Senator West Virginia

We are under no obligation to be subjected to the underbelly of cultural dysfunction, rap and hip-hop music. We just need adults to take charge.

Let’s take a typical hour in the car, listening to a pop music station, such as WPGC Washington, DC. Fortunately most of the hour is commercials. Normally, you wouldn’t want that. But in this case it is a relief. Why? There was a song about birthday sex, a song about a large penis (the song production included Beyonce, and I had thought she had some class. I was wrong.), a song with masturbation references, another about sexual positions, and another about nudity and the joys of weed. This is material not suited for the intended audience: kids. We should not put up with it. But in today’s over-communicative world, it’s everywhere.

The key here is that for a free society, without government censorship, to work, there has to be something else: adults. For parents, that means turning off the radio. But we know that in this day and age, communications are a step ahead of parents. There are just too many sources, and the kids are too savvy — they learn early where the minimize button is.

Something should be done. This content is not OK. It is unhealthy. This isn’t prudishness talking here; it’s decency. In that hour of music there was not one — not even one! — positive message. It was filled with sexual content, but no hint of sexuality — that passion, caring, gentleness, and other traits that separate human intimacy from the animal act. Basically, what rap and hip-hop talk about is what pigs do. That’s as elevated as the conversation becomes. And it goes downhill from there. It glorifies pimps and gangs. These are two things that in reality have always — always, in EVERY case! — been destructive. So to see teenage boys cheerfully talking about pimping, or teenage girls playfully trying to make gang signs is more than disturbing. It is a sign of sickness in a society that claims to care about kids.

A free society means we are going to have freak shows. It also means people are free to shake up the system and push envelopes. Freedom does not protect us from shocking behavior. But when Snoop Dog, on national TV, leads a woman on all fours around on a leash, we all know it is wrong. And moms and dads should work to stop it. In fact, anyone with morals should step up.

What can be done to create a civil society? Well, we’re going to need help. We are going to need adults in positions of responsibility. Adults would’ve said, ‘No!’ to Snoop Dog and pulled the plug. Adults would’ve said, We care about kids and we are not going to allow music [like the hour I described] on the airwaves.

In a society that needs more civility and not less, adults are going to have to act. Not under government coercion, but because they are adults. With the incredible choices we have — local music, world music, all styles and types, there is no call for adults to choose the type of airwave pollution with NO value. Censorship NO! Acting like adults, YES!

Who would have thought that they’d see a country star singing a song with Civil Rights references to a black president in the White House. Well, it happened. And it means something.

Young people who’ve grown up on the Internet, music ‘sharing’, cable TV, and following people’s lives by the minute on Twitter take these for granted. But it is a quantum leap in communications from a generation ago. Truly there are significant problems with these technologies, but they provide people today with an incredible gift: choice.

A generation ago, news was owned by three main networks (and perhaps a single local station). Information was hard copy — one had to dig up information in books, magazines and reports. The EM spectrum was a carefully controlled and monitored as a vital asset in the Cold War. But today information flows freely.

Directions, opinions, tickets — the range of what is available in an instant is astounding.

When it comes to music, the technology makes the choices endless. At your fingertips you have current music and past music, local music and world music, urban music and country music — along with reviews of songs, and the means to make your own music.

Yet with this wonderful portal of music choice, with its possibilities for using music to better understand people from all over the world, some people still use music to divide. ‘This is OUR music, and if you are one of us it is YOURS too.’ And ‘If you like another style of music, you are not one of us.” It’s music-as-a-weapon.

It is like bigotry. The generation with the greatest access and closeness to people different from themselves, the most diverse generation in history, seem to be the one using the language of intolerance and prejudice.

People should realize that as a society we are becoming more and more homogenous. In today’s world, nowhere is unaffected by the rest of the world. In the excellent Heard Museum in Phoenix, AZ, a showcase of Native American culture, there is a film about the Havasupai of the Verde River canyons. They chose to be isolated in the beautiful canyons, and yet they spoke English, wore jeans and t-shirts with rock band logos, and rode Toyota four-wheelers.

The people of this nation have been pulled together by three main forces.: service in the military, education, and the Internet. The military was the first great integrating force. Not without problems, it nonetheless brought people of varying backgrounds into a merit-based system. The nation’s education system today teaches tolerance. Ninety-one percent of the nation’s children go to public schools like Edison High School in Northern Virginia. It is a high-performing International Baccalaureate school with a minority white population. Elite private schools, once lilly-white, show a different, more diverse, more integrated face today. The newest trend in online education, where you can take classes in which you communicate with people all over the world in your ‘virtual classes’.

