Icy Weather Raises Questions About Dallas Super Bowl Travel

The above is a screen cap from an article in today's CNN online. With a picture of the Cowboy Stadium. In Arlington. With snow on the stadium and snow on all the stuff that has been erected around the stadium for the Dallas Super Bowl.

I am not sure, but I think maybe some local umbrage might be expressed over the caption under the photo which says....

"Officials in Dallas, Texas, say the city will be ready to host the big game on Sunday."

I wonder when, or if, the big game takes place, if the talking head is going to say, "Live from Dallas, Texas, the 2011 Super Bowl."

Variations of this have already occurred at previous events in the new Dallas Cowboy Stadium. In Arlington.

I imagine the same type thing used to occur at the old Dallas Cowboy Stadium. In Irving.

Big difference is you could actually see the Dallas skyline from the stadium in Irving. And Irving actually borders Dallas. And is in Dallas County.

I have seen the Dallas skyline from the top of the Oil Derrick in Six Flags Over Texas. Six Flags is just a short distance east of the Dallas Cowboy Stadium. I don't think the new Dallas Cowboy Stadium has any vantage points high enough from which you can see Dallas.

Jerry Jones should build a Seattle Space Needle-like structure next to his new stadium. With a revolving restaurant and viewing level on top. A futuristic structure, like the Space Needle, would be a good match with that futuristic looking stadium. You could market the ride to the top with something like "Take the Ride to the Top of the Cowboy Needle Where You Can See the City the Team is Named After."

I'd not thought of it before, but Fort Worth actually does border the town in which the Dallas Cowboy Stadium sits. Dallas doesn't, Fort Worth does.

I think it had occurred to me before that the Dallas Cowboy Stadium is in Tarrant County, that being the county of which Fort Worth is the county seat. Dallas sits in Dallas County. But, the Dallas Cowboy Stadium does not sit in Dallas County.

And someone at CNN. And likely elsewhere, thinks Sunday's Super Bowl is going to be played in Dallas. Where the city is ready to host the game. In another town.

Olbermann Leaves MSNBC

In a surprising turn of events, tonight Keith Olbermann announced that this would be his last night hosting COUNTDOWN on MSNBC.

It wasn't a gag, or a publicity stunt. NBC News said on TWITTER that MSNBC has decided Olbermann's contract would not be renewed. Friends such as Luke Russert and Shannyn Moore immediately tweeted goodbyes and goodlucks to Olbermann.

Below, his short farewell and thank you to his audience.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Well...what's next?

It's just my opinion, but don't be surprised if Keith ends up on CNN. Their ratings are in the tank, their Parker/Spitzer is a disaster and is a poor lead in to the new Piers Morgan Show. The entire evening lineup needs a makeover, and fast.

I think after Olbermann's non-compete is completed he ends up at 8:00PM Eastern and Pacific on CNN.

One thing you can bank on...he's not in line to replace Regis.

Ignorance Is U.S.(A.)

Bill Maher has taken heat from some people by calling the United States a stupid nation. On Friday Bill took it one step further, likening Americans to dogs, with short attention spans and only wanting immediate rewards from their masters.

I think that's kind of extreme. Americans are basically good people, and most aren't idiots.....but being a nation of 300 million plus it's clear that we do have a large segment of the nation who will never be confused with MENSA members. I do think there is more ignorance in America than we'd like to admit. Ignorance is not stupidity; the word implies "a state of being uninformed (lack of knowledge)". Stupidity means a person is "lacking ordinary quickness and keenness of mind; (they are) dull".

Many pundits, social critics, and bloggers have pointed to the results of the 2012 midterm elections and asked "Is America that stupid?". They voted into office more of the same people who who advocate the same polices that drove the economy off a cliff in 2008, either believing in the song they are singing, or blissfully unaware of who and what they are voting for.

Yesterday Sue posted a entry called Europeans Are Flabbergasted, a look at what our friends across the pond are saying about the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives, and the "quality" of some of those swept into office. I'm sure every person looking at the results has a different take on why the Republicans made such great gains.....of course there are true GOP believers and those who have lost faith in Democrats to get the economy turned around (after less than two years of control of the Legislative and Executive branches of government).

