Jr.NTR’s new film ‘Brindavanam…Govindhudu Andharu Vaadele’ has begun its shooting in Pollachi, Tamil Nadu. In this movie Jr NTR is pairing up with Kajal. Dil Raju is producing the movie under Sri Venkateswara Creations banner and directed by Vamshi Paidipally, the director of film Munna. Prakash Raj, Mukesh Rishi, Sri Hari and Ajay are playing other major roles. Music is scored by Thaman S and cinematography by Chota K. Naidu.

I have to say I love Richard Dawkins. He’s so sweet and sincere.

Theists are really nasty about him, sometimes.

Though Jørn Utzon isn’t exactly a household name outside of Denmark, you are almost certainly familiar with his work. He is the architect behind one of the twentieth century’s most iconic buildings, the Sydney Opera House.

The late Utzon was born in Copenhagen, but he spent most of his childhood in Ålborg, which is now home to the Utzon Center, a museum of modern architecture and art designed by the man himself, in cooperation with Finnish architect Alvar Aalto. Ålborg is also home to the ambitious Søgaards Brewery, whose range encompasses a variety of international styles and includes some unusual experiments. The Søgaards brewmasters have taken inspiration from the places that inspired Utzon’s architecture to brew two beers for the Utzon Center: Blond and Dark. The label on Utzon Blond explains:

This beer follows Utzon’s footsteps from Australia, where we have gathered the herb lemon myrtle; across Asia for the refreshing character of kaffir lime leaves and ginger; to Spain, where we have selected an orange flower honey to round off the beer and add a light floral flavor. The noble conclusion comes from the Middle East’s delicate and luxurious spice saffron.

Pretty neat. These ingredients may sound weird, but remember that before hops came into favor around the turn of the fifteenth century, bouquets of herbs and flowers called gruits were used to add flavor and bitterness to beer. Dandelion, heather, ginger, burdock, nutmeg, juniper and spruce were common. So while this beer is cosmopolitan and contemporary in its selection of international ingredients, this method of flavoring also recalls ancient brewing traditions. Especially interesting is the inclusion of honey, since the vikings were fond of a sort of mead-beer hybrid that was also flavored with odd spices and herbs.

Utzon Blond is an amber-gold ale with a pillowy white head, and it actually does hit all the notes described on the label: Australian lemon myrtle and kaffir lime leaf provide a pleasantly soapy, citric top note, while the honey gives the beer a sweet foundation. Floral, savory saffron floats by in the background. All around it is very fruity, slightly tangy and rather robust – probably not as arresting as Utzon’s designs, but just as intriguing and unique!

Sunday, 6 December 2009:

There’s a significant Asian community here in Austin, especially as the 50,000-student University of Texas, based in this city, attracts a huge number from across the Pacific. The community provides a ready market for supermarkets catering to its needs, one of which is “Mai Dan” – which I believe is the Vietnamese pronunciation of its proper name.

Mai Dan is located in a shopping area called Chinatown Center – actually a large carpark surrounded by 4 or 5 single-storeyed, unconnected buildings. The place grated me the wrong way the moment I saw it. There was a stereotypical Chinese arch out front with statues of three sages (or where they gods of fortune?) while the roof over the building housing Mai Dan was upturned at its corners. Both were marks of shallow orientalism.

Entrance arch to Chinatown Center, Austin

Like Mai Dan, all the other shops catered to the Asian market. There were Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese restaurants, cellphone retailers, and a video store with nothing but Vietnamese movies.

Inside the supermarket itself, just about all the aisles were crammed full of stuff for a Chinese or Vietnamese lifestyle – many different grades of rice, soya sauce, bean paste, sesame oil and so forth. A few aisles were filled with things no Western supermarket would ever dream of. One had jars upon jars of creepy crawlies – it wasn’t clear to me if they were dead or alive, but edible they were meant to be. Another aisle offered many varieties of ancestral altars, censers, joss sticks and auspicious door plaques.

Where Western supermarkets had 100-metre walls lined with freezers for frozen foods, Mai Dan had a 50-metre wall lined with aquariums, from which you could pick your live fish, crab or eel. It was a world away from the antiseptic Western supermarket.

Upturned roof over the supermarket

The management, supervisors and key personnel, e.g. butchers, were, as far as I could tell, all Vietnamese, speaking Vietnamese among themselves. The shelf stackers, cleaners and security guards were all Hispanic, speaking spanish among themselves. The division was so stark, I didn’t see a single exception to the rule.

Where are the African-Americans? They generally share the same poorer neighbourhoods as the Hispanics, so if Mai Dan was close enough for Hispanics to find work there, why not the African-Americans? The first explanation that comes to mind is that the Vietnamese owners refuse to hire Blacks. But might it also be that the Blacks didn’t even come looking for work?

* * * * *

I see in Monday’s Straits Times that Minister for Muslim Affairs, Yaacob Ibrahim spoke out about the social problems within the Malay-Muslim community. One sentence in the news story (Straits Times, 7 December 2009, Deaths of kids from broken homes a ‘wake-up call’) struck me:

His despair is almost palpable as he described how these tragedies are symptomatic of a deeper sociological problem and spells out the dangers of ignoring this long-standing problem of broken homes in the Malay community, saying it will lead to an underclass.

‘Once it emerges… you can never remove it,’ he warned, as he expressed his fear of the situation deteriorating and going the way of the blacks and Hispanics in the United States.

There is a world of difference between the situation of the Blacks and that of the Hispanics. Exceptions notwithstanding, Black communities are too often characterised by single-parent families, absent fathers, drugs, jail and a culture of non-achievement. Hispanic families are not like that, if one looks past the illegal immigrants who tend to be detached from their families and living in fear of the law. In settled Hispanic communities, the family structure is very strong. There do come across as culturally less demanding of achievement compared to other immigrant communities from Asia, and yes, they do have a gang culture at its margins, but it’s quite unfair to lump them with the African-Americans.

My sister teaches English as a second language to adult students from many different immigrant sources, and her observation is that immigrants who have chosen to come to America work very hard to get up the ladder, and this is true whether they come from Latin America or Asia. The slight difference is that Asian families tend to invest very heavily in education for the next generation, and for that, the parents work extremely hard. Hispanic parents also work very hard though their priorities may be somewhat different.

First generation immigrants differ from what she loosely termed ‘indigenous’ communities in terms of the jobs that people would take. Immigrants do the low-status dirty work if they have to. Perhaps because they are separated from their home communities by physical distance, it is easier for them to take on low-status work. In contrast, it is hard for ‘indigenous’ communities to do that, because the loss of face is too great. Their communities are right here in the US, not across the border.

