Category: politics

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Is Arianna Huffington asking us to “Watch Our Neighbor?”

watch thy neighbor?

Well, I just got my daily email from Arianna Huffington announcing that I could now look into my neighbor’s political donation history. I find this a bit disturbing, some might find it intimidating… even threatening. Arianna is quick to qualify her support of this new system by saying: 

“We’re just using technology to make the public record much easier to access and, therefore, much more public.” However, I am a bit concerned with who and how this information will be used. I am not interested in seeing where the big boys & girls donate… they seem to play all sides.. I am worried about exposing all the little folks. I can just see one of my left wing nut neighbors dropping by with a little chat about my donation to  Rudy Giuliani  or the NRA while they attempt to exert a little neighborly pressure on the ‘incorrectness’ of this or that donation. This is not America. 

Yep, sounds a little like how folks used to watch each other back in the old days, right Comrade? Roger Freberg

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Public Service Academy? training or indoctrination?

Some ideas just don't want to go awaySOMEONE suggested the concept of a “Public Service Academy”  Hmmm… although it sounds ‘innocent’ enough, I found one quote unsettling:

“I think just like our military academies, we need to give a totally all-paid education to young men and women who will serve their country in a public service position.”

What is of concern is something about a national academy for the training of all those entering Public Service. By te way, what do they mean by ‘public service’?…. & why do we need this, again? I suspect we are not talking just about Americorp or the Peace Corp… but developing ‘leaders’ for local, state and government office … and activists? Kinda like someone wants a ‘farm team’.

In politics today, many political leaders start off on the bottom rungs by volunteering for committees attached to some local political entity… a city or county. Often, many are asked to participate by local political groups, which is neither all that sinister or surprising. Although this is not necessarily a great system to help develop our future leaders, I am suspicious of making the process too streamlined and too easily manipulated & abused.

Roger Freberg

PS. By the way, don’t be fooled, this idea has been around before….

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Greg Lukianoff’s Free Speech!

Some of my friends are even...er... liberals

Yep, this ol’ boy does like those liberals every once in a while. Especially, anyone who practices what he preaches. Greg Lukianoff is one of those thoughtful, sincere individuals that you can’t help but like.

I first ran into Greg at  theFire.Org.  This is an organization that supports folks who have had their free speech trampled on at any of the major universities in our great country. TheFire.Org has found itself representing many folks including conservative students, faculty and organizations that found them in the liberal cross hairs. He has said that trends change and he’d hate to see the guns turning into the faces of liberals as time rolls on. Greg is into ‘fairness’… what a concept!

I guess, I admire Greg… however, I don’t feel the same about saving folks like Ward Churchill.

So, whether you are conservative or liberal, Greg’s Blog is worth a look.  CHECK IT OUT!

Roger Freberg

 

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“Snakes in Suits”… are everywhere!

Snakes in Suits... are in education, tooFor a long time, many people have followed the corporate disasters of “Eron” and the many ‘lapses in judgment’ in the corporate arena and wondered — not always silently — why these folks weren’t behind bars?

Publisher’s Weekly offers a candid review of the effort… and here is an excerpt:

“Psychopaths are described as incapable of empathy, guilt, or loyalty to anyone but themselves; still, spotting a psychopath isn’t easy. Babiak, an industrial and organizational psychologist, and Hare (Without Conscience), creator of the standard tool for diagnosing psychopathology, present a study of the psychopath in the corporate landscape. A common description of psychopathology states that subjects “know the words but not the music;” Babiak and Hare state that “a clever psychopath can present such a well-rounded picture of a perfect job candidate that even seasoned interviewers” can be fooled.”

 You can purchase a copy rather inexpensively on  Amazon.com.

Personally, I have noticed that psychopaths tend to be attracted to money, power and the control over other lives to benefit themselves. This covers a lot of ground — an in my humble opinion — the corporate environs are not the only hallowed halls that are infected with self serving psychopaths. One only has to look into academia itself… following the university president who takes his entire staff on a holiday cruise to the Mediterranean and there is much much more… but then I am sure that would be a subject of another book.

worth reading,

 Roger Freberg

PS. other interesting books on related topics : the Sociopath next door, Psychopath: emotion and the brain; Emotional Vampires

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“Ilse…. but we’ll aways have Paris and Katie and MSNBC”

And the weeeeener is.......

A funny thing has pulled virtually all Americans together… and that is a ‘distaste’ for Paris Hilton. This overshadows the bovine antics of Katic Couric ( who in an unusually weird ethical twist seemingly won’t cover any ‘news’ about Paris) .  Many Republicans are heaping on the high partisan MSNBC…. which is no surprise to me … I had my own publicized battle with an MSNBC ‘Newsy” and lets just say… I won, he lost and soccer still sucks.

Anyway, if ‘Weenie’ awards (the full one incher) need to be given here’s mine:

  • Paris Hilton for “Baby Needs to be spanked”
  • Katie Couric for ” I need to learn how to bake cookies and care for my family and stop worrying about what my daughter discovers about me on the Internet”
  • And finally the coveted “Dan Rather Award for Objective Journalism” to the supporting cast and clowns of MSNBC News.

Roger Freberg