But I think the underlying truth behind much of the GOP resurgence is that many Americans are gullible, and sadly ignorant about their country, their government, and their world. The Republican message machine exploited that fact.....and they seized a big chunk of power back from the Democrats last week.

Newsweek had a very revealing article recently called America the Ignorant; Dumb Things Americans Believe. These beliefs have little to do with political dogma, just facts that everyone should know.....and too many Americans don't. And you have to wonder "why?".

Consider some of the following.....about one fifth of the population and as many as 46% of Republicans believe President Obama is a Muslim. The first number came from a PEW poll, the second from TIME magazine.

A Gallup Poll said that only 39% of all Americans believe in evolution. The poll was taken February 11, 2009, the 100th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth. It also said 25% don't believe in evolution and 36% had no opinion, or weren't sure.

About three out of four of all Americans believe in some form of the paranormal. Forty-one percent believe in ESP, 32% believe in ghosts...and 21% of all Americans believe that witches exist. See, Christine O'Donnell should have never made that commercial to "refudiate" being a witch. The poll was conducted by Gallup.

A Harris Poll found that 4 in 10 Americans believed what Sarah Palin and others said about "Death Panels" to be formed by this year's heathcare legislation. The results appeared in an article in USA Today last August.

As late as 2007 four out of ten Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9/11 attacks in a Newsweek poll. More poll respondents knew Jordin Sparks won American Idol (18%) than who the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court was (John Roberts, 11%).

In a Gallup Poll from 1999, almost 20% of the respondents believed the sun revolved around the earth.

Only 53% of Americans are aware that Judaism is an older religion than Christianity or Islam, this according to a Newsweek poll in September, 2007. That same poll told us that 36% of Americans didn't know the Amazon River is in South America.

A Zogby poll from 2006 showed that three quarters of those polled could name two of The Seven Dwarfs and only 25% could name two Supreme Court Justices.

And the youth shall come forth to lead us.....a Roper Poll conducted by National Geographic among young people (ages 18-24) and released in 2006 told us the following..... six in ten could not locate Iraq on a map. Other findings- following Hurricane Katrina almost one-third couldn't locate Louisiana, and half couldn't find Mississippi. About half couldn't find New York State on a map, and almost 75% couldn't locate Israel. The same poll showed that 90% young people couldn't couldn't find Afghanistan on a map that was of Asia only.

Almost 75% of those asked in an August 2006 Zogby Poll could name Moe, Larry, and Curly as the Three Stooges but about 42% could name the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial as the three branches of the US Government.

I guess you can bottomline these poll results by saying too many people know too little about things they should know, and know too much about marginal stuff. And these people are among the electorate of the United States.

When new arrivals become naturalized citizens they first have to take a citizenship test. When they pass they take an oath of allegiance, and are they receive the same rights as native born citizens....and that's great.

But our native born citizens' education about their world, their nation, and their government seems to have fallen through the cracks. I'm not proposing a test for voting- that's what we had in the Jim Crow South to prevent African Americans from voting by making the test impossible to pass. We do need to start educating our citizens in the things we need to know before we give them a high school diploma and send them out into the world. We should make courses in civics, US History, and World History mandatory in every state, and in every school system.

But that won't happen, because if such a requirement were implemented the Right would call it just more of the boogieman called Big Government stepping on the rights of school systems, and private and charter schools, to educate children as they see fit. And so we'll probably have an alternate history where cavemen rode dinosaurs 5,000 years ago and of a universe created in seven days competing with science and natural history.

The Americans who can't find Louisiana or Israel on a map or name one Supreme Court Justice didn't get dumb by watching Fox News, however Murdoch's gang is a primary source of the "disinforming of America"- but they're not alone.

One of the most telling (and sad) things I have ever witnessed on a news channel was an episode of The Situation Room on CNN a few years ago. Wolf Blitzer had Bill Cosby on as a guest, and the topic was educating America's youth, and quelling the rising rate of high school dropouts in America's inner cities. Halfway through the discussion Blitzer cut Cosby off to go to breaking news from Los Angeles.....

Paris Hilton was surrendering to authorities in LA to begin serving her jail sentence.

The late Walter Cronkite said the purpose of news was to tell people what they need to know. What we see all to often are news organizations telling people what they want to know, even if it is not really news at all, only more heaping helpings of pop culture morsels.

