GOOD RIDDANCE TO BAD RUBBISH

From our friend Badtux, the Snarky Penguin:
" 'Rick Wagoner is out at GM -- Obama said to GM, 'not a dime more as long as Wagoner is CEO', and Wagoner quit before he was fired by the board. Given Wagoner's unblemished record of failure as a manager, I agree with Jerry Flint: good riddance to bad rubbish.
"You'll note that neither Ford nor Chrysler are [sic] being asked to change management. That's because both companies already have new management rather than the management that got them into trouble. That is not, however, stopping the tighty righties from getting their panties into a knot over the firing of Wagoner. Nevermind that any investor investing money into GM would have said, 'not a dime until Wagoner is gone' because the man was clearly utterly incompetent, for some reason the job of a rich white man is more important to them than the jobs of the tens of thousands of working people that Wagoner's mismanagement has eliminated.
"But then, the Republicans only pretend to care about those tens of thousands of working people anyhow. What they are is the party of rich white men, in the end. Anybody who fails to see that is being blinded by ignorance and propaganda, because every single Republican policy -- *EVERY* single Republican policy -- is intended to benefit rich white men at the expense of, well, the rest of us. So now they huddle together and whine in defense of yet another rich white man -- Rick Wagoner -- while saying not a yelp about the millions of Americans who've been thrown out of jobs over the past year by the Bush Depression. How suprising."
-- Badtux the Unsurprised Penguin
"PS: The rich bastard is heading into the sunset with a $20M retirement package, so the tighty righties sure are getting their panties in a knot about nothing, we won't find Wagoner destitute and homeless and begging for pennies on the streets of Detroit anytime soon... alas, given how many of his victims have been reduced to that."

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

"You have to start by changing the story you tell yourself about getting older...The minute you say to yourself, 'Time is everything, and I'm going to make sure that time is used the way I dream it should be used,' then you've got a whole different story."
~~Diane Sawyer

THOUGHT FOR A MONDAY

"Some of the fastest growing American corporations are the ones that, as they put in the business press, sell workers. So Man Power Incorporated is just booming. And the reason for the turn to temporary workers is perfectly straight forward. They can be treated just as goods, as material goods. If you want to throw them out, you throw them out. You don't want to pay them benefits, you don't pay them benefits."
~~Noam Chomsky, from Radio Free LA, 1997

