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What insight can Buddhism offer to the Occupy Wall Street movement? Here’s one perspective. [Elephantjournal.com] Israel has agreed to release 1,027 Palestinian inmates in exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. While this news has been met with joy, it has also been surrounded with controversy. [CNN] Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith often makes headlines. Here’s an article that gives a more in-depth look into Romney’s role in the Church of Latter Day Saints. [NY Times]
Moderate State Senators in New York continue to be targeted by the National Organization for marriage. The National Organization for Marriage’s assault on moderate Republicans in New York shows no signs of stopping. After State Senators James Alesi, Mark Grisanti, Roy McDonald, and Stephen Saland, all of whom represent traditionally-Republican areas of Upstate New York, were feted by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg last week, NOM released an advertisement entitled “Money Dance,” in the style of the popular Jib-Jab political videos. The ad, which portrays the four Senators dancing in pairs while wearing tuxedos (intentionally evoking wedding couples) while being showered with cash, accuses the men of being bought off by wealthy donors who support same-sex marriage. [Albany Times Union] In response to Republican-backed legislation that would require welfare recipients to undergo drug tests, Ohio State Representative Robert F. Hagan has put forth a bill that would require state-level elected officials, including lawmakers and Supreme Court justices, to take drug and alcohol tests. Such requirements would extend to people standing to benefit from the Troubled Assets Relief Program. The bill also includes a procedure for recalling elected officials in the State of Ohio. [Columbus Dispatch] On the topic of recall elections, Wisconsin has a second round coming up on the horizon. By Wisconsin state law, legislators can be target for a recall after they have served one year of their terms; in November, 11 Republicans and six Democrats will become eligible. The 17 legislators join two Republicans and four Democrats who were targeted by recall efforts that failed to garner enough signatures in the last round of attempted ousters. Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau), Senate Majority Leader, has said that he is considering targeting many if not all elegible Democrats. The current spate of chaos is on top of a pre-existing effort to recall Governor Scott Walker. [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel] Pennsylvania Democrats seem to be stricken with the same incumbent-challenging ailment as establishment Republicans. Tim Burns, a businessman from rural Western Pennsylvania, has entered the race for the Republican nomination for Senator, challenging single-term incumbent Bob Case, Jr. Burns, a failed 2010 Congressional candidate, joins a crowded, but relatively undistinguished, Republican field that includes numerous other Tea Party-backers and businessmen. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette] Occupy Iowa protesters are running into legal troubles with Republican Governor Terry Branstad and his administration, as the state has refused to reauthorize a protest permit. In an effort to avoid being arrested by the State Police, the protestors were working to pull together as large a protest as they could, numbering in the several hundreds and aiming for at least 1,000. [Des Moines Register] In a rather odd move for a man who was elected claiming he would create 700,000 jobs on top of expected growth, Florida Governor Rick Scott told a radio show that he “didn’t have to create any jobs,” and only needed to focus on making sure that job growth was positive. The comment was made on a show hosted by Bud Hedinger, a conservative talk radio host in suburban Orlando who broke the right wing radio mold by pressing Scott on his jobs record and the fact that he now questions the usefulness of Florida’s economic prediction models. [St. Petersburg Times Forum] California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, roundly criticized his state for complacency about jobs. Pushing his jobs plan, one that has been overshadowed by Governor Jerry Brown’s, Newsom said “We’re like the aging high school football player that talks about the good ol’ days,” referring to the state’s breakneck jobs creation record between the 1950’s and 1980’s, at a conference in Beverly Hills. Interestingly, Newsom attributed the problem, at least in part, to bitter partisanship in Sacramento, calling the state legislature “tribal.” [Sacramento Bee]  The Politics of Beauty If you’re a fan of American pop culture, you’re certainly aware of comic books and the influence they’ve had on American culture—from Spider-Man to American Splendor. And if you’re not familiar with the hysteria created by comic books in the 1940s, 50s and 60s, you must read one of your correspondent’s favorite books, The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America. So is the recent release of The 99, a group of Islamic superheroes embodying the more positive attributes of Allah, a cause for multicultural celebration or hyperbolic cries of “propaganda!”? Read more about the “controversy” from MSNBC. [Islamic superheroes: Role models or propaganda?]
