Jason Atkinson: Winter Best in Comedy Trailer 2013 “A Moral Steelhead Story”

Created for Joel La Follette’s Trailer Trash Thursday Film Festival at Royal Treatment Fly Shop. All entries had to be under 4:27.

WINNER BEST IN COMEDY TRAILER 2013 “A Moral Steelhead Story” from Jason Atkinson & Flying A Films on Vimeo.

Lisa Miller: Fantastic Grace

 “Shit happens.  I realized then that we always have the choice to either let it remain on the dung heap, or allow it to transform.”

I’m still celebrating International Women’s Day, but I’m calling it Fantastic InterGenerational Women in my Life Month. 

I feel so lucky to know some really compassionate, hilarious, brave, nutty, wise, strong women, and they come in an array of decades.  I often wish I could gather all of them into one room so that they could know one another.  (Hmmmmmmmmmm!  What are all y’all doing on my birthday this summer?)

This March 2013, I want to celebrate one Fantastic in particular, but I’m not sure of how she’d feel about the personal publicity, so I’ll use The Fake Name Generator here and henceforth refer to my friend by her alias.

Delvonia Fansmetonopolis is a dedicated rehabilitation therapist.  In her 70’s she is beautiful and hip, and people feel they can tell her anything because she has such a welcoming way about her.  She laughs with you when you laugh, and cries with you when you cry.  Her heart is bigger than she is tall, and she truly wants healing for everyone—this is her mission.

While this mission may be true for most service professionals and healers, what’s unique about D is her dedication to her own personal healing.  In her seventh decade, she is truly a role model who LIVES the healing she recommends to everyone.  She’s not shy to confide that she is always learning, growing,  finding new inspiration—that her health depends on physical, emotional and spiritual well-being.  She teaches that here is no one magic pill, and having survived her own debilitating years of despair, D’s courage and commitment to a life of balance gently but surely precede her when she enters a room. 

It’s this vital energy that is a gift to anyone seeking his/her own courage and balance.  Because recovery is such a raw and painful process, the promise of healing carried in the aura of the facilitator means everything, even before a word is spoken, and certainly in the spaces between words. 

Lisa MillerNearly three weeks ago, my friend needed an unexpected surgery on her spine.  She was told that without it she would lose the ability to walk.  No picnic either way—she felt she had no choice. 

Though nervous, as anybody would be, D faced her surgery bravely and gets high marks for recovery to this point (though she was calling patients from her bed despite the fact that she barely had a voice in the days after surgery.) But it is something else entirely that inspires and moves me each time I talk to her. 

Simply, my friend D is FULL of grace, love, patience, and gratitude. 

How easy it would be to feel sorry for one’s self—the pain, the genetic misfortune, the inconvenience, the terror associated with this type of diagnosis.  But instead, she has chosen to move with the very flow of her life; she is present in the now and she is finding a way to smell the flowers (well, she’s not bending down but she’s enjoying them symbolically)!

I wouldn’t have guessed that each of my “consoling” post-surgery calls to her would leave ME inspired and reassured, but they have, each and every one.  D’s ability to see her situation as an opportunity for deeper healing is transforming her very situation.

Read the rest of…
Lisa Miller: Fantastic Grace

Lauren Mayer: What Silver Lining?

March always tends to be a rather bleak month. In most parts of the country, the charm of snow has definitely worn off, and even here in California, we’re getting a bit tired of gray cold weather. And there’s plenty of gloom and doom in the news, between various fiscal crises, a federal government paralyzed by partisanship, and Lindsay Lohan being sentenced to her 6th stint in rehab. But we Californians are always looking to find meaningful life lessons in our challenges, to let our spiritual selves rise above adversity. Which works great when I get stuck in traffic and do a few deep cleansing breaths, but it can backfire too. Constantly being told to find a brighter side, when there isn’t one, just makes us feel worse. I tried to find a silver lining in having a nasty cold and a huge work commitment that I couldn’t get out of, but I ended up just feeling like a spiritual failure with an ugly red nose. However, I remember hearing some wise words when my kids were younger and took Tae Kwon Do – the instructor told them to absorb blows by making sounds, so they’d release all that negative energy. (Or something along those lines – I may be mixing things up with old episodes of “Kung Fu.”) Which one could interpret to mean, Go ahead and vent – so I did, mostly by sending a couple of self-pitying texts to my closest friends, since my voice was out of commission. And sure enough, I felt better, on top of getting some really nice, sympathetic responses.

