When you come down to it, we’re surrounded by morons and fools, many of whom are our leaders–political, cultural, media, whatever. Opening a newspaper or turning on the television in modern America often is like diving into an oil spill. So it’s time once again to remind ourselves of their transgressions, which we have the Buffalo Beast to do for us, so we don’t have to waste time trying to keep track ourselves. Once again, here is their annual list of the 50 Most Loathsome Americans in 2011. It’s got Megyn Kelly (pictured, number 45) on it, and all the Repubican presidential candidates, and Rupert Murdoch is way up there at number 2, bless his heart. And The Donald, of course.

Yesterday I attempted to shed a little light on the PR crisis strategy behind the Komen Foundation’s sudden Planned Parenthood “backtracking.”

Contrary to what Komen’s highly-paid PR crisis hacks and gullible headline writers at newsdesks around the nation would ask you to believe, The Susan G. Komen Foundation does NOT promise to fund Planned Parenthood in the future. They promise to let PP APPLY for grants in the future. Applying and receiving are different things, as anyone who ever applied and got rejected for a job ought to know. Full story »

#25: The Land of Lincoln: Travels in Abe’s America by Andrew Ferguson (2007)

The Lincoln Memorial looked like frost tonight. The flurry that had blanketed the lawn white earlier in the day had been glazed with rain and then turned to ice, so the whole landscape shimmered under the Memorial’s lights.

Frost or no, the Memorial still has that beacon-in-the-dark look, which is, I suppose, its main purpose. It is, as I’ve noted before, as close to a temple as we have in America. The man who sits inside has become such an icon he’s lost humanity.

I’m here because I’ve just finished journalist Andrew Ferguson’s Land of Lincoln, an exploration of the man and, in the end, a defense of that icon. I’m here for the icon, too.

Full story »

Today is a national holiday to celebrate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the famed civil rights leader.

Government buildings are closed, the post office is closed, most K-12 schools are closed and many universities cancel classes for the day.

The idea behind the holiday was so people could focus on the good works of Dr. King.

Years ago, when I was a faculty member at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, students had protested the fact that campus remained open and classes, except for two hours midday, met, as usual. Top level administrators responding to student pressure decided to change the calendar and cancel classes. The only one objecting was then-Vice President Wilma Ray Bledsoe, the only African American (and, I believe, woman) on the cabinet at that time. Full story »

#21: A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson (1998)

I’m sure I’m not the only person who’s read Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods and had a burning urge to go hike the Appalachian Trail. Of course, that might also have something to do with the fact that my girlfriend is heading there today to hike part of it. But whatever.

My experience with the AT is pretty limited, although the few places I’ve crossed its path are places I’ve crossed it a lot. The spot that comes to mind most is a foot bridge that crosses over I-90 in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts. I’ve never stepped on that leg of the AT, but I’ve driven under it about a thousand times.

By foot, I’ve encountered the AT most frequently at Harper’s Ferry, WV. The trail crosses the Potomac River and rises up to Maryland Heights where it vanishes into the woods before climbing even further to run along the crest of South Mountain. In fact, my favorite stretch of the AT heads into the woods at the northern border of Gapland State Park several miles north of Harper’s Ferry. I remember a misty afternoon Full story »

#18: Hallowed Ground: A Walk at Gettysburg by James McPherson (2003)

Most Civil War historians in the Park Service feel a little battlefield when it comes to Gettysburg. It’s the great Granddaddy of All Battlefields in North America, marked and monumented with enough granite, marble, and bronze to sink Rhode Island into the sea. Pennsylvania, being bigger and more landlocked, isn’t in such danger. In fact, Gettysburg’s location in the Keystone State, so relatively close to the major metropolitan areas of the east coast, ensured its place as Hallowed Ground—not because it represented the “High Water Mark of the Confederacy” but because it was certain to attract tourists. Lots and lots of tourists. Full story »

A famous saying reads “Home is where the heart is,” and day two of our road trip brought new meaning to this phrase for me.

Wednesday morning, my sister, Julie, and I woke up in South Bend, Indiana only 95 miles from Chicago, Illinois. Though we grew up in Rochester, New York, Chicago has been the next closest city to offer me that warm and welcoming feeling of home. The city was finally within reach, and I couldn’t have been more excited.