A BOY LIVING IN A CAR

By Nicholas Kristoff, Op-Ed Columnist for The New York Times:
"As America’s unemployment rate rises, those paying the severest price aren’t necessarily in Detroit or Miami. One of the newest street children here in this northern Haitian city is a 10-year-old boy whose father was working in Florida but lost his job and can no longer send money home. As a result, the family here was evicted, the mother and children went separate ways to improve their odds of finding shelter, and the boy found refuge in an abandoned wreck of a car.
The boy is one of 46 million people in the developing world — more than double the New York State population — who will be driven into poverty in 2009, according to a World Bank estimate.
In Haiti’s largest slum, Cité Soleil, in the capital, Port-au-Prince, I stumbled upon a one-room public school. The principal, Claude Lafaille, lamented that enrollment had dropped from 150 at the start of the year to 60 today."
" 'Haitians in America stopped sending money back, and so their family members can’t pay fees,' he said.
"The school used to provide free breakfasts to ensure that students got at least one solid meal a day. But in January, the charity that provided the food had to stop because its donations were dropping, so now the remaining children are often too hungry to concentrate.
In the St. Catherine Labouré hospital in Port-au-Prince, the number of children admitted for malnutrition has approximately doubled since September, said a pediatrician, Dr. Armide Jeanty. She pointed to a 15-month-old child, Richardson, skeletal and covered with sores. He stared blankly, for when children are severely malnourished their bodies shut down and do not waste energy crying, laughing or smiling.
" 'It’s natural in an economic crisis to look inward, to focus on America’s own needs, but it’s worth remembering that the consequence of a deep recession in a poor country isn’t just a lost job but also a lost child.'
"In Cité Soleil, a woman named Chantal Dorlus told me that her 5-year-old daughter, Nasson, starved to death last month, and neighbors confirmed the account. Ms. Dorlus said that her three other children would have starved as well if not for the generosity of her neighbors, who share their meager food supplies.
"If slum-dwelling Haitians can share what little they have, I hope we can be equally generous during this downturn when needs are greatest.
"On this trip, I met a couple of American women, Sasha Kramer and Sarah Brownell, both in their early 30s, who offer an example of outward commitment at a time when most of us are retrenching and focusing on ourselves. Sasha and Sarah run a hand-to-mouth aid group, called SOIL; they speak fluent Creole and get around on motorcycle taxis while waving back at legions of fans on every street. (You can watch a video of them at nytimes.com/ontheground.)
I was interested in their work because it addresses two of the developing world’s greatest but least glamorous challenges. One is sanitation, for human waste in poor countries routinely spreads disease and parasites. The second is agriculture, for poor countries must increase crop yields if they are to overcome poverty and hunger.
Sasha and Sarah create dry composting toilets that turn human waste into valuable fertilizer. They say that the yearlong composting process kills the pathogens in the waste, making it safe to use the fertilizer.
"Frankly, I was taken aback when, 10 minutes after they had met me, they pulled out a Ziploc bag and proudly declared that it was compost made from their own toilet. They were so impressed with what they had accomplished that I felt obliged to take a whiff and hold it in my fingers; it simply felt and smelled like rich potting soil, and I would never have guessed its origins.
"Haitian farmers use virtually no fertilizer — less than a pound per acre, compared with about 90 pounds in the United States — and soils are severely depleted. But Sasha calculates that if half of Haitians’ human waste could be used as fertilizer, that would amount to a 17-fold increase in fertilizer use, more than doubling the country’s agricultural production.
"Sasha and Sarah have deployed 45 of their toilets, and now they are trying to introduce a municipal composting system in Cap Haitien.
"I don’t know if this is feasible. But I love the idea that even when the needs of the United States are so immense, a couple of young Americans aren’t complaining or finger-pointing, but are hard at work to assist others whose distress is incomparably greater than our own."

Zztopdog's note: Visit Nicholas Kristoff's blog, On the Ground.

Zztopdog's additional note: If you would like to sponsor a child in an impoverished country, there are many many organizations to choose from. A good place to start is http://www.ucc.org/child-sponsorship/

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

"If our American way of life fails the child, it fails us all."
~~Pearl S. Buck

POOR MIZZOU

AP - "Missouri went down swinging in a spirited end to an impressive NCAA tournament run."

Thanks, in no small part, to the cheering and support of one of Mizzou's biggest fans.

FRIDAY'S LITTLE DOSE OF CUTE

Photo by Corey Workman

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

"The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one's mind a pleasant place in which to spend one's leisure."
~~Sidney Harris, American Journalist

WORDLESS WEDNESDAY

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

"This is the moment when we must come together to save this planet. Let us resolve that we will not leave our children a world where the oceans rise and famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands."
~~Barack Obama

THOUGHT FOR A MONDAY

"In the end, the size of a man's accomplishments can best be measured by the size of [his] heart."
~~Author Unknown

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

"A sense of humor is a sense of proportion."
~~Kahlil Gibran

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

"It would seem that something which means poverty, disorder and violence every single day should be avoided entirely, but the desire to beget children is a natural urge."
~~Phyllis Diller

FRIDAY'S LITTLE DOSE OF CUTE

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

"The secret of success is to realize that the crisis on our planet is much larger than just deciding what to do with your own life, and if the system under which we live the structure of western civilization begins to collapse because of our selfishness and greed, then it will make no difference whether you have $1 million dollars when the crash comes or just $1.00."
~~Marianne Williamson

WORDLESS WEDNESDAY

"Eyes Wide Open" -

An Iraq War Memorial

by bendystraw

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY - HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY

"May the Irish hills caress you.
May her lakes and rivers bless you.
May the luck of the Irish enfold you.
May the blessings of Saint Patrick behold you."
~~Irish Blessing

UNCONSUMPTION = FREECYCLE(TM)

By Rob Walker in The New York Times:

"Getting new stuff can feel really good. Most everybody knows that. Most everybody also knows — particularly in the aftermath of the consumption-frenzy holiday season — that utility can fade, pleasure can be fleeting and the whole thought-that-counts thing is especially ephemeral. Apart from the usual solution to this problem (more new stuff!), it’s worth pondering whether getting rid of stuff can ever feel as good as getting it.
"A few years ago, a self-described tree-hugger in Tucson named Deron Beal was working for a nonprofit that focused on recycling as a way to minimize what was going into local landfills. While plenty of people were willing, even eager, to get rid of things they no longer wanted but that weren’t really trash, finding people who wanted those things was a challenge. Beal set up a Yahoo Groups mailing list, hoping to create a giveaway marketplace where people could list usable items and others could lay claim to them and then come pick them up. The mailing list became the basis for Freecycle, a Web-enabled network of about 3,900+ such e-mail groups, each dedicated to a local community and managed by a volunteer moderator(s), and claiming 2.9 million+ participants in more than 70 countries. One of the largest Freecycle groups, with 25,000 members, is for New York City.
"Save-the-earth types make up only a fraction of Freecycle users. Like any successful marketplace, this one works because it links people with widely disparate motivations. Some participants want to declutter. Some see it as akin to a charity. Some just don’t want to lug items to the dump. And of course, many people are looking for free stuff. As Freecycle has become a bigger and bigger de facto brand — Beal prefers 'movement' — its sheer scale no doubt attracts people who aren’t tree-huggers or 'simple living' fanatics but just have some item they’d like to unconsume and in the process see what all the fuss is about.
"Whatever attracts people to join, part of what keeps them involved, Beal says, is something they probably didn’t expect: the moment when someone thanks you backward and forward for giving him something you planned to throw away. 'There’s a sort of paradigm shift in your brain: ‘Wow, that feels really good,’ ' Beal says. 'That’s what I think is fueling this absurd amount of growth we’ve had.'
"But it’s not all one big love-in. Freecycle has also sparked squabbles, schisms and even legal disputes among its enthusiasts. Though Beal turned away venture capitalists, opting to register as a nonprofit, he did take on a sponsor, the garbage-hauling company Waste Management Inc. Some of the network’s purists didn’t like that idea; others didn’t like what they saw as too many Freecycle rules and split off to form their own groups. The legal wrangling (and some of the network’s rules) stem from competing efforts to claim the Freecycle name. Given all this turmoil, the online environmental magazine Grist was already asking in 2005 whether, only two years after Freecycle started, it had 'run its course.' Beal concedes that 'it was messy there for a while,' but membership has more than doubled since then, and Freecycle is still keeping tons of exercise equipment, old computers, Santa neckties, 80-pound bags of cement and whatever else out of landfills.
"In a sense, what Freecycle has done is channel the same blend of utility and pleasure that motivates consumption itself. Steve Portigal, a business-strategy consultant based in Montara, Calif., founded a Freecycle group for the San Francisco area’s coastal communities in 2004. 'Getting something you need and getting rid of something you don’t need are both satisfying as problems solved,' he points out. But while we’re all well trained in the former, the latter often exceeds our patience and know-how.
"Consider the unwanted shed in Portigal’s backyard. Instead of trying to figure out how to take it apart and hauling the pieces to the dump, he listed it on his Freecycle group. Sure enough, someone volunteered to take the thing, expertly disassembling it and moving it to a nearby farm. Thus a tedious hassle was converted into a virtuous act, and Portigal enjoyed the satisfaction of knowing that his old shed had a new home. Moreover, he adds, 'it was great to get rid of it.' ”

Zztopdog notes: Looking for a Freecycle(TM) group in your area? Visit Freecycle.org to view listings by state.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

"The people who make a difference in your life are not the ones with the most credentials, the most money, or the most awards. They are the ones that care."
~~Charles Schulz

THE POLAR PLUNGE

My wackie, wonderful daughter-in-law, Jen, participated in the Polar Plunge last Sunday, at Silver Springs State Park in Yorkville, IL. On that cold and rainy day, her team of 19 crazy people plunged into the lake (some even submerging themselves!) to celebrate raising money for Special Olympics Illinois.