Spring will be here soon enough, and it will probably be easier to rise above fiscal cliffs and traffic jams when the weather is nice. But in the meantime, give yourself a break – instead of trying to look for the good in your challenges, go ahead, kvetch! (Which is Yiddish for ‘releasing negative energy.’ Or close enough . . . ) Here’s a song to help you:

All 68 NCAA Tournament Schools Ranked By Coolest Person Who Went There

Aw, c’mon.  Norman Mailer?  Cooler than me?  Did her ever win anything at the poker table?

From Sports Illustrated Extra Mustard:

The field is set for this year’s NCAA Tournament, but rather than break down the brackets like everyone else, Extra Mustard is ranking the 68 schools in this year’s field by coolest alumnus (or alumna).


68. Florida Gulf Coast: Don Carman

After 10 years in the majors, the lefty hurler went back to school in Fort Myers, Fla., and earned a degree in sports psychology.

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45. Oklahoma: Olivia Munn

The Newsroom star graduated from the Norman, Okla., school in 2004 with a degree in journalism.

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7. Harvard: Norman Mailer

The novelist, journalist, essayist and Muhammad Ali confidant enrolled in Harvard at 16 years old, graduating in 1943 before joining the U.S. Army.

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Michael Steele: I Won, He Didn’t

From Daily Kos:

446px-Michael_SteeleLet’s be clear, Michael Steele could only have been as competent as the GOP policies allowed him to be. Under his stewardship of the RNC he successfully navigated contempt for the President, idiocy, and the many GOP fallacies perpetrated by the Tea Party into a winning formula. After-all he picked up 63 seats in the House and took control of the House.

Under his tenure Republicans won 51% of the vote vs 44% for the Democrats. While some may say that was done in spite of Steele, if they had lost or not win as big, he would have taken the brunt of the jokes and he would have been fired.

But wait a minute. He won big and he was fired. Reince Priebus lost big and was rewarded with another term. If this is not the good old boy network of entitlement what is? In Joy-ann Reid’s article “Michael Steele calls current RNC chairman’s tenure ‘an absolute failure’” atthe grio Steele summarizes perfectly.

In the end, Steele, who has hinted he may want to run for the job again, sees his past tenure at the RNC as a success.

“You can criticize my tenure and say Steele is ‘buck wild,’ or ‘we don’t like his style and he’s gaffe prone,’” he says. “But the mission that they gave me when they hired me was two things: raise money — over $190 million in two years — and win elections. And in the process, we grew the party.”

Well there is definitely bad blood between the past chairman and the current chairman. At the Press Club when unveiling the party’s autopsy, Priebus states he walked into the RNC in 2011 with suspended RNC credit cards. When a reporter asked Priebus if Chairman Steele ruined the party financially he replied “I am not going to there. Listen, I think the numbers speak for themselves.”

Well maybe the numbers should speak for themselves as to his performance. `Steele replied accordingly on Andrea Mitchell Reports saying, “That’s the problem. I won and he didn’t.”  He then went on stating all the victories he had in Blue and Purple states. He said the Republican Party made the decision to go into debt to win and they did. He said Priebus had surpluses and lost.

He caricatured the report being referred to as an autopsy as poor branding. He said the Party had no message and no focus.

John Y’s Musings from the Middle: The Best and Worst Advice Columns for Students

The column below is an irresistible one—even for me (at age 49) and not looking for either a college major or a job.

They are interesting reading and worth glancing at for information. Bu…t not, in my opinion, for life guidance.

