More Links With Your Coffee - Friday
- Daily Kos: The Rich Are Different
How about the CEO at Qwest, whose daughter gets to use the corporate jet to travel to school? Puts that kid whose mother pulls up to jr. high in a Hummer in her place. Cost to the stockholders: about $600,000.
- Election Commission Cites God For Making Illegal Campaign Contributions To Huckabee
- RESET - xkcd - A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language - By Randall Munroe
- Benazir Bhutto, 1953-2007. - By Christopher Hitchens - Slate Magazine
The sternest critic of Benazir Bhutto would not have been able to deny that she possessed an extraordinary degree of physical courage. When her father was lying in prison under sentence of death from Pakistan's military dictatorship in 1979, and other members of her family were trying to escape the country, she boldly flew back in. Her subsequent confrontation with the brutal Gen. Zia-ul-Haq cost her five years of her life, spent in prison. She seemed merely to disdain the experience, as she did the vicious little man who had inflicted it upon her.
- Pharyngula: Any volunteers?
- Atheists Vocal Over Moment of Silence Law - CommonDreams.org
“I don’t go to school to talk to God,” she said. “I’m in school to learn.”
The debate reflects a longstanding national fight over school prayer. The Supreme Court in 1962 ruled that official sponsorship or endorsement of prayer in schools is a violation of the First Amendment. Over time, state lawmakers found that they were allowed to require moments of silence as long as students were not forced or encouraged to pray.
But there were limits: In the mid-1980s, an Alabama mandatory “moment of silence” law was found unconstitutional by the high court because “there was a clear legislative record that they were trying to advocate getting prayer back into schools,” said Charles C. Haynes, a senior scholar at the First Amendment Center in Washington. - Terminus Movie (strange video)
- Jacket Copy : Los Angeles Times : The art of the disclaimer
"This is the story of my Texas life. And while (essentially) true to my experience, I must warn that it often reads better (as in funnier, or happier) than it was lived. This service I’ve performed not merely for the sake of your sensibilities, but also for my art. After all, how does the old song go? A hat’s not a hat till it’s tilted. Well, mea culpa, I have tilted hats throughout...."
Comments
On the Silence Law
I went to school not only to learn, but also to talk to God. When I left my house I spoke to God and when I was at school I spoke to God. I still do as I am in a University.
I never needed a quiet time to pray. My quiet time was at home, in my room. What good would it be for me to pray quietly before God? When I already talk to him like he is next to me.
The silence law is forced religion no matter how you look at it. Its forced reverence. The same goes for when people take a moment of silence for someone who died, they are forcing you to be quiet and you are endorsing that person who died with your silence.
The Daily KOS
Why are we so consumed by the rich? If we do not like what they are doing with their money. And it is their money, because the shareholders give it freely so that they might be rich as well.
But if we do not like what they are doing, then do not support them by buying their product or services. Complaining about it, can only go so far and if these do not agree with your convictions, words are sometimes just dust in the wind, and actions are needed to resolve an issue.
Hitchens on Bhutto: Utter load of shit.
Terminus: Ah, that's better!
The Kos blurp hits at one of America´s biggest problems: publicly-traded companies being robbed blind by the management. These CEOs are not capitalists, they are socialists earning capitalists´ wages. They risk nothng, they own nothing. They have no real stake in the success or failure of the comapanies they run because they will earn mega-millions no matter what happens.
Unfortunately, our economy is built around these large conglomerates and most of us are forced into supporting them in one way or another through retirement-investment schemes. How could a company be efficient that allows its CEO to use the corporate jet to ferry his daughter off to school? The answer is that it can´t be efficient. The salaries paid out to many corporate officers in America also goes against any sane business practice, not to mention how it violates our sense of democracy and the whole "all men are created equal" doctrine we seem to have all but given up on.
We aren´t talking about rich people here; we are talking about a new class of ultra-elites that make 18th century French aristocrats look like social workers. We are talking about a small segment of our society with way too much power and no sense of moral obligation. We need to chop down this segment and redistribute their wealth--our wealth for we did more to create it than they--just like we did back when we first instigated the income tax and put an end to the first gilded age.
Commenting here is rather difficult.
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