GOP Staffer on Vitter Amendment: "Congress Literally Threw Staff Under The Bus" | Mother Jones
Monday, September 30, 2013
In Mississippi, America's most revolutionary mayor | Al Jazeera America
Mayor Chokwe Lumumba is '€˜applying a philosophy against imperialism to the practice of repairing streets'
Populist Left Makes Warren Its Hot Ticket - NYTimes.com
In an ideal world Elizabeth Warren, my favorite Senator would be the next President. I can be happy with Hillary but I would be overjoyed with a President Warren.
Veterans of City Opera, Proudly Wistful, Reflect as the Curtain Falls - NYTimes.com
This is extremely sad. I remember the NYC Opera with fondness. Yes the Met is still with us but as a young grade school student my first exposure to opera live was at the NYC Opera at Town Hall. At Hunter College my opera class was taught by the Assistant Director of the NYC Opera. NYC is losing a major cultural institution. In an era where American culture has in part devolved into a form of pop fast food entertainment we need to preserve the arts in all of it's forms.
Sunday, September 29, 2013
Saturday, September 28, 2013
‘The Blood Telegram,’ by Gary J. Bass - NYTimes.com
" The voices of Kissinger and Nixon are the book’s most shocking aspects. Bass has unearthed a series of conversations, most of them from the White House’s secret tapes, that reveal Nixon and Kissinger as breathtakingly vulgar and hateful, especially in their attitudes toward the Indians, whom they regarded as repulsive, shifty and, anyway, pro-Soviet — and especially in their opinion of Indira Gandhi. “The old bitch,” Nixon called her. “I don’t know why the hell anybody would reproduce in that damn country but they do,” he said."
Scalia on privacy: ‘Blah blah blah, garbage’ — MSNBC
The Associated Press reports that, while speaking to the Northern Virginia Technology Council, Scalia suggested that the Fourth Amendment protects personal items from being taken from the government, not privacy per se. Unfortunately, he complained, prior Supreme Court decisions have found “there’s a generalized right of privacy that comes from penumbras and emanations, blah blah blah, garbage.” Conservatives have taken a dim view of the concept of a constitutional right to privacy since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized abortion rights.
Student Cited By Ted Cruz As Proof Of Obama's Failure Is Actually Grateful For Obamacare
During his 21-hour talkfest on the Senate floor earlier this week, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) went through a litany of examples that he said highlighted the abject failures of President Barack Obama's policies.
One of them involved the case of John Connelly, a Rutgers student who found himself in debt, without a permanent job, and forced to sleep on his friend's couch. His story was one that was all too common in the age of Obama, Cruz concluded.
Well, it turns out that Connelly isn't the biggest fan of Cruz. What's more, he is actually a beneficiary of the very health care law that Cruz was protesting during his speech. And in an appearance on MSNBC Friday morning, Connelly explained just how ironic it was that the senator would use his story to bludgeon the president and the Affordable Care Act.
"A friend of mine called me the next morning as I was on the way to an optometrist appointment .... [and said], 'While Ted Cruz was talking about why the ACA's bad, he mentioned your name.' And I said, 'Well, that's funny. I'm heading to an appointment I can only go to because of Obamacare.'"
Narrow Escapes and Questions on Emergency Response in Attack at Kenya Mall - NYTimes.com
NAIROBI, Kenya — One man showed the militants his voting card, very gingerly placing his thumb over his first name and pretending he was Muslim.
Narrow Escapes and Questions on Emergency Response in Attack at Kenya Mall - NYTimes.com
Narrow Escapes and Questions on Emergency Response in Attack at Kenya Mall - NYTimes.com
Friday, September 27, 2013
NationalJournal.com - Stark Divide Between Blacks, Whites on Gun Control and Health Care -
This week's United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection Poll tested attitudes about two of the most incendiary issues now dividing the parties in Washington: health reform and gun control. While the survey found substantial convergence between whites and minorities on some fronts, it also underscored the consistent tendency of minorities to support a more activist role for Washington than many whites now prefer.
Thursday, September 26, 2013
Marco Rubio Blocks Gay Black Judge's Nomination, Puzzling Everyone
WASHINGTON -- Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has withdrawn his support from a federal judicial nominee that he previously recommended -- William Thomas, a gay black judge from Miami -- and, to the anger and puzzlement of many, is preventing the nomination from moving forward at all.
