I’m pretty busy today, so I thought I’d encourage you to talk amongst yourselves.
Some possible topics:
- Haley acknowledges need for improvement at Richland DSS — Not sure what to make of this. Thoughts?
- Coke, Benjamin and Harrell push family fitness — The photo above, which Mayor Benjamin Tweeted out this morning, just struck me as interesting. Anyway, if Coke is pushing fitness, well, good for them.
- Cantor finds himself a target of tea party — Talk about your irony, eh?
- Conservatives blame Hillary Clinton for Boko Haram — No, really. They are.
Or… whatever interest you most…
Related Posts
“Haley acknowledges need for improvement at Richland DSS ”
It appears her staff is very skillful at being able to counter every Sheheen attack.
Nice job if you can get it…. do these count as some of the jobs Obama has “created”?
http://nypost.com/2014/05/14/obamacare-contractors-paid-to-sit-at-computers-and-hit-refresh/
Employees at an ObamaCare processing center in Missouri with a contract worth $1.2 billion are reportedly getting paid to do nothing but sit at their computers. “Their goals are set to process two applications per month and some people are not even able to do that,” a whistleblower told KMOV-TV, referring to employees hired to process paper applications for ObamaCare enrollees.
The facility in Wentzville is operated by Serco, a company owned by a British firm that was awarded $1.2 billion in part to hire 1,500 workers to handle paper applications for coverage under the law, according to The Washington Post.
Coke has been funding all manner of research trying to disprove a link between sugary sodas and obesity.
If you drink enough of them – and sit around all day- you’ll get fat.
My son drinks Coke several times a day- and he’s skinny.
One of my best friends drinks a 2 liter every few days- he works out and walks daily- and he’s fit and trim.
If you drink them and watch tv half the day or sit around- you’ll get fat. No surprise there.
Back when I weighed 30 or 40 pounds less than I do now, I chain-drank Cokes all day. One day I counted up and realized I’d had 10 of them (admittedly, some of them just small paper cups with crushed ice from a vending machine). This was when I was in college; the vending machine was in the history building at Memphis State.
Oh, to have that metabolism again!
Here’s a topic suited to the season…
How about the controversies surrounding various invited graduation speakers? I found this story interesting in part because it was illustrated with what looked like Joe Biden standing near the Maxcy Monument on the Horseshoe — even though the story doesn’t mention Biden.
First they came for Condi Rice, and I said nothing. Then they came for P. Diddy, and I did nothing…
You have to watch the video with the story to find the Biden reference. They link his speaking at USC to SC’s first-in-the-South primary status…
The video is light-hearted, but there’s a serious issue here:
Sure, just like the legislators who want to allow college students to opt out of reading things that diverge from the students’ (and legislators’) beliefs.
A writer in the WSJ on Monday treated the subject very seriously, in a piece headlined “The Closing of the Collegiate Mind:”
The “everything is political” idea is a problem I vent about in person. Nowadays, everything you do has some sort of political connotation. You bought some coffee? Oh, is it “fair trade” or “free trade” coffee? Things that have been historically without any political significance have now taken on serious connotations in our increasingly intolerant society.
I’ve seen a story about a person on FaceBook who had — oh no! — been forced to buy Barilla pasta because it was the only gluten-free brand available. He almost had a fainting spell as he attempted to seek advice as to which gay cause he should donate to, to expunge himself of sin. (Barilla’s CEO said a half year ago or so that he wouldn’t feature gay couples in their ads, as the brand has a brand identity of traditionalism and traditional families. So Barilla’s evil.) Or the CEO of Mozilla had to be fired because he wrote a check in support of traditional marriage when that issue was on the CA ballot. Or how Chic-fil-A needs to be boycotted because the owners are Christians who don’t support gay marriage.
And on and on and on….
One of the reasons my blog doesn’t feature exclusively politics is because living a completely political life is exhausting and frankly, empty. That’s why some of my blog posts go into things like food, cars, sports, or just randomly funny things.*
Everything isn’t political. But some people try to make it out that way. Example from way back: Remember when Newt Gingrich traced Susan Smith’s murder of her two children to the liberal ideology? I was still young, but even I just eye-rolled that. It’s dumb to make everything political.
