September 2011 archive
Sep 21 2011
Cartnoon
Sep 21 2011
On Suskind
Crossposted from The Stars Hollow Gazette
It certainly does clear up any thought we might have had about whether or not the president is a real fiscal conservative or whether he was just flogging this deficit obsession for political effect. He’s a true believer. And we know this because of his reliance on other deficit hawks and because when the political bloodbath the jobless recovery had predicted came true, his first move was to validate the Republicans’ manufactured narrative about what had motivated their voters and launch his program of budget cuts and deficit reduction.
I have thought that his fetish for a Grand Bargain was mostly born of a delusional belief that he was someone who could bridge unbridgeable differences and be remembered as the man who brought cats and dogs together. But it looks as though he was just as motivated by the fact that he’s a true blue, Concord Coalition, Pete Peterson deficit hawk.
Sep 21 2011
Muse in the Morning
 Muse in the Morning |
Time for a break from poetry…in order to create some art.
| We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.
–Kurt Vonnegut |
 Hasty 3 |
Sep 21 2011
Fasting With Troy Davis on 9/21
The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles denied Troy Davis’s request for clemency. It appears that Georgia will kill him by lethal injection at 7 pm ET on September 21, 2011. And it appears that execution cannot be stopped.
From Ben Jeanlous at the NAACP an eloquent, moving request that we fast tomorrow evening and mark the time of Troy Davis’s execution:
Sep 20 2011
Today on The Stars Hollow Gazette
Our regular featured content-
- On This Day In History September 20 by TheMomCat
- Punting the Pundits by TheMomCat
- Evening Edition by ek hornbeck
These featured articles-
- An Outrage In Georgia by davidseth
- Typhoon Roke: More Bad News For Japan by TheMomCat
This is an Open Thread
Sep 20 2011
We’re back.
You may have noticed a brief interruption.
Soapblox is undergoing software upgrades that will hopefully result in more reliable and faster service for you. You shouldn’t notice many changes in the operation of the site, though there are a few improvements that may be used in the future to enhance your reading experience.
TheMomCat and I look on ourselves as stewards and so we place a lot of emphasis on continuity. As one of the founders I assure you that our editorial direction has not changed a bit since buhdydharma’s initial public launch on September 12th, 2007.
We are interested in providing a platform for you to be able to express yourself and get exposure for your thoughts. Your posts are not just welcomed but encouraged.
If submissions justify it DocuDharma can run much closer to it’s maximum capacity. Currently we feature about 8 – 9 new posts a day, but there’s no technical reason we could not accommodate 12 – 18 with ease while still providing each author an hour of top priority.
As readers I urge you to scroll to features you may have missed since your last visit. There are about 2 and a half days of posts on the Front Page at any given time. Also you have the ‘Recent Essays’ list that contains about 4 days of content (if you are a registered user and have set your preferences to 50) some of which is not featured. There is also the Essays button.
We hope you are enjoying DocuDharma just as much as you always did and are open to your suggestions.
Sep 20 2011
Typhoon Roke: More Bad News For Japan
Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette
Keeping our brother mishima, his family and the Japanese people in our hearts. May they all stay safe from harm.
You can follow Roke’s track at the Weather Underground
1 dead, 2 missing, over 1 million urged to evacuate as typhoon nears
More than a million people in Japan were warned to leave their homes on Tuesday as an approaching typhoon brought heavy rain and floods which left one person dead and two others missing.
Typhoon Roke, packing winds of up to 144 kilometers an hour near its center, could land in central Japan Wednesday and move northeast, possibly towards the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, the Japanese weather agency said.
“While keeping its strength, the typhoon could make a land fall on Wednesday,” an official with the Japan Meteorological Agency said in a televised news conference.
“We ask that the highest level of caution be used because of the heavy rain, strong wind, and high waves.”
The city of Nagoya issued an evacuation advisory to some 1.09 million residents at one point because of worries that rivers might burst their banks.
The advisory was lifted from parts of the city, but landslide, flooding and tornado warnings affecting over a million people were still in place as night fell.
Typhoon Roke Hits Japan on Track for Leaking Nuclear Power Plant
Sept. 20 (Bloomberg) — Typhoon Roke brought evacuation orders, downpours and fears of floods to southern Japan today as it began to traverse the country on a course towards the crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant.
