Jan 28
This is what Kansas Day is all about! Via Facebook.
Happy Kansas Day Eve! Sleep tight and just maybe if you have been a good Kansan, Amelia Earhart will bring you Russell-Stover chocolates. And if you have been a bad Missourian, John Brown will shoot you and your family while you slumber.Tommy Bobo
Raconteur
Kansas Day is January 29th. This will be the 149th anniversary of Kansas’ statehood.
Nov 12
I’ve always tried to analyze things because I want to be lawyer. I really don’t feel that there’s currently liberty and justice for all.Will Phillips
Elementary school student, Age 10
This in response to why he won’t stand and say the pledge of allegiance in his elementary school class. You see, young Will, age 10, is upset that homosexuals in this country are treated as second-class citizens – denied marriage equality and adoption rights.
After asking his parents whether it was against the law not to stand for the pledge, Will decided to do something. On Monday, Oct. 5, when the other kids in his class stood up to recite the pledge of allegiance, he remained sitting down. The class had a substitute teacher that week, a retired educator from the district, who knew Will’s mother and grandmother. Though the substitute tried to make him stand up, he respectfully refused. He did it again the next day, and the next day. Each day, the substitute got a little more cross with him. On Thursday, it finally came to a head. The teacher, Will said, told him that she knew his mother and grandmother, and they would want him to stand and say the pledge.
“She got a lot more angry and raised her voice and brought my mom and my grandma up,” Will said. “I was fuming and was too furious to really pay attention to what she was saying. After a few minutes, I said, ‘With all due respect, ma’am, you can go jump off a bridge.’David Koon
Arkansas Times
This young man is the hope for tomorrow. The fact that he can exist in a country saturated by Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh is something to celebrate. Will Phillips, I salute you! Keep fighting the good fight!
Thanks, Shannon!
Oct 28
[American families] must be reassured their dead have sacrificed for a purpose worthy of futures lost, love vanished, and promised dreams unkept. I have lost confidence such assurances can be made any more.Matthew Hoh
Former Senior Civilian U.S. Representative in Afghanistan
This is a must-read article for anyone seeking to understand the situation on the ground in Afghanistan. It delves into the resignation of Matthew Hoh, the Senior Civilian Representative of the United States in Zabul Province, Afghanistan. Hoh’s letter of resignation (PDF) is a striking condemnation of the war in Afghanistan from a highly regarded veteran of both the conflict there and Iraq and his words are rattling the administration, at least as far up as Richard Holbrooke. We can only hope Obama is shaken, too. But as Hoh said, “I’m not some peacenik, pot-smoking hippie who wants everyone to be in love…there are plenty of dudes who need to be killed…I was never more happy than when our Iraq team whacked a bunch of guys.”
He is quite an interesting fellow and this is definitely worth the read.
Sep 22
Neil Garfield on the Kansas Supreme Court Decision that blocks many foreclosures in the state of Kansas and sets precedent for the rest of the country:
This is one state, but it is likely to serve as the basis for most appellate opinions rendered on securitized loans. The tide has turned. The moral of the story is that those encumbrances (mortgages) don’t exist in most cases, the foreclosures were all fatally flawed, the people who have been chased out of their homes, still own those homes, and the parties seeking to enforce the note can do so only as unsecured creditors and only if they prove that they lent the money that funded the loan and only if they are willing to be subject to counterclaims, cross claims, affirmative defenses and defenses of the borrower relating to predatory lending, appraisal fraud, securities fraud, rescission under all available theories of law, damages, treble damages, punitive damages, exemplary damages and consequential economic damages.Neil Garfield
Attorney and Homeowner Advocate
Aug 24
I ask people to think thoroughly when they’re speaking to me, and to make sense. Is that tough?Deborah Solomon
Author, The New York Times Magazine’s “Questions For”
This should not be a novel concept. This is the very foundation of what “reporting” should be, “go find out what happened”. But what I really like about her is that Solomon doesn’t seem to think there is anything exemplary about what she does. Nor should she; extraordinary <> exemplary. All in a days work when one asks questions for a living.
Aug 10
Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East…. The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled…. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.George W. Bush
Christian Crusader; Ex-President
This quote comes from a 2003 phone conversation between Bush and former French President Jacques Chirac. Bush called to get Chirac’s support for the invasion of Iraq. Chirac declined and immediately sought the advice of a scholar to help understand the meaning of the insane reference.
Honestly, as more information emerges from the darkness of the Bush-Cheney years, I am amazed that the world was not re-terraformed at the hands of those zealots. This man had control of a nuclear arsenal tens of thousands of times stronger than that unleashed on Hiroshima 64 years ago. If there is a god, it surely saved us from the likes of George W. Bush.
I am an Assistant Professor of Interactive Media at Johnson County Community College and an independent multimedia communications consultant. Politically, I defy labels. Philosophically, I believe that Ella Wheeler Wilcox was correct when she said, "To sin by silence, when they should protest, makes cowards of men."
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