More than twenty years ago in Joseph Campbell; The Power of Myth, Campbell, the great mythologist and teacher, lamented to host Bill Moyers that education of our young people had become more utilitarian and concerned with only making a living in the future. He looked at the classical eduction of the past- what was once called Liberal Arts- as being of intrinsic value because of the broadness and range it covered. Maybe we just educated our young more completely in those days, making them better, informed citizens.

And smarter voters.

Now....Where Were We? Olbermann's Return

Caricature above from THE NEW YORKER, June 2008

It only took a petition with 300,000 plus names attached demanding the reinstatement of Keith Olbermann by his bosses at MSNBC, but he did return on Tuesday night, first disclaiming that the suspension was a publicity stunt, and closed the show talking about the events, and offering both thanks and apologies where he saw fit.






One of the more interesting aspects of Olbermann Suspension Affair was the demand by many petitioners  that Keith's boss, Phil Griffin, be fired for suspending Olbermann because of his contributions to the campaigns of three Democratic candidates in last week's midterms. On further review, it should be said that Phil Griffin and Keith Olbermann go back a long, long way, nearly thirty years. Griffin and Olbermann first worked together at CNN in the early days of the first 24 hour news channel. Griffin, it seems, was an early supporter of Olbermann in those days, a producer who saw his talent when others had doubts about the young eccentric sportscaster turned newsman.

An interesting portrait of Olbermann and his relationship with Griffin, and others in the world of broadcast news, was published by The New Yorker on June 23, 2008. Titled One Angry Man; Is Keith Olbermann Changing TV News? the piece by Peter J. Boyer gives a warts and all look at Keith Olbermann and his brutal honesty that some might find over the top and even hurtful- co-worker at ESPN Suzy Kolber was said to have locked herself in the ladies room to cry on occasion after run ins with Olbermann.

Years later, Olbermann's brief tenure at Fox Sports was ended by none other than Rupert Murdoch himself. A few years ago Murdoch was heard to say "He's crazy", regarding Olbermann.

It's an interesting but lengthy read; and it's fairly objective. It won't change your opinion of "KO" if you're a friend or fan, but it will give you a clear portrait of a very complex guy, maybe even a slightly mad genius.

To progressives like me Keith Olbermann is one of the good guys fighting the good fight. Having said that, one can be one of the "good guys" without necessarily being a "nice guy" in the true sense of the word. And to be candid, after reading the New Yorker piece it's clear that KO has moments when he is not a nice guy. And in today's political climate that's not necessarily a bad thing.

For too long progressives whined after they were slapped around by the Righties. Olbermann punches back, and hard. And maybe that's why the Right detests.... and even fears him.....as much as they do.

Gov. Christie shouldn't cozy up to muckraker of 'Teachers Union Gone Wild' | NJ.com

In the Friday October 29th edition of the Star-Ledger (Newark, NJ), the editorial board chastised Governor Chris Christie for apparently choosing to ally himself with conservative muckraker James O'Keefe and, in the Star-Ledger's words, "(for co-opting) the questionable material for his political purposes".

The "questionable material" is a video called "Teachers Gone Wild" which supposedly shows less than extraordinary behavior by teachers (NJEA members), administrators, and union reps. For all of you newbies, Chris Christie and the NJEA, New Jersey's largest teacher's union, have been engaged in open warfare from Day One of the current administration.

Every taxpayer in New Jersey may have a beef with the NJEA; they might be the biggest lightning rod locally since Darryl Strawberry's days with the Mets or Patrick Ewing's near misses at titles with the Knicks. But for a sitting governor, and former federal prosecutor, to ally himself with O'Keefe's background is questionable in itself.

Conservatives and Tea Partiers love O'Keefe because of his videos that brought down ACORN last year. But then last January O'Keefe posed as a repairman to try to tap the office phone of Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu in a federal building, was caught along with his accomplices, and temporarily jailed with felony charges. The felony charges were dropped and reduced to a misdemeanor; O'Keefe was sentenced to three years probation, 100 hours of community service, and fined $1,500.

And then the James O'Keefe saga starts to get really weird.

CNN's investigative reporter Abbie Boudreau was putting together a series on young conservative activists in the United States. One of the persons Boudreau wanted to interview was James O'Keefe. O'Keefe agreed to a meeting with Boudreau aboard a boat in Maryland. Supposedly Boudreau and O'Keefe were to discuss a music video; O'Keefe told Boudreau the meeting on the boat was an attempt to protect his privacy.