Thomas would have made history, if confirmed, as the first openly gay black man to serve as a federal judge. Rubio initially recommended Thomas to President Barack Obama late last year as a nominee for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. There's a particular urgency to filling the judgeship, vacant for 18 months. The court backlog is so bad that the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts has deemed it a “judicial emergency."
Warren: 'We Face A Clear Danger' On Campaign Finance
WASHINGTON -- Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) warned Thursday that a coming Supreme Court case that could ultimately eliminate certain campaign contribution limits is a "clear danger" that threatens to expand the influence of large and wealthy corporations on elections.
The case -- McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, set to be argued on Oct. 8 -- challenges the aggregate limit on campaign contributions that an individual donor can make in a single election. Currently, a donor may only give $123,300 in total, made up of sub-limits of $48,600 to candidates and $74,600 to party committees and PACs.
Newt Gingrich Hit With Grave Charge
" The main point of the piece was actually that Gingrich appeared to be hoarding much of the money raised for his PAC instead of paying it out to fund candidates. But among the people it had given donations to were Sens. Rand Paul and Ted Cruz.
This caught the attention of Media Matters:
After the donations were made, Gingrich hosted Paul on the first episode of Crossfire's revival -- and discussed Cruz on [Tuesday's] episode -- without disclosing his PAC's donations in either instance."
NSA Chief Admits Stunning Surveillance Ambition
National Security Agency Director Keith Alexander said the NSA wants to collect more phone records, even after being the subject of recent public unease.
Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) asked Alexander if the NSA wants "the phone records of all Americans" during a congressional hearing Thursday.
"I believe it is in the nation's best interest to put all the phone records into a lockbox that we can search when the nation needs to do it, yes," Alexander replied.
Wednesday, September 25, 2013
Clinton Suggests Putin Can Be Trusted
CNN) - Former President Bill Clinton said Wednesday that Russian President Vladimir Putin can be trusted, but cautioned the United States will "just have to see what happens" over efforts to disarm Syria of its chemical weapons.
"You work for the best and prepare for the worst in this business. But I think it would be a terrible mistake not to take advantage of the opportunity," he told CNN's Piers Morgan at the Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting in New York. "And, you know, look, Mr. Putin is very smart."
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
Deeper Than God: Ronald Dworkin's Religious Atheism - NYTimes.com
Dworkin had some influence on my jurisprudential thinking in law school but ultimately even though I was fond of his attitudes and goals I found him less than satisfyingly.
"Ronald Dworkin, a professor of law and philosophy at New York University, was arguably the most influential legal philosopher of the past 50 years. Dworkin, who died in February, was (and will continue to be) known for his critique of positivism, a view of law that locates its authority in what is “on the books” — what has been enacted by those who are in a position to back up their pronouncements with sanctions and penalties, including the loss of property and life. Dworkin argued that here must be more than that; there must be an underlying or overarching set of values in relation to which legal particulars are intelligible and have meaning."
Texas Senator Ted "Bafoon" Cruz Reads Green Eggs and Ham In The Senate Well.
What a waste of tax payer money and the mockery of the American legislative process.
Review & Outlook: The Cruz Campaign Against ObamaCare - WSJ.com
So House Republicans have passed and sent to the Senate a budget that includes no funding for the Affordable Care Act, setting up a political showdown that could result in a government shutdown. We wish the GOP luck, since we support the policy if not the strategy. But however this charge into the fixed bayonets turns out, we hope the folks who planned it will take responsibility for what happens now.
That starts with Senators Mike Lee (Utah) and Ted Cruz (Texas), who joined with a handful of conservative groups to force Speaker John Boehner's hand. In July they had vowed to mobilize a grass-roots "army" to support ObamaCare repeal. The legions never arrived, but the activists still insisted that any continuing resolution to fund the government had to zero-out ObamaCare. They recruited a rump minority of the House majority to defeat a budget that would have maintained the automatic spending cuts built into current law.
Messrs. Cruz and Lee have thus got their way, though it's far from clear what they can accomplish. Senate Democrats have said they'll strip the ObamaCare provision and send a budget back to the House, perhaps with higher spending levels. And even Mr. Cruz has already acknowledged he can't do much in the Senate, where Republicans hold only 45 seats.
