arely staircase
arely staircase's JournalAmerica’s bankrupt morality
It's not just Wall Street. Every profession from medicine to academia has been corrupted by our money obsession
First there was the “New Economy,” a millennial fever dream predicated on the twin ideas of a people’s stock market and an eternal silicon prosperity; it collapsed eventually under the weight of its own fatuousness.....
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Second was the war in Iraq, an endeavor whose launch depended for its success on the turpitude of virtually every class of elite in Washington.....
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And then, Wall Street blew up the global economy...
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What I didn’t understand was that these weren’t cognitive failures at all; they were moral failures, mistakes that were hard-wired into the belief systems of the organizations and professions and social classes in question. As such they were mistakes that— from the point of view of those organizations or professions or classes—shed no discredit on the individual chowderheads who made them. Holding them accountable was out of the question, and it remains off the table today.
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http://www.salon.com/2012/03/29/americas_bankrupt_morality/
monstering
Mark Lewis is the lawyer for more than 80 alleged phone-hacking victims. Labour MPs Tom Watson and Chris Bryant questioned Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks, an executive and former newspaper editor at Murdoch's News International umbrella corporation, during parliamentary hearings. And Nick Davies is the reporter for The Guardian, the paper that originally broke the phone-hacking story. Some of them were put under surveillance by private investigators hired by News International. Others were intimidated, says Bergman, through a process called "monstering," in which Murdoch's papers singled out individuals and attacked their character on a daily basis.
"[Chris Bryant] tells the story that at some time [after questioning Brooks in Parliament in 2003] he runs into her at a party, and she starts to say unkind things to him, that she knows that he's gay," says Bergman. "Then soon after, he gets 'monstered' by the tabloids, where they single out an individual and go after him day after day.
"They began to show pictures of him in his underwear — any pictures they could find of him being somewhat compromising — talking about him being a member of Parliament, being gay, etc. And leaning on him, and, he thought for a while, endangering his political career."
http://www.npr.org/2012/03/22/148610399/as-murdochs-scandal-unravels-many-implicated
Racial Tension Runs Through Sanford's Roots
In Sanford, Fla., historic wrongs against the local black community go back a long way. The memory of those events is still fresh, and they are getting another airing in the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting, which protesters have called racially motivated......
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Willie Saunders grew up in the area in the 1940s and '50s. Saunders had a paper route back then and still remembers his boss at the Sanford Herald. The older white man refused to touch him.
"You know, I didn't think about it then. I was a kid," he says. "Every time I would come to give him the monies for the route, he would say, 'Put it on the counter, put it on the table.' And ... when he gave me my money, he put on the table."
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Valada Parker Flewellyn collected stories for the book Images of America: African Americans of Sanford. She says in 1946 baseball legend Jackie Robinson was run out of town during spring training. Local authorities did not want to see blacks and whites playing together
http://www.npr.org/2012/03/22/149164373/racial-tension-runs-through-sanfords-roots
Allen West On Trayvon Martin Case: 'This Is An Outrage'
Florida Rep. Allen West, a high-profile conservative and one of two African-American Republicans currently serving in Congress, lambasted the local authorities in the handling of the shooting of Trayvon Martin.
"I have sat back and allowed myself time to assess the current episode revealing itself in Sanford, Florida involving the shooting of 17-year-old Treyvon Martin. First of all, if all that has been reported is accurate, the Sanford Police Chief should be relieved of his duties due to what appears to be a mishandling of this shooting in its early stages. The US Navy SEALS identified Osama Bin Laden within hours, while this young man laid on a morgue slab for three days. The shooter, Mr Zimmerman, should have been held in custody and certainly should not be walking free, still having a concealed weapons carry permit. From my reading, it seems this young man was pursued and there was no probable cause to engage him, certainly not pursue and shoot him….against the direction of the 911 responder. Let’s all be appalled at this instance not because of race, but because a young American man has lost his life, seemingly, for no reason. I have signed a letter supporting a DOJ investigation. I am not heading to Sanford to shout and scream, because we need the responsible entities and agencies to handle this situation from this point without media bias or undue political influences. This is an outrage."
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entries/allen-west-on-trayvon-martin-case-this-is?ref=fpblg
serious question about trayvon, zimmerman and stand your ground
ok, i have raised this in other threads with very little response but:
if trayvon did in fact initiate the physical altercation, as zimmerman alleges AFTER zimmerman chased him down and illegally detained him, as zimmerman admits, doesn't the stand your ground law apply to trayvons actions and not zimmerman's?
wouldn't trayvon be the one who had the right to stand his ground under florida law against someone committing a felony against his person?
well now here is the "no-s***" story of the day
Trayvon Martin shooting: George Zimmerman dreamed of being a cop
Written by
Rene Lynch
Los Angeles Times - ?44 minutes ago?
By Rene Lynch When a rash of burglaries and other crimes broke out in and around a gated community in Sanford, Fla., residents wanted some form of protection.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-george-zimmerman-trayvon-martin-20120320,0,1508238.story
Didn't everyone know a guy like this in high school?
back to work tomorrow: or
how I stopped worrying and love high stakes standardized testing.
Tomorrow I will begin a whole week of prep for the starr test part one (writing). The ptbs want all attention on that. I will sneak in some social studies and science as writing cues but it will not make up for actually teaching the concepts.
This shit is out of control.
happy birhday, kirk watson - a true texas progressive
I sure wish you were still my voice in the legs.
gender roles, stereotypes, postcards, and leap year
i had no idea that it was concidered acceptable for a woman to propose marriage to a man during (and only during, of coure) leap year back in the day. the recurring assumptions in these "jokes" are that marriage is akin to punishment for a man - how ironic given how subserviant women were generally expected to be, especially in marriage, at the time.
also assumed is that "pushy" women are ugly.
http://www.slate.com/slideshows/double_x/crazy-old-postcards-showing-women-proposing-to-men-during-leap-year.html#slide_1
why i can't oppose the death penalty in all cases
let me preface this by saying i support repealing the death penalty as it stands in my state (texas) and the others that have it. it is applied to minorities at a much greater rate than whites and it has undoubtedly resulted in the execution of innocent people (Todd Willingham here in my state)
but as a moral and ethical choice, i simply cannot take it off the table for the soldier or soldiers who murdered those poor children in kandahar. i just cannot.
sorry for whomever this pisses off (and i hope you are still my friends) but the person who did this deserves to have their own life taken from them. and when i say the person who did this, i mean the person who has been proven to have done it through due process.
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Gender: Do not displayMember since: Sun Dec 11, 2011, 06:54 PM
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