Arkansas Blog

posted this on the proctor story and then max opened up this thread. sorry about that.

Karl Malden died earlier today. He has an Arkansas connection. He attended UCA (then Arkansas Teachers College) on an athletic scholarship.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/TV/07/01/karl.malden.obit/index.html

I don't Facebook but if you do here is the Palm Beach Atlantic University
page.
clik it.

eLwood just finished his second bowl of blueberries. Excellent. Sweetie and I went much earlier today but not early enough. I had to sit out most of the pickin due to overheating and breathing problems (COPD). But she continued to pick and as usual chat it up with everyone around. She had taken our large canvas shopping bag without realizing it was a 10 gallon bag.

At check out time she had racked up EIGHT gallons of delicious blueberries or $80 worth! They're medium sized blueberries and not too sweet, just right, excellent firmness. Her large family will enjoy about 5 gallons of berries. Our freezer had room for 3 gals.

If in NWA -we chose Clear Creek Blue Berry Farm (highly recommended by friends)
From Fayetteville take Highway 16 W, aka Weddington Road, go seven miles and watch for large signs on the L side of road. $10 gal Upick, $12 they pick.

If you're new to blueberries I suggest taking a cooler with those freezer-ice packs inside. Once picked blueberries must stay chilled or they break down quickly.

There's a surprising number of pick-your-own fruit and veggie places around Ark.
PickYourOwn.org is on my name.

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oops. Here is Pick-Your-Own.org link

elwood, you mean you didnt eat any berries on the way home? I would've had to hose down a travel supply before I left.

I couldnt believe Karl Malden was 97 years old. good grief!

Obama's answer, today, why he doesn't want and (according to Sebelius, and will prevent) a Single-Payer system.

"The President was asked why, unlike most industrialized nations, he is not pursuing a single-payer health care system. He answered that such a system would be "hugely disruptive" because of the current systems reliance on employer based healthcare.

"We should be able to find a way to create a uniquely American solution to this problem that controls cost but preserves the innovation that is introduced in part with a free- market system," the President said.

Basically the same answer that we go from Grassley, Nelson, Snowe and LIEberman. Gag me. "Free Market System" is a typical Rethug. description for any plan that is guaranteed to screw the majority of Americans.

Wipe Out is on! Now that's television.

No, tina. You eat and pick, then eat some more. I wasn't a total dropout on the pickin trip, just most of it.

eLwood--Your story brings back memories of cherry picking we use to do as kids. We'd go to the cherry orchard and eat while we picked. They would weigh the buckets of cherries when we got through and charge accordingly. My Mom always said they should have weighed us three kids on the way in and out because we would eat so many.

Karl Malden grew up in Gary, Ind., near Chicago. and apparently was a pretty good basketball player. He got a scholarship to ASTC, now UCA, and stayed only briefly. The story, which I can't vouch for, is when he got on the campus, he wanted to participate in a school play. The coach told him no and Malden went back to Gary. This was in 1931. He's not listed in UCA athletic records.

Exxon still funding global warming skeptics

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jul/01/exxon-mobil-climate-change-sceptics-funding

Sad to see Karl Malden pass. When I was in college, I wrote a poem for my creative writing class based on the character he played in Ruby Gentry. Ruby (the extremely sexy Jennifer Jones) was from the wrong side of the tracks and in love with the scion of an aristocratic family played by Charlton Heston, but he had to marry the daughter of another family to keep his family out of the poor house. Malden's character also was wealthy and he was in love with her, so she married him even though she did not love him, and that was what the poem was about.

Click on name for a bit of squeaky hilarity in this Durex condom commercial. It's a hoot.

Nice to read this............memories........glory days

clicky

goodnight,,,,,,,,,,,,bon nuit

Obama has to figure out how to kill the big insurance companies first and then he'll hand us a plan of what to do next. If you read between the lines, a lot of what he has said so far can only lead to one conclusion......death to Big Insurance. That's a tall order...just think how many people work for Big Insurance. File clerks and secretaries, janitors and receptionists. They aren't the bad guys, they don't deserve to lose their jobs. But when their bosses can't make money any more.....they'll be out the door with the big dogs.

Universal health care is a biggin! To dismantle Big Insurance without swamping the whole country is a big order. But that's what has to happen before us little people catch a break. The bottom line is.....putting in a public government plan will kill Big Insurance. They want to make billions off us, not millions. They want the whole pie...they don't want to share a damn thing.

This is what I believe Obama is doing and it's a super delicate dance. I wish I could go to the doctor tomorrow....but I'm going to have to wait. Moving the tectonic plates takes a while. I've spent 16 years trying to figure out how to repair my front porch.....fair, affordable, quality, health care for everyone is a damn site bigger job than that. Everybody start wiggling their nose like Samantha Stevens....maybe that will help.

DBI -

It's Morning in America.

Well, it's morning in MY America, anyway. Which, when you get down to it, is all that truly matters.

Have you erected a SHRINE to Barry and Mickie in your home's media nook? (We want pix!)

"If you read between the lines," you suggest . . . .

"This is what I believe Obama is doing," testifying to your "faith"-based reality.

You've said several times, in light of recent criticisms of Obama here (based on actions, not "faith'), essentially the same thing:

"But you all still haven't told me who we should line up behind? If not Obama....then who? If we don't support Obama, isn't that tacit support of the Republicans? Who do we march with? I need a name!"

We all know you're one of the Good Guys here, and yours is a legitimate question.

Yet your assertion implies that criticism of Obama requires abandoning him and finding a new Leader ("führer" in German, Hans).

Not so.

Forget for the moment all the ancient excuses perpetually served us by the Powers That Be when profound social change threatens institutionalized bigotry: "It's not the right time." "Too much on his plate." "More important issues." "Too soon." "It's an abomination before God."

I've already addressed Facts vs. "Faith" in Obama's administration policies based on his ACTIONS so far at clicky.

We've heard those same excuses since the Civil War, which STILL divides many Americans 150 years later. (Well, Southerners. Nobody else gives a shit since the rest of the country long ago abandoned rural self-pity and moved on to economic development and progress.)

But it's not "just" same-sex equality, DBI.

The deceptions and spin from this administration reverse GENUINE health-insurance reform (single-payer public option's NOT gonna happen under Obama, so far) and the economic "rescue" (NOT happening) too. Obama's backpedaled from BOTH. His administration's apparently on IV life-support from the usual Big $ Lobbyists.

Nobody expects overnight change in anything, DBI (eLwood, etc.).

We DO expect - and voted for -- a leader whose words match his actions. They don't. They haven't in generations of Presidents. Obama's (so far) just more of the same.

Here's a NYT article from five years ago. Prescient.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/25/opinion/25KIPN.html

No one wants Obama to become an historic American leader more than I.

My God! Our first Black President, in one fell swoop, could wipe out centuries of racist bigotry and ugly stereotypes of black subservience and incompetence.

Obama could be, in effect, what Martin Luther King could have been had he been elected President instead of assassinated by a southern white religious-racist tool.

I hope Obama can STILL be what Martin Luther King was on his way toward.

Barry's got the badinage. But from facts and actions in these first five or six months, it's (corrupt) business as usual.

Hope dwindles every day this goes on.

I guess my choice is to pressure and prod and provoke a President I once thought had the courage to turn America around in the eyes of the world.

Barack Hussein Obama can still be an American President for the Ages.

I'd like to think those of us who speak to power, on local Blogs and a broader scale, might be heard, might be recognized as urging and supporting the BEST in our elected leaders, rather than threatening to prematurely abandon them.

All I know is Martin Luther King (imperfect in his personal life like everybody but me) didn't kiss anybody's ass. Ever.

Obama?

I guess, DBI, there are Leaders and Puppets.

My "faith?" That the Blue Fairy of same-sex American equality (DOMA / DADT) and universal health-care will turn Obama into a real man. No strings. A REAL President.

That's's my heartbreak, DBI.

Maybe I want TOO MUCH from Obama. Every day's news brings incrementally disappointing facts about his administration's kiss-lobbyists'-ass policies.

Maybe Obama's temperamentally incapable of being a Great American. Maybe I overestimate him.

Rather than abandoning Obama, DBI, it seems more productive to support his strengths and courage through (hopefully) constructive criticism and positive reinforcement.

It's just that opportunities for positive reinforcement -- or for Obama's listening or caring -- or his administration -- are nearly non-existent, now.

Take it to the bank, DBI.

The Blue Fairy issue of same-sex Constitutional equality for all Americans (I'm so sorry, but the only people who'll take "offense" to that are certain straights: everybody else gets the irony) is the issue that will make or break Obama's Administration.

It's about Equality, honey. Like Abraham Lincoln and shit.

Obama could be the black Lincoln.

So far he's just another cowardly bigot and corporate puppet who's spun his way into the Presidency.

I mean that in a hopeful way.

No. REALLY.

Given that the US Senate is the biggest obstacle to meaningful reform on any issue you care to mention in the current political environment, I've been paying close attention to the statements coming out of Blanche Lincoln and her office lately. To put it mildly, I've found them highly disturbing:

On Health Care Reform, interviews with our senior Senator sound like a continuous series of right-wing/corporate talking points just strung together end-to-end. If I hear her say one more thing about "rationing" or "bureaucrats coming between you and your doctor" (as if those things don't happen now with Insurance companies under the current system) I'm going to scream and hurl something at my TV or radio.

On desperately-needed Climate-Change legislation, she appears to be one of the major reasons why some observers are declaring the Waxman-Markey bill DOA in the 'world's worst deliberative body.' This in spite of recent studies showing that by 2080 the effects of unchecked climate change will lower the agricultural output of Arkansas and other south-eastern states by anywhere from 15% to upwards of 30%. Needless to say, this would be devastating for a state as agri-intensive as ours, particularly to the farmers whose plight Sen. Lincoln claims to champion.

And that's not even mentioning her regressive position on the Employee Free Choice Act.

To make a long story short, Blanche needs a primary opponent in the worst way. Without a credible threat from her left, her re-election strategy is, logically, to tack to the right in order to be in the safest position for the general election. Unfortunately for Arkansans and for the country as a whole, this triangulation strategy, aimed at the fall of 2010, means that she is a greater obstacle to vital reform legislation under consideration this year.

Any ideas for a credible, progressive challenger?