What’s in it for you? You can grab some sweet new socks at a discount and step up your style!
How can you help?
1. Make A Pledge Check out the link Sock 101’s Kickstarter campaign and video above, choose a perk that suits you, and pick out which socks you want us to send you. It’s that easy! Sock 101 is offering discounts for Earlybird Funders which save you about $12 off our normal pricing! What a deal. Imagine what you can do with that savings. Buy yourself a beer at the game, grab some food and proudly display your new threads. The Earlybird Funder discounts are limited to the first 100 people for each Earlybird discount level.
2. Share Our Story
Please share this email about Sock 101’s Kickstarter Campaign via email, Facebook, Twitter, phone calls, text messages and through old fashioned conversations. The more people Sock 101 reaches, the more likely we will achieve our funding goal to bring our team line to being!
Read the rest of… Jason Grill: Sock 101’s Kickstarter Campaign has Officially Launched!
By John Y. Brown III, on Thu Oct 3, 2013 at 1:30 PM ET
Why I am not sweating the government shutdown today.
Why not?
Because I have a general tendency to overestimate the impact of external political and economic events on my personal life.
And have learned this the hard way. Which is to say the, well, embarrassing way.
About 9 years ago during the winter months we had a snow storm that caused my work to close down for the day. My son, Johnny, was… about 9 or 10 years old and pleased Dad was getting to stay home for work and wanted me to join him outside to play and sled in the snow. He first asked me around 10 that morning and I responded, “Johnny, I will…but right now the stock market is down over 200 points. I want to see what is happening and monitor a little longer. Give me another hour and check back with me.”
An hour passed and back Johnny came ready for the snow. “Johnny,” I said, “the stock market is now down 300 points and I don’t know what is going on. Can you please give me a little more time and check back around noon?”
Noon came around and in came Johnny. Again. “Dad, how is the stock market going?” I responded, “Johnny, this is awful. The market is now down over 500 points. Unbelievable.”
Johnny paused for a moment and then said, “Why does it matter so much? Mom just told me we don’t own any stocks.” “Yeah,” I said….”Well, you know…That is ….that may be true. We really don’t own any stocks right now, come to think of it. I, uh. I…it’s just a big ….thing. A national , uh, bad thing. I guess. So, that’s why it matters so much to us, I guess.”
We then went outside and played in the snow. And I didn’t worry about the stock market plummeting the rest of the day.
By John Y. Brown III, on Thu Oct 3, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET
Deep religious ponderings.
I don’t believe my religion is right and other religions are wrong.
But if pressed….I do like to think my religion is just a little bit superior to yours.
You know, classier, I guess.
Maybe a bit more “uptown” and perhaps even a little more sophisticated, too.
I guess what I am trying to say is that we Presbyterians, as a denomination, tend to do better at cocktail parties than our competitor denominations.
For example…..I just had a couple of Church of Latter Day Saint women drop my my house to share some literature with me. Thought it was UPS but when opened the door saw no brown but did see the The Watchtower publication being held by one of the ladies— and instantly knew that it wasn’t UPS —and didn’t appear to be FedEx or DHL either.
I admire Mormons a great deal. But I am glad my religion doesn’t go door-to-door to evangelize. Telemarketing to evangelize would be beneath us too. We are better than that. We use mass mailings, for example. And try to keep telemarketing campaigns to minimum.
Of course, I didn’t say anything to the Church of Latter Day Saints ladies about any of this. Just thanked them and suggested they talk to a neighbor who had friends last weekend park in my driveway.
Debating religion on my doorstep wouldn’t have been very Christian of me. Especially when it would be easier for me to wait and just talk about them behind their backs on Facebook.
And I would never bring up something like this at a cocktail party.
But wouldn’t put it past a Methodist.
===
What is the world’s most popular “unsaid” daily prayer?
My guess is….
“Why can’t the rest of the world just behave! So I don’t have to.”
I recommend saying it at least once out loud. After that, I find I ave a hard time even thinking it to myself.
Sometimes saying something out loud–and hearing it–helps me stop thinking it to myself.
By John Y. Brown III, on Wed Oct 2, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET
The existential angst of being at that “in between place” in life.
And Facebook.
I am at that point in my life where I am still hopeful enough about life to believe that changing my profile picture on Facebook will yield some small degree of new happiness or uptick of social meaning ; but yet wise enough to anticipate the harsh reality that will settle in moments after changing my profile picture –that I am, in fact, the same flawed person with the same human problems that I was before the change of Facebook profile pics only now a little less dignified for believing something so inconsequential could add something of significance to my life.