Julie and I began this day of our trip with a leisurely drive through Notre Dame’s campus. We saw the university’s football field, snapped photos of “Touchdown Jesus” and awed over the grand and expansive size of the campus. We had both seen the university before, but it appeared just as beautiful the second time around.

Though we had both been within miles of the Michigan border on several occasions, neither Julie nor I had ever stepped foot in the state. Full story »

#17: Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War by Tony Horwitz (1998)

If there’s one book I’ve wished I’d written, it’s Confederates in the Attic. Of course, Tony Horwitz already wrote it, nearly two decades ago (I can hardly believe it’s been that long). Here’s a guy who wandered around the South, talking to people about the legacy of the Civil War. He asked questions, had conversations, observed, listened, and explored the landscape for himself. He immersed himself in the story.

This, I tell my students, is what good feature writers do. They take the time to do the story justice—and a story as complex as this one requires a lot of time if you’re going to be thorough and fair. That’s what I respect most about Horwitz’s work on the book: he takes the time to make an honest attempt at trying to understanding that which, I suspect, can never fully be understood.

Full story »

Have you seen the vid on Youtube called “Iowa Nice”? If not, let’s start there.

The producer of the video, Scott Siepker, is an Iowa State University grad and host of Iowa Outdoors on Iowa Public Television. Full story »

I think the educated, informed and politically active electorate on all sides get the three-ring circus metaphor for our government. There just needs to be more of them, on all sides. Let’s see what happens, though, when I look, with beginner’s eyes, at the nuts ‘n’ bolts under the hood of the the Klown Kar in the lead-up to the featured act. For this exercise, I’ll use a bit of legislation currently up for debate, S.1726, Withholding Tax Relief Act of 2011, a bill to repeal the imposition of withholding on certain payments made to vendors by government entities.

I first became aware of this issue by following Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) on Facebook. Full story »

Citizens across the country are embroiled in battles to keep developers from destroying the character of their cities and towns, and now one such fight has made its way to my neighborhood, the Denver West Highlands. Here’s the note I just sent to the mayor and city council. I suspect a lot of our readers know exactly how I feel.

_____________

Dear ______________:

I know you’re aware of the issue so I’ll keep this brief. If the developers are allowed to blight the Highlands with high rises I will work aggressively for your opponent in the next election. Full story »

Ala. GOP leaders have 2nd thoughts on immigration
By PHILLIP RAWLS

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Alabama Republicans who pushed through the nation’s toughest law against illegal immigrants are having second thoughts amid a backlash from big business, fueled by the embarrassing traffic stops of two foreign employees tied to the state’s prized Honda and Mercedes plants.

The Republican attorney general is calling for some of the strictest parts of it to be repealed.

Some Republican lawmakers say they now want to make changes in the law that was pushed quickly through the legislature.

Sometimes I think the problem is Democrats see the likely results of Republican policies ahead of time and argue against them  rather than just letting these fools go ahead and do dumb stuff and see what happens. Full story »

Here’s a bit of a surprise–moldy applesauce going into baby food and school lunches. MSNBC fills us in:

A Washington state fruit processor that supplies the nation’s schools and a baby food maker is under scrutiny by federal health regulators for repackaging applesauce contaminated with several kinds of potentially dangerous, multi-colored molds, msnbc.com has learned.

Repackaging? What the hell is that?

Food and Drug Administration officials this week posted a warning letter to Snokist Growers of Yakima, Wash., saying the company cannot ensure the safety of moldy applesauce and fruit puree that has been reconditioned for human consumption.

Wait–I thought it was just repackaged. What is this? Full story »

by Richard A. Lee

The topics dominating the discussion about the Republican primary for president – Rick Perry’s inability to recall the details of his own campaign proposal and the sexual harassment allegations against Herman Cain – may be captivating, but they don’t tell us what we need to determine who is best equipped to serve in the Oval Office.

Sure, we’d like our leaders to be pillars of virtue, but there have been some very effective presidents, governors and mayors whose personal lives were not exactly role models. Likewise, Perry’s gaffe in the CNBC debate was downright embarrassing, but should our judgments on the next leader of the free world be based on a 53-second YouTube moment? There must be better ways to gauge who would be a good president.