Which leads to the culturally-unifying force of the Internet. You wish to buy authentic Navajo jewelry from the Navajos themselves? You used to have to go to Arizona; now you can go online. I once tried to buy a product made in a city I was visiting. The woman at the counter told me I would be better off ordering on the Internet! Improbably, the language of the Internet is now known everywhere. It is a cultural commonality, in a homogenous world.

Choices represent freedom — freedom to choose. In a world brought together by these choices, we should accept our common traits.

ORIGINAL

Growing Together, a Trend that Brought Country Music and an African-American President Together

When Brad Paisley, country music star, sang his hit Welcome to the Future, to President Obama, for whom he wrote it, the moment underscored two key notions: choice and homogeneity.

Young people who’ve grown up on the Internet, music ‘sharing’, cable TV, and Facebook take these for granted. But it is a quantum leap in communications from a generation ago. Truly there are significant problems with these technologies, but they provide people today with an incredible gift: choice.

A generation ago, news was owned by three main networks (and perhaps a single local station). Information was hard copy — one had to dig up information in books, magazines and reports. The EM spectrum was a carefully controlled and monitored as a vital asset in the Cold War. But today information flows freely.

Last week I was driving across country. Whenever we needed directions (GPS, one a security priority, can now be utilized with your phone), opinions about restaurants, or tickets to some event, we could use a phone, from the car, for instant results.

When it comes to music, the technology makes the choices endless. At your fingertips you have current music and past music, local music and world music, urban music and country music — along with reviews of songs, and the means to make your own music.

Yet with this wonderful portal of music choice, with its possibilities for using music to better understand people from all over the world, some people still use music to divide. ‘This is OUR music, and if you are one of us it is YOURS too.’ And ‘If you like another style of music, you are not one of us.” It’s music-as-a-weapon.

It is like bigotry. The generation with the greatest access and closeness to people different from themselves, the most diverse generation in history, seem to be the ones using the language of intolerance and prejudice.

People should realize that as a society we are becoming more and more homogenous. In today’s world, nowhere is unaffected by the rest of the world. In the excellent Heard Museum in Phoenix, AZ, a showcase of Native American culture, there is a film about the Havasupai of the Verde River canyons. They chose to be isolated in the beautiful canyons, and yet they spoke English, wore jeans and t-shirts with rock band logos, and rode Toyota four-wheelers.

The people of this nation have been pulled together by three main forces.: service in the military, education, and the Internet. The military was the first great integrating force. Not without problems, it nonetheless brought people of varying backgrounds into a merit-based system. The nation’s education system today teaches tolerance. Ninety-one percent of the nation’s children go to public schools like Edison High School in Northern Virginia. It is a high-performing International Baccalaureate school with a minority white population. Elite private schools, once lilly-white, show a different, more diverse, more integrated face today. The newest trend in online education, where you can take classes in which you communicate with people all over the world in your ‘virtual classes’.

Which leads to the culturally-unifying force of the Internet. You wish to buy authentic Navajo jewelry from the Navajos themselves? You used to have to go to Arizona; now you can go online. I once tried to buy a product made in a city I was visiting. The woman at the counter told me I would be better off ordering on the Internet! Improbably, the language of the Internet is now known everywhere. It is a cultural commonality, in a homogenous world.

So people today have more choices than ever before, in a world brought together by these choices.

Lyndon B. Johnson was the 36^th president of the United States. As such, most people who are interested in the history of the United States would do well to learn some of the interesting Lyndon B. Johnson quiz points that exist, as he plays an important part in the history of the country.

 

Perhaps the most significant fact of Lyndon B. Johnson’s political career has to do with how he came to office. It was after one of the most devastating moments in American history, the assassination of JFK, that Johnson would become president, although he would go on to fairly win his own election after finishing Kennedy’s term.

 

Lyndon B. Johnson trivia buffs should know the years of his service in the variety of the political branches that he worked in. In addition to his years as vice president and as President, he also was a United States Representative (Texas) for 12 years, starting in 1937, and a Senator for another twelve, six of those spent as the Majority Leader in the Senate.

 

A Lyndon B. Johnson quiz is ultimately going to turn to the issue of Vietnam, easily the most controversial part of his presidency and his politics. Before Kennedy’s death, the mission had been planned to begin the withdrawal of troops from this troubled region. Instead, Johnson began to increase the American presence and involved them directly in the ground war. When Kennedy died, there had been 16,000 American soldiers in Vietnam, and by 1968 the number was over half a million.

