Copyright 2005 - Steal what you wantSat, Apr 11:04:54 5 GMTSat, Apr 11:04:54 5 GMTDaily Kos Daily Kos This is an XML content feed. It is intended to be viewed in a newsreader or syndicated to another site, subject to copyright and fair use.
Polar Bears are members of the order Carnivora. This diverse clade also includes Pinnipedia like seals and walruses; Musteloidea like raccoons, weasels, and skunks; Felidae from kitty cats to tigers; and in my highly biased opinion, the most wonderful creatures on earth, dogs. As the name implies, they're mostly meat eaters. Senator James Inhofe (R-Trainwreck) [Correction: Glenn Beck] explains why we must fight Polar Bears with global warming up there, so we don't have to fight them down here:
Video -- They eat people! For the love of Pete, they’re big, angry bears. They eat people. Not that I say we go out and kill all of them, but I mean, it doesn’t seem to be a problem here. ... I can’t take the lies anymore. [Neither can I Senator - DS]
It's neat, it's petite, it's the smallest black-hole ever detected, right at the theoretical mass limit for stellar mass black-holes predicted by astrophysicists.
What does Barack Obama think about evolutionary biology vs creationism? Read it yourself and enjoy Obama's intellectual honesty.
If you think the media went nuts over a few remarks by Jeremiah Wright, wait til they get their fangs into this: Wright has been strutting around for years with senior leaders of the Democratic Party, proudly and openly bragging that he speaks with the ghost of Thomas Jefferson, plus a bunch of other famous dead people. According to Wright, they all report from the spirit world that Wright is the Messiah ... Woops! It wasn't Wright, it's a conservative foreign cult leader jetting around with senior Republicanssaying it. Well then, no story there...
Obama acknowledges the threat of a pandemic in a statement on the U.S. Visit of Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd:
In Asia, the quality of our alliance and scope of our diplomatic partnership shine brightly. We both face a rapidly evolving security order defined by traditional and non-traditional security problems. These include: changing regional power dynamics and rivalries, territorial disputes, resource competition, terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, failed states, environmental degradation, and pandemic diseases. Managing this complex blend of security challenges requires leveraging both bilateral and multilateral mechanisms.
Clinton has done so previously. McCain? Still working on whether condoms help prevent AIDS. Which candidate is most likely to help rebuild public help health infrastructure as part of health reform and use the facts to do so? – DemFromCT
James Perry, the Executive Director of the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center, writes Friday in Facing South: A New Voice for a Changing South (published by the Institute for Southern Studies):
40 years ago today, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on the balcony of a Memphis hotel. Since then, Dr. King's reality has been replaced with a seemingly mythological character of the same name. America has forgotten much of the soul awakening substance of King's work and has been entranced in a 40-year old dream state. A careful review of King's advocacy reveals a body of work that transcends King's ubiquitous dream and draws close parallels to the current day social justice advocacy of New Orleans' citizenry.
In post-Katrina New Orleans, advocacy has been reborn through a myriad of group efforts to better our community. Citizens Road Home Action Team (CHAT ) holds the government and ICF accountable for Road Home program failures. Public housing protesters made the world aware of New Orleans' affordable housing woes. The Women of the Storm doused Capitol Hill with information about the needs of our community in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The Louisiana Housing Alliance (LHA) pushed for more Road Home money and funding of the Louisiana Housing Trust Fund. Citizens from Lakeview, New Orleans East, the Lower Ninth Ward and Broadmoor refused to quietly accept the recommendations of the Bring New Orleans Back Commission. Each effort exemplifies citizen advocacy at its best. But there are two particularly important aspects of these and other post-Katrina advocacy efforts.
First, post-Katrina advocacy coalitions have almost uniformly transcended race and ethnicity. Examine the ranks of supporters of CHAT, public housing, Women of the Storm, the LHA and the neighborhoods noted above, and you will find that diversity is the norm. This is not unlike the movement that King sought to galvanize against racial discrimination.
Total U.S. military bases abroad (according to the Department of Defense's 2007 Base Structure Report [WARNING - giant pdf]): 823
Total Russian Federation military bases abroad: 16
Total People's Republic of China military bases abroad: 0
Meteor Blades Open Thread for Night Owls & Early BirdsHurricane KatrinaNew OrleansFacing SouthInstitute for Southern StudiesSat, 05 Apr 2008 06:11:08 GMT
This evening's Rescue Rangers are YatPundit, PaintyKat, jennyjem, Wes Opinion, srkp23, and Avila, with vcmvo2 as editor.
