If you employ a fictional guest blogger occasionally, you will now have to make sure that he or she carries a union card and is up to date with his or her union dues. Some people are saying that this is a step backward for the blogosphere and that this union will inevitably become corrupt.
I for one welcome this important development. I think fiction guest bloggers have been exploited for far too long. I have never employed one because I had ethical qualms about it. I think that I can feel good about it now that they are guaranteed minimum wage and bathroom breaks. Wait a minute, I’m the boss of this blog and I don’t get those kind of benefits.
I’m dedicating that musically inspired post title to FoxNews.com.
While it’s inaccurate to say that they ignored the Obama speech, I did feel reassured by the fact that it wasn’t on the landing page and it wasn’t above the jump on the politics page. The coverage that they did have focused on a few things that they pundits thought Barrack had not said.
…this just in… Fox actually removed the Hillary First Lady documents stuff that they had above the Obama speech review and now the top story on elections.foxnews.com is something about the New Black Panther Party endorsement being on Obama’s website. I guess it might be newsworthy. Independent groups can create member pages on the campaign website. Obama has been the most engaged candidate on the internet and allowing for lots of free expression has had some drawbacks. Ron Paul benefited from online support without over engaging them, which allowed him the luxury of distancing himself from extreme opinions and groups. Obama has fostered a lot of support and discussion and sometimes wrong thinking people bring attention to themselves while they are under his umbrella.
I cannot attest to the accuracy of the following long description of Jewel Hodges’ political life. It is an anonymous comment left on this blog post.
Mrs. Jewell Hodges reports her success within the community is that God uses her as an instrument. As God’s instrument, God has given her visions and she “reached out to the community and they shared that vision.” These visions have allowed her to serve God and humanity where ever she walks.
Through this walk she has shared the importance of what she perceives as her civic duty to be involved in politics. Through her years of involvement she has aided with getting out the vote, community rallies, candidate campaigns, and political appointments to serve on committees at local and state levels. Through her walk she has influenced city, county, state and federal elected officials.
Mrs. Hodges has served the Democratic Party in Springfield Massachusetts, Bastrop County, and Texas. For 16 years Mrs. Hodges served on the Board of Directors of Springfield Economic Development. She served as a member of Massachusetts Citizens Advisory Committee of the Executive Office of Elder Affairs for 3 years.
Mrs. Hodges has served as a delegate to Democratic state and national conventions. She has held many local and state political appointments to include Bastrop County Representative to Area Agency on Aging Advisory Council; Chairperson of Bastrop Home Economic Area Program Committee; and Statewide Health Coordinating Council to name a few. She has attended numerous Bastrop city and county commissioner’s court meetings as a public citizen advocating for those who do not always have a voice. Mrs. Hodges has aided the Democratic Party and Club by striving to involve more Afro-American voters and fight complacency among minority voters.
The voice of Mrs. Hodges is heard by others as she led them as a Bastrop County Precinct Chair and Election Judge. She has served the Bastrop Democratic Party as Secretary. Mrs. Hodges has served on the nomination committee for the Bastrop County Democratic Club aiding in the recognition of other leadership within the club needed to step up and walk the talk as she has.
The Bastrop County Democratic Club wishes to honor Mrs. Jewel Hodges for her years of dedication and life long commitment for her efforts that she calls her “civic duty” and “that politics runs the game. You can hold them accountable.”
I don’t have anything bad to say about this woman. She seems like a very smart and very decent lady.
I am going to make a general criticism about very old people being used as campaign tools. Actually, I’m just going to allude to Jerry Seinfeld’s bit where he talks about old people backing out of their driveways without looking behind them. He probably tells that joke on one of these clips. He only has about five jokes.
I see a couple of things happening that bother me. Opponents of Barrack Obama are using a lot of hyperbole when discussing the words that have come out of the mouth of Jeremiah Wright. They are also careful to crop the actual quotes in such a way as to prevent considerate people from qualifying them as strong analogies or statements made expressly to shock the listener (and followed by a qualifying statement). Context can’t neuter this man’s words, but it can make Obama’s reactions seem reasonable.
Obama’s claims to have never heard these kinds of sermons at Trinity are refuted as being dubious on their face. Here’s something that his detractors may not take into account… It is VERY unlikely that Jeremiah would have ever delivered a sermon in the presence of Barrack Obama without being aware of that presence. It may be that the tone and substance of a sermon was adjustable according to who was sitting in the pews.