But it was a setup, an attempt to "punk" and discredit Abbie Boudreau. O'Keefe had champagne and strawberries, and a plethora of sex toys and aids onboard the small boat. He was going to attempt to seduce Abbie Boudreau, and get it on tape in to discredit her and CNN. An associate of O'Keefe's tipped off Boudreau to the plot. This became one of the most bizarre stories to surface last summer.



It is amazing to me that a former federal prosecutor and current governor would ally himself to a man who'd enter a federal building under false pretenses to secretly tape a sitting member of Congress. Add to that, O'Keefe's lame and hairbrained plan to sandbag Abbie Boudreau and CNN for his own agenda.

But I suppose Chris Christie and James O'Keefe do share one thing in common; it's all about winning. It doesn't matter who gets hurt, it's all about painting the other guy as a villain, even if it means showing a distorted view to their true believers and to those sitting on a fence.

Some say "Chris Christie for President in 2012". Who knows? Maybe James O'Keefe can be his communications director.

Click the link below to read the Star-Ledger editorial about the Christie- O'Keefe relationship.




Gov. Christie shouldn't cozy up to muckraker of 'Teachers Union Gone Wild' | NJ.com

Florida Pastor To Burn Quarans On 9/11

"Hello....is there anybody in there?....Just nod if you can hear me....is there anyone home?" COMFORTABLY NUMB by Pink Floyd (Roger Waters and David Gilmour)

The Reverend Terry Jones,  pastor of the Dove World Outreach Church in Gainesville, Florida is going forward with his plans to burn Quarans to protest the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in spite of protests from the world's Muslims and other religious leaders, as well as American officials.

General David Petraeus, the American commander in Afghanistan, issued the following statement regarding the planned book burning.

"It could endanger troops and it could endanger the overall effort in Afghanistan......(burning Quarans) is precisely the kind of action the Taliban uses and could cause significant problems -- not just here, but everywhere in the world we are engaged with the Islamic community."

Jones appeared on American Morning on Tuesday, September 7, and was interviewed by co-anchor Kiran Chetry. Ms.Chetry, who in most interviews usually does not inject her opinion, appeared both appalled and somewhat aghast by the responses Jones gave her, among them his knowledge that the burnings- in protest of radical Islam- would offend moderate and friendly Muslims, and even dismissing General Petraeus warning with a "we'll pray on it". Ms. Chetry asked some tough questions- even telling Jones that one of his answers "just sounds silly": she gets some high marks from this blogger.

Kiran Chetry at one point told Jones that she wasn't questioning the intelligence of the Reverend.

But she is a professional journalist on a 24/7 news network. I am not, and am not subject to network imposed constraints.

Reverend Jones, in my opinion, is either a little bit crazy or a whole lot stupid. What he is contemplating doing has already resulted in counter protests in Afghanistan's capital, Kabul, yesterday, as well as another in Jakarta, Indonesia. What he is planning to do is wrong, bigoted, and as un-American as anything I've ever heard....and un-Christian as well.

The United States has spent over one trillion dollars and lost more than 4,000 men and women fighting in Iraq, and more than 320 this year alone in Afghanistan. One of our aims is to build stable democracies in both nations and turn the fighting over to the government troops of both of those Muslim nations. Those troops we are training have a holy book that they follow.....the Quaran. And in one small area in Florida a foolish old fanatic and his equally stupid followers will be insulting the very people we are trying to supposedly democratize, as well as all other well meaning Muslims both home and abroad.

Foolish, stupid.....or crazy. There's nothing else to say, except that below there is an embedded video from CNN that must be seen to be believed.

Tea Party Express Leader Mark Williams Kicked Out of Movement

Mark Williams, the leader of The Tea Party Express, who railed against accusations of racism within The Tea Party while referring to President Obama as "an Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug" has been kicked out of the National Tea Party Federation after he posted a blatantly racist blog entry in rebuttal to the request of the NAACP to oust fringe racist groups from their organization.