By ‘indigenous’ communities, she meant both the Native Americans and the African Americans, the first tending to feel a sense of entitlement as the original inhabitants, the second still nursing a sense of victimhood, and thus an elliptical sense of entitlement (remedy) too. Instead of competing hard like the Asian and Hispanic immigrants, they seem to be waiting for a kind of justice.

The Straits Times also reported:

Meanwhile, [Yaacob Ibrahim] made a plea to better-off Malay-Muslims not to turn their backs on these families but ‘make it their mission in life to think about it, to write about it and explore solutions’.

The African-Americans who have made it to the middle class and beyond, according to my sister, likewise turn their backs on the underperforming  ones. In fact, they may hold even more disdainful attitudes than Whites towards the ghetto Blacks. Their attitude is very easily summed up: They think the underperforming Blacks are plain lazy.

I would hasten to add that dysfunctional families and the cascade of problems that follow should not be so simplistically reduced to personal failure. Yaacob Ibrahim provided a similar caution:

However, he does not view their behaviour as a lack of morality, saying it is a sociological phenomenon.

There was one thing in the news story that I didn’t think was correct though. It was this:

[Yaacob Ibrahim] fears that should [having babies out of wedlock] become rooted, it would go the way of black and Hispanic Americans, where many girls get pregnant to get out of poverty because the state would then take care of them.

This may be true of many European countries, but I don’t think it is so in the United States.

One of the best Music videos made in Connecticut. The landmarks remind me of the Connecticut River and a place that I would like to go fishing and swimming. Even in the Connecticut river, their is a place where I can go and dream about anything and find escape from the world. So here are the landmarks where this video was filmed in Connecticut.

Come on Over Scene: Middletown & Portland CT
Cliff Jumping: Seldon Island Chester, CT
House on the River: Essex, CT
Train Bridge: Old Saybrook, CT
Ferry: Chester, CT
River Scenes: Connecticut River from Old Saybrook, CT to Middletown, CT

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Where_was_Billy_Joel%27s_River_of_Dreams_video_filmed

Saturday, 5 December 2009:

This is a picture of quintessential middle America, a leafy suburb of single houses. A perfect blend of community (no front fences) and privacy. Space, quiet, security and goodliness.

And conformity. The first thing I noticed was that all the houses were either of dull brick or painted in similar tones: neutral beiges, off-whites and some pale grey. Why does no one choose red, yellow or pink?

It’s probably written into the Neighbourhood Covenant. Although sold as separate lots, the homes come with an obligation to sign on to a covenant with other owners along the same street. Exactly what’s in the covenant will vary from place to place, but quite commonly it will establish limits for the look of the house and the behaviour of the occupants, e.g. when to put out the trash for the weekly collection.

Even without a covenant, conflicts arise, and sometimes become cause celebres. Apparently, a corner house (shop?) somewhere in Austin had wooden flamingoes of various colours planted in its front garden. The neighbours felt that such flightiness lowered the market value of the surrounding properties and demanded that the owner revert to a staid frontyard. He refused. The neighbours took him to court. Other Austin citizens rallied to his defence. He won.

Some home owners have more than covenants to live up to. When a street has one or two nosey-parkers – people who, in the name of civic togetherness, want others to rally around this or that  – they can be a pain. Near where my sister lives, a neighbourhood has two such women who went around making their neighbours feel obliged to put up colourful, twinky Christmas lights on their front lawns. But the street has a non-Christian Korean family and a Muslim one. How did they feel?

* * * * *

In Singapore, because civil society has been so eviscerated by years of strong government, we tend to speak of civil society in glowing terms. The more of it, the better. It’s good to see private citizens rallying around, organising themselves for a shared cause, we say.

But as with so many things in life, too much can be a bane. Private citizens can be quite oppressive to other private citizens too, either through covenants and such instruments or through manipulative personalities. And that is what the dispassionate, secular state is for: a means of redress and rebalancing. If you want to put flamingoes on your frontyard, or refuse to put up Christmas lights, you may need the justice system to fend off your neighbours.

* * * * *

Just as, ultimately, the government of Singapore had to act to nudge private employers towards ensuring that their employees can speak some English. It’s a reversal of the earlier position taken by the government that they do not need to intervene. Employers will know that it’s in their best interest to have frontline service workers speak English, they said, and companies can be relied upon to do the right thing by themselves.

Rubbish. Yawning Bread had argued for a long time that the state should require a minimum standard of English before we give out work permits; I never believed that private employers can be relied to do anything.

I haven’t yet grasped the details of the Ministry of Manpower anouncement, but on first reading it seems to be just a financial inducement to employers (a lower foreign worker levy) to have their employees pass an English test. What standard is that test? Even after the employee has passed the test, how will employers motivate their workers to actually use English at work, and not turn surly towards any customer who uses English to them?

In other words, is the measure enough? I think the jury’s out on that.

Back in the more puritanical ’50s, executives at CBS Television were faced with a situation they had never faced before. Lucille Ball, the star of the wildly popular “I Love Lucy” sitcom about the misadventures of a scatterbrained New York City housewife, had become pregnant.

Network standards were so strict at the time that she and co-star Desi Arnaz, her on-air and real-life husband,  had to be shown occupying separate beds. So strict that even the word pregnant was forbidden on air.

Instead of shutting down production for months, it was decided that the show would do something unheard of at the time: Lucille Ball and her on-air alter ego, Lucy Ricardo, would become the first obviously pregnant woman to appear in a TV show or movie.

It was still such a sensitive topic that “the p-word” remained forbidden, with CBS executives insisting that the word “expecting” be used instead. A priest, a minister and a rabbi were each made available to vet each episode before it went on the air to ensure that nothing controversial went out over the network.

The censorship was only relaxed in the early ’70s when CBS’s All in the Family and Maude became the first TV shows to talk about sex on prime-time television. It was in the same decade that Ball began talking openly in TV interviews about the bitterness and anger caused by now ex-husband Desi’s compulsive philandering.

Those old enough to remember how things were in the ’50s must marvel at how much things have changed. The medium that once forbade the word pregnant now features ads for Viagra, scripts that deal with newer trends like “starter marriages” and “friends with benefits”, and even shows with gay, lesbian and bisexual characters or hosts.

But a couple of things have not changed. Re-runs of I Love Lucy are still on the air, nearly 60 years after its first broadcast; and philandering still tends to lead to angry and even violent outbursts.

Witness the details we’ve learned this week about golfer Tiger Woods and his panic-stricken attempted escape from his Florida mansion, with wife Elin Nordegren in hot pursuit, undoubtedly screaming obscenities and swinging a golf club wildly.

His evasive explanations of the incident and the surfacing of information suggesting that Woods was having an extramarital affair caused much fascination with the story.

