Zbigniew Brzezinski finds Joe Scarborough's knowledge of the current Gazan conflict to be "stunningly superficial". Ouch, I am not thinking that Zbig's daughter Mika is going to be able to get a work in edge-wise for a while (although she will always try to bring Joe and Willie back to the "important news" when they veer off into real discussion about sometimes ancillary or crude things)...
Philip Mangano is the current "homelessness czar" for the Bush Administration. It's not known yet whether he will have a role with Obama, although he is working with the transition team. As this Washington Post article notes, Mangano attempts to reduce homelessness through permanent housing solutions instead of temporary shelters. His "Housing First" approach has had some success in Boston . Critics of Mangano feel that his programs create a hierarchy of sorts in the homeless community (homeownership may not be everyone's dream), and point to the rest of the measures put forward by the Bush Administration on housing as proof that it's not a priority there. Mangano went from music agent to one of the 2006 Public Officials of the Year . He worked for a bread line in Boston before taking over homelessness programs.
Mangano was interviewed on NPR, and said some pretty interesting things about "remoralizing" the countless people that have worked on homelessness issues through the years. He tells a story of his patron Saint Simone Weil , a Jewish Philosopher in the 1940's and contemporary of Camus and Eliot. Here is the PBS article,
with the Simone Weil discussion at the end . Part of Mangano's plan involves the creation and adoption of local 10-year plans to address homelessness (again, through permanent housing mainly) that require a change in resource allocation and methodology. There is an interesting story of Mangano and former Mayor Hahn of L.A.talking with people on "skid row" about homelessness issues... (I'm wondering if people that live there call it "skid row"...) and coming away with ideas for the 10-year plan. Here's Mangano explaining his core beliefs and strategies:
OK, you have to watch this for more than 30 seconds to truly enjoy... it starts slow, but this guy kills Enter Sandman from Metallica at the end with some vocal drums and squealing kazoo action. And if you hate Metallica or kazoos or humorous takes on real songs, he makes some funny faces along the way...
Huffington Post has some hilarious selections for their YouTube videos of the year ... The ancient Bill O'Reilly one where he goes insane for a minute, and the Andy Samberg and Tom Cruise ones are good. I guess the Palin Turkey-Head Chopping one was a little late in the year...
Sure, we need to increase the availability and use of mass transit in the U.S. Heck, lots of folks have told me we need to model ourselves after the South Koreans or Japanese for their innovative strategies and successes. Seemed reasonable to me... and then I saw this. It's someone's job to push the hell out of everyone to get them firmly jammed into Japanese subway trains? And when I say push the hell out of... well, just watch.
You probably wouldn't expect to run into your wife at a brothel , and you really wouldn't expect to see her working there... What I love about this little story is that it's made to sound as if she is the terrible person, and it hardly seems to matter that the guy himself was at a brothel!! It's not like he was walking by the place and saw her come out, he was buying himself some fun of his own. Who should we hate in this story, the woman that was making money for her family at a brothel, or the guy that was spending his family's money at a brothel? Personally, I think they should have just worked it out, they obviously both have common interests (sex with strangers for money).
Recent Comments