Hot Button Politics...shoes are not good dinner conversation material!

I have managed  to stay out of trouble for several month...TROUBLE...my opinions have lain deep within my heart, like a fish waiting for the right bait.  I thought I had trained that fish to feed on real things...worthy nourishment as it were.  But, it was not to be so.

Within the last two days I have mentioned sore points in gatherings of friends and been called out...disagreed with.  In the first instance someone could not understand my anger at the hotel industry for covering up for big corperations and their extravagant conferences by removing "resort" from their name.  In the second instance, I was talking about shoes!   One friend, unbeknownst to me, is a big Sarah Palin fan. Unfortunately,  my friend's toes were stomped on as a result of me telling about Sarah Palin's pumps...you know, the shoes Palin wore on the night she was nominated as vice-presidential candidate in 2008.  The sale of the shoes went through the roof after her appearance. I just thought it was interesting. 

Before I knew it, poor Sarah Palin was being beaten with the proverbial big stick.  Monica Lewinsky lipstick was even discussed.  It was all very old hat and not worthy of our attention or even polite conversation at dinner.  I was trying to keep myself under control but it seems I failed miserably.  I said out loud I thought Sarah Palin would be a wonderful Bunko partner but I didn't want her to be a heart beat away from being the President of the United States. I could not believe the words coming out of my mouth...did I say that? Oh dear!!!  Before I knew it, my friend had risen to Palin's defense and somehow Joe Biden came swimming up to the surface of the water to be discussed.

That was when we called a halt and moved on.  Why do I do that?  I am promising myself (AGAIN) I will never mention these people's names EVEN IN PASSING.  A "hot button" should not be pushed because in the end no one can or will change their opinion.  We just learn to fight better.  Sigh!  What was I thinking?

So now I will need to apologize for stirring the pot.  I am a trouble maker....darn!  I hope you are better at this sort of thing than I am.  Friends are so much more important than politics!!!

Incidentally, I cannot defend Joe Biden or even say why I was more comfortable with him becoming our vice-president.  I guess I just thought he had worked for a long time very closely in Washington politics and I really didn't dislike him.  In the end he was a known evil...something we often choose.

Have a wonderful day.

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Loews Ventana Canyon Drop RESORT from name...AIG CAN VISIT UNNOTICED!!! IDIOTS!!!

I thought I was through writing about the nitwits that took TAXPAYERS money and ran!!!   But I'm not. I am talking in particular about those companies that took government bailouts...banks and investment firms.  This is what I saw today on the front page of the Tucson newspaper.  The information from Hotel Online, a website for hotel executives had this to say today:

February 2, 2010 --You won't be getting those skin-abrasive, roach-motel towels there, but Loews Ventana Canyon has dropped "resort" from its name to keep the corporate and government types coming to meet, eat and sleep in the gorgeous Santa Catalina Foothills.
It's part of a national, post-AIG-bailout trend in the luxury-hotel business to drop the "resort" in names, said Brian Johnson, managing director of the swanky hotel formerly known as Loews Ventana Canyon Resort.
"Nothing else has changed. We haven't changed our service. We haven't changed our staffing. All we've done is take 'resort' out of the name, because if you don't, you don't even get to bid on the business," said Johnson -- whose voice-mail message still contained the offending word as of Monday afternoon.

Now you tell me...does a rose by any other name smell any better?  I don't think so!

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Malcolm Gladwells Tipping Points! Lifesaver Water Bottles...ViRob Robots in the Blood Stream

Malcolm Gladwells Tipping Points! Lifesaver Water Bottles...ViRob Robots in the Blood Stream

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TED Blog

The Maldives have a lot to lose if the ocean depth should rise..TED had this article about the governments attention getting "cabinet meeting.

On October 17, president Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives will conduct his national cabinet meeting … 20 feet beneath the surface of the Indian Ocean. The president and his ministers will carry out the full monty under the sea with wetsuits, compressed-air tanks and even waterproof pens and paperwork to persuade world leaders of the impending danger of global climate change and the necessity of carbon emissions cuts. TED Blog

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Moral Psychology...Can We Listen?