The only thing worse you can do than pursue a degree you are interested in that pays a low starting salary is get a degree you aren’t interested in because it pays a high salary. If you do the former, at a minimum you will almost surely do much better while in college or graduate school (higher GPA), which translates into more professional options, better educated, and more self-confidence. Not a bad outcome.

jyb_musingsIf you do the latter, you will likely do poorly, have a negative experience with school, have a lackluster record, get a second or third tier job in the field of study and not enjoy or excel at it. Pretty lousy outcome.

I’m not saying don’t balance the practical aspects of the connection between college degree and future jobs. You should and must. But make it only a part of your analysis. And at the end of your analysis, go with your gut and your passion.

No one has yet been able to quantify either. But being engaged something you are interested in and passionate about seems the common denominator of almost every person I know who excels in their field.

Even if they majored in English. (And many did!)

From Forbes:

The Best And Worst Master’s Degrees For Jobs

Thousands of new college grads will enter the workforce this year, but with unemployment at 8.2% and underemployment near 18%, many will put off the taxing job search process and opt out of the weak job market to pursue graduate degrees.

With this in mind, Forbes set out to determine which master’s degrees would provide the best long-term opportunities, based on salary and employment outlook. To find the mid-career median pay for 35 popular degrees, we turned to Payscale.com, which lets users compare their salaries with those of other people in similar jobs by culling real-time salary data from its 35 million profiles. We then looked at the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ employment projection data to see how fast employment was expected to increase between 2010 and 2020 in popular jobs held by people with each degree. Finally we averaged each degree’s pay rank and estimated growth rank to find the best and worst master’s degrees for jobs.

As it turns out, although there are too few doctors in the U.S. and too few seats in medical schools, those shortages are good for one segment of the population: people who get degrees as physician assistants.

Click here to read the full article.

Steve Levy: Dear Mr. President — Try this Mideast Solution

When it was announced that President Obama was going to be visiting Israel I thought it timely to forward my humble suggestion as to how we can have a breakthrough in the  Palestinian-Israeli conflict. How about buying from the Palestinians the land they once lived on and is now the state of Israel.

For the last several decades, negotiators had tried to curb the violence by seeking a two-state solution.  Israel would claim a hands-off policy to a neighboring Palestinian State while the Palestinians would simultaneously acknowledge Israel’s right to exist.

The reason this proposal never moved forward is because it did not get to the root of the anger that lies beneath this controversy.  In order to fashion a lasting peace, we first have to look back to the manner in which the conflict erupted upon the founding of Israel in 1948.

There were four major players in this scenario:  the United Nations, the British, the Jewish people and the Palestinians.  It is hard to say that any one of these entities was the bad guy.  Millions of Jews who were uprooted by Nazi tyranny were, after World War II, in a state of shock with no home and needing to regroup.  The U.N., with the best of intentions, looked to provide these dispersed Jewish populations with a singular homeland where they could grieve for their dead and start anew.  The British would retreat from its colony after having tried unsuccessfully to fashion a Jewish homeland since the 1917 Balfour Declaration. It was a magnanimous gesture.  The only problem is that they created the new nation of Israel on land that many Palestinians had called their own.  Palestinians were actually uprooted and forced to flee the area.  So, one can see the burning hostility that would boil within the Palestinian people.

Steve LevyBy the same token, it is hard to expect the Jewish population at this point to have rejected this offer to control their own destiny through their own government.  The problem comes in when some inject into the argument that one people has more of a God given right to the land than another.  I can’t imagine the person on the losing end of that argument feeling very good about themselves.

The Jewish people were merely trying to survive in peace.  They were not seeking to conquer their neighbors or to hurt anyone.  On the other hand, an angry Palestinian population that was kicked off their land, was feeling a sense of humiliation. They have mistakenly concentrated their anger upon the Jewish population and have vowed revenge. Thus we had attacks on Israel in 1967 and again in 1973.

