John Petro
I was among the thousands of people cramming into Foley Square Wednesday evening, observing those who had come down to show their support for the Occupy Wall Street movement. I arrived at 4:30, and for the next hour roamed around the park. It had the energy of a festival, a…
Last month, Sarah wrote about the GOP recently pushing a “youth are leaving Obama” narrative. One of the major sources for these conservative columnists is a new ‘youth’ organization called Generation Opportunity. Since its public announcement on June 1, 2011, Generation Opportunity has become one of the largest and fastest growing organizations targeting young Americans through social media, issue education, and grassroots mobilization. Generation Opportunity’ s facebook page – Being American – has rapidly grown to over 650,000 fans. Generation Opportunity Press Release, July 1, 2011 Most of us who are actually in the youth movement had never heard anything about this “largest and fastest growing” youth organization until their press release blitz, and many of us were puzzled by how different their “research” results were from existing research. Out of curiosity, I decided to dig deeper into this organization.
Like many elected officials Senator Tom Coburn is back in his state for the August Recess. While he’s home he’s been working on his own federal budget proposal that would continue to decapitate any attempt at federal spending. His series of interviews with his local paper advocates, among other things, a drastic cut from a large portion of his state’s backbone: Farmers.
While watching a recap of the Christine O’Donnell walk out on Piers Morgan my friend @KBondelli and I commented on the pearl necklaces…. Of many…. many pearl necklaces. So I bring you… the many pearl necklaces of Christine O’Donnell
The I am not a witch pearls
The - I’m not crazy for…
Tucson has gone from a sort of a one-horse college town to a golf retreat and a snowbird destination of choice, and an alternative to what has to be among the ugliest and most unlovable of American cities, Phoenix.
Magicland
Laurie WinerGlenn Beck © Ed Wexler 2011
Glenn Beck
The Christmas Sweater
Threshold, November, 2008. 284 pp.
Glenn Beck
The Overton Window
Pocket, Dec 2010. 480 pp.
Alexander Zaitchik
Common Nonsense: Glenn Beck and the Triumph of Ignorance
Wiley, May, 2010. 288 pp.
Dana Milbank
Tears of a Clown: Glenn Beck and the Tea Bagging of America
Doubleday, October, 2010. 272 pp.The undisputed high point of Beck’s tenure in Baltimore was an elaborate prank built around a nonexistent theme park. The idea was to run a promotional campaign for the fictional grand opening of the world’s first air-conditioned underground amusement park, called Magicland. According to Beck and Gray, it was being completed just outside Baltimore. During the build-up, the two created an intricate and convincing radio world of theme-park jingles and promotions, which were rolled out in a slow buildup to the nonexistent park’s grand opening… On the day Magicland was supposed to throw open its air-conditioned doors, Beck and Gray took calls from enraged listeners who tried to find the park and failed. Among the disappointed and enraged was a woman who had canceled a no-refund cruise to attend the event. “They never told a soul what they were doing,” says Sean Hall, the B104 newsreader. “People just drove around in circles on the beltway for hours trying to find the place.”Glenn Beck broadcast his last Fox show yesterday, after two and a half memorable years. In his final week he began with footage of rioting and looting in the streets of Chicago, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and Cairo. Anyone tuning in for the first time might wonder why these upsetting events evoked in this man only a caustic “I told you so.” As per usual, he played both puppet-master and puppet, performing his repertoire of goofy voices, bobbing, weaving, bringing his plump head right up into the camera. Addressing us as “America,” he jumped maniacally through a familiar list of names: George Soros, Saul Alinksy, Hugo Chavez, Woodrow Wilson; having already drilled into us the monikers of those who got our country into this ungodly mess, he didn’t need to ID them. He warned that any day we might be kneeling before a Caliphate. As always, Beck’s delirium held out the promise that he might, once and for all, completely unravel before our eyes. As a student of all things Beckian, I will miss him. “I watch so you don’t have to,” I tell my family and friends who long ago grew tired of my obsession. I picture myself as the cat sitting in front of a mouse hole while the rest of the house goes about its business. But unlike the cat, once in a while I have to ask myself why. Why, mother of god, am I drawn here, again and again?
– from Alexander Zaitchik’s Common Nonsense: Glenn Beck and the Triumph of Ignorance
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This morning, doing “research,” I was entranced by a YouTube clip in which George Stephanopoulos surprises Michele Bachmann with the President’s birth certificate. He whips it out and reads to her: “This copy serves as prima facie evidence of the fact of birth in any court proceeding.” Bachmann remains eerily composed as she avoids eye contact with the document. “Well, then, that should settle it,” she says, her neck stiff as if in a brace, her pupils pinwheels as she searches for some way to put in the last word. “As long as someone introduces it…it’s what should settle it.” I wondered if Roger Ailes was watching. Please, I thought, someone give this woman a TV show.
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Beck’s television career exploded in late 2008. Anticipating the election and looking to boost the numbers for the historically low-rated 5 pm slot, Roger Ailes plucked his new star from CNN’s Headline News, where Beck had doubled his audience in two years. The Glenn Beck Show debuted on Fox in January, 2009, auspiciously the day before Barack Obama’s inauguration. At long last, he had found a target worthy of the unfocused, mischievous, spottily educated sensibility he had displayed as a Baltimore morning zoo DJ and later as a talk show host and “commentator.” Beck was ready for his close-up. To his ever-volatile mix of free-floating rage and shame, he added a new component: a saccharine sensitivity. He became a man who had only to mention how much he loved his country to theatrically choke back and then let flow a flash-flood of tears.
This report investigates the city’s record on street safety and its recent efforts to improve it. The city’s new policies and street designs are compared with Executive Summary 5 Vision Zero international best practices, and the authors examine the academic research that evaluates their effectiveness saving lives. The authors then identify ways in which the city can work towards eliminating road fatalities and serious injuries. We recommend that the city make safety the explicit goal or the primary outcome of the street transportation system. In order to do so, the city should adopt as its guiding “vision” a commitment that no one should be killed or seriously injured on New York City streets. The city must also find new channels of communication with the city’s diverse communities about the goal of improved safety and how to achieve it.
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Vision Zero: How Safer Streets in New York City Can Save More Than 100 Lives a Year (via drummajorinstitute) |