Review & Outlook: The Cruz Campaign Against ObamaCare - WSJ.com
The Merger of Mac OS and iOS - The Real Secret of iOS 7, the iPhone 5s and the A7 Chip
Back in January of this year we wrote an article, Apple's iOS 7 - A Complete Break with the Past, a Leap into the Future, that strongly suggested that Apple needs to begin pulling together iOS and the Mac OS (“Ultimately the next generation will also require bringing Mac OS into the fold, but that is a few years away.”). We also strongly suggested that iOS 7 and iOS 7-based devices would prove to be the first step towards making this a reality. And, in fact, with the release of the iPhone 5S and the new A7 64-bit chip, Apple has indeed done exactly this, and has confirmed our prediction in the process.
Ted Cruz Has a Plan to Get the America He Wants: Minority Rule | The Nation
Ted Cruz has figured out how to get the America he wants: he wants to impose minority rule.
No, not majority rule, minority rule.
The senator from Texas hatched a “plan” to “defund Obamacare” by threatening to shut down the federal government. He got a lot of true-believer conservatives—especially in the Republican-controlled US House—to buy into the scheme. But the Texan never rounded up significant support for his approach in the upper chamber.
So the whole defunding scheme—which was never grounded in budgetary reality—has begun to look more and more like the sort of mess that costs political parties seats. House Republicans are furious.
1946 Orson Welles Commentaries : Orson Welles on the lynching Isaac Woodard
Orson Welles on the lynching Isaac Woodard
1946 Orson Welles Commentaries : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive
1946 Orson Welles Commentaries : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive
688. The Blinding of Isaac Woodard (Woody Guthrie)
"Isaac Woodard (1919-1992) was an African-American veteran of WW2 who was beaten and maimed only hours after being discharged from the US army. Still in uniform, he was left permanently blind after suffering from a ruptured cornea during an encounter with the South Carolina police on February 14, 1946. The sheriff involved claimed he had struck Woodard only once in self-defense, very different from Woodard's story. The case was not widely reported immediately but it soon became a major issue, with extensive newspaper coverage, when the NAACP campaigned for the South Carolina state government to take action, which they had been reluctant to do. One significant campaigner was film-maker Orson Welles whose radio broadcast about the incident can be heard on YouTube.
Monday, September 23, 2013
LaPierre: Not enough ‘good guys with guns’ — MSNBC
Dumb, dumb and dumber. "Wayne LaPierre, the executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, said Sunday that, even though the Navy Yard had armed guards, there were simply not enough people with firearms to stop Aaron Alexis from killing 12 people last week.
“There weren’t enough good guys with guns,” LaPierre said Sunday on Meet the Press. “When the good guys with guns got there, it stopped.”
Following the latest mass-shooting in Washington, D.C., LaPierre said the NRA was calling for improved security layers around bases and for servicemembers to freely carry their weapons on bases. The organization will not, however, be calling for expanded background checks, he said."
Ted Cruz: The Distinguished Wacko Bird from Texas
In less than a year, Texas Republican Ted Cruz has become the most despised man in the U.S. Senate. He's been likened to Joe McCarthy, accused of behaving like a schoolyard bully, and smeared by senior members of his own party. Is this any way to get ahead in Washington? Well, Cruz is no dummy—just ask him—and his swift rise might prove that it's the only way
Read More http://www.gq.com/news-politics/newsmakers/201310/ted-cruz-republican-senator-october-2013#ixzz2flZydAeZ
Sunday, September 22, 2013
Saturday, September 21, 2013
Goldsboro revisited: account of hydrogen bomb near-disaster over North Carolina – declassified document | World news | theguardian.com
In the document, Jones gives his response to a passage in a book by Dr Ralph Lapp, a physicist involved in the Manhattan Project that developed the first nuclear bombs, that describes the accident in 1961 in which two hydrogen bombs were dropped inadvertently over North Carolina. An extract of Lapp's book is reprinted on the left hand column of the first page of this document, and Jones's expert response is printed on the right hand column.
The second page of the document is all in Jones's words, giving his expert opinion on the serious nature of the accident and how close America came to catastrophe
Yes, atomic bomb that fell in US almost went off, says document | Politics and Law - CNET News
An H-bomb that accidentally plunged into a North Carolina field in 1961 came far too close to actually exploding, according to a secret document newly published by the Guardian.
Ted Cruz’s origins continue to haunt him - Salon.com
Believe it or not, it looks like Sen. Ted Cruz is still a Canadian citizen. Although it has now been over a month since he promised to renounce his Canadian citizenship – which he obtained by virtue of his birth in Calgary, Alberta – there has been no indication (whether press release, statement or otherwise) announcing that he has followed through on the commitment.