Tweetmeme on twitter was my first stop today. Tweetmeme claims to be the hottest thing on twitter...they must spend day and night searching the Internet for the best information! I, for one, am never disappointed.

Today tweetmeme directed their readers to a web site called TED. TED is a group that has been in existence since the mid eighties when a group made up of movers and shakers from the technology, entertainment and designs fields were invited to give 18 minute speeches on the topic of their choice. Since that time the movement has spread throughout the world and is more about innovative ideas than it is about entertainment or design. For example, the conference in Long Beach California posted this information:

The annual conferences in Long Beach and Oxford bring together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).

Videos of these talks are available online for free.

Tweetmeme directed their readers to the TED blog where one of the TED speakers answered questions about his 18 minutes of fame as it relates to the healthcare debate. The first question for social psychologist Jonathan Haidt was the following:

In your talk at TED2008, you asked us all to "take the red pill" and step outside of our moral matrix. You said that moral psychology was the red pill, and that it could help people resolve many of the puzzles of politics. When emotions are running high in a debate such as we are seeing in the United States over health care, it's difficult to do this. What can moral psychology tell us about the health care debate?

Today's article called The health care debate: Jonathan Haidt on how our moral roots skew our reasoning will be well worth your time. Please read to the very bottom. We can learn a great deal by standing back and taking a look at how we respond to hot button issues.

I just thought you would want to know.

Only freedom can work such miracles! A Reminder

Image by cindy47452 via Flickr

I occurred to me this morning that sometimes we just need to step back and think about where we are. We live a place where we are allowed to disagree, even call each other names and believe differently in our religion and our politics. It is called Freedom. But we are also united in the belief that if we don't protect our country, life in the world will suffer in ways we cannot imagine. I am revisiting this article from the Romanian newspaper, Evenimentul zilei ("The Daily Event" or "News of the Day"), written soon after 9/11 by Mr. Cornel Nistorescu. It has been traveling on an email chain for heaven knows how long. Feel free to check snopes, then just print it and hang it on your wall. It is called Ode to American.

Why are Americans so united? They don't resemble one another even if you paint them! They speak all the languages of the world and form an astonishing mixture of civilizations. Some of them are nearly extinct, others are incompatible with one another, and in matters of religious beliefs, not even God can count how many they are. Still, the American tragedy turned three hundred million people into a hand put on the heart. Nobody rushed to accuse the White House, the army, the secret services that they are only a bunch of losers. Nobody rushed to empty their bank accounts. Nobody rushed on the streets nearby to gape about. The Americans volunteered to donate blood and to give a helping hand. After the first moments of panic, they raised the flag on the smoking ruins, putting on T-shirts, caps and ties in the colours of the national flag. They placed flags on buildings and cars as if in every place and on every car a minister or the president was passing. On every occasion they started singing their traditional song: "God Bless America!".

Silent as a rock, I watched the charity concert broadcast on Saturday once, twice, three times, on different tv channels. There were Clint Eastwood, Willie Nelson, Robert de Niro, Julia Roberts, Cassius Clay, Jack Nicholson, Bruce Springsteen, Silvester Stalone, James Wood, and many others whom no film or producers could ever bring together. The American's solidarity spirit turned them into a choir. Actually, choir is not the word. What you could hear was the heavy artillery of the American soul. What neither George W. Bush, nor Bill Clinton, nor Colin Powell could say without facing the risk of stumbling over words and sounds, was being heard in a great and unmistakable way in this charity concert. I don't know how it happened that all this obsessive singing of America didn't sound croaky, nationalist, or ostentatious! It made you green with envy because you weren't able to sing for your country without running the risk of being considered chauvinist, ridiculous, or suspected of who-knows-what mean interests. I watched the live broadcast and the rerun of its rerun for hours listening to the story of the guy who went down one hundred floors with a woman in a wheelchair without knowing who she was, or of the Californian hockey player, who fought with the terrorists and prevented the plane from hitting a target that would have killed other hundreds of thousands of people. How on earth were they able to bow before a fellow human? Imperceptibly, with every word and musical note, the memory of some turned into a modern myth of tragic heroes. And with every phone call, millions and millions of dollars were put in a collection aimed at rewarding not a man or a family, but a spirit which nothing can buy.

