Puffin’s Place

. . . no-one ever collided with the sky.

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Entries from April 2008

Life is Short. Read Fast.

April 15th, 2008 · No Comments

I stole the title of this post from a sweatshirt I saw recently. Seemed fitting
If you are interested in any of the following, you will admire and enjoy James Lipton’s, Inside Inside [The Actors Studio]: excellent writing, acting as a craft, James Lipton’s unexpectedly—to me—intriguing life, the genesis of the Pivot questionnaire, a sprinkling of [...]

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Tags: Book Reviews

Local Obama Life

April 14th, 2008 · 4 Comments

I spent a bit of time yesterday accosting folks in shopping centers to spread the word about registration in my state and the newly-opened Obama headquarters in my town.
Perhaps it is fanciful thinking, but those who support Obama seem a bit different from those who grunted and scurried away. It is as though the sense [...]

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Tags: politics

What People Hear, Folio 2

April 14th, 2008 · 9 Comments

I continue to be gobsmacked by the sequence of miles between what Obama said and what people—not even in his San Francisco audience—purport to have heard.
One expects Hillary Clinton and McCain to make a meal of this once they have distorted his words sufficiently to raise a row. One expects the media to leap upon [...]

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Tags: politics

Common Sense is Elitist?

April 12th, 2008 · No Comments

And the logic behind the firestorm of the following Washington Post blog report of Obama comments is?
Obama dismissed the idea that his struggles were based on his race, and instead offered lengthy observations about working-class disenfranchisement and its political manifestations.
“In a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have [...]

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Tags: politics

Hillary Again

April 9th, 2008 · 1 Comment

FWIW, I recommend this article in the April 7 issue of New York Magazine. In it, John Heilemann offers the fascinating scenario of Hillary Clinton successfully wooing the brains of John and Elizabeth Edwards in an NC meeting after Edwards withdrew from the nomination race. According to Democratic scuttlebutt provided by the article, whereas Obama [...]

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Tags: politics

Sorry, Tibet

April 9th, 2008 · 2 Comments

I guess the Olympic torch is still making its stealthy way through San Francisco with a police escort that would make the Chinese proud. Too bad that same number of protectors has not gone to Tibet to support the monks.
Aside from the transcendent idiocy of the money and time and machinations spent deciding which country [...]

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Tags: Uncategorized

From Move On

April 9th, 2008 · No Comments

Reprinted at the request of moveon.org:
“No matter what happens in Iraq, the Bush administration and John McCain always have an answer: 6 more months.
“When the ’surge’ began a year ago, they told America things would get better by September. In September, they said we’d know more by spring. And this week, General Petraeus is on [...]

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Tags: Public Policy