Mitt Romney would have us believe that a proven track record of running a successful business will produce similar results in the White House. It’s a message that resonates well with voters who often lament that government should run more like a business. It sounds good in theory, but how it plays out in practice is a different story.
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Sitting before Congress — and a dozen stalwarts of opposing political ideologies — is the opportunity to question the economic and moral wisdom of what author Andrew Bacevich calls the Washington rules — a “sacred trinity: an abiding conviction that the minimum essentials of international peace and order require the United States to maintain a global military presence, to configure its forces for global power projection, and to counter existing or anticipated threats by relying on a policy of global interventionism.”

These Washington rules — America shall protect and, more importantly, project American values because they are derived from American exceptionalism — require great military expense born by you and me, the taxpayers. That expense now faces a congressionally mandated deficit reduction process.

Come the day before Thanksgiving, Nov. 23, six Democrats and six Republicans must identify at least $1.5 trillion in cuts in federal spending over the next decade. If they do, then Congress must vote yea or nay by Dec. 23. If they do not, the Budget Control Act triggers automatic cuts totaling $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction, slashing, among others, military spending. (Note that some folks are trying to detrigger the trigger.)

The so-called super committee, formally known as the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, exists because Congress demonstrated neither the political will nor moral courage to tackle deficit reduction in a rational, non-confrontational, non-ideological way. None of its members has the stomach to cut military spending; the political cost would be, they think, unbearably high.
Full story »

So Twitter is abuzz with the news that the Port of Oakland has been shut down; major news sites are either ignoring the act or standing with reports from earlier in the day that the port is operating. That makes it sound like the general strike, focusing on the port, has been a failure. But then there’s this:

The Port of Oakland was chosen as the protest site because the International Longshore and Warehouse Union has a rare contract clause that allows workers to honor certain community picket lines. If workers arriving for a 7 p.m. shift decide not to cross the line, a shutdown could result. LA Times

So i suppose that neither sort of report is true, or even knowable yet.
There are also reports of wildcat strikes inside the port, but those may well be work related. It’s possible that the longshoremen will walk out when the Occupy protesters form their picket line outside the port. Full story »

The Occupy movement seems as if it has the potential to do great things. While it professes no leadership, it has galvanized the left—and a growing part of the middle, possibly—in ways that no other issue has over the past decade—since the invasion of Iraq, actually. And galvanize it has—it’s a worldwide phenomenon now, here in London at St Paul’s Cathedral, and elsewhere. It has provided a focus for the anger—outright rage, in many cases—at the lack of accountability of the financial and political elite for the crisis of a couple of years ago, and the state of the economy now, at a time when it is god-awful difficult for many families in America and many other industrial economies to make ends meet, or just to stay in place. People are going backwards, and they know it. One can only admire the determination and focus of the people involved. One can only feel outrage at the indifference, so far, their protest has engendered in the corporate media and the policy elites. The tragedy in Oakland is symptomatic of a deep sickness in American culture, one that the financial and political elite seem perfectly comfortable perpetuating at the expense of both people and planet.

And yet, and yet…. Full story »

by Chip Ainsworth

Shortly after finishing his three-month, 3,312-mile run from the coast of Oregon to the Rhode Island shore, Glenn Caffery visited his physician and complained that his feet were numb.

“What’d you expect?” the doctor replied.

Caffery, a 49-year-old data management teacher at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, lives in Leyden, a small town in the Connecticut River Valley that borders Vermont. His cross-country pilgrimage was to raise awareness about the Alzheimer’s disease that killed his father at age 68.

“He was diagnosed at 55,” said Caffery, “but it was symptomatic at least two years prior to that.”

On May 19, Caffery stuck his foot into the Pacific Ocean and began his long, arduous journey across Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, South Dakota, and Minnesota on toward the Northeast and into New England. On Aug. 17, surrounded by friends and family, he splashed into the Atlantic Ocean at Misquamicut Beach in Rhode Island.
Full story »

Every once in awhile a new term/catchphrase/buzzword/meme catches fire here in the US. Sometimes it’s a function of the fact that our incredibly plastic language, with its myriad dynamic influences (everything from media to subcultural to ethnic to technological) sort of inherently generates new words. Other times the term is a result of political or PR craftiness, as was the case with “Japan-bashing” (and subsequently, any more generalized iteration of “______-bashing”). The lobbyist who made the phrase up later famously said ”Those people who use (the term) have the distinction of being my intellectual dupes.” Full story »