Thursday, April 29, 2010

TRANSCRIPT of President Obama's remarks in Quincy on Wednesday, via Lynn Sweet and the Chicago Sun-Times, with applause and audience comments included.

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Quoting:

The goal of every culture is to decay through overcivilization; the factors of decadence — luxury, skepticism, weariness, and superstition — are constant. The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next.

Cyril Connolly, (1903-1974)

Luxury, skepticism, weariness, superstition: Somehow, these words have a quite contemporary feel to them.

Addendum ...

YES, "imagine if the Tea Party was black" — you might start to get an understanding of the phrase, "white privilege."

Sunday, April 25, 2010

AN essay one cannot resist: Tom Wolfe on Mark Twain.

Addendum II...

DAVID Brooks offers a truly sensible analysis of the current state of American politics. We centrists are hurting amid the current "war."

Addendum ...

HAVE a page in this book, a project started by Gary Reef on the Ning site, Lovin Mixed Media:

Sunday, April 18, 2010

A Chinese-American right-wing ideologue once again sees the coming demise of China (in 2001, he predicted China's imminent collapse) — while a former Wall Street insider sees the U.S. and Chinese economies now "joined at the hip," thus creating "Chimerica." (Finished reading Zachary Karabell's "Superfusion" last week.)

For 4,000 years, the Chinese have had a way of confounding those who profess to understand them.