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Justice ends at 5 PM...
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94 Views
08/19/09
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I just read the story of the Texas judge on trial because she refused to hold the clerks office open for a death row appeal because the office hours are from 8 till 5, even though the state law provides for keeping the appeals office open after being informed an appeal is on the way. The man was executed that night.
Has it really reached the point where any excuse will do to execute a person?
I was all for capital punishment until DNA testing started proving how many innocent men and women were sitting in jail for crimes they didn't commmit, more than a few on death row.
And the real schocker was when states started passing laws that no further DNA testing would be accepted after a conviction,EVEN IF THE TESTS PROVED INNOCENCE!!!
There are so many cases of men sitting for years and then being exonerated that I feel a moratorium on executions should be in effect, at least where DNA evidence is involved.
I'm no bleeding heart liberal, but a death sentence is so serious that every effort should be made to BE SURE the right person is being punished.
We've gotten so carried away with the letter of the law, we forget that justice is the goal of law.
Good example is the man that was sentenced to prison for failure to maintain child support payments, even after DNA testing proved the child was not his! The courts rationale: He agreed to make payments long before DNA testing, so he was obligated to continue paying no matter what, because his agreement was a `contract`with the state. The man was unemployed and making partial payments from his unemployment checks.
Where is the justice in that?
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Presidential qualities
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196 Views
07/10/08
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Recently I've noticed that the qualities I most look for in a leader are being ridiculed.
If a candidate displays a shred of intelligence, she/he's labelled as 'talking down' to one group or the other. If they display awareness of world affairs, they're out of touch with the common people of america. God forbid they speak and carry themselves like a college grad and have earned a little money by working for it, now they're 'elitist' and have forgotten their roots.
I WANT a president that's smarter than me. I WANT a president that worked, earned a living and was sucessful at it, who's NOT a professional politician.
I NEED a president that realizes he's president of all the USA,not just the folks that voted for him.
Honesty? To tell the truth,(haha) he can lie all he wants, JUST NOT TO US!
I want someone who will do everything he can to make the country what it should be; a refuge of freedom and chance for anyone willing to try, willing to do, not just talk.
The president SHOULD be special, not just some guy.
Or am I expecting too much?
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Greatest movie...
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116 Views
04/04/09
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I may be a little behind the times, but I just watched one of the best movies(IMHO)ever made.
The Man from Earth.
No car chases, no special effects, no explosions, just 8 of the best character actors Hollywood has, in one room, playing to each other.I was completely blown away. The story itself is simple, but the questions it raises are undeniably thought provoking to say the least. Won't give it away, but there is a trailer on you----.
For those of you that are inclined toward religion, be warned, it will challenge some of you beliefs and just maybe, give you pause...Dave, Rump, Booklover, this film is just your cup of tea.
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He is sooo cool...
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235 Views
11/17/08
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Found this in the IHT and boy am I proud!!!!
For the first time in eight years, we Americans have a president who is cool. It starts with the Ray-Bans. Ray-Bans are the ultimate cool sunglass brand, evoking memories of the John F. Kennedy presidency, of sunny cruises off Cape Cod on his sloop Victura, with the tame photographers from Life magazine in tow. Obama wears cool suits, too: plain blue, wool, two-button affairs from Hartmarx. Even the $1,500 price point is cool. It doesn't say, "I'm in the pocket of insurance pirates AIG" - those are $5,000 suits. But it doesn't say "Men's Wearhouse" either. Why pretend? Who wants a Ford Focus president? Make mine a Lincoln.
Like a lot of American politicians, Obama has plenty of dough. But unlike Legacy Boy Bush, Obama earned his stash. He's made $5 million in book royalties, plus or minus. A friend points out that Obama is the first president since Woodrow Wilson to have a prose style, and the first president since Ulysses S. Grant to have a good prose style. Pretty cool.
