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:
By John Y. Brown III, on Wed Apr 18, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
10 hard facts about late night infomercials (Brace yourself):
1) No book, program or technology will “transform your life” in 14 days. Or even 30 days.
2) Operators are always “standing by” –even if they act like it’s only for a few more minutes.
3) Remember, you don’t really want to be like Anthony
Robbins. Just look like him. But he’s not telling you how to do that.
4) Ronco knives work well but you never use them as much as you think you will.
5) If you are over 40 what it takes to get “Six pack abs” isn’t worth all the effort required.
6) The 1-900 Psychic lines where a stranger predicts your future, is a pretty good deal. They are right about 50% of the time with predictions that you will have something good or bad happen in the near future.
7) It’s hard to “re-gift” products purchased through Infomercials because people know that’s where they came from.
8) There’s nothing you need at 2:30am that you couldn’t get by without at 1am. You are just tireder and more vulnerable to persuasion.
9) I have never heard any male brag that they grew a new head of hair after purchasing a late night infomercial spray.
10) Nothing changes until you are ready and willing to change.
By Krystal Ball, on Wed Apr 18, 2012 at 8:30 AM ET
There is a caterpillar native to the Americas from the Silkworm moth genus Lonomia.
The caterpillar doesn’t look dangerous, but if you attempt to harm it, it secretes a venomous anticoagulant that causes renal failure, hemorrhaging, and death. Perhaps this is what Reince Priebus meant by the GOP “War on Women” being like a “War on Caterpillars.”
Although any given incremental erosion of women’s reproductive rights from a GOP sponsored bill at the state level seems harmless enough to the future of the GOP, taken in the aggregate they are likely to cause the party severe electoral distress.
Caterpillars aside, the GOP “War on Women” is real and it has real-world consequences for the millions of women whose lives can and will be impacted by legislation that erodes more than a century’s worth of progress on women’s reproductive rights.
There were over 1100 antichoice provisions introduced in 2011 and 900 antichoice provisions introduced so far in 2012. Legislators in 13 states have introduced 22 bills seeking to mandate that a woman obtain an ultrasound procedure before having an abortion.
Of these, seven states are pursuing the state-rape vaginal probe variety. In addition, legislators in 13 states have sponsored right-wing “Personhood” type bills, too extreme even for the electorate of Mississippi, that could make both abortion and reproductive choices highly restricted.
Lest we think that the rhetoric around these bills might contain the damage to the GOP’s standing amongst women, please note how Georgia state legislator Rep. Terry England compares women to cows and pigs on his farm in support of bill forcing women to carry even inviable fetuses to term and Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett justifies forced ultrasound bill by telling women to “just close your eyes.”
Read the rest of… Krystal Ball: The GOP War on Women is Real
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Apr 17, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
Impenetrable Packaging: There’s got to be a better way.
A few years back the “He Man” serving was all the marketing rage. Restaurants would offer up 20% more food than people could eat and charge 40% more and get away with it because of the “perceived value.”
Today the problem is with packages that cannot be opened by mere mortals. If you are a bodybuilder or keep a chain saw in your car, no need to keep reading. This doesn’t apply to you.
For the rest of us, though, I don’t get this need of putting items we purchase in packages we can’t open.
Is it to create a “perceived value add” bc we have to work so hard to open our new product that we are supposed to feel even more excited than we would have been to start using it?
It can’t be to prevent store theft. If so, only easily lifted store items would be encased in a impenetrable packaging –not everything in retail stores.
Yesterday, after wrestling for nearly 10 minutes with an ear bud package, I finally successfully tore it open. I looked around to see if others were watching. I felt like Arthur successfully withdrawing the embedded Excalibur sword from the giant stone.
I felt I should be knighted or at least applauded.
And I didn’t feel a “value add.”
I did feel several abrasions on my hands and fingers. Which I hope I’m not being charged extra for. And I didn’t bother trying to buy band-aids. That would be another battle to open that package.