 

An interesting point of Lyndon B. Johnson trivia is that despite the way the media has portrayed the reactions of America to the Vietnam War, it was not directly responsible for his decline in popularity and the polls. In fact, the divisive stance of his own party was as much to blame for his not being re-elected as anything else in that political climate.  It was the division in the party which caused him to ultimately withdraw his bid for being the party’s presidential candidate. However, the damage to his party had already been done. The events taking place internally within the Democratic Party at that time were thought by many to be responsible for the election of Richard Nixon in the 1968 election, as the party was far too divided and weak to mount an effective campaign against the Republican Party of the time.

 

How The Elite Control Politics

People learnt a long time ago that getting into full blown discussions at work and in the office about sex, religion and politics are a very touchy aspect. They are bound to always end up going in the wrong direction (by this I mean a major disagreement). The fact of this is because you can either offend a colleague or get into a full blown out of proportion argument.

This doesn’t mean that you should seek out those who are powerful and hang onto them, however. It means, simply, that you should learn to remain balanced in your outlook regardless of the machinations of the power politics that constantly swirl around you. How? By being content with yourself and your personal power, without need for anything else.

Plato, the I Ching, and others like them counsel that to gain the power that we all intrinsically seek, we should focus on becoming stronger within, because the power we are looking for does not lie in the ability to hire and fire, or to be noticed or praised; it lies in the ability to no longer care about either your own position in relation to that of others or even what they think.

How do you get this healthier outlook on life and the opinions of others? Most likely you are quite familiar with what you believe is your weakness and your concerns about your image. But to find the power within yourself to not care about what you can’t control, you will need to become reacquainted with your own strength.

The best thing to do in all honesty is to walk out of the room, but if you are stuck then you should make your feelings clear that you do not want to be part of the conflict.

Now let’s consider a different scenario: what if you are the one in your organization who has the power? Or what if you become one of the powerful? Then you must learn something else: to become wise enough to use the power you are granted appropriately; that is, you must learn not to abuse it, despite the ever-present temptations to do so.

For all those who abuse power will sooner or later pay dearly. Why? Because power follows the rule of physics that says for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction; that is, the usage of power always has a reaction on the user. Simply put, power, when misused, weakens and corrupts. Or, at the least, its abuse leaves you feeling guilty and anxious, and here I speak from long experience, like many, having made numerous mistakes in the misuse of power both at work and at home.

Characterizing The Judge Talks Politics as a tell-all book about Long Island politics does not do it justice. Between the covers of this compact, well written book a reader can find a snapshot of Nassau County history during a most important time; details on how politics really work; tips on how to analyze issues; advice on how to seek political office; and much more.   Whether you are a casual reader, or a political junkie seeking snippets of information politicians don’t normally want to discuss, The Judge Talks Politics is a worthwhile read. I strongly recommend it.

Resource Author Francisco R. Higueras
Trabajar desde casa es fácil si sabes como
Todo sobre Juegos para gente que le gusta jugar
Encontrar un Trabajo – Empleo es fácil si sabe dónde buscar

You may have heard the joke that goes like this: There are two types of people in the world, those who divide people into two types and those that don’t. One of the world’s smartest people, Steven J. Gould, wrote about humanity’s disturbing trait of dividing things into two’s. That makes it easier to say that someone is for us or against us. This dualism adds to our dueling.

It also prevents us from seeing solutions to our problems. In local school districts, it’s either whole language or phonics (in reality, just about any reading program has both). In politics it’s liberal versus conservative. In Washington, DC politics, it’s black versus white. In the Bible belt, one finds Christians versus anyone who isn’t.

Talk radio stations love the liberal-conservative noise. You can’t find a let’s-get-along station. The country isn’t served by this. When pressed on his liberal credentials, then-President Clinton said, “that dog won’t hunt anymore.” Like him or hate him. his effort to blur the distinction might have merit.

Around the Internet there is a campaign to paint the world as a coming battleground. The Muslims are coming and coming fast! Soon they will take over Europe, then Islamify the US. Then won’t Christians who ignored all the signs be sorry!

In matters of race, we have issues, but we show progress. The quiet progress comes from interracial marriages and mixed race neighborhoods. Moreover, it comes from mixed race people. Tiger Woods signaled by his notoriety a change in our concept of race. Black/white distinctions are being blurred by the idea of multi-racial.

Our true selves as Americans show up not as blots of black, white and other, but as a mix. If Tiger by virtue of his parentage is cool, having a mixed-race president is way cool.