Is it fascinating because such incidents are rare, or because they’re common?

Take the following Extramarital Sex Quiz and get a better idea of just how many Tigers (and tigresses) there are out there.

1. The American Sexual Behavior Survey, conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, involved interviews with 10,000 Americans over two decades. It found that…

a.) 22 percent of married men and 15 percent of married women have cheated at least once

b.) 7 percent of married men and 1 percent of married women have cheated at least once

c.) 39 percent of married men and 32 percent of married women have cheated at least once

2. A 2007 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill study concluded that…

a.) about 14 percent of U.S. men had “concurrent” sexual partnerships or partnerships that overlap in time during a one-year period

b.) about 16 percent of U.S. men had “concurrent” sexual partnerships or partnerships that overlap in time during a one-year period

c.) about 11 percent of U.S. men had “concurrent” sexual partnerships or partnerships that overlap in time during a one-year period

3. A study published in the American Journal of Public Health in 1998 found that…

a.) A total of 19 percent of American men reported having had only one sex partner during their lifetimes, as compared with 21 percent of Britons

b.) A total of 48 percent of American men reported having had only one sex partner during their lifetimes, as compared with 58 percent of Britons

c.) A total of 34 percent of American men reported having had only one sex partner during their lifetimes, as compared with 47 percent of Britons

4. The same study found that in their lifetimes…

a.) 48 percent of American women reported having only one sex partner, while 37 percent of British women reported having had only one sex partner

b.) 32 percent of American women reported having only one sex partner, while 40 percent of British women reported having had only one sex partner

c.) 24 percent of American women reported having only one sex partner, while 14 percent of British women reported having had only one sex partner

5. A study published in the Journal of Sex Research in 1998 found that extramarital sex was considered to be “always wrong” by a majority of the population in each of 24 current (or former) countries, with the exception of the Czech Republic and:

a.) Russia

b.) Canada

c.) The Netherlands

THE ANSWERS:

1. The American Sexual Behavior Survey, conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, involved interviews with 10,000 Americans over two decades. It found that… a.) 22 percent of married men and 15 percent of married women have cheated at least once

2. A 2007 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill study concluded that… c.) about 11 percent of U.S. men had “concurrent” sexual partnerships or partnerships that overlap in time during a one-year period. (No data available for women.)

3. A study published in the American Journal of Public Health in 1998 found that… a.) A total of 19 percent of American men reported having had only one sex partner during their lifetimes, as compared with 21 percent of Britons

4. The same study found that in their lifetimes… b.) 32 percent of American women reported having only one sex partner, while 40 percent of British women reported having had only one sex partner

5. A study published in the Journal of Sex Research in 1998 found that extramarital sex was considered to be “always wrong” by a majority of the population in each of 24 current (or former) countries, with the exception of the Czech Republic (43%) and: a.) Russia, where only 36 percent said that extramarital sex was always wrong, compared to 63 percent in the Netherlands, 68 percent in Canada and 80 percent in the U.S.  (Responses to this and other questions showed the U.S. to be considerably more conservative in its  sexual attitudes than relatively liberal Canada.)

Yesterday I ran across an article in the feeds of some research done at U Haifa and U Michigan.[Link] The research used some standardized methods to estimate the competitiveness among students taking tests. The primary variable was the size of the group locally taking the test. The surprising – according to the media representation – result was that the degree of competitiveness decreased with increasing group population.

To illustrate the difference between a physicist and a social scientist, the physicist would have immediately wanted to know what the functional relationship was. In particular, is there some sort of conservation relationship

f(C,P)=K,

where:

• C = (mean?) competitiveness;
• P = local population of test takers;
• K = a constant, “C” number if you will; [1] and
• f = a function.

In particular, we should like to know if

CP = K,

which is the simplest such functional relationship and says (for the benefit of the acalculate out there) that the total competitiveness in any group is a fixed quantity.

I mention this because the latter part of the article is a tortuous attempt to express this very idea without the benefit of maths. And it does so in the same dismal fashion that it always does, disgusting and alienating both the intelligent and the doltish. My experience in taking standardized tests in high school is that it does not matter how many people are in the room but rather how many of them you will compare, in a social network sense, grades with. The latter refers to not only the people you directly compare grades with but the people they have compared with and cite. Sort of a degrees of connection thing. So the population needs to be some sort of average over social network not the nose count in the testing room. IMHO.

The tenor of the discussion is that if one wants students to get high marks on standardized tests then they need to take the tests in small groups. I suspect this is a bit farcical based on my own personal anecdotal observations, which, of course, are statistically and scientifically meaningless except that they are probably accurate.[2]

While I am revisiting my misspent youth, I may as well complain a bit more. It is not at all clear to me that this sort of false competitiveness has any merit at all. Of course in the modern secondary shul environment of Every Child Left Behind whipping up artificial competitiveness in standardized testing has the merit of increasing the pay of some so-called teachers, the ones most adept at exploiting this effect. But on a realistic basis, it is not at all clear that such testing is of benefit to either students or society. If competitiveness really is conserved in this fashion, then perhaps using competitiveness in artificial situations such as testing wastes it from being used in situations actually beneficial to individuals and society?

I recall in undergraduate shul, largely because in graduate shul the classes were smaller that it was easier to excel in large classes than small because it was simply too hard for people to knock against each other. This is sort of the opposite of competitiveness but it illustrates the false benefits of such. If the purpose of courses is actual learning, education even, then wasting time and effort in interpersonal friction is counterproductive. In effect, such competitiveness tends to reduce the classes to rote training since the measure of goodness is not what has been learned but how well one scores on exams. Hence, missed by the researchers, is that this research demonstrates that artificial competitiveness and standardized testing are detrimental and damaging to society and individuals.

[1] Yes, I know that is a pun, and a good one from a physics standpoint. Think BRACKET. And I know today is Saturday but I didn’t get to use a pun yesterday, so this is just conservation of pun.

[2] This is commonly known in the fields of theoretical physics and marital survival as the I-told-you-so condensation. Everyone has encountered situations where their best estimation of how to act under some conditions is abysmally wrong and a colleague/spouse/significant other/boss/employee/archvillan who has observed this points out that your assessment is opposite to theirs. Usually unintentionally in the most shattering fashion attainable, hence the condensation appellation.

Thursday, 4 December 2009:

“There’s a culture of trust,” my sister described it. Indeed, many features of the American retail scene would not be possible without it. Having checked out seven large stores, each the size of Suntec Carrefour or IMM Giant in Singapore, the most striking feature is how open the layouts are. In Singapore, when a checkout lane is not in use, it is barricaded. Not in Austin. They are left open, but nobody walks through them with unpaid merchandise.