Some post-mortems on Rick Santorum’s partly admirable, partly vexing candidacy: First, his is a campaign that can credibly spend energy on the “what-if” game. That distinguishes him from Herman Cain, Rick Perry, and Michele Bachmann, all of whom were so thin in national campaign skills, or so palpably unprepared to be president, that no assembly of tactics would have gotten them there.
I’ve believed since the night of his Iowa speech that Santorum did have a pathway. It involved owning a unique economic message, one that chastised both Wall Street and Washington for breaching the social compact, and one that recognized that middle class anxiety has cultural and economic roots. He could have so easily broadened that theme by embracing tough education reforms and a crackdown on special interest influence. He could have wielded the Bain Capital card much more credibly than Newt Gingrich.
For a mix of reasons—the lack of a strategic thinker in his campaign circle, an undisciplined communications style, and way too much time arguing process and electability instead of ideas–Santorum never polished the smart populism that I described above. Instead of becoming the “creative, new ideas” alternative to Romney, he lapsed into the politics of last conservative standing, which after his peak in February, was only good enough for the Deep South and a string of solid seconds. It’s a gambit that might have worked against a Giuliani or a Huntsman; but against a mainstream conservative like Romney, whom the right found acceptable if unexciting, the game plan was too cautious and too uninspiring.
Read the rest of… Artur Davis: A Santorum Post-Mortem
Good afternoon, and welcome to another edition of Prix Fixe Politics! It’s now unofficially general election season, so you can finally rest assured Sarah Palin won’t be coming out of hibernation to join the race. Here’s today’s menu…
But first – in the last edition, I asked a question in the Appetizer about what Americans want most in 2012. If you said men want more money, and women want more time, you have your finger on the pulse of the American electorate. Thanks to all who participated, and as promised, I have used the fancy algorithm of pulling a number out of a hat to pick the winner. Sakina Zaidi, a Penn classmate of mine and formerly of Bain Capital, is the lucky one, so I will be treating her to drinks in…Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Because I don’t see a trip to the Horn of Africa in the near future, Sakina can claim her prize when she is back stateside; in the meantime, I will treat Nick Eng, another classmate of mine and currently a consultant with Diamond Management and Technology, next time I’m in New York City.
Appetizer: A piece of data you should keep your eye on as we head toward summer is the Consumer Confidence Index (CCI). CCI ignores contentious social issues and wedge issues, focusing on current economic conditions and voters’ future expectations for business, employment, and personal income. The last 40 years show a potentially game-changing correlation: If the CCI is at 100 or higher, the incumbent party has a significant advantage in its bid to retain the White House. In October 2008, for example, the CCI was a paltry 52. Gas prices had skyrocketed, the beginnings of the recession were among us, and John McCain ended up losing the election. Since the 1972 election between Richard Nixon and George McGovern, the CCI has correctly predicted the outcome of 9/10 of the presidential elections (the notable exception being 2000, in which incumbent-party candidate Al Gore won the popular vote). So, where do things stand now? As of the end of March, the CCI stood at 70.2. As Democrat strategist James Carville said to Bill Clinton in his 1992 campaign, “It’s the economy, stupid!”
Media victim? Seriously? He’s a media victim in the same way that Kim Kardashian is: every dollar they raise/make is due entirely to their shameless exploitation of media fascination with them as opposed to any iota of talent they might possess.
These two peas-in-a-pod exemplify the modern-day media corollary of “If it bleeds, it leads,” which is “If it screams – or has implants – it leads.”
This episode will inevitably help him raise more money from the nutjob base, which helps him. But I don’t know enough about the dynamics of his new district to say whether it hurts him with actual swing voters.
People who talk about him seriously as a VP prospect should immediately report back to the asylum from which they’ve escaped.
By John Y. Brown III, on Mon Apr 16, 2012 at 8:30 AM ET
Tax Day and silver linings.
When I found out about tax extensions I had the same ecstatic feeling as when I was a college freshman and found out I could withdraw from a class I was struggling in.
Sure it just puts off the inevitable –and with a penalty.
But much like dropping a college class, it sure can do wonders for my attitude today.
Blog this!