More recently, Israelis have been bombarded with haphazard shellings from over their border.  The restraint shown by the Israeli people is incredible.  I doubt that Americans would be so restrained if we were being bombed every day from a bordering state.  A foreign power attacked our buildings once and we rightfully responded with an overwhelming military fury.

Many Arab leaders, who are despots in their own right, have used anti-Semitism as a way to create a nationalistic jingoism to distract their poverty stricken constituents from the leaders’ evil ways.  Their schools teach their children to despise Jews are the Devil.  Is it any wonder that these younger generations grow up with such hatred toward the Jewish people.

But Israel, America and others seeking the long-term survival of Israel must understand the humiliation and the frustration that many of these generations have harbored – in part due to the repression that they face  through occupation, and even more so from the fact that they were kicked off of their land without any compensation.

What if the U.N. would have been more sensitive to the Palestinian people who were displaced back in 1948?  What if instead of kicking them off their land, they offered to buy their land?  Israel could have been created without the resentment and the humiliation that came about.  Perhaps it’s not too late for that type of justice.  Perhaps the way to finally create lasting peace in this area is to recognize that Israel has a right to exist and that the Palestinians who were displaced have a right to compensation for the land they lost.

So, instead of us wasting billions of dollars in federal aid to thankless powers such as Pakistan, Egypt and Afghanistan, perhaps our money would be better spent in a one-time payment to the Palestinians for the land that was previously taken from them.  The compensation would go far beyond helping people in poverty; it would create a sense of justice for those who feel they were wronged.  Only when that sense of resentment is eradicated from the situation, will there be peace of mind for the Palestinian population and peace for all the region that lasts.

Join Me, Rob, Hillary and the 58%

It’s been nearly two years since I apologized for hiding my support for marriage equality.  GOP Senator Rob Portman and Secretary Hillary Clinton joined the bandwagon in the past few days.  Turns out a big majority — 58% of Americans — agree with us.  That includes a whopping 81% of young adults.

Come join us; the water is warm.

From Washington Post:

Public support for gay marriage has hit a new high as Americans increasingly see homosexuality not as a choice but as a way some people are, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

The poll shows that 58 percent of Americans now believe it should be legal for gay and lesbian couples to get married; 36 percent say it should be illegal. Public attitudes toward gay marriage are a mirror image of what they were a decade ago: in 2003, 37 percent favored gay nuptials, and 55 percent opposed them.

The Supreme Court takes up the issue of gay marriage next week, and nearly two-thirds of all Americans say the matter should be decided for all states on the basis of the U.S. Constitution, not with each state making its own laws.

Gay marriage trend

Among young adults age 18 to 29, support for gay marriage is overwhelming, hitting a record high of 81 percent  in the new poll. Support has also been increasing among older adults, but those aged 65 years old and up remain opposed, on balance: 44 percent say same-sex marriage should be legal; 50 percent say illegal.

Gay marriage by party

A slim majority of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents under 50 years old now support gay marriage. Nearly seven in 10 of those aged 65 and up oppose it, although that is down from more than eight in 10 just four years ago.

Gay marriage by Party ID and Age

There has been a related movement in public opinion about homosexuality. Fully 62 percent of Americans now say being gay is just the way some people are, not something people choose to be. About 20 years ago, fewer than half of the public said so.

In the current data, about three-quarters of those who do not see homosexuality as a choice support gay marriage, with most supporting it “strongly.” More than two-thirds of those who see it as a choice oppose gay marriage, with almost all intensely against it.

Currently, gay marriage is legal in only nine states and the District of Columbia, but public views are more similar than not across state lines. In the states that allow gay marriage, 68 percent say such same-sex marriages should be legal, but so too do 56 percent of those in states where the practice is not legal.

Intensity on the matter is, however, different in those states. In places where gay marriage is legal, 52 percent feel strongly that it should be. That falls to 39 percent feeling strongly that it should be legal in states where it currently is not.

The Washington Post-ABC News poll was conducted March 7 to 10, among a random national sample of 1,001 adults. The margin of sampling error for the full survey is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

Click here for interactive poll results and complete question wording. Complete trends over time are available here.

