harmonicminer

Sometimes surverys of public opinion just aren’t revealing.  Here is a brief recounting of Egyptian attitudes as measured by some polling. 

Make of it what you will.  But don’t be too hard on them.  Americans who claim to believe in freedom elected Obama, who did not disguise his policies.   And we have our “compassionate conservatives” and “pro-life Democrats” continually trying to square the circle.

Most people hold at least some conflicting beliefs or perspectives. 

But “living Consitution” is still an oxymoron.

You really have to read this.

Here is an article by a white northern lawyer about the impact of the life of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Read it. 

I will always wonder if race relations in the USA might have been better in the last decades had he not been murdered.  I would like to believe so.

OK, with Innermore’s excellent suggestion, I’ve run down what the problem was, and the appearance of the blog is back to “normal”, mostly.

Well, I’m not deliriously happy with this new look, but it’s a start, and at least I’ve got the columns back, and you can see recent comments without scrolling to the bottom of the page.

More to come as I rebuild.

You will have noticed that I haven’t been blogging a lot lately. I’ve just been too busy. But I’ll be gradually doing a little more over the next weeks, if all goes well. I have temporarily disabled the subscribe feature, due to getting overwhelmed with spam. Soon, I hope to be installing a new blog setup, one that has features that will make it easier for me to avoid getting hacked and spammed into oblivion. You may have noticed that I can’t seem to get rid of the post that lives permanently in the upper right corner of my sidebar. That’s a symptom of the problems I’ve been having.

So stay tuned, if you’re interested, and things may be changing appearance (but not attitude) around here, and a little more may start happening again.

In the meantime, if you want to see a list of recent comments and recent posts, you’ll have to scroll WAY down the page to get to it.

I’ll fix it.

Really.

First the unaccompanied version, unless you count the harmonica.

Then we get the accompanied version.

Send this dog to college.

We all remember when Barbara Boxer dressed down a general for referring to her as “ma’am” (the same thing as “sir” to a military person), insisting he call her “Senator”.

How nice that Harry is on a first name basis with Congresswoman Bachman. Apparently he isn’t so close to his other guests. I expect that he would have called Barbara Boxer “Senator”….. or possibly “your highness.”

Don’t get me wrong.  I usually like Tom Selleck’s acting, and he even seems to be somewhat conservative in his politics.

But this new series, Blue Bloods, about a cop family in New York, with Selleck as Police Commissioner, really, really jumped the shark in episode 5.  They couldn’t even get through the first handful of episodes without trotting out that favorite of Hollywood, the white American female terrorist of non-Middle Eastern descent.

This time it’s a typical looking neighborhood mom who is looking to blow up Central Park with her son and estranged husband as unwilling victims, all in the name of Allah.

So they got it half right.  Yes, virtually all homicidal terrorist types are Islamic.  But no, they are virtually never females of European descent who are recent converts to Islam.

But Hollywood is all about fiction.  Sometimes even fantasy.

In final Senate speech, Specter slams political ‘cannibalism’

Arlen Specter isn’t leaving Washington quietly.

In his final speech on the Senate floor, the outgoing Republican-turned-Democrat sounded off on the tea party, the rise of partisanship in Congress and the “judicial activism” of the Supreme Court.

“Defeating your own is a form of sophisticated cannibalism,” the Pennsylvania senator said of the tea party activists who worked to defeat GOP centrists.

Specter bemoaned the loss of a Senate where both parties seemed to be interested in finding compromise, and he was especially critical of lawmakers who campaigned against their fellow members.

“That conduct was beyond contemplation in the Senate I joined 30 years ago,” Specter said. “Collegiality can obviously not be maintained when negotiating with someone simultaneously out to defeat you, especially within your own party.”

He called the increasing lack of civility in politics discouraging. “Civility is a state of mind,” Specter said. “It reflects respect for your opponents and for the institutions you serve together.” Political polarization, he said, will make civility in the upcoming Congress “more difficult [but] more necessary than ever.”

The former Senate Judiciary Committee chairman then went after the Supreme Court, accusing Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito (both conservatives whom he supported) of “eroding the constitutional mandate of separation of powers.”

“The Supreme Court has been eating Congress’ lunch by invalidating legislation with judicial activism after nominees commit under oath in confirmation proceedings to respect congressional fact-finding and precedents,” Specter said, per CNN’s Alexander Mooney.

Whiner. Loser. Coward.

This from the man who switched parties because he’d lost the confidence of the voters who elected him.

Good riddance.