There are even self-checkout stations. You scan your purchases yourself, bag them and pay with a credit card. There’s nobody watching you, but people don’t try to get away with unscanned merchandise.

Newspapers are left unattended on shelves. No one collects them by the baleloads for reselling.

At Whole Foods, a store specialising in organic produce, a section of the space is devoted to salad bars, pasta bars and other fresh ready-to-eat foods. Recycled paper containers are at hand. One sees others helping themselves to food either to take away or for immediate consumption. Indeed, the food looked appetising. Yet, it was not obvious where one should pay. Did we have to pay before helping ourselves, if so where, or should we help ourselves first and pay later? If the latter, what about those who are already eating?

My brother-in-law and I were baffled. We couldn’t figure the system out. We finally decided that instead of risking a huge faux-pas by helping ourselves, we’d eat somewhere else. (In other words, too much trustiness, too much open-plan layout may not make business sense)

A 50-metre stretch of Lowe's parking lost is filled with an array of potted plants. You don't see anyone watching. Choose your plant, take it inside and pay.

At Lowe’s, an enormous seller of DIY, construction and gardening materials, a huge array of potted plants is left unsupervised in a section of the car park. The honour system is practised. You pick the plant you want and take it to the cashier station inside the shed to pay.

Their physical size allows the stores to stock an enormous variety of produce and merchandise. Where New York’s downtown retail scene is one of many specialised shops, each with unparalleled depth of merchandise, here in Austin, the hypermarkets have both depth and breadth. Not only do they sell anything from knock-down furniture to winter jackets to food, they do so with incredible variety in most categories.

How many varieties of bananas (a tropical fruit) will you find in tropical Singapore? Typically, one. At Whole Foods, there were eight different varieties of them, each properly labelled. Dishwashing detergent? Perhaps 20 different brands on offer. Organic milk? Maybe 30. Asian curry mixes? At least 40 different varieties. Pasta sauces? Over 100.

The frontage of this SuperTarget store is two and a half times the width of this photograph

In one of the stores, there was a mix-and-match nuts section where you scoop out your own nuts and weigh them yourself (unsupervised, of course). By my estimation, there were some 50 – 60 different nuts, roasted or flavoured in countless ways. And don’t start me on the range of coffees.

The wines section in both Whole Foods and Central Market each had something like 1,000 different labels, occupying an area that could be an entire supermarket itself.

But most curious of all was the corner in the Walmart store that sold bullets. “They used to sell guns,” said my brother-in-law, “but for some reason, have discontinued doing so.”

The seven stores I have visited (so far) are just a few of the numerous hypermarkets in this city of just 800,000 people. I can’t figure out how the economics work. At 6 p.m. which I suppose must be peak hour on a weekday, Whole Foods and Central Market were nowhere as busy as Singapore’s hyerpmarkets.  With this kind of traffic, how do the Austin stores support the cost of carrying so much stock?

Staff are also a million times more polite. Shelf stackers greet customers when they go past them (Who’s ever heard of that in courtesy-campaign Singapore?). Cashiers make a little small talk with each customer – they can afford to when the line is just one or two persons.

* * * * *

Although spread over an area roughly as large as Singapore, Austin’s population is one-sixth of Singapore’s 5 million. The result is a city of low buildings (except for a few office towers downtown), stand-alone homes and thick ropes of highways. I cannot imagine how anyone can live here without a car.

This creates two problems: Firstly, it amplifies the disadvantage of lower-income people; secondly, it makes for a huge carbon footprint.

Sure, cars are nowhere as expensive as in Singapore. Gasoline is currently about US$2.50 a gallon (3.8 litres), or about S$0.92 per litre, half the price as prevailing in Singapore. Still, it’s not cheap if you’re a student or don’t earn very much. There are buses, but low ridership means infrequent and sparse routing for buses. Can one really depend on them to get about? But if you can’t afford a car, what do you do? How do you get to work?

Located in Austin's suburbs, Chinatown Center is a shopping centre comprising five blocks (one is shown) surrounding a huge parking lot. The blocks are not connected to each other.

The layout of the city is also extremely unfriendly to pedestrians. There is rarely any shelter from sun or rain, and outside of downtown, shops are separated by expansive parking lots. In summer, when temperatures reach to between 35 – 40 degrees for weeks on end, it must be like an inferno.  (Today, it’s the opposite. At three degrees, with a biting wind, it was a frigid walk from one building to another or to the car.)

Then there’s the environmental cost. Between the acres of asphalt absorbing solar radiation and the huge number of cars in use, Austin may be among the chief contributors to global warming on a per capita basis.

David Bowie

Hang Onto Yourself

David Bowie – Hang Onto Yourself

David Bowie – Hang on to Yourself – Video & free listening at Last.fm

VERSE

Never had a good thing going
And, you know, never had a thing on
My baby got out last Monday
And me, I’m on a radio show

CHORUS
So come on
Come on
We really got a good thing going
(Well) Come on
(Well) Come on
If you think we’re gonna make it
You better hang on to yourse..el..elf
VERSE

CHORUS (x3)

Oh
Alright
Alright
Come on
Ha
Ha
Ha
Come on
Ha (etc…)

David Bowie – China Girl

Marc Savard organized the 1st Tea Party in Wisconsin earlier this year.  He was also the 1st candidate to declare his candidacy for the 8th Congressional seat.  So why did he decide to run?

Very interesting reasons.  Considering how crowded the field is in the 8th, the obvious question is can Marc build on the success of organizing a successful Tea Party event enough to win the primary and then the seat?

Related articles by Zemanta

• NRCC to Candidates: Prove Yourselves Worthy! (lakeshorelaments.com)
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POSTED AS A COMMUNITY SERVICE BY GADABOUT-BLOGALOT

THIS IS A FANTASTIC WORKSHOP FOR EVERYONE.  STUDENTS * ADULTS * YOU!!!!  PLEASE JOIN US

NCCS – National Center for Constitutional Studies

The East Mountain Federated Republican Women’s Group will be sponsoring a Constitutional Workshop.  Know Your Constitution “Making of America in the History of our Constitution”.

Place: Valley View Christian Church

170 State Rd, 343

Edgewood NM 87015

Date:     May 1, 2010

Time:    9:00 am – 3:30 PM

Cost:

Workbook on the Constitution – $15.00 for Adults, $12.00 for Students – includes lunch and refreshments.

Contact:  Lori K. Harris, EMFRW President

(505)235-6276

Make Check Payable to:   EMFRW

EMFRW

Carroll Bodo, Treasurer

18 Holiday Loop

Tijeras, NM   87059

Facility Contact:

Chuck Ring

505-281-3968  Home

505-263-3268  Mobile

Thank you

Lori K. Harris, EMFRW

I read somewhere — and I’m too annoyed to link to it — that a gay man who simulated oral sex on stage, and is typically shallow and flamboyant as showbiz people, and especially gay male ones, are, has a huge lesbian following.