I don’t wish to define myself (through my blog) in such a manner — I am ideological, but I am more than just ideological — and I will actively fight against being defined as nothing more than an empty shell of a thing for ideology. You’ve got to remember WHY you’re being political. For me, it’s in part about preserving and respecting the freedom to think and act differently – our basic individual identity. And our basic identity has to be more than simply a “COEXIST” bumper sticker. If that’s not true for you, I truly pity you.
Which brings me back to these young students who have now asserted the heckler’s veto in regards to commencement speakers. These students are making something which is NOT traditionally political into something that is political. It’s like they’re afraid to be the guy who bought the Barilla pasta. These students are trying to remain ideologically pure, because to them, allowing Condi Rice to merely SPEAK IN THEIR PRESENCE will somehow taint them and make them less acceptable to the ideologically pure collective. And that kind of thinking is sad.
*That’s why I also like this blog. For instance, the “why airplanes stay up” post and the movie quote games we play in the comments are examples of how this blog doesn’t become exhausting.
Amen, Bryan. I can only take so much politics. Unless it’s on “The West Wing.” I haven’t gotten tired of that yet…
It’s the students commencement, why shouldn’t they express their opinion? If the “tainted” speaker shows up anyway then the students should be polite and respectful. But in the lead-up to commencement it is very American to express disappointment with a speaker you find offensive on one of the most important days of your life. Sadly, at the recent USC commencement I heard boos when Joe Biden walked to the podium. Surely Bryan there is some speaker out there who you would find so offensive that you would feel compelled to protest. Bill Clinton? After all he was impeached. How about Vladimer Putin or Edward Snowden. My point is I don’t really believe the folks on the right who are expressing such indignation about the Rutgers protests are bothered by the protest so much as they are trying to stand up for their gal. And that’s ok too. This is America, no matter how much we may disagree.
Because they’re the students. AFTER they graduate, they can listen to whomever they like. Just this one more time, they should sit still and listen. Anyone who has held a significant role in society, such as Condi or Clinton, should be listened to politely. A self-appointed newsmaker like Snowden hasn’t earned that respect. I would have to seriously question the value of a diploma from a school that would invite him.
Putin would be an interesting choice.
You know what? I have no idea who spoke at my graduation.
Thank you Brad, you couldn’t have confirmed my point any better. Folks do have specific people that they would object to. Obviously I would object far more to Condi Rice than Edward Snowden. Brad feels just the opposite.
And Bud, you may doubt the indignation of folks on the right, but don’t doubt mine. I find such intolerance deeply obnoxious.
Just so I’m crystal clear. I have no problems with protests before the commencement. That’s a legitimate protest. At the ceremony itself everyone should be polite.
Rutgers students were doing more than protesting against Ms. Rice.
at least one student broke a glass door in the main administration building and sliced their hand in doing it.
The students indicated they had no interest in being polite during the ceremony.
Well, it is the New Jersey state school. At least they didn’t whack anybody. 😉
“Surely Bryan there is some speaker out there who you would find so offensive that you would feel compelled to protest.”
I doubt it. Protesting isn’t really my thing. If I found the speaker completely abhorrent, I probably just wouldn’t attend. However, I can’t think of anyone who would be that bad and realistically be invited to speak at a commencement.
At my commencement- they invited a politician that I didn’t like or necessarily agree with-
never considered protesting – just sat there and listened and applauded politely at the end.
Of course I wasn’t interested in getting publicity for myself either.
Former Charleston Sen. Robert Ford has acknowledged transferring nearly $15,000 in campaign donations to his organization and using it to pay his bills.
Senate Ethics Committee Chairman Luke Rankin said Wednesday his committee will order Ford to pay civil fines and will forward the latest allegations to the attorney general’s office. How much the Democrat will be fined is not yet determined.
