The spoiled-brat American electorate

By Eugene Robinson, The Washington Post
Friday, September 3, 2010

According to polls, Americans are in a mood to hold their breath until they turn blue. Voters appear to be so fed up with the Democrats that they're ready to toss them out in favor of the Republicans -- for whom, according to those same polls, the nation has even greater contempt. This isn't an "electoral wave," it's a temper tantrum.

It's bad enough that the Democratic Party's "favorable" rating has fallen to an abysmal 33 percent, according to a recent NBC-Wall Street Journal poll. It's worse that the Republican Party's favorability has plunged to just 24 percent. But incredibly, according to Gallup, registered voters say they intend to vote for Republicans over Democrats by an astounding 10-point margin. Respected analysts reckon that the GOP has a chance of gaining 45 to 60 seats in the House, which would bring Minority Leader John Boehner into the speaker's office.

Click here to read more about our spoiled electorate.

President Obama: ‘The Illustrated Man’

President Obama at a meeting in the White House in July.
Obama’s enemies have painted him as an alien threat. Can he fight the flight from facts?
by Jonathan Alter, Newsweek online, August 28, 2010

“I’d like to burn them off,” says the Illustrated Man in Ray Bradbury’s 1951 science-fiction classic of that name. “I’ve tried sandpaper, acid, a knife.” Nothing works. More than a half century before head-to-toe tattoos, a time-traveling witch had painted colorful images on nearly every part of the man’s body. The elaborate stories they told made it hard for him to hold a job.

President Obama is our era’s Illustrated Man. His enemies—and even some of his ostensible allies—have been busy for three years painting Obama as some kind of alien threat. His name, race, exotic upbringing, and determination to reach out to moderate Muslims have given those who would delegitimize him a fresh palette of dark colors. The caricatures are almost comical, as the president himself recognizes. “Some folks say, ‘Well, you know, he’s not as cool as he was,’?” Obama said at a May fundraiser in California. “?‘When they had all the posters around and everything.’ Now I’ve got a Hitler mustache on the posters. That’s quite a change.”

Click here to read more.

Sheafe Family: the Longfellow connection

More on the Sheafe family genealogy (my mother's family)...from my First Cousin Ogden Miller:

I believe that the grave you were looking for was not the poet himself (Henry W. Longfellow) but most probably WILLIAM PITT PREBE LONGFELLOW (25 Oct 1836-3 Aug 1913), who I think was the poet's nephew and who married EMILY DANIELL (28 May 1835-9 Apr 1919). That is the Sheafe connection.

Emily was the daughter of Otis Daniell (1804-1871). Another daughter was Caroline Elizabeth (1839-1901) who married Isaac T. Hoague (1844-1885) and who were our great-grandfather and mother and the parents of Mary Stanley Sheafe (nee Hoague) [known to us grandchildren as "Nana Sheafe."] Except for Nana Sheafe they are all buried in LOT NO. 246, MOUNT AUBURN CEMETERY, CAMBRIDGE MA.

Click here to see more about Mount Auburn Cemetery.

Wisdom & Humor: "Glenn Beck"

Click on the cartoon to enlarge the image.

Click here to see more political cartoonists' comments on Glenn Beck.

Florida: Alex Sink unveils plan for school changes

BY MARY ELLEN KLAS, The Miami Herald
Herald/Times Tallahassee Bureau
September 1, 2010
Florida CFO and Gubernatorial Candidate Alex Sink talks to supporters during a Primary Election Night Victory Party at the Sheraton Tampa Riverwalk Hotel on Tuesday.
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink envisions an education system in Florida where at-risk students have incentives to stay in school, better-trained teachers get performance-based raises and school buildings become community centers.

Click here to read more about Democratic candidate Alex Sink's education plan.

Wisdom & Humor: Watch a video voted "Best in Europe."

Click here to watch a video voted "Best in Europe."

The kid is yelling "I want the sweets."

Thanks to my friend Frances Phipps for sending this to us.

Same-sex marriage gains GOP support

By Sandhya Somashekhar, The Washington Post
Friday, August 27, 2010
A growing number of Republicans are breaking with the party's traditional stance to publicly state their support for same-sex marriage, a shift strategists say stems as much from demographics as from the renewed focus on economics and the "tea party" movement.

A solid majority of adults younger than 30 - about six in 10 - support the right of gay and lesbian couples to legally wed, according to a Washington Post poll in February.

Click here to read more.

Florida: Charlie Crist's remarks give fodder to opponents

August 31, 2010
BY BETH REINHARD, The Miami Herald
breinhard@MiamiHerald.com
A longtime target of finger-to-the-wind accusations, Gov. Charlie Crist has engaged in an unusual amount of hedging, backpedaling and two-stepping since Tuesday's primary crystallized his opposition in the U.S. Senate race.

What's more, he is refusing to join his chief rivals, Republican Marco Rubio and Democrat Kendrick Meek, on NBC's Meet the Press this Sunday.

Click here to read more about Governor Charlie Crist.

I'm a Snowbird and now vote in Florida. Who would you vote for?

The Billionaires Bankrolling the Tea Party

Frank Rich
August 28, 2010
By FRANK RICH, The New York Times Op Ed
ANOTHER weekend, another grass-roots demonstration starring Real Americans who are mad as hell and want to take back their country from you-know-who. Last Sunday the site was Lower Manhattan, where they jeered the “ground zero mosque.” This weekend, the scene shifted to Washington, where the avatars of oppressed white Tea Party America, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, were slated to “reclaim the civil rights movement” (Beck’s words) on the same spot where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had his dream exactly 47 years earlier.

Vive la révolution!

There’s just one element missing from these snapshots of America’s ostensibly spontaneous and leaderless populist uprising: the sugar daddies who are bankrolling it, and have been doing so since well before the “death panel” warm-up acts of last summer. Three heavy hitters rule. You’ve heard of one of them, Rupert Murdoch. The other two, the brothers David and Charles Koch, are even richer, with a combined wealth exceeded only by that of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett among Americans. But even those carrying the Kochs’ banner may not know who these brothers are.

Click here to read more about these sweet Billionaires.

thanks to my friend Dr. Paul P for forwarding this to me..

Glenn Beck rally sparks debate over crowd size

By Michael Calderone, Monday Aug 30, 2010
Glenn Beck rally draws huge crowd

Glenn Beck kicked off Monday's radio show by thanking the many attendees at Saturday's "Restoring Honor" rally in front of the Lincoln Memorial — at least 500,000 by his count. Beck said he's "still waiting on the real number" and plans to look closely during his 5 p.m. Fox News show at photos of the large crowd assembled on the National Mall.

The rally — which took place on the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech at the memorial — drew a good deal of controversy, with civil rights leaders holding a countermarch. But the event largely kept free of overt political references, as Beck (a longtime scourge of the Obama White House) had pledged it would. It stressed religious themes, together with celebrations of noncontroversial virtues such as charity and national service.

Click here to read more about the crowd.

Wisdom & Humor: Humor on the Roadway (video)

It's short and very funny........Some old retired folks play a trick on some other guy and make him crash.

Click here to watch the video.

-- thanks to my friend Reiko for sending this to me...