Recently by Voice

Thanks to Shortstuff for the inspiration! Unlike many of the talking heads who now appear on various "news" shows, Edward R. Murrow was a journalist with integrity who not only fought for free speech, but for TRUTH in journalism as well. He once said at the RTNDA Convention in Chicago in 1958 to a group of fellow journalists: "It is not necessary to remind you that the fact that your voice is amplified to...

... written in 1949 by Rogers and Hammerstein"South Pacific received scrutiny for its commentary regarding relationships between different races and ethnic groups. In particular, 'You've Got to Be Carefully Taught' was subject to widespread criticism, judged by some to be too controversial or downright inappropriate for the musical stage. Sung by the character Lieutenant Cable, the song is preceded by a lyric saying racism is "not born in you! It happens after you're born...' " You've...

I had a unique opportunity to observe a fascinating process that perfectly illustrates why we're where we are as a nation. I attended an American Idol open call audition in another city this year as an observer. For those who aren't familiar with what their audition process is, I'll share some info. We arrived very early in the morning the day before the open call with our photo ID and proof of citizenship in...

So Bill O'Reilly finds Jennifer Aniston's comments about women having choices about sperm donors and being single mothers offensive. As we say in the south, "how nice" that he has an opinion. Every man should NOT have the right to be a father. There are some men who don't DESERVE to be fathers because they couldn't fulfill an emotional or fiduciary responsibility if their lives depended on it. (There are also some women who...

What a concept.This man should run for higher office. He actually remembers who he was "hired" to represent.(Thank you, SereneOrange for sharing!)...

I am a racist. I admit it. I can't stand so many of these old(er) white men who sit on their asses collecting a paycheck they don't deserve while people under them with no power or authority, but a heckuva lot of responsibility for P&L, lose their jobs as a direct result of what the old(er) white man did or didn't do.I can't stand the fact that in Corporate America, it can be a...

I read something disturbing in the paper a couple of days ago: "The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work." As if we didn't already know that the...

I received the following in an email from my dear friends at the Arthritis Foundation this week. Lest anyone who works for a not-for-profit should EVER feel like what they do is less important than being a "captain of industry", read on:Back in May, I received a phone call from a parent in Georgetown. His 15-year-old daughter had attempted suicide for the second time because of the pain from Juvenile Arthritis, the medications and not...

Newton's First Law states: An object's inertia causes it to continue moving the way it is moving unless it is acted upon by an unbalanced force to change its motion. In the simplest of terms, this means an object (like a passive-aggressive GOP body politik) will always continue moving at its current speed (slowly or not at all as the party of "no"), and in its current direction (down into the muck) until some...

At this point in our weekend forecast, even the waterfowl have to be saying ENOUGH with all the rain we've had for the past several days, and it's supposed to continue!If you were lucky enough to be able to leave work early yesterday for the start of the holiday weekend, you probably experienced the flash flooding and poor visibility in various parts of the city. You may have driven by the bayous and seen for...

You've heard about it before: The Peter Principle, aka "fuck up and move up" in Corporate America. (Come on, you know you've said it.) There are some immediate examples that may come to mind for you, or perhaps not, depending on your level of consciousness, and age. Nowhere are the examples more prevalent than in politics. Michael Brown, Former FEMA director - "Heckuva job, Brownie" - lost his job in September 2005 after his...

You've heard about the meeting that will take place today between Gen. McChrystal and President Obama, but what you may not have heard about is the conspiracy behind the General's remarks that lead up to this meeting.1. Al-Qaeda had this planned all along as part of a fatwa that was issued during the first Gulf war, and then restated when the war in Iraq began. Anything to discredit an American president, and make the military...

Chillax, as my boys say. This is only tangentially about quantum physics. Time really is relative. When you are the general public waiting on someone in a position to act during a catastrophe -- like the BP oil spill - time and the parties involved seem to move like frozen molasses. When you are a parent, an entire year, or decade, or lifetime can go by at Gaussian blur speed. When you work for...

I'm addicted to a show on the Discovery Channel called Deadliest Catch and hadn't thought about why until I was explaining my fascination to friends. This program is as far away from my reality as anything could be, or so I thought. It centers around the crab fishing industry on the Bering Sea and the men who risk their lives every season in what is thought to be the deadliest occupation in the world. As I...

The boys and I spent yesterday at a waterpark in celebration of my youngest's 12th birthday. We were there for a number of hours so I had a chance to do some serious people-watching, one of my favorite things. We've been exposed to the Hollywood and media standards of beauty and so-called health -- rail thin, flawless skin and makeup, perfectly symmetrical and artificially perky C-cups (or larger), spray tans, liposuction-sculpted torsos, over-processed hair with lots...

There has been much opinion vomited back on various "news" programs about what the INSURANCE reform bill really means to us. Misinformation has run rampant--from those who say that 65-year-olds will be given "death pills" so they will no longer burden the system to how it will completely drive small businesses out of business with "forced" policies. Smarter people than I have really looked into what this bill represents, and here's what it comes...

My oldest son shared a link to a YouTube video with me last recently. He found it amusing and posted it on my Facebook page. As it turns out, it wasn't a unique video. As I watched it, it became apparent that videos like it are all-too-prevalent on the web and in the media. It had to do with a Teabagger event which shall remain unpublicized in my writing. It was an 11-minute video,...

I heard John McCain speak this morning on the news about the "sleazy, back door politics" of the Dems that are ramming this horrible healthcare bill through and how the American people don't want it.Hmm... sleazy. What does that make me think of ...Ehrlichman: "Edgar Kaiser is running his Permanente deal for profit. And the reason that he can ... the reason he can do it ... I had Edgar Kaiser come in ... talk...

This appeared on CNN's Crossfire in 2004. Not much seems to have changed. We're still grossly partisan as a nation (or at least the politicians are), and the media are still hacks."I'm not your monkey" ... Jon Stewart, I love you.As you know, CNN cancelled Crossfire in January of 2005 -- more info in an interesting follow-up piece here: http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2005/01/4509.ars" ... most major media outlets, have a long way to go before the thinking public truly respects...

I heard something on NPR this morning that irked me, to say the least.Since PBO took office over a year ago, there are still some 200 or so positions that are to be filled by his appointments. He has named people to these positions--don't misunderstand--but apparently there seems to be a little problem in getting the various Director-level folks into these positions. The little problem is ... partisan politics on the part of the Republicans.Positions...