Category: Random Shots

What a Tangled Tweet We Weave When First We Practice to Get Outraged
29-Nov-20 Education, Hubris, Meaningful Labor, Politics, Professionalism, Public Domain, Quotable, Random Shots, Rants, Society, Work

A "good job" according to whom? May I ask when exactly was the last time you were in an elementary school and sat through an entire school day with first graders? I ask because my mother makes this same argument frequently, yet has not been in an actual elementary school building since 1976. Her grandchildren were taught at home so she, therefore, has no experience either visiting a school or evaluating a public school education since 1976.

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Pocket Guide to France, or, Onward to Parisian Mademoiselles
06-Jun-19 Around the World, Books, France, Germany, Great Britain, History, Hope for the Future, Meaningful Labor, Memories, Quotable, Random Shots, Society, The Nation, United States

"You are a member of the best dressed, best fed, best equipped liberating Army now on earth. You are going in among the people of a former Ally of your country. They are still your kind of people who happen to speak democracy in a different language."

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Corporate Power
04-Jun-19 Around the World, Capitalism, Crime, Deutsche Welle, Germany, Greed, Grief, History, Hubris, Meaningful Labor, News Media, Politics, Public Domain, Quotable, Random Shots, Reciprocal Affection, Society, The Nation, Torture, Touchy Feely, United States

"Many states whose sovereignty is threatened are now finally waking up to the danger. But is it perhaps already too late to do anything about the seemingly over-mighty corporations?"

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The Wages of Sin, America, is …
03-Jun-19 Books, Crime, Education, Germany, Great Britain, History, Hubris, Meaningful Labor, Memories, Politics, Professionalism, Quotable, Quote, Racism, Random Shots, Rants, Society, The Nation, Torture, United States, White Supremacy

"It is impossible to engage in intellectual discourse with National Socialist Philosophy. For if there were such an entity, one would have to try by means of analysis and discussion either to prove its validity or to combat it. ..."

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Treading a Careful Path in Post-Castro Cuba
18-Jul-18 Around the World, Cuba, History, Hope for the Future, Meaningful Labor, Politics, Quotable, Random Shots

"There is a discrete left-opportunist trend that seeks to throw all developments in Cuba post-1959 into the dustbin and forget about it. This does as little for us as the right-opportunist line; both fail to grasp the full reality of revisionist corrosion and capitalist restoration in Cuba, although one cloaks itself in stultified theory."

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Deer Tracks
11-Apr-18 Hermitage, Random Shots

With the recent freeze/heat weather cycle, the Saddlebrooke Deer Herd are a little pressed for food, it appears. The… Posted by Steve Pollock on Wednesday,...

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Shuttling Between Failures
03-Jan-18 Airlines, Aviation Safety, Boston Globe, Braniff Flight 250, Braniff International Airlines, History, Hubris, Meaningful Labor, Memories, New York, New York City, Pan American World Airways, Politics, Professionalism, Random Shots, Society, The Nation, Travel, Trump Shuttle, United States, Washington Post

The story is sordid and long, but the details were made clear by Matt Viser's excellent Globe piece. To wit: Lorenzo sold the Donald the Eastern Shuttle for an overvalued $365 million (if DT had created a brand-new shuttle from the ground up with brand-new planes, not old worn-out 727s, estimates were that he could have done it for $300 million.) Of course, the money was all borrowed. It was 1989; Eastern (and Continental) were already almost dead from Lorenzo's sledgehammer and the economy was tanking. Pan Am 103 was bombed, the first Gulf War was about to begin. It was incredibly bad judgement to overpay a bunch of other peoples' money for something that was guaranteed to tank.

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They Don’t Like the New ‘America First’ As Much As They Did the Lindbergh Version
11-Dec-17 Deutsche Welle, Germany, History, Hubris, Meaningful Labor, Politics, Politics and Elections, Polls, Quotable, Quote, Random Shots, Rants, Society

So let's see if I've got this. Germany, a country in which there are still many women alive who were raped by invading Russian Red Army soldiers and in which the human products of those rapes are still living, now trust … Russia more than the United States.

By AirBeagle Read more