ronbailey

Wave hello!

Rick Santorum didn’t actually win those primary votes Tuesday night - it’s just that the Newt/Mitt slugfest has gotten so brutally ugly that voters were turned-off. They didn’t have anywhere else to turn but Santorum. He got the most votes, but he didn’t really earn them.

Gingrich has gone scorched-earth. He’s in the race not to win, but rather to make sure that Romney can’t win. And Tuesday night, it worked.

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/08/g-o-p-race-has-hallmarks-of-prolonged-battle/?hp

aimee-b-loved:

Kanye West seems like the kind of guy who locks himself in his bedroom whenever someone makes an interrupting cow joke. It’s gotten to the point where he avoids knock-knock jokes all together.

Aimee has been on fire today.

Wednesday Gratuitousness 

This shot is weirdly off-balance, but I sort of like the energy anyway. 

I think they might have a valid argument when you speak of actual church employees - the rabbis, priests, deacons, secretaries, cleaning staff, etc. who work inside of the church itself. Those individuals have made a choice to work for a religious organization, and may well be expected to adhere to church dogma. 

As I understand it, most major religions stress the idea that believers should be IN the world, but not OF the world. When you are of the world, you may have to sacrifice things that your belief system would normally hold to be important. 

mrsbadcrumble:

mrsbadcrumble:

how many people would be vigorously nodding their heads in agreement if the government declared that all Jewish institutions/schools had to serve pork and would say it’s not a big deal because “a lot of them eat pork anyway.”

We need to disentangle insurance from employment….

1. No one is forced to work for or attend a religious school or organization.

2. Birth control isn’t a medical necessity (in the cases where it is, it is covered.

3. Birth control isn’t outrageously expensive.

I’m a woman. I’ve used birth control. That’s not the real issue. We need to think about how this first step could be exploited.
The point is, it’s a very slippery slope. Church should stay out of State and State should stay out of Church.

Except that when a church steps into the public arena and opens, say for a example, a hospital, then they are no longer acting as a church - they are acting as a hospital, as an employer, and at that point they are required to play by the exact same rules as every other employer. If for some reason they cannot play by those rules, then they should face the same consequences as any other employer.

We live in a secular democracy. Theocracy doesn’t get to influence public policy, and it isn’t entitled to any special exemptions. 

Wait. THIS is what all the cool kids are doing today. I had it all wrong before.

Pat Benatar - Shadows of the Night

Concrete Blonde - Joey

So I guess this is what all the cool kids are doing today, right?

My very own take on “Amazed Obama”. Feel free to use as needed.

Market Square

Shay and Kris

• Somebody mentioned something the other day about how all of us - from the tiniest tree frog to the bluest Blue Whale - will all experience roughly the same number of heartbeats over the course of our lifetime. We’ve all been gifted with a finite stack of muscular contractions to get us through to our last day, and though some us use ‘em faster than others, we are all forced to live inside a budget. I’m just beginning to get to a place in life where I can actually see the bottom of my stack as a tangible reality, instead of just some worrysome abstraction.

• Some people have the ability to make my heart race with just a text message or phone call. I don’t mind spending the extra heartbeats when that happens - in fact, I live for it, and I so wish it happened more often.

• I was leaning back on a barstool the other day, and I almost went over too far while discussing politics with the bouncer. I think I spent a whole day’s worth of beats in that one split second before I was able to catch myself. 

• I’m generous with my heartbeats. I fall in love a dozen times a day, easy. No lie. 

• I think if you love enough people, and you do it with enough ferocity and devotion, you might just be able to trade heartbeats back and forth. I could be wrong about that, though.

Roxy Music - More Than This

Tell me one thing.

Elmwood Park at lunch time.

fuiru:

Everyone within earshot goes ‘uh huh’, laughs into their sleeve

It took exactly three seconds for a “Nobody would line up for Samsung stuff, anyway” tweet to hit my timeline last night.

See that “Cafe” sign? That’s Thelma’s Chicken and Waffles. I’d take you there for our first lunch date, except that I’m afraid you might get the wrong idea and never leave.

impressionsofanexpat:

http://impressionsofanexpat.blogspot.com/2012/02/papinei-doch.html

A fat little lady breathes very loud. Her nose a long hook, her sweater ill-fit she stares at our documents, flipping the edges of pages with a yellow fingernail. There are ones in English, photocopied and notarized translations, a forest of papers spread across her little desk. E is squeezed next to me. N is explaining things, shushing me when I try to interject. I am not helping. At one point the woman shrugs her shoulders and stalks off.

We are ushered into a large office, then sit at a long table. Two more women are there, their long blonde hair in elaborate upsweeps. Costume jewelry, brightly colored sweaters, ballpoint pens resting next to books with tiny notes on them they ask E questions like her birthday, or counting to ten. They ask her a subtraction question that she gets wrong, then right. I try to breathe. I stare at the blank yellow walls, smell the musty textbooks. (read more)