If you watched a football game this weekend, you probably noticed a whole lot of pink going on. In fact, unless you’re color blind, you’ve probably seen a whole lot of pink everywhere lately as October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. But is it too much? Is it just another over-simplified “symbol” that makes people feel like they’re doing something to help when in fact they’re just putting on a ribbon? Nothing more than putting a bumper sticker on your car? There are plenty of critics that think so. Check out two pieces on thinking outside the “pink” box. Amid Breast Cancer Month, Is There Pink Fatigue? from National Public Radio, and more from Breast Cancer Action. Finally, unless you’ve been maniacally focused on getting the latest iPhone recently, you may have noticed that there’s a little protest movement going on in Manhattan (and Rome, Paris, Peoria, etc., over the weekend). Check out this send up from the New York Times, as the rich have had it up to their mink stoles with all of the attention given to the plebeians of late. [Occupy Poor Street] Rest in peace, Dan Wheldon. The popular NASCAR driver, who won the Indianapolis 500 for the second time this May, died this weekend in a collision during a fall series race in Las Vegas. [NY Times] The RP is neither stiff-necked nor arrogant enough to believe that the producers of the ABC freshman TV hit, Revenge, read his little-known Web site. However with Hollywood being run by Jews and liberals — the RP’s two core constituencies — we imagine that someone in the RP Nation knows the show’s producers. If you are one of those suitably connected, please share this open letter with them. Thank you – RP Staff. Dear Revenge producers: I’m really enjoying your new program. Sure, the plots are contrived, the writing sophomoric, and the thespianism over-emotive. But in the spirit of many of the best primetime soaps from my adolescence — Dallas, Dynasty, the ’85 Red Sox — it’s good ole cotton-candy fun, with plenty of beautiful people intertwined in delicious intrigue and hyperbolic conflict. And the writers are setting up a doozy of a climactic catfight between the protagonist Emily Thorne (played with considerable emotional nuance by Emily VanCamp) and her Lady MacBethian rival Victoria Grayson (the always-wonderful Madeline Stowe). Indeed, there are two special features that I enjoy the most. First, while the underlying plot is an obvious homage to fiction’s ultimate revenge fantasy, The Count of Monte Cristo (If you hadn’t picked that up by last week’s episode, the camera pans to a copy of Dumas’ classic on a character’s bookshelf), Emily’s face sometimes reflects conflicting feelings about pursuing vengeance against her enemies. Indeed, in its oh-so-unsubtle fashion, the series opened with one of my favorite Confucianisms: “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.” I’ve written often about the value of forgiveness and the toxicity of holding grudges, and I hope the series ultimately reflects the downside of Emily’s pursuit of retributive justice. Read the rest of…
Steve Jobs was a lousy role model. [Forbes] Google’s tax bill has been released…read all about it here. [Fortune] Apple’s iPhone 4S hits stores as fans remember Steve Jobs. [CNBC] Suburbia begins to slip below the poverty line. [Huffington Post] Surprising new study finds that wealth managers now prefer to use Apple iPhones over RIM’s Blackberry’s. [Reuters]
This week I am posting two stories this week that share a common thread. One is about an underground moo-vement that allows people to buy unpasteurized milk, which is illegal. The other is about the Danish government instituting a fat tax on foods with saturated fats. The fat tax is intended to make the populous healthier but it will unfortunately hurt local farmers disproportionately. These local farmers are making smaller scale, organic and natural foods, like butter and cheese, that are healthy if enjoyed in moderation. Obviously the common thread here is that the government is making the decisions of what people should eat and drink. Unfortunately, these decisions are not ending corn subsidies and hurting processed foods manufacturers, but are in fact hurting local farmers and educated consumers. The Super Bowl is returning to Arizona for the third time. The league awarded Super Bowl XLIX to the city of Glendale, AZ over Tampa, FL. No doubt the NFL wanted to get back to a warmer climate after they gave the 48th Super Bowl to the Meadowlands in New Jersey where it is typically around 31 degrees in early February. [ESPN]
Hollywood, by the way, senses that politics usually does not sell, and it makes its accommodations to this reality. This spring’s “Adjustment Bureau” shunned its political story-line in its own advertising, and another momentary flash in the pan, Bradley Copper’s “Limitless”, tacks on a political sub-plot only in the final ten minutes (it works as well as trying to work a fender bender in the studio parking lot into the action.) Even a film that is unambiguously about a political figure, the upcoming “J. Edgar”, exists more because of the tangled webs that apparently existed in Hoover’s private life, than because he blithely abused the prerogatives of federal law enforcement through the terms of eight presidents.
Read the rest of… The Politics of Tech Dennis Ritchie, the creator of Unix and C has died at the age of 70. [OS News] This is a super cool video that demonstrates Photoshop managing to “unblur” images by mapping the trajectory of the camera while the photo was being taken. [9to5Mac] Following the death of Steve Jobs last week: “What Everyone Is Too Polite to Say About Steve Jobs” [Gawker] More on the legacy of Steve Jobs, a thought-provoking article in the New York Times labeling Jobs the “Enemy of Nostalgia.” [New York Times] Netflix has decided to abandon its plans to separate its streaming service with its DVD service. They have also thrown out the name Qwikster, leaving them with only Netflix once again. This announcement comes after fan and customer uproar and push-back. [Media Decoder blog, NYT]
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