The list goes on. Unlike Bush, who labors on the exercise machines for a desultory hour each day, Obama plays basketball. His brother-in-law coached basketball at modish Brown University. Too cool! Obama dines at cool restaurants with names like Spiaggia and Topolobampo, and during a particularly boring moment in the campaign he sampled a rap song, Jay-Z's foul-mouthed "Dirt Off Your Shoulder." Writing in the New Republic, novelist Paul Beatty opined that "I bet dude knows how many chambers there are in the Wu-Tang."
Of course you picked up the reference to the Wu-Tang Clan album "Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)."
But is Obama the coolest head of state in the world? For instance, is he as cool as ...
... Vladimir Putin?
Putin used to work for the KGB, which was a veritable ice pack full of chilling customers back in the day. He and Obama and France's Nicolas Sarkozy have one thing in common: They are the only world leaders willing to be photographed with their shirts off. Putin is one buff fella; a few keystrokes on YouTube will take you to his recently released martial arts video, "Let's Learn Judo With Vladimir Putin." Obama may be draining the treys, but Putin is president of his local dojo. Cool that.
Did I mention that he's married to a flight attendant? And that he supposedly subdued a rare Siberian tiger with a tranquilizer gun? Alas, the incident was not captured on film.
In the voice-over to his video, Putin calls judo "a lesson in collaboration and cooperation." He is all about collaboration. The day after Obama's win, the Russian czar let slip that he was thinking of stationing short-range missiles about four seconds away from Obama's new allies in Poland. That's sort of a cool - nay, Cold War - way of saying: Welcome to the neighborhood, Barack.
... Nicolas Sarkozy?
Sarkozy first achieved prominence in 1993, when, as mayor of the posh Paris suburb of Neuilly, he entered a nursery school alone to negotiate with a hostage-taking lunatic who called himself the Human Bomb. The Bomb had strapped explosives to his torso. Sarkozy emerged from the school surrounded by kids and the French police subsequently defused M. Bomb, by killing him.
Even Putin isn't that cool.
The rest is history. Sarko edged out the World's Most Beautiful Socialist, Segolene Royal, to win the French presidency last year, then promptly dispatched his gorgeous ("darkly beautiful" - The New Yorker) and accomplished wife Cecilia to Libya, to handle a delicate negotiation with the mercurial Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi. The negotiation succeeded, but the marriage failed. Sarko quickly drafted a gorgeous and accomplished replacement, the Italian-born siren-singer-songwriter Carla Bruni. Bruni needs no introduction here. Michelle Obama is cool, but Bruni, who has dated reprobates Eric Clapton and Mick Jagger, takes the thermometer down several more degrees. And Bruni digs fellow cool cat Obama. Last week she trashed Italian prime minister/vulgarian-at-large Silvio Berlusconi for "joking" about Obama's "suntan."
... Daniel Craig?
Not a head of state, you say? Perhaps not, but Bond boy Craig is permanent ambassador to the sovereign republic of Chillaxin' (capital Ice Station Zebra). Nobody is as cool as Craig. But Obama comes darned close.
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Palin:Nixon on steroids?
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144 Views
09/14/08
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After some serious digging, I found nothing, absolutely nothing, about this woman...
AND THEN...the cracks started to appear. The troopergate thing was interesting, but the ex-brother-in-law seems to be a sleazeball anyway so I give her the benefit of the doubt, standing up for your family is a very subjective thing...
BUT...after this nugget from the International Herald Tribune, Sarah begins to sound like Richard Nixon on steroids...
WASILLA, Alaska: Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska lives by the maxim that all politics is local, not to mention personal.
So when there was a vacancy at the top of Alaska's Division of Agriculture, Palin appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to the $95,000-a-year directorship. A former real estate agent, Havemeister cited her childhood love of cows as one of her qualifications for running the roughly $2 million agency.
Havemeister was one of at least five high school classmates Palin hired, often at salaries far exceeding what they had made in the private sector.
