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POPSMajor Malik Nadal Hasan.......But First A “Shout Out” to Obama’s Bud No reason I can’t go golfing, shoot some hoops, and hit the town with Michelle. President Bush used to break into tears when addressing soldiers and was reviled as a stone-hearted warmonger; Donald Rumsfeld was demonized for using a machine to sign notification letters to fallen soldiers’s next-of-kin. President Obama gives out rounds of virtual fist-bumps to his buds before even mentioning a slaughter of American soldiers, perpetrated by Americans, in mid-America. We desperately need an adult in the White House. Sadly, today’s press conference proves we do not have one. (Incidentally, the shooter " who killed 12 people with two handguns " is reportedly an adherent of the Religion of Peace who was incensed about being sent to war.)
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POPSStephen Wiltshire: Living Camera This challenges just about every glib generalization about the mind, except that it is capable of unimaginable and wondrous things. Thank you Judythe for sending me this!
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POPSLess Novelty, More Useful Apps I see the iPhone commercials where they primarily plug their app store...and it makes me want to buy one. No kidding apps should be useful. But I'm not being too glib. After all, people use to buy Atari's to play Pong.
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POPSWebhosting : My nightmare with Gigenet My problems started the past sunday, when one of our techs tried to upgrade Glib in one server, that caused the server to crash and started to give error all over, since we were unable to do anything through SSH,
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POPSOut Of The Closet And Into The Pews Hate the sin, love the sinner? Or is it really hate the sin and maybe even harass the sinner? This is real anti-gay prejudice and it causes suffering. I say anyone who casts someone out of the church for simply being the person God made them is effectively standing between them and God and it is wrong.
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POPSAmerica's favorite bogeyman We all need a good enemy. As U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates once shrewdly pointed out, the talk of a new Cold War fills him “with nostalgia for a less complex time.” Indeed, the world made a glib sort of sense back then — communism vs. capitalism, good vs. evil empire.
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POPSCarbon Copy Pro Mike Dillard has made quite a "splash" recently in the network marketing world. Many a network marketer has had an inbox filled with videos of Mike touting his expertise in "attraction" marketing.He has intrigued many of us with his cutting edge style of Magnetic Sponsoring.
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POPSObama's choice of Warren "tone-deaf" and "on the wrong side of history" More: By the historical standards of presidential hubris, Obama’s disingenuous defense of his tone-deaf invitation to Warren is nonetheless a relatively tiny infraction. It’s no Bay of Pigs. But it does add an asterisk to the joyous inaugural of our first black president. It’s bizarre that Obama, of all people, would allow himself to be on the wrong side of this history.
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POPSViva McCain Katie Couric asked each candidate recently what his favorite movie was. Obama gave an utterly conventional answer: "Oh, I think it would have to be The Godfather. One and two. Three not so much. Umm. So-so, but, but that--that saga--I love that movie." Lawrence of Arabia. Great film. One of my favorites--and then Casablanca. Who doesn't like Casablanca? Couric: I asked for one. Obama: I'm a movie guy. I can rattle off a bunch of movies. But that Casablanca, you know. That's Obama. He's glib, conventional, won't make a real choice, shows nothing about himself, and says nothing offputting and says nothing impressive.
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POPS With a Wink and a Smile by Mark Steyn But, on Debate Night, the official Obama website was still boasting that he would meet Ahmadinejad “without preconditions”. “My friend John McCain voted 422 times against tax cuts for the middle classes. Let me repeat that so the American people are clear on this. My friend John McCain voted 673 times against tax cuts for the middle classes.” The problem was that it all sounded drearily senatorial. When Regular Joe Six-Pack Bluecollar Biden tried to match her on the Main Street cred, it rang slightly wacky. “Look,” he said, “All you have to do is go down Union Street with me in Wilmington or go to Katie’s Restaurant or walk into Home Depot with me, where I spend a lot of time.” As for Katie’s Restaurant, ah, I’m sure it was grand but apparently it closed in 1990. In the Diner of the Mind, the refills are endless and Senator Joe is sitting shootin’ the breeze over a cuppa joe with a couple other regular joes on adjoining stools while Betty-Jo...