Williams, who in the past has referred to Obama, former President Jimmy Carter, and the Democrat Party as "enemies of America" on his website, called the Manhattan boro president a "Jewish Uncle Tom who would have turned fink on Anne Frank", and led a recent fight to ban the building of a mosque near Ground Zero, posted a "satirical" piece on his blog in which he wrote a letter to President Lincoln on the behalf of "colored people". Below an excerpt, as reproduced by The Daily News.

"We Coloreds have taken a vote and decided that we don't cotton to that whole emancipation thing. Freedom means having to work for real, think for ourselves, and take consequences along with the rewards. That is just far too much to ask of us Colored People and we demand that it stop!"

Yesterday on CBS's Face The Nation, Tea Party Federation spokesman David Webb said the following.....

"We have expelled Tea Party Express and Mark Williams from the National Tea Party Federation because of the letter that he wrote"

.

Williams' response to his expulsion appears on his website's July 18th entry.

Mark Williams is no stranger to this blog. In the past we have referred to his words and actions, and included two entries when he mixed it up a bit with MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan and CNN's Anderson Cooper.

Iranian Woman Sentenced to Death By Stoning

On the morning following a day celebrating our freedoms in this wonderful country I watched one of the more disturbing and horrific stories regarding religious dictatorship in Iran on CNN. This is indeed a story that belongs in the 12th century.

Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, an Iranian mother of two, was convicted of adultery in 2006. She confessed her adultery while being given 99 lashes. She later recanted her confession, obtained under torture. Her conviction was not based on evidence, but on the determination of three of the five judges hearing her case.

Iran's Supreme Court upheld her conviction three years ago, and the stoning can take place at any time. Amnesty International has said the stoning will probably not be open to the public, as to deflect the condemnation of the international community. From the beginning of the year until June 6 there have been 126 executions in Iran , according to Amnesty International.

Here's the complete story from CNN.com.

Arizona"s New Immigration Law; The Tale of Two Soldiers

Yesterday CNN ran a story and video about Pfc Jose Medina, a Mexican born soldier in the United States Army about to be deployed to the Middle East. Medina was raised in Arizona- and came to the United States legally. He always told those who asked where he was from that he was a proud resident of Arizona.

That is, until now.

The new Arizona immigration law which gives law enforcement the power to ask anyone suspected of being in the country illegally to produce proof of citizenship or legal residency has Medina feeling wounded and ashamed of the state in which he grew to manhood.

His loyalty to his country remains unwavering.

In the video below he tells his story.



While watching Medina yesterday I thought about another soldier. His name was Thomas Coady; Thomas served in The Grand Army of The Republic- the union- during the Civil War. I first knew of Thomas when I went for a walk in The Cuyahoga Valley National Park, between Hudson and Peninsula, Ohio, about ten years ago. Near the welcome center was a graveyard, Mater Dolorosa Cemetery in the park itself. Walking around it I noticed all of the buried were Irish. On a later talk I had with a park ranger I was told that the Irish, who first came to dig and build the Ohio and Erie Canal in the early 19th Century, were buried here because they were Irish and they were Catholics; Hudson was a prosperous community of Congregationalists, many of whom were involved in the Underground Railroad. There was the first irony; white Protestants working to free black Southern runaway slaves, yet treating white immigrant Catholics like second class citizens.

But there was even more to the story when I got to Thomas Coady's grave, which he shared with his parents. His death occurred on April 27, 1865- weeks after Lee's surrender at Appomattox. I spent sometime finding out what happened to this man.

Digging around the internet I found that Thomas Coady was probably taken prisoner in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and was sent to hell on earth- the Confederate POW camp at Andersonville. He managed to survive, and was being shipped home along with 1,700 former prisoners on the steamship Sultana. The Sultana departed New Orleans, and made stops along the way, dropping off former prisoners along the way. She was already overloaded, with the prisoners and other Federal troops, and perhaps as many as 100 cabin passengers. By law her maximum capacity was 376, including crew. She probably held more than 2,000.

After leaving Memphis before midnight on April 26,1865 there was an explosion- the boilers that had been straining under the heavy load exploded, killing up to 1,900 people on board. No exact figure was ever determined because some bodies were never found.

And Thomas Coady, a man who fought for the Union, but was an outcast in his home state because of his ethnic background and religion, died that day as well.

I told Coady's story because its as relevant today as is that of PFC. Jose Medina- the more things change, the more they stay the same. We're told this mantra regarding the Arizona immigration law- it will not include racial profiling. To that I say...come on, get real. Who are the people who will be looked at, blond blue eyed guys who look like they could have been in ABBA?