Well this lesbian wants nothing to do with him. Queers need to get their act together. Sorry, but it’s true. As long as gay men, a) discriminate against, ignore, or have a contemptuous or exclusionary attitude toward lesbians, and b) behave hedonistically, promiscuously, or exhibitionistically, I refuse to support them in any way.

Similarly with queer culture in general. So much about queer culture grosses me out — the hedonism, the disrespect for family values, the obsession with phalluses which is purely inherited from a patriarchal, phallus-worshiping attitude — that I can hardly bear to identify as queer. But let me put it this way:

I am a moderately conservative, intellectual, family-loving and family-values respecting, chaste and monogamous lesbian who does not party or go to bars. And I’m damn proud of it. Hopefully, some day, all queers will have the sense to follow this path.

Tuesday, 1 December 2009:

Not having had much free time in the last two weeks, I have not been reading  (online) newspapers. Other than Dubai World defaulting on a some US$60 billion worth of loans, and the Australian federal government deciding not to block Canberra’s recognition of same-sex civil unions, much may have happened in the world without me having a clue.

I do know however, that President Nathan rejected the clemency appeal of Yong Vui Kong, and (until the surprise court decision, Wednesday, 2 December, to stay the execution) Yong was scheduled to hang this Friday.

This poor boy’s plight has been on my mind quite a bit since I heard about the rejection of the clemency. Like many others, I’m sure, I feel helpless. Taking anyone’s life, whatever the legal rationale, is plain wrong, yet the juggernaut rolls on.

At Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, while waiting for my plane with nothing much to do, I wondered what it felt like to wait for execution day.

I see that the Straits Times, in reporting  the latest twist in Yong’s case, mentioned that:

Malaysian-born Yong, 20, was caught with 47g of heroin, contained in packages, by Central Narcotics Bureau officers in Yishun last year.

During the trial last November, Yong’s then-lawyers argued that their client, then 19, was unaware of what he was carrying. He was merely following instructions from his boss in Johor Baru to deliver ‘presents’, they said.

But his accomplice, Reggie Gwee, 22, testified that he had received drugs from Yong on five to six occasions between May and June last year, and that they even came unwrapped twice.

After a two-week trial in the High Court, Justice Choo Han Teck found him guilty. The mandatory death penalty for anyone found guilty of trafficking in more than 15g of heroin was then imposed. Gwee, who was found guilty of trafficking in less than 15g of heroin, was given 22 years’ jail.

(Straits Times, 3 Dec 2009, Stay of execution as drug trafficker gets new hearing)

It sounds as if Gwee had a plea bargain. Did he really traffic in less than 15g of heroin, or did the prosecutor ignore the lab findings regarding the amount he handled, instead choosing to charge him for “less than 15g”?

How does the prosecutor choose which party to use as prosecution witness, offering a plea bargain for that, and which party to hang? Why do courts have no say in this?

* * * * *

Siddharth Narrain from India was in Trinidad for the same conferences that I attended. He explained that one of the most significant aspects of the 2 July 2009 Delhi High Court decision reading down Section 377 came from the way the court distinguished constitutional morality from popular morality.

Many legal scholars recognise that law cannot but reflect a society’s sense of morality. Thio Li-Ann, I think, would be among them.  However, the Delhi High Court said there is morality and there is morality. In looking at what the law should mean, a court must search for the moral principles as embodied in the constitution, which is different from what people may hold as their morals.

People may think that it is immoral to have sex outside marriage, but the moral principles enshrined in constitution may be that people should be left alone to decide how they want to live their lives. Others may think it is outrageous to deny the existance of their god but the moral principles in the constitution may be that gods should not be imposed on others.

Too often, the popular idea of morality takes the form of prescribing how lives should be led, how much skin should be clothed, what foods to abjure and how sex should be performed.

Constitutional morality however has quite different concerns: liberty, equality and the state’s duty of care. Far from embodying and advancing majoritarian demands,  constitutional morality may require these to be resisted.

* * * * *

Trinidadians have lost the battle of the bulge, particularly females. I’d say about half of the women there are overweight and maybe 10 to 20 percent pathologically obese. Getting into an economy class airline seat is like squeezing a pillow into a shoebox. Of course, all sorts of circulatory problems will likely result with flights more than two hours’ duration.

There are more visible problems. On the flight from Trinidad to Fort Lauderdale, a big fat woman found it hard to squeeze into the aircraft’s toilet. After she managed to slowly shuffle herself in, she found herself unable to turn around to close the door behind her. A kind soul helped by closing the door for her. How she would manage, while inside, to remove her underwear and sit on the bowl, I could not imagine. I don’t think she ever did, because there was no sound of flushing before she came out of the toilet. Quite likely she just gave up and decided to hold it in till we landed.

Trinidad's Piarco International Airport is the quietest airport I've seen in a long time. It was quieter than some small domestic airports in Malaysia. This is a view of its 10 duty-free shops.

On Caribbean Airlines, the only food we had for the four-hour flight was a small cold croissant filled with some cheese, lettuce and turkey, prepacked together with a chocolate wafer. And a soft drink. Alcoholic beverages were chargeable, US$6 for a beer. What afar cry from Asian airlines (other than those that clearly put themselves in the budget category) that serve a choice of hot meals (starter, main course, dessert) with free-flowing wine, beer, juices and soda.

But worse was to follow. From Fort Lauderdale, I transferred to American Airlines. There was no food at all, just one round of soft drinks. It being already 7 p.m. and hungry after Caribbean Airlines’ croissant mini-lunch, I asked if they might have some cheese crackers.  “Yes, certainly, we do,” said the middle-aged woman in the airline uniform.

“Here you go,” she said as she handed the pack to me. “Four dollars, please.”

ljubljana, december, 2009

McCarty was exonerated in 2007 after serving 21 years, including 19 years on death row, for a 1982 oklahoma city murder he didn’t commit.

He was convicted twice and sentenced to death three times based on prosecutorial misconduct and testimony from forensic analyst Joyce Gilchrist.

more info

Monday, 30 November 2009:

It’s midnight and the eight around the table are speaking too loudly for the hour. There’s reggae for background, and the discussion about race is animated by free-flowing rum. We eight are part of the group that have been together at conferences through the past nine days. Tonight, the exhausting pace is finally over; thus the celebratory rum.

I had been partly responsible for setting the dicussion off, by asking, “What typically happens when an Indian girl goes out with an African boy?”