MHP: Dear Eric Cantor, take a seat
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
MHP: Dear Eric Cantor, take a seatThis story is disgusting. " They are welcome here, says the mayor, as long as they remember one very important rule.
“This is a Jewish city,” said Shimon Gafsou of his adopted home town, “now and forever.”
To be more specific: “I would rather cut off my right arm than build an Arab school,” the mayor said in an interview on his terrace at city hall.
Ditto mosques. “No, no, no. No mosques, ever,” said Gafsou. Nor churches. Or Ramadan lanterns or manger scenes. “And no Christmas trees,” said the mayor of a town that abuts the largest Arab city in Israel, celebrated as the childhood home of Jesus."
High above Nazareth, an Israeli mayor wants to keep his city Jewish ‘now and forever’
www.washingtonpost.com
MHP: Another collective American tragedy
Militia Act of 1792
I am so sick of the selfish gun lovers that are clueless about what the Second Amendment was about, which was not an individual's right to bear arms but a State's right to have a militia which was comprised of citizens who were subject to a government mandate to own a gun for the purpose of use during their militia service. The ignorance of these gun lovers on this topic is appalling. Five minutes of reading would demonstrate their error but the would rather ignore facts for their blood lust to kill. This Act was passed by Congress the year after ratification of the Second Amendment to the Constitution. Read it for yourself!
MHP: Another collective American tragedy
I am so sick of the selfish gun lovers that are clueless about what the Second Amendment was about, which was not an individual's right to bear arms but a State's right to have a militia which was comprised of citizens who were subject to a government mandate to own a gun for the purpose of use during their militia service. The ignorance of these gun lovers on this topic is appalling. Five minutes of reading would demonstrate their error but the would rather ignore facts for their blood lust to kill. This Act was passed by Congress the year after ratification of the Second Amendment to the Constitution. Read it for yourself!
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
MHP: Another collective American tragedy
Friday, September 20, 2013
PolitiFact | Rick Perry says every engine maker is in Texas
Perry said every engine manufacturer is now in the state of Texas. Using a broad definition from the Census Bureau, we counted 17 firms in Texas that are involved with building engines.
However, in that broad line of work , the total number of firms nationwide is well over 350. A sampling of some of the larger engine makers in the United States revealed some notable absences from Texas.
We rate the statement False.
PolitiFact | Rick Perry says every engine maker is in Texas
However, in that broad line of work , the total number of firms nationwide is well over 350. A sampling of some of the larger engine makers in the United States revealed some notable absences from Texas.
We rate the statement False.
PolitiFact | Rick Perry says every engine maker is in Texas
Rep. King hopes healthcare repeal efforts expose Cruz as 'a fraud' - NBC Politics
The Tea Party-backed Cruz spent much of the summer drumming up pressure on fellow Republicans to refuse to fund the government unless the Affordable Care Act was also defunded at the same time. The campaign helped Cruz build a national profile among conservative activists who badly want to repeal President Barack Obama's landmark legislation.
But as the House passed legislation to do just that, some Republicans turned their ire not toward opposed Democrats, but toward the Texas firebrand.
"Today's vote is definitely a signal that we have to take a more realistic and practical approaches, that we can't be going off on these false missions that Ted Cruz wants us to go on," King told reporters before the bill passed by a partisan 230-189 vote.
Rep. King hopes healthcare repeal efforts expose Cruz as 'a fraud' - NBC Politics
But as the House passed legislation to do just that, some Republicans turned their ire not toward opposed Democrats, but toward the Texas firebrand.
"Today's vote is definitely a signal that we have to take a more realistic and practical approaches, that we can't be going off on these false missions that Ted Cruz wants us to go on," King told reporters before the bill passed by a partisan 230-189 vote.
Rep. King hopes healthcare repeal efforts expose Cruz as 'a fraud' - NBC Politics
Thursday, September 19, 2013
A Ghastly Ritual Repeats Itself - NYTimes.com
"Another mass shooting. Another round of shock, sadness and outrage. Another pitched discussion about rights and responsibilities, mental illness and background checks. And then nothing.
The pundits debate merits. The public demands action. But in the end, N.R.A. intimidation pressures the cowards in Congress to maintain the status quo and scare ordinary citizens into believing that they face extraordinary threats — from the burglars out to steal property to a government out to rob them of their guns and the Second Amendment." America tolerates such barbarity. We have more gun deaths than any country in the world while we prattle around about a Second Amendment which was solely designed to allow states to organize a state militia.
