Hurricane Whining of the Day
Also, check out the slideshow White Whine put together.
Privileged Tweet of the Day
Thanks to White Wine, I will begin a new series dedicated to tweets, Facebook statuses, and other gripes by the priviledged few. Enjoy!
Got to love it.
Mailbag
A reader responded via Facebook to the question(s) of the weekend:
It always seems like they like to take some industry currently heavily restricted by government regulation, find some way that it’s flawed, and mark it off as a failure of the free market, and evidence that the industry needs more government intervention. Postal Service, Education, Hospitals, Banks, Automobiles, Health Insurance. These are things that started out private, and became crippled by regulation. Then they swooped in and said “oh look, it’s not functioning. The free market could never provide that functionality, so let’s have the gov’t provide it” usually shortly accompanied by entirely outlawing private industry in that sector.
An Unplugged Lent
I just was chatting with a colleague and the upcoming religious holidays were brought up. I said I wanted to give up coffee for lent but she said now that I am teaching I really need it (ha!). Giving up Facebook now comes to mind:
However, this experiment taught me about the need to be in touch with what’s happening offline, so that my reporting can reflect what’s actually happening on the ground. In a virtual world like Facebook, some self-appointed authors and speakers strut their spiritual stuff as though they are the ultimate faith fashionistas. Hence, one can easily get the false impression that these holy hipsters have a far greater sphere of influence than they really do in the real world.
In Jesus Died for This? I reflected on the need for us to connect with each other, not only virtually, but also face-to-face. The televangelists might claim that they can cure for cash through the TV, but all throughout his ministry, Jesus healed people one touch at a time (Matthew 9:18-26; Mark 5:21-43; Luke 9:41-56). No matter how plugged-in we get, I can’t hug my laptop. And the ritual partaking of the Last Supper entails that we feed each other actual bread and wine.
Facebook Disconnect
Google Chrome now offers an extension that disallows you from clicking ‘like” at the bottom of any article or item on the internet. This option at the bottom of over 1 million websites notifies Facebook when you go to a certain website. It basically has in a type of connection between Facebook and say a New York Times article. Use Google Chrome and stop those connections with this extension.
Nail In The Coffin
Big ups to Michael Drane for posting this on his Facebook. Tim Wise ends the Tea Party:
In evaluating the Tea Party phenomenon, those of us who insist white racial resentment is at the heart of the movement are often attacked for besmirching the high minded, non-racial motivations of those who identify with this insurgency. So, for instance, we are told that the real concerns of the TP are: deficit spending and big government. Prejudice and bigotry have no part in their efforts, or so we’re told.
And yet, if this were true, the conservatives in the Tea Party would have been screaming at George W. Bush when he was president (and certainly wouldn’t have voted for his re-election, since he eliminated the government surplus that had been created in the Clinton years). They would have called for the resignation of Dick Cheney for saying, famously, that “deficits don’t matter.” They would have supported Al Gore in 2000, since he was a member of the surplus-creating Clinton Administration. They would detest, rather than revere, the legacy of the Reagan years, which boosted the deficit and debt to before-then unheard of proportions.
Wise, in his very short treatise, demolishes each and every pillar of the TP. This is an accessible, worthwhile read. Give it a shot, even if you are a TP backer and read it in full. Shoot me a rebuttal – vgiordano at gmail dot com. I am willing to tango.
“It’s About The Children”
So says Governor of New Jersey Chris Christie, Mayor of Newark Cory Booker and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. This is an alliance, funded by a $100 million start up grant from Zuck, to tackle Jersey’s education woes (1 in 2 students in Newark do not graduate from high school) and should be a lodestar for “this generations civil rights issue”: education.
H/T: The Corner