Trinidad’s population comprises two major race groups: those of mainly African descent, and those of East Indian descent. Generally speaking, the Africans were brought to the island as slaves and the East Indians, in the 19th Century, as indentured labourers.

Anton said it would be no problem at all, he even suggested it might be quite fashionable. Kareem strongly disagreed. “In Port of Spain, it may be no big deal, but go to the south [of the island] where the Indians are more numerous, and it is a different story.”

“The parents would object?” I hazarded a guess.

“The parents will tell the girl, ‘Don’t even think about bringing that Black boy home again.’”

Anton was not convinced. “Naw, that’s the exception, man.”

“Some of my classmates, they went south for a project,” Kareem got emphatic. “They came back almost in tears. The racism they saw there was unbelievable.”

Shopping street, downtown Port of Spain

Beverley was more interested in the cultural differences between Indians and Africans. Though light-coloured herself, she seemed to identify as part of the African group, saying something about how the Indians and Syrians have monopolised business. “The problem is that the Africans will never unite or help each other. When an Indian builds a house, other Indians will lend a hand. when an African builds as house, others come in as thieves to steal the materials.”

I thought that was way too stereotypical, but strangely, nobody else objected to her characterisation. Quite possibly though, no one really noticed, because they were all talking at the same time, offering their own views about the racial situation in Trinidad.

Undeterred, Beverley went on: “The problem is that the African here has lost his culture. Being deported as slaves broke the connection with the culture. But I’m not only blaming the Europeans; the fact is that it was Africans who first enslaved Africans and then sold them to the Europeans.”

She said more, mostly drowned out by the rest making their own points, before I heard her say, “Look at Africa. In all of history, have they ever united?”

“Well, that is a colonialistic way of looking at the question,” I chimed in. “Using the category of ‘African’ that is. That comes from the perspective of the European.”

I suspected that no one really understood me, so I tried harder. “I mean, why should the Zulus see the Fulani as less foreign as the English? Why should the Ibo see the Shona, Tutsi or the Kikuyu as any less foreign as the Germans or the Egyptians?”

Monica, here for the conference from Botswana, caught my drift. “Ya, why should I, as Batswana, see any affinity with other ethnic groups from other parts of Africa?”

Beverley persisted. “That’s just it. The Africans are fighting each other all the time. Other people can manage to unite, like the Indians, for example.”

Siddharth from Bangalore, India, was thoroughly amused. “But Indians fight each other all the time too.”

Somebody, I think it was Anton, pointed out a flaw in Beverley’s analysis. “But India is not united, if you consider the whole subcontinent. There’s Pakistan and so on.”

“Impicit in all this,” I ventured, though I wasn’t sure who was listening to me anymore, “is the belief that racial unity is the key to progress or advanced culture or whatnot, but I’ll give you one racial group that has never really been united: Europeans. And they aren’t the worse for it, are they?”

By now, the discussion, if you can call it that, had drifted far from the topic I was interested in – the racial and ethnic complexities of Trinidad. The way the conversation, robust but good natured, was going, it was unlikely I would learn anything more. I soon decided to bid good night to the group and went to bed.

* * * * *

It had struck me on my second day in Trinidad that, at least for Trinidadians of African decent (or partly African, for many are mixed to varying extent) the Black-White divide is still a little raw. At the opening ceremony for the Commonwealth People’s Forum, the cultural segment following the formal speeches included calypso, but all the songs chosen referred in some way to the Black-White racial divide. I thought it was a strange choice, especially when there were delegates from White Commonwealth countries, such as the UK, Canada and Australia. Then I read the program notes and learnt that in calypso, the lyrics are usually social commentary. If that’s the case, it appears to suggest that race is still considered something worth commenting about, and quite possibly, the best calyso works – and thus chosen to be showcased – may be the ones on this theme.

Yet, it’s not as if there is a noticeable White minority enjoying special privileges in Trinidad anymore. The visible racial groups are the Africans (and partial Africans), the Indians and a small community of Chinese. How does one explain the way social commentary foregrounds the oppressive or patronising behaviour of a racial group that is not present in the country today in any significant way?

* * * * *

Unlike the conference delegates from Trinidad and Tobago, Sheldon was from a very different social class. He was the night guard at the hotel we stayed in. I chatted with him a few times, not without difficulty because the less educated Black Trinidadians speak a tonal and condensed form of English, with unique syntax rules that can be extremely difficult to decipher.

“How is crime?” I asked him.

“It’s bad,” he said and went on to tell me about shootings and muggings.

“What’s the police doing about it?”

“Nothing. The police, they are the problem. They don’t do nothing. They ask for money, them do.”

I asked about drugs. Weed (marijuana) is apparently widely available. Even schoolboys smoke it.

“So what’s the government doing about all these problems?” I wanted to probe his view of politics.

“They cannot do anything about it.”

“Why not? They are the government? Aren’t they supposed to do something about such things as crime and drugs?”

“These are society problems,” was his explanation, reiterated a few times in slightly different forms. He appeared to attribute these social problems to moral failings of the individuals involved, to the lack of social and cultural censure and such like, all the while resisting the idea that the government should be faulted for this state of affairs.

Corner shop, Port of Spain

A few days later, I checked with Colin, a fellow participant at the conference I was attending. Black Trinidadian himself, but far more educated than Sheldon, he confirmed what I suspected.

In Trinidad, there are two main political parties. One is more identified with the African or partly-African community, the other with the East Indian community. The former has a majority in Parliament and forms the government.

Sheldon, who is African, probably saw the ruling party and government chiefly as protectors of his racial group. That’s what a political party is for, to defend the racial group’s interests. Doing things like ensuring security, delivering social services or promoting economic growth may be quite secondary. If things aren’t right, blame is ascribed to “society” or others’ moral failure, rather than to the ruling party.

But then the result is a government that is not held responsible for delivering the public goods they are there for.

Here then may be an instructive lesson about the dangers of race-based politics, a lesson that is surely applicable to any multi-ethnic country.

November 30, 2009

No one is all bad.  Obama does occasionally do things right. I’m amazed at Obama’s decision to send 30,000+ troops to Afghanistan.  This has taken tremendous courage on Obama’s part.  He has angered his support on the far left for the good of our soldiers in Afghanistan for the good of the American People.  Read the idiotic open  letter below from Michael Moore (MM) to President Obama.  The letter is important for what it does not say.  For one it Appears that Michael Moore is not getting enough attention so he makes it an open letter. The second thing I would like to put out is they illogical things he says in the letter.  If Michael gets enough publicity from this letter we will surely see another one of his fake documentaries on the big screen.  MM is somewhat like an M&M thin candy coating outside and full of brown stuff in the inside).  My comments pertaining to some of his more stupid comments are noted by “TP.” 