A Ghastly Ritual Repeats Itself - NYTimes.com
The pundits debate merits. The public demands action. But in the end, N.R.A. intimidation pressures the cowards in Congress to maintain the status quo and scare ordinary citizens into believing that they face extraordinary threats — from the burglars out to steal property to a government out to rob them of their guns and the Second Amendment." America tolerates such barbarity. We have more gun deaths than any country in the world while we prattle around about a Second Amendment which was solely designed to allow states to organize a state militia.
A Ghastly Ritual Repeats Itself - NYTimes.com
The Maddow Blog- Rep. Phil Gingrey (R), who's currently running for the U.S. Senate in his home state of Georgia complains that his salary of $172,000 is not enough
Woe is Republican Rep. Phil Gingrey of Georgia, who bemoaned in a closed-door meeting this morning that he's "stuck" making a paltry $172,000 a year in Congress.... Capitol Hill aides can go work for a lobby shop and make $500,000, the congressman said, according to National Review's Jonathan Strong. "Meanwhile I'm stuck here making $172,000 a year."
The Maddow Blog
The Maddow Blog
Wednesday, September 18, 2013
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
Monday, September 16, 2013
Eight years after Hurricane Katrina, nearly 100,000 people never got back to New Orleans, the city remains incredibly poor, jobs and income vary dramatically by race, rents are up, public transportation is down, traditional public housing is gone, life expectancy differs dramatically by race and place, and most public education has been converted into charter schools. - See more at: http://blackpoliticsontheweb.com/2013/09/16/ugly-recovery-8-years-after-katrina-new-orleans-sees-uneven-recovery-between-blacks-and-whites/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BlackPoliticsontheWeb+%28Headlines+from+BlackPoliticsontheWeb.com%29#sthash.Ks2qh9wO.dpuf
Sunday, September 15, 2013
Police have launched an internal investigation after an innocent black teenager was held for FIFTEEN HOURS on suspicion of robbery – despite having a cast-iron alibi.
Talented musician Shakeil Jackson, 19, was inside Thornhill Road police station reporting the theft of his own motorcycle at the time the phone robber struck.
Yet despite protesting his innocence the teenager, from Handsworth, was arrested, locked up overnight and only released when officers finally confirmed his alibi with colleagues.
As long as anyone can remember, critics have been saying that the schools are in decline. They used to be the best in the world, they say, but no longer. They used to have real standards, but no longer. They used to have discipline, but no longer. What the critics seldom acknowledge is that our schools have changed as our society has changed. Some who look longingly to a golden age in the past remember a time when the schools educated only a small fraction of the population.
But the students in the college-bound track of fifty years ago did not get the high quality of education that is now typical in public schools with Advanced Placement courses or International Baccalaureate programs or even in the regular courses offered in our top city and suburban schools. There are more remedial classes today, but there are also more public school students with special needs, more students who don’t read English, more students from troubled families, and fewer students dropping out. As for discipline, it bears remembering a 1955 film called "Blackboard Jungle," about an unruly, violent inner-city school where students bullied other students. The students in this school were all white. Today, public schools are often the safest places for children in tough neighborhoods
Saturday, September 14, 2013
Oh Look, There Goes the Deficit - The Daily Beast
"
A funny thing happened on the way to the debt-ceiling battle: a big chunk of our annual budget quietly melted away. Daniel Gross on the good news you didn’t see coming."
Deal Reached to Destroy Chemical Arms in Syria - NYTimes.com
“This situation has no precedent,” said Amy E. Smithson, an expert on chemical weapons at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. “They are cramming what would probably be five or six years’ worth of work into a period of several months, and they are undertaking this in an extremely difficult security environment due to the ongoing civil war.”
Friday, September 13, 2013
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
How de Blasio Turned Conventional Wisdom on Its Head - Graphic - NYTimes.com
The breakdown of the vote is very interesting. Traditional ethnic boundaries were obliterated by the election.
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
How Slavery Changed the US South — The Monkey Cage
Drawing on a sample of more than 39,000 southern whites, we show that whites who currently live in counties that had high concentrations of slaves in 1860 are on average more conservative and express colder feelings towards African Americans than whites who live elsewhere in the South. That is, the larger the number of slaves in his or her county of residence in 1860, the greater the probability that a white Southerner today will identify as a Republican, express opposition to race-coded policies such as affirmative action, and express greater racial resentment towards African Americans. We show that these differences are robust to a variety of factors, including geography and mid-19th century economic conditions and political attitudes. We also show that our results strengthen when we instrument for the prevalence of slavery using local measures of the agricultural suitability to grow cotton. In fact, our findings indicate that in the counterfactual world where the South had no slaves in 1860, the political views of white Southerners today would be indistinguishable from those of similarly situated white Northerners.