Her team won the coveted Golden Plunger for raising the most money (nearly $20,000.00) of all the teams at that site. To date, it appears that they may have raised the most money of all the teams in Illinois (final results still pending).

Jen, who is an occupational therapist, works with special needs kids. She said that for her, "it was the chance to actively show support for a movement that supports children and families with whom I work directly. A chance to support an organization that provides invaluable experiences for children who would otherwise maybe not know what it is like to get recognition or reward for dedication and hard work."

"To have a sense that you belong to something with a bigger meaning can really bring you moments of clarity about who you are and what life is really about," said Jen. "We were all there to be a part of something that had such a bigger purpose than just being cold and wet."

FRIDAY'S LITTLE DOSE OF CUTE

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

"It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry."

~~Albert Einstein

ENDING THE 'RACE TO THE BOTTOM'

Op-Ed from The New York Times:
"was an impressive breadth of knowledge and a welcome dose of candor in President Obama’s first big speech on education, in which he served up an informed analysis of the educational system from top to bottom. What really mattered was that Mr. Obama did not wring his hands or speak in abstract about states that have failed to raise their educational standards. Instead, he made it clear that he was not afraid to embarrass the laggards — by naming them — and that he would use a $100 billion education stimulus fund to create the changes the country so desperately needs.
"Mr. Obama signaled that he would take the case for reform directly to the voters, instead of limiting the discussion to mandarins, lobbyists and specialists huddled in Washington. Unlike his predecessor, who promised to leave no child behind but did not deliver, this president is clearly ready to use his political clout on education.
"Mr. Obama spoke in terms that everyone could understand when he noted that only a third of 13- and 14-year-olds read as well as they should and that this country’s curriculum for eighth graders is two full years behind other top-performing nations. Part of the problem, he said, is that this nation’s schools have recently been engaged in 'a race to the bottom' — most states have adopted abysmally low standards and weak tests so that students who are performing poorly in objective terms can look like high achievers come test time.
"The nation has a patchwork of standards that vary widely from state to state and a system under which he said 'fourth-grade readers in Mississippi are scoring nearly 70 points lower than students in Wyoming — and they’re getting the same grade.' In addition, Mr. Obama said, several states have standards so low that students could end up on par with the bottom 40 percent of students around the globe.
"This is a recipe for economic disaster. Mr. Obama and Arne Duncan, the education secretary, have rightly made clear that states that draw money from the stimulus fund will have to create sorely needed data collection systems that show how students are performing over time. They will also need to raise standards and replace weak, fill-in-the-bubble tests with sophisticated examinations that better measure problem-solving and critical thinking.
"Mr. Obama understands that standards and tests alone won’t solve this problem. He also called for incentive pay for teachers who work in shortage areas like math and science and merit pay for teachers who are shown to produce the largest achievement gains over time. At the same time, the president called for removing underperforming teachers from the classroom.
"In an effort to broaden innovation, the president called for lifting state and city caps on charter schools. This could be a good thing, but only if the new charter schools are run by groups with a proven record of excellence. Once charter schools have opened, it becomes politically difficult to close them, even in cases where they are bad or worse than their traditional counterparts.
The stimulus package can jump-start the reforms that Mr. Obama laid out in his speech. But Congress will need to broaden and sustain those reforms in the upcoming reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act. Only Congress can fully replace the race to the bottom with a race to the top."