I have a Baptist minister in my past who I admired and respected. I am virtually sure that I never heard him say anything that I objected to in front of a congregation. I did attend a few adult bible study sessions and during one of these the discussion somehow devolved into what seemed a lot like anti-catholic rhetoric. My minister didn’t lead the conversation to that place, but he didn’t seem to steer clear of it either. That was 20 years ago and I remember it.
When I read the hard to decipher ‘news’ coming out of Chinese ruled Tibet this weekend I was sad and I thought that there was no way to know what was really going on. I am probably right about that for the most part, but there were foreign blogging tourists in Lhasa and they did what we do. They ‘blogged it.’
They took a calculated risk by taking some pictures and video. Some of this material may end up on the evening news. BBC left a comment on the blog.
I am not reflexively risk averse, but I am married to an incredibly quick witted woman who has a major GTFO response when anything dangerous is burgeoning around us. If we had been in Lhasa, there would not have been any pictures on my blog.
We decided to splurge on pizzas for our Friday snack break. I was trying to use Google to find the phone number of the bakeries that are the most renowned. When the thumbnail for this YouTube video appeared on the first page for my search, I had to check it out.
Maltese is an interesting language. It is so interesting that it seems like it is physically impossible for me to pronounce the names of my favorite foods correctly. I got someone else to call in our order.
The frontman for Gym Class Heroes has recently undergone a rapid detox program. Getting straightened out is cool, but it depresses me to read about creative geniuses that mess around with drugs. Travis McCoy came clean on his blog after getting clean. He expresses some feelings of guilt with regard to glorifying drugs in his music.
Travis, I don’t mean to diss you with my post title, I’m trying to say that you are at a starting point, as in Zero to Sixty. I like your music, and I am an old guy (38). I was song-tagged with Cupid’s Chokehold for days and it somehow was reborn as parody…
“Oh Man, this sh** is gettin’ SO old,
I’m feeling like Cupid kicked me in the cake hole,
I’m gonna have to take a break from solid food,
it turned out that my girlfriend was a dude”
A member of Team Obama resigned shortly after she was quoted in the press as having called Hillary Clinton a Monster.
Samantha Power is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and she was a volunteer adviser. She called her words inexcusable at a press conference.
This thing reminds me of something that happened in Canada. In 2002, the Director of Communications for Prime Minister Jean Chrétien was overheard calling George W. Bush a moron. Françoise Ducros resigned after her words made it into print as well. Her job was not volunteer work, but rather quite a high paying and prestigious position. The incident was a setback and I think her words were very poorly chosen, but it doesn’t actually look that bad on her resume in 2008. She is presently a director of CIDA.
Samantha Power is still a Pulitzer Prize-winning author.
Here are some kind words for the President of the United States of America…
“I think President Bush is in a line of very thoughtful, proactive conservative presidents who include John Adams, Calvin Coolidge, Ronald Reagan. We have the first president with an MBA degree, and he is an impressive manager. He’s very interested in measuring results, and there is no lack of clarity, which I think makes it easier for those of us who work here. We know what the expectations are. They are always high, and we know exactly what they are.”
-Tim Goeglein, who recently resigned from his position at the White House after being exposed as a chronic plagiarist
Plagiarism is typically thought to be a form of stealing. The Internet and search engines have simultaneously made it easier to plagiarize and easier to get caught. I think that in some way, plagiarism is just as much a form of lying as it is stealing. Tim was a volunteer columnist for the conservative newspaper in his hometown. He had no deadlines or obligations in relation to this endeavor and the subject matter was generally not stridently political. He was found out by a blogging journalist from the same area. She Googled an obscure name that was in one of Tim Goeglein’s columns and found that he had lifted several paragraphs from another author without attribution. The newspaper investigated and found that the majority of the 38 columns that had been published since 2000 contained plagiarized text.
It is interesting to note that some people credit Tim with bringing out the evangelical vote in 2004, thus giving Americans four more years of George W. Bush. NYT reports that GWB was saddened to hear that Tim was found out as a thief and a liar and that he has left the White House. Tim had a close working relationship with Karl Rove.
I was finally bored enough to look at the ‘Best of Craigslist’ pages. I was mildly amused by this page that was giving away a collection of cat hats.
The poster says that the pictured cat is dead. When I look in its eyes in the pictures, I am 110% certain that it was suicide. This is an altered picture of Snowman. I hope his next life involves more dignity than the last.
I was finally bored enough to look at the ‘Best of Craigslist’ pages. I was mildly amused by this page that was giving away a collection of