~One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake through great periods of social change. Every society has its protectors of the status quo and its fraternities of the indifferent who are notorious for sleeping through revolutions. But today our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change.~Martin Luther King, Jr.~
The diaries up for rescue tonight are:
Sleeping through revolutions
jazmen8 reports on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s increasingly intense calls for the U.S. to shift from its wealth accumulation focus to one on people and economic justice. He hoped to avoid another Vietnam in Beyond the Dream - King and the Vietnam War. (PaintyKat)
Every year in this country children suffer and die at the hands of those closest to them. RoCali gives us invaluable information on what we can do to help the most vulnerable among us in Suffer the Little Children, and How They Suffer. (Wes Opinion)
Great periods of social change
Snickers77 recounts the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the behavior of Republicans in its wake in Lest We Forget - April 4, 1968.... (YatPundit)
davidseth writes a moving, personal narrative about how one man's life may effect another's in For Dr. King. (jennyjem)
grndrush writes a riveting diary about growing up "in then-lily-white east Memphis" and what Dr. King's life and assassination meant to him, in My Political Awakening - the 40th Anniversary. (srkp23)
DemocracySpace unveils a dynamic plan where Memphis residents can discuss race relations, while working together on specific projects that repair and restore their city in Memphis goes back to the mountaintop. (PaintyKat)
upstatetimmy gives us his Thoughts on NY bottle bill, and how the expanded bill, currently in front of the Assembly, can help turn NY a pretty shade of blue and green! (vcmvo2)
OK, time for a diversion. I was emailing with some folks the other day-- and one of them may or may not write at DKos under the moniker Scout Finch—and someone mentioned baseball Hall of Famer George Brett. George Brett is one of the best players of my lifetime, and I loved watching him play. But my favorite George Brett moment was when he came completely unhinged during the infamous pine tar incident. In fact, it's one of my favorite moments in all of sports. (I suppose I have an odd sense of "great moments in sports.")
I didn't see that game live, but it got me thinking about great or favorite moments I did see live. [I'm talking about watching the performances of others; I won't bore you with my exploits, like that game wining hit in the bottom of the 14th inning during little league...] Some were amazing performances. Jack Morris pitching a ten-inning complete game in the 7th game of the 1991 World Series. Kellen Winslow catching 16 passes, blocking a field goal, and losing 13 pounds during the game to lead the Chargers over the Dolphins in the 1982 AFC playoffs. Derek Jeter coming out of nowhere to the flip the ball home and save the game for the Yankees in the 2001 World Series ALCS. Michael Jordan winning the 1983 NCAA championship on the last shot. Dodgers GM Al Campanis ruining his career on Nightline by saying that African-Americans "may not have some of the necessities to be, let's say, a field manager, or, perhaps, a general manager."
There are some hometown moments that will always stick. Frank Tanana winning the last game of the 1987 baseball season with a 1-0 shutout against the Blue Jays to cap off a 4 game sweep which began with the Tigers 3 games behind the Jays and ended with the Tigers in the playoffs. Every game Charles Woodson played in 1997, when he was the best college football player I've ever watched. The 1979 Rose Bowl, from which I'm still working off the trauma of Michigan losing on a Charles White touchdown scored while the ball was on the two yard line. Adrian Dantley and Vinnie Johnson knocking each other out while diving for the ball in a desperate attempt to beat the Celtics in game 7 of the 1987 Eastern Conference finals. And someone I deeply love loves few things as much as he loves me, but I would never ask him to rank me against the Detroit Red Wings, so their 1997 Stanley Cup win is special.
There are the absurd moments. I was a kid, sitting in the upstairs (which was sorta an attic) watching the old black and white television when my grandparents told me to quit shouting so loud. I just couldn't convey to them what a wild thing it was to watch Ohio State coach Woody Hayes, during the Gator Bowl, slug a player on the Clemson team because he had intercepted an OSU pass. And there was Disco Demolition Night, between innings of a game between the Tigers and White Sox in Chicago, which Keith Olberman helps describe here:
Finally, here's one that it's quite possible none of you watched. I think it may not even have been on American TV, but something I watched on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's coverage of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. Those Olympics were the first in which South Africa was permitted after the end of Apartheid. One of the favorites in the women's 10,000 meters (6.2 miles) was white South African Elena Meyer. The race itself wasn't particularly exciting, as the top two positions were pretty much known fairly early in the race, as Meyer pulled far away from the rest of the field (including American Lynn Jennings, probably the best American runner of the last 40 years or so) except one woman, Ethiopian Derartu Tulu. The two tiny women pulled further away from the rest of the field, but Meyer was unable to shake the former shepherdess. On the final straightaway, Tulu blasted past Meyer to become the first African woman to win an Olympic gold medal in distance running.
As they gasped for breath, these two African women were handed flags. Tulu was given the flag of her country, Ethiopia, which was just emerging from a communist dictatorship, frequent famines and war that led to the separation from Ethiopia of what became the country of Eritrea. Meyer, who had spoken against apartheid, competing in the first post-apartheid Olympics for sports-crazed South Africa, was handed an Olympic flag. They both lifted the flags, hugged, kissed, and the Black African and the White African held hands and ran a victory lap around the stadium. It remains the best moment I've ever watched in sport.
How 'bout you? What are your favorite moments that you've seen live.