Monday, September 09, 2013
Fox News pundit says atheists don't have to live in the United States. This is unbelievable.
(CNN) -- Fox News pundit Dana Perino said she's "tired" of atheists attempting to remove the phrase "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance, adding, "if these people really don't like it, they don't have to live here."
The co-host of Fox's "The Five" was referring to a suit brought by the American Humanist Association in Massachusetts, where the state's Supreme Judicial Court heard a challenge to the pledge on Wednesda
George Zimmerman goes gun shopping
" George Zimmerman, the killer of Trayvon Martin who was found not guilty of second-degree murder last month, just can’t stop doing things that thrust him back into the spotlight. There was the “look, I’m a hero” rescue of a family in an overturned vehicle. Then there was the “You didn’t see my name?” speeding ticket in Texas. But Zimmerman’s latest attention-getter defies comprehension."
Andrew Cuomo blasts Mike Bloomberg over mayor’s race - Maggie Haberman - POLITICO.com
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo blasted Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s comments about Bill de Blasio’s “racist” mayoral campaign Sunday — and offered extremely warm words about the Democratic front-runner after avoiding getting involved the New York City primary for weeks.
Cuomo’s remarks came in Buffalo, where he was asked if he had a comment about Bloomberg’s statement to New York Magazine in an interview last month, which was published just this weekend, that de Blasio, who has showcased his biracial family in the campaign, is running a “racist” effort.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/09/andrew-cuomo-mike-bloomberg-mayors-race-96434.html#ixzz2eRkI9hZo
Sunday, September 08, 2013
The United States and chemical weapons
A traditional bomb is nothing more than an explosive concentration of unstable chemicals.
The US objects to killing people with chemicals, yet our system has capital punishment which is based on death by lethal injection.
The Value of Suffering - NYTimes.com
attempt to protect others from that fate threatens to kill many more. A child perishes with her mother in a tornado in Oklahoma, the month after an 8-year-old is slain by a bomb in Boston. Runaway trains claim dozens of lives in otherwise placid Canada and Spain. At least 46 people are killed in a string of coordinated bombings aimed at an ice cream shop, bus station and famous restaurant in Baghdad. Does the torrent of suffering ever abate — and can one possibly find any point in suffering?
Wise men in every tradition tell us that suffering brings clarity, illumination; for the Buddha, suffering is the first rule of life, and insofar as some of it arises from our own wrongheadedness — our cherishing of self — we have the cure for it within. Thus in certain cases, suffering may be an effect, as well as a cause, of taking ourselves too seriously. I once met a Zen-trained painter in Japan, in his 90s, who told me that suffering is a privilege, it moves us toward thinking about essential things and shakes us out of shortsighted complacency; when he was a boy, he said, it was believed you should pay for suffering, it proves such a hidden blessing.
Yet none of that begins to apply to a child gassed to death (or born with AIDS or hit by a “limited strike”). Philosophy cannot cure a toothache, and the person who starts going on about its long-term benefits may induce a headache, too. Anyone who’s been close to a loved one suffering from depression knows that the vicious cycle behind her condition means that, by definition, she can’t hear the logic or reassurances we extend to her; if she could, she wouldn’t be suffering from depression.
Is Bill de Blasio the ‘black candidate’ in the NYC mayor race? | theGrio
It’s a large bloc and one experts credit with the ascent of New York City Public Advocate Bill de Blasio to the leader position in the race to be the Democratic candidate.
Is Bill de Blasio the ‘black candidate’ in the NYC mayor race? | theGrio
De Blasio is leading the five-candidate race with the support of 43 percent of likely primary voters, according to the most recent poll by Quinnipiac University.
And with the support of 47 percent of black voters and 44 percent of women voters, he is well positioned to pass the 40 percent threshold needed to avoid a runoff with either City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, a woman, or former Comptroller Bill Thompson, who is black.
“For the first time I can remember in city politics, the black vote is not being taken for granted,” says political consultant Basil Smikle. “You have a lot of community-based and grassroots organizations and individuals who feel they’ve been marginalized. I think de Blasio has honed in on that with his campaign,” he says.
Is Bill de Blasio the ‘black candidate’ in the NYC mayor race? | theGrio
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