WORDLESS WEDNESDAY

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

"Every patriot believes his country better than any other country . . . In its active manifestation—it is fond of killing—patriotism would be well enough if it were simply defensive, but it is also aggressive . . . Patriotism deliberately and with folly aforethought subordinates the interests of a whole to the interests of a part . . . Patriotism is fierce as a fever, pitiless as the grave and blind as a stone."
~~Ambrose Bierce, Collected Works

THOUGHT FOR A MONDAY

"When it comes to getting things done, we need fewer architects and more bricklayers."
~~Colleen C. Barrett

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

“ 'WHEREVER you come near the human race, there’s layers and layers of nonsense,' says the Stage Manager in Thornton Wilder’s 'Our Town.' ”
~~Thornton Wilder

What Battered Newsrooms Can Learn From Stewart's CNBC Takedown

By Will Bunch, author, "Tear Down this Myth," for The Huffington Post:

"The most talked-about journalism of this week wasn't produced in the New York Times, CNN, Newsweek or NPR. It was Jon Stewart's epic, eight-minute takedown on Wednesday night's Daily Show of CNBC's clueless, in-the-tank reporting of inflatable bubbles and blowhard CEOs as the U.S. and world economies slowly slid into a meltdown. You can quibble about Stewart's motives in undertaking the piece -- after he was spurned for an interview by CNBC's faux populist ranter Rick Santelli -- but you can't argue with the results.
"The piece wasn't just the laugh-out-loud funniest thing on TV all week (and this was a week in which NBC rebroadcast the SNL "more cowbell" sketch, so that's saying a lot) but it was exquisitely reported, insightful, and it tapped into America's real anger about the financial crisis in a way that mainstream journalism has found so elusive all these months, in a time when we all need to be tearing down myths. As one commenter on the Romenesko blog noted, 'it's simply pathetic that one has to watch a comedy show to see things like this.'
"But that's not all. The Stewart piece also got the kind of eyeballs that most newsrooms would kill for in this digital age -- planted atop many, many major political, media and business Web sites -- and the kind of water-cooler chatter that journalists would crave in any age. In a time when newspapers are flat-out dying if not dealing with bankruptcy or massive job losses, while other types of news orgs aren't faring much better, the journalistic success of a comedy show rant shouldn't be viewed as a stick in the eye -- but a teachable moment. Why be a curmudgeon about kids today getting all their news from a comedy show, when it's not really that hard to join Stewart in his own idol-smashing game?
"Here's how:
1) Great research trumps good access to the powerful: The Stewart piece makes this controversial but critical point in two different ways. For one thing, the story shows how access to the nation's most powerful CEOs -- supposedly the big advantage of a journalistic enterprise like CNBC -- isn't worth a warm bucket of spit when it results in slo-pitch softball questions, for fear of offending the rich and powerful. And so we see Ford's CEO grilled about Kid Rock's performance at the auto show, Ponzi scammer (later revealed) Alan Stanford quizzed on whether it's fun to be a billionaire, and Maria "Money Honey" Bartiromo gushing at how corporate chiefs were still telling her that their companies were doing great, even as the massive iceberg was casting its shadow over the hull of the American economy.
"Jon Stewart's act of journalism -- reported, of course, by his ace team of writers -- worked because there were no interviews at all. It all hung instead on meticulous research, dredging up lethal quips of CNBC's stock pumping hosts to hang them with their own undeniable words -- Jim Cramer's "buy buy buy" when the Dow was roughly double what it is today, his touting of Bear Stearns' and Bank of America's doomed stocks. The kind of research that's so hard for most newspapers to do anymore, with downsized staffs and ever-looming deadlines, but which can so often belies the spin from our 'accessible' sources.
2) The American public is mad as hell right now, so why isn't the mainstream media? Balanced reporting is important, but a balanced, modulated tone of voice? Not now, not when millions are hurting from lost jobs and under-water mortgages, and many millions more are living in fear of the same fate. People need information but what they so desperately want an outlet that shares their passion -- and, yes, that rage -- and so Jon Stewart gave people what they weren't getting anywhere else.
3) Tear down this wall... of pretending that the media itself isn't a major player in American society, and isn't a factor in most big stories. Sure, there were greedy bankers and their pocketed politicians working in unintended tandem to take the Dow from 14,000 down to 6,600, but these popular TV pundits were there every step of the way, as The Daily Show revealed, and their contribution was consequential. Mainstream media, after all these years, has a hard time understanding that one of the major political forces in this country is mainstream media, something the audience knows all too well.
4) The First Amendment doesn't say anything about not being funny, or not being passionate. I don't know about you, if you actually watched the piece, but I feel like I learned something important -- confirming the cheerleading nature of the nation's most-watched source for business news, even in a moment of oncoming disaster -- but I also busted my gut laughing as I did. And there's nothing wrong with that, informing and entertaining at the same time -- isn't that what newspapers are charging people 75 cents for?
"You know, sometimes people do some crazy stuff when they realize their days are numbered. I don't have the answers to problems facing American journalism -- not my own newsroom, mired in Chapter 11, nor the others that face a possible death sentence. But fighting for life will mean living each day like it was your last, with passion, anger and laughter, the way The Daily Show shined a light on a crevice of the nation's battered economy on Wednesday night."

