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adventure, Africa, age, Border Crossings, Cycling Across Africa, HellsGate, Kenya, Maasai, politics, Ted Kunz
Like time, age is a social construct. Have you ever considered how different life would be with no recorded birthdates? …
16 Tuesday Mar 2021
Posted Everything else, Travel & Adventure
inTags
adventure, Africa, age, Border Crossings, Cycling Across Africa, HellsGate, Kenya, Maasai, politics, Ted Kunz
Like time, age is a social construct. Have you ever considered how different life would be with no recorded birthdates? …
21 Wednesday Jun 2017
Posted Travel & Adventure
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If you wonder how the once-great democracy that was the hallmark of American governance could possibly have descended into the …
25 Friday Apr 2014
Posted Everything else
inThis gallery contains 3 photos.
“The truth is,” he claimed, eyebrows arching toward his iconic bare crown, “I’m just a lumberjack and a political accident.” …
11 Tuesday Feb 2014
Posted Everything else
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feminism, Hillary Clinton, politics, scandal, the Presidency, women, world affairs, yellow journalism
I fail to see what, in the blooming garden of the devil, the above headline from Alana Goodman and published by Fox News, The Washington Free Beacon, and a host of other news media, has to do with anything at all.
This article mimics similar reports that have ricocheted through the media since February 9th. Someone has mined a treasure chest of previously private memos and correspondence shared between Hillary and her best friend, and dating back to before her husband’s entry into the White House some thirty years ago.
Random quotes have been published that, according to Ms. Goodman, “shed new light on Clinton’s three decades in public life. The records paint a complex portrait of Hillary Clinton, revealing her to be a loyal friend, devoted mother, and a cutthroat strategist who relished revenge against her adversaries and complained in private that nobody in the White House was ‘tough and mean enough.’”
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p>What Hillary may have confided to her closest confidante while she endured intense personal and marital pain under the spotlight of 24/7 national media attention has absolutely nothing to do with her qualifications or her ability to get the job done, whatever job she embarks upon. Whatever sophomoric pranks her husband has pulled in his life, have absolutely no bearing on his wife’s ability to do her job.
Does this rash of yellow headlines indicate that our nation must endure, yet again, the utter humiliation and stupification of the Monica Lewinski affair? Who the fuck cares where the former President’s peter has been?
We should be caring about how our current and future leaders will anticipate market upheavals, world political entanglements, national health pandemics, and a contrary Congress that has become so constipated it no longer functions.
The world doesn’t care about Monica. Nor should we. I don’t even know if I would support Hillary for President. What I do know is that what’s masquerading as headline news is nothing but yellow journalism.
29 Wednesday Jan 2014
Posted Everything else
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compromise, debate, Democracy, Dr. David Adler, Five Modest Suggestions, Idaho, Luna laws, politics, public opinion, public policy, reasoned discourse
How can we collaborate in a sea of sharks? Before we can begin to influence public policy, we need to shape public opinion. Individually we are little more than pesky voices shouting into the wind. But when we join forces our power multiplies exponentially and that is how public opinion grows legs.
Before we can hold our leaders accountable, we must be accountable to ourselves and to each other. We must rediscover the lost art of negotiation. Compromise is not a dirty word. Compromise is the only way that a democracy can work. There is absolutely no possibility of meeting each individual’s agenda in a country comprised of over 316,000,000 people with myriad colors, religions, beliefs, and cultural backgrounds.
Below I paraphrase Dr. David Adler, author and national lecturer specializing in public law, the Supreme Court, the Presidency and American political thought, in what he calls Five Modest Suggestions to Improve Public Discourse.
Reasoned Discourse requires understanding and accepting the scientific method. Just as we must listen to other points of view, we must also support our arguments with factual evidence, not with hyperbole, rumor, or wishful thinking.
Shaping Public Policy requires us to demonstrate to others how our ideas will benefit them. Once we have learned to talk openly and honesty with each other in small groups, and have learned to listen for that which unites rather than that which divides, then we can implement a unified voice to shape public policy through fact based letters to the editor and emails and phone calls to our representatives. Legislators are powerless against rising popular opinion. Numbers talk!
In Idaho, the top-down implementation of the Luna laws (among other things) offended Democrats. The purchase of expensive technology required by the Luna laws (among other things) offended Republicans. Each side had a vested interest in undoing that legislation and by working with each other rather than against each other, education policy that the Governor and the Superintendent of Public Instruction had lobbied hard to put in place was successfully unraveled.
As an example of what I consider reasoned discourse, I offer the following link to an opinion offered by an Idaho official regarding a highly controversial topic in our state. The article appeared in the Idaho Statesman on January 29, 2014.Lawrence Schoen: Idaho needs a new wolf management structure
Where do you look for information upon which to base your decisions and beliefs?