Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), another public option foe, wouldn't commit when asked last week. "I believe in playing chess, but that's about three moves ahead of me, and I'm not prepared to make those moves until I see some other moves in between," he told HuffPost.
"I use silly, insensitive metaphors!" "For me as a Mormon, Glenn Beck’s invitation to return to childish things forces me to confront anew the unsavory aspects of my religion’s past, and all the things we Latter-day Saints are now attempting to heal."
This post, written by a creative writing instructor at BYU and cross-posted at Kos, Street Prophets and TPM Cafe, through a solid, enlightening narrative testimony (and testimony is important to Mormons), offers a context for the Cleon Skouson-Glenn Beck connection. I think it also calls on my LDS friends to renounce Beck, although such a message is derivative and soft advice, rather than the kind of screed I would probably write.
Reading and discussing this post would be a great use of your time. If enough people are interested, I'd gladly facilitate a podcast conversation on it.
Why did Beck’s infantile sneer matter? Because Beck is a Mormon. Because his mocking presence in the small town of Marshall, Missouri meant he was sticking his tongue out at patrons in every library in the nation. Because the city of Provo, Utah — where I still live and now teach — sometimes invites him to be part of our Freedom Festival and host our "Stadium of Fire," as though his ultra right, self-assured conviction and his simplistic view of contemporary issues comprise a worthy résumé. Because he is a disciple of W. Cleon Skousen, whose conspiracy theories resulted in students spying on each other and on their professors at BYU and fomented terror and suspicion throughout Provo — even at Provo High — and created a climate which made Darius fear for his family’s life. Because Beck has said such race-baiting things as, "This president has exposed himself as a guy ... who has
a deep-seated hatred for white people, or the white culture" (July 28). (What on earth does he mean by "white culture"? Is it in the tradition of the Coen Brothers’ white supremacists in O brother Where Art Thou?: "We have gathered here to preserve our hallowed culture and heritage...") Because on Fox News he loops a tape of Reverend Jeremiah Wright saying "Not God bless America...", as though it were something new and newsworthy, and as though Wright had never said anything else. And because people think he represents me and even Darius, inasmuch as we all call ourselves Latter-day Saints.
Prosecutors revealed yesterday that Elliott Madison, 41, and his wife, Elena, 39, are under investigation for allegedly violating a little-used interstate rioting law. FBI anti-terror agents raided the couple's Jackson Heights home on Oct. 1 and seized riot gear, including a dozen gas masks, fireworks, books, photographs and electronic equipment.
In this day and age, federally authorized agents entered the private home of a writer and urban planner and seized their books and writings. The warrant's vagueness and lack of specificity encouraged the agents to use their own discretion and their own views of the political universe to seize, or not to seize, items which they thought were evidence of a violation of the federal anti-riot statute. The law and the Constitution do not allow this. If there really is a grand jury investigation with possible future prosecution under [a federal anti-rioting law], the use of this statute as applied to demonstrations, demonstrators, and their supporters has profound 1st Amendment implications.
A nod to an "Examiner" -- Milwaukee Progressive Examiner Jerome McCollom -- who while disagreeing with the tactics and possibly even the message, nevertheless recognizes how an injury to one is an injury to all.
An individual, Elliott Madison, who used twitter to inform fellow protestors of police movements during the arrest has been arrested. Weren't we in the US (rightly) praising Iranian protestors who used twitter in Tehran when their rights were violated? The "rationale" of this arrest is that he was interfering in prosecutions. But that rationale assumes that those who are engaged in exercising their fundamental free speech rights are guilty of some crime. That is and should not be the mentality of a law enforcement arm in a free nation.
Israeli media reported earlier in the day that an IAEC representative met with a senior Iranian official last month in Cairo to discuss nuclear-free issue in the Middle East. Meirav Zafary-Odiz, director of policy and arms control for IAEC, and Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran's ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), met several times in Cairo at the end of September, with the representatives from other countries joining in, Israeli daily Ha'aretz reported. The newspaper referred it as "the first direct meeting between official representatives of the two states" since 1979.
Nikki White died at the age of 32. She had lupus, a chronic inflammatory disease that was untreated because she could not afford health insurance. ...if Nikki had been a felon, the problem could have been averted, because courts have ruled that prisoners are entitled to medical care.
corporations are even offshoring America's debt collectors. The LA Times reports on a call to a hard-pressed woman in Fort Worth. "Hello, Ma'am, how ya doin' today?" asks the caller in down-home American accent. "My name is James Harold," he says, "and you owe us $11,000." James' name and accent are fakes. His real name is Sharoon Hermoon, and he's sitting in a cubical 8,000 miles away in Islamabad. He's part of a Pakistani crew of a dozen twenty-somethings working on what's called the "deadbeat beat" for Touchstone, a call center owned by a U.S. corporation. These long-distance arm twisters don't merely have accents, they have something else, too: a wealth of personal information on the American people they're dunning. Working for U.S. finance firms, they not only have details of the person's debt, but also things like the person's income and how much they spend. And when debtors don't respond to their calls, the Islamabad center use tracking software to contact the person's co-workers, neighbors, and relatives to apply even more pressure – and embarrassment.
