Obama’s Remarks to Newspaper Editors – NYTimes.com

This is really good.

Obama’s Remarks to Newspaper Editors – NYTimes.com.

Zapata: You knew he was coming.

 

Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs – NYTimes.com

Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs – NYTimes.com.

What a resignation statement.

As eco-terrorism wanes, governments still target activist groups seen as threat – The Washington Post

The FBI interviews a philosophy professor about one of his students.  The opposition to fracking in Texas draws FBI interrogation dark suits to a north Texas campus.  Jeez!  Let’s have a little more free speech about the fracking and oil issue without these inquires from J. Edgar Hoover’s institution.

As eco-terrorism wanes, governments still target activist groups seen as threat – The Washington Post.

The Jerusalem Syndrome: Why Some Religious Tourists Believe They Are the Messiah | Wired Magazine | Wired.com

With no disrespect to any reader’s religion or institution, the following article details messiah disorders or similar reality breaks while visiting Jerusalem.

The Jerusalem Syndrome: Why Some Religious Tourists Believe They Are the Messiah | Wired Magazine | Wired.com.

A battle line drawn in discourse

I sometimes think, Where have I been since the 1970s?  I suddenly wake up and the John Birchers are flooding the airwaves with right wing junk that in the seventies and eighties we rolled our eyes at and went on about our business.  One of the problems is outlined in the quote below.

Thus, a hallmark of conservative success in recent decades is the tarnishing of inconvenient terminology in our public discourse – root causes, socioeconomic conditions, historical factors, even inequality and social justice!–that implicates systems and gives context to individual failings. The right has made such language taboo, and those who continue to invoke it risk being marginalized and derided as hopelessly liberal, criminal-coddling, and trafficking in “moral relativism.”

Battle lines are being drawn and one of them is the use of terminology that is associated with critical thinking.  The quote above from James Thindwa in In These Times shows that the field of discourse is between ideologues on one side, rationalists on the other.  Critical thinking versus stupidity.

The GOP’s Crackpot Agenda | Politics News | Rolling Stone

The GOP’s Crackpot Agenda | Politics News | Rolling Stone.

This is a three-page article that writes about the right-wing nuttery of the present day Republican Party — a far different party from the Eisenhower years (they seem so far away).  In short, the crackpots are now the vital center of the Republican Party.

The Great Man’s Wife – NYTimes.com

The Great Man’s Wife – NYTimes.com.

‘Gingrich’s communications director, Joe DeSantis, has airbrushed Callista’s Wikipedia page 23 times since 2008, often to banish unflattering details from the site, according to BuzzFeed’s Andrew Kaczynski.

DeSantis edited the introduction, taking out the fact that she is “the third wife of,” and excising the sentence, “She met her husband while he was in the House, and had an affair while he was conducting the impeachment investigation for President Bill Clinton.”‘

Cited from the NYT article, Maureen Dowd, February 4, 2012.  This is why I don’t use Wikipedia in serious work.  Never did.

Wendell Berry On The Problems of Industrialization | Food Renegade

I’d like to know where in the heck I’ve been to not have heard of Wendell Berry.  This excerpt from Berry on the website ‘Food Renegade’ (not heard of it either) is wise, classic, sad.

Wendell Berry On The Problems of Industrialization | Food Renegade.

The Problem With Pre-Internet Laws – Room for Debate – NYTimes.com

The following article discusses bloggers and their constitutional rights to publish and have protections under the Constitution as journalists possess.

The Problem With Pre-Internet Laws – Room for Debate – NYTimes.com.