What on earth can unite the Americans in such a way? Their land? Their galloping history? Their economic power? Money? I tried for hours to find an answer, humming songs and murmuring phrases which risk of sounding like commonplaces. I thought things over, but I reached only one conclusion.

Only freedom can work such miracles!

I don't know about you but once in a while it feels good to reflect on what we are and the culture we support. I am reminded that my country is only as good as all the pieces that make the whole...the American people!!!! For this day I will quiet my voice and respect your opinion. I would only ask you to do the same for me.

Amen

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Whole Foods Boycott..."society-at-large...[is]demanding it."

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Thoughts on this post began with an website called The Conference Board. Quote:

Corporate Citizenship & Sustainability

Citizenship and sustainability - sometimes referred to as corporate social responsibility - are new business realities. In today's marketplace, companies wishing to improve their long-term competitiveness, profitability, and market valuation must be effective in integrating citizenship and sustainability into core business strategy. Markets, customers, regulators, Boards, and society-at-large are demanding it.

I had never given much thought to corporate citizenship before. The phrase, "society-at-large...[is]demanding it." caught my eye. For some reason an op-ed piece I had seen in the Oregonian about the Whole Food boycott popped into my mind. Could it be that the controls that society-at large-place on corporations is also spilling over onto the personal opinions of their CEO's? I think the answer is probably yes. Here is my op-od opinions on the Whole Food's boycott.

In a recent ob-ed piece published in the The Oregonian called Misguided boycott of Whole Foods maligns CEO, imperils rights, Amanda Moll spoke out against the consumer boycott of Whole Foods. If you will recall, the owner of Whole Foods had an opinions on Health Care reform and stated it publicly in the Wall Street Journal. The article lays out a long list of solutions for the problems in the health care system, all well thought out and logical in their approach. I was very impressed and wish with all my heart that the system could be fix in the piece meal fashion John Mackey suggested.

His contention that we needed to reform Medicare was a real hot button issue and one that caused consumer confidence to fall during the Bush administration. Then at the end of the article that he got himself in trouble. The last few paragraphs just did not sit well with people. They did not like the idea that many health issues the American people face could be self-inflicted.

Unfortunately many of our health-care problems are self-inflicted: two-thirds of Americans are now overweight and one-third are obese. Most of the diseases that kill us and account for about 70% of all health-care spending—heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes and obesity—are mostly preventable through proper diet, exercise, not smoking, minimal alcohol consumption and other healthy lifestyle choices.

Recent scientific and medical evidence shows that a diet consisting of foods that are plant-based, nutrient dense and low-fat will help prevent and often reverse most degenerative diseases that kill us and are expensive to treat. We should be able to live largely disease-free lives until we are well into our 90s and even past 100 years of age.

The writer in the op-ed piece for the Oregonian here in Portland, Oregon felt that the boycott threatened John Mackey's freedom of speech rights and might in fact muzzle other business owners rights to expressing their opinions in public. In her article Moll contended that by boycotting Whole Foods we were somehow infringing on the freedom of speech rights of Mackey. When consumers began calling for his removal from the Whole Food chain of command she felt the consumers had overstepped the bounds and squelched Mackey's conservative voice. She said:

This isn't about the bucks, but about ideology. This isn't about removing Mackey because he hurt business, but because he doesn't toe the liberal line.

Does the consumer really have the right or even the power to dictate who is leading companies? And, if they do, how can they go about acting on those rights? I don't necessarily agree with Mackey nor do I agree with Amanda Moll. In my opinion the only way we can counteract the voice of someone as important or with as big a soap box ad John Mackey is to hurt them or the company they work for financially. In the same way we support workers from the United State by not buying things produced in China, we can support the American people's right to enjoy the same health care benefits as those enjoyed by public servants and our nations representatives by choosing where we spend our money. Health care may not be our right but we certainly have the right to spend what we earn where and when we want. As every Republican Conservative knows...MONEY TALKS!!!