Religious distinctions, products of our minds and not physical characteristics, should be easily bridgeable. But we insist on exclusivity. Maybe it’s time for make it cool to be multi-religious. Mike Mansfield in his book The Japanese Mind describes how the Japanese can be, with no internal contradictions and no social discomfort, be of several beliefs. They may be Christian, Buddhist, and Shinto at the same time, choosing rituals from each, as they deem fit.

And why not? Why can’t I choose a theology drawing on the Wisdom of Solomon and David, the meditative awareness of the Buddha, the poetry of the Quran, and the humility of Jesus? Religion at its best creates community, and our diverse society is rich in the wisdom of the ages.

Yet we feel we must choose one and only one.

I know someone whose wife is a Muslim Moroccan who followed her white, Christian husband to the US from Spain. She believes in celebrating everyone’s holidays. She enjoys St Patrick’s Day with the relish of the Irish, Christmas with the sense of joy experienced by Christians, and Eid with the reverence of her own faith.

But that we all could embrace such an outlook. But we seem stuck in our dualist nature. Pro-com. Go-no-go. We argue to argue. We can, however, be more than the residue of our little philosophical encampments.

I admit there are limitations. One cannot, for example, be both a Dodgers and Giants fan. That would be silly.

That innocent looking wall clock staring at you from the wall might be more menacing than you think. Is it staring…or is it watching? And who is it telling?

Cameras are being placed everywhere, and nobody is telling us about them. They are being hidden in vases, teddy bears, televisions, and even innocuous wall clocks. Companies are using them to proetct their posessions, or monitor our habits. Governments are tracking our movements, and now, even private individuals are starting to watch us.

The power to watch you is now in the hands of the average guy on the street. With the prevalence of mini spy cams now being offered at very affordable prices, the ability to secretly watch us is now available to anyone with a couple of extra dollars to spend. And where are these responsible citizens placing their new spy toys?

Some people have innocent enough desires. The most common use of a spy cam is to monitor babysitters and housekeepers while you are at work. It is a basic enough desire. In a world short on trust, it is difficult to hand over your most prized possessions and even your children to random strangers claiming to be nannies.

But many clever people are thinking outside of the box, and are using these spy cameras to take explicit images of people in very private places.

Aside from merely monitoring the short skirts in the neighborhood on a windy day, some people are sneaking into bathrooms and dressing rooms and installing these mini devices in order to take explicit, and highly illegal photographs of those trusting enough to expose themselves.

What is the answer? Tentative vigilance or outright paranoia? Whenever you are outside of the security of your home, be aware that you may be on camera. However, it may not really matter. If everyone is on film, every day, every minute, there is a certain equality oin that.

Eventually we may discover some technology that will reveal hidden cameras and other transmission devices. Unfortunately, until that time, the wall clock sitting above the mantel may not be as unassuming as you think.

The advertising campaign that helped Barack Obama to win the US presidential election has scooped a number of awards at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Awards. Advertising agency Droga5 won the Titanium prize for presenting an idea that is “provocative, challenges assumptions and points to a new direction” for ‘The Great Schlep’ campaign featuring Sarah Silverman intended to boost support for Obama amongst Jewish voters. As well as the video that saw Silverman urging young “Jewish grandchildren” to travel to Florida and persuade their grandparents to vote Obama, the campaign also included an interactive website.

The integrated prize was also given to the Obama campaign, for its effective use of three or more different medias combining to deliver a powerful message. It got recognition as a creative use of different media across the board from television, new media and online to grass roots door to door campaigning.

Obama’s election campaign also had a presence in the film category, with creator of Budweiser’s classic ‘Wassup’ ads, Charles Stone III, being awarded a special jury commendation for his 2008 reprisal of the classic ad. The new version saw the original characters who were once happy and chilled out going through tough times after eight years under George Bush, being posted to Iraq and affected by the Wall Street crash. Unfortunately this ad was not eligible to win a prize in the film category as the rules state that all entries must be commissioned by a commercial client and work towards promoting a corporate identity design, but the judges felt it deserved special recognition for being such a powerful political statement.

Another big winner was newspaper The Zimbabwean, for their campaign which used the country’s almost worthless banknotes on billboards, giving a whole new meaning to sign printing and scooping gold awards in both the Titanium and integrated categories. Other winners included T-Mobile’s “dance” ad with a whole crowd dancing together in Liverpool Street station, and an interactive ad for a Philips TV featuring a bank robbery frozen in time.