And yet still shallow enough to respond to this existential grieving and shame (a la Facebook) to believe that this inner pain can be adequately relieved by changing my profile picture a second time.
===
Aging is a funny thing in how it changes our perceptions and opinions on things.
The older I get, on the one hand, the less inclined I am to support capital punishment for murder.
And yet, on the other hand, the older I get the more inclined I am to support capital punishment for tailgating while driving.
Q: Here’s my problem: I’m secretly dating someone who works on an opposing campaign. I know what you’re thinking: This is like something out of a movie, or like James Carville and Mary Matalin. But we’re just two people who really like each other and don’t want to let the campaign get in the way of a blossoming relationship. Is this too scandalous? Should we take a break, or do you think we can survive it? —Juliet (obviously not my real name!)
Yes, “Juliet,” something about your question suggested that might not be your real name, though I appreciate the clarification. As for you and your star-crossed lover, your situation does sound a bit like a movie—the dreadful 1992 Michael Keaton vehicle Speechless.
Forgive my tone, Juliet, but, really, chill. By today’s standards, what you’re doing isn’t very scandalous, unless of course you’re leaking poll numbers and television ad scripts. In fact, someone else on your campaign is probably hooking up with someone on an opposing campaign as well. Politics is a small and horny world. So go ahead and date—quietly for now if you prefer, but openly if you like. Assuming that your boyfriend on the other campaign isn’t a 15 year-old intern, I’d suggest that this cycle’s candidates have rendered your love life rather quaint.
Q: Did you see the Washington Post article about the longtime Hillary Clinton aide getting mixed up in shenanigans during the 2008 campaign where she appears to have coordinated a so-called independent expenditure on behalf of the campaign? It reminds me of what you got in trouble for. What’s the difference, and what do you think will happen to her? —M.E, Washington, D.C.
Well, one big difference is about $600,000 (the expenditure in question was nearly $609,000, whereas the expenditure during my 2004 race was approximately $10,000). A second difference is that—at least according to the Post article—the Clinton aide in question, unfortunately, allegedly put some things in writing, unlike my campaign aides who met with an outside consultant. But the biggest apparent difference is that none of her closest friends wore a wire and got her to talk, so it may be possible for her to explain away alleged emails that strongly suggest illegal coordination but leave some ambiguity. “I was merely providing Sen. Clinton’s campaign schedule for an old associate who wanted to invite friends to some events,” she might say; or “I provided information about our field operations to an associate who said he knew some willing campaign helpers, but I had no idea he was planning any sort of independent expenditure.” I should stress that I’m not accusing anyone of a crime here but speculating about possible defenses. Given the woman’s status as a longtime Clinton aide and the high stakes as Hillary contemplates 2016, I’d expect she’s receiving top-flight legal advice. The outcome is difficult to predict without seeing the actual emails, but it will sure be interesting to watch it unfold.
Read the rest of… Jeff Smith: Do As I Say — A Political Advice Column
By Jason Atkinson, on Wed Oct 2, 2013 at 8:30 AM ET
Contributing RP Jason Atkinson continues to pump out exciting and sometimes hilarious films about its adventures in the great northwest.
Here’s his latest, “Spring Skwala,” a film featuring Jason, Jim Root and Ken Burkholder chasing Brown Trout on the Owyhee River during the Spring Skwala Hatch.
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Oct 1, 2013 at 5:00 PM ET
A post, a question and a response. And an apology.
Earlier today I posted my thoughts on the government shutdown.
“Great leadership is the ability to successfully blame others for your failures…..Said no one never.”
A longtime friend then asked if I was suggesting others shouldn’t be held accountable or tbat it was bad form to blame.
And here’s my response:
I don’t mean to say either of those things. I am saying that when the people we elect to represent us utterly fail as a body to function to the point that the entire system is shut down, I really don’t give a flip who they think is to blame until they first want to talk about their own failure to do the job they were elected to do. And that job, in my view, isn’t prissing around the halls and floors of Congress to see who can point their finger most forcefully while shrilly blaming another because someone didn’t get their way.
I am embarrassed at my country’s leadership right now. Not because they disagree but because their cause has become so petty, so limited, so thinly-veiled, so self-serving and so antithetical to a governing body that once was the envy of the world.
We should be embarrassed that our leaders have taken a pivotal policy issue of our day and while marshalling our greatest policy minds and medical and technical resources have turned the entire debate into an exercise demonstrating NOT how a great country solves its problems but rather demonstrating how petty a great nation is capable of being–in spite of its greatness.
And we as voters and citizens are complicit in this breakdown. Our elected leaders are, after all, only a reflection of ourselves. That is the good news and bad news of a democratic system.
