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Blackbird Singing in the Dead of
Night |
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Kamala Harris’s
brown-skinned, immigrant parents are what has Made America
Great. |
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By
Debby Long |
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“ My parents fell in love in that most
American way — while marching together for justice in the Civil
Rights Movement of the 1960s… That led me to become a lawyer, a
district attorney, attorney general and a United States
Senator." - Vice-President Kamala Harris in her 2020 acceptance
speech at the Democratic National Convention 2020
I am writing this in my new house, a house built 184 years ago
in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. My new house,
with its walls made of giant 20” wide, hand-hewn poplar beams,
are partially chinked with old newspaper from a century ago and
its glowing pine floor that creaks and slopes from the footfall
of almost 200 years of families born in its rooms, reminds me of
how old our country is and how long it has survived in a chaotic
world.
I moved from Asheville, NC to these nearby mountains because, at
my age, I wanted to, as Thoreau wrote in 1857, “live
deliberately … to front only the essential facts of life and see
if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came
to die, discover that I had not lived.”
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The Fable of
the Sick Anti-Vaxxer |
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In the early 20th century,
a famous anti-vaxxer exposed himself to smallpox. What happened
next offers a COVID cautionary tale. |
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By Rebecca Onion |
Slate |
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A
parishioner of Los Angeles’ Hillsong Church dies of COVID-19
after making anti-vax jokes on Facebook and Instagram, some of
which were posted from his hospital bed; after his death, the
founder of the church tells CNN that vaccines are a “personal
decision.” A Nashville radio host who had voiced skepticism
about the COVID vaccine gets the disease and, after suffering
from COVID-related pneumonia, goes on a ventilator; his brother
tells the media, “If he had to do it over again, he would be
more adamantly pro-vaccination.” Another pastor, from Texas,
speaks publicly about his regret at not getting vaccinated
before getting COVID and going to the intensive care unit: “I
recognized that I had been a bit cavalier.”
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How Supercharged Blue Heroin Ravaged
This Small Town In Ohio |
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By Mitch Stacy |
AP |
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 MARION, Ohio (AP) The usual
hand wringing
over the heroin problem turned into panic in this small city in
May when a supercharged blue-tinted batch from Chicago sent more
than 30 overdose victims to the hospital and two to the morgue
in a 12-day stretch.
Like many places in America, Marion an hour's drive north of
the capital, Columbus has gotten used to heroin. Emergency
crews in the city of 37,000 have become accustomed to treating
an overdose patient about once a day for the past year or so.
But they were stunned when the unprecedented onslaught began on
May 20.
They say if it hadn't been for naloxone, an antidote carried by
paramedics, most of the survivors probably would have died, too.
They ranged in age from their late teens to early 60s.
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Fraud |
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Activists
began campaigning to change the understanding
of the 2nd Amendment in the late 20th century |
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By Larry Laird |
lairdslair |
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One
of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the
word fraud on the American public by special
interest groups that I've ever seen in my life
time. The real purpose of the Second was to
ensure that state armies the militias would
be maintained for the defense of the state.
The very language of the Second Amendment refutes
any argument that it was intended to guarantee
every citizen an unfettered right to any kind
of weapon he or she desires.
---- Chief Supreme
Court Justice Warren Burger
Justice Burger said
in no uncertain terms, before gun lobbyists
and activists began campaigning to change the
understanding of the 2nd Amendment in the late
20th century, nobody considered it to be an
individual right.
In 2008, the right
wing contingent on the most recent Supreme Court
(the same people who said that corporations
are people) decided to throw away centuries
of juris prudence and extend the 2nd Amendment
as an individual protection for gun owners
right to bear arms. During the case, United
States v. Emerson, the Supreme Court decided
that the 2nd Amendment is not a collective protection
for gun ownership in militias, but rather a
protection for individuals to own and operate
weapons. This decision flies in the face of
centuries of settled law and, like Citizens
United v. FEC is just another case where right
wing extremist wearing robes have perverted
our country's longstanding understanding of
our laws. |
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Requiem for a Golf Course |
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by Fred Altvater |
B9R Lessons |
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 The
Golf economy today is a mixed bag, while some areas of the golf
business are very strong, other parts are suffering.
Part of the reason is that young people do
not seem to be taking to the game as the
older generation did. With the variety of
activities available to the X and Y
Generations, other sports seem to be more
attractive.
A slow walk around a golf course can't compete with mountain
biking or zip-lines.
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What is Humility? |
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An easily misunderstood human quality that seems to have gone missing in our modern times. How to make it part of your life once again. |
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By Larry Laird | lairdslair.com |
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 I attend a small evangelical Lutheran church in Marion, Ohio called St. Paul's and have for over 60 years. I took my catechism there and was confirmed in this little church. On occasion, our pastor takes a much needed vacation and since we have no assistant pastor he calls on members of the congregation to lead a service in his absence. I have done so a couple of times in the past two years. What follows is the message I delivered on a Sunday in late August, 2016.
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 There
is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The
strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way
through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that
democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge. |
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- Isaac Asimov |
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One
man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but
for real bona fide stupidity nothing beats teamwork. |
| - Mark
Twain |
The
faithful see both crisis and opportunity as churches close
across the country -