Dear President Obama,

Do you really want to be the new “war president”?

TP – Come on Michael.  No president wants to be a “War president.”  But, we do have to defend our country and our way of life.  You know so you can drive your big fancy car a project the image of being a defender of the poor.  Here is a quote from you recently: 

If you go to West Point tomorrow night (Tuesday, 8pm) and announce that you are increasing, rather than withdrawing, the troops in Afghanistan, you are the new war president.

TP – I you were not so stupid you would know that life is not as simple as you project it to be. You use words to inflame “you are the new war president.”  I am sure you have put this in your 3×5 card index for a future movie.

Pure and simple. And with that you will do the worst possible thing you could do — destroy the hopes and dreams so many millions have placed in you.

TP – So tell us MM how is Obama destroying “hopes and dreams” by protecting our way of life.  You do not have the advisors that the President has, you do not get the intelligence reports the president gets, you do not have the responsibility of the entire nation on your shoulders.  Most of us are getting wise to you.  MM, you shoot your mouth off to make more controversy so you can mold them into another movie or book to add to your millions.  Why dont you give your millions of dollars away to the needy.  You dont need it.  You hate capitalism.  What do you do with all of your money you make from selling your books and movies using the capitalistic system?

With just one speech tomorrow night you will turn a multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics.

TP – only the ones that are not informed and not logical.  The world is not black and white MM.  You seem to think the people who elected Obama are stupid.  They will not automatically become disillusioned cynics because you say it is so. 

You will teach them what they’ve always heard is true — that all politicians are alike.

TP – This one-act by Obama does nothing to support your phrase “all politicians are alike.”  You are making a simplistic and over-reaching assumption. 

I simply can’t believe you’re about to do what they say you are going to do. Please say it isn’t so.

TP – To much drama here MM.  Just stick to the facts, the real facts.

It is not your job to do what the generals tell you to do. We are a civilian-run government.

TP – Politicians make wars that our military have to fight.  You have not basis of understanding the war decisions that Obama has to make.  Only a foolish president would not listen to his generals.  It sounds as if you want to president to make the decision sitting in the White House without input from his generals.  This would be stupid.

WE tell the Joint Chiefs what to do, not the other way around. That’s the way General Washington insisted it must be. That’s what President Truman told General MacArthur when MacArthur wanted to invade China. “You’re fired!,” said Truman, and that was that.

TP – If you have been watching the news rather than sitting at home watching your movies over and over you would have seen that the president wisely took the advise of his generals, the advise of his war council and HE made the decision.

And you should have fired Gen. McChrystal when he went to the press to preempt you, telling the press what YOU had to do. Let me be blunt: We love our kids in the armed services, but we f*#&in’ hate these generals, from Westmoreland in Vietnam to, yes, even Colin Powell for lying to the UN with his made-up drawings of WMD (he has since sought redemption).

TP – you can always tell a person that pretends to be smart is really dumb when he has to resort to words above like f*&in’.  Do you do this because you think it is cute or is it because you just can’t come up with the right word? You hate generals?  These brave men have dedicated their lives to the United States so people like you can be free to make your millions and constant blow hot air.

So now you feel backed into a corner. 30 years ago this past Thursday (Thanksgiving) the Soviet generals had a cool idea — “Let’s invade Afghanistan!” Well, that turned out to be the final nail in the USSR coffin.

TP – You are correct  on this one but this is a different time, different circumstances, different people.  Heraclitus (MM he is a well-known philosopher) once said “A man never steps into the same stream twice.  The man is never the same man and the stream is never the same stream.”  Do you remember “9/11″ where 3,000 people died?  You probably don’t. 

There’s a reason they don’t call Afghanistan the “Garden State” (though they probably should, seeing how the corrupt President Karzai, whom we back, has his brother in the heroin trade raising poppies). Afghanistan’s nickname is the “Graveyard of Empires.” If you don’t believe it, give the British a call. I’d have you call Genghis Khan but I lost his number.

TP – This is not a laughing issue, so your joke about Genghis Khan falls flat.  Refer to the Heraclitus quote above. 

I do have Gorbachev’s number though. It’s + 41 22 789 1662. I’m sure he could give you an earful about the historic blunder you’re about to commit.

TP – Wow MM.  Please again refer to the Heraclitus quote above.

With our economic collapse still in full swing and our precious young men and women being sacrificed on the altar of arrogance and greed, the breakdown of this great civilization we call America will head, full throttle, into oblivion if you become the “war president.”

TP – This your opinion MM.  You have never fought in combat.  You have never had to be responsible for millions of lives.  You only inflame to make movies.  My son, SSG Darrell Griffin, Jr.  was a soldier that gave his life in Iraq.  He understood the Iraqi people.  He understood freedom is not free.  Since you hate capitalism so much, I can send you a list of countries that are not capitalistic.  Oh ya, you will have to give up your millions of dollars if you want to live in one of them.  And oh ya, you will not have the freedom of speech that you have in this country to make your inflammatory films and write your hateful books.  Do you have any other skills that you could use to make a living in one of these other countries?

 Empires never think the end is near, until the end is here. Empires think that more evil will force the heathens to toe the line — and yet it never works. The heathens usually tear them to shreds.

TP – Are you aware that radical Islamist have been attacking the Us since the end of WWII?  Remember the Beruit Barracks bombing, the USS Cole, the first WTC bombing, the last WTC bombing?  Laying down our armies as you suggest would only encourage them to push even harder to over throw our country. 

Choose carefully, President Obama. You of all people know that it doesn’t have to be this way. You still have a few hours to listen to your heart, and your own clear thinking. You know that nothing good can come from sending more troops halfway around the world to a place neither you nor they understand, to achieve an objective that neither you nor they understand, in a country that does not want us there. You can feel it in your bones.

TP – MM, you have no basis for your comments.  They are simplistic and without foundation.  Just more of your nonsense rhetoric.  MM, you need to start being factual in your rants.  You are fast becoming irrelevant to thinking patriots.

I know you know that there are LESS than a hundred al-Qaeda left in Afghanistan!

TP – Stop the press, stop the generals, stop the president.  MM says there are only 100 al-Qaeda in Afghanistan!  Before we start sending all our troops home we should probably verify where you got your information.  MM, this statement only shows you are more stupid than I thought.

A hundred thousand troops trying to crush a hundred guys living in caves? Are you serious? Have you drunk Bush’s Kool-Aid? I refuse to believe it.

TP – Wow MM! Only 100 guys living in caves?  What have you been smoking MM?

