When Michelle & I went to the Outer Banks of NC in September, we stopped by a really nice store called Sandy Bay Gallery. After making our jewelry purchases and chatting with the owner, we walked back outside and stopped to admire the hippo pottery. But oh look! Hippo Mouth has a resident!
Is that the blurpiest little frog ever? The shop owner saw us looking and came out and said he lives in there, and that sometimes there is another one that hangs out close by. But before I could get more photos inside the hippo, she coaxed him out onto the wall:
and that is about half of my vacation photos right there....
Rupert Cornwell: Why can't the US learn to love its government?
Out of America: Suspicion of rulers dates to the founding of the nation – and even Obama is unlikely to change that
What is it about Americans and government? The tea-party crowd were back in town the other day – more than 5,000 of them, gathered on the West Lawn of the Capitol to rail against the historic healthcare reform bill that the House of Representatives is expected to pass this weekend.The passions the measure has generated among its Republican opponents have been remarkable. One Republican Congresswoman has declared that health reform was a greater threat to America than Osama bin Laden and global terrorism, while John Boehner, the party's leader in the House, urged the protesters to join Republicans in "defending our freedom".
A neutral observer would not know whether to laugh
or cry at this so-called "Super Bowl of Freedom", featuring inter alia
a giant banner describing the proposals as "National Socialist
Healthcare, Dachau, Germany, 1945". Yes, the tea-party movement,
currently touring the country, contains more than its share of cranks
and nutters. But the fringes, too, can express political truths. This
particular truth is that Americans just can't bring themselves to love
government.
When President Barack Obama came to power, the stage seemed set for government activism unmatched in decades. The parallels with the early 1930s were palpable. Talk of a second Great Depression was everywhere, economists were urging a "new New Deal", Franklin Roosevelt was suddenly back in fashion. Nine months on, however, the urgency seems to have vanished. And why this cooling of reformist ardour? True, the economy has improved (though not by much, as evidenced by the news that unemployment last month rose to 10.2 per cent, the highest level in a quarter of a century.) The huge deficits being run up by Washington are also legitimate cause for concern. A more important reason though is America's ancestral suspicion of government.
The governors' elections in New Jersey and Virginia last week, in which Mr Obama's Democrats were soundly defeated, were largely local affairs. But in so far as they sent a message to the party that controls the White House and both chambers of Congress, the message was plain: slow down, the voters said, don't force change down the people's throats. With a young and charismatic President who won power by promising change, it's easy to forget that the US is a conservative country. Mr Obama triumphed in 2008 not by harnessing a vast tide of liberalism, but by persuading the wavering centre that he was a better bet than another four years of discredited Republican policies. In Virginia and New Jersey, exit polls showed, the centrists (moderates, independents, call them what you will) changed their minds and decided to put on the brakes.
A fascinating Gallup survey last month found that despite the Democrats' victories in 2006 and 2008, fully 40 per cent of Americans, more than ever, describe themselves as conservative, while 36 per cent call themselves moderates. Only 20 per cent are avowed liberals. It's not a question of government having failed the country. It's just that Americans aren't comfortable with the beast when its role, as now, threatens to expand – even when the deficiencies of the unfettered free market have never been more glaring.
Mr Obama secured his record-breaking $787bn stimulus package last February, albeit with virtually no Republican support. But that might be it. Yes, the House will probably pass a version of healthcare reform, but the measure could yet founder in the Senate, where party discipline is weaker, and a 60 per cent majority is required to pass anything of significance. If it does fail, it will basically be for fear that the reform amounts to a "government takeover of healthcare". The most contentious part of the bill is the "public option" – whereby a publicly financed scheme would be set up to provide some competition to rapacious private insurers. But that option now hardly dares speak its name. Leading Democrats prefer to speak of a "consumer option".
And health care is but one of three massive public policy issues on the table, beside a green energy programme to combat climate change, and regulation of the financial markets, aimed at preventing a repeat of last year's crisis. But there's no guarantee any of them will get through. For Europeans, all three would be no-brainers: assured health coverage for all (or rather almost all), steps to reduce both pollution and imports of costly foreign oil, and curbs on the excesses of Wall Street. Not so in the US – because each implies a substantial increase in the role of government.
And it has been ever thus. Suspicion of government is as old as the Republic. The movement that turned up on Capitol Hill again last week takes its name, of course, from the Boston Tea Party of 1773. Americans like to see their War of Independence as a revolution against government – back then the far-away government in London that taxed the colonies without allowing them representation – and the habit has never died.