ZZtopdog notes: Please click here to watch the video.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

"Weather is a great metaphor for life - sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad, and there's nothing much you can do about it but carry an umbrella."
~~Pepper Giardino

FRIDAY'S LITTLE DOSE OF CUTE

From Cute Overload:

ZZtopdog notes: This albino baby hedgehog was rescued from the wild because its color makes it much more of a target for predators.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

"I've had great success being a total idiot."
~~Jerry Lewis

AMAZON'S REVIEWS OF JOE THE PLUMBER'S NEW BOOK

From Amazon.com, via Cynical-C:

ps I don't think they liked it.

WORDLESS WEDNESDAY

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

"The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us."
~~Black Elk (1863-1950)

THOUGHT FOR A MONDAY

"Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it."
~~Ellen Goodman

HOW ERIC HOLDER & MICHAEL STEELE SPENT THEIR FEBRUARY

By John Ridley, on The Huffington Post:
"We come to the end of another Black History Month.
"Eric Holder, the Nation's first black Attorney General, spent February demonstrating he owned the stones to call out Americans for being 'in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards' when it comes having the tough discussion on race and ethnicity. That's when he wasn't putting the finishing touches on the bust-up of a major Narco ring.
"Michael Steele, the nation's first black chairman of the Republican National Committee, spent February explaining how he wants the RNC's new PR campaign to be 'off the hook,' featuring 'urban-surburban hip-hop settings.' That's when he wasn't giving a shout-out of 'slum love"' to Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal who is of Near Eastern ethnicity.
"Slum love, get it? 'Cause, like, Slumdog Millionaire was, like, big.
"Can you imagine Holder publicly wishing President Obama some ghetto affection?
"So much for the GOP's new face.
"Despite a few critical posts -- call them my tough love shout-outs -- I actually wish Michael Steele much success in reinventing the Republicans. There's nothing wrong with a smart, ideas-oriented adversarial Party. A new version of Eisenhower's Dynamic Conservatism, as opposed to the same version of 'let's try tax cuts.' Though I personally appreciate them.
Steele, however, is not helping advance the cause, or sell the party beyond the base with his tone-deafness. Nor is he being helped by the 'new' GOP. I'm sure Bobby Jindal is thankful 2012 is three years away, and I'm sure Sarah Palin is thankful for Bobby Jindal. For all the ills of liberal paternalism, conservatives are learning you can't do diversity overnight.
"What's clear now is that after Tuesday night's 'I'm exotic like Obama, too' flame out by Jindal, Steele is going to have to work double time in finding a new messenger. First, perhaps, he needs to figure out what the message is and how to deliver it."

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

"March is a month of considerable frustration - it is so near spring and yet across a great deal of the country the weather is still so violent and changeable that outdoor activity in our yards seems light years away."
~~Thalassa Cruso

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

"March is a month of considerable frustration - it is so near spring and yet across a great deal of the country the weather is still so violent and changeable that outdoor activity in our yards seems light years away."
~~Thalassa Cruso