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POPSA Living Lie "Fabian socialist George Bernard Shaw included the working class among the "detestable" people who "have no right to live." He added: "I should despair if I did not know that they will all die presently, and that there is no need on earth why they should be replaced by people like themselves." "Similar statements on the left go back as far as Rousseau in the 18th century and come forward into our own times. "It is understandable that young people are so strongly attracted to Obama. Youth is another name for inexperience -- and experience is what is most needed when dealing with skillful and charismatic demagogues. "Those of us old enough to have seen the type again and again over the years can no longer find them exciting. Instead, they are as tedious as they are dangerous."
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POPSDemocracy Saves America's Reputation The great thing about America is not that we are a perfect country, but that we are always a redeemable one. We have a certain mercurial charm (not to mention idiosyncratic way of doing things) that somehow manages to bring us back from the brink. The world will never truly hate us, because we can and do change. And somehow, America has a knack for putting its best foot forward at just the right crucial moment. Roger Cohen, also, is a shining example of editorial journalism in an age of glib semi-literate rants. He takes in the whole world, and manages to make sense of it, noticing all the right details.
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POPSDemocrats Bristle At Clintons' Attacks More: In Washington, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), who endorsed Obama last week, castigated the former president for what he called his "glib cheap shots" at Obama, saying both sides should settle down but placing the blame predominantly on Clinton. "That's beneath the dignity of a former president," Leahy told reporters, adding: "He is not helping anyone, and certainly not helping the Democratic Party." That concern was also voiced by some neutral Democrats, who said that the former president's aggressive role, along with the couple's harsh approach recently, threatens to divide the party in the general election. there is concern that a Clinton victory could come at a cost -- particularly a loss of black voters, who could blame her for Obama's defeat and stay home in November
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POPSTruly Understanding Martin Luther King Jr. I love Sarah Vowell. Not because I'm an NPR nerd. Not because I'm a history nerd. Not even because I'm an assasination nerd. I have been accused of such vile things! But I protest! I love her because I'm an Emma Goldman nerd, in all her obscure anarchistic and humanistic glory. Emma Goldman perfectly balanced being a political figure with still being a living-and-breathing, loving-and-losing human being. Something that many professional activists (as well as historians) lose track of. I think Sarah Vowell introduces just enough levity to bring the force of irrefutable humanity (and its resultant moderation) to a field badly needing in perspective. Although she could take glib pot shots at the Christian right like Marueen Dowd, she has enough class instead to put it all in perspective and remind us that people who are different aren't necessarily deviant. She actually appears to have listened to what Dr. King says.
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POPSA Positive Political Process Frank Rich, in an op-ed I don't feel like clipping (too glib), declared the GOP Platform to be Dead on Arrival. I beg to differ. Although McCain had a dark period of pandering, he seems to be back to saying what he thinks, and playing clean. He's the Boy Scout of Electoral Politics, and he's got my respect. (Not something I give out often to candidates.) But the really interesting thing is that Huckabee, who was always a nice guy, seems to have become more insightful and philosophical as the campaign goes on. His observations on political process I thought were exactly what America should be. We'll put him on my "provisional respect" list. Although his last bizarre bit about the Confederate flag will probably cost him the Hootie and the Blowfish vote, I'd bet they were already going to vote for Hillary anyway. Now if only the losers like Thompson and Giuliani will take a hint: sharpen up, start thinking, or drop out.
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POPSHoly Nonsense - Romney's worthless speech. Romney drones on about a barely relevant moment of emotion in 1774 and comes up with the glib slogan that "freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom." Any fool can think of an example where freedom exists without religion—and even more easily of an instance where religion exists without (or in negation of) freedom.
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POPSWhy Atheists are So Smart Thus when Christopher Hitchens and other atheists routinely dismiss religious claims on the grounds that "what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence," they are making what philosophers like to call a category mistake. We learn from Kant that within the domain of experience, human reason is sovereign, but it is in no way unreasonable to believe things on faith that simply cannot be adjudicated by reason. When atheists summarily dismiss the immortality of the soul or the afterlife on the grounds that they have never found any empirical proofs for either, they are asking for experiential evidence in a domain which is entirely beyond the reach of experience. In this domain, Kant argues, the absence of evidence cannot be used as the evidence for absence. Notice that Kant's argument is entirely secular: It does not employ any religious vocabulary, nor does it rely on any kind of faith.
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POPSPinker Thinks Some Stuff Pinker, if you asked me, is an intellectual mediocrity of the first order--in other words of the worst kind. He's good looking, popular, glib, and not really capable of understanding the big topics he likes to write about. One day he'll go out of fashion I suppose, but I probably won't be around to enjoy vindication. Oh well.
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