homefries.org

I’m feeling burdened by the bigotry and ignorance of people who are objecting to the Cordoba Institute’s community center (and yes, mosque) at a location in lower Manhattan near the World Trade Center. (The so-called “Ground Zero Mosque.”) Although some of the rhetoric has de-escalated to “they may have the right to build it, but [...]

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I contributed several times during the last presidential election. But I won’t be contributing to the national Democratic Party or national candidates unless they come up with, at a minimum, passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA): Of course, Democrats have an overwhelming majority in the House. In the Senate, Republicans can only filibuster if [...]

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Most New Yorkers seem to have their heads on straight about Cordoba House, the Islamic community center proposed in downtown Manhattan. Mayor Michael Bloomberg (via the Cordoba Initiative): If somebody wants to build a religious house of worship, they should do it and we shouldn’t be in the business of picking which religions can and [...]

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Here is what the anti-American “tea party” is like: First, Islam is NOT a religion, it is an ideology – the religious portion only encompasses 11 % (the qur’an) the rest is the Sira and Hadith and the closest parallel to Islam is the Ku Klux Klan – if that is Six Flag’s idea of [...]

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It is all connected. My favorite constructive pessimist, Robert Paterson, on the problem: Our system has destroyed community. Food is now “made” in industrial settings far away from the consumer – where machines or “slaves” do the work. I use the term “slave” deliberately as people who do crushing hard and boring and often dangerous [...]

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Andrew Sullivan linked to an article by Bradford Plumer on The New Republic, “There’s More to Oil Use than Massive SUVs.” He, in turn, bases part of his essay on research published on Grist in “How we can end our addiction to oil,” by Craig Severance. Plumer seems to be saying, “sure, we need to [...]

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I’ve just seen the first image in the Boston Globe’s “Big Picture” blog for today, of seabirds caught in the oil in the Gulf. May the people responsible for this rot in Hell. Failing that, BP’s executives should be held criminally liable. The assets of the corporation and all of their profits should be directed [...]

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CNN has an interactive map showing military casualties from Afghanistan and Iraq. It includes U.S. and coalition forces and links locations in Iraq and Afghanistan with the hometowns of the soldiers who died. It is sobering and a beautiful tribute. Five young men from the county I grew up in have been casualties of the [...]

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. . . but isn’t boarding a ship in international waters (by dropping from a helicopter, no less) an act either of piracy or of war? I acknowledge the right of Israel to decide who and what can enter Israel, and what ships can enter Israel’s territorial waters or dock. I find it incredibly offensive, [...]

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Robert Paterson has one of the most consistently bleak yet optimistic takes on reality that I’ve come across. Today he critiques the economic system we live in as being dominated by finance to the detriment of “making and doing things that benefit us really.” He looks to the end of the Soviet Union and of [...]

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