Please sign the petition below to remove the statue of Jefferson Davis currently in Kentucky’s Capitol Rotunda, and replace it with a tribute to Muhammad Ali, “the Louisville Lip” and “the Greatest of All Time.”
I just heard from the Ali family: It is the Champ’s belief that Islam prohibits three-dimensional representations of living Muslims. Accordingly, I have adjusted the petition to call for a two-dimensional representation of Ali (a portrait, picture or mural) in lieu of a statue.
UPDATE (Tuesday, December 2, 2014)
In this interview with WHAS-TV’s Joe Arnold, Governor Steve Beshear endorses the idea of honoring Muhammad Ali in the State Capitol (although he disagrees with removing Davis). Arnold explores the idea further on his weekly show, “The Powers that Be.”
Click here to check out WDRB-TV’s Lawrence Smith’s coverage of the story.
And here’s my op-ed in Ali’s hometown paper, the Louisville Courier-Journal.
UPDATE (Saturday, June 4, 2016)
In the wake of the 2015 Charlestown tragedy, in which a Confederate flag-waving murderer united the nation against racism, all of the most powerful Kentucky policymakers — U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell, Governor Matt Bevin, Senate President Robert Stivers and House Speaker Greg Stumbo — called for the removal of the Davis statue from the Rotunda. Today, as we commemorate last night’s passing of Muhammad Ali, there is no better moment to replace the symbol of Kentucky’s worst era with a tribute to The Greatest of All Time.
UPDATE (Wednesday, June 8, 2016):
Great piece by Lawrence Smith of WDRB-TV in Louisville on the petition drive to replace Jefferson Davis’ statue in the Capitol Rotunda with a tribute to Muhammad Ali.
UPDATE (Thursday, June 9, 2016):
Excellent piece on the petition drive by Jack Brammer that was featured on the front page of the Lexington Herald-Leader.
Highlight of the article:
Miller said he has received a few “angry comments” on his call to honor Ali.
“One of them encouraged me to kill myself,” he said. “You can quote me that I have decided not to take their advice.”
UPDATE (Friday, June 10, 2016)
The petition drives continues to show the Big Mo(hammed): check out these stories from WKYU-FM public radio in Bowling Green and WKYT-TV, Channel 27 in Lexington:
UPDATE (Saturday, June 11, 2016):
Still not convinced? Check out this excerpt from today’s New York Times:
I’ve often wondered about certain strategies gym goers employ. The one strategy that has vexed my mind is a ritual of sorts and a lot of people do it every day. You know if you do something every day and expect a different result, that makes you crazy rightJ. It is at like the Holy Grail, the very reason people come to the gym and try to eat right, it’s the difference between a good day and a bad day, it is the end all be all. It is stepping on the scale! Don’t try to pretend you don’t do it because we all are guilty, especially in a place where there are scales and we are trying to lose weight, gain weight or stay the same. But the very fact people are control by this instrument, this measurement of body mass can be alarming and skewed. The end all be all may not be “all” its cracked up to be.
Let’s back track for a second. What are we trying to do? Most people? Answer is losing weight. Statistics show the most common goal for any gym goers is losing weight. But that should really be the goal? The answer is yes and no. If you are 50 lbs overweight and you need to lose 50 pounds then I would say losing weight would be a great goal for you. However, if you are trying to lose 10-20 pounds, does it really matter what the scale says as long as your body fat changes? Of course not! I use to tell clients all the time; if I could have you weigh the same weight you are today and look 100% different, would it matter what the scale said? 9 times out of 10, the number didn’t matter.
Read the rest of… Josh Bowen: End All Be All (Tales of the Dreaded Scale)
By Jonathan Miller, on Wed Mar 20, 2013 at 5:00 PM ET
Click here to display printable NCAA Brackets
Time is running out to sign up for “No Bracket, No Pay II” — The Recovering Politician’s second annual contest for college hoops forecasting mastery.
We are offering 2 spectaculat prizes to the winning entry:
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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.
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The catfight between former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele and his replacement, Reince Priebus, has reached screech level, with Steele belittling the party’s new focus on minorities as old news.
Appearing on the “Andrea Tantaros Show,” a nationally syndicated radio show, Steele called the GOP establishment that on Monday unveiled a $10 million minority outreach effort a bunch of “numb nuts” for ignoring the plan he instituted four years ago.