Your potential decision to expand the war (while saying that you’re doing it so you can “end the war”) will do more to set your legacy in stone than any of the great things you’ve said and done in your first year. One more throwing a bone from you to the Republicans and the coalition of the hopeful and the hopeless may be gone — and this nation will be back in the hands of the haters quicker than you can shout “tea bag!”

TP – MM who are the haters?  From your rants and ravings, your films and books I think you have established yourself as one of the haters.  If the shoe fits put it on.  And I am sure it is a nice snug fit for you.

Choose carefully, Mr. President. Your corporate backers are going to abandon you as soon as it is clear you are a one-term president and that the nation will be safely back in the hands of the usual idiots who do their bidding. That could be Wednesday morning.

TP – MM, it is not the “corporate backers” as you call them, but the people of the United States that elected Obama.  I am confused.  Are you telling Obama that he should pander to his corporate backers?  Wow,  MM you are confused.

We the people still love you. We the people still have a sliver of hope. But we the people can’t take it anymore. We can’t take your caving in, over and over, when we elected you by a big, wide margin of millions to get in there and get the job done. What part of “landslide victory” don’t you understand?

TP – MM, cry babies like you call it caving in if Obama does not agree with you.  He is not just your president.  Even though I did not vote for him he is still my president.  He is doing what he feels is good for the country in this particular instance and he is not doing this for political reasons.  If you are shallow enough to judge his presidency from such a narrow view-point then take off your blinders.

Don’t be deceived into thinking that sending a few more troops into Afghanistan will make a difference, or earn you the respect of the haters. They will not stop until this country is torn asunder and every last dollar is extracted from the poor and soon-to-be poor.

TP – I can send you an address where you can send your millions of dollars and they will see it gets fairly distributed to the poor. 

You could send a million troops over there and the crazy Right still wouldn’t be happy. You would still be the victim of their incessant venom on hate radio and television because no matter what you do, you can’t change the one thing about yourself that sends them over the edge.

TP – “their incessant venom on hate radio and television” as you call it is free speech in action.  I have heard a lot more venom fall from your fangs that any talk show host I have heard.  You are so hateful that you are soon going to be irrelevant.

The haters were not the ones who elected you, and they can’t be won over by abandoning the rest of us.

President Obama, it’s time to come home. Ask your neighbors in Chicago and the parents of the young men and women doing the fighting and dying if they want more billions and more troops sent to Afghanistan.

TP – MM, I am a parent of a soldier that lost his life fighting in Iraq.  So if you want him to ask the soldiers I can answer for my son, and many other soldiers.  After my son was killed I was allowed to embed with my son’s combat unit in Baghdad to complete a book were working on.  100% of these brave soldiers felt what they were doing was right.  Real Americans and our soldiers want to win and leave, not abandon the people of Afghanistan and Iraq.  Sure the soldiers questioned our being in Iraq and Afghanistan, but they still fight for the freedoms we have in this country.  It is people like you that sadden our troops with your nonsense.  Read “Last Journey.”  This is the book my son and I wrote.  It will tell you how our brave and thinking patriot soldiers feel about what they are doing.   

Do you think they will say, “No, we don’t need health care, we don’t need jobs, we don’t need homes. You go on ahead, Mr. President, and send our wealth and our sons and daughters overseas, ’cause we don’t need them, either.”

TP – MM stay on the subject.  You are talking about the war.  Healthcare and jobs are important but do not confuse the issue you are addressing here. 

What would Martin Luther King, Jr. do? What would your grandmother do? Not send more poor people to kill other poor people who pose no threat to them, that’s what they’d do. Not spend billions and trillions to wage war while American children are sleeping on the streets and standing in bread lines.

TP – MM, obviously you did not do your homework on this issue.  The military demographics pretty much reflect the demographics of our U.S. population.  Our military goes to great lengths to make sure this is so.  We are all concerned about American Children sleeping in the streets and people standing in bread lines.  But, you use them to support your views on the war.  You do this because you know people are emotional about these issues.  These are important issues but shame on you for using their images to support your weak argument against Obama sending more troops to Afghanistan. 

All of us that voted and prayed for you and cried the night of your victory have endured an Orwellian hell of eight years of crimes committed in our name: torture, rendition, suspension of the bill of rights,

TP – MM, more of your hate speech.  There was no torture on our part. What about the beheadings by the insurgents, the insurgents killing innocent people with suicide bombers?  MM, the Bill of Rights is still in place.  Why did you not capitalize the “Bill of Rights” in your letter?  Was it a Freudian slip?

invading nations who had not attacked us,

TP – We did not attack ourselves on 9/11 MM.

blowing up neighborhoods that Saddam “might” be in (but never was)

TP – MM, I don’t know if anyone told you but we did get Saddam.

, slaughtering wedding parties in Afghanistan.

TP – Do you remember Uday and Qusay, Saddam’s sons?  They used to go down the bridle roles of couples getting married to have “fun” with the bride to be.  This is one of many ways they got there kicks.  Are you defending their behavior?  Are you suggesting that we should have left them alone to their evil devices?

We watched as hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were slaughtered and tens of thousands of our brave young men and women were killed, maimed, or endured mental anguish — the full terror of which we scarcely know.

TP – Our soldiers have found hundreds of mass-graves from Saddam’s evil rain.  We have witnesses thousand of innocent Iraq’s and Afghan’s die from suicide bombers.  Are you suggesting we should turn our backs on them?

When we elected you we didn’t expect miracles. We didn’t even expect much change. But we expected some. We thought you would stop the madness. Stop the killing. Stop the insane idea that men with guns can reorganize a nation that doesn’t even function as a nation and never, ever has.

TP – Bad guys usually have guns (al quada, taliban, etc) so good guys have to use guns to protect innocent people from bad guys with guns.  MM, I hope this explanation was simple enough for you.

Stop, stop, stop! For the sake of the lives of young Americans and Afghan civilians, stop.

TP – you are not being consistent.  Above you said Afghanistan has never been organized.  We are helping the Afghan people.  You are suggesting we abandon them, that we have no responsiblity to help the countries of the world out that has oppressive regimes that kill its people.  American is strongest country on the earth and we have a responsibility to use this strength for world good.  We can not turn our heads and ignore the raping, murdering acts of repressive regimes and organizations like al queda and the taliban.

For the sake of your presidency, hope, and the future of our nation, stop. For God’s sake, stop.

Tonight we still have hope.

Tomorrow, we shall see. The ball is in your court. You DON’T have to do this. You can be a profile in courage. You can be your mother’s son.

TP – MM, I will debate you anywhere any time.  If this is too much for you I will arrange for my 13 year-old son to debate you.

We’re counting on you.

Yours,
Michael Moore

a film director whose short movie trst je naš (trieste is ours) disturbed the italian foreign ministry, december, 2009