When Palin had to cut the 2007 Alaska state budget, she avoided the legion of frustrated legislators and mayors. Instead, she huddled with her budget director and her husband, Todd, an oil field worker who is not a state employee, and vetoed millions of dollars of legislative projects.
Last May, a Wasilla blogger, Sherry Whitstine, who chronicles the governor's career with an astringent eye, answered her phone to find an assistant to the governor on the line. "You should be ashamed!" Ivy Frye, the assistant, told her. "Stop blogging. Stop blogging right now."
Palin now walks the national stage of the United States as a small-town foe of "good old boys" politics and a champion for ethics reform. The charismatic 44-year-old governor draws enthusiastic audiences and high approval ratings. And as the Republican vice presidential nominee, she points to her management experience while deriding her Democratic rivals, Senators Barack Obama and Joseph Biden Jr., as speechmakers who never ran anything.
But an examination of her swift rise and record as mayor of Wasilla and then as governor of Alaska finds that Palin's visceral style and penchant for attacking critics - she sometimes calls local opponents "haters" - contrasts with her carefully crafted public image.
Throughout her career, she has pursued vendettas, fired officials who crossed her and sometimes blurred the line between government and personal grievance, according to a review of public records and interviews with 60 Republican and Democratic legislators and local officials.
Still, Palin has many supporters. As mayor she paved roads and built an ice rink, and as governor she pushed through higher taxes on the oil companies that dominate one-third of Alaska's economy. She stirs deep emotions. In Wasilla, many residents display unflagging affection, cheering "our Sarah" and hissing at her critics.
"She is bright and has unfailing political instincts," said Steve Haycox, a history professor at the University of Alaska. "She taps very directly into anxieties about the economic future."
"But," he added, "her governing style raises a lot of hard questions."
Palin declined to grant an interview for this article and she did not respond to written questions. The McCain-Palin campaign responded to some questions on her behalf and on that of her husband, while referring other questions to the governor's spokesmen, who did not respond.
Interviews show that Palin runs an administration that puts a premium on loyalty and secrecy. The governor and her top officials sometimes use personal e-mail accounts for state business; dozens of e-mail messages obtained by The New York Times show that her staff members studied whether that could allow them to circumvent subpoenas seeking public records.
Rick Steiner, a University of Alaska professor, sought the e-mail messages of state scientists who had examined the effect of global warming on polar bears. (Palin said the scientists had found no ill effects, and she sued the U.S. government to block the listing of the bears as endangered.) An administration official told Steiner that it would cost $468,784 to process his request.
When Steiner finally obtained the e-mail messages - through a federal records request - he discovered that state scientists had in fact agreed that the bears were in trouble, records show.
"Their secrecy is off the charts," Steiner said.
This is only the half of this amazing story. It gets better as you get deeper into the FACTS and read interviews of people that have felt the wrath of Palin...
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Are they nuts??!!!
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180 Views
10/28/08
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FROM the International Herald 28 Oct. 2008:
Five straight quarters of losses and a 70 percent slide in its stock this year have not stopped Merrill Lynch from allocating about $6.7 billion to pay bonuses.
Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, both still on track for profitable years, have set aside about $13 billion for bonuses after three quarters, down 28 percent from a year ago. Even some employees at Lehman Brothers, which declared the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history last month, will get the same bonus they received a year ago.
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What is McCain thinking?
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485 Views
08/31/08
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John McCain's choice of Palin was either brilliant or insane, not sure which...
A pro-life woman,one term mayor of a town smaller than most major college campuses, a first term governor of a state with a population smaller than most major cities who admits she 'hasn't followed the war in Iraq too much'...
Is this his bid to woo Hillary supporters? Or appealing to the right wing of the party? She sounds conservative enough to keep the religious radical people happy...
So weigh in,ladies. Inquiring minds want to know, is he pandering or did he he get it right?
And is she really more qualified than Colin Powell, who was not, as far as I can determine, not even on the wish list?
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