Steele also sounded ready to beat up Priebus. Asked by Tantaros who would win in a cage fight, Steele said, “Oh, no question, I would clean his clock.” How? “Just one knock on the head. It’s done.”
The Steele-Priebus battle is, in a way, a repeat of their 2011 duel for the RNC chairmanship. Steele didn’t have the votes and pulled out, clearing the way for Priebus, a former Wisconsin Republican Party chairman.
What’s more, he said that the current Republican Party is bloated. “The bottom line is you’ve to to be focused on what the purpose and the role of the party is. The national party is too big for its own britches right now. It’s centered around itself.”
By John Y. Brown III, on Wed Mar 20, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET
Technology is supposed to make us more organized, efficient and punctual.
But I often wonder if each of those things aren’t more of an “inside job” that has more to do with internal factors than the screen size and processor speed of the latest smartphone.
Think of it this way, with a little mathematical license thrown in to make my point: Before cell phones and the internet and GPS and laptops and tablets, I had a tendency to over commit myself and always running a few minutes late.
But that’s all changed now with technology to thank, right?
Well…..well…..well…..ummm.
With two cell phones, one laptop, an iPad, and GPS system in my car and on my cell phone, I have increased the likelihood of being somewhere on time, by 3.75%. That means, at that rate of increase (and factoring Moore’s Law of advancing technology), I will be on time to appointments 100% of the time starting in mid August in the year 2114.
So, is the conclusion that technology is just not advancing fast enough to fix this deficit? Or perhaps I need to spend more money on more technology?
Or maybe, just throwin’ this out there, not saying it’s true or anything, but just maybe it’s on me –and regardless of all the wonderful promises of technology making our lives simpler, better, more efficient, maybe there are limits.
Q: In House of Cards, Congressman Russo is having sex with his aide, while House Majority Whip Underwood is having sex with a journalist. Which happens more often?
—A.S., New York City
Great question—it actually inspired me to write a separate column on the fact and the fiction behind House of Cards.
The answer is, definitely the former. During my time in the Missouri Senate, I never knew of a legislator sleeping with a journalist, but there was a lot of sex with legislative aides—though it generally happened with other people’s aides, not one’s own. Something about working with someone 16 hours a day makes them decidedly less sexy. I even knew of one legislator who slept with a constituent who visited his office to lobby for special needs children (though it happened after several meetings). They are now quite happily married.
Q: Our campaign is preparing to hire a bunch of summer interns to canvass this summer. I saw in the documentary about your race that you had this awesome group of interns who worked their hearts out for you. How did you find them? Did you have to weed a lot out?
—J.L., New York City
Well, I was lucky. As a college prof I was blessed to be in contact with a lot of young people who were into politics. And as I used to joke, it’s amazing how much you can motivate students to engage with passionate teaching…and a little extra credit.
But the key was the weeding out process. During my 2004 campaign for Congress, I implored anyone who expressed a scintilla of interest to become an intern. Most did, and about a quarter of them ended up not working out.
In my 2006 campaign, based on the twin notions that the desperate guy at the bar goes home alone and the girl who plays hard to get usually attracts many suitors, I decided to do things differently. When a student inquired about volunteering, I’d give her my email address and tell her to contact me in the next 48 hours to learn more about the application process. If she did that, I’d ask her to send her résumé to my campaign manager in the next 48 hours. If she did that and her résumé wasn’t terrible, my manager would tell her we still had one to two internships available and ask for a time she could come in to interview in the next 72 hours. If that went smoothly, my manager would ask for three references he could call within the next 48 hours. But by that point, we barely even needed to call them (though we did), because we could tell that the student was responsible, aggressive and committed to the cause. We didn’t lose a single intern that campaign.
Read the rest of… Jeff Smith: Do As I Say — A Political Advice Column
“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.
Nearly 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.
By Lauren Mayer, on Tue Mar 19, 2013 at 5:00 PM ET
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:
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.
tumblr.com…
45. Oklahoma: Olivia Munn
The Newsroom star graduated from the Norman, Okla., school in 2004 with a degree in journalism.
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.
Let’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.
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.
Blog this!