The government shutdown is, in my opinion, hardly our finest hour in modern times as a nation. Of course, it is not our nation’s darkest hour in modern history either. But it is certainly one of our nation’s most frivolous and unenviable moments. And I hope we can muster the decency and self-respect to make it a very brief one.
—And in the spirit of my response, here is my apology.
I would like to speak for myself now and say that as a citizen and voter I have failed to take the time I should have to read and understand adequately the complex issues at the center of our nation’s healthcare debate. I have failed to listen intently and seriously to those whose politics are different from mine. I have at times sneered and dismissed those who disagree with my party’s position and selfishly sought refuge inside an echo chamber of partisan commentators, news sources, and websites.
I have not done my duty to become a adequately informed citizen and add constructively to the debate. I have chosen easy catch phrases and one-liners in place of a more nuanced and thoughtful understanding of our national healthcare challenges. I understand enough to know there are no easy amswers or obvious solutions and my self-centered and lazy approach has contributed to the trivialization and caticaturing of many important aspects of healthcare policy.
Although I have been careful not to make a habit of using social media to insult those who disagree with my party, I have at times wanted to and in private moments have done just that. I have a role in this national debate and have not asked enough of myself and can’t act too surprised that the debate has culminated today in an unspectacular moment where seemingly everyone loses and no one is to blame.
I am to blame for my failure in my small citizen role. And I hope to make up for these failings going forward. But for tonight, I can at least accept blame in some public way and apologize for my part. And do.
Given that not a single Democratic voice has surfaced in favor of bending on the House GOP’s demand of a moratorium on the health care law, and since it is unlikely that the House would accept the one remotely plausible counter-offer of a one year delay of the individual mandate, the government shutdown is about to commence.
Whether that eventuality proves to be a blunder that thwarts the recovery and casts Republicans as intransigent extremists is a gamble I would rather Republicans not run. I’m in the camp that fears that shutdown politics will be costly for the party, from Virginia’s November races to the Senate fight in 2014. But even when the crisis eventually resolves, likely through some Senate procedural device that bypasses or outwits the House, the more meaningful dilemma is that the right’s path to brinksmanship has not really been countered by any articulate, influential conservative voice.
The case against the Ted Cruz putsch has been advanced in Republican circles, to be sure, but largely in the context of either the Wall Street fallout or disdain for Cruz’s leveraging of the defund Obamacare strategy to elevate his presidential ambitions. Missing is an alternative, conservative anchored vision of what the political right might more constructively be doing to advance its agenda.
What would such a message sound like? It might, for example, point out that Republicans are sacrificing one of the most principled critiques of the Democratic maneuvers on Obamacare: that the process of passing the law circumvented congressional rules and fed the public’s cynicism about congressional responsiveness to public sentiment. The defund movement’s tactics—risking a government stoppage that every poll suggests is deeply unpopular and seeking to effect a dramatic policy shift without anything resembling the normal process for repealing legislation—resembles too closely the Democrats’ insistence on driving through a healthcare overhaul in the face of broad opposition, through a parliamentary slight-of hand that effectively imposed one congressional chamber’s prerogatives on the other.
Read the rest of… Artur Davis: Where Is the Right’s Answer to Ted Cruz?
By John Y. Brown III, on Mon Sep 30, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET
Asheville, NC is cool.
Hip.
And Southern (albeit reluctantly).
A serenely hippie dippie college town that could easily take the NCAA regional title in meditation, woodworking, haute cuisine, energy healing, Frisbie throwing, and self-awareness if any were collegiate sports.
My phone camera isn’t functioning. Maybe it has dropped into the Asheville mindset and decided I should just experience the city instead of taking pictures of it, man.
And I agree.
Suffice it to say that it feels like Haight-Ashbury went to rehab and then was sent to a half-way house on the other side of the US and over time these Haight-Ashbury refugees found a way to make a sober-ish life while still honoring their eccentric individuality and pacifist world view. And learned how to make a contented community among themselves.
The inhabitants are not burned out but turned on(and aptly named their town Ashville) where they seek out (not eek out) an all-natural gluten-free, and gloriously Granola-fied life. To the beat of street musicians playing jazzy sounding bluegrass music.
People first started supporting their favorite teams with jackets, sweaters and shirts. Then people moved to hats, t-shirts, jerseys, kids cheerleader outfits and body paint.
Now, you can support your favorite team with your socks!
Introducing the Sock 101 Team Line! There’s only one catch…Sock 101 aren’t launching the team line unless they raise $25,000 on Kickstarter.
Sock 101 has 30 days to raise $25,000! We need your support!
Please out Sock 101’s campaign and video HERE: http://kck.st/1fG7kLo
