Jim Rittenhouse's semidaily journal of news, commentary and reports
Take a look at the gravestone to the right; that’s from one of my family members; translated from the German, it reads “Born in the year 1736: Heinrich Rittenhouse…” and trails off into the grass. Wikipedia’s entry on the Mennonite church / movement notes: Persecution and the search for employment forced Mennonites out of the [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
I am frequently dismayed by various Truthers out there who insist on a Grand Conspiracy theory of the universe; stories about how the moon landing was faked, the world is flat, that 9/11 was an inside job and how Obama is some kind of Manchurian candidate smuggled into the country as a very small baby [...]
While retrieving THE FIXER from one of my off-air VHS tapes, I ran across the real-life story that the movie/novel was based on – see the story of the Beilis Trial in late Tsarist Russia in Wikipedia. Wow.
Sometimes, you end up with a movie or book or story that you just get stuck on – as in, you’re at page 138, and the early part of the book is good, but the author has just gone off on a tear with some weird artsy material that passes all rational understanding, and you [...]
While the Democratic establishment is working on a plan to flush Burris out of his seat with a special election, Burris is countering with a threat to challenge it through the courts and hope that the Democratic poobahs give up. Also, Burris is inspiring various black Chicago notables to talk like Burris inherited the Senate [...]
Zimbabwe is a complex subject, and the complexities have gotten a whole lot rougher on the inhabitants as time passes by. Europeans under Cecil Rhodes marched in in the ned of the 1800s and took control of the land from the local chiefs, and passed out all sorts of claims to white settlers, who set [...]
Back when I was in high school, some of the kids thought I was half black, because of the curly hair. Which was interesting, because the dark and curly part came from my father, who was *not* very *ah* progressive in his feelings about black people. One of the things that struck me as the [...]
Here (Minnesota) and here (Pennsylvania) with a Keef cartoon about the latter.
I normally do *not* embed You Tube stuff in the journal, but I was so appalled by this…
Going back to my response posts, I want to stress that I never assume that anyone voting against Obama is a racist, or that Republicans are racists, or that either on the Republican ticket is a racist. I know better. I’ve lived with serious racists, had racism and sexism used against me and mine (you [...]
Bill Kristol on Fox News suggests that Bush give Musharraf asylum in the USA, then naturalize him, and have Obama pick him for VP. Har har. Moooo-slim. Daaaar-ky. Harharhar.
The interesting part of the last week, of course, was to watch McCain be seriously stupid in the face of Obama’s trip to the Middle East and Europe. The whole thing started off with McCain double-dast-daring that gormless Obama guy to be a real man and walk down a Baghdad street like he did, and [...]
After the last week of major screwups from McCain, including the whole “surge is when I say it is, ignore history business”, and things like accusing Obama of being responsible for the rise in gas prices and willing to ‘lose the Iraq war deliberately in order to win the 2008 election’, it looks as if [...]