I don't think so.

It takes a unique individual to decide to fight for one's country while feeling like an outcast in one's hometown or state. There are few like today's Jose Medina, or Thomas Coady of almost two centuries ago. How many of us would be willing to make the same sacrifice if we or are loved ones were the veiled target of a law that in reality subjects particular elements of our people to undo scrutiny?

The United States must protect its borders, and it must reform immigration policy. The Arizona law signed last week is a step back to another century.

Rep. Patrick Kennedy Blasts The Main Stream Media; Plus Commentary

Representative Patrick Kennedy (D-RI), son of the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, ripped the news media on the floor of the House of Representatives Wednesday, citing the media's failure to adequately cover the war in Afghanistan while giving updates of the Eric Massa scandal 24/7.

Kennedy continued his loud tirade until cut off by Rep. Loretta Sanchez, who was presiding over the chamber. Kennedy has announced he is not seeking re-election in 2010.



Commentary
Patrick Kennedy is on the mark...we are not well served by most mainstream media in this country, whether it be the Big Four Networks, or CNN, HLN, MSNBC, or FOX. All of the networks are owned by large conglomerates looking at a bottomline....all have cutback in coverage of international news, and some have specifically geared their broadcasts at particular demographics or political beliefs.

When was the last time there were meaningful stories leading off the hour about events in Iraq or Afghanistan? The news of American casualties seems to get buried in the middle of a broadcast, if mentioned at all. And the failure to inform the public is not exclusive to war coverage- any news about what's going on in Haiti in the aftermath of the devastating earthquakes has been sadly lacking; Sean Penn showing up on REAL TIME with Bill Maher and on CBS SUNDAY MORNING to tell of the plight of tens of thousands living in tents on hillsides with hurricane season less than three months away is not enough coverage.

A few years ago PBS had an episode of FRONTLINE that dealt with the change in broadcast media. The "bottomline" ownership of mega conglomerates was only part of the equation....this transformation began more than 30 years ago when a little show called 60 Minutes was moved to Sunday nights following NFL football, and became one of the most watched programs on television. Until then news coverage was a "loss leader" at the networks....ABC, NBC, CBS and local affiliates covered news as part of their licensing agreement to serve the public good. But with the ratings success of 60 Minutes the networks and affiliates has an eureka moment; there was a way to make money with news. Soon the copycats started up, tailoring stories that they thought viewers would watch.

Ted Turner came along with CNN....all news, all of the time. MSNBC and FOX followed years later...as well as the ownership by Time-Warner, General Electric and Microsoft, and by NEWSCORP. Along with DISNEY owned ABC, the news divisions of the Big Four networks and 24 hour cable news outlets shifted from what Walter Cronkite said "the public needed to know" to what the public wanted to know; and we had "infotainment" on a larger scale than what we had ever seen previously. Viewership was segmented by demographic and political preference in some cases, and always with the intent of maximizing ratings. Add the rise of the internet as an information source, and the slow protracted death of America's newspapers, and we have the situation we have today.

Some may accuse me of hypocrisy because I'll include personality driven features in this blog along side political entries. But here's the difference- I never set out to do a strictly political blog....but I do write a blog that has a decided and admitted political slant, and I make no apologies for it. I write about people places, things, and ideas that appeal to me....and I just like to write; so I throw these ideas and features back to you, all 900 + of them.

And I'm not doing it for the money.

I thank God for the dedicated bloggers we have out there...the one's who'll talk about subjects few want to, and of subjects few in media want to touch. Though there may be a slant in the presentation in some, its being brought for with a passion that's void of profit, other than profiting by doing a good job in its writing.

Maybe more of that zeal is need by some of the "MSM", minus the bottomline.

The Coffee Party; Time For More Civility In The Political Discussion

Something new brewing in American politics?

Pardon the bad pun.

Annabel Park joins Kiran Chetry and John Roberts on CNN's American Morning to discuss the Coffee Party USA, a movement she says is aimed to get government working again for the people. She says the movement is not aligned with any existing political party, and that the two party system is outdated.



The movement appears to be a consensus building centrist organization with reasonable leadership who's goal is civility, discussion, and fixing what appears to be broken in our government.

