I‘ve been known to travel with a laptop computer. I’ve also been known to write and store on its hard drive the most private of thoughts, not to mention personal financial information.
Now I read that the Department of Homeland Security has bestowed upon itself the right to search computer hard drives and other digital storage devices belonging to people entering the country. Without probable cause. Read More
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Choose your most admired U.S. president. Imagine him saying this:
Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter.
Now imagine him grinning widely and punching the air. And saying it while leaving a meeting of world leaders who had gathered in Japan to discuss combating climate change.
According to a British newspaper, those present, including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy, “looked on in shock” at George Bush.
Maybe the bigger story is why anyone was shocked.
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Touchy, touchy some people are, especially zealots on the way-out-there religious right. The American Family Association’s news web site has a filter that automatically changes words it doesn’t like. So an Associated Press story from Eugene, Oregon, about track star Tyson Gay was “corrected.”
The headline: “Homosexual eases into 100 final at Olympic trials.” The story:
Tyson Homosexual easily won his semifinal for the 100 meters at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials and seemed to save something for the final later Sunday.
And on it went. Read more here, if you can stomach it. The AFA later changed the story, restoring Gay’s good name.
Maybe the AFA’s on to something. Imagine the possibilities with the name Bush.
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I couldn’t sleep recently and switched on the television. Up popped a PBS story about life on an Navy aircraft carrier, which at 2 a.m. I figured would bore me to slumber. I didn’t pay much attention until a sailor explained how much trash is dumped overboard from this floating city every day.
Last year I’d read about two Texas-size floating islands of plastic bags and other trash. Flanking the Hawaiian islands, these vortexes (pictured is the one east of Japan) are twelve feet deep in some spots. Not vivid enough to embed in your mind? Think about swimming through them. Read More
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Today comes a classic Karl Rove assault on a member of the opposition party, a churlish smear rather than criticism over issues:
Even if you never met him, you know this guy. He’s the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by.
Rove was speaking of Barack Obama, never a country club member and unable to join many because he’s black.
Rove’s comment to Republican Party insiders begs the question: has any non-elected official harmed our country more than Karl Rove, at least in the last century?
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Unlike past wars, the Iraq war is an abstraction. We rarely glimpse the unspeakable suffering. Most of the media have lost interest. Some stalwarts remain, chronicling events beyond our comprehension. As much as I hate this war, I’ve never let what happens there penetrate my comfortable life here. Until now.
Reality intruded last night when Suzame, my wife, showed me this photograph: Read More
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It’s hard to imagine not having NPR on most of the time during the week. I don’t watch TV news, unless a huge news event occurs — 9/11, Katrina, and so forth. NPR‘s news is generally even-handed and not as entertainment-driven as most broadcast media have become. I like the interviews, like hearing music I might otherwise never hear, and like the sound of it from afar — a reassuring background noise.
That said, NPR recently has become a Clinton lovefest. Yes, I’m biased in favor of Barack Obama and therefore sensitive to even a change in an anchor’s tone of voice when discussing the Democratic candidates.
Two weeks ago I emailed NPR to complain about Cokie Roberts‘ report on Obama’s so-called “bitter” comment. She said he was “disparaging” voters. I contend he wasn’t. All I got back were an automated response that my email was received and several days later a perfunctory form letter than didn’t address my specific complaint.
But this morning I wanted to throw the radio in the garbage. Read More
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For a few weeks, we watched the dozen green tulip buds grow taller and fatten. They cloaked themselves in a hint of red. I planted them three years ago in a small corner garden at the intersection where we live in Northeast Portland.
The tulips were on the verge of opening, an event we and the many people who stroll past every day anticipate. Then nine of them were gone, snipped overnight. And it’s not the first time they’ve been abducted. Nor is it the first plant theft from our yard. Two years ago I planted a variegated Jacob’s ladder next to our front steps. A few days later I noticed an empty hole.
I had to do something about the tulips, take some action in a futile, maddening situation, something beyond bitching and moaning. So I typed a letter to the thief, printed it out, and had it laminated. But by the time I got around to erecting it over the clipped stumps, an adjacent batch of orange and gold tulips bloomed. I realized the sign wouldn’t make sense next to a glorious display of spring. So I’ll save it for next year and the inevitable return of greed. But here’s what I wrote: Read More
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