Read more here: http://www.thestate.com/2014/05/14/3445625/former-sen-ford-again-facing-ethics.html#storylink=cpy
And I thought we were rid of that guy…
On a very positive note, and there seem to be more and more of those lately, the CBO reported a surprisingly large drop in it’s projected FY 2014 budget deficit. It’s now less that 1/3 of it’s 2009 peak:
http://www.cbo.gov/publication/45229
An excerpt:
“As it usually does each spring, CBO has updated the baseline budget projections that it released earlier in the year. CBO now estimates that if the current laws that govern federal taxes and spending do not change, the budget deficit in fiscal year 2014 will be $492 billion. Relative to the size of the economy, that deficit—at 2.8 percent of gross domestic product (GDP)—will be nearly a third less than the $680 billion shortfall in fiscal year 2013, which was equal to 4.1 percent of GDP. This will be the fifth consecutive year in which the deficit has declined as a share of GDP since peaking at 9.8 percent in 2009.”
Brad, our graduation speaker was Tony Hodges, who at the was running the environmental organization Life Of The Land. I remember because I was given the task of inviting him because I knew him. Everyone was quite excited about it until his speech, which urged the graduates to not go to college until they’d worked for a while in the real world. The administration and parents were horrified and I got the blame.
Yeah, but you survived and went on to stir more pots.
You know what? I remember that now, Burl…
I also remember Steve Clark acting as the emcee of the proceedings, using his super-serious grownup expression, glowering ominously from under his brows, his voice taken down an octave. Cracked me up…
I still don’t know who the speaker was at Memphis State. It was the off-season August graduation, as I had a couple of required courses to take over the summer. I had avoided until the last minute taking the two required copyediting courses because everyone had painted the professor, L. Dupre Long, as such a terror. I made an A in both of them, but Leon kept me in suspense about it…
It’s so cool that I can muse aloud about my graduation all these decades later and thousands of miles away, and the very guy who knows the most about it (in this case, Burl) magically steps forward to jog my memory.
It’s kind of like the moment when I realized how amazing social media was. My wife and I were returning from a wedding in Atlanta, and she was driving (for a short stretch; I’m one of those obsessive controlling types who hates to surrender the wheel), and I got to wondering what one of the buttons in the car was for. The manual was no help. So I Tweeted out a question. Within seconds, a guy I had worked with 30 years earlier, who had always been a technogeek, answered me. Just out of the ether…
Like a couple of days ago… After I posted that item from my daughter’s blog about Mother’s Day, Peter Hamby of CNN wrote to me on Facebook to say his younger brother is just ending a tour of Peace Corps duty in Thailand. I passed on his info to my daughter, and she sent him a friend request because although she didn’t know him, they had so many friends in common. Cool connections…
I remember neither my high school nor my college graduation speakers. I do remember being taken to the graduation ceremony on a fire truck, as I was employed part-time as a firefighter through college. Unfortunately my family was not able to attend my graduation, so I agreed to leave the coliseum to put on a Santa suit and be Santa for the board of trustees at their after graduation luncheon. I still have a signed picture of the university president and me as Santa.
Oh, my college graduation from University of Missouri-Columbia … I had to work that day, and the newspaper assigned me to photograph the graduation ceremonies!
At least you didn’t have to sit in uncomfortable chairs and hot sweaty robes and caps….I would gladly have worked at my graduation. Fortunately I was in England for the big one in May, but my parents made me go to the dinky one in August.
My commencement speakers:
High School: Can’t remember.
College: President of the University (Every year, the president of the university speaks. It’s a tradition.)
Law School: Lee Iaccoca.
When my wife graduated from William & Mary in 2004, John Stewart was the commencement speaker. He was great.
I didn’t attend my HS graduation. I hated high school until I discovered summer school. I earned enough credits that way so I didn’t have to go back my final semester. And then I became a teacher. Go figure.
Bush 41 was the speaker at my Carolina graduation in 1990. Michael Eisner and Andrew Lloyd Webber were there as well. Pretty cool lineup. I still have the VHS of the ETV broadcast.