Reasonable discussion without shouting the other guy down....what a concept!

For more information visit Join The Coffee Party Movement on FACEBOOK.

Haiti- Human Tragedy In The Millions

Commentary

As I type this I'm caught between reveling at what a great and generous country the United States can be when it wants to be, and of the depths of human misery going on in Haiti days after the earthquake that literally reduced that tiny nation to a level close to that of the Stone Age.

As I type this about 40,000 of the dead have been buried, but an estimated 100,000 more are either dead or assumed to be dead and unaccounted for. Bodies are piled in the streets, and some reports indicate that desperate survivors have piled corpses one on top of another to form roadblocks to slow down any passing vehicle that might have food or water.

Survivors appear to be on the brink, with no food or water for days, no government, and hospitals coping as best as they can while makeshift hospitals are set up in hotel lobbies and in tents by relief agencies and volunteers. This afternoon I saw CNN's Elizabeth Cohen tell the audience that she was seeing "Civil War medicine"- amputations that have to be performed on crushed limbs without general anesthesia. There was CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta giving an update as one could hear gunshots in the distance, while it appears that lawlessness and riots might break out at any given second. One could sense his fear that the Haitian people, who have shown patience for days, might be at their breaking point and could resort to violence.

This afternoon CNN showed a relief truck swamped by the humanity around them- young men pushed women and children aside as the workers passed out nutritional biscuits. One man mistook the packaging date (2008) as the expiration date, and told those in the crowd not to eat the food. Some threw the biscuits on the ground, others clutched the truck as it pulled away.

The largest problem seems to be that of security. Supplies, food, water, and medical personnel cannot be deployed because of the risk of being overwhelmed by either the starving masses, or possibly being hijacked by profiteers and thieves.

Its been said the next 48 hours are critical- some semblance of order has to be restored, roads and rubble must be cleared, and food, water, and medical aid has to be set up through distribution points. The United States military has the facility to accomplish this, and hopefully this can be done as quickly as possible.

It is remarkable that when the call came out for financial contributions more than $8 million was contributed via texting....that, ladies and gentlemen, was money that came primarily from the young people of America, who often get a bad rap from oldsters like me. I salute them....and God bless them.

Keith Olbermann was just talking about some genius congressman from Iowa named Steve King, who thinks that the 100,000 Haitian nationals who are in the United States illegally should be sent back to Haiti to help clean up the island. And we wonder why our government is so lacking- send 100,000 people back to a country in chaos....100,000 more to feed and house where there is not enough food or water, and most housing is now a pile of rocks.

I'm sure the Obama administration will continue to do the best it can to alleviate the crisis, and the American people will continue to be generous with financial contributions. But we are a people with a notoriously short attention span. Will we still be caring six months from now? The quake is a tragedy of such enormous proportions that it may take years of American involvement and American money to help ease the pain. And it can't be about restoration of "normalcy"...there never has been a "normal" in Haiti. We have to help them recover, and then take that next step for long term stability.

If we're going to be in it for the long haul, I hope we don't take our eyes off the ball. Once again, the United States, a great but imperfect giant, is the best hope for a suffering people.

To contribute to relief efforts contact the American Red Cross, and be as generous as you can.

"Hugh Jee"

Brit & Tiger & Rick & The Buddha & The Power of Forgiveness

In the wake of FOX News commentator Brit Hume's plea for Tiger Woods to convert to Christianity to obtain forgiveness for his marital infidelities- and abandon the Buddhism that Hume believes Woods practices- CNN's Rick Sanchez tries to find out more about Buddhism for his audience.

Sanchez has scholar and practicing Buddhist Ethan Nichthern on his telecast to learn more, and find out if Buddhism offers a way to forgiveness as offered in Christianity.



More from Rick Sanchez on his CNN blog .

Below, Hume's original comments on Tiger Woods.




So according to Brit Hume, by implication; should a person who has done something grievously wrong start shopping around for which religion has the best deal on forgiveness?

Maybe he should float that same idea on some of America's various Death Rows, where its really appropriate.

Lou Dobbs leaving CNN - CNN.com

BREAKING NEWS Lou Dobbs to leave CNN. The controversial host has decided to leave CNN and pursue "a number of opportunities and directions."

READ MORE from CNN.com