When There Is Nothing Left To Eat…
Posted on September 28, 2011 in Images
We In Bed-Stuy
Posted on September 28, 2011 in Videos
Gotta Have It by Jay-Z and Kanye West off of Watch The Throne.
Unraveling Rick Perry
Posted on September 27, 2011 in Articles
In twenty-seven years, Rick Perry has never lost an election.
His opponents have described him as lucky, but Perry makes his own luck. He campaigns relentlessly, surrounds himself with exceptional talent, and he keeps his mouth shut. He is the perfect candidate.
Perry the man is likable and loyal. His posse is composed of his betters: men and women of privilege who admire his moxie and inexhaustible sense of humor. Many of them were once his foes and Perry’s ability to charm and disarm his enemies makes him one of the most successful politicians in America today. Kinky Friedman wants his ashes scattered in the Governor’s good hair when he dies.
He may not be popular — recent polls in Texas show Governor Perry losing to Obama or barely beating him, and most of the GOP kingmakers have rallied to revile him — but he is incredibly effective. Karl Rove, the architect of Perry’s swing to the right in 1990, has demonstrated a very odd tone-deafness by aligning himself with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie over his former Prince Charming, despite the fact that Christie has said he will not run.
Rove’s miscalculation is the same one that his enemies on the left make when it comes to Perry: they look at him and see a rube. It’s an easy mistake to make, as Perry has inadvertently cultivated an aura of shallow and callow. He blew up a toilet in his dorm at Texas A&M with an M-80. He plays with his balls in public so much that he earned the nickname “the Crotch”. He was a cheerleader. But everyone who bought the narrative of Perry as a lightweight has finished with their ass in their hands and a mountain of campaign debt. And they usually end up in his corner explaining to everybody else why Rick Perry is the last great hope for a strong America.
This is not to say that Perry is deep, he just doesn’t have the time to waste thinking things through. He has a brain trust that he trusts, and once they deliver an opinion, he usually runs with it. However, he can and will swim against the current, both within his trusted circles and the Republican norm. As Governor of Texas, he issued an executive order in February 2011 mandating that teenage girls in Texas receive the HPV vaccine. He was close to a woman dying of cervical cancer, Heather Burcham, who had been a nanny to a Houston area developer and longtime Perry supporter, Craig Wilson. As she neared the end of her life, she convinced the Governor that he had a role to play in preventing the deaths of thousands of women by mandating one of the biggest state-wide public health efforts since the Spanish Flu outbreak of 1918.
The Bad News On The Egyptian Revolution
Posted on September 26, 2011 in Articles
The Article: Has Egypt’s revolution become a military coup? by Jon Jensen at the Global Post.
The Text: Egypt’s army, which continues to cement — and flaunt — its grip on power, appears to have hijacked the revolution.
Just days after the departure of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak on Feb. 11, the nation’s new, self-appointed military leaders pledged, within six months, a swift transition to civilian rule.
Crowds of the same protesters that demanded Mubarak’s ouster cheered as their army said it would steer the nation toward a “free, democratic system.” Seven months later, however, many Egyptians are finding that little has changed.
As the so-called Supreme Council of the Armed Forces increasingly cements, and in some cases flaunts, its firm grip on power, the revolution that inspired a region is beginning to look more like an old-fashioned military coup.
Military trials of Egyptian civilians persist and the military leadership has expanded and extended the 30-year-old, widely criticized Emergency Law once used by Mubarak to justify his authoritarian tactics.
Egypt’s police chief even announced this month that security would use live ammunition on protesters thought to be illegally entering certain government buildings.
