Smith's Alternative Arkansas History on this date:

8-Jan 1923 National Woman's Party leaders announced that Arkansas is among 41 states targeted to pass an Equal Rights Amendment. Arkansas women are still waiting after 89 years.

8-Jan 1954 Fort Smith radio preacher Braxton B. Sawyer claimed to have recordings of youths admitting to "immoralities" at a nudist camp at Dunn's Spring near Evansville.

8-Jan 1975 J. Wiliiam Fulbright eulogy for Walter Lippmann said he justified the "hope that reason, intelligence, and empathy are not beyond man's reach."

8-Jan 1988 Howard Baird, Tyson's vice president for industrial relations, said the firm's policy on snow days and inclement weather was clear - "We do not pay for hours that aren't worked."

8-Jan 2003 Ed Jaros, head of Little Rock Fire Fighters Local 34 representing 364 of 380 firefighters, said the union had resolved the contract dispute with City for safety improvements and 4% pay raise.

8-Jan 1987 Bishop Andrew J. McDonald of the Catholic Diocese of Little Rock and Rev. Joseph Biltz of the Diocesan Office of Justice and Peace, called on the Arkansas General Assembly to abolish capital punishment. No takers.

8-Jan 1987 Federal Judge Franklin Waters reluctantly ordered Boone County Sheriff Kenneth "Buck" Foley to reinstate with back pay Deputies Mysinger and Neeley, fired by Foley in 1986 for opposing his reelection.

8-Jan 1995 With circulation of 75,000, U.S. Gospel News edited by gospel radio station owner Paul Boden in Jonesboro is the largest magazine in the state, according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

--by Stephen Smith, PhD.

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Rachel Maddow interviewed Thomas Frank on her show about his book:

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2012/01/hbc…

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Why men shouldn't write advice columns.

http://www.picshag.com/show.php?f=pics/122…

click on image after loading for more clarity.

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Dick who? Gerald Who? Ronald who? George who? George who two?

Coming soon: an app for that. Like it never happened.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2012/0104…

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As to Tyson's policy of not paying people on snow days, isn't that still the policy? Aren't all the production-line employees still hourly, with no guarantee of hours?

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Just when natural straight men from Natural State get straight about natural manly hugs, widely respected dude in dress and smart new Prada pumps warns of U.N. conspiracy to make half of world gay.

Priestly Prada-pumped paranoia? Wishful thinking?

Mercy.

"The Spanish Catholic Church is also concerned about homosexuality. During his Boxing Day sermon, the Bishop of Córdoba, Demetrio Fernández, said there was a conspiracy by the United Nations. 'The Minister for Family of the Papal Government, Cardinal Antonelli, told me a few days ago in Zaragoza that UNESCO has a program for the next 20 years to make half the world population homosexual. To do this they have distinct programs, and will continue to implant the ideology that is already present in our schools.'"

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/english/Abo…

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Enough of this silly stuff, I've got a serious request for fellow ATimers from NWArk. I'm going to Crystal Bridges on an upcoming weekend, and my companion and I wonder if it is possible to have a beer in Ark, Mo and Okla within a reasonably short amount of time. Anybody?

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Louie, if you drive south on 43 from Southwest City, Missouri and pop open your beer when you see the gas station on the left just before the Arkansas state line sign, you won;t even be done chugging it before you're in Oklahoma.

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Louie, you well know you can find a beer anywhere in the dryest of all of Arkansas's dry counties, including at Crystal Bridges. It is drunk-friendly.

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No, MarcKyle64, I mean a B=A+R wherein a cerveza may purchased and consumed with either Willie Nelson or Debussy on the jukebox. Thanks for e suggestion, though. What I'm looking to do is a southwest Arkansas Hat Trick, verdad?

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Well, Louie, you might try JJ's Chill and Grill in Rogers, where the waitresses wear very short denim skirts and bare mid-riff tops, and where there is plenty of country on the jukebox. They will sell you one of the best cheeseburgers in Arkansas, along with the beer, and they will titillate your senses while doing so, NWA is different than when you were in school up here, where you had to depend on George's and Mary Hinson, or the Huddle Club, or the Tee Table.
Man, we are cosmopolitan now. (That means citified.) There's a JJ's in Fayettevile, too, If you would rather visit your old haunts. Debussy on the jukebox? I doubt you really want that.

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Sorry about that, I must have flashed back to my college days. IIRC, there's also a little stone marker where all three states meet right by the highway in the spot I mentioned.

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What?! No mention of the ASU bowl game?

Yeah, plenty o' drank can be had at just about any eating establishment in "dry" Benton County. The Southwest City 3-state drink-a-thon will require about a 40 minute one-way drive in the sticks from B'ville to make it happen.

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Alright, let me spell it out for you girls. One bar stop w/one cerveza in Ark; then move on to Mo where process is repeated; thence to Okie. States can be in any order. Just need from locals what place on what road. All close to Bentonville.
Three states, three beers. Southwest Arkansas hat trick. Sheesh, don't youse know nuttin about hockey?

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I don't know nuttin about beer joints, Louie.

I go to bed with a different author every night. Tonight it is Tom Robbins. Last night was Allen Ginsburg as I re-read "Kaddish for Naomi". No idea who I will invite into my mind and bed tomorrow night.

Oh, and November is a perfect asshole.

"And so to bed."---Samuel Pepys

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Tebow going to make a playoff run? http://haltingarkansasliberalswithtruth.co…

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As an antidote to the insane, inane, war-mongering blatherings of Santorum and others, you need to listen to someone who actually knows something. Javedanfar is an Iranian Jew, living and teaching in Israel---he still loves his mother country. Barbara Slavin's web site is linked below.

http://bloggingheads.tv/videos/8662?in=34:…

http://www.barbaraslavin.net/

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Thanks for the link to Maddow's interview. Funny, insightful(reminder) piece of the way things are and the delusion of a failed economic policy.

I continue to push back at folks that defend this abortation of a mind-set. While the Democrats are missing in action with little, to no solutions of their own, I continue to rest the majority of our countries ills on the "Reagon Revolution". The idea of cutting taxes without it being firmly tied to spending cuts, the right has had ample power over the past three decades, not really doing much of anything other than de-regulation and spending.

Bring back Glass Steagal, seperate financial firms and place an oversight agency with teeth that watch over finanical services. And if it is too complicated for folks on the front lines to comprehend, perhaps it should not be allowed. I'm referring to the sophisticated CDOs and the like, along with highly complex computer trading and leverage.

Our markets had worked perfectly fine for decades, prior to the aggressivre allowance of leveraged trades. The markets are supoosed to protect the "average" investors and that has clearly not happened over the past three decades. Bring back common sense!

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I'm gonna remember how much ya'll helped me when you come -- caps in hand --- wanting to get in on the protest line at the gates of our swell new electricity plant at McNab.

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Louie, what you have described sounds like some kind of sophmoric frat game that you should have gotten over, since you are a respected newspaper publisher now. You are respected, aren't you?

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