Great Britain and France wholeheartedly agree. I do not understand how John King and others can hold up a printout of Resolution 1973 and ask where it says regime change. By direct implication it says just that.
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Charlie Sheen had best learn how to say losing. Apparently Charlie can win with drugs, prostitutes, porn stars, and rehab but not so much with his one man and 2 porn stars self-aggrandizing, grandiose “Violent Torpedo of Truth Tour”. Opening in Detroit he was booed off stage. The porn stars kissing though, did get a rise out of the audience. Next stop Chicago and, if Charlie sticks with it, 2 sold out shows at Radio City Music Hall in NYC. While Sheen changed the show’s format in Chicago going to a Q&A format, ticket sales for future shows have fallen. Yes Charlie – learn how to say l-o-s-i-n-g!
4/10/11 Update:
Charlie Sheen has been booed off stage for a second time during his “My Violent Torpedo Of Truth/Defeat Is Not An Option” tour.
The former Two and a Half Men star was heckled by the crowd during his appearance at Radio City Music Hall in New York last night, and ended the show approximately 30 minutes earlier than scheduled.
TMZ reports that Sheen told "barely coherent" stories involving his drug use, including an anecdote about performing CPR on a model in a heroin coma, and was booed heavily when he claimed to have recently embraced a sober lifestyle.
The former Two and a Half Men star was heckled by the crowd during his appearance at Radio City Music Hall in New York last night, and ended the show approximately 30 minutes earlier than scheduled.
TMZ reports that Sheen told "barely coherent" stories involving his drug use, including an anecdote about performing CPR on a model in a heroin coma, and was booed heavily when he claimed to have recently embraced a sober lifestyle.
Read the full article here:
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It couldn’t happen here. At least that’s what Japan’s nuclear power people assumed when designing the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. While a 9.0 earthquake and tsunami isn’t exactly commonplace in Japan, being in a highly earthquake prone location designers should have planned for the worst – not playing the percentages. The tragic consequences of that failure are all too obvious.
Consider then the Indian Point nuclear power plant in the bucolic village of Buchanan, NY. Indian Point’s design is identical to that of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Indian Point sits less than 25 miles from New York City. Yes, it sits – sits on two (2) seismic faults less than a mile from the Hudson River. How large an earthquake can Indian Point sustain? Executive and management of the plant have been distressingly coy in dodging that question. How well would an evacuation of New York City go?
4/8/11 Update from MSNBC’s investigative reporter Bill Dedman:
The reactor with the highest risk rating [in the United States] is 24 miles north of New York City, in the village of Buchanan, N.Y., at the Indian Point Energy Center. There, on the east bank of the Hudson, Indian Point nuclear reactor No. 3 has the highest risk of earthquake damage in the country, according to new NRC risk estimates provided to msnbc.com.
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The chance of an earthquake causing core damage at Indian Point 3 is estimated at 1 in 10,000 each year. Under NRC guidelines, that's right on the verge of requiring "immediate concern regarding adequate protection" of the public. The two reactors at Indian Point generate up to one-third of the electricity for New York City. The second reactor, Indian Point 2, doesn't rate as risky, with 1 chance in 30,303 each year.
Read the full article here:
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