Prizes Announced for “No Bracket, No Pay II” NCAA Hoops Forecasting Challenge

Click here to display printable NCAA Brackets

Already a few dozen people across the country have signed up for “No Bracket, No Pay II” — The Recovering Politician’s second annual contest for college hoops forecasting mastery.  It was enough for them to try to match hoops forecasting some recovering politicians.

But some of you wanted added incentives.  So we are offering at least 2 exciting prizes to the winning entry:

1. A No LabelsMake the Presidency Work” book, signed by former Clinton and Obama Chief of Staff William Daley and former Bush II Chief of Staff Josh Bolten.

2. A copy of John Y. Brown, III’s new book, “Musings from the Middle,” autographed by the author!

You can be assured that NO OTHER NCAA BRACKETS CONTEST is offering those 2 prizes.

To read up on the the latest of the “No Budget, No Pay” proposal by No Labels, and how it applies to the presidency, please click here.

And most importantly, click here to sign up for No Bracket, No Pay II, and fill out your brackets today!

Good luck!

David Walker & William Galston: The Future of “No Budget, No Pay”

Two of my fellow co-founders of No Labels — former Comptroller General Dave Walker and former Clinton Administration policy expert Bill Galston — discussed the future of No Labels’ hallmark legislative proposal, No Budget No Pay, in today’s The Hill.  Here’s an excerpt:

Although most citizens may find it hard to believe these days, there is  actually a law that establishes not only the process for producing a federal  budget but also a timetable. First passed in 1974, the Congressional Budget Act  tried to ensure that the different parts of the government would know what they  could spend during the coming fiscal year—and would enjoy that certainty early  enough to be able to make plans to spend the taxpayer’s money as efficiently and  effectively as possible.

That’s the theory, but in practice it hasn’t  worked out that way. In fact,  the government has not passed all its budget  and spending bills on time since 1997.

NoLabels-NoBudgetNoPay-NYTimesAdLate budgets have real and serious  consequences. In the absence of timely spending bills, Congress passes “continuing resolutions,” which are short-term band-aid measures to keep the  government running. This stop-and-go budgeting creates havoc for government  agencies and the citizens who rely on them. It’s hard for federal agencies to  plan and make commitments for the long term when they’re worried they might run  out of money in three months.

This is no way to run the largest  organization in the world – one that spent $3.8 trillion last year.

The  dysfunctional budget process also contributes to the general climate of  uncertainty that many economists believe restrains businesses from making new  investments and hiring additional workers.

That’s why both of us were so  thrilled when No Labels’ No Budget, No Pay proposal was included in this  February’s debt ceiling extension bill. No Budget, No Pay is as simple as it  sounds: If Congress can’t pass a budget on time, members aren’t paid.

No Budget, No Pay provided sorely needed  accountability for our legislators. And it worked. Last week saw the delivery of  budgets from Democrats in the Senate and Republicans in the House.
But  there’s still a missing piece of the budget puzzle.  The president is  required by law to submit his budget proposal by the first Monday in February,  but President Obama’s budget is late. In fact, this is the first time in history  that Congress has released its budgets before the president. And if President  Obama releases his budget on April 8, as recent reports suggest, it would be the  latest budget presented by a president not in his first year of office since  1921, when record-keeping began.

That’s why we believe it’s time to  expand No Budget, No Pay to the executive branch.

If the president  doesn’t submit his budget by the first Monday of February – as the law requires – he or she should not be paid until the budget is released and transmitted to  Congress.

Although No Budget, No Pay could only apply to future  presidents (the Constitution prevents current presidents’ salaries from being  increased or decreased), President Obama would take a big step toward more  accountability in our government if he agreed to apply No Budget, No Pay to the  executive branch.

Congress took its medicine with the No Budget,  No Pay Act earlier this year.  Now it’s time to hold the presidency to the  same standard.

Click here to read the full piece.

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