Jim Rittenhouse's semidaily journal of news, commentary and reports
Is the controversy over building a mosque near ground zero a grand distraction or a grand opportunity? Or is it, once again, grandiose demagoguery? It has been said, “Nero fiddled while Rome burned.” Are we not overly preoccupied with this controversy, now being used in various ways by grandstanding politicians? It looks to me like [...]
“When we think of Islam we think of a faith that brings comfort to a billion people around the world. Billions of people find comfort and solace and peace. And that’s made brothers and sisters out of every race — out of every race. America counts millions of Muslims amongst our citizens, and Muslims make [...]
If I’ve been quiet again, it’s because my main PC in my office downstairs (where I’m exiled to pending the doc saying I can go up and down stairs again) has been zapped by a nasty virus. It got past my Trend Micro antivirus, and started disconnecting various things on my PC (including the virus [...]
The latest on all of the medical stuff is that I haven’t healed enough on the bottom of my foot for the Doc to be able to let me really walk on it again, so he has basically told me that I will be off my feet until my next visit with him next Monday [...]
See http://www.epa.gov/bpspill/ I know that the Administrator was down these in the last couple of days, and that there’s a huge gearing up on this issue.
I’ve been asked to speak at a Wright State University forum; their Honors Institute is having a symposium on Chinese-American relations called “Connecting With China”, and I’m to talk on “Exploring Issues in Cross-Cultural Adoptions” from 2-4 pm, February 17th. The event is free to the public, but you have to register in advance to [...]
The local Sioux Falls paper notes that the voting percentage in the most recent school board election was 3.55% in an editorial asking for voting to be made easier by eliminating precinct voting in favor of at-large polling places scattered around the city. Personally, I think that’s more likely to confuse the heck out of [...]
My favorite conservative columnist, Daniel Larison, is hitting it on the head and out of the ballpark this morning about the mindless OMG’ing in the Beltway press and elsewhere about political dishonesty on national security issues. He brings up two main directions on this: if Group A is out of office, then Group B (who [...]
As some of you may have sussed out, since November of 2007, I’ve been working 99% of the time out of my basement office…with a huge long line of doctor’s excuses, bases on either my non-healing foot wound, or my weak response to infections casing raging problems on and off. The office finally said that [...]
…is only indicative of local situations, really – with two caveats. If you run a crappy candidate and a nasty, dumb campaign, don’t be surprised when you lose. If you spend a lot of money and should have won or just barely won, that says more about your campaign and your candidate than anything else. [...]
Child stealing and smuggling rings in China, including a bust in the twins’ home town. Shanghai Daily _ 上海日报 — En.. (PDF. 28 k – pdf’d version of story)
Discussion about a bailout bill for newspapers if they reorganize as 501c3 not-for-profits; the President had this to say about it: Obama said that good journalism is “critical to the health of our democracy,” but expressed concern toward growing tends in reporting — especially on political blogs, from which a groundswell of support for his [...]
Back home last night; feeling logy and icky today and sleeping most of the day. Meredith seems to be getting out from under the strep throat, Susan seems to be coming down with it, and Connie’s leaving today for out of town till Saturday or so (long-expected absence, but a horrible time for it). I [...]
(taken from the teabagger protest in DC this weekend) Lesson #1: Anyone who is not a Republican is not a Marxist. Really. Lesson #2: The last Czar in Russia gave up the throne in 1917, and the Russian Communists took over Russia in 1918; I don’t think you understand that there were no Czars in [...]
I have been listening to enough rants, hate and nonsense in the last year and a half to last me a lifetime or more, and I’ve been more than fed up with it all. But I started realizing that this sort of crud is endemic; uninformed people who choke off their sources of information to [...]