Open Letter to Chuck Todd

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Friday March 12, 2010 · 10:05 AM PST

2010/03/12 · 10:05

To Chuck Todd: On the one hand, it is interesting to watch your expertise narrating political races. On the other hand, it’s sad to see your dubious judgment in certain cases.

Item: When you substituted for Chris Matthews on "Hardball" yesterday (2010-03-11), you chose to ignore a critical and historic debate in the House about ending the US invasion of Afghanistan. (Except for Patrick Kennedy's comments.)

Item: Instead, you chose to ridicule Patrick Kennedy, in the comic "Sideshow" part of the program. You did not even mention what the debate was about, nor important remarks by the likes of Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul.

[Cont. below.]

esperanto41

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Thursday July 23, 2009 · 9:18 AM PDT

2009/07/23 · 09:18

A current TV commercial for Mercedes Benz ("Trip
to the Museum") shows it speeding (yeehaw!), then
crashing through a museum window in an orgasmic
shower of glass, with a 180-degree skid finale.
Hoo-ha! As well, there are recent news reports
about YouTubing pranksters who pretend to be hotel
personnel, telephoning sleepy guests to give them
false alarms about gas leaks, urging them to smash
their room windows. Har har.

Social psychology is one of my blind spots, but I
think there is something about breaking glass that
seems to excite baser instincts and prurient
enjoyment. For many years in the past, no western
movie seemed complete without a bar-room brawl and
broken glass everywhere. More recently, action
movies revel in any number of glass-smashing
stunts, with protagonists diving through
skylights, windows, or whatnot.

Real life is another story. I have long thought
that broken glass itself is one of the great
unsung forms of litter and pollution.

---more below--

esperanto41

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Wednesday June 17, 2009 · 7:48 PM PDT

2009/06/17 · 19:48

That is the subtitle of an interlinked set of 17 profusely illustrated web pages dissecting Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion map. I contrast it with the octahedral projection of B.J.S. Cahill (1866-1944), published in 1909, and developed over a thirty year period. The full set is at my "B.J.S. Cahill Resource Page" http://www.genekeyes.com/...
In this diary I will quote from its conclusion:
• Even in the 21st century, the prevailing world view is still corrupted by Mercatoritis: for instance, all Google Maps.

• A century ago, in 1909, B.J.S. Cahill was among the first to denounce the mis-use of the Mercator in education and all non-maritime venues.
More after the jump.

esperanto41

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Monday September 15, 2008 · 8:28 AM PDT

2008/09/15 · 08:28

Now that Lehman and Merrill Lynch have toppled, I'm recycling a diary of mine from last January, quoting some prominent economic cassandras, to see how close they were. Gerald Celente hit it pretty well, but four months too soon (forecasting pre-June rather than September), perhaps not considering the Wile E. Coyote double-take hiatus.

Tue Jan 22, 2008 at 06:30:39 PM PDT

These are just a few quotes without comment, of some very dire economic forecasts that bunched up in the past few days (except for this first one, from a month ago). I'm not vouching for them; merely noting their similar direness, and stroking my chin in a "could-be" sort of way.

esperanto41

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Thursday May 08, 2008 · 5:20 PM PDT

2008/05/08 · 17:20

Assuming that an Obama-Clinton ticket is a good thing, but that
neither candidate would want to hold their nose and pop the question:
let the Convention decide. Throw it open to the delegates. This is
what Adlai Stevenson did in 1956. He and Estes Kefauver had fiercely
contested for the presidential nomination; but once Adlai had it, he
gave the VP decision to the convention. At that point, Kefauver and
John F. Kennedy scrambled for delegate votes, and Kefauver won in a
squeaker. Doing likewise in 2008 would have the advantage of:

1) Creating an O-C ticket by popular demand, rather than Obama himself
having to choose Clinton and her baggage, good and bad;

2) Adding more interest and suspense to a convention, in lieu of the
coronations they have long since become;

3) Cementing the reunification of the Democratic Party's two main
factions & genders by will of the delegates;

4) Restoring a patina of democracy to the vice-presidency, rather than
Putinesque prize which it has been most of the time.

Below the fold, I'll recycle some thoughts on VP contests from my
diary of last June.
Read More

Obama's Afghanistan War

esperanto41

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Tuesday February 26, 2008 · 8:10 AM PST

2008/02/26 · 08:10

I support Obama (and voted for him in the recent Democrats Abroad
primary); but one thing I'm worried about is Obama's willingness to
migrate the Iraq war to Afghanistan.

Here in Canada we're more familiar with it because the Canadian Forces
have been doing a lot of the heavy lifting in the combat-plagued
south, and Parliament is about to extend Canadian participation till
2011.

>>more below

esperanto41

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Tuesday January 22, 2008 · 6:30 PM PST

2008/01/22 · 18:30

2007-12-21
Gerald Celente, Editor and Publisher, The Trends Journal, Rhinebeck, New York: (Interviewed by Linda Moulton Howe, Earthfiles.com.)

