From Bill Schneider
CNN Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Sen. John McCain became the likely Republican nominee after Mitt Romney decided to suspend his campaign Thursday. Now, the Democrats are debating who would do better against the Arizona Republican.

Democrats are debating who would do better against Sen. John McCain, the GOP front-runner.

Two polls this month have asked registered voters nationwide how they would vote if the choice were between McCain and Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton.

A CNN poll, conducted by the Opinion Research Corporation February 1-3, shows Clinton three points ahead of McCain, 50 percent to 47 percent. That's within the poll's margin of error of 3 percentage points, meaning that the race is statistically tied..

A Big, Giant, Unsustainable, Idiotic Loop

I'm no economist. With the exception of one Japanese language course I took while in the Navy living in Japan, I have no college experience. I do know how to read. I do have common sense. The more I learn about how our economy works (or is expected to work), the more completely baffled I become by it. How anyone can defend this system, which seems to be based on false assumptions and a flat out disregard for reality is beyond me.

While the news on the economic front grows dimmer and dimmer, defenders of our system grow ever more cynical in regards to talk of recession. The new buzzword among free market capitalists is "economic slowdown", as if we're just hitting a speed bump, and we'll be fine in the coming months. Congress and the president have yet to come up with a stimulus package to "bail out" the economy because they've yet to figure out what will work. Why is this task so difficult? Perhaps they are finally seeing that this system doesn't work in the long run, that their economic advisers are giving them bad advice, and they have no idea exactly how to fix it. From what I've read so far, any stimulus package they throw out at this point would be like applying neosporin to a sucking chest wound. Not enough, not even close.

An Associated Press article that was published today focused on gift cards, and their place in the market.

According to the article, WalMart is reporting that people are spending their gift cards on groceries and other necessities. Historically, gift cards have been used to buy iPods, DVDs, DVD Players, video games, and other luxury items. This news must have free marketeers shaking in their boots. After a dismal holiday shopping season retailers experienced their worst January in four decades.

Super Size Me director Morgan Spurlock has a new documentary in which he hunts down Osama Bin Laden. Looks like it's going to be good.

Another thread made me think about Majora Carter and I remembered how much I love the projects they're working on in the South Bronx borough of NYC.

Here's a link to Sustainable South Bronx's website.

This is a quote from another thread. I didn't want to hijack that thread because there was good conversation going on there.

So, in response: No, it is not.

By KRIS MAHER

January 23, 2008 10:23 a.m.

A series of emails by Starbucks Corp. managers sheds light on the company's efforts to thwart union organizing among its baristas.

The emails, which are part of a labor-dispute proceeding in New York and were reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, open a rare window onto the company's labor relations practices. Labor experts not involved with the case said the activity is not illegal. But the emails could prove embarrassing because they show managers using various methods to identify pro-union employees.

The Industrial Workers of the World, or IWW, has been trying to organize workers at Starbucks since 2004 and has been able to organize only several dozen at a handful of stores in New York and a few other cities.

Guglielmo wanted to talk about the Buddhist concept of right actions. Here we go.

I'll start it off with a link to the wikipedia page on "Noble Eightfold Path", and a quote from that article that defines this usage of the word "right".

"In all of the elements of the Noble Eightfold Path, the word "right" is a translation of the word samyañc (Sanskrit) or sammā (Pāli), which denotes completion, togetherness, and coherence, and which can also carry the sense of "perfect" or "ideal"."

Parks, Terrie Lee, 47, Olympia, died Sunday, Jan. 27, 2008, at home.

I'm writing this because I want to share Terrie's life, which mirrored the lives of so many women on the streets. I do not want Terrie to simply vanish without her story being told.

I met Terrie four years ago when I began my time at Bread and Roses, and have been friends with her to this day. Every time we would see each other on the street we would give each other a big hug and talk for a while. Terrie always wore way too much perfume. If you’ve ever known someone who does, you know that the person “stays with you” for the rest of the days after you hug them. It was worth it though just to see the joy she got from that intimate human contact, something her life, for the most part, had been devoid of.

The journey that Terrie and I went on was one that I’ll never forget. She touched my life so profoundly that I’ll never do justice to it with words. I’ll try my best.

Watch this

The Gay Science are:
(my friends and housemates!!)

(from left to right in the video)
Ryan Bunnell
Cassie Burke
Matt Kellegrew
Kevin Laird

At Fort Zarpaws

1-26-08 - Westside Artswalk