More than 400,000 people have been advised to evacuate because of Roke, public broadcaster NHK said. That’s in line with evacuation numbers for typhoon Talas earlier this month, which dumped record rainfall on southern Japan, causing mudslides and floods that killed 67 people and left 26 missing.
The eye of Roke, which is categorized as “strong” by the Japan Meteorological Agency, was about 1,016 kilometers (631 miles) southwest of Tokyo at 1 p.m. local time today and packing wind speeds of 40 meters per second. The typhoon is forecast to take three days to pass over Japan and its storm warning area is due to cover most of the country in that time, according to the meteorological agency’s website.
Sep 20 2011
An Outrage In Georgia
The Georgia Pardon and Parole Board has DENIED clemency to Troy Davis. The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports:
The state Board of Pardons and Paroles on Monday has denied clemency for Troy Anthony Davis after hearing pleas for mercy from Davis’ family and calls for his execution by surviving relatives of a murdered Savannah police officer.Davis’ case has already taken more unexpected turns than just about any death-penalty case in Georgia history and his innocence claims have attracted international attention. Its resolution was postponed once again when the parole board late Monday announced it would not be making an immediate decision as to whether Davis should live or die.
Davis, 42, is scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection on Wednesday at 7 p.m. at the state prison in Jackson.
I doubt there are other legal steps that can stop the state from killing Troy Davis.
My heart goes out to Troy Davis and his family, and also to the McPhail family. They all deserve better.
Sep 20 2011
On This Day In History September 20
Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette
Find the past “On This Day in History” here.
September 20 is the 263rd day of the year (264th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 102 days remaining until the end of the year.
On this day in 1973, in a highly publicized “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match, top women’s player Billie Jean King, 29, beats Bobby Riggs, 55, a former No. 1 ranked men’s player. Riggs (1918-1995), a self-proclaimed male chauvinist, had boasted that women were inferior, that they couldn’t handle the pressure of the game and that even at his age he could beat any female player. The match was a huge media event, witnessed in person by over 30,000 spectators at the Houston Astrodome and by another 50 million TV viewers worldwide. King made a Cleopatra-style entrance on a gold litter carried by men dressed as ancient slaves, while Riggs arrived in a rickshaw pulled by female models. Legendary sportscaster Howard Cosell called the match, in which King beat Riggs 6-4, 6-3, 6-3. King’s achievement not only helped legitimize women’s professional tennis and female athletes, but it was seen as a victory for women’s rights in general.
Billie Jean King (née Moffitt; born November 22, 1943 in Long Beach, California) is a former professional tennis player from the United States. She won 12 Grand Slam singles titles, 16 Grand Slam women’s doubles titles, and 11 Grand Slam mixed doubles titles. King has been an advocate against sexism in sports and society. She is known for “The Battle of the Sexes” in 1973, in which she defeated Bobby Riggs, a former Wimbledon men’s singles champion.
King is the founder of the Women’s Tennis Association, the Women’s Sports Foundation, and World Team Tennis, which she founded with her former husband, Lawrence King.
Despite King’s achievements at the world’s biggest tennis tournaments, the U.S. public best remembers her for her win over Bobby Riggs in 1973.
Riggs had been a top men’s player in the 1930s and 1940s in both the amateur and professional ranks. He won the Wimbledon men’s singles title in 1939, and was considered the World No. 1 male tennis player for 1941, 1946, and 1947. He then became a self-described tennis “hustler” who played in promotional challenge matches. In 1973, he took on the role of male chauvinist. Claiming that the women’s game was so inferior to the men’s game that even a 55-year-old like himself could beat the current top female players, he challenged and defeated Margaret Court 6-2, 6-1. King, who previously had rejected challenges from Riggs, then accepted a lucrative financial offer to play him.
Sep 20 2011
Muse in the Morning
| Muse in the Morning |
Time for a break from poetry…in order to create some art.
| There is in a man an upwelling spring of life, energy, love, whatever you like to call it. If a course is not cut for it, it turns the ground round it into a swamp.
–Mark Rutherford (William Hale White) |
 Hasty 2 |