I might add that CEO's are much like public servants. While we all have a right to voice our opinions, our jobs place certain boundaries on what we say. It is sad but very, very true. When Mackey decided to put his views on public display he lost his right to protections from public opinion. It is just unfortunate that the business he runs suffers too. Maybe he is learning a lesson in the true meaning of "freedom of speech"...that he is not the only one with a very big voice!!!

Just a thought.

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Oh by the way, if Amanda Moll is wondering, I use only one paper towel to dry my hands. Resources are not MINE to waste! I just thought she would want to know.

Brian Welch...the psychology of paranoid behavior and the health care plan

I found this interesting. It explains WHY people are acting just plain nuts!! Take a look.

Bryant Welch: Why Obama Had to Have Been Born in Kenya

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Bullying....Sentiments On Common Sense

I found this fascinating quote today regarding the behavior of the Republicans and their opposition to President Obama's speech made to school children in Texas:

It makes all too much common sense that this sort of behavior by a small faction in our world can inhibit free speech by spouting the extreme rhetoric, it certainly does have the effects of 1) drowning out the less compelling and more cerebral conversations and 2) pushing the more thoughtful, reasonable and intellectual people to the point of being unwilling to speak for fear of being portrayed as ignominious and shameful members of our society. I call this bullying. They are using verbal harassment, physical assault, or other more subtle methods of coercion such as manipulation and it is WRONG!sentimentsoncommonsense.com, Sentiments On Common Sense

You should read the whole article.

Credit Card Profiling Experience

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We are all afraid of the possibility that our credit card knows more about us than we would like. The whole "profiling" thing as been a big deal in the media within the last few months and became just one more thing for us to worry about.

In case you have been living in a cave you need to know that if you shop with your credit car at a discount store where things are a lot cheaper than anywhere else, the card company has a tool in place that will track that behavior and they assume that you are in financial trouble. They might, as a result of that behavior, lower your credit limit. At least that is what we have been told by the media. I don't know if they actually do that but it seems to make sense. The average American consumer finds the whole idea just plain spooky...it is as though they are watching us walk down the street and we cannot hide. In addition we have become so dependent on our credit cards, the idea of giving up the card habit can cause a great deal of anxiety.

BUT, there is a flip side to the coin and I had an experience with it this morning. Our credit card company is a very good one. We use the points for airline tickets and they don't care when we fly, who we fly with or on what day. We just charge the ticket to their card, apply for the points and they forgive the amount on our next bill. It does work. But best of all they "profile" us! Yes, you hear me right. And we like it!!!

This is what happened. Last night, very late last night, someone make a charge for $17.00 on our account. They did it online and the hour was very strange...for us. Before we were awake this morning, the credit card company contacted us and the card was inactivated. They had already denied the charge. I assume that the person that made the charge was just taking a stab, trying to see what would happen. I looked up the company that made the charge and did not find them online.

As you can see from this blog, I have opinions, some of them well thought out some of them rants that are not as reasonable as they could be. On the surface, my ideas seem, at least to me, reasonable. But when I look a little deeper, I find many times there are things I did not know. The "tort reform" article is a perfect example. In that particular case, I found I might be wrong. (smile) Now I find that the credit card company "profiling" activity may in fact protect us from people that make charges to our account illegally. I had not thought of that. On the surface, profiling seemed like an invasion of our privacy! I had forgotten that I do give them permission to know a lot about my behavior and in return they lend me huge sums of money every month. I choose to make this deal with the devil. Incidentally, we carry 0 (zero) credit card debt from month to month!

Check your statements carefully!!! While the credit card companies are protecting you a little, your best protection is your own vigilance!!! If you are traveling it is a good idea to let your card company know. They get a little cranky when charges show up from Tim-buk-tu and you have not let them know you are going there.

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