These days, one thing unites every presidential candidate: a readiness to denounce the federal government in Washington and all its works. That the candidate in question might have made a long and comfortable career in that den of corruption and iniquity makes not a scrap of difference. Usually – as now – the sentiment works to the advantage of Republicans, but not always. Sometimes, the beneficiary can be a genuine outsider like the eccentric Texan businessman Ross Perot, who in 1992 came closer to winning the White House than any independent in 80 years. Sometimes it takes on the hyperbolic aspect of the tea-party crowd, and last summer's raucous town-hall protests against health reform. And on occasion it spills over into tragedy, into the raw hatred of Timothy McVeigh, who blew up the federal government building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people.
No one is more aware of how distrust of government is part of America's collective political DNA than Mr Obama. Whether he can tame it is another matter.
It was a big day for Penny yesterday as she completed and graduated from her Family Dog I class. For the past month and a half or so, we’ve been working on sitting and staying and heeling and coming when called – all the things that are needed to be a good dog citizen.
Good job, Penny!
~
I am scared of squirrels. Irrational I know and I'm annoyed at myself for being afraid of such a cute looking little thing.
I'd
never seen a "real" squirrel until my first day here and when I saw
them I raved over their sweet little faces and bushy twitching tails.
My second day here I met a kamikaze squirrel. Instead of running away from me it ran straight at me and stamping feet and noise did not deter it. It only stopped when I ran away and then, looking over my shoulder, I swear I saw it smile.
This fear is especially pathetic as I come from the land of more than a few of the world's top 10 deadliest snakes, the small Funnel Web Spider and the Blue Ringed Octopus. I have a healthy respect for these but am not particularly terrified of them.
But squirrels... I give way to even if it means walking onto the roadway; I give wide berth to trees where I spot a squirrel and I never stand still in a park!
We don't have any squirrels in our little yard; I suspect because of all the pepper (chili) plants we have around but yesterday I noticed a neighbour is actively encouraging them .... I would never be able to leave the house if this was at my front door!
This little girl was having a feast. Of course this was taken from well back on the sidewalk!
Making It Happen
from DailyOm
There are times in our lives when all the signs seem to be pointing us in a particular direction. Our thoughts and dreams are echoed in the songs and stories we hear and the media we see. Maybe the message we are getting from the universe doesn’t even make sense in the “real” world, but somewhere inside, these urges feel right. Maybe you feel you are being told to move to a new city although your life where you are is just fine. Or maybe you feel the desire to pursue a new direction in your career when it never really interested you before. When we spend time getting in touch with our higher selves, our intuition sends us directives to lead us to become our best and most fulfilled selves. And when we are open and listening, the next step is to take action and go for it.
Once we make the decision to pursue our inner urgings, the universe sets into motion the means for all sorts of details to fall into place. A sense of peace will come over us, because we know that any questions will no longer make us wonder if our dreams are possible, but how to make them happen. Instead of deterring us from our goal, these questions only serve to clarify our focus to move us forward. We need not throw caution to the wind to follow our dream. The positive shift in our energy affects everything around us. Like a rush of water, it goes ahead to clear debris from our path so that we can go forward. Our new attitude also attracts likeminded people. Sometimes even the most unlikely angels arrive to help us along our way with the information and support we need.
Wherever your dreams are pointing you today, take a step. Take action and manifest your inner urges and soul whisperings.
via Center for American Progress
Census Shows Most Poor Adults Are Women, Particularly "Women on Their Own"
Elderly, unmarried women—many of whom are widows or divorced—are particularly susceptible to poverty, particularly as retirement funds dwindle in the recession.
By Liz Weiss | September 10, 2009
New data released today by the Census Bureau shows a statistically significant increase in the national poverty rate in 2008. Most adults (18 and over) in poverty are women; 59 percent of adults in poverty are women; and 13 percent of all adult women are in poverty. Three-quarters of these women are women on their own—widowed, divorced, separated, or never married—despite being less than half (47 percent) of the population of adult women. These unmarried women have appreciably higher poverty rates than married women—20.8 percent versus 6.2 percent. Yet unmarried women live in a variety of situations—they may be living with partners, they may be mothers, they may be elderly—and each group has unique circumstances and needs. Indeed, poverty rates vary greatly for women by family status, age, and race.
In 2008, 39.8 million people—13.2 percent of Americans—were in poverty, a statistically significant increase from 2007 (12.5 percent), and a marked increase since 2000 when poverty was at 11.3 percent—its lowest level in a generation. Unfortunately, we know that the poverty picture has worsened in 2009, and these new numbers reflect only the first part of the current economic downturn. Unemployment in August 2009 was at 9.7 percent nationwide and nearly 12 percent for unmarried women (seasonally unadjusted). What’s more, long-term unemployment has grown considerably and food stamp participation increased by more than 20 percent between June 2008 and June 2009.
Women are more likely even in better economic times to face poverty than men, and unmarried women have higher poverty rates than married women. Yet the marital disparity has worsened since early in the decade. The poverty rate of unmarried women was 13.4 percentage points higher than married women in 2000, but it was 14.6 percentage points higher in 2008. The risk of poverty for women of color is even greater, especially for those who are unmarried. Thirty percent of unmarried black women and 29.5 percent of unmarried Hispanic women—of any race—were poor in 2008, compared with 18.5 percent of unmarried white women.
She speaks of the loss of her father, and the legacy he left her in handwritten letters.
Very touching ~ Please enjoy
A mass of conflicting impulses. - Spock and V'ger Nomad
The Great Star Trek Project of 08-09 has been slowly drawing to a close. While Mr. Val and I finished Enterprise last month and will soon tackle the pre-boot on blu-ray we've been busy with fan films and parodies for a while. My intention was to blog my progress throughout the project but that was overly ambitious. I think I am at the point, though, where I can step back and make some pretty good observations about the project as a whole.
Star Trek: The Original Series
Oh joy, what fun. There are few shows that can be so genuinely wonderful but still have enough cheese that they don't even warrant parody. TOS does enough to parody itself, so much so that, at times, it's painful. Let us all recall Spock's Brain. Ok, let's not. Instead, let's let some genius with a YouTube account condense it into 4 minutes that are far more enjoyable than being subjected to the entire episode.
This clip is also sure to highlight one of my favorite lines from all of Trek: Brain and brain, what is brain!?!
Clearly the original series stood for a lot of good in addition to the cheese. Yay brother. The show was one of the first to spotlight minority actors and actresses and show them working alongside white people as if it was no big deal. And despite some seemingly sexist overtones, I feel like Gene Roddenberry saw much of the sexiness of the women on the show as an expression of female empowerment. Let's face it, throughout all of the different series it's clear that women can do anything, however, the amount of quality face time by powerful women in Star Trek pales in comparison to that of the men. To me, that shows that we have a longer way to go in current society.
One of the primary missions of Captain Kirk was to destroy every Eden he could lay his hands on. Apparently space is populated by peaceful and beautiful worlds that all hold a different, dirty little secret. Each has its own version of the snake. While I kept a list of characters who said, "I'm a doctor, not a ______", I should've also kept a list of Edens destroyed by the glorious Captain Kirk, a man with no need of a Prime Directive. Every time it happened, I know I turned to Mr. Val with my best Kirk imitation and spat, "so this...is...your...Eden".
For the best of the original series we turn to the first, and shockingly, the third season.
Easily one of the most famous episodes of TOS is The City on the Edge of Forever. I dare you to watch it and not shed a tear. According to the Wiki page, writer Harlan Ellison recently settled with Paramount over royalty issues despite at one time disowning the script. Ha! Sounds like Ellison. But he certainly deserves credit for this, even if the final version is someone dissimilar to his original script.
Another outstanding episode in the catalog was penultimate episode of the entire show's run. They should've ended the series with All Our Yesterdays since the final episode, Turnabout Intruder was a poorly executed look at what the glass ceiling in Star Fleet can do to a poor girl. Anyway, back to the good one, here's All Our Yesterdays, featuring one of my favorite Ladies of Star Trek.
Now for the fun part. Let's turn to YouTube for some hilarious splices and clips.
First, there's the ever-famous video featuring all of the variations on: "he's dead, Jim".
I love this next one. The person who uploaded it simply calls it, "Shatner at his finest":
All in all, the Original Series is a wonderful show, I can't wait to get the remastered versions on blu-ray with the beefed up effects. I'm always happy to revisit this universe.
Coming tomorrow (if I feel like it): a look at the Original Series Films
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