"Economic 9/11, we believe is going to hit the United States in 2008. And just as the World Trade Centers toppled from the top down, we're going to see the crash happen from the top down as well. This talk about the sub-prime market. Yes, that's a problem, but nothing compared to when the big firms start failing, when banks go bust, brokerages go out of business. In 2008, we're going to see some major, giant firms fall and get hit by an economic 9/11. We don't know what the fuse will look like, but we know that the bomb is set already. And when it's lit, we believe it's going to happen before June of 2008."

http://www.earthfiles.com/...

Three more quotes below. Read More

Kucinich barred from Iowa debate: stench of Putinism

esperanto41

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Wednesday December 12, 2007 · 11:02 PM PST

2007/12/12 · 23:02

When I heard Kucinich was to be barred from the Iowa debate, I sent this letter to the editor of the Des Moines Register:

2007-12-13
Des Moines Register
To the Editor:
What a flagrant abuse of power you have shown by banning Dennis
Kucinich from the debate. At minimum you owe the public and Mr.
Kucinich an apology, as well as at least one free full page ad from him.
Sincerely,
Gene Keyes
55 Douglas Ave.
Berwick, Nova Scotia, Canada [US citizen and Illinois voter]
*

---> more Read More

Mercy Force: Notes on an International Rescue Command

esperanto41

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Thursday August 16, 2007 · 9:09 AM PDT

2007/08/16 · 09:09

[Update note, 2007-08-16: The idea of an International Rescue Command, or "Mercy Force", is ever more worth considering. This article appeared 15 years ago*; in recent times we've had the Asian Tsunami, Pakistan earthquake, Katrina, and currently Darfur, floods in North Korea, India, Bangladesh,--the list goes on--all of whose rescue actions have been likewise admirable, but ad hoc and insufficient.]

Why should international rescue action be merely a goodwill by-product of military capability?

We need a military alliance against mass disaster. It would field a world-scale Rescue Command, in constant readiness for world-class catastrophes: famines, floods, and earthquakes; artificial, natural, and nuclear calamities. Call it a Mercy Force.

esperanto41

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Saturday December 16, 2006 · 12:25 PM PST

2006/12/16 · 12:25

Yesterday I wrote about my free online reprint of Dr. Esperanto's International Language, the 1887 pamphlet which originally proposed Esperanto. Because December 15 is Esperanto Day, the birthday of its creator, L.L. Zamenhof, many bloggers friendly to the idea had agreed to mention his International Language. (See listing at esperanto-usa.org/.) One such blog was by Don Harlow and deserves to be quoted here for its evocation of Zamenhof's background. Excerpt:

Zamenhof, the inventor of Esperanto, is often described as "a polish oculist". During most of his life he was, in fact, a Russian-Jewish ophthalmologist. But the inventor of Esperanto, when we date the language in his life span, was neither an oculist nor an ophthalmologist; he was a teen-age boy. Raised in an environment of extreme multiethnicism, in which language was perhaps the most obvious trait that distinguished group from group, he very early decided that a common language would contribute to a more peaceful world. When you live in an environment where pogroms are an annual affair, a more peaceful world is something to be desired.

All of it below: Read More

Esperanto in 1887 and 2006

esperanto41

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Friday December 15, 2006 · 7:37 AM PST

2006/12/15 · 07:37

Esperanto--the easy-to-learn international second language for every country--is alive and well around the world and throughout the Internet. I have just published an HTML version of the original 1887 [English] pamphlet, "Dr. Esperanto's International Language", free on my website, http://www.genekeyes.com with a new preface (excerpted below).

When I first wrote it for a print version on September 9, 2000, Esperanto in Google yielded more than one million results. Now on December 15, 2006, Googling Esperanto gets over 30 million. (Google itself has an Esperanto interface.) The Esperanto version of Wikipedia, begun in November 2001, already has over 61,000 articles, ranking #15 among Wikipedia's 250 language-versions. At www.esperanto.net, Esperanto is introduced in any of 62 languages.

And here is the booklet where it all began. In July 1887, Esperanto made its debut as a 40-page pamphlet from Warsaw, published in Russian, Polish, French and German versions: all written by a Polish eye-doctor under the pen-name of Dr. Esperanto ("one who hopes"). [continued below] Read More

CT-Dem sees "Coming Political Breakthrough" for 1960

esperanto41

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Friday August 18, 2006 · 9:43 PM PDT

2006/08/18 · 21:43

Chester Bowles (1901-1986) was a prominent Democratic
liberal. Connecticut Governor and later Congressman, plus
Ambassador to India for both Truman and Kennedy. His 1959
book, The Coming Political Breakthrough, heralded a
liberal-Democratic victory in 1960, and it was Bowles who
engineered a remarkably liberal Democratic platform at the
1960 Convention.*

The book itself is a period piece of conventional-wisdom
cold-war liberalism; but there is one passage in it which
has always stood out in my mind: his description of
prophecy: Read More

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Open Letter to Chuck Todd

The Pornography of Broken Glass

I Love Bucky, but Cahill's Map is a Lot Better

Economic Doomsayers [revisited]

How to have an Obama-Clinton ticket, democratically

Obama's Afghanistan War

Economic doomsayers

Kucinich barred from Iowa debate: stench of Putinism

Mercy Force: Notes on an International Rescue Command

More about origins of Esperanto

Esperanto in 1887 and 2006

CT-Dem sees "Coming Political Breakthrough" for 1960