Partisan Free Politics

Well due to the popularity of my last NFL-related post, I figured I should add a little update. For those of you who haven't heard Mike Vick is facing a deadline tomorrow to accept a plea deal, or a grand jury will meet to consider more evidence and additional charges against him. Rather than rehash what I've said so far, I wanted to take this opportunity to shed some light on actions of the NFL that even I missed, mostly because I am not a resident of Florida. Since January, Deion Sanders, the only arguably more recognizable Atlanta Falcon alum, has been writing a weekly column for The New-Press, a media outlet based out of Neon Deion's hometown, Fort Myers, Florida. He ...

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At the risk of penning yet another unreadable post, I feel I must share this article in the Guardian, which discusses a recent South African report blaming the UK for Zimbabwe's economic demise. According the South Africans: "The most worrisome thing is that the UK continues to deny its role as the principal protagonist in the Zimbabwean issue and is persisting with its activities to isolate Zimbabwe." This, to borrow an English phrase, is complete bollocks. While I agree with South Africa's claim that "targeted sanctions," which would only impact the Mugabe administration and their families might be preferable, no one but Mugabe himself is to blame for the almost unanimous international scorn the country is now ...

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We've been at this for more than a month now, and I feel like there just has to be hundreds of devoted readers out there who just haven't had time to author a post and just haven't been excited enough by posts on dogfighting and "orange shirt guy" to chime in. Well here is your chance! Now I know most of us here are quickly becoming the iPod generation, but I have retained a strong affinity for the piece of art that marked the latter half of the last century: the album. I'll admit many of my favorite songs were recorded by bands that would never string together 2 or 3, let alone a whole album's worth of good tunes, but ...

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In a previous post "Sicko = Excellent Propaganda Film", I described my impressions of health care, by relating the story of what happened, when I broke my back almost two years ago. By coincidence, I am still uninsured and recently found myself going to the hospital. (disclaimer: I'm loaded up on painkillers right now, I take no responsibility for grammar or coherence)... So this past Thursday I found myself (like most Thursdays this sumer) playing softball on the mall, within sight of many a national monument. It was the top of the second, my team, the Muckrackers, was already behind by three runs. I stepped up - prophetically told someone that their smoking was going to cause me ...

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In ancient Greece, newspapers, radio and television provided the foundation necessary for Democracy to be born, thrive and flourish. In his most famous televised State of the Union address, Pericles said, “We… regard a man who takes no interest in public affairs, not as a harmless, but as a useless character”. 2,639 years later, those words enunciated first on Ancient Greek C-Span, still resonate in their grainy black and white footage. That same mass media model: Connected Socrates, Plato and Aristotle with the education and audience necessary for them to further transform the lives of thousands of Greeks from decadent ...

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The New York Times is on a trend-reporting spree again, which means that over the next couple of days you will all read articles in "lesser" magazines and newspapers all echoing the original article. This time, my beloved NYT has decided to talk about obscenely wealthy people, using what is surely the catch phrase of the month, "The New Gilded Age." The first article appeared on July 15 (it might be TimeSelected by now, irony of ironies; google it or email me if you can't read it) and it profiled several billionaires whom the author thought were representatives of this throwback era, particularly because of their disdain for regulation and their philanthropy. According to the article, "Only twice before over the ...

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Well I began kicking this post around a few weeks ago, but was never able to come to terms with myself on what sort of point it was I wanted to make. The world of sports has had some pretty shaking stories bubble up in recent days, but none has quite struck me in the same way as the story of Michael Vick, aka Ookie. Rather than dig into the legal morass of this admittedly disgusting indictment, or bask in the luster of perhaps the best pure athlete in the NFL, I would like to focus this post on the reactions of an uninformed public. If you haven't yet read the preliminary indictment you can access it here: ...

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I know I usually focus my posts on highlighting abuses of power from, and the overreaching nature of the Federal Government, but this time I am going to switch it up a little, and take a pot shot a little closer to home. One of my major summer projects this year has been to landscape my mom's yard, and in the process find places for the fifty or so different trees, shrubs, and perennials that I have accrued over the last seven or eight years.  One of the final touches left in the transformation is the removal of an old, unsightly, gnarled pine tree that my mom has complained about for years.   Now I knew that many cities in Oregon have regulations over such tree ...

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In the interest of moving things forward, I thought I'd start a thread on the content and direction of Partisan Free Politics (as well as some basic bloggery-nonsense). My vision for this project (and please feel free to disagree) is to foster a partisan-neutral, issue-oriented community capable of holding its own against the partisan-frenzied mobs that dominate the political blogosphere. We (and not just the Millennial generation) have before us an unprecedented opportunity; to communicate, organize and impact the world through diffuse organic power structures. The source of this power is not derived from the internet - though the internet helps - it is derived from the discovery of a